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Colombian Civil Defence officers stand near a table of food from US humanitarian aid at the warehouse. Credit:Bloomberg Maduro, who enjoys the support of China and Russia, rebuffed calls to let the aid into the country on Friday, local time, in a dueling news conference in Caracas. "The reality is there is no help. It's a message of humiliation to the people. If they really wanted to help they should lift all the economic sanctions, the financial persecution, and cancel the economic ban that robs us of billions of dollars," Maduro said. Nicolas Maduro during a televised press conference in Caracas, during which he denounced the presence of trailers of humanitarian aid brought to the Colombian border. Credit:Bloomberg He insisted that Venezuela is not facing a crisis, though during the news conference, the power went out twice.
The Trump administration has meanwhile reiterated its implicit military threat against Maduro and warned him to leave US diplomats and Venezuelan opposition figures unharmed. On Friday, national security adviser John Bolton reaffirmed in a tweet that "all options are on the table". Despite the warning, US and Colombian officials have said they do not plan to use military force to get tens of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid into Venezuela. The possibility of such an operation loomed on Friday as Isaias Medina, an ex-Venezuelan diplomat who broke with Maduro in 2017, called on the Trump administration to consider the military option. "The main objective here is to bring humanitarian assistance and if it must be done by military support, so be it," he said at a news conference at UN headquarters in New York. Colombian Civil Defence officers fill boxes with aid resources. Credit:Bloomberg
But US officials have conceded that their most realistic option is to persuade members of the Venezuelan military to defy Maduro's order to block the aid. Toledo on Friday appealed to the armed forces. "Members of the military, this aid is also for you. Here is food for your children, medicine for a people that's suffering. Here is help for children. Your job is not to condemn your people, it's to help them," he said. Guaido and his team have started speaking about a humanitarian corridor into the country, although with this border crossing blocked off, it was unclear how that would work. Loading Toledo said a previous border closure between the two countries had been called off when thousands of women protested, "dressed in white and with their arms raised".
The director of the Colombian emergency department, Eduardo Jose Gonzales Angulo, said the delivery of aid was a five-stage process but that the final two stages moving the aid to the border and distributing it within the country would be up to Guaido and his team. Anxieties over a US military intervention spiked last month after Bolton appeared at a news media briefing with a yellow notepad that read "5000 troops to Colombia". On Wednesday, Colombia's foreign minister, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, met with Bolton to discuss steps forward. In an interview, Trujillo downplayed Bolton's comments, saying there is "no plan of an immediate military" operation. However, he emphasised that there was no turning back from regime change in Venezuela. "There is no plan B. The only plan is the definite change in Venezuela," he said. "This is a process that is moving on. This is an irreversible process." Loading
Millions of Venezuelans have migrated, and those left behind struggle to afford scarce supplies of food and medicine. Guaido called upon the international community for humanitarian aid. The world watches now whether Maduro's government will let the first shipments from United States cross its borders.
Opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido declared himself Venezuela's interim president last month, vowing to oust Nicolas Maduro from power and end the once-wealthy nation's deepening political and humanitarian crisis.
Despite having the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuela is in a historic crisis after 20 years of socialist rule launched by the late President Hugo Chavez. Dozens of political parties that make up Venezuela's opposition have failed to mount a viable political challenge.
Critics accuse Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, of unfairly winning an election last year for a second six-year term by banning his popular rivals from running. Some anti-Maduro leaders are jailed and others have fled Venezuela fearing for their safety.
Last month, the 35-year-old Guaido was named leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly. He's managed to rally masses of Venezuelans into the streets to show their support, and he's won backing from nearly 50 countries worldwide, including the United States.
London: A British newspaper has published details of allegations of sexual and racial misconduct by retail tycoon Philip Green, after the Topshop owner dropped a legal bid to stop the claims being reported.
The Daily Telegraph on Saturday described allegations by five former employees, including that he groped a female executive, held another in a headlock and mocked a male staff member's dreadlocks.
British model Kate Moss and British billionaire businessman Sir Philip Green. Credit:Joel Ryan
The employees received substantial payments to settle claims against Green on condition they signed non-disclosure agreements.
Green's lawyers deny that his conduct "amounted to any type of crime, or anything that would amount to gross misconduct, or a serious risk to health and safety."
London: Prince Philip has decided to stop driving at the age of 97, less than a month after he was involved in a collision that left two women injured, Buckingham Palace said on Saturday.
The palace said in a statement that "after careful consideration," Queen Elizabeth II's husband "has taken the decision to voluntarily surrender his driving licence".
The Duke of Edinburgh was behind the wheel of a Land Rover near the royal family's Sandringham estate in eastern England when he smashed into another car on January 17. He had to be helped out of his overturned vehicle but wasn't injured. Two women in the other car were injured, though not seriously, and a nine-month-old baby boy was unhurt.
Prince Philip has given up his driver's licence.. Credit:AP
The Duke was photographed driving again two days later, without a seatbelt. Police said they offered him "suitable words of advice" after that.
Complaints against Victorias 4400 architects appear to be falling on deaf ears, with the states regulator averaging two investigations a year in the past decade.
The regulator, the Architects Registration Board of Victoria, has a budget of more than $2 million a year and manages the registration and training of architects. It also deals with complaints against architects, including accusations of professional misconduct.
Lawyer Sean Barrett argues the ARBV operates more like a club focused on protecting its members than a regulator. Credit:Joe Armao
The boards annual reports from the past decade show that, while the number of practising architects in Victoria has risen from 3527 to 4380, complaints investigated have not risen above five a year.
And on the occasions the board has found an architect to be incompetent or to have failed a client, penalties have not topped $7000 in a decade. The board does, however, sometimes recover costs from architects.
The first chief executive of the NBN believes it is inevitable the value of the network will be slashed, saying tough decisions will be needed to rectify the "disastrous" rollout of the project.
Mike Quigley, head of NBN Co under the former Labor government, said the Coalition's shift to a multi-technology model and away from mass rollout of fibre-to-the-premises had hurt the potential of the service and would ultimately cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
Former NBN head Mike Quigley. Credit:Louise Kennerley
Labor has indicated it is open to a write-down of the current $50 billion value, arguing the Coalitions decisions have reduced the NBNs value to less than the construction costs and the economics need to be fixed. If elected in May, the opposition also wants to boost access to high-speed fibre connections.
Do I think a write-down of the NBN assets is inevitable? Yes, I think it is, Mr Quigley said. NBN Co and its auditors are likely to come to the conclusion that the [multi-technology mix] just does not have the revenue-generating capability or a long enough useful life to support the valuation currently on the books.
With a fragile immune system, he could not see the children every day while in hospital for fear of picking up a bug from school. Learnt good life lesson: Sinodinos. Credit:Janie Barrett To avoid dwelling on death or slipping into depression, he focused on the words of his haematologist, Dr Sam Milliken, who was so steady and direct that anything positive stood out. Because my haematologist said my prognosis was good, that gave me something to hold on to, he says. It gave me something positive in my mind to reinforce positive thoughts. Sinodinos jokes now that he took his attitude from the election campaigns he fought with John Howard, as his adviser and chief of staff from 1995 to 2006 and 1987-89.
During the campaigns I used to cross off every day, once wed been through it, to get through the 33 days, he says. And with chemo, I was told thered be a certain number of rounds and Id be counting the rounds off. Thered be a few unscheduled ones, where theyd want to top me up, but I just worked my way through it. One of the lowest points came one year ago when a bad infection turned into septicaemia and he spent the late Sydney summer in the intensive care ward. I almost died of that, he says, casually, in the middle of a sentence. These are the day-to-day things that happen, that youve got to deal with along the way. One of the greatest improvements came, slowly, after the bone marrow transplant, which was only possible thanks to a 32-year-old donor in Germany. This has given Sinodinos a strong interest in why Australia does not seem to be as effective as Germany or the US with its bone marrow donation system.
Political friends and colleagues helped to lift his spirits. Turnbull visited. So did Peter Dutton, the Home Affairs Minister. The President of the Senate, Scott Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tony Smith, and Senate colleagues like David Fawcett also kept in touch. Stephen Brady, an adviser with Sinodinos in the Howard government and later Australias ambassador to France, visited him in hospital every day. A lot of people, and Im speaking generically here, find it hard to know what to say sometimes, when youre dealing with a cancer patient, but I can tell you its always good to hear from people so you feel youre part of the swim of things and youre not isolated, he says. Its good for your frame of mind. These days I think Ive become more sensitive to when people are ill Im less reluctant to pick up the phone and ask how are you? and talk about what theyre going through and maybe talk about what Ive been through. The one thing to avoid saying, he suggests, is: Youll be right. He was happy for friends to ask: How do you feel?
He was there when one friend needed him on the night of Wednesday, August 22. Turnbull called to tell him a leadership spill was on the way and he would need his vote. I thought I was in a sufficiently good state I could do it and I knew he wouldnt call unless he thought I could handle it and it was necessary. Sinodinos left at 6am the next morning, with a staff member driving him to avoid the risk of infections from a flight. On the Friday, after Turnbull had been toppled, he returned to Sydney with an unsentimental view of the outcome, even though the sheer turmoil had surprised him. Once it had happened, I guess my attitude was: the party room proposes and the party room disposes, and it has ever been thus. I didnt dwell on it because, frankly, I had to get back to my daily routine.
His own political career has not been smooth, including a period when he stepped down as Assistant Treasurer when the Independent Commission Against Corruption called him as a witness in its inquiries into Australian Water Holdings and Liberal Party donations. There were no findings against him and he rose to cabinet after Turnbull became leader in September 2015, only for the cancer to force him to take leave in September 2017. Now he returns to Parliament as a backbencher with a desire to engage in issues like innovation, urban congestion and decentralisation, to help the government prosecute the case at the election. His interest in policy remains undimmed from his start in life with a first-class honours degree in economics and commerce from the University of Newcastle, his home town, where he was raised by parents who had migrated from the Greek island of Cephalonia. Im not saying Im going to solve all these problems by myself but I want to contribute to the debate, he says.
When minorities do speak out, they can be made to feel that no one in power listens. Many Aboriginal Australians, for example, took umbrage with the Turnbull governments rejection of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017. The culmination of extensive dialogues with Indigenous communities, conceived by Indigenous people and conducted by the Referendum Council on constitutional recognition, the Uluru Statement proposed a guaranteed voice for Indigenous people in the form of an advisory body to parliament. It was an eloquent blueprint for Indigenous reconciliation. The government, though, summarily dismissed it, arguing that such a body would be seen as a third chamber of parliament, which couldnt possibly win endorsement at a referendum. The result was another abortive attempt to secure constitutional recognition of First Australians.
Pat Anderson from the Referendum Council with the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
The voices of minorities can be aggressively policed, as well. Ive detected this whenever Ive taken part in public debates about race issues. Its that old notion of Go Back to Where You Came From. Almost without fail, an opponent somewhere will resort to saying that Ive somehow as an Australian of Asian heritage who came here as an immigrant displayed a lack of gratitude to the nation in offering an opinion that may challenge something about Australian society. Its as though the right to express ones opinion in our democracy is meant to exist for some only in theory. Some will always believe their claim to being heard is superior. To be an Australian citizen doesnt mean that others will believe you are an equal, or believe you truly belong. It doesnt guarantee that others will see you as really Australian.
A racialised sense of nationhood doesnt always involve hate. When people draw lines about who is Australian and who isnt, there can be multiple forces at play. It could merely reflect a failure of imagination or a narrowness of experience with racial diversity. Indifference and ignorance can overlap with racial hatred, but arent always themselves expressions of it.
Whiteness becomes an active hatred, however, when its channelled as anger. When anger is directed at people like Adam Goodes or Yassmin Abdel-Magied people turned into figures of hate its because some find it intolerable for an Aboriginal Australian or a person of colour to question aspects of the national identity. Hate is when an opinionated member of a minority comes to be regarded as an uppity ingrate who doesnt know their place.
Two social factors helped Billy Grahams incredible success in 1959, Piggin says. First was the Cold War, which caused considerable fear, and second was the widespread conviction that Australia was declining morally. Billy Graham speaks at the SCG on May 10, 1959. Credit:George Lipman Piggin studied contemporary statistics relating to crime and morality, and found massive increases in assault, burglary and births outside marriage in the 1950s and 60s, but a short hiatus after Graham's Crusade. Even nationwide beer consumption fell 10 per cent in the year after, he says: There was a widespread longing for religious revival, not only in the churches but the community as a whole, which is interesting it seems to mean people understood what revivals of the past were and were aware of them. They probably arent any more. The Age in 1958 opined that the population was hoping for a genuine revival such as those of the past. World War II was not long past, so many Australian church leaders thought in military terms, and were warrior-like in their prayers and expectations, Piggin says. Another important factor is that the crusade was incredibly well organised, intentional and precise. There were 11 subcommittees, all run by Australians.
And not least, Graham was at the height of his powers in 1959. He became a world figure at the Los Angeles crusade in 1949, did very well in London in 1954, better in New York in 1957 and better still in San Francisco in 1958. But 1959 was the first crusade that covered an entire country, with the involvement of almost all Protestant churches and no dissent. Piggin has watched all the sermons Graham preached in Australia at the Graham archives. It was certainly fantastic preaching, very well done. It wasnt terribly emotional, but it was very well constructed to achieve an end. He first went for comprehension, then conviction, then an appeal so you were asked to do something, make a confession, commit your life to Christ. Approachable: Billy Graham speaks to a person dressed as the devil before preaching to students at the University of Sydney in May 1959. Credit:Harry Martin And that was important because evangelical Christianity in Australia up to that point was very pietistic, very self-absorbed, and Billy wanted people to get out there. At that final meeting at the MCG, he preached on the text 'occupy until I come'. It was all about dont just sit around and wait for Christ to come but get involved, go back to your churches, your workplaces, your schools. Graham certainly had charisma: tall and handsome, urgent and passionate, totally confident. A woman quoted in a 2009 Compass documentary said: Our hearts were fluttering for Billy Graham. He was such a sexy-looking man. Most of the ministers we'd had were just very plain, everyday, older men. And here was this young man, a beautiful man, telling us all these wonderful things. It was just a revelation.
Franklin Graham may not have the same charisma, but he has the same passion and conviction. Graham, chairman and CEO of both the Billy Graham Evangelical Association and the international aid organisation Samaritans Purse, had by last year preached at 184 evangelistic festivals in 49 countries since 1989. What is he expecting in Australia? Franklin Graham at a media event for his Decision America tour of California in May 2018. Credit:New York Times Of course the need of the human heart is the same. People are searching, and turn to drugs or sex or various religions or whatever trying to find answers to life, and Im coming to preach the same gospel message my father preached, and giving an invitation to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Im looking forward to it, hoping that many people will put their faith in Christ. Were not taking up offerings, were not asking for money, were here to give in Jesus name.
The gospel message, Graham says, is that God sent his son Jesus Christ to earth in the form of a man to take the sins of the world. And when Jesus Christ hung on the cross he shed his blood for the sins of every human being, and if we are willing to turn from our sins and accept that by faith, then God will forgive our sins and heal our hearts and Christ will come into our life. Asked about his support for Trump, Graham has the practised ease of someone who has answered this scores of times. He didnt campaign for Trump, he says (although critics say his 2016 Decision America tour of all 50 state capitals amounted to precisely that, and along with Jerry Falwell junior he is credited with helping persuade 80 per cent of white evangelicals to vote for Trump). Vital support: Donald Trump hosts a dinner celebrating evangelical leadership at the White House in August. Credit:New York Times But now that he is President it is important that we try to support our leaders, no matter what kind of people they are, Graham says. The American people voted for him, and of all the presidents I have known he has been the most friendly to Christians. He is the first President in our country that is not a politician he says what he thinks. Does he have faults? We all do, we have all failed, and its important to pray for our leaders whether we agree with them politically or not. The Apostle Paul explicitly rules out doing evil to bring about good. In supporting a man who has reportedly told nearly 10,000 lies since taking office, who boasted of his sexual assaults, who demeans his opponents, is Graham not doing this?
He replies: In the scriptures Caesar was the ruler of the world, and he was a ruthless person who killed who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people. But at the same time, the Bible says all authority on earth has been given by God, so for some reason God has allowed Donald Trump to become President of the United States. This doesnt satisfy such critics as Bird, who wrote last year that Graham had used Christianity as a political prop to sanitise Trump despite his egregiously non-Christian character and the dubious moral quality of many of Trumps policies". Franklin Graham's Christianity is thoroughly implicated in a particular political vision, a peculiar agglomeration of policies about America's place in the world; it is tied to a troubling form of pugnacious nationalism, centred on the anxieties of the white middle class, and seeks political influence at the expense of faithfulness to the gospel. Graham's god looks like an apotheosised version of Ronald Reagan; his Jesus comes with an endorsement from the NRA; and his Holy Spirit is the presence of American military power in the world. Franklin Graham (centre) and the Graham family pray alongside US President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence as Billy Graham lies in honour at the US Capitol in February 2018. Credit:AP Bird cites the apparent hypocrisy of Graham calling on then president Bill Clinton to resign over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, but explaining away or calling irrelevant Donald Trumps philandering and boasts of sexual assaults. He also accuses Graham of blending Trumpism and Christianity in a Faustian pact of political support for preferential treatment, and fears this will reflect badly on Australian evangelicals, suggesting they are pining for an Aussie version of Trump.
In reply, the Billy Graham and Samaritans Purse chairman in Australia, Karl Faase, sought to pour oil on troubled waters. He wrote in Eternity, a Christian newspaper: I have heard Franklin Graham speak at events such as these around the world, and have seen God use him to bring thousands to a saving knowledge of Jesus. I am confident that the events being planned across Australia in 2019 will be marked by three key qualities: a clear gospel message, a series of fabulous meetings and a politics-free agenda. Politics affected Billy Graham as well. He returned to Australia in 1968 with much less impact, though still attracting large numbers and reaching many people. What happened in the intervening years? Vietnam, says Stuart Piggin. Billy Graham refused to condemn the war, which upset many Australian Christians. It will be harder now, Piggin adds: In 1959, the default was towards Christian values. In every small community in Australia you had four churches Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican and Catholic so until the 1970s Australia was one of the most Christianised nations on earth in terms of values. Billy Graham addresses students of the University of Melbourne at Wilson Hall in March 1959. Credit:Age Archives Nowadays, in contrast, a lot of people in Australia think that Christianity is dangerous, its pernicious, you dont need to send your kids to Sunday School, you need to keep them away from Sunday School.
Besides apathy, an anti-Christian secularism is rising. One of Australias highest-profile Anglicans, former Sydney archbishop Peter Jensen, was converted at Billy Grahams Sydney rallies. The world-view changes since 1959 have been revolutionary, Jensen says. Christians are no longer the home team but the away team, and this will become increasingly evident. All community groups and clubs, indeed the family, have suffered decline because of the triumph of individualism. But Jensen doesnt think that means Grahams 2019 tour cannot succeed. Since Billy Graham preached the true gospel in the power of the Spirit, and since the Lord was of a mind to bless us, our nation was shaken. In a sense it had nothing to do with the times it was a spiritual moment which you cannot predict or create. I believe that it could happen again in our very different time, because God is God and we were no better back then.
Finalists in this years Tropfest. Credit:AAP
A moving documentary about an anonymous female street artist who paints portraits of train commuters won the Tropfest short film festival in Sydney on Saturday night.
The film, Be You T. Fool, depicts an unnamed woman as she sketches people on trains, before painting large portraits and plastering them on a pillar of a busy suburban bridge in Melbourne.
The motivation behind her art is to contribute to a better world, she says in the film.
When photographer Paul Harmon first began piecing together the more than 100 individual images that make up each of his vast aerial landscapes, he was "blown away" by what he saw.
Photographer Paul Harmon with one of his striking aerial images.
Shot from a drone, the 2.4-metre wide images of the Murray-Darling basin in north-western NSW bear an uncanny resemblance to Aboriginal dot paintings.
"The thing that first struck me was how powerful the images [were] and then how some of the images had such a presence of First People in them," says Harmon. "I was astounded by that.
US stocks ended virtually unchanged after a tech-led rally in the final minutes of trading salvaged the session.
The S&P 500 eked out a gain to avoid its worst weekly drop since December, led by a rebound in tech shares spurred by better-than-expected earnings.
For the week, the Dow added 0.17 per cent, the S&P 500 rose 0.05 per cent, and the Nasdaq gained 0.47 per cent. Credit:AP
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 63.2 points, or 0.25 per cent, to 25,106.33, the S&P 500 gained 1.83 points, or 0.07 per cent, to 2707.88 and the Nasdaq Composite added 9.85 points, or 0.14 per cent, to 7298.20.
For the week, the Dow added 0.17 per cent, the S&P 500 rose 0.05 per cent, and the Nasdaq gained 0.47 per cent.
Local police arrested a suspect on Friday following the fatal stabbing of a 31-year-old man inside an apartment building of Peace Lake Towers, a community in New Orleans East that houses disabled residents and people over the age of 55.
Darryl Hawthorne, a 58-year-old resident of the apartment unit where the stabbing happened, is facing a second-degree murder charge after detectives with the New Orleans Police Department connected him to the incident, according to police and a female employee of Peace Lake Towers.
The victim was identified by family members as Marlo Ard, the father of a young son who was visiting a resident within the apartment building with his mother when he was attacked, according to a report by NOLA.com.
The NOPD's Seventh District first got a call about the incident at around 7:30 p.m. Thursday night, and officers and EMs arrived at the building in the 9000 block of Chef Menteur Highway to find the victim suffering from "multiple stab wounds to the body," police said in a release.
The victim was declared dead at the scene, and the NOPD Homicide Unit took over investigation, authorities said.
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Hawthorne was at the scene and was detained by officers for further questioning, police said. He was identified as the perpetrator as the investigation progressed.
Hawthorne was arrested and transported to the Orleans Parish Justice Center, where he was booked for second degree murder.
The Orleans Parish Coroner's Office will determine official cause of death and release the victim's name, upon completion of autopsy and notification of family.
Anyone with additional information on this incident is asked to contact NOPD Homicide Detective Jake Engel at (504) 658-5300.
Want to turn yourself in on a murder warrant in New Orleans? Be sure to bring proper ID.
A man wanted in the fatal shooting of a New Orleans East gas station clerk spent nearly an hour Wednesday pleading with deputies to book him into the Orleans Parish lockup.
Frank Sams Jr., 25, hoped to start the process of fighting a murder charge connected to a botched armed robbery at a gas station in September.
But lawyer Kelly Orians, who accompanied Sams to the jail, said deputies at the front desk refused to process him unless he had a state identification card. Sams didn't have one on him.
Orians said deputies crowded around trying to keep Sams out. Her suggestion that no one would turn himself in on someone else's murder charge went unheeded.
Orians could only laugh at the situation, despite her concern for Sams and the shooting victim's family.
This is all very serious to us, and yet we walked into an agency tasked with protecting our community, and it was like it was a joke, she said.
The logjam ended only after Orians produced a copy of a news article featuring Sams picture and noting that he was wanted. With that, Sams was whisked away as quickly as he came in.
Orians said the whole scene was nothing short of absolutely bizarre.
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Sams is now being held in lieu of $500,000 bail on a second-degree murder charge. Orians said she went to the jail only to assist in his booking. The Orleans Public Defenders will handle his murder case.
The Sheriff's Office's general counsel said it is unusual for someone to surrender themselves directly to jail on a murder warrant, rather than through homicide detectives.
"However, our policy does not require any identification for booking. We are investigating the claims based upon the information provided by The Advocate," Blake Arcuri said.
Police allege that Sams and Farnell Jackson Jr. were caught on video robbing the Fuel Express Mart at 7220 Hayne Blvd. early on Sept. 18. Store clerk Olah Bessid, 58, was fatally shot.
Attempts to reach Bessids relatives were unsuccessful Friday.
Jackson has been in custody since he turned himself in to police in September. He and Sams face life imprisonment if convicted of second-degree murder, armed robbery and other charges in a Jan. 10 indictment.
Frank did the right thing, Orians said. He was wanted by law enforcement, and he became aware of it. He made what is, I have to imagine, a tough decision to turn himself into police, and he did it. Hes eager to fight and have his day in court.
Sams was already on probation for possession with intent to distribute marijuana and possession of a firearm by a felon.
His case was assigned to Criminal District Court Judge Laurie Whites re-entry court. A re-entry specialist also accompanied Sams during his nearly foiled attempt to get himself booked.
A Lil Wayne protege awaiting trial in a double homicide in New Orleans took the surprise step Friday of pleading guilty to two lesser charges.
Up-and-coming rapper Widner Flow Degruy, 27, pleaded guilty in Criminal District Court to obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice, but hes still headed to trial on two counts of second-degree murder that could land him in prison for life.
The guilty pleas came without a deal from prosecutors.
Degruys attorney described them as an acknowledgment of Degruys limited role in criminal wrongdoing after the shooting of Kendrick "Muddycupbuddy" Bishop, 22, and his 18-year-old brother, Kendred, in New Orleans East.
Attorney Gary Wainwright said a co-defendant who pleaded guilty and became a state witness in another case, Jonathan Evans, was the real mastermind behind the double homicide.
Widner, who had just seen his friends murdered and was totally in shock when he was interviewed by the police, he did not tell them that Jonathan Evans was the perpetrator of these murders. That's the truth, Wainwright said.
According to Wainwright, Degruy was in the middle of cutting a rap record with the elder Bishop when the Bishop brothers were shot to death on a residential street early on Memorial Day 2015.
Wainwright said Evans unleashed an AK-47 on the brothers as they sat in a car, shortly after all four of them took a ride in the vehicle.
Police said they placed Degruy at the scene because he was caught on surveillance video in a nearby convenience store soon after the shooting, and also because he left his cellphone near the car.
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Degruy, who lived nearby, also was caught on an officers body-worn camera when he returned to the scene later and acted as if he had just learned that the brothers were dead. He also lied about his name.
Wainwright said his client made a mistake in not owning up to Evans prime role in the shooting sooner.
We accepted responsibility for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice, and we look forward to our trial on the murder counts, he said.
Two types of shell casings were found at the shooting scene, suggesting there may have been more than one shooter. Wainwright declined to comment on whether he thinks there was a second, unindicted assailant.
Judge Tracey Flemings-Davillier did not sentence Degruy on the obstruction counts on Friday. He is set to go to trial on the murder counts April 1.
Evans pleaded guilty in October 2015, receiving a 20-year sentence after prosecutors reduced his murder charges to manslaughter. A memorandum of understanding about his guilty pleas was entered into the court record under seal.
Evans testified last year at a trial in an unrelated killing in Gentilly.
Assistant District Attorneys Alex Calenda and Irena Zajickova are prosecuting the case against Degruy.
Every schoolchild learns about the Louisiana Purchase, the real estate deal that transferred the vast French colony to the United States in 1803 and transformed the nation in the process.
Far fewer remember the Florida Purchase, which shifted some Spanish lands into American dominion. Signed 200 years ago this month, the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 gave Louisiana its distinctive boot shape by officially bringing two disputed regions into the state.
One was the top of the boots toe in the eastern corner; the other was the back of the heel in the state's far southwest.
Both have convoluted backstories.
West Florida
Well start with the eastern toe, the so-called Florida Parishes, from the Mississippi River by Baton Rouge straight east to the Pearl River. Originally the domain of the Tunica, Natchez, Houma, Bayogoula, Tangipahoa, Acolapissa and other native tribes, this area was claimed by France in 1682 and lightly settled in the early 1700s.
In 1762, France, foreseeing defeat by the British in the French and Indian War, secretly ceded to Spain everything west of the Mississippi, plus New Orleans east of the river. Defeat came in 1763, at which point all remaining French land east of the Mississippi became British, as did Spains Florida colony, which became British West Florida.
This put two hostile nations, Britain and Spain, on either side of Lake Pontchartrain.
Twenty years later, in 1783, the Americans defeated the British at the end of the American Revolution. Former English colonies became American, while British West Florida reverted to Spain.
Spain and the United States later agreed that the 31st parallel would form their international border, which President George Washington commissioned Andrew Ellicott to survey. Ellicotts Line put the top of Louisianas future toe on the map, but at the time, it marked the upper boundary of the entire Florida panhandle.
In 1800, France, under Napoleon, pressured Spain to return Louisiana, which three years later France turned around and sold to the United States. The Louisiana Purchase put American territory on both sides of slender Spanish West Florida, which had been excluded from both deals. All this political upheaval put New Orleans and Baton Rouge under different flags which would both change at least three times in as many decades.
The tumult would continue. Because Spanish West Florida had previously been British, it had a substantial Anglo-Saxon population, particularly around St. Francisville and Baton Rouge. Many remained antagonistic to Spanish rule, and some called for independence. In 1810, rebellious factions formed the Republic of West Florida in what is now West and East Feliciana, East Baton Rouge, St. Helena, Livingston, Tangipahoa, Washington and St. Tammany parishes.
But creating a new nation proved more that the rebels had bargained for. Within a few months, the tiny republic acquiesced to American occupation, and the Florida Parishes apparently got subsumed into the Louisiana Territory in 1810-1811 and into the state that entered the Union in 1812. Maps of the era show as much.
However, because Spain had not recognized the short-lived Republic of West Florida, it refused to transfer any land titles. American diplomats tacitly acknowledged that the destiny of Florida, and of Louisianas Florida Parishes, required further negotiations with Spain.
Those negotiations led to the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819. But before we go there, let us shift out attention to the opposite end of the state the boot heel in southwestern Louisiana.
The Sabine 'Neutral Ground'
This thicket of prairie and swamp between the Sabine and Calcasieu rivers had long been something of an inter-imperial mystery. Spanish authorities viewed it as the easternmost frontier of New Spain, whereas French colonials saw it as the western edge of French Louisiana.
Neither power militarized the wilderness, but both kept an eye on the other. When the French founded Natchitoches on their side in 1714, the Spanish responded a few years later by establishing Los Adaes a few miles to the west. In between was a free state where isolated populations of African, indigenous, Spanish and French peoples, as well as a fair number of buccaneers and rogues, made do in a space without a controlling authority.
Then came the 1762 cession of Louisiana from France to Spain, which put the entire area under Spanish rule, seemingly resolving the power vacuum.
But the problem returned after the 1800 Spanish cession back to France and Napoleons 1803 sale of the French lands to the United States. Now Spanish and American interests stared down each other across the Sabine strip, with the former understanding Mexico to extend eastward, the latter holding that Louisiana stretched westward.
Neither side wanted to make trouble with an erstwhile friend, so the two nations instead agreed in 1806 to declare the zone a Neutral Ground, which historian J. Villasana Haggard described as lying between two sovereign nations but under the authority of neither.
The Neutral Ground agreement kept the peace, but both parties knew it could only be temporary. Settlers would arrive, land would be claimed, and someone would have to govern the Sabine Free State. Some pro-American mapmakers went ahead and depicted the area as fully part of Louisiana upon statehood in 1812, but, as with West Florida, Spain adamantly disputed such presumptions.
Enter Luis de Onis, Spains envoy to the United States, and John Quincy Adams, the U.S. secretary of state. Both diplomats had border issues to clear up and were willing to negotiate. Spain sought to unburden itself of the unpromising Florida colony so that it could focus on its highly valuable but increasingly volatile empire to the south. Spain also wanted legal protection against claims filed by Americans.
The Americans wanted Florida, as well as legal clarity as to where, exactly, their Louisiana Purchase territory abutted Spanish Mexico.
In February 1819, Adams and Onis agreed to a Treaty of Amity, Settlement, and Limits Between the United States of America and His Catholic Majesty.
The 16-article accord called for Spain to cede to the United States all the territories eastward of the Mississippi, known by the name of East and West Florida [including] adjacent islands, all public lots and squares, vacant lands, public edifices, fortifications, barracks, and other buildings.
This affirmed once and for all that the Florida Parishes were part of the United States and of the state of Louisiana. Sections of the cession east of the Pearl River were eventually divvied up among the states of Mississippi and Alabama and the territory of Florida.
The treaty also stipulated the boundary-line between the two countries, west of the Mississippi, shall begin on the Gulph [sic] of Mexico, at the mouth of the river Sabine, in the sea, continuing north, along the western bank of that river, to the 32d degree of latitude. This made the Sabine Neutral Ground into American land, and gave Louisiana its boot heel.
Other articles clarified the international border from Louisiana to the Pacific and addressed navigational and legal matters, with the Americans exonerating Spain from all claims of their citizens. No money changed hands, but because of the exoneration clause, capped at $5 million, the Adams-Onis Treaty is sometimes called the Florida Purchase.
The treaty was signed on Feb. 22, 1819, and ratified to go into effect two years later. A major complication occurred in the interim: Mexico won its independence from Spain, evidencing just how volatile the Spanish empire had become. Luckily for the Americans, Mexico later affirmed the Adams-Onis Treaty.
The consequences of these shifting political geographies were enormous. Millions of lives would be affected, including those of Americans and Mexicans, for years to come. Indigenous peoples would be displaced, slavery would expand, a war of territorial expansion would be fought, and settlers would move westward.
In Louisiana, two sub-regions finally resolved their sovereignty, and settlement and development would follow with residents secure in knowing who governed them.
Vestiges of this tumultuous era persist in our landscape and in our vernacular. Ellicotts Line, surveyed in 1798-1800, still traces the 31st parallel; you cross it when you drive from Kentwood to McComb on Interstate 55. Irregular British metes-and-bounds land surveys are still in place near St. Francisville, which itself looks more English than French or Spanish. Many folks still use the term Florida Parishes to refer to the land across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.
Meanwhile, to the west, the Sabine River still separates Louisiana from Texas, though the Louisiana side feels pretty Texan, with cowboys and cattle, and the Texas side feels quite a bit like Louisiana, with Cajuns and crawfish. Folks in Florien, a small town near the Texas border, hold the Sabine Free State Festival each fall, celebrating their rustic frontier heritage.
And neutral ground? Its possible our usage of that distinctive term for street medians in New Orleans derives from its coinage in the 1806 agreement with Spain. New Orleans at that time was the capital of the territory, and the Neutral Ground issue with Spain often came up in official papers and public discourse.
It became part of the local lexicon at a time when the local rivalry between Creoles and Anglos peaked. Most Creoles lived downtown, most Anglos lived uptown, and Canal Street, with its ample median, ran down the middle. Possibly as a jocular reference to the divisive factions on either side of the capacious boulevard, people started to refer to Canal Streets median as a neutral ground by 1837, if not earlier. By the 1850s the term spread to medians citywide.
Today neutral ground is as much a part of our local vernacular as Louisianas boot, 200 years old this month, is a part of our iconography.
Richard Campanella, a geographer with the Tulane School of Architecture, is the author of Cityscapes of New Orleans, Bienvilles Dilemma and Bourbon Street: A History. He may be reached through http://richcampanella.com , rcampane@tulane.edu , or @nolacampanella on Twitter.
Imagine being a child and having your father own a chocolate factory. Think about the heart-shaped boxes of Valentines candy filling the shelves of nearly every store you visit. If youre older, you might prefer the heart-shaped box embellished with roses; if you're younger, the box with the unicorn on it.
That's the reality for the four Nelson children, whose father, Michael, is co-owner and vice-president of operations of Elmer Candy, the venerable Ponchatoula business thats been making chocolate since 1855.
Michael's grandfather, Roy, purchased the company from the Elmer family in 1963. Michael and his brother, Rob, and their nieces own the company today.
Rob Nelson is president and CEO. "Most people just know me as Robs brother, Michael said.
The chocolate factory is in Ponchatoula, and Michael, Janice Nelson, and their four children live in the home that chocolate built: a traditional two-story house in Old Metairie, constructed in the 1990s, that the Nelsons purchased in 2003.
The house has changed a lot. It was Pepto-Bismol pink on the exterior, and the dining room was red with a gold ceiling. So we started with paint, Janice said.
An elegant cream color replaced the pink on the outside and continues through to the interior.
Everything in the house is painted Palace White," a Benjamin Moore color, Janice said. Its easy to coordinate with and calming.
Calm can be elusive in a household with two teenage sons (Ashton, 16, and Mitchell, 13) and two young daughters (Aubrey, 6, and Maren, 3), so having a resilient, kid-and-pet-friendly home is a must.
"We really wanted the house to be a place where the kids can enjoy themselves and that we can enjoy being with them, Janice said.
The result is a family home that is stylish without being trendy, and personal without being eccentric.
There was a solid door on the front when we bought the house, but I felt as though it made things too dark inside, so I had a new glass door made at a place on Metairie Road. Then, when we changed out the cabinets in the dining room and added glass, the cabinet makers used the same pointed arch on them as there is on the front door, Janice said. I like having glass doors on the cabinets so I can look at the china my grandmother passed down to me I like things that have a history to them.
Pieces with a past abound at the Nelson home, where the dining table was the one the couple bought when they were first married 21 years ago. A Gustavian settee, upholstered in linen, keeps company with two antique chairs in the sitting room.
An antique wood-carved medallion serves as a decor element in the room, and vintage sawn balusters (found in a shop in Covington) hang on the office wall. Old silvery urns hold preserved boxwood wreaths in niches of the cabinets installed by the Nelsons in the family room.
A table made from old wood by Dops on Jefferson Highway serves as the breakfast table, where all six family members have room to sit.
The renovated kitchen, family room and breakfast area flow together across the back of the house, where abundant glass brings in light and connects the inside of the house with the verdant rear yard. Boxwood hedges define the rooms of the yard but leave plenty of space for a swing set, ping pong table, and miniature picnic table with umbrella for the girls to enjoy.
At any given moment, Aubrey may be at the table, Maren on a swing, Ashton and Mitchell battling it out over the ping pong table, and their 14-week-old Bernedoodle puppy, Toffee, leaping over the hedge.
Dinner at the Nelson residence is at 6 p.m., and every night, the whole family dines together. The girls go to bed early and the boys join their parents in the family room after.
I like to needlepoint, Janice said, and Michael will say that he watches TV with us. But in reality, hes asleep by 8:30.
Perhaps that is because a chocolate makers work is never done. Once the heart-shaped boxes of Valentines Day chocolate are off the shelves, they are replaced with Heavenly Hash and Goldbrick Easter eggs. Then there is Christmas, and the cycle begins again.
That doesn't mean we are making Valentine candy right now. Our lead time is more than a year to generate the millions of boxes we make, Michael said. One thing I think is neat about the innovations we made with the business about two years ago is that the small heart boxes retail for just a dollar, just as they did in in 1978. The only difference? The chocolate is better!
Over the years, the Nelsons have developed a Valentine's Day tradition that everyone looks forward to.
Each of us picks a name, and the idea is that we have to make a gift for the person we picked, explained Janice. The process worked great, until everyone decided they wanted to be paired up with Michael. Thats because he makes original chocolate treats things that you cannot buy.
East Baton Rouge leaders are considering a change to local law that would redefine and increase penalties for drivers who cut into funeral pro
Foreground, from left, Georgena Desrosier, Miriam Barras and Lurline Gebhart, all from Baton Rouge, sing with hundreds of others gathered at Galvez Plaza Saturday, Jan. 26, 2019 for a program held after the Louisiana Life March South, which began near the State Capitol gardens and finished with a program at the plaza just off North Boulevard. The event was held 46 years after the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that established a woman's legal right to an abortion. The march was sponsored by Louisiana Right to Life, Louisiana Baptist Convention, Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, United Pentecostal Church of Louisiana, Louisiana Family Forum, the Knights of Columbus, Baton Rouge Right to Life, Caring to Love Ministries, and Louisianas Concerned Women for America.
A dispute between Attorney General Jeff Landry and a former campaign worker is heating up, with the two tussling in court over what the operative claims is an unpaid debt of between $175,000 and $250,000 from Landrys 2015 campaign.
The jilted campaign worker, Dwayne Alexander, is a prodigious filer of lawsuits. He has also gotten into past trouble for working as a private investigator without a required license.
This suit was actually filed by Landry and his campaign several months ago, after Alexander sent him a demand letter and threatened to sue over the alleged debt. Landry pre-empted him, asking a Jefferson Parish judge to issue a declaratory judgment ruling that it did not owe Alexander anything because he was a volunteer.
Alexander punched back in a filing this week. He says Landry hired him in 2015 after they met in the offices of politically active New Orleans lawyer Bob Harvey, who was supporting Landry. According to Alexander, who is black, Landry was looking for someone to help him secure African-American votes in and around the city.
The campaign first got in touch with former state Rep. Sherman Copelin for similar services, but Copelins price was too high, according to an affidavit filed by Harvey. Copelin said in a phone interview that he didnt remember whether such a meeting had occurred.
Alexander, who sometimes works for Harvey, offered to provide the desired services for about a third of what Copelin wanted, and Landry agreed to the deal in the presence of several others, according to Harvey. Bob DHemecourt, a longtime political operative who was part of Landrys 2015 campaign, also signed an affidavit attesting such a deal was struck.
Alexander acknowledges he had no written contract.
According to Harvey, to allow Alexander to get started, Landry cut Harvey a down payment of $5,000 in October 2015, with the intent that Harvey who stresses he did no legal work for Landry or his campaign -- would pass the money to Alexander.
+2 La. law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges blocked by Supreme Court -- for now The U.S. Supreme Court has stopped a law that threatened to shutter Louisiana abortion clinics from taking effect this week, but the fight ove
A copy of the check, from Landrys personal account, is attached to Harveys affidavit, along with a check for $5,000 that Harvey wrote to Alexander on the same day.
Alexander claims he did the work Landry wanted posting hundreds of campaign signs in Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines parishes and doing his best to get Landry traction among black voters by putting the campaign in contact with ministers, radio personalities and others.
But the suit alleges that Landry only came up with $7,500 more after the initial $5,000, even though he still owed Alexander $245,000. The $7,500, according to the suit, came from a political action committee affiliated with Landry, and was paid to Alexanders brother, according to affidavits from Harvey, DHemecourt and Alexander.
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DHemecourts affidavit said the check was cut at the direction of businessman Shane Guidry, a key financial supporter of Landry who went on to take an unpaid high-level job in the Landry administration.
Guidry told The Advocate he did not recall asking for such a payment to be made but could not be sure he had not done so.
Its unclear why the two payments allegedly meant for Alexander went to other people, but Harveys affidavit says Landry did not want to write the check directly to Alexander for reasons Landry and Alexander had previously discussed.
Alexander makes another eye-popping claim that Landrys lawyer, Stephen Oats of Lafayette, suggested he might be able to satisfy Alexanders debt with public money instead of campaign cash, by expediting a $300,000 legal judgment Alexander is owed by the state in an unrelated matter.
Such an arrangement would violate the law, although Alexander has never been paid either debt.
And Oats says it was Alexander who proposed settling Landrys purported debt with state money. Alexander's claim is "absolutely untrue, Oats said. In fact, when I first tried to talk to him, he tried to link the two.
Along with DHemecourt, Harvey and Alexander, the court papers say the only other people present when the purported oral contract was struck were Landry himself and Millard Mule, then the campaign manager and now a Landry spokesman.
Mule declined to answer questions about what happened at the meetings, referring a reporter to a strategist for the Landry campaign, Brent Littlefield, who was not present at the meetings.
Anybody can file a fabricated lawsuit, Littlefield said. Anyone can read the lawsuit and understand that its fabricated. And that is why the campaign took the step to seek to have this dismissed quickly.
Littlefield declined to give specific answers to questions about the allegations in the lawsuit and the affidavits. Littlefield repeated the same answer in response to each question: The claims are outrageous.
Alexander and his lawyer, Raymond Burkart Jr., have sought to have the case moved to Orleans Parish. Oats, Landrys lawyer, said he is confident the case will remain in Jefferson Parish and that Alexanders claim will be found to be without merit.
A recently created interactive map lets people know if pollution has made a Louisiana waterway unsafe for swimming, and tells anglers whether it's safe to eat their catch.
The map shows 58 lakes, bayous and other waterways where contaminated fish have been caught, the bottom is too polluted for safe swimming, or both. Most restrict fish or shellfish eating; two also warn against swimming. Two others warn only against swimming.
The largest advisory covers all state waters in the Gulf of Mexico nearly 1,200 square miles (3108 sq. kilometers).
Clicking on a fish-and-fish-hook icon brings up the advisory. Zoom in and larger bodies of water in affected areas show up in dark blue. Those areas also are clickable, but are approximations adjacent areas of dark and light blue aren't boundaries, Department of Environmental Quality scientist Al Hindrichs said in an email Friday.
"Be sure to read the details," he said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Baton Rouge. That's because recommendations depend on what's been found in fish from a given area and how much of it there was, so they vary widely from place to place.
For instance, the state says nobody should eat any fish from Capitol Lake in Baton Rouge, while in the Upper Calcasieu Estuary, only crab fat is on the do-not-eat list. For 83 miles along the Tensas River, the advisory states only, "Long-term fish consumption may cause health risk."
The Gulf advisory is complicated. Most people are advised against eating more than a total of four 8-ounce servings a month of fish caught in state waters, except for king mackerel. People should eat no more than two meals a month of king mackerel and only then if the fish is less than 39 inches long. Women of childbearing age and children below age 7 should not eat any king mackerel and no more than one meal a month of cobia, blackfin tuna, and greater amberjack.
In advisory language, "one meal" means 8 ounces.
The advisories also describe which chemical, heavy metal or other substance causes the problem.
At Capitol Lake, it's the manmade chemicals called PCBs . In the Calcasieu and Cameron parish estuary, PCBs, dioxins and furans have been found in crab fat. Along the Tensas River in Madison, Tensas and Catahoula parishes, the now banned pesticides DDT and toxaphene are the contaminants.
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+2 DEQ on alert in St. James: Wall holding back acidic water inside Mosaic waste pile might collapse Environmental regulators are engaged in emergency mode in monitoring the stability of a large waste pile at a Mosaic Fertilizer plant in St. J
Those are actually exceptions of a sort: nine advisories are for organic compounds of one type or another, while the other 49, including the Gulf waters, are for mercury, Hindrichs said.
The Gulf advisory is most likely because the fish are "highly predatory," not because there's more mercury in the ocean, Hindrichs said in an email.
He said that although some mercury may have gotten into other waterways including parts of the Ouachita basin from old oil and gas meters, in most areas it all has come out of the atmosphere. If conditions are right for it to change from elemental mercury into the highly toxic organic compound called methylmercury , it can then easily work its way up the food chain, he said.
Each advisory is the result the state departments of environmental quality, health, and wildlife and fisheries working together.
Hindrichs said the map went up in December, and Sibley Lake, the reservoir for Natchitoches, was removed from it in early January, after enough fish samples proved clean of PCBs.
Most advisories suggest limits of anywhere from 8 ounces a week to six 8-ounce servings a year. Recommendations can depend on where a species is on the food chain, since fish that eat other fish take in the mercury they've eaten.
The advisories for Bayou Bonfouca in St. Tammany Parish and Bayou Olsen at Lake Charles tell people only to avoid swimming or contact with sediment.
Two others one for Devil's Swamp, Devil's Swamp Lake and Bayou Baton Rouge, and one for Bayou d'Inde and parts of the Calcasieu Ship Channel advise against both eating fish and swimming or touching sediments.
"Do not eat fish or crawfish from this area," reads the advisory for Devil's Swamp and related areas. The fish advisory is for PCBs and mercury; the swimming one is for mercury, lead, arsenic, benzene and butadiene.
Historical documents like this one telling of the sale of people into slavery in the 1800s in Ascension Parish will be entered into databases by volunteers, to help make the search easier for people looking for their familys history.
My drive to work this morning took me from one end of Johnston Street to the other. Its usually about a 15-minute drive, and I like that it gives me a snapshot of Lafayette each day.
I live in a neighborhood behind Acadiana Mall, where a new owner has recently cast doubts on the shopping centers future.
I pass Moncus Park at the former Horse Farm and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where my eldest son is a student (on hiatus, but he swears hell finish).
My office is on Johnston, just past Bordens ice cream shop, across from Artmosphere and within walking distance of Pops Poboys and Kellers Bakery.
This new office is a change of scenery for me. For the past eight years, I have led the newsroom at The Daily Advertiser. I worked with some amazing journalists during those years. I also saw many top-notch people leave journalism as Gannett, The Advertisers giant corporate owner, disinvested in local coverage and spread its national network of news sites ever thinner.
Sometimes a change of scenery is a good thing.
Starting last week, Im leading a team of experienced, committed journalists in a much bigger Acadiana Advocate newsroom. Some of them were already covering Acadiana for The Advocate; others made the move with me from The Advertiser. But we all have one thing in common: We believe Lafayette and Acadiana deserve a local newspaper that cares about the same things they do.
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The Advocate is owned by Dathel and John Georges, who are from Louisiana and own several other businesses. With newspapers in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Acadiana, they are invested in south Louisiana. And the folks in this newsroom are invested in Acadiana from Lafayette to Youngsville to Carencro.
We live here and shop here. Our kids attend schools here. We bounce along the same potholed roads that you do. We pull for the Cajuns and dance at Downtown Alive! We vote in local elections.
We question public officials because its our tax dollars they are spending. We care about quality of life here because its our quality of life, too.
+3 Advocate expands Acadiana newsroom with hire of six journalists; new chief revenue officer also named Two veteran media executives with deep ties to Lafayette will be joining The Acadiana Advocate, and the news organization has doubled the size
Im so excited The Advocate is investing in local journalists. Youre going to be seeing more of us at public meetings, community events and in your neighborhoods. We look forward to hearing your concerns, asking the tough questions and telling your stories.
Meanwhile, let us know what youd like to see in your hometown newspaper. I can be reached at (337) 349-1145. Stop by for a cup of coffee. I cant promise beignets, but Bordens makes a killer hot fudge sundae.
Kristin Askelson is managing editor of The Acadiana Advocate. Along with her two sons, she has called Lafayette home for the past eight years.
ADA [ndash] Wanda Lee Brewer, 91, of Ada, Oklahoma passed away Sunday, June 13, 2021, in Ada. Services for Wanda will be held Thursday, June 17, 2021, at 10 a.m. at the Estes-Phillips Funeral Home Chapel, with Bro. Roger Arter officiating. Interment will follow at New Bethel Cemetery. For up
Big quote: The fact that this is now bubbling up at the state level is a good sign," said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, a group that wants net neutrality reinstated. "But in reality, we need the FCC to actually do its job and ensure that these companies arent acting in ways that put the public in danger."
A new bill being introduced by the Texas House of Representatives aims to make it a crime to throttle data services during disaster or emergency situations, or otherwise declared disaster areas. The proposed legislature comes in the wake of Verizon controversially throttling the data plans of firefighters working at the Santa Clara County fire department. For their part, Verizon suggested an upgraded plan. However, Verizon is no stranger to throttling services, and that was a point brought up recently when net neutrality went back to court.
In fact, Verizon's throttling of first responders quickly became a crux during the oral arguments, with the FCC receiving sharp questioning about how throttling could affect future public safety. Hence, the state of Texas has decided to take action with their current bill, HB 1426, which doesn't further codify any of the repealed net neutrality rules -- it simply bans throttling during disasters, and no other scenarios.
HB 1426 does join over 100 other bills aimed at resurrecting net neutrality at a state level. This was another point of contention during the recent debate, for both sides. The FCC alleges that such action is illegal, while net neutrality proponents maintain the FCC has no right to block the states from passing their own rules.
Lead image courtesy Steve Heap via Shutterstock
In context: Recent months have been filled with news of international cybersecurity concerns and foreign meddling, and now two US Senators are going after a new target virtual private networks (VPNs) used by governmental employees.
With ongoing investigations into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign, and the recent rumors of an executive order to ban Chinese hardware from new communications infrastructure, its clear that the United States is taking its cybersecurity seriously. Alongside these wide-ranging efforts to tighten security, Senators Marco Rubio (Republican) and Ron Wyden (Democrat) have asked the Department of Homeland Security to investigate governmental employees use of VPNs.
The Senators concern is that many VPNs make use of foreign servers to redirect traffic, and they are worried that two countries in particular may be on the receiving end of US data China and Russia.
Its perhaps no surprise that China and Russia are the two countries being singled out by Rubio and Wyden, given the current uneasy relationship the US has with each nation.
Writing to Christopher Krebs, Director of DHSs Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Senators noted, If U.S. intelligence experts believe Beijing and Moscow are leveraging Chinese and Russian-made technology to surveil Americans, surely DHS should also be concerned about Americans sending their web browsing data directly to China and Russia.
The if at the start of the quote is important as the Senators arent singling out any specific products. Instead, they are asking DHS to conduct a threat assessment on the national security risks, and if appropriate, issue a Binding Operational Directive to prohibit the use of any software deemed a threat.
These Directives have been used before, such as in 2017 when DHS issued one to ban the use of Kaspersky-branded products from federal IT systems.
In brief: Chief Representative of Huawei to the European Union, Abraham Liu, reaffirmed Huaweis dedication to cybersecurity in a speech in Brussels last week. Despite mocking spying allegations posed against Huawei, he revealed how important the European market was to the company and how they plan on strengthening that relationship.
Liu says Europe is Huaweis second home, and indeed it is. Its the companys second largest market in terms of sales, after China, they have some 12,000 employees there and thus far theyve purchased $6.7 billion in goods and services from the Unions members.
Cutting to the chase, Liu began his speech by emphasizing Huaweis separation from the Chinese government and their dedication to security, before moving on to tangible actions. Perhaps the most significant is Huaweis willingness to accept the supervision and suggestions of all European governments, customers, and partners.
Its a surprising offer and therell be no shortage of groups taking them up on it. To help them execute this oversight and to improve Huaweis security in general, Huawei will be opening a cybersecurity research center in Brussels next month.
More impressively, Huawei has promised to invest nearly $2 billion over the next five years in their Integrated Products Development 2.0 transformation program, which is targeting improved security. However, they remain adamant that the money is only to reassure partners and that theyre already the best in the business.
Recently Huawei has been under constant attack by some countries and politicians. We are shocked or sometimes feel amused by those ungrounded and senseless allegations. For example, yesterday the U.S. ambassador to the European Union said someone in Beijing can remotely run a certain car off the road that's on the 5G network and kill the person that's in it. This is an insult to peoples intelligence let alone the technology experts across Europe.
Other than some shady business practices (that have nothing to do with customer security), Huawei is correct in saying that theres no evidence that theyve been spying for the Chinese government. Theyre also correct in pointing out that theyve never suffered a security breach.
On the other hand, particularly in light of an upcoming presidential order that would ban the companys 5G equipment completely, theres a real possibility that somethings going on that we just dont know about.
Gathering to celebrate the creation of scholarships for American Indian students who wish to attend medical school were, from left: Bill Anoatubby, governor of the Chickasaw Nation Bill John Baker, principal chief of Cherokee Nation; Kayse Shrum, president, OSU Center for Health Sciences; and Gary Batton, chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Present for the donation from the NeoHealth Women's Care Center to Help In Crisis were, front row, from left: Whitney Richmond, Elissa DeLong, Bobbie Smith, Dr. Wallace Champlain, Griselda Bailey, and Kim Dry. Back row: Dr. Larry McCullough, Dr. Calvin Monroe, Ginny Geddes, Ashley Barthel, and Mary Mouse.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Cor Development Co. executive Steven Aiello was ordered to begin serving his three-year prison term March 1, despite his appeal of his convictions on conspiracy and bid-rigging charges.
U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni today denied Aiellos request to remain free on bail while he appeals. Joseph Percoco, a former top aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, also was ordered to prison March 1. Percoco was convicted of bribery and conspiracy during the same trial as Aiello.
Caproni has allowed Aiellos business partner, Joe Gerardi, to remain free on bail while Gerardi appeals a 30-month sentence for bid-rigging and lying to federal authorities.
Aiello, 60, the founder of Cor Development, was found guilty in two separate trials of conspiring to bribe a state official and of playing a role in the rigging of competitive bids for state construction contracts.
Gerardi, who was tried alongside Aiello and others, was acquitted in March of conspiring to bribe a state official. He was convicted in July, after a second trial, of conspiring to rig a state bid and of later lying to federal authorities.
Besides Aiello and Gerardi, two other men were convicted in the federal bid-rigging trial that ended last July. Both Buffalo contractor Louis Ciminelli and former SUNY Polytechnic Institute leader Alain Kaloyeros are free on bail pending appeal.
Percoco was convicted along with Aiello during the first trial. He was sentenced to six years in prison for three felonies: two counts of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and one count of soliciting bribes.
At that trial, Aiello was found guilty of using a shell company set up by disgraced lobbyist Todd Howe to funnel payments from Cor to Percoco in exchange for Percocos influence in state government.
At the second trial, Aeillo and Gerardi were convicted of conspiring to defraud SUNY Poly-affiliated non-profit Fort Schuyler Management Corporation. The jury decided they colluded with Kaloyeros and others to rig bids for lucrative state-funded contracts.
In a written order issued today, Caproni ruled that Aiello and Percoco should not remain free during their appeals, because their appeals do not raise a "substantial question of law or fact'' that is likely to reverse their convictions. Caproni had previously ruled that all the defendants in the second trial, including Aiello, deserve bail. If Aiello had not been convicted in the first trial, he would remain free on bail like Gerardi.
A new documentary chronicling the civil rights movement produced by a team of students and professors from Ithaca College is making an impact on public television airwaves since it first debuted last month.
With Infinite Hope: MLK and The Civil Rights Movement will air more than 300 times across 75 different stations during its scheduled three weeks of programming according to director and co-producer James Rada, associate professor and journalism department chair at Ithaca College.
The documentary encompasses the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and covers a broad spectrum of landmark events of the civil rights movement, including the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike and the context behind the letter that brought King to Selma .
Rada, of Jamesville, conceived the idea in 2017 during a meeting with WKNO, Memphis PBS affiliate station, that was primarily focused on a multimedia feature for the 50th anniversary of Kings assassination . While the anniversary piece was in its early planning stages, the idea for a larger project on the civil rights movement was developed.
He recalled signing on as soon as there was clear potential for creating a documentary, one of his main areas of expertise. I thought This is who I am. This is what I do. and luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, Rada said. Well, this was good luck.
- Sophia Tulp and Katie Jones, senior journalism majors at Ithaca College, interview Elaine Lee Turner, an active protester and marcher during the civil rights movement. Submitted by James Rada
Six journalism students were selected for the production team with two additional professors brought on in post-production to help fine-tune the documentary. Sophia Tulp, a senior journalist student, said the plan was to go behind the scenes with some of the most prolific members of the civil rights movement and capture a three-dimensional image of MLK.
A lot of times portrayals of him are sanitized, Tulp said. He was a huge anti-war advocate and anti-poverty, especially for black Americans. She added that modern dialogue about race relations further proves the need to have documentaries like With Infinite Hope that show there is still a fight going on in society.
Katie Jones, a senior journalism student, said the interviewing process gave the team, and her personally, a renewed respect for the trials many of the civil rights activists faced. Going and capturing firsthand experiences just made it all real.
One of the unique aspects of this documentary in comparison to other civil rights movement pieces, Rada said, is the new perspectives from original activists who are not often included in the standard coverage. We got the foot soldiers, he said. We got these people you would walk by on the street and not even realize who they were and what they had done.
- Kalia Kornegay, Emily Varga and Christy Calcagno interview The Rev. Dr. James Netters who served on the Memphis City Council from 1968-1971. Submitted by James Rada
The team discovered during the filming of each interview that getting these new perspectives on record was its own obstacle entirely. A lot of the folks from that era don't always like to talk about themselves or don't always know how to talk about themselves, Rada said. That was an era where you're not supposed to call attention to yourself, you're not supposed to take credit.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A 45-year-old woman is in critical condition Friday after she was pinned between the driver door of a car and the cars door frame because it rolled forward in a driveway on the Near West Side, according to Syracuse police.
The woman is in critical condition at Upstate University Hospital, police said. Police did not release the womans name.
During the crash, the woman was partially inside the car and it rolled forward, hitting the side of 412 Elliott St., police said. The crash pushed the door closed and pinned the woman in the cars doorway, police said.
Police are still investigating the crash and are unsure how the accident happened, police said.
Priscilla Newby couldnt sleep Thursday night. All she could think about was Valerie Crowder. By Friday morning, shed done as much crying and thinking as sleeping.
Crowders death devastated Newby on Thursday, still she tried to teach the next day. She tried to look into the faces of the same students Crowder once influenced, thinking the routine would soothe her.
Crowder, 54, was stabbed to death in her home at 144 Holland St. in Syracuse on Thursday. Crowders son, Darrien Howard, 27, was charged Friday with killing his mother.
Crowder worked at Dr. King Elementary School in Syracuse for more than 30 years and met Newby 15 years ago. For seven years, Crowder was Newbys teaching assistant. Crowder worked with the challenging students, the ones no one else could reach, and reached them.
Teachers didn't just send students to Crowder. When students needed someone who understood them, they gravitated toward her.
On Friday, Newby taught until 11:30 a.m. Then it emerged that police had arrested Crowders son in her murder. Dr. King Elementary principal Andrea Ellis-Smith and support staff offered to take Newby home.
To hear that she passed away in the manner that she did and just that she passed away, it took a lot out of me, Newby said.
The teacher drove home alone. She tried to relax. She checked on teachers Crowder influenced for comfort. She suppressed questions and pain with memories of Crowder's smile.
I just I couldnt believe it, Newby said, pausing, of finding out about Crowders death.
I just Newby trailed off. Devastated.
According to a neighbor, Crowders sister found her in her home after Crowder didnt show up for work at Webster Elementary School. Crowder was moved from Dr. King to Webster in late 2018. Newby said Crowder worked in the Syracuse City School District for 32 years.
Debra Felder, who lives across the street from Crowder, said Thursday was the worst day of her life. Teachers and principals who worked with Crowder were stunned that someone who had an innate gift for understanding and caring for people could be murdered by someone she loved.
A woman such as Val, things like this dont happen to her, said Nitch Jones, who taught with Crowder at an after school Boys & Girls Club program.
In the classroom, coworkers said Crowder was motherly." They said she understood the students and their lives, so she was able to deal with even the most difficult to reach.
Working in the school district for more than 30 years afforded Crowder with deep knowledge of students families. She often knew the fathers, mothers or grandparents of the students she was teaching. It allowed her to connect with them when others couldnt.
Her smile made her approachable, and she understood how to bring herself to a students level. Each student was different, and Crowder knew how to deal with each one. She didnt view the difficult students as difficult, just as needing extra loving, said former Dr. King Elementary principal Najah Salaam Jennings-Bey.
Jennings-Bey said Crowder was put in 8:1:1 classrooms, where there are eight students, one teacher and one teaching assistant because of Crowders nurturing" ability. Those classrooms are the most restrictive in the district. The school saw an immediate decrease in behavioral outbursts in the classroom Crowder worked in, Jennings-Bey said.
It wasnt like working in the school district was just a job for her," Jennings-Bey said. It was a lifestyle. She knew the families that she was working with, so she was able to bridge that gap between home and school and that in itself is a characteristic that cant be taught. She knew how to build relationships with the families.
Crowder worked in Newbys classroom through 2017, and the two grew close. A house fire destroyed some of Newbys belongings, including all of her daughters clothes. Crowder asked Newby how she could help.
Not long after, Crowder bought Newbys daughter a weeks worth of clothes.
Jennings-Bey said she treated each student like one of her own, but she also treated her friends and coworkers similarly.
I would categorize it as authentic, Jennings-Bey said.
On Thursday, as Felder, the neighbor, looked across the street at much of Crowders family, she often shook her head. Occasionally, she approached the family that she knew and lamented their shared loss.
Todays the most horrible day of my life, she said.
Syracuse, NY -- An Onondaga County employee accused today of lying about allegations against the since-fired chief medical examiner says he saw his boss punch and deface separate corpses.
Tyler Strutz is facing a misdemeanor after Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick accused him today of lying in a sworn affidavit about the defacing accusation.
But Strutz also reported seeing former ME Dr. Robert Stoppacher punch a corpse, defense lawyer Paul Carey said.
He has absolutely no motive to lie at all, Carey said of his client.
When asked about Strutzs allegations, Fitzpatrick told Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard that Strutzs story morphed over time. The DA added that a prior state health department investigation had totally exonerated Stoppacher.
In his initial complaint to the health department, Strutz claimed that Stoppacher slapped a body on the side but said he didnt see it happen, Fitzpatrick said.
Now, Strutz is saying that Stoppacher punch(ed) the body in the head.
Strutz, who has worked for the MEs office for five or six years, was simply reporting disturbing behavior on the part of his boss, his lawyer said.
Carey said his client reported to authorities seeing Stoppacher punch a corpse on the autopsy table. The defense lawyer said Strutz has always maintained that he saw that. In response, Fitzpatrick says thats not true.
It is a second allegation, however -- that Stoppacher wrote on a corpse with a marker -- that got Strutz in criminal trouble. Fitzpatrick alleges that Strutz made no mention of that allegation during a state health department investigation of Stoppacher in 2017.
But when questioned in late 2018 during a separate county investigation, Strutz said he witnessed Stoppacher defacing the body, Fitzpatrick said.
That means that Strutz was lying in one statement or the other, the DA argues. Fitzpatrick made it clear he believes Stoppacher was the victim of a smear campaign.
Carey said his client never lied and actually saw Stoppacher act inappropriately both times.
In regards to the defacing incident, Strutz said Stoppacher wanted him to write a letter on a deceaseds body as a joke. By adding the letter T" to letters on a tattoo on the body, it spelled the name of an investigator in the MEs office, Carey said.
Strutz refused to mark on the body, Carey said. So Stoppacher did it himself, Strutz maintains. Afterward, the body was cleaned up.
But Fitzpatrick said a witness in the autopsy room testified that Stoppacher took a picture of the corpse, then added the letter on the picture, not on the actual corpse. The picture was then destroyed, the DA believes.
Carey said that witness appears to be an ME office intern. The defense lawyer believes the offending picture still exists and said he wants to examine it for clues.
Fitzpatrick accuses Strutz of making up the allegation about Stoppacher marking the body long after the fact. But Carey said his client simply didnt report it to state investigators during a call in which Strutz reported the punching incident.
Carey added that his client felt he was arrested simply for trying to do the right thing.
I am confident my client is telling the truth, Carey said.
Strutz was arraigned Friday night and released on his own recognizance. He is set to reappear in court on Feb. 13.
Syracuse, NY -- An Onondaga County employee was arrested today on a charge of lying in a sworn statement about misdeeds by the since-fired medical examiner, Dr. Robert Stoppacher.
Stoppacher, the countys medical examiner for many years, was suddenly let go by the county in the past month without explanation.
District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said today that he opened a grand jury investigation into Stoppachers firing -- at the MEs request -- and was provided information that the allegations against Dr. Stoppacher were false.
In response, a spokesman for County Executive Ryan McMahon said that there were several examples of inappropriate behavior that led to Stoppachers firing.
One of the damning allegations was that Stoppacher had defaced a human corpse by writing on the body with a marker in 2017. The DA said theres evidence that never happened.
The DA believes that Stoppacher took a photo of the corpse, then added a letter to the photo in an apparent attempt at humor. The added letter on the photo was placed next to a tattoo, forming an undisclosed name, the DA said.
...the letter was added by Stoppacher TO THE PHOTO, and then the photo was shown to an employee, in what I would describe as an effort at humor, the DA wrote in a note to Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. The employee laughed and the photo was destroyed.
Tyler Strutz, a technician in the medical examiners office, is now facing a misdemeanor, accused of making inconsistent statements in regards to allegations that Stoppacher had defaced the actual corpse.
Stoppacher was accused of using a black marker to write on the deceased person, Fitzpatrick said. An anonymous tipster sent a photo of the supposed defacement to state authorities.
But the state health department investigated the allegation in March 2017 and closed the case without taking action, the DAs office said. Stoppacher denied the allegation when interviewed by state authorities at the time, Fitzpatrick said.
Strutz was interviewed back then. On March 24, 2017, he denied any knowledge of Stoppacher defacing a body with a marker and, in fact, lauded Stoppacher as a mentor and great man, Fitzpatrick said in a news release.
The allegation remained, however.
In November 2018, the family of the deceased person received an anonymous letter with the same allegation, the DA said.
The county opened its own investigation, apparently unaware that the State had already determined the allegations to be unfounded, the DA said.
Strutz signed a sworn affidavit for the countys investigation, as well. But this time, his story had changed, the DA alleged.
...however, (Strutz) now claimed he was in the autopsy room and actually witnessed Dr. Stoppacher writing on the body with a black marker, the DA said. Dr. Stoppacher was terminated in early January, 2019. Within days of his termination, the District Attorneys Office was provided with information that the allegations against Dr. Stoppacher were false.
DAs office investigators then interviewed another person who was present for the autopsy in question.
When that witness was interviewed, he stated that he remembered that specific autopsy and denied that Dr. Stoppacher ever defaced the deceased, the DA said. That witness provided a sworn affidavit to that effect.
Strutz will be arraigned this afternoon on the misdemeanor charge of making a punishable false written statement.
He stood up, twirled his fingers and said, Thats good enough for me.
And that, Riley said, was where the legend of Lucas began.
Behind Dowells wise-cracking antics was a man committed to his calling as a public safety professional, Settle said.
You see, Lucas could always be counted upon to defend the weak against the strong and fight for what was right, Settle said. He believed that good should prevail over evil and he worked to make it so. The other troopers and officers just felt so much safer knowing Lucas was around. This was a guy you wanted to show up if one of your family members needed help at a moments notice. Like on the night of February 4, when Lucas gave the ultimate sacrifice.
That night, Dowell was assisting with the execution of a search warrant in Farmville when the occupant of the home opened fire, killing the young trooper.
Its often times like this, I will tell you, that we all remember what it means to take this job as a law enforcement officer, Settle said. No other profession gives you as much or sometimes takes as much. The job can reward you like no other, but one day, it might demand from you everything in return.
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Staff Reporter
Alex Chhith is a staff reporter at the Chaska Herald. In her spare time, she enjoys walking her dogs (Cody and Sam), catching up on the Game of Thrones and finding new restaurants. Follow her on Twitter @AlexChhith.
The Government has today announced it will prohibit smoking in cars carrying children under 18 years of age, says Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa.
The law change will come into effect by an amendment to the Smoke-free Environments Act 1990.
First and foremost this change is about protecting children. However, it is also part of the Governments commitment to achieving Smokefree 2025, says Jenny.
Too many New Zealand children, particularly Maori and Pacific children, are exposed to second-hand smoke in the vehicles they usually travel in. Children are especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of second-hand smoke due to their smaller lungs, higher respiratory rate and immature immune systems.
Second-hand smoke accumulates in vehicles, even with the windows open. It reaches much higher levels than in homes.
Public education and social marketing campaigns over many years have had some impact, but the rate of reduction in children exposed to smoking in vehicles is slowing. It is now time to do more by legislating, says Jenny.
Under the change, Police will be able to require people to stop smoking in their cars if children (under 18) are present. Police will also be able to use their discretion to give warnings, refer people to stop-smoking support services, or issue an infringement fee of $50.
In 2016, recommendations by the Health Select Committee to ban smoking in cars carrying children were ignored. Now, this Government is taking action, says Jenny.
One of our core priorities is achieving equity in health. Raising public awareness about the dangers of smoking in cars carrying children can assist in achieving this goal.
The legislation will also be backed up with a new and innovative public education and social marketing effort.
Ultimately, the focus of this change will be on education and changing social norms not on issuing infringement notices.
There is strong support for legislating. Multiple surveys have shown around 90 per cent of people support a stop to smoking in cars with children present.
New Zealand will join other countries such as Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, South Africa, parts of the United States, and most of Canada where smoking in cars with children is already prohibited, says Jenny.
Vaping will also be included in the prohibition and it will apply to all vehicles both parked and on the move.
It is expected that this amendment will become law by the end of 2019.
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Eight of the Bay of Plentys top young growers are being tested to the limit today as they take part in a series of skills events at the Te Puke A&P Show.
In the specially designed Horticultural Village site at the show, they are competing in practical and theory events in the first stage of their endeavours to win the title of 2019 Bay of Plenty Young Grower of the Year.
The final test will be presenting a speech at the awards dinner in Tauranga on Wednesday February 13.
Vying for the top title and a range of awards are; Alex Ashe, technical advisor, Farmlands; Andrew Jenkins, orchard cadet, Seeka; Dylan Wadsworth, orchard manager, Baygold; Emily Crum, orchard manager, Prospa (EastPack); Georgia Guy-Williams, laboratory manager / inventory assistant, Apata Group; Hamish McKain, avocado manager / production manager, DMS Progrowers; Megan Fox, orchard technical advisor, Southern Cross Horticulture and Ranjit Singh, orchard manager, Weskco.
Today, under the watchful eye of judges, the contestants are demonstrating their knowledge and abilities in skills vital to the management of a successful orchard, including tractor proficiency, orchard profitability, and plant nutrition.
On Wednesday night, at the gala dinner, compared by entertainer Jackie Clarke, each contestant will present a speech on the topic of Future disruptors to horticulture before an audience of 420 guests, including industry leaders.
The 2019 Bay of Plenty Young Growers prize package includes sponsorship to attend the annual Horticulture New Zealand Conference, a media and presentation development course, and an all-expenses paid trip to compete for the national 2019 Young Grower of the Year title in October as well as cash prizes.
Now in its 12th year, the competition is organised by the Bay of Plenty Young Fruit Grower Upskilling Committee with support from New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Inc.
Andrew Dawson, Chair of the Bay of Plenty Young Fruit Growers Upskilling Committee, says, "The avocado and kiwifruit industries are booming in the Bay of Plenty and we want to ensure that there are leaders with scientific, commercial and technical backgrounds to continue its success into the future. The Young Fruit Grower competition is a great way to promote and build the young and upcoming talent that our industry has."
Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman agrees that these competitions are an excellent showcase of the potential opportunities in the horticulture industry.
"The Young Grower competition doesnt just show what you can accomplish with a career in horticulture, but how to develop the skills and experience to get there. Horticulture is a growing industry, and there are amazing opportunities for everyone willing to put the work in.
"The Bay of Plenty competition, and similar competitions held around the country, showcase the amazing talent we have working in our industry."
Event organiser Renee Fritchley says, "This year we have had a record number of contestants apply to compete, and for the first-time tickets to the gala dinner have sold out well in advance. This is a reflection of how dedicated our industry is to encouraging future talent, and the level of drive and commitment we are seeing from our future leaders coming through.
The original MC for the gala dinner was actress and comedian Madeleine Sami. Since accepting the role to moderate at the dinner, Madeleines movie the Breaker Upperers has been picked up by Netflix and she will attend the launch in Hollywood so is unable to be at our dinner. However, Jackie Clarke will be the new MC of the evening. She is a great entertainer and we are very pleased to be able to secure her for this important evening.
The champion of the Bay of Plenty competition will progress to the Young Grower of the Year national final, to be held in Tauranga in October. There, they will join the winners of the Nelson, Hawkes Bay, Gisborne, and Central Otago regionals, as well as a Young Vegetable Grower, to compete for the national title of Young Grower 2019.
For more information on the competition, visit: www.bopyoungfruitgrower.co.nz.
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra is to be part of a unique international project celebrating Beethovens 250th birthday next year, which will include school and youth choirs performing the composers famous Ode to Joy in te reo Maori.
The NZSO will join acclaimed orchestras in Brazil, Britain, the United States, Australia, Austria and South Africa in performing Beethovens Ninth Symphony with the Ode to Joy segment sung in local languages of each country.
The NZSOs performances of the Ninth Symphony will also incorporate new works by New Zealand artists reflecting the cultures of New Zealand.
All Together: A Global Ode to Joy is the brainchild of the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York. The NZSO has worked with leading American conductor Marin Alsop and the institution for the past 12 months to be part of the project, with the New Zealand concerts to be known as Kia Kotahi: He Toirangi A-Ao Kai Harikoa.
The NZSO will join eight other orchestras on five continents which perform the Ninth Symphony between December this year and December 2020.
Maestro Alsop, a strong advocate for young people and diversity in the arts, will conduct every performance of the Ninth Symphony by each orchestra, including those by the NZSO in major centres in late July and August next year.
Ode to Joy is about standing up and being counted in this world. Its about believing in our power as human beings, says Maestro.
Everyone will be tied together by this experience. And I think thats the important element that through this project, we will bring diverse communities together, and communities who dont normally work together.
The te reo Maori translation of Ode to Joy will also be made available as a learning tool, with nationwide distribution, providing an opportunity for young people around New Zealand to be involved in the projects wider reach.
NZSO Head of Artistic Planning Lucrecia Colominas says it is an honour for NZSO and New Zealand to be part of Carnegie Halls initiative and to welcome a conductor of Maestros standing on a project that involves young New Zealanders, New Zealand composers and diverse communities.
Kia Kotahi is a reimagining of Beethovens magnificent Ninth Symphony, which is one of his best known and loved works. Ode to Joy sung in te reo Maori by our young people will be breath-taking. This is a fantastic way to celebrate the genius of Beethoven, our youth and our own rich culture.
The first All Together: A Global Ode to Joy concerts will be performed by the Sao Paulo Symphony in December this year.
During 2020, the Ninth Symphony will also be performed by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Baltimore Symphony, Sydney Symphony, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic and Johannesburg Philharmonic.
The project will culminate with a concert at Carnegie Hall in December next year.
Beethovens Ode to Joy, sung in the Ninth Symphonys fourth movement, is based on a poem by Friedrich Schiller, which calls for equality, freedom and fraternity among people.
More details about Kia Kotahi: He Toirangi A-Ao Kia Harikoa will be announced in the coming months.
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The U.S. Air Force has decided to retire its B-1B bombers, which were built in the 1980s, before the B-52Hs, which were built in the 1960s. Its all about cost. One of the two older heavy bombers has to go when the new B-21 stealth bomber begins entering service in 2030. If that happens the B-1Bs will start to retire in 2025 and the last will be gone by 2035. The B-52s are to serve until the 2040s.
The B-21 is supposed to be a more effective and cheaper version of the B-2 stealth bomber. The B-2 was so expensive that only 21 were built and the B-21 has to avoid the budget curse or be canceled or end up as updated and still way over budget B-2 replacement. The air force has established a tradition of over-promising and under-delivering that has created much less tolerance for projects that go way over budget and arrive much very late as well. B-21 is being built to quickly get to targets anywhere on the planet, avoid air defenses and deliver conventional or nuclear weapons. The main job would be delivering conventional weapons, including standoff weapons against defended air space. Moreover, current stealth technology, which mainly renders radar much less effective, is vulnerable to growing improvements in heat detection systems which are already being primary sensors on some fighters (especially stealth ones that do not want to use a radar which tells everyone where it is).
The B-52 survives because it entered service in the 1950s at a time was budgets and delivery schedules met. Moreover, the B-52 is an example of how an aircraft that has been declared obsolete several times survived because new technology kept the B-52 competitive. The B-52 was originally designed as a high-flying long-range bomber that could deliver a lot of unguided bombs, including nuclear ones. Better Soviet (Russian) air defenses (radars and missiles) appeared to make the B-52 obsolete as a strategic nuclear bomber, but then cruise missiles were invented that allowed a B-52 to launch these before entering defended Russian air space. Even before that the B-52 demonstrated (in the 1960s over Vietnam) that it was very effective at delivering conventional bombs and air dropped naval mines, even over defended air space (thanks to new electronic warfare defenses).
The B-1A was developed in the 1970s as a low flying, high-speed replacement of the B-52 as a nuclear weapon bomber. It was canceled because of cost overruns and the belief that Russian air defenses were adapting to handle a fast, low flying B-1. In the 1980s the cruise missile used as a standoff nuclear-armed missile made possible the revival of the B-1 as a slower, higher flying B-1B. After all, those B-52s were getting older. Age did not damage the slow moving B-52 as much as it did faster moving aircraft like the B-1B. But the B-1B did manage to use its greater speed to replace the B-52 in situations where only one two heavy bombers were covering a large area (in Afghanistan or Syria/Iraq). Carrying only smart bombs and missiles one B-1B could get to where it was needed faster than a B-52 even though the B-1B still cost more per hour to operate. The B-52 is, however, aging more economically and reliably than the B-1B. Thus the B-1Bs will retire first.
Another factor is that the B-52, lacking the movable wings of the B-1, is easier to adapt for new technology. Thus is was a lot easier to use a targeting pod on the B-52 (just hang it from a wing) compared to the B-1 (where installation was more expensive and time consuming). The one tech that made the most difference for the B-52 was the smart bomb. The appearance in the 1990s of GPS and other inexpensive guided missiles and bombs revolutionized the role of bomber aircraft. Far fewer bombs were needed to destroy a specific target. That meant even the F-15E fighter-bomber, which could carry six tons of bombs and missiles, because more effective than a heavy bomber carrying five or six times as many unguided bombs.
To remain competitive the B-52 and B-1B had to rely on new technology to keep up. A recent example of this occurred in late 2017 when B-52Hs used their latest upgrade, the CRU (Conventional Rotary Launcher) in combat for the first time. CRU enables a B-52 to carry eight large (or 34 small) JDAM smart bombs internally. The CRU itself is an accessory and not all B-52Hs will carry them. But all B-52s are being modified so the CRU can quickly be removed or installed and work with the fire control system. The CRU allows more smart bombs and missiles to be carried that are reprogrammable by the crew while in the air. This is essential for most B-52 missions, which simply provide smart bomb support for a large area (most of Afghanistan, all of Iraq and so on). With the CRU dozens of smart bombs can be launched quickly and that was recently done in an attack on multiple heroin production sites in southern Afghanistan. Similar tactics can be used against North Korean artillery and missiles units.
The CRU is one of several new features associated with the 1760 IWBU (Internal Weapons Bay Upgrade). The B-52H has long had a CSRL (Common Strategic Rotary Launcher) for the internal weapons bay but that was only for nuclear weapons. Without a rotary launcher installed the internal bomb bay carries unguided bombs. Since the 1990s the B-52H has been carrying smart bombs externally, attached to hard points under the wings. Carrying anything on those hard points creates aerodynamic drag during flight which increases fuel consumption and requires more inflight refueling to obtain the same time in the air.
The first CRUs were delivered for installing and flight testing in mid-2016. Testing and delivery of more CRU continued until it was used in combat over Afghanistan in November. CRU and the IWBU continue to be upgraded so CRU can handle JASSM cruise missiles and MALD (Miniature Air Launched Decoy) a small missile which not only acts as a decoy but also carries electronics for jamming and or deceiving enemy sensors.
Since 2013 there has been a major upgrade in B-52 electronics and fire-control systems. These changes included CONECT (Combat Network Communications Technology) and 1760 IWBU (Internal Weapons Bay Upgrade). The IWBU was necessary to use CRU but both upgrade programs are being applied throughout the air force to provide standardization of communications and use of smart bombs.
Earlier upgrades enabled B-52 crew to program (enter GPS coordinates for a target) smart bombs carried. Initially, this was done so smart bombs carried under the wings could be programmed by the crew and later that was expanded to include those carried internally. This upgrade simply means wiring the bomb bay so that smart bombs can be plugged into the upgraded aircraft fire control system. This was important because that made it possible to carry other programmable weapons like the MALD and the JASSM (long range smart bombs used for taking out enemy air defenses). By 2017 about half the B-52s had their bomb bay wiring upgraded.
Back in 2006, the B-52 was modified so it could carry over a hundred of the 130 kg (285 pound) Small Diameter Bombs (SDB, also known as the GBU-39/B). The bomb rack inside the B-52 was modified to carry 32 SDBs instead of 15 larger bombs. The B-52 could already carry more SDBs under its wings using special racks that held 4 SBDs where one larger bomb would normally be. Initially, all these SDBs had to be programmed (with target location) on the ground. This was all for mass precision strikes from one bomber, something that has not been required yet. The large bomb capacity of the B-52 was a 1960s innovation which enabled one B-52 to carry 108 500 pound unguided bombs for carpet bombing missions.
Until the programming upgrades, the SBDs carried internally had to receive their target coordinates on the ground, not in the air. The ability to enter or change GPS coordinates in smart bombs is necessary now because heavy bombers typically stay in the air over the combat zone for 8 hours or more at a time, delivering smart bombs as needed by troops on the ground. The B-52 also has its own targeting pod now that enables the crew to spot targets, program one of its smart bombs, and take them out without needing GPS coordinates from someone on the ground.
Despite being the oldest American combat aircraft in service the B-52s have been regularly upgraded with new electronics and minor tweaks for new bombs. For example in mid-2017 the B-52H was certified as able to use PDU-5 leaflet bomb. This is a variant of the cluster bomb long carried by B-52s. But instead of dispersing 247 bomblets from a larger canister the PDU-5 disperses 60,000 leaflets over several square kilometers. The PDU-5 has been used regularly since 2001 to warn people (usually in target areas) that a bombing or artillery attack is coming. Normally PDU-5s are delivered by jet fighters but helicopters have been used and the test drops from the B-52H is to ensure that there are no problems with the bomb colliding with the aircraft once dropped. The B-52H PDU-5 test wasnt an upgrade as much as standard safety check. As with the CRU, the B-52H isnt able to use a newly installed feature until after several tests followed by use, if possible, in a combat zone.
Another reason for the longevity of the B-52 has been its reliability and relatively low maintenance cost. The B-52H has a better reliability record than much more recent aircraft and much smaller aircraft. For example, the U.S. Air Force mission capable or readiness rate (percentage of available aircraft able to do their job) varies by type and technology. Age has less to do with it than you might think. As of 2015, the B-52H rate was 72 percent compared to 47 percent for the B-1B heavy bomber and 71 percent for the F-15E fighter bomber.
This greater bomb carrying capability makes the B-52 even more effective, as it is cheaper to have one "bomb truck" over the combat zone rather than several fighter-bombers. With a max takeoff weight of 240-250 tons the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fellow) is basically a large aircraft designed to carry bombs cheaply and efficiently. The readiness rate of these bombers remains high because it was not designed to operate at supersonic speed or carry out stressful maneuvers. Although the remaining B-52s are all at least 50 years old, most of the internal gear has been replaced with modern electronics and furnishings. Its all flat screens and modern gear. Look closer and you see a lot of 50 year old metal.
US President Donald Trump again this week portrayed his plan to pull troops out of Syria as a victory homecoming and an end to endless wars. Then, in stepped Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to clarify whats really going on: its a tactical change to put Iran in the crosshairs.
The purported pullout is not a return of US military from the Middle East, as Trump has been trumpeting with self-congratulations. Its more a reconfiguration of American military power in the strategically vital region, and in particular for greater aggressive leverage on Iran.
In his State of the Union speech to Congress this week, Trump talked about giving a warm welcome home to our brave warriors from Syria. Supposedly it was mission accomplished for the US in defeating the ISIS terror group in that country.
It should be pointed out that ISIS would not have been in Syria or Iraq if it were not for criminal American military interventions, covert and overt, in those countries.
In any case, Trump was proclaiming America victorious, and so it was time, he said, to follow up on his order given in December for the 2,000 or so troops (illegally present) in Syria to withdraw.
The day after his nationwide address, Trump reiterated the theme of glorious homecoming at a forum of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, held in Washington DC. This was a two-day gathering of dozens of US allies who have been attacking Syrian territory in the name of fighting terrorists (terrorists that many of these same coalition members, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have been covertly sponsoring.)
We look forward to giving our warriors a warm welcome home, Trump again told delegates after informing them that the ISIS caliphate had been virtually destroyed by US forces and partners.
His top diplomat Mike Pompeo, however, assured the gathering that the US was still leading the fight against terror and that the planned troop withdrawal from Syria was only a tactical maneuver. He said that what Washington wanted was for more regional partners to take over military operations from the US.
When Trump first made the announcement of a troop withdrawal from Syria on December 19, there was immediate pushback from military figures in the Pentagon and politicians in Washington. Together with a proposed drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan by Trump, it was construed that the president was signaling a wholesale retreat from the region.
Since the surprise announcement by Trump, lawmakers within his Republican party have been doubling down to prevent any pullout from Syria or Afghanistan. This week, the US Senate voted through legislation to block any abrupt withdrawal, claiming that, contrary to Trumps assertions, ISIS has not been defeated and still poses a national security threat.
The Pentagon has also been warning of a resurgence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq if US forces were to pull out. A Department of Defense document published this week quoted Pompeo. Following the presidents announcement in December 2018 to withdraw troops from Syria, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that the policy objectives of defeating ISIS and deterring Iran had not changed.
In other words, the Pentagon is busily rationalizing for entrenchment in the region, not for a retreat.
Last month, while on a nine-nation tour of the Middle East, Pompeo was at pains to emphasize to Americas Arab client regimes that Trumps pullout from Syria was a reorganization of military forces, not an overall withdrawal. During his tour, Pompeo renewed Washingtons project to create an Arab NATO for the region, with the top priority being to contain Iran. According to Radio Free Europe, he said, the United States is redoubling efforts to put pressure on Iran.
Next week, the US has organized a conference to be held in Poland which is dedicated to intensifying international pressure on Iran. The indications are that senior European Union officials will not attend the summit as it is stoking tensions with Tehran at a time when the EU is striving to save the nuclear accord with Iran.
However, the conference in Poland testifies to ramped up efforts by Washington to isolate Iran internationally and provoke instability in the country for regime change. Since Trump walked away from the internationally-backed nuclear accord last year, his administration has been piling on the aggressive rhetoric towards Iran, in particular from his national security advisor John Bolton, as well as Pompeo.
This obsession to confront Iran would explain the real significance of Trumps supposed pullout plans in Syria and Afghanistan. Both countries have been utter failures for US imperialism. They are a dead loss, despite the self-congratulatory nonsense spouted by Trump.
What the White House is intent on doing, it seems, is redirecting its military forces in the region away from dead-end causes for a more aggressive stance towards Iran. Pompeos clarifications about Trumps troop withdrawal makes it clear that what is going on is not a scaling down of American military power in the region, but a reconfiguration.
Trump himself has indicated that too. In a recent interview with the CBS channel, Trump said that US forces would be reassigned from Syria to Iraq where the Pentagon has several large military bases. He explicitly said that the US forces in Iraq would be used to keep a watch on Iran and the wider region.
Trumps braggadocio immediately got him into hot water with the Iraqis. Iraqi President Barham Salih fulminated that the 5,000 or so US troops in his country were there strictly for the purpose of combating terrorism, not for watching Iran or any other neighboring country. Other Iraqi lawmakers have been so incensed by Trumps comments that they are calling for the presence of US forces to be terminated.
Thus, the apprehensions among the bipartisan War Party in Washington and some at the Pentagon regarding Trumps purported troop pullout from Syria and Afghanistan are misplaced. Trump is not ending the endless wars that feed American imperialism and its war-machine economy.
Far from it. The Condo King is simply moving the Pentagons real estate around the region in order to get a better view of the planned aggression towards Iran.
Photo: Flickr
Why are the British government and media so passionate about their new aircraft carriers Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales? The ships are being celebrated as an icon and manifest expression of the renewal of British resolve and glory that started 40 years ago with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. But in reality they embody the opposite. They are an expression of how vulnerable, weak, ineffectual and just plain ridiculous Britain has become in the 21st century.
When Gavin Williamson, Prime Minister Theresa Mays ludicrous little boy-toy secretary of defense recently visited Washington he pathetically displayed his military and strategic illiteracy by boasting at public events on how the Queen Elizabeth, at 65,000 tons (50 percent heavier than the Titanic) by far the largest warship ever built for the Royal Navy alongside its sister vessel the Prince of Wales, would enable Britain to project power around the world, second only to the US Navy.
Williamson gloried in how this capability would make both the new British aircraft carriers worthy partners for the US Navy, keeping Britain as Americas trusted partner in running the world.
Or, as a senior political adviser to Prime Minister Thatcher memorably once boasted to me: Britains enduring role in the world is being the loyal sidekick to the hero in a Western movie or TV series, being the Native American partner Tonto to America acting as the worlds global policeman, or Lone Ranger.
The reality could not be more different: Far from Britain once again boldly strutting across the world stage as Americas partner, it is trotting along as Americas poodle, her little pet dog.
Like every British prime minister in the past 80 years starting with the revered Winston Churchill, Mrs. May has eagerly accepted Britains role as Airstrip One to Americas globe-strutting Oceania in George Orwells darkly prophetic classic novel 1984. (I suggest future editions, at least within Britain, be called 2024 in tribute to the ever increasing power of the British as well as US Deep States and the unending passion of British leaders for stirring up unnecessary wars around the world).
Even as a floating, mobile accessory to Airstrip One, the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales, as Russian and American naval experts recognize (but are usually too polite to say publicly) are ludicrous jokes.
For while Britain busted its defense budgets for most of a decade to build the two carriers at 3.1 billion pounds ($4.6 billion) for each ship, it could not afford a penny more to build the aircraft they are designed to carry or the screening task forces they desperately need to survive in any full-scale war.
The Queen Elizabeth has at last finally carried out operational flight trials off the East Coast of the United States. But the US Marine Corps had to give the Royal Navy a squadron of its own ultra-expensive, problem-plagued and far too few US-built F-35B VTOL Lightning II Joint Strike Aircraft to operate. They had absolutely no aircraft of their own left that could do the job.
Also, if it came to any war against a significant power, the Royal Navy cannot afford to project around the world long range anti-submarine warfare (ASW) forces adequate to protect its new carriers from the fleets of lethal, fast and difficult to detect (and also cheap to build and buy) diesel submarines that powers from India to Israel now operate.
And against an opponent like Iran, the British carriers would have to operate from well over 1,000 miles, or around 1,700 kilometers offshore to be safe from land-based anti-ship missiles that could destroy them.
How then, can Britain safely and effectively operate these enormous obsolete white elephants? There is only one way: They will have to be integrated into US carrier task forces to augment their striking power and it is highly debatable if the US admirals will even want them.
For US super-aircraft carriers are nuclear powered and they do not need to be constantly refueled as the old-fashioned oil-turbine powered new British carriers do.
Far from augmenting Anglo-American ties, the new British carriers look certain to erode them by repeatedly displaying to the US Navy how much smaller and more obsolete the British vessels are. Ironically, they will revive experiences of Special Relationship naval cooperation and lack of it 74 years ago.
In the closing days of World War II, the British Pacific Fleet was unable to keep up with the far more numerous, more powerful and far bigger and faster US Essex class aircraft carriers and their battle groups in the later naval operations against Japan, generating operational difficulties that endlessly outraged US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest King.
Mrs. May and Defense Secretary Williamson (who eerily echoes US Senator Marco Rubio in his boy toy characteristics and utter ignorance of serious military affairs) remain oblivious to all such issues. The victims of their pride and incompetence will likely be the 3,200 Royal Navy personnel that crew the two leviathans.
Like the vote for Brexit for Britain to leave the European Union the building of the two new aircraft carriers was a decision by the British to embrace ancient dreams over sober contemporary realities.
The British Empire is dead. The 100- mile-long line of warships off Spithead that honored Queen Victoria at her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 has been scrap iron for more than a century. It is time for Airstrip One to wake up and recognize its real place in a very different world.
Missouri has fallen behind in economic performance. Even though our state has the seventh-most diversified economy and rank among the top 10 states in high school graduation rates, we lag in post-secondary degree or credential attainment.
In the State of the State address, Gov. Mike Parson emphasized his two core priorities: infrastructure and workforce development. His commitment to our workforce is noted in his budget recommendations for three new programs: Fast-Track Workforce Incentive Grant, Missouri One Start and Missouri Excels Workforce Initiative.
Fast-Track is a new needs-based grant program targeted at adults over the age of 25 who are working toward a certification, undergraduate degree or industry-recognized credential for a high-demand occupation. Missouri One Start is designed to provide more workforce training for new and expanding businesses. Missouri Excels is a new initiative for higher education to develop and expand employer-driven education and training programs.
The fastest-growing jobs through 2026 will be in the service sector at all skill levels, many requiring a certificate or credential. Without unified, statewide business leadership and ambitious new efforts, our states economic performance is not likely to improve.
We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years, the backers explain in an outline, because we arent sure that well be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.
Well, at least the plan isnt too ambitious. Retrofitting every building in America can be done in 10 years, but eliminating all the gassy cows will take a bit longer. Maybe well move them all to Hawaii, which with the near-abolition of airplanes will be effectively cut off from America anyway.
Even if you take these goals seriously, as a practical matter its a fantasy masquerading as green virtue-signaling.
But its a fantasy based on a worldview that should be treated seriously because its so dangerous. NPRs Steve Inskeep asked Ocasio-Cortez whether she was comfortable with the massive government intervention critics say is required by such an undertaking.
And then what?
Its a crucial question, because gun-control attempts that fail arent just ineffective but a godsend to the National Rifle Association in its quest to keep us all armed to the teeth.
As it happens, we have right in front of us a good example of how to do it and another of how not to.
The latter is the 1994 ban on military-style assault weapons, which the NRA still holds up as evidence that gun control cant work. Like most of what the NRA says, this is a lie.
The main problem with the assault weapons ban was that it was poorly designed, allowing gun manufacturers to skirt it with minor modifications to their guns. Even at that, mass-shooting deaths with semiautomatic rifles the specific problem the ban was meant to address did decrease while the ban was in effect, and rose after it expired in 2004.
Key West, Florida, has voted to ban certain sunscreens in an effort to protect coral reefs in its surrounding waters.
The city joins a growing list of places that have banned sunscreens containing the chemicals oxybenzone and octinoxate. The Pacific nation of Palau and the state of Hawaii both passed similar bans last year.
The two particular sunscreen ingredients are FDA-approved and help protect skin against damage from ultraviolet rays. So far, there's been no conclusive evidence to suggest the chemicals pose risks to humans.
There is a growing body of evidence, however, that suggests those sunscreen ingredients cause coral bleaching and other toxic effects to marine ecosystems when sunscreens worn by beachgoers wash off in the shower or in the water.
Two men, one who rents an apartment from Jamilah Nasheed and another who used to be employed by Nasheeds campaign for president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, have both been paid to do work for one of her opponents, Megan Ellyia Green.
Campaign finance reports show that Nasheeds tenant, Calvin Kennedy, was paid $300 last month by Greens campaign.
Also in January, Chauncey Cosey was paid $815 to work for Nasheed and an additional $615 to work for Green. Both men were listed as campaign worker on Greens latest finance report filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission.
Both men worked as canvassers, Green said, going door-to-door handing out campaign flyers.
Nasheed, a state senator, did not know about her tenant being on the Green payroll until Thursday and her campaign said Cosey no longer works for Nasheed as of this week after finding out he was working for both candidates.
We recently learned Megan Greens campaign hired Senator Nasheeds tenant and one of our campaign workers, said Lindsay Pattan, Nasheeds campaign manager.
While the city is mandating at least 112 parking spaces, Savoy is asking to provide no more than 100, with only one driveway entrance, on the west end of the site.
While Kirkwood requires at least 3,000 square feet of lot area per dwelling, the development on this tract would provide only 1,685, Raiche said.
Also, city code calls for no more than four apartments per floor, while the developer wants 16.
Savoy representative John Pennington said that, in response to residents' concerns, a large post oak tree would be preserved on the site in a small pocket park and more shrubs and trees would be added to the site. He said the cost of the project is estimated at $10 million.
Tyler Stephens, an architect representing Savoy, said many apartments and condos in the city don't meet the 3,000-square-foot minimum, although Raiche said city codes in that regard have changed over the years and some buildings predate the current code.
He said Savoy is planning 31 one-bedroom apartments and 17 two-bedroom apartments, to accommodate a total of 65 people.
Stephens said the homes on the site have been vacant for about 10 years.
During public comment, Kirkwood resident Parker Pence said he supported the effort.
He has been very disruptive in terms of how Washington works, Graham said of Trump. But generally, speaking, if you are a Republican, you like the tax cuts. He has been deregulating. If you are a Republican conservative you like the judicial picks. From a foreign policy point of view, I like rebuilding the military and going on the offense.
But Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, said Trump as a disrupter is very bad. and Ill tell you why.
In order for government to run, you have to get to the middle somehow, he said, predicting that Democrats and Republicans in Congress will forge a border security deal that could override a Trump veto. You have to get an agreement on the issues that maintain our system of government.
I am sure we will see a few more temper tantrums from the president, Clay said about the coming week. But hopefully the adults in the room will be the members of Congress that will decide it is more important to keep the government open than it is to keep a campaign promise that he cant keep.
HOUSE
Day care at veterans hospitals, clinics Voting 400-9, the House on Feb. 8 passed a bill (HR 840) that would establish a nationwide system of day care centers at veterans hospitals, clinics and psychological and social counseling facilities. This would expand and make permanent a pilot program under which full-time caretakers can place their children for supervision while they receive treatment elsewhere on the premises. The bill is tailored to veterans who need intensive physical or mental care and would miss appointments without the availability of on-site care for their children. A yes vote was to send HR 840 to the Senate.
WASHINGTON COUNTY A stretch of Missouri Highway 21 north of Simpson Road was closed Friday night while the Washington County Sheriff's Office investigated a handmade bomb, according to the Missouri Highway Patrol.
The highway was reopened before 10 p.m., according to the Missouri Department of Transportation.
Deputies were alerted to a "possible incendiary device" on the side of the road, MHP officials said, and the highway was shut down while the St. Louis Regional Bomb Squad took possession of the homemade bomb.
No one from the Sheriff's Office could be reached for comment Friday night.
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Terje Rod-Larsen (Jim Poulos), a Norwegian sociologist, believes that hes found a method of conflict resolution that may be successfully applied to any situation. But he may be more ambitious than he realizes.
With the support of his diplomat wife, Mona Juul (Kathleen Wise), Terje proposes nothing less than bringing about peace between Israel and Palestine. Initially in secret, their efforts to forge an alliance between the intractable enemies led to the Oslo Accords of the 1990s and are chronicled in Oslo, the astonishingly brilliant, Tony Award-winning comedy-drama running through March 3 in a Repertory Theatre of St. Louis production.
Written by J.T. Rogers and directed by Steven Woolf, the fact-based play is vast in scope yet intimate in spirit. No particular background in geopolitics is required to get caught up in its wry humor, rare insight and rich theatricality. And despite our knowledge that the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization will indeed come to an understanding, however short-lived, the play generates palpable suspense.
Trump is not the first president to overlook the atrocities of a dictator for geopolitical reasons. Franklin Roosevelt famously defended an invitation to a Nicaraguan dictator by saying, "He may be a son of a b----, but he's our son of a b----." Many presidents have looked away from troubling allies as they brazenly violated America's lofty ideals. But Trump is the first in recent memory to seem at ease with mafia tactics. Murder and dismemberment add a far more gruesome twist, but the mob-like approach is nothing new, given Trump associates who have been making the news with gangster-style threats. Threats and intimidation appear to be a feature of the Trump world, not an exception.
Americans may be used to shocking news by now, but it was still stunning when Jeff Bezos claimed the National Enquirer -- a close ally of Donald Trump -- committed "extortion and blackmail."
Bezos, the world's wealthiest man, owns The Washington Post, where Khashoggi was a columnist. And in his Medium post on Thursday, Bezos suggested this entire scandal kicked off due to his own investigation into how and why the Enquirer published intimate texts he sent to a woman who is not his wife.
Updated at 6:50 p.m.
Two days after a crude oil leak in St. Charles County was first reported, officials announced Friday that the Keystone pipeline was the likely source of the spill.
Both the Keystone and the parallel Platte pipeline were stopped late Wednesday as crews worked to discover which of the two had caused the release of at least 43 barrels, or 1,800 gallons, of oil.
By late Friday, Enbridge Inc. said that it had begun a restart plan for its Platte pipeline and that the line could be fully operational by Saturday.
The status of the Keystone line, which is owned by TransCanada Corp., was less certain.
At this time, there is no estimated timeline to return to service, said Matthew John, a TransCanada spokesman.
Keystone is a major artery for Canadian crude to U.S. refiners, typically channeling around 600,000 barrels of oil per day toward its eastern terminus in Patoka, Ill.
On Friday, about 75 workers were on-site to excavate the pipelines and pinpoint the source of the leak.
Defense contractor DRS Land Systems, a division of Leonardo DRS, is replacing its Cool Valley headquarters with a new office in Bridgeton and relocating 300 engineering and business support jobs to the new facility near St. Louis Lambert International Airport.
Our company has been growing and together with the expanding mission-critical needs of our customers, we now require a more modern and efficient facility, Aaron Hankins, vice president and general manager of the Leonardo DRS Land Systems line of business, said in a statement. The St. Louis area has been our longtime home, and we look forward to being a part of this community for years to come.
Defense contractor gets tax breaks as part of redevelopment plan for former hotel site in Bridgeton Details of the actual project will be announced in coming months. Total construction time is to be two years.
DRS Land Systems the former Engineered Support Systems that the late Mike Shanahan sold to Washington-based Leonardo DRS in 2006 said its current facility near South Florissant Road and Interstate 70 was over 50 years old and no longer met the companys needs. DRS Land Systems won last year a major $193 million contract to install defense systems on the Armys Abrams battle tanks.
The move was seen by some as a court-ordered blessing for the PSC to help pave the way for greater utility investment in EV charging stations.
But last weeks proceedings show that there is still some uncertainty about how Missouri should move forward with the technology. PSC commissioners voted 4-1 on an order to grant partial approval to the proposed investments in Amerens Charge Ahead program introduced last February, when the utility resurrected its plans for EV charging.
I think that this is going to be a good step in the right direction as we look to build out EV infrastructure across the state, said PSC Chairman Ryan Silvey, adding that the charging corridor targeted by Ameren was the only aspect of the companys plan worth advancing at this time.
Though it did not grant Amerens other requests to incentivize electrification of commercial vehicles, including forklifts, and install about 1,200 plugs for charging, Hall said the PSC approval closely mirrored what Ameren had sought with its first charging station proposal.
Dean, a Sanders critic who endorsed Clinton in the last race, said that while many Sanders supporters felt he "got cheated" during the 2016 primary race, they voted for Clinton in the general election. "That phenomenon is going to be amplified 100 percent this time around because people really, really want change," he said.
In addition to finding his message echoed by other candidates, Sanders, 77, would be competing with a younger and diverse field of candidates at a time when the votes of women, minorities and young people are driving Democratic politics.
"You are always in a stronger position to expand your base, if you have a strong base. And Bernie Sanders has a strong base inside the Democratic Party," said Mark Longabaugh, a senior adviser to Sanders. "If he decides to run again, I'm confident his message is as powerful today as it was in 2016, and he will be able to build a broad winning coalition."
Organizing for Bernie, a group founded by former Sanders staffers, is leading a coalition of pro-Sanders groups in a campaign to demonstrate that the senator still has support to sustain a potential campaign. The coalition includes Progressive Democrats of America and Our Revolution, which was formed in the wake of Sanders' 2016 campaign.
Our Towns Habitat for Humanity homeowners and their families now have the opportunity to apply for the Build Your Career scholarship program.
Funded by Bill and Donna Kenney, the program will provide up to $2,000 in scholarship funds each year to one or more eligible students.
The inaugural scholarship funds will be awarded for the 2019-20 academic year. To be eligible, the applicant must meet the following criteria:
Have lived in an Our Towns Habitat for Humanity home for at least 12 months and be a Habitat mortgage holder in good standing, or the spouse, child or legal dependent of the mortgage holder.
Be a high school senior or graduate, have a GED certificate or be a current postsecondary undergraduate or nontraditional student.
Be eligible and plan to enroll for a minimum of three credit hours or the equivalent per term for the 2019-20 academic year in an undergraduate degree or certificate program of study at an accredited two-year or four-year college, university or vocational-technical program.
Have financial need, as demonstrated by submitting any college financial aid award letter.
The Hub has written about a number of different Kearney residents who operate Airbnbs. One uses the extra cash to travel and of course, she stays at other Airbnbs. A couple said that, two years ago, on a lark, they posted rooms in their home to rent during the total solar eclipse. They landed several travelers, but after the celestial event, they forgot to take down their Airbnb posting. They got more inquiries, and over time, used Airbnb income to repay student loans. Retired couples say they are using an asset their home that they acquired over their lifetimes, to help produce a little extra cash.
SCOTTSBLUFF Registration of kindergarten students for the 2019-20 school year, in both Scottsbluff and Gering, will be held Feb. 25 through March 1 in all elementary schools. Registration will be held at the elementary school in the familys attendance area.
If you are in Scottsbluff and unsure of your attendance area, a map is available at www.sbps.net/map where you can enter your address to determine the school your child will attend. Gering attendance centers can be verified by checking your address with the school nearest to you.
The Scottsbluff Bear Cub Preschool is holding registration for 3- and 4-year-olds at the same time at the preschool, which is located at 2512 Second Ave., between Scottsbluff High School and Bluffs Middle School.
The Gering Public Schools Preschool is holding registration for 3- and 4-year-olds at the preschool, which is located at Lincoln Elementary, 1725 13th St., each elementary school and the Administration Office.
Parent reminders:
1. A student must be registered by the parent/guardian of the child.
2. A copy of the State Certified birth certificate is needed for registration.
CHADRON The Business Academy at Chadron State College has initiated a new program, the Rural Business Leadership Program (RBLP), to help undergraduate students in Accounting, AccountingCertified Public Accountant, Agribusiness, and Finance assume leadership roles in rural communities.
Assistant Professor Gary Dusek said the program is open to incoming and current CSC students who have a strong interest in working in the banking industry or as a CPA in rural Nebraska.
Through the RBLP, 15 tuition waivers will be awarded to each incoming class. Tuition waivers follow successful applicants through their college career, provided they remain in one of the four qualifying options and their GPA remains at 3.0 or higher.
Dusek said the program will offer both required and supplemental activities to student participants. Required activities include six monthly meetings per year and two internships, one in the junior year and one in the senior year. Optional activities may include business tours, job shadowing, conference attendance, and membership in the Phi Beta Lambda business club.
As part of the application process, students must provide their ACT scores and GPA from high school or transfer school, as appropriate. Other requirements include a resume and essay discussing why the applicant wants to be in the program and how he or she wants to make an impact in rural Nebraska. To learn more or apply, visit: www.csc.edu/rblp/apply. Applications are due by Feb. 28.
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According to the affidavit, a Nebraska State Patrol investigator examined the financial records and found 45 cash withdrawals or checks, ranging from $50 to $1,500, that were claimed to be for clients or payment to individuals or businesses. However, in contacting individuals or businesses, investigators determined that more than $17,000 in withdrawals or written checks had either no documentation or had not been given to the person or business that it had been documented to and even found instances when Heumesser had paid personal expenses with funds from the veterans service account. Many of the expenditures exceeded a $100 threshold that required board member approval.
"This is one medium by which China can contest American influence in the Asia-Pacific," he said. "And it's unfair for the U.S. to voluntarily restrict itself in a bilateral treaty when one side of that partnership (Russia) is failing to live by its obligations. The U.S. ... is voluntarily fighting with one hand tied behind its back."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in early December that Washington would give Moscow 60 days to return to compliance before it gave formal notice of withdrawal, with withdrawal taking place six months later. The 60-day deadline expires on Saturday.
Technically, a U.S. withdrawal would take effect six months after this week's notification, leaving a small window for saving the treaty. However, in talks this week in Beijing, the U.S. and Russia reported no breakthrough in their dispute, leaving little reason to think either side would change its stance on whether a Russian cruise missile violates the pact.
"We have raised Russia's noncompliance with Russian officials including at the highest levels of government more than 30 times," Pompeo told reporters at the State Department. "We have provided Russia an ample window of time to mend its way. Tomorrow that time runs out."
Ogden jazz icon Joe McQueen may be gone, but his memory and legacy live on. One physical reminder of his life, McQueen's lifelong home at 3158 Grant Ave., has now become available for sale. The house received extensive remodeling, but as investor Richard Casperson has said, "Joe's energy is
S outh London rapper Cadet died in a car crash on the way to a gig in Staffordshire in the early hours of this morning.
The 28-year-old musician, whose real name is Blaine Cameron Johnson, died while he was a passenger in a taxi on the way to a performance, his family said today.
He was on route to Keele University on Friday where he was due to perform.
The rapper's family shared the news on his official Instagram account, which has since been made private.
His management told Radio 1 Newsbeat that he was a passenger in a vehicle that crashed in Staffordshire.
Cadet was due to perform at Keele University / Rex Features
A post read: "We the family of Blaine Cameron Johnson known as Cadet (Underrated Legend) would like to share the sad news that during the early hours of 9th February 2019 he passed away as a passenger in a taxi, en route to a performance.
"Right now we the family appreciate your patience and will share with you any information as and when we can. Thanks for your support in advance. Love The Johnson Family #cadetcadet #imbuff #underratedlegend #ripcadet."
In a statement, Staffordshire Police said: "A man has died following a road traffic collision in Newcastle-under-Lyme.
"At just before 1.30am this morning (Saturday 9 February) police were called to reports of a two-vehicle collision involving a silver Toyota Prius and a red Vauxhall Combo van on Main Road, Betley (A531).
"Emergency services attended and a passenger of the Toyota, a 28-year-old man from London, sadly died at the scene. Specialist officers are supporting the mans family.
"The drivers of both vehicles, a 36-year-old man from Stoke-on-Trent and a 22-year-old man from Crewe, were taken to the Royal Stoke University Hospital with serious injuries. Three further passengers of the Toyota were treated at Leighton Hospital in Crewe."
Rapper Cadet died in the early hours of Saturday morning / Rex Features
Award-winning artist Krept, cousin of the rapper, tweeted that he was "broken" following the news.
He wrote: "My life will never be the same again. I love you and will forever miss you. I cant believe it. I am heartbroken. Rest in peace cuz. You finally started getting the recognition you deserved. Im so proud of you. My left lung. Im devastated and broken right now.
Other fellow rappers paid tribute to the artist.
Example wrote on Twitter: "Was chatting to you only last week about how excited you were for some festivals this summer. So much positive energy.
"Smiling nonstop when I was with you, first time we met I felt as if I'd known you my whole life. Mad humble guy. RIP Cadet."
DJ Semtex wrote: "Cant believe it... I was on stage with him last week.
"Never seen a man so happy. Everything was working out for him. This was gonna be his year. We were plotting on the best time to do an interview on his next single. RIP Cadet."
Mega So Solid wrote: "Woke up in shock this morning.... He brought life and substance to the UK music scene."
Cadet, who was from south London and was tipped for success, toured the UK supporting Krept And Konan on their The Long Way Home Tour.
He accumulated millions of views on YouTube and Spotify and was booked to play at this year's Wireless Festival.
The festival announced on Saturday that it would be keeping his performance slot "as a time to reflect" on his memory.
A spokesman said in a tweet: "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family, friends and fans, of Cadet. Such sad news.
C ongresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accepted an invite from American model Chrissy Teigen to watch the Grammys with her.
Ms Teigen, who co-hosts Lip Sync Battle, tweeted to the 29-year-old democrat to ask her if she would like to join her and Modern Family start Jess Tyler Ferguson to watch the event.
She wrote: Hello my hero, do you wanna come over and watch the grammys with us? There will be pizza.
After this she asked Ms Tyler Ferguson to tell Ms Ocasio-Cortez we are normal.
Chrissy Teigen contacted the congresswoman on Twitter / Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
Following this, the democrat who is the youngest ever US congresswoman, said: Yes! We can live-tweet me burning something in the kitchen.
Ms Teigen replied Perfect! We have extremely different strengths except I still sometimes burn things.
The budding friendship sparked excitement on social media.
One person wrote: This type of wholesome interaction is the reason why I still have twitter wow.
Another said: Yall I dont know if I can even process this yet emotionally.
Others asked if they could join the festivities as well.
The Grammys will be held on February 10 in Los Angeles.
It will start at 5pm PST, which is 1am on Monday in the UK.
They are set to be hosted by Alicia Keys.
P arenting website Mumsnet is investigating after a data breach on the site that let some people see details of other accounts.
In a statement it said the problem occurred between 2pm on Tuesday and 9am on Thursday.
During this time some account holders who logged in at the same time had their account information switched and were able to inadvertently access each other's details.
Approximately 4,000 people were logged in during the breach period.
However, the site has now stated the total number breached was 44.
Email addresses, account details, posting history and personal messages may have been accessible as a result, Mumsnet said, but confirmed passwords were safe as that data is encrypted.
It is believed that a "software change, as part of moving our services to the cloud", may have been the cause of the problem.
The firm has since reversed the change and said it has not been aware of any further incidents.
A spokeswoman for the site said: "We're very sorry to say that weve become aware of a data breach which affected some Mumsnet user accounts."
Previously, a statement said: "We know some of you will be very worried by the possibility that your account has been breached - please mail us on contactus@mumsnet.com if you'd like to discuss your individual account details."
I n the three years of travelling to Ethiopia to treat patients with life-altering facial disfigurements, one case in particular stands out for nurse Lara Tang.
A 15-year-old patient who had dropped out of school after being bullied for having a huge tumour on his nose, had travelled hundreds of kilometres to have surgery to remove it.
I remember being there when he looked in the mirror for the first time, said Ms Tang, a clinical nurse specialist in plastic surgery at St Thomas Hospital.
He was just smiling from ear to ear, he was so shocked.
Ms Tang, 34, is part of a team of 40 nurses, surgeons, anesthetists and doctors from hospitals around the UK who give up two weeks of their holiday and travel to Ethiopia each year to perform life-changing surgery alongside local medical teams.
Children in Ethiopia are given are chance to live normal lives after medical teams from the UK perform life saving surgeries to correct sever disfigurements. / Project Harar
Their patients - up to 50 or 60 children and adults each mission - often have severe, life threatening facial deformities or have suffered injuries from hyena attacks.
They arrive to the clinic with their faces covered with cloths, reserved, quiet and ashamed of the way they look, Ms Tang said.
Once they see there are others with similar disfigurements and see that they are not alone, they slowly come out off their shell.
Ms Tang is headed to Ethiopia for the fourth time in March, where charity Project Harar runs the missions.
A child is assessed for life changing surgery to correct a disfigurement on his face. / Project Harar
The complex issues each patient faces makes surgery difficult, but Ms Tang said the biggest challenge is dealing with the limited facilities.
It's not uncommon for us to go day-to-day without there being power cuts or no running water or trying to get a hold of things, she said.
When Ms Tang first travelled to Ethiopia in 2014, she said nothing could have prepared her for what she experienced.
The poverty that you see with your own two eyes on the streets, I remember going past on a bus and seeing people lying on the streets - it's quite shocking, she said.
I saw a quite a lot of homeless people and you see homeless people over here (in London) but these people they have babies and you can't even see their babies because cos they're so malnourished.
She added that the emotional attachment she feels for patients can be difficult but it is something that cant be helped.
Last year, an 18-year-old boy had arrived at the clinic alone who Ms Tang later found out had been orphaned.
At the age of 5, he fell from a tree and broke his jaw. He attended hospital for surgery, which is where his parents abandoned him and he has since been living in an orphanage, she said.
Over the years his accident had caused pain and locked jaw, ultimately contributing to malnutrition.
He became reserved and developed low self esteem at school.
Learning that he has been going through this over the years alone and having complex surgery without family to help and support him was difficult to witness so I found myself keeping an extra eye out for him.
This year, Ms Tang is extending her stay to four weeks and will be one of the lead nurses on the mission.
She said returning back to London after the trips can be difficult.
It's really cliche but it makes you realise how appreciative you should be of what you've got over here, she said.
T ransport Secretary Chris Grayling today faced calls to resign after a controversial ferry contract awarded to a firm with no ships as part of no-deal Brexit plans was scrapped.
Mr Grayling's decision to award Seaborne Freight a contract worth 13.8 million had attracted widespread criticism.
The Department for Transport said it had decided to terminate the contract after the company's Irish backer, Arklow Shipping, pulled out of the deal.
A DfT spokeswoman said: "Following the decision of Seaborne Freight's backer, Arklow Shipping, to step back from the deal, it became clear Seaborne would not reach its contractual requirements with the Government. We have therefore decided to terminate our agreement.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling is facing calls to resign / EPA
"The Government is already in advanced talks with a number of companies to secure additional freight capacity - including through the port of Ramsgate - in the event of a no-deal Brexit."
TODO: define component type apester
Labour seized on the situation to say Mr Grayling should quit or be sacked.
Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said: "As we predicted, the Seaborne Freight contract has been cancelled.
"This cannot go without consequence. The Chris Grayling catalogue of calamities grows bigger by the day.
"This contract was never going to work but this Secretary of State, true to form, blunders from one disaster to another.
"Whilst Theresa May needs the few friends she has right now, we cannot have this incompetent Transport Secretary carry on heaping humiliation after humiliation on our country. He has to go."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn raised the "ludicrous situation" in a speech in Coventry, saying: "Chris Grayling the Transport Secretary claimed the Government had 'looked very carefully' at Seaborne Freight before giving the company the contract, but apparently not carefully enough to notice that it didn't have any ships.
"Chris Grayling does have form in other departments."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during a speech in Coventry / PA
Brexit-backing Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg questioned whether Leo Varadkar's Irish Government had any influence on Arklow's decision.
He told the Daily Telegraph: "One has to hope that the Irish Government has not leant on or put any pressure on Arklow to persuade it to pull out.
"That would be a very unfriendly act of a neighbour to obstruct no-deal preparations and one has to hope very sincerely that this is genuinely a corporate decision."
Mr Grayling last month defended the Seaborne Freight contract, insisting it was "not a risk".
It was one of three firms awarded contracts totalling 108 million in late December to lay on additional crossings to ease the pressure on Dover when Britain leaves the EU, despite having never run a Channel service.
Seaborne Freight was due to run a service between Ramsgate and Ostend in the event that Britain leaves the EU with no deal on March 29.
The department said it had been Arklow Shipping's backing that gave it confidence in the viability of the deal, and that it stands by the robust due diligence carried out on Seaborne Freight.
It added no taxpayer money had been transferred to the company.
Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, said: "RMT has taken a number of protests over the fiasco of the Government's Brexit ferry contracts to both the Department for Transport and the ports, and the news this morning comes as no surprise to us.
"The whole exercise is a complete and utter shambles with the Government ignoring union calls on what needs to happen. Instead they are blundering on from crisis to crisis.
"RMT has set out a package of demands that would guarantee that the Brexit ferry contracts are crewed by British seafarers, on decent pay and conditions negotiated through recognised trade unions.
F our teenagers have been arrested after a 16-year-old boy was stabbed in west London.
Police were called by paramedics shortly before 4pm on Saturday to reports of a fight in Central Avenue, Hayes, Scotland Yard said in a statement.
Officers attended the scene and found the teenager suffering from a stab injured.
He was rushed to a west London hospital by London's Air Ambulance where his condition was deemed to be not life-threatening.
Later on Saturday police arrested four teenagers on suspicion on attempted murder.
They are a 15-year-old boy, a 16-year-old boy and two 18-year-old men.
All four were taken to west London police stations where they remain in custody.
A mother was stabbed to death near a primary school by a man who jumped out of a car and attacked her yesterday afternoon, witnesses told local media.
Two men were arrested after the woman was knifed by a man who is believed to have been known to her in London Road near Cheam on Friday, Surrey Police said.
The victim, in her 30s, was stabbed just yards from Meadow Primary School and London Road and the adjoining Sparrow Farm Road were cordoned off as police investigated.
On Saturday, police confirmed the woman's children are being provided with care and support after the incident.
Chief Inspector Michael Hodder called it a "tragic incident" / Guy Walker
The force said in a statement: "A man in his 40s from Epsom, was arrested on suspicion of murder and a man in his 50s from London was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender. Both men remain in custody while investigations continue."
Witnesses said the air ambulance landed in the quiet street near the school. A local councillor Drew Heffernan had tweeted that the woman had been attacked with a knife.
The area where the attack took place is a village on the south-west London and Surrey border.
A witness said he saw the moment two men were apprehended.
The victim was stabbed just yards from Meadow Primary School / James McKenzie
Guy Walker told the Standard: "As I got closer I saw two armed police pointing their guns towards a white transit van.
"Police were shouting to get them out and also shouting at bystanders to get back. I retreated and could see the men removed from the vehicle and appear to lay on the ground.
"After about five minutes or so, the police then moved the men into a marked X5 police car. The police then allowed cars and pedestrians to pass. As I walked passed, the white van had been boxed in by two unmarked police X5s front and back."
Another witness told the Surrey Comet that they saw a man jump from a 4x4 and attack the woman shortly before 3pm on Friday.
Chief Inspector Michael Hodder said: This was a tragic incident where sadly a woman lost her life as a result of the injuries she sustained. At this time we are not looking for anyone else in connection with this incident, and we do not believe anyone else was injured. The coroner has been informed.
Emergency services at the scene in Cheam / Guy Walker
The victims children are being provided with the support and immediate care they need at this difficult time.
A cordon has been in place overnight, and will remain for a number of hours to allow crime scene investigators to gather evidence. The road will therefore remain closed, and we thank the public for their patience and support while we carry out our investigations.
We have carried out house to house enquiries and have already spoken to multiple witnesses who have come forward. If you witnessed the incident and have not already spoken to us, please come forward.
"I would also ask that anyone who was in the area and travelling in a vehicle with dash cam or helmet footage that you review it in case you have anything that can help us piece together a timeline of what led to this tragic death."
A London Ambulance Service spokesman said: We were called at 3:01pm today (8 February) to London Road, Ewell to reports of an incident.
We sent a number of resources to the scene: an advanced paramedic, an incident response officer, a medic in a response car and an ambulance crew. We also dispatched Londons Air Ambulance.
Sadly, despite the efforts of medics, a person died at the scene.
Anyone with information should contact Surrey Police on 101 (999 in an emergency) quoting reference PR/45190014238.
T he family of a 39-year-old mother stabbed to death on Friday evening have paid tribute to their loved one.
Aliny Mendes died after an incident in London Road near Cheam on Friday, Surrey Police said.
Paying tribute to her, her sister said: My sister was lovely, always thinking about everyone but mostly her children. She had a wonderful heart and there was no one else like her. She was a caring sister and worried about everyone.
"She was always making sure everyone was ok. She tried to help everyone where she could. She loved to cook and would organise surprise parties for friends and family giving cakes and presents she was loved by everyone. Everything she did was for the love for her children.
Chief Inspector Michael Hodder called it a "tragic incident" / Guy Walker
Ms Mendes was stabbed just yards from Meadow Primary School and London Road and the adjoining Sparrow Farm Road were cordoned off as police investigated.
Two men were arrested after the woman was knifed by a man who is believed to have been known to her in London Road near Cheam on Friday, Surrey Police said.
A man in his 40s from Epsom was arrested on suspicion of murder and remains in custody.
Another man in his 50s from London who was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender has been released with no further action being taken against him.
The victim was stabbed just yards from Meadow Primary School / James McKenzie
The investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Chapman said: This was a tragic incident where sadly a woman lost her life as a result of the injuries she sustained. At this time we are not looking for anyone else in connection with this incident, and we do not believe anyone else was injured. The coroner has been informed.
The victims children are being provided with the support and immediate care they need at this difficult time."
Witnesses said the air ambulance landed in the quiet street near the school. A local councillor Drew Heffernan had tweeted that the woman had been attacked with a knife.
The area where the attack took place is a village on the south-west London and Surrey border.
A witness said he saw the moment two men were apprehended.
Guy Walker told the Standard: "As I got closer I saw two armed police pointing their guns towards a white transit van.
"Police were shouting to get them out and also shouting at bystanders to get back. I retreated and could see the men removed from the vehicle and appear to lay on the ground.
"After about five minutes or so, the police then moved the men into a marked X5 police car. The police then allowed cars and pedestrians to pass. As I walked passed, the white van had been boxed in by two unmarked police X5s front and back."
L ondon has welcomed a new addition to its hotel scene this week with the opening of the Vintry & Mercer hotel on Monday.
Located on Garlick Hill, near Mansion House station and among the narrow streets that line the banks of the Thames, the Vintry & Mercer is the sister property of The Ampersand Hotel in South Kensington.
Touching on the London eco-conscious movement, the new-build hotel is running completely on renewable electricity, sourced from wind, solar and biomass generators. It also has solar panels on the roof to ensure a minimal effect on the environment.
Below, we detail the best bits from our recent stay from the Instagrammable bathrooms to the truffle polenta fries.
The vibe
Walking into the Vintry & Mercer, you can tell theyve tapped into the millennial psyche. Potted plants line the reception and the walls and fixtures sparkle with green and eggshell tones two hues echoed throughout the hotel.
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On the way to your room, youll pass by the Vintry Kitchen an eatery serving Asian tapas by night and breakfast in the morning. Each of the 92 rooms are decorated with custom-made wallpaper and are a standard size for London, with even the bigger rooms being quite compact. Yet, despite the smaller size there is room for a king-size bed, chairs and an ensuite with a deep bath and rainfall shower overhead.
Amy Murrell
City workers will delight in the underground speakeasy bar, Do Not Disturb, with a separate off-street entrance, wall hangings encrusted with Swarovski crystals, an extensive drinks list and a bar menu including sliders, popcorn shrimp and parmesan-crusted polenta fries with truffle shavings.
The star of the show is the Mercer Roof Terrace, a restaurant in the sky with views across London rooftops looking towards Southbank. The glass-panelled roof ensures plenty of natural light and a prime spot to have dinner with a sunset backdrop a view which will distract you from the plastic-looking (but comfortable) tables and chairs. The menu focuses on earth, land and sea with oysters, lobster and Tomahawk steaks all on offer but with limited vegetarian options. The dessert menu offers the classics with a twist think chocolate mousse with ice cream, caramel and topped with stout. The atmosphere is vibrant and chatty, with a bar making custom infusion drinks try the Twisted Daquiri - and uber-welcoming wait staff.
Amy Murrell
Who for?
The discerning traveller, looking to stay in the bustling business heart of London, close to tourist delights like St Pauls, the Tower Bridge and Southbank.
What to Instagram?
The turquoise tiled bathrooms are an interior influencers dream, but you can expect to see the view from the Mercer Rooftop Terrace on everyones Insta feed come summer.
Amy Murrell
Known for
While the Vintry & Mercer is still in its opening month, it will soon be known for its rooftop terrace, offering some stellar inner-city London views.
How to get there
For Londoners, Mansion House and Cannon Street are the closest tube stations, with St Pauls, Bank and Monument all being a short walk away.
If youre arriving into London, Mansion House is the best tube station to head to as its only a four-minute walk from there. Both the District and Circle lines service Mansion House.
What do Meghan Markle, Michelle Obama, Khloe Kardashian, Kate Middleton and, probably, your best mate have in common? They all own a Self-Portrait dress.
Very few fashion labels manage to appeal, and be accessible, to so many different women but Malaysian-born Han Chong bridged a gap when he created his aspirational, yet affordable, clothing line.
"There are plenty of brands out there designing luxury fashion but its not accessible." Chong tells the Standard. "There has always been a massive gap between high street and luxury, never anything in between. I wanted to be able to bring great design and quality, at an honest price point, to a wider audience."
It wasn't just the label's affordability that caught womens attention when it launched five years ago, Self-Portrait also had an instantly recognisable aesthetic. "My focus at the start was to establish a recognisable signature - it helped get the brand noticed," explains Chong who moved from Malaysia to study a degree in womenswear at Central Saint Martins in London.
Pink Azaelea Dress, 260 (Self-Portrait ) / Self-Portrait
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Chongs first design, the Azaelea dress, was crafted from cut-out guipure lace and the delicate design gave a fresh and contemporary spin on traditional florals. During the summer of 2015 it was a surprise if you went to a wedding and didn't see someone wearing the Azaelea.
"The Azaelea, is the original Self-Portrait icon which got the brand noticed and since its release, weve done a version of the dress in every collection," says Chong. "Through wholesale alone, the Azaelea generates thousands of orders per season."
You'd think the staggering popularity of Self-Portrait's OG signature would make it less appealing to the A-list customer, but it's been quite the opposite.
Maisie Williams attends the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in the Azaelea dress / Getty Images
In 2015 Games of Thrones actress Maise Williams wore a crimson version of the Azaelea on the red carpet at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and was one of numerous celebrities to favour the 290 Self-Portrait dress over haute couture that season.
To date, Self-Portrait's roll call of A-list fans includes Michelle Obama, Beyonce, Margot Robbie, Reece Witherspoon, Khloe Kardashian, Zendaya, Priyanka Chopra, Kendall Jenner, Jessica Biel and Chrissy Teigen.
First Lady Michelle Obama in a custom Self-Portrait dress in 2016 / Getty Images
What Chong has produced is not a one-hit wonder, though, but a recognisable pattern that has become the brand's trademark and engrained in Self-Portrait's DNA, which Chong has since developed into bridal, footwear, eyewear and accessories.
Explaining the inspiration behind the pattern that has become synonymous with the label, Chong says: I think women want to wear pieces that are feminine yet functional. For me, lace is the ultimate feminine fabric but to fit into modern lifestyles, it needed to be updated for women to wear day-to-day. Its versatile in its nature so you can create fabrics that are striking and bold or subtle and organic.
Self-Portrait's designs have even had the seal of approval from the most high profile clientele: the British royals. The Duchess of Cambridge wore a 320 Pleated Crochet Floral Maxi Dress to the premiere of A Street Cat Names Bob in 2016. Not deterred by the fact that American socialite Paris Hilton sported the same number just days before at the amfAR Inspiration Gala.
Duchess of Cambridge arrives for the premiere of A Street Cat Named Bob wearing a 320 Self-Portrait dress / AFP/Getty Images
The Duchess of Sussex, however, has a more enduring love for the London-based brand, first debuting a Self-Portrait dress at the height of her Suits fame in 2016. She has gone on to style three of its intricately-detailed garments since her engagement to Prince Harry in 2017, proving the ability of Chongs designs to grow along with the women who wear them.
The now pregnant duchess was most recently seen in a custom striking red midi dress on her first official tour of Tonga in October 2018. And, unsurprising, the continuous appearance of the label in the duchesss wardrobe has had an impact on the already commercially successful brand.
The pregnant Duchess of Sussex wearing Self-Portrait whilst on a royal tour of Tonga in 2018 / Getty Images
Three dresses have become new icons for Self-Portrait. The Pleated Crochet Floral Maxi worn by HRH the Duchess of Cambridge, the Cold Shoulder Floral Printed Dress and the Red Embroidered Midi worn by HRH the Duchess of Sussex. They've sold over a hundred units each week since they were worn, says Chong.
Self-Portrait's latest New York Fashion Week collection for spring/summer 2019 / SplashNews.com
The reason for Self-Portrait's universal appeal? Self Portrait is for real women, living real lives, says Chong. When Im designing, I always think about what women want to wear. They want to feel feminine and empowered, but their clothes have to be functional at the same time. We have been working to diversify our collections so women can live their lives in Self-Portrait.
It's in that spirit, of listening to his customer, that Chong has let his fans choose their favourite pieces to bring back for the brand's five-year anniversary. The Icons Collection is made up of a selection of the brand's best-selling signatures.
Our customers have been so supportive, we wanted to do something that for them," says Chong. "The Icons Collection is for them. Not only did they select their favourite styles, we were overwhelmed by their personal stories about their experiences in Self-Portrait at birthdays, graduations and weddings.
Han Chong with actresses Jamie Chung, Rachel Bilson, Jaime King and Karen Gillan at the Self-Portrait spring/summer 2018 show / Getty Images
Five years on and Self-Portrait is only just getting started. Since launching with its first major stockist, Selfridges, in 2014, the label now has 375 stockists covering 70 countries worldwide, as well as its own flagship store in Mayfair which opened last year. Its rapid growth has also earned Self-Portrait a spot on the New York Fashion Week schedule and the brand's sixth show takes place this Saturday.
NEW HAVEN When Ryan William OReilly was born at 4:50 a.m. Oct. 19, his parents already knew their family faced a challenge. Ryan had a severely defective heart.
But in less than four months, Ryan, whose hearts left ventricle and aorta are too small to pump blood to the body, has survived more obstacles to survival than most people ever will.
Hes gone through more in one week than some people go through their whole lives, said Rosalie Ferrucci, Ryans mom. It was emotionally very, very hard having to watch it, she said.
When he was born, weighing 7 pounds, 1 ounce, Ryan came out perfect, he really did, Ferrucci said except for having hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a congenital deformity of the left ventricle, which pumps blood to all parts of the body except the lungs. The right ventricle supplies blood to the lungs.
But for Ferrucci and Patrick OReilly, Ryans dad, the emotionally exhausting series of hurdles began at the 21st week of pregnancy.
We had already had a conversation from the first ultrasound, where some parents decide not to go through with the pregnancy, which is the worst thing you can hear when you go for an ultrasound, OReilly said. It was then that they found out about Ryans congenitally defective heart.
Ferrucci and OReilly had to make a decision quickly. Connecticut law limits abortion to the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. It was while Ferrucci was undergoing amniocentesis that they found out that Yale New Haven Childrens Hospital had recruited Dr. Tain-Yen T-Y Hsia, a pediatric heart surgeon from Londons Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, to join its Childrens Heart Center.
The London hospital is renowned. One of its first benefactors was Charles Dickens and J.M. Barrie donated the copyright to his childrens play and novel, Peter Pan, to the hospital. Hsia, who in July took on the position of chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at Yale New Haven Childrens Hospital, performed the states first hybrid Norwood procedure on Ryan along with Dr. Peter Gruber, also a pediatric surgeon, who joined Yale New Haven in 2018 from the University of Iowa.
Along with Dr. Jeremy Asnes, cardiologist, and Dr. Heidi Boules, anesthesiologist, the surgeons played a huge role in ensuring Ryan will live a normal life. Having such a highly specialized team in New Haven the family lives in the Morris Cove section helped Ferrucci and OReilly make the decision to have Ryan undergo the complicated surgery.
His whole life with the exception of five or six days have been spent in the hospital, OReilly said.
Its in our backyard, Ferrucci said. We were definitely about having him. Everything was literally planned to a T. They had a special room. Its a huge room where theyre going to have the cardiology team waiting.
Knowing Ryan would need open-heart surgery shortly after birth was stressful, but having the Yale New Haven team helped. Having someone with that kind of expertise gave them relief, Ferrucci said. They werent sugarcoating things, but they were able to put things in perspective.
The parents also had support from Yale Maternal-Fetal Medicine, a department of the clinical practice of the Yale School of Medicine. When I was pregnant I was high-risk already because of my age, Ferrucci said. Both parents were 37 when Ryan was born.
It didnt make things easier when Ferrucci was rear-ended twice while driving on the highway once at 38 weeks of pregnancy. Its just trying to stay positive because of these things, she said.
100 percent lethal
In a baby with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, the left-sided structures of the heart dont develop normally, so theyre small, Asnes said. All of the blue [unoxygenated] blood still comes back from the veins to the right side. In addition, the aorta is very small, too small to allow all the blood that would leave the heart to get to the body, he said.
This is a lethal condition untreated, 100 percent lethal, Hsia said. It requires three operational processes to get that person to final circulation and the final process is abnormal.
Over the course of those operations the final surgery will be performed at 3 to 4 years old the surgeons will redirect Ryans blood flow so that he will live to go to school, get married, have a job, Hsia said.
In the standard Norwood open-heart surgery, which Hsia said remains one of the most risky operations that we do in babies in open-heart surgery, the surgeon redirects blood from the left ventricle to the right, which normally pumps unoxygenated blood to the lungs. The right ventricle then also pumps the oxygenated blood that normally would go through the left ventricle to the body. The aorta is enlarged as well.
Boules, in charge of anesthesia, said, A baby with congenital heart disease can be higher risk than any of the other populations and with this particular disease its one of the highest-risk diseases well take care of.
Unfortunately, as Ryan was being put under anesthesia, he went into cardiac arrest. He was given CPR and we had to put him on this thing called ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation], which is basically an artificial heart-lung bypass machine, which would take over the work of the heart and lungs, Hsia said. That was the only way he could be kept alive at that time. And luckily Ryans heart recovered. He was on ECMO for more than two days; without it, he would have died.
When he was on the ECMO, while we were supporting him, the circulation was not in balance, so we had to restrict the blood flow to the lungs so we could pump more blood to the body, Hsia said. Bands were placed on the arteries to accomplish that.
After all this, hes got his circulation balanced, so his heart recovered, but sadly he actually had a stroke, making him no longer a candidate for open-heart surgery, because to do open-heart surgery we have to thin a persons blood to such a level that it never clots [which] can make that stroke worse, Hsia said. That put the standard Norwood procedure off the table, he said.
So now we have a problem, a lethal condition. Weve got to get him to that third operation when hes 3 or 4 years of age, but the first operation is no longer available, so what do we do? Hsia said.
The answer is the hybrid Norwood, which requires very advanced interventional cardiology skills to work with the surgical team that has expertise in the hybrid procedure, he said.
The difference between the standard Norwood and the hybrid procedure, Hsia said, is that the hybrid uses stents to accomplish what would be performed during open-heart surgery.
For this particular case, the interventional parts were to place a stent in a blood vessel called the ductus arteriosus, Asnes said. That is a vessel that connects the pulmonary artery to the aorta, normally a vessel that closes after birth. Its function is to allow blood to bypass the fetus lungs, which are not being used before birth.
A stent is also placed in the wall between the two atria, the hearts upper chambers. That part of the procedure is done directly through the heart wall, Asnes said. The surgeons role is to provide access for the interventional cardiologists, he said.
Ryan did recover from his stroke and the hybrid Norwood was successful in enabling his heart to pump blood to both his body and his lungs. However, there were more obstacles ahead. He developed a respiratory viral infection, which kept him in the hospital longer than expected. He also had a series of seizures not waking up when he should, OReilly said.
His whole life, with the exception of five or six days have been spent in the hospital, his father said.
Ryan had surgery to insert a feeding tube on Jan. 3 and was discharged Jan. 10, but two days later there were signs of another possible seizure, so his parents brought him back to the Emergency Department. Luckily, that turned out not to be serious.
A second operation
So now at 6 months of age, with very close monitoring, frequent clinic visits hell have a second operation, Hsia said. Now, his right ventricle is pumping blood to both his lungs and the rest of his body, when its supposed to pump only to the lungs.
The second operation, developed at Yale and called a Glenn procedure, separates the superior vena cava, the vein coming from the upper body, from the heart and connects it to the artery supplying blood to the lung, relieving the right ventricle of that burden.
The second operation typically is to take the job of delivering blood away from the single pump, making that pump happier, Hsia said. A happier heart will last longer.
However, the reconnected blood vessels deliver only half of the unoxygenated blood that is supposed to go to the lungs, so the baby will have only about 85 percent oxygen saturation rather than 100 percent, but its still acceptable, Hsia said.
He can live with that and do very well indeed until about 3 or 4 years of age when we do the last operation, called a Fontan procedure. Until then, low-oxygen blood was mixing with oxygenated blood in the right ventricle. The Fontan surgery connects the lower vena cava, which brings blue blood from the lower body, directly to the lungs using a Gortex tube, Hsia said.
Throughout the last year and looking into the future, Ferrucci said shes relied on another source of strength, her faith. Were very religious and we believe in asking God for help. Throughout the pregnancy thats really helped me.
A friend gave Ferrucci a rosary bead she received from Pope John Paul II (now a Catholic saint). Also, we have a lot of family in other countries, Ferrucci said, including the Philippines, where children were dancing for Ryan and others lit a candle at the Cross of Magellan in the city of Cebu.
But Ferrucci and OReilly are thankful that the Yale and Childrens Hospital teams were there for them. Hsia said the Childrens Heart Center allows specialists to collaborate in high-risk procedures like the hybrid Norwood.
When you deal with something like this, heart care in babies, its so complicated, its so risky that you need a place where everyone who looks after Ryan are specialists in what they do. Having a Childrens Heart Center is so important because we all work in this collaborative unit horizontally. Everyone has a very special role to make sure Ryan has the best care possible.
edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382.
Chahid El Hafed (Saharwi Refugee Camps), 05 Feb 2019 (SPS) - the Secretary General of the of Sahrawi Women Union (UNMS), Fatima El-Mehdi, affirmed this Sunday that the VIII Congress of the Union of Saharawi Women will take place in Auserd from February 23 to 25 under the theme "Together we march towards victory and liberation" will be a platform to raise awareness about the Sahrawi cause and to let the foreign delegations know the experience of the Sahrawi State in various fields.
UNMSSG said in a press conference to national media, that the Congress that will bear the name of the Martyr, Sidam-mi Mojtar Mohamed, will host different workshops such as the political participation of Sahrawi women, human rights, Breach of international law by the European Union in Western Sahara.
Fatima El-Mehdi went on saying that this important event will be attended by delegations from Africa, Europe and Latin America, the foreign and national press that will cover the activities of the event.
She also pointed out that foreign participation reflects the dimension reached by the just struggle of the Saharawi people at the international level. SPS
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ABC has given pilot orders to an untitled legal/family drama and comedy per Deadline.
Comedy, United We Fall (working title), is a multi-camera, multi-cultural family comedy that hails from Julius Sharpe (Making History creator, Dads), Julia Gunn, Seth Gordon (The Goldbergs, Atypical, The Good Doctor), Sony Pictures TV and ABC Studios. Sharpe will pen the pilot.
United We Fall is a profoundly realistic, multi-cultural family sitcom that shows how, when two people with young children and overzealous extended families truly love each other, barely anything is possible.
The untitled legal/family drama hails from Hank Steinberg (The Last Ship co-creator, Without a Trace creator), Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson (Power), Doug Robinson (The Goldbergs). George Tillman Jr. (The Hate U Give) is attached to direct the pilot written by Steinberg.
The untitled legal and family serialized drama follows a prisoner who becomes a lawyer, litigating cases for other inmates while fighting to overturn his own life sentence for a crime he didn't commit. His quest for freedom is driven by his desperate desire to get back to the family he loves and to reclaim the life that was stolen from him.
Source: Deadline The show will also, through the window of his ferocious struggle and his complicated relationship with a progressive female prison warden, examine the flaws and challenges in our penal and legal systems.
Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques tests out the Bio-Monitor shirt in orbit during Expedition 58. The International Space Station wearable experiment is intended to monitor vital signs and transmit them to Earth, sending down information such as blood pressure and heartbeat measures.
OTTAWA, Ontario Fans of "Star Trek" know of the iconic tricorder that could take the measure of just about any vital sign for the spacefarers. Although astronauts on the International Space Station don't have access to this futuristic technology (yet), they are testing out devices like a shirt that measures heartbeat, temperature and blood pressure, according to an astronaut currently in orbit.
Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques spoke with schoolchildren and media yesterday (Feb. 7) at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum via a brief downlink, answering questions such as how radiation affects spacefarers and how astronauts stay healthy in space. Microgravity is a nasty problem for astronauts, he explained while floating in the Japanese Kibo laboratory. Astronauts must spend roughly 2 hours a day exercising their cardiovascular and muscular systems to stave off weakness and damage.
While the station isn't full of gee-whiz technology like audiences saw in "Star Trek," Saint-Jacques said, there are a few innovative technologies on the orbiting lab. One is a "smart shirt" called Bio-Monitor, whose development was led by Montreal's Carre Technologies. Its goal is to combine the functions of several devices, while remaining unobtrusive enough for astronauts to wear while sleeping and exercising. The shirt automatically monitors the astronaut's vital signs and then transmits the information to Earth. [Expedition 58: The International Space Station Mission in Pictures]
"We hope that [it] will become a very common product," Saint-Jacques told Space.com during a publicly broadcast question-and-answer session with media. And he didn't just mean in space. "It would be very useful for people who are deployed [in the military] or people who are stuck at home, [where] it is difficult to go to the hospital. They could have their health checked remotely."
Most of the other ISS medical equipment is "pretty conservative," although sometimes doctors get creative trying to use stuff that's already on the space station to monitor health problems, he added. Then, those creative solutions can get used back on Earth, too.
"We scratch our heads and we invent new methods on station that we then use on the ground," said Saint-Jacques, who is a medical doctor himself. "For example, a couple of years ago, people started to think, 'Hm, we don't have an X-ray machine here in space. How could we figure out if somebody has a hole in their lungs without an X-ray machine?'
"So we figured out a way in space, using an ultrasound machine, because that's what we had," he continued. Now, that's standard practice for many doctors. "Now, that's what we do on Earth to look for punctured lungs. We use an ultrasound machine."
Former Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk (top right) poses with schoolchildren at a new museum exhibit at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa on Feb. 7, 2019. The exhibit highlights the contributions of medical space technology to astronaut and consumer health. It also features astronaut doctors such as David Saint-Jacques. A flat picture of Saint-Jacques is displayed at top left. (Image credit: Elizabeth Howell)
New exhibit
Saint-Jacques' call from space coincided with the opening of a new exhibit at the museum, "Health in Space: Daring to Explore." The traveling exhibit discusses several Canadian astronauts who journeyed to space. In addition, the attraction includes artifacts such as pictures of Saint-Jacques when he was a doctor working in Canada's north, a sample Bio-Monitor shirt and an example of the Microflow experiment on blood-sampling technology that flew with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield during his Expedition 34/35 mission in 2012-13.
Retired Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk attended the event and gave a quick tour of the exhibit to a small group of children, explaining how the artifacts on display were used in spaceflight. During the tour, he paused in front of an exhibit talking about how gravity affects astronauts.
Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques (on screen) calls down from the International Space Station to a group of schoolchildren at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa on Feb. 7, 2019. (Image credit: Elizabeth Howell)
"This is me in space," he said, pointing to a picture of himself in 2009, during Expedition 20/21. "I wear glasses for reading, and my first month in space, I realized I couldn't see as well as I did on the ground. I talked to one of my crew mates, and he said he was also having vision problems. I could see distance, but [when] reading documents up close, I was having difficulty." [The Human Body in Space: 6 Weird Facts]
The vision problem, which Thirsk played a role in discovering, still troubles NASA a decade later. What the agency knows for sure are the effects: Pressure on the back of the eye pushes the back end of the eye in and causes a change in the focal distance, affecting the astronaut's ability to read in space, among other things. No one knows exactly how the vision problems are happening, but NASA is investigating. One strong suspect is the lack of a day-night pressure cycle inside astronaut skulls when they're in space.
Saint-Jacques' mission will examine a suite of Canadian medical technologies. These include Bio-Analyzer (which will do near-real-time blood analysis), MARROW (which will investigate whether microgravity causes fat accumulation in blood marrow) and MicroPrep (which samples body fluids to look for macromolecules such as DNA).
Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.
WASHINGTON A startup with visions of developing private space stations raised only a small fraction of the funding it sought in a recent equity crowdfunding campaign, with no guarantee that it will be able to retain that funding.
Orion Span unveiled its plans in April to develop a private space station that could launch as soon as 2022 to serve the space tourism and research markets. At the time, the company disclosed few details about its financing, saying it was looking for potential partners to raise new funding rounds.
Orion Span announced in December that it was seeking to raise as much as $2 million through an equity crowdfunding campaign using a platform called SeedInvest. The effort is similar to more common crowdfunding efforts with the exception that Orion Span offered equity in exchange for contributions, taking advantage of relatively new regulations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow for crowdfunded investments. [Orion Span: A Luxury Space Station Idea in Pictures]
Orion Span claims it can launch a one-module space station, called Aurora Station, by 2022 for space tourism, but an equity crowdfunding campaign to support the company's plans fell far short of its goal. (Image credit: Orion Span)
The campaign was scheduled to end late Jan. 25, and Orion Span continued to promote the effort on social media through that day. Shortly after the deadline, the website for the campaign was no longer available on the SeedInvest site, and the company has not commented on the campaign on social media or other venues since then.
See more
A copy of the SeedInvest page for Orion Span, archived by SpaceNews hours before the deadline Jan. 25, shows the company raised $225,700 by that point, far short of its public goal of $2 million. A copy of the site captured by the Internet Archive Jan. 26, just after the deadline, says the campaign raised $235,700.
SeedInvest, which says on its website that it accepts only about one percent of the startups who apply to use the site for equity crowdfunding, did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding the total amount raised by Orion Span and why the campaign web site was no longer available.
Orion Span also declined to comment on the outcome of the crowdfunding campaign or its future plans. Courtney Merolle, a spokesperson representing the company, said in a Jan. 29 email that "it's a bit hectic right now and we are going to have to pass on this opportunity" to discuss the fundraising effort.
In a Nov. 30 Form C filing with the SEC, the company disclosed that it was carrying out the equity crowdfunding campaign, governed by a set of rules known as Regulation CF, alongside a separate, more conventional offering of equity governed by Regulation D, which together are called the "Combined Offerings" in the SEC filing. While Orion Span met one requirement under the offering to raise at least $25,000 in crowdfunded investment, that may not be sufficient for the funding round to close.
"Unless the Company raises at least the Target Amount of $25,000 under the Regulation CF Offering and a total of $1,000,000 under the Combined Offerings (the 'Closing Amount') by February 1st, 2019, no Securities will be sold in this Offering, investment commitments will be cancelled, and committed funds will be returned," the document states.
Orion Span reiterated that point later in the filing: "The Company is making concurrent offerings under both Regulation CF and Regulation D and unless the Company raises at least the target amount under the Regulation CF Offering and the closing amount under both offerings, it will not close this Offering."
It's not clear that Orion Span has raised enough money through the Regulation D offerings to meet that $1 million threshold. The company has yet to file documentation with the SEC revealing the sale of any securities made under Regulation D.
When the company announced its plans in April, it said it sought to place a single-module station called Aurora into orbit by 2022, capable of hosting six people at a time. The company claimed at the time that the station could be built for "tens of millions" of dollars, a figure far less than many satellites.
"I knew that space travel could be done far, far more cheaply $65 million to build the whole thing," Frank Bunger, chief executive and founder of Orion Span, said in an interview published Jan. 10 by the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley, where Bunger is an alumnus. He did not provide a rationale for that cost estimate.
Regardless of the cost, the company has shown few signs of progress in the months since its April 2018 announcement. In the SEC Form C filing, the company disclosed that, as of Sept. 30, it had only $998.86 of cash in hand and just two employees. In October, the company sold $50,000 of convertible notes, the proceeds of which would fund general operating expenses.
If the company does raise the $1 million required to close the round, it will spend $85,000 on offering expenses, according to its Form C filing. Of the rest, about 30 percent would go towards work on a ground-based model of the station, another 30 percent for general expenses and the rest on facility and other expenses, including additional investment filings for future rounds.
Orion Span also says it has deposits of $80,000 each from 26 customers. Those deposits, though, are held in an escrow fund, according to its SEC filing, and are fully refundable. The company would not recognize the funds until nine months before a customer's launch.
Whatever the outcome of this fundraising effort, the company acknowledged that it will need to raise much more money in the future. "There is no guarantee the Company will be able to raise such funds on acceptable terms or at all," its filing states. "Assuming the Company is able to raise sufficient capital, the management anticipates being able to launch in 2022, but there are numerous risks that may prevent or delay the start of product shipments."
"We're trying to be incremental in our development. We have a milestone-based development strategy," Frank Eichstadt, chief architect of Orion Span, said during a Nov. 28 panel session at the SpaceCom Expo conference in Houston. "Using that strategy, I believe that we can realistically get to this operational state within a reasonable number of years."
This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
Vanuatu turns the Corner LETS USE THIS AS A SPRINGBOARD FOR THE FUTURE
South Bend Tribune
PLYMOUTH A grand jury in Marshall county has recommended charges not be filed against the truck driver involved in a rear-end crash with a school bus two months ago that resulted in the death of a 13-year-old boy.
The Dec. 5 crash happened on U.S. 31, about 30 miles south of South Bend. Owen Abbott, 13, of Winamac and a student in the Eastern Pulaski School District, died when the bus he was riding in was rear-ended by a commercial truck driven by Tylor Perry.
According to Matthew E. Sarber, Marshall County deputy prosecuting attorney, the bus carrying Owen was one of two buses taking students on a field trip to Warsaw to see a Christmas musical.
The crash occurred at a railroad crossing, which both buses stopped at.
Sarber said Perry acknowledged his view of the road was obstructed because he was removing an article of clothing. Mr. Perry became aware that the bus was in front of him, and made a hard maneuver to his left, which is the passing lane of 31, Sarber said.
The trucks overhead rack struck the rear of the bus, killing Owen instantly.
Sarber said the state statute the grand jury considered in the case required them to determine whether Perry acted recklessly. Sarber noted conduct is deemed reckless if it is a plain, conscious and unjustifiable disregard of the harm that might result, and that disregard involves a substantial deviation from acceptable standards of conduct.
Sarber said the case was sent to the grand jury to allow citizens to determine if Perrys actions constituted a substantial deviation.
We took it to the grand jury because we realized that his conduct was not acceptable and we would not condone it, Sarber said. However, we could not say that it was a substantial deviation that rose to the level of a recklessness charge, so we gave it to the community.
Because grand jury deliberations are confidential, neither Sarber nor Marshall County Prosecutor E. Nelson Chipman know why the six members of the grand jury decided against recommending an indictment.
Sarber said Indiana State Police officers involved in the case, as well as the staff in the prosecutors office had mixed feelings about the case.
If we had mixed feelings, the larger community would have mixed feelings, he said. That is why we presented it to a grand jury.
Owens family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Perry and his employer.
Joseph Dits South Bend Tribune
South Bend Tribune
MISHAWAKA Two new Republican candidates and two new Democrats have filed for city council seats in the primary election May 7, while all of Mishawakas incumbents have also filed to run for mayor, city clerk and the council.
None of the Mishawaka candidates will be opposed in the primary, but the four new candidates will be opposed in the fall election. Friday marked the deadline to file for the primary.
There will be time after the primary for more opponents to file for the fall elections. The deadline is noon June 30 for candidates to file in seats that either party didnt fill in the primary. Republican and Democratic party chiefs for the city say they do hope to draw more candidates on the fall ballot.
City council
The four new candidates all filed this week:
Tony Hazen Hazen, 62, had served as Mishawaka police chief from 1997 to 2003 and on the police force from 1980 to 2005. He is running as a Republican for the 3rd District seat. Hazen and his wife Lou Ann, own a convenience store and gas station. Lou Ann Hazen works as administrative assistant to Mayor Dave Wood.
Maggie DeMaegd DeMaegd, 56, is a Republican seeking one of three at-large seats, all held by Democrats. She moved to Mishawaka in 2004 from her native San Diego. This is her first run for public office. DeMaegd works as an administrative assistant and helps with finances at the University of Notre Dames Institute for Educational Initiatives.
Joel Dendiu Dendiu, 33, is running as a Democrat for the 2nd District. A Mishawaka attorney and 2007 graduate of Bethel College, he was one of three people whod run in a Jan. 5 Democratic party caucus to fill an at-large seat that had suddenly opened. The caucus elected Gregg Hixenbaugh. Dendiu and a partner in his law firm provide legal counsel to the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library, and he serves on the Mishawaka Education Foundation board.
Cory W. Smith Smith, 47, is running as a Democrat for the 4th District seat. While living locally, he works for the nonprofit Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., which advocates for the legal and civil rights of migrant and refugee children. Hes led policy advocacy work for four years there and for almost 20 years in general. Smith and his wife and son moved to Mishawaka a year ago when his wife took a job at Notre Dame.
Republican Mayor Wood, whos been in office since 2010, is seeking his third full term. City Clerk Debbie Ladyga-Block, a Democrat, is seeking her eighth term.
Council members Stacy Petko Reisdorf, D-3rd, and Gregg Hixenbaugh, D-at large, who were elected in a party caucus on Jan. 5, are running. So, too, are council members Dale Woody Emmons, D-1st; Mike Bellovich, R-2nd; Kate Voelker, R-4th; Mike Compton, D-5th; Ron Banicki, D-6th; Matt Mammolenti, D-at large; and Bryan Tanner, D-at large.
Associated Press
South Bend Tribune
SEBRING, Fla. A prosecutor says he plans to seek the death penalty for a man arrested in the fatal shootings of five women at a Florida bank last month.
State Attorney Brian Haas said at a news conference Friday that he had reached the unquestionable conclusion that he should seek the death penalty against 21-year-old Zephen Xaver, who is originally from Marshall County.
Haas also said a grand jury in Highlands County, Florida, this week had indicted Xaver on five counts of first-degree murder. Xaver will be arraigned later this month.
Four employees and a customer at the SunTrust bank were killed last month.
Sebring Police officials say the women were shot in an apparently random act of violence.
Hass on Friday didnt offer any further details on what motivated the suspect.
the Associated Press
South Bend Tribune
INDIANAPOLIS A state election panel won't investigate Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma's use of campaign funds to collect information on a woman who says she performed oral sex on the married Republican lawmaker when she was a legislative intern in 1992.
Those who filed a campaign finance complaint about the $44,000 payment to Linda Pence, Bosma's attorney, said the process appears to be rigged in his favor, the Indianapolis Star reported.
"I have to wonder, were back door politics once again in effect because Speaker Bosma was involved and appears to be above the rules," said Joe Weingarten, the Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman who filed the complaint, arguing that expenses must be reasonably related to the candidate's campaign under campaign finance law.
The complaint came after the former intern told the Star that Pence and her investigators had reached out to a former boyfriend and an ex-husband in an effort to discredit her. The ex-intern and her family said Pence then threatened to reveal the information she had gathered if the woman went public with her story about a decades-old sexual encounter with Bosma.
Bosma and Pence have denied threatening or intimidating anyone, calling Pence's investigation routine and professional.
All four members of the Election Commission two Republicans and two Democrats agreed to dismiss Weingarten's complaint 4-0 during last week's commission meeting, noting that state election law requires them to find "substantial reason to believe an election law violation has occurred."
The Indiana Election Commission's proceedings and a House Ethics Committee meeting on a separate complaint against Bosma both took place Jan. 31 behind closed doors and without notice to those who filed the grievances.
"We are troubled by the fact that the IEC dismissed the complaint without taking sworn testimony in a public hearing and issuing a formal opinion," William Groth, the Indianapolis attorney who represents the former intern, said. "By denying a public hearing, the IEC has left unresolved many factual and legal questions."
Bosma has denied having a 1992 fling with the former intern. He declined to comment for the Star's story, referring inquiries to his attorney, Margaret Christensen.
"We are pleased with the bipartisan and unanimous decision made by the Indiana Election Commission during its recent public meeting to dismiss the complaint, which was clearly politically motivated," she said in an emailed statement.
One commissioner, Democrat Anthony Long, suggested Weingarten request another hearing.
"If he comes in and says he didn't know about the hearing, he was not given copy of their response, in that situation, it may be two-two tie, but I would be moving we give him that opportunity," he said.
Jack Walton
Tribune Correspondent
The night before she embarked on her current American tour, Emily Burgess had one final engagement in her native Canada.
Burgess and her band, the Emburys, are based in Peterborough, Ontario, and she was nominated for Best New Artist at this years Maple Blues Awards. She learned of the nomination in October and had planned to attend the ceremony, but the events of the day ended up being a bigger deal than she originally imagined.
At one oclock in the afternoon, the Toronto Blues Society called me, saying, Could you fill in a spot? Theres someone who cant make it, Burgess says by phone from Syracuse, N.Y. Im two hours from Toronto in Peterborough, so it was a mad rush to get there to set up and perform at the show, too.
She was too busy to prepare an acceptance speech. It turned out that she should have had one handy, because she won. Fresh off her new accolade, Burgess brings her band to the Midway Tavern in Mishawaka on Sunday.
Everyone says this, but I didnt actually expect to win it, Burgess says. I thought I might plan out a little speech on the way there, but then once I got that phone call, performing was the only thing on my mind.
The 31-year-old sings and plays guitar in a style thats rooted in swinging blues, but expands to folk and pop-rock as well. Her Emburys are usually comprised of bassist-drummer brothers Rico and Marcus Browne, although for this tour, bassist Ryan Weber is subbing in for Rico.
Burgess credits legendary guitarist Hollywood Fats as a prime inspiration for her sound. He made only one full album as a leader prior to his death from a drug overdose in 1986, but Hollywood Fats served as a template for Burgess.
He was just perfect. He had the perfect sound, the perfect phrasing, she says. His album is such a benchmark. You never hear him play a cliche. Hes just so captivating.
Burgess wanted to emulate even the make and model of Hollywood Fats guitar, although she had to settle for the next best thing: a Gibson 339 instead of her heros Gibson 335.
The 339 is a little bit smaller and it costs about a thousand dollars less. Ive had it for about six years now. Its the only guitar I play and its become special to me, she says. Honestly, though, if I had gotten some other guitar, then it probably would have become the special one.
At her live gigs, Burgess plays many of her own songs as well as covers both classic (Chuck Berrys Brown Eyed Handsome Man) and unexpected (TLCs Waterfalls.)
In 2017, she recorded her first album, Are We in Love? There are plenty of bluesy moments, but the tracks often veer into rock territory and can bring to mind anyone from Ani DiFranco to The Breeders. Burgess also didnt stint on the overdubs.
I didnt feel the need to do the album just as a trio because were a trio. I wanted to go ahead and layer it up, she says. Make it as great as it can possibly be, and afterwards you can figure out how to play it live in concert.
Roy Chapman, 73, of Nancy, passed away Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at his residence. Arrangements are pending and will be announced later by Morris & Hislope Funeral Home. Condolences may be expressed to the family at: www.morrisandhislope.com
PHILIPSBURG:--- Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, Wycliffe Smith, visited the frustrated staff of the Sint Maarten Vocational Training School on Wednesday morning after a vehicle, owned by one of the teachers, was stolen by a student on Tuesday. The teachers stood in solidarity of their colleague as they decried the need for a safer school environment for both staff and students alike.
Minister Smith, along with Acting Secretary General, Shermina Powell-Richardson and Acting Head of the Division of Public Education, Marcelia Henry, listened to the teachers who expressed their concerns about the recent situation as well as the many occurrences of deviant student behavior in the past. The Minister promised to address the fears of the teachers starting by having extra security as of the following day. He also advised the teachers and staff that the education of all of the others students entrusted to them is important and therefore their cooperation to work together with the management to ensure a safe environment is very important. Minister Smith also promised that the fencing around the school would be fortified to ensure that students will only be able to enter through the front gate. The safety of staff and students alike is of paramount importance, said Smith.
Minister Smith was accompanied by his Cabinet Chief of staff, Peter J. Gittens, who also addressed students to get their feedback on their views of safety and learning at the public secondary school. The students gave valid insight of their home, community and school environs, and how they impact their learning. As the Ministry of Education is actively working on a safe school plan that will be presented to Parliament, departments and divisions within the ministry are concurrently busy with the execution of different aspects of the plan.
According to Minister Smith, The situation at the Sint Maarten Vocational Training School is one that has been neglected for too long, and now as a community, we must put all efforts together to correct the issues. At this point in time, this school needs a holistic, multi-faceted approach as the matters go beyond the scope of this ministry. I have already sought and received approval from the Prime Minister for the placement of two members of the Volunteer Korps at SMVTS daily. This added security measure was in place as of Thursday, February 7, 2019, until further notice.
The minister also stated that for the improvement of the teaching-learning environment and the productivity of the school, all stakeholders must be involved for the change to take effect and to ensure the success that is desired by all. To effectively overhaul the system that exists at this school, the participation of the Ministry, the management, teachers, staff, students and parents are vital. Just as important is the cooperation of the school bus drivers, the police officers, corporate partners, the Inspectorate of Education, and the community at large. Minister Smith would also like to thank Minister Stuart Johnson who visited the school on Thursday as his replacement while he is in Curacao for the Vierlanden Overleg conference. Upon his return Minister Smith will be sitting with Minister De Weever to further discuss the way forward as it relates to Justice.
Reports have been received of students of the St. Maarten Vocational Training School seen loitering on the streets, during school hours. Some accounts reported that some of these students have been seen conducting criminal activity in different areas of the community. We must unite and focus to make Sint Maarten Vocational Training School a place where we are happy to send our children. It takes a village to raise a child, and in this case, we need the village to help to redirect our youth. I am encouraging persons to look out for all school-aged children, encourage them to stay in school, and alert the authorities when there is reasonable suspicion of truancy or wrongdoing, said Smith.
The right to quality education is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. According to the UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child, every child has a right to education. Childrens education should develop each childs personality, talents and abilities to the fullest. As a signatory to the Memorandum of Understanding for all the countries with the Kingdom of the Netherlands to uphold these rights of children, Minister Smith is resolute in his commitment to see the turnaround of the Sint Maarten Vocational Training School and the general improvement of the image and reputation of the schools operated by the Department of Public Education.
New York: One of the men arrested over alleged involvement in a record-breaking $1.3 billion shipment of drugs to Australia ran several financially troubled audio equipment companies in the US and had previously declared bankruptcy.
Australian Federal Police revealed on Friday that they had intercepted 1.7 tonnes of methamphetamine bound for Australia the largest meth seizure ever recorded on US soil and the biggest intercepted drug haul bound for Australia.
The Australian Federal Police display the drugs that were seized. Credit:Joe Armao
The drugs were "artfully concealed" inside a shipment of loudspeakers on a ship in Los Angeles, US authorities said.
Among the six people arrested for allegedly facilitating the shipment were Nasser Abo Abdo and Leonor Fajardo, two US nationals living in Woodstock in Melbournes outer suburbs.
Jeffrey Wilke oversees the retail business, and Andrew Jassy runs the company's fast-growing cloud computing business Amazon Web Services. Both of them have been at the company since the 1990s. And unlike other CEOs, Bezos doesn't speak at conference calls with analysts and investors after the company releases its financial reports, leaving that to chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky, who has been at the company since 2002. Still, that hasn't stopped the Enquirer from casting doubts over whether Bezos can effectively oversee his company. "All of these [text] messages raise serious questions about Bezos' judgment as the CEO of the most valuable company in the world," the tabloid said in a January 24 article. Loading Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. declined to comment on Bezos. The company's stock did not take a big hit, slipping 1.6 percent at close on Friday, local time.
Meanwhile, the Enquirer's publisher, American Media Inc., is disputing Bezos' claims that it used "extortion and blackmail" in reporting its story, saying that it "acted lawfully". In his blog post Thursday, Bezos defended his ability to lead Amazon: "I founded Amazon in my garage 24 years ago, and drove all the packages to the post office myself. Today, Amazon employs more than 600,000 people, just finished its most profitable year ever, even while investing heavily in new initiatives, and it's usually somewhere between the #1 and #5 most valuable company in the world. I will let those results speak for themselves." He also said he wants to focus on work, noting that the person he hired to handle the investigation into how his texts were leaked to the Enquirer will also be tasked with "protecting" his time. "I have other things I prefer to work on," Bezos wrote. The front page of the January 28, 2019, edition of the National Enquirer featuring a story about Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' divorce. Credit:National Enquirer via AP
Bezos' indiscretions are seen more as a personal matter rather than one to do with the company, unlike Tesla's CEO Elon Musk, for example, whose behavior has caused the electric automaker's stock to rise and fall. Musk was recently stripped of his chairman title and forced to pay a $20-million penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly duping investors with tweets about a plan to take the company private. "This is very much a matter of Jeff Bezos," says Neil Saunders, the managing director at GlobalData Retail, of Bezos' affair. "It's not really anything to do with running with the company." David Larcker, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says it's up to shareholders and the board of directors to decide just how engaged a CEO is in their work, and whether they should go. Bezos is both chairman of the board and the largest shareholder, owning a 16 percent stake in the company. Amazon's shoppers are not likely to take notice. "I think as long as people can get their Nespresso pods within 48 hours, they don't care," says Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU Stern School of Business.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors are reviewing accusations made by Bezos to determine if the Enquirer's parent company may have violated the terms of a non-prosecution agreement struck over a hush money payment meant to help US President Donald Trump's chances in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. Credit:AP Bezos' post suggested that AMI's conduct, which he called "extortion and blackmail", might be a violation of the non-prosecution agreement the company signed with federal prosecutors in New York in September, as part of the Justice Department's investigation into campaign finance violations by Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. The deal requires AMI to "commit no crimes whatsoever" for a period of three years; if AMI breaks the terms of the deal, it could be charged with campaign finance crimes. As part of the agreement, AMI admitted it paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 before the 2016 election to silence her allegations about an affair with Trump.
Loading "Assuming AMI's continued compliance with the agreement, the office has agreed not to prosecute AMI for its role in that payment," the prosecutors wrote in a letter spelling out the terms of the deal. Two people familiar with the matter said the office of the US attorney in Manhattan is reviewing Bezos' accusations to determine whether AMI's conduct regarding his photographs amounts to a violation of the terms of that agreement. It's unclear how long such a review might take. A spokesman for the US attorney's office declined to comment. American Media Inc. insisted Friday that it had not broken any laws but pledged to thoroughly investigate the extortion claims. Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post newspaper (home of which is pictured), claims American Media Inc., which owns the Enquirer, threatened to publish intimate photos of him. Credit:AP
"American Media believes fervently that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr Bezos. Further, at the time of the recent allegations made by Mr Bezos, it was in good faith negotiations to resolve all matters with him," said the statement from the board, which is chaired by AMI's chief executive, David Pecker. "Nonetheless, in light of the nature of the allegations published by Mr Bezos, the board has convened and determined that it should promptly and thoroughly investigate the claims. Upon completion of that investigation, the Board will take whatever appropriate action is necessary," the statement said. Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Chicago, said prosecutors would want to see the entire conversation between the two sides, but said AMI's demands could amount to a violation of the Hobbs Act, the federal law against extortion. "You can't use extortion to get anything of value from someone else, even if you feel that the thing you are getting is something to which you are legally entitled," Cotter said. As an example, Cotter said it would be extortion for an employee who is owed back pay to threaten to burn down his boss' house unless he is paid. Extortion is the wrongful use of force or fear including fear of economic harm to obtain something of value from another. Cotter said the threat in the Bezos matter could be economic harm to Bezos' business, while the thing of value demanded is a public statement absolving the Enquirer of political motives. "Under the law, it doesn't even matter whether AMI believes the statement they are using extortionate threats to obtain is true or not. Nor does it matter if the pictures are real," he said.
Beirut: US-backed forces in Syria have begun what could be the final battle for the last village controlled by the Islamic State.
In a brief statement posted on its website, the Syrian Democratic Forces said the push began on Saturday night and was focused on the village of Baghouz, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River in the south-eastern Syria province of Deir al-Zour.
The statement gave no indication of how long it could take to capture Baghouz, but President Donald Trump said last week he had been told that the full territorial conquest of the Islamic State could be completed in the coming week.
US President Donald Trump speaks at the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS meeting at the State Department in Washington on February 6. Credit:AP
That would herald an end to the nearly five-year-old war aimed at pushing the Islamic State out of its self proclaimed "caliphate", the once vast stretch of territory spanning Syria and Iraq that at its peak was roughly the size to Britain.
Lorries full of coal, trains full of coal were a symbol of the Wirtschaftswunder. The rise of Germany after the war and in the '50s and '60s was strongly linked to coal mining. Coal was the energy to boost modern Germany, to make Germany successful again. In the '50s and '60s, and even '70s and '80s, that would have been unthinkable - to say lets phase out the coal industry. Snow on an abandoned coal mining dump in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Credit:AP But in the 1990s, things began to change. Germans have started to feel uncomfortable with coal, says Meurer. Its a little bit weird because the Germans rely so very much on their industry sector - but they dont like it. Its dirty, it pollutes the environment.
He remembers the first Greens to enter parliament. They were, frankly, hippies. They arrived wearing jeans, carrying sunflowers in pots. They were ridiculed. But they married their environmentalism with pacifism, a movement with extra resonance in Germany, not just because of the war but also the knowledge that the country could have become a nuclear battleground at the height of the Cold War. They opposed the Iraq war, a move that garnered respect. Protesters calling for an end to coal in 2017. Credit:EPA Figures like Joschka Fischer, a popular, politically canny and endearingly outspoken Green who served as foreign minister and vice-chancellor in the cabinet of Gerhard Schroeder, helped move his party into the political mainstream. The sneakers he wore to his swearing-in are now in a museum. The Greens were even in power, in coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), in North Rhine-Westphalia, the heart of the coal and steel industry. There were arguments over coal. At the time the Social Democrats, many of whose members came from the industrial working class, resisted the Greens moves to change the agenda.
But the clock was ticking. In 1990 there were 115,000 employees in the brown coal sector of reunited Germany. Now there are only 20,000. And there are 330,000 workers in renewables. Workers and their families are voters, says Meurer. Angela Merkel, he says, has a very important skill: She knows exactly when the time is ripe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel 'knows when the time is ripe'. Credit:AP She picked the right time to phase out nuclear energy, he says, and now she knows it is not dangerous (for her own party, at least) to phase out coal power.
Loading Its not necessarily inspired, conscience-driven politics, says Matthias Dilling, a lecturer at Oxford University who specialises in European party politics. Its a political calculation. He points out that at the time of Merkels decision on nuclear power, her CDU had been shocked by a defeat in the big south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, which it had controlled for decades. There, instead, the Greens formed a coalition with the Social Democrats. A Green became the states new minister-president. By counter-punching onto Green policy territory, Merkel helped staunch the wound. Her party recovered votes and the Greens lost their momentum. The CDU didnt exactly own the energy transfer policy, but at least they were not seen as its opponents. And this idea of energy transfer - that a switch to renewables was a matter of time rather than still up for debate - was slowly becoming the norm.
Meurer has a theory: its because of Germanys history. We want to be the good guy, he says. The whole green movement was a kind of reaction, in a certain way, to the behaviour of our fathers and grandfathers. We wanted to be better. There is a strong link between the past and whats going on now. To be better, to behave better. Thousands of people march in Berlin in December to demand that Germany make a quick exit from coal-fired energy. Credit:AP Its the same reason Germany made such a point of accepting Syrian refugees, he says: We want to present ourselves to the world as people who have changed their mind. Dilling, though, disputes this.
Loading I think this might be wishful thinking, he says. He points out the weakness of the Greens in the old East Germany. Certainly the idea of transnationalism, the idea that Germany can only prosper by working with its neighbours and on the global stage, is a long tradition and trajectory for German politics. This boosts the acceptability of Green plans and dilutes opposition to global climate pacts. Dilling says there may be something to an alternative "post-materialist" explanation, the idea that as a country develops economically people move past their basic material needs and start embracing post-material needs such as environmental action. There is some evidence for this: the inter-generational differences, where young people are more environmentally aware. But, says Dilling, what is behind the rise of the Greens now has a pretty plain political explanation.
Basically, people are fed up with the "grand coalition" [of the CDU and the SPD] running the country. Its a good time not to be one of the two major parties, he says. Grand coalitions at a federal level have always been seen as the exception given the timing of the rise of the Greens it really has to do with dissatisfaction with this type of coalition. At the same time, politics is polarising along a new cultural axis that the major parties are uncomfortable with but which suits the progressive, liberal Greens (and the conservative, nationalist Alternative for Germany, or AfD) much better. Meurer says the next testing ground for Green Germany is the car industry. Its an industrial behemoth, rich and powerful, its lobbyists deeply embedded in the political system. Theres BMW in Munich, Audi in Ingolstadt, Porsche and Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart. Greens hate them all. They dream of bicycle-centred cities, of clean air.
Seoul: The top US envoy for North Korea returned from three days of talks in Pyongyang and will meet again with his North Korean counterpart before the second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi later this month, the US State Department said.
Stephen Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, landed at a US air base south of Seoul on Friday evening. He is expected to brief South Korean officials about his visit to North Korea over the weekend.
Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun. Credit:AP
Biegun and Kim Hyok-chol, North Korea's special representative for US affairs, discussed "advancing Trump and Kim's Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearisation, transforming US-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula", the State Department said in a statement.
It said that Biegun and Kim agreed to meet again before the leaders' second summit, scheduled for February 27 and 28 in Hanoi, Vietnam. Trump tweeted the venue on Friday in Washington, saying Biegun had just left North Korea after a "productive meeting" on the summit.
Addis Ababa: For any first-time visitor to an Ethiopian restaurant, the signature experience is tearing off a piece of injera, a pancake-like bread, and using it to scoop up spicy meat or vegetable curries.
The spongy, almost sourdough-like taste of injera comes from a grain called teff, a tiny seed found throughout the Ethiopian and Eritrean countryside on golden, grass-like stalks. Like quinoa before it, teff is slowly hitting the mainstream in the West, touted as a new, gluten-free superfood high in protein and fiber and low in sugar.
But until just recently, an obscure Dutch agronomist held the patent for making pretty much anything out of teff flour, strangling Ethiopia's ability to market and sell its millenia-old grain. The tale of how that happened and how Ethiopia won back control of its staple crop is an object lesson in how the worldwide practice of patenting agricultural products often harms those in the developing world.
A farmer displays his harvest of teff grain at a warehouse in the village of Germama, Ethiopia. Credit:Bloomberg
In the case of teff, the Ethiopian Institute of Biodiversity Conservation partnered with a newly formed Dutch company called Health and Performance Food International (HPFI) in 2005. Ethiopia agreed to provide HPFI, run by agronomist Jans Roosjen, with a dozen varieties of teff, which would then be turned into products for the European market. Proceeds would be divided between the two entities.
Freetown: Sierra Leone's President has declared a national emergency over rape and sexual violence, saying perpetrators are getting younger and their acts more violent.
In a keynote address on Thursday, local time, President Julius Maada Bio said hundreds of cases of rape and sexual assault are reported each month in the West African nation against women, girls and babies as young as three months old.
Those who sexually assault minors will face life in prison, the President declared, saying that some 70 percent of victims are under age 15. The current law carries a maximum penalty of 15 years, and very few cases have been prosecuted.
Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio. Credit:AP
"With this declaration, I have also directed the following: that all government hospitals must provide free medical treatment and certificate to every victim of rape and sexual abuse," he said.
Within hours, Fire and Rescue HAZMAT crews recorded toxic and "extremely hazardous" levels of hydrogen sulphide on the vessel; a suspected gaseous byproduct that can occur from sewage waste in the holding tanks of a cruise boat. The Lady Rose is among a fleet of boats owned by All Occasion Cruises, of which Mr Elias is the sole shareholder and a co-director. The Lady Rose party boat. Credit:Seven News Sources have told the Herald the woman may have been overcome by the toxic gas while she was in the toilet cubicle. Police investigations are continuing and a report will be prepared for the coroner.
HAZMAT crews arrive at the All Occasion Cruises moorings to conduct further testing on Tuesday. Credit:Lucy Cormack It prompted a raid by Roads and Maritime Services compliance officers on Tuesday, on five other vessels moored at 37 Bank Street, Pyrmont. It is understood they identified issues with "sewage disposals" on some of the vessels, giving the company two weeks to rectify the problems. A spokesperson for All Occasion Cruises declined to comment until all facts are known. There is no suggestion Mr Elias had any involvement in the operation of the boat on the day or was responsible for the womans death. Both events have sparked fresh calls from residents for the state government to reconsider the approved proposal for Mr Elias' Blackwattle Bay Marina Pty Ltd (All Occasion Cruises) to relocate to 5-11 Bank Street.
It was the one topic on the lips of locals in Pyrmont's pubs this week. "They're basically saying the marina at Bank Street cannot go ahead," said Mary Mortimer, Pyrmont local and convenor of the Ultimo and Pyrmont associations and community group Save Blackwattle Foreshore. "The minister for planning has to overturn the decision to allocate that space to Blackwattle Bay Marina Pty Ltd (All Occasion Cruises) for a commercial marina." The history behind the proposed marina dates back to 2009, when All Occasion Cruises was controversially awarded a $15-20 million tender to build a marina at 100 Pyrmont Bridge Rd, Blackwattle Bay, by then-Labor ports minister Joe Tripodi. Clockwise from top ... The Wildboys Afloat website, Joe Tripodi and Joe Elias. Credit:Andrew Quilty, Dallas Kilponen
Mr Elias, a friend of Mr Obeid's son Eddie Obeid jnr, had grand plans for the site, including a large function centre. He won what should have been a two-stage tender at the first hurdle, when NSW Maritime's then-chief executive Steve Dunn (since found to have acted corruptly on an unrelated matter) dismissed all other bidders. But the development never happened and by 2016 Mr Elias had a windfall in his sights. A $250 million redevelopment of the new Sydney Fish Market was announced, forcing Mr Elias, who held both a lease and a tender over the Blackwattle Bay site to find a new home, and 5-11 Bank Street quickly became the offering. As a local Ms Mortimer spent 11 years working on plans for a promised community parkland area at the very same Bank Street site.
Then in 2014 plans were approved for a publicly accessible foreshore walkway and a marina at the site, to be used by the Sydney Heritage Fleet. An artist's impression of the eastern entrance of the new Sydney Fish Market. "But the boats were to be small, used infrequently and only during the day. Then, because the government had already approved the water base part of the development ... they simply extended that approval for All Occasion Cruises," Ms Mortimer said. The deadline for All Occasion Cruises to leave the Pyrmont Bridge Road site was June 30 last year. Since then the companys fleet has been moored at 37 Bank Street, after its owner offered to take them in, due to a shortage of commercial berths.
Another Pyrmont resident, Neville Monk, said the community felt the decision "was orchestrated just to get Joe Elias out of Blackwattle Bay ... to make way for the new fish market". "When it was the heritage fleet it was an advantage, it was to have a museum, and the boats rarely left the dock ... this is an entirely different proposal, done on the basis of a modification rather than a new development application." NSW Planning and Environment finalised the approval for the development, subject to conditions, shortly before Christmas last year. Under the agreement All Occasion Cruises would have exclusive use of the site for five years. Should it go ahead, Ms Mortimer said the community would be robbed of the parkland it was promised, only to be left with "noise, traffic and excessive waste".
"Large boats so close to the Glebe Island Bridge would endanger other shipping and passive boats, particularly dragon boat racers," she said. Chair of The Glebe Society environment committee Asa Wahlquist said locals only needed to remember the company's former site at 100 Pyrmont Bridge Road. The original 100 Pyrmont Bridge Road site where All Occasion Cruises was based. "It was an absolute tip. [Mr Elias] made all these promises ... he never delivered. And yet the government runs around and asks us to help the company relocate to a place where the community does not want them," she said. "Is this the sort of company that deserves that kind of patronage from the government?"
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared the government will not negotiate over a bill giving doctors more say in treating sick refugees, setting up a pre-election battle on border security if Labor votes for the legislation next week.
Mr Morrison declared yesterday in Sydney that he was willing to risk a humiliating defeat on the floor of Parliament to maintain the government's stance on border security, urging Opposition Leader Bill Shorten to reverse his stance.
"There is no form of this bill that is acceptable," Mr Morrison said. "We cannot have Australias borders determined by panels of medical professionals."
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the government will not negotiate on border security. Credit:Stefan Postles
It came after Mr Shorten indicated on Friday that he was willing to work towards a compromise on the bill while accepting the government's offer of a further security briefing.
Murillo was a huge contributor to the Rams' victories in the CIF-SS Division 3 semifinals and championship game with his glove and his arm.
[Steggall says she wants an orderly end to coal-fired power plants, a focus on renewable energy and the development of new clean technologies.] Abbott insists the Coalition has a satisfactory climate change policy going into this election, though many Liberal MPs are convinced the party needs something new to offer. A big boost to the Abbott-era "Direct Action" fund could be on the cards in the budget. "Its quite possible we might go back to Direct Action and renew the Emissions Reduction Fund," Abbott tells The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age. "If we have to reduce emissions, I think direct action is the best way of doing it. Tony Abbott meets Joy Latos, who despairs at the campaign to try to oust him from the seat. Credit:Jessica Hromas But Abbott also argues the political potency of the issue is overstated. "If you look at the polls, climate change rates no more strongly today than it did a decade or so back," he says.
Instead, the ex-PM is focused on entirely local problems. He has pledged to fight tooth-and-nail to fast-track a proposed tunnel linking the Northern Beaches to the CBD. He has called for a halt to residential developments in the area. And he wants more toilets in Manly. A video of a shirtless Abbott outside a portaloo demanding more public bathrooms for the busy tourist spot attracted howls of derision last weekend. For some critics, it was proof he had failed to deliver for the electorate for the past 25 years. This is the one accusation that genuinely angers Abbott. "That's a smear, that's an absolute smear," he says. He talks proudly about his regular surf patrols, volunteering with the fire brigade and raising money for charity on the annual Pollie Pedal. "Id back my local record against anybody else running in the Warringah campaign," he says. For other critics, the portaloo video triggered something else a feeling that there was something jarring or unbecoming about a former prime minister spruiking dunnies. Abbott's response reveals much about his lack of pretence or ceremony.
"Democracy is very humbling, and thats a good thing, not a bad thing. Im not too proud to do all this stuff, and you cant be too proud to do all this stuff," he says. "A lot of politics is very, very basic. People want their potholes filled, they want their rubbish removed. They do not like noisy neighbours having parties all night. And they expect their politician any politician they can get access to to help fix all that stuff. "And sometimes you can and sometimes you cant, but you've always got to be interested in it - because if it interests them, it has got to interest you." A Rhodes scholar, former journalist and keen writer, Abbott is fond of intellectual debates on big-picture issues. He muses about Brexit and opines on the future of conservatism and the centre-right. But all that is secondary, he argues, to the main gig. "The job of being a member of Parliament is not all making great speeches on the great issues of life and death. Its about solving very practical problems as best you can," he says.
"But you only get the licence to do the stuff you want to do if you are prepared also to do the stuff that is not necessarily what you want to do, because thats part of the job." Former prime minister Tony Abbott meets voters at Bridgepoint Shopping Centre in Mosman on Saturday. Credit:Jessica Hromas Out and about in Warringah on Saturday, Abbott puts his skills as a political veteran to work. An army of about 50 "Team Tony" volunteers has turned out to knock on doors and hand out flyers on a hot and sunny morning. The squad includes Abbott's sister Christine Forster and her wife, Virginia Flitcroft, as well as Liberal Party federal vice-president Teena McQueen and former Fairfax Media chairman Roger Corbett. Abbott is positioning himself as the financial underdog, asserting: "The big money in this campaign will certainly be with the independents." He says the cash will come from unions, GetUp and "wealthy people with a vested interest in the renewables sector", an undisguised reference to Turnbull's son Alex, a hedge fund manager.
In the nondescript malls of Balgowlah and Mosman, the former PM isn't constantly mobbed, but he is always recognised. He encounters a few angry detractors but meets several devout fans who are seething at what they see as an insurgency against their serving member. Graham Kells, a Military Cross winner and chairman of the Mosman Anzac Memorial Hall Trust, can't speak highly enough of Abbott when they cross paths at Bridgepoint Shopping Centre on Saturday. Loading "He's the answer," Kells says. "He's got values and he's got dedication, and he speaks up. He doesn't equivocate. You might not agree with everything he says, but he believes in this country." One area where Abbott's constituents definitely disagree with him is on same-sex marriage. Warringah voted 75 per cent for "Yes" in the postal survey, one of the highest in the country. Abbott has not abandoned his well-known opposition to marriage equality but he is, oddly enough, now taking credit for the result.
A man has died and two others are in hospital after they were involved in a car crash in WAs South West on Saturday morning.
One man has died and two others taken to hospital following a car crash in Pemberton. Credit:St John Ambulance
Police officers were called to Gloucester Road in Pemberton about 2am on Saturday where they found two men injured in a crash.
The pair were taken to Manjimup Hospital by St John Ambulance before a third man was found deceased inside the car.
A police spokeswoman said officers found the man dead in the Toyota Landcruiser on Gloucester Road, about 1.4km from the intersection of Warren Road.
Queensland's medical organisations are angry the state government appears to have ignored their advice and will push forward with new mandatory reporting laws governing health professionals who seek treatment.
The law changes would in many cases force clinicians who treat colleagues for drug, alcohol or mental health issues to report them to health authorities.
A Queensland parliamentary committee has recommended the amendments pass without alteration, despite warnings from medical bodies including the Australian Medical Association Queensland, the Queensland Nurses Union, and the Royal Australian College of GPs.
Queensland's medical community is pushing back against changes to mandatory reporting laws. Credit:Andrew Quilty
AMAQ President Dr Dilip Dhupelia said they were disappointed the committee had recommended the laws be passed despite their objections.
The NSW government is likely to knock back a push to open bars and pubs in the inner city for extended late night trading in the week prior to Mardi Gras.
The appeal to wind back the lock-out laws for the week follows the suspension of the lock-out laws for the one night of Mardi Gras last year.
Sydney's rainbow crossing has been re-painted on Bourke Street, near Taylor Square and Oxford Street, in the lead-up to Mardi Gras. Credit:Nick Moir
Christine Forster, the Liberal City of Sydney councillor, and the independent Member for Sydney Alex Greenwich have both called for a suspension of the lock-out laws for the week before Mardi Gras, to help capitalise on the influx of visitors to the city.
But the appeal is likely to fall on deaf ears, with last year's one-night exemption set to be repeated this year.
NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance said he would support a review of a hotline that allows ministers to intervene in fines given to their constituents after it was revealed a member of Michael Daley's staff used the hotline to transfer a personal speeding fine into his wife's name.
Last week the Herald reported that the now-Opposition leader's office called the hotline to the Office of State Revenue after a car owned by Mr Daley was detected travelling over the speed limit in May 2017.
Transport Minister Andrew Constance wouldn't oppose an investigation into a hotline used by MPs. Credit:AAP
According to Mr Daleys office, his wife Christina was driving the car at the time of the offence and Mr Daley signed a statutory declaration transferring the fine on June 30, 2017, which was then paid.
Records from the hotline show a call was made by Mr Daley's office on August 3, 2017.
Women fleeing violent ex-partners are being forced to wait six months for "immediate needs" payments under the state government's troubled support scheme for victims of violent crime, prompting the NSW Labor Opposition to promise a "root and branch" review of the system if elected to government next month.
The NSW Victims Support Scheme offers a range of payments and support services to victims of acts of violence, including one-off recognition payments typically $1500 and up to $5000 for immediate needs such as urgent medical treatment, refuge fees and security measures.
Immediate needs payments for victims of domestic violence are taking six months to be processed, lawyers warn. Credit:Gabriele Charotte
But lawyers warn the timeframe for receiving immediate needs payments has now blown out to six months.
"These delays are completely unacceptable," Arlia Fleming, managing principal solicitor of the Elizabeth Evatt Legal Centre, said in a letter to NSW government agency Victims Services on January 23.
States and territories should follow the ACT's lead when it comes to policies surrounding electric cars, a recent Senate report has recommended.
The report into electric vehicle use in Australia praised the ACT government's current policy of aiming for 100 per cent of government fleet vehicles be electric by 2020-21.
Denby Angus with his electric car, the Nissan Leaf, which was imported from overseas. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong
The Senate committee recommended that the federal government take up a similar target.
"The committee is encouraged by the ACT government's action in mandating 50 per cent zero-emission vehicles by 2019-20 and 100 per cent by 2020-21," the report said.
Transport Canberra is still not weighing ACTION bus drivers to ensure they comply with safe working limits, more than six months after the directorate said it was looking at ways to monitor drivers' weights.
In August last year, a Transport Canberra spokesman said it was "working with other ACT government departments on systems and process for monitoring driver body weights".
An ACTION bus, which concerned drivers say is not guaranteed to be safe because there is no requirement for drivers to be weighed. Credit:Jeffrey Chan
The comments came after The Canberra Times revealed concerns raised by two drivers that going to work was "like playing Russian roulette", because overweight drivers were damaging seats and creating a risk they could "bottom out" or collapse mid-trip.
Comcare accepted liability for a back injury one of the drivers suffered when a seat he had raised concerns about failed during a test run he was directed to undertake in 2016.
Police are appealing for information after three armed men allegedly stole cash and cigarettes from a Lyons supermarket on Thursday evening.
In a statement, ACT Policing said the alleged aggravated robbery happened about 7.15pm.
Police said the men threatened staff with a weapon during the alleged robbery, then fled the scene.
Witnesses and anyone with dash-cam footage or other information should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, or via the Crime Stoppers ACT website.
Information can be provided anonymously, quoting reference number 6361268.
When Maya Moses decided she wanted to be vaccinated at age 18, she was nearly put off by the complexity and expense.
I was quite overwhelmed and disheartened because the doctor meant to be specialising in it couldnt even help me figure out what to get done and when to get done, Ms Moses said.
Maya Moses grew up in Mullumbimby and was not vaccinated as a child. She had to catch up on her vaccinations to enrol in a medicine degree. Credit:Jason South
By the time Ms Moses was sorting out her vaccinations, she was an adult and her parents were on board with her decision. But new laws could make it easier for young people to catch up on vaccinations even without parental consent.
Since January, NSW pharmacies have been permitted to administer vaccines for influenza, measles-mumps-rubella and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (whooping cough) for patients from the age of 16.
The Oklahoma State vs. Kansas game featured a line of -11 Jayhawks.
Kansas State roughed up No. 13 Kansas 74-67 on Tuesday night to snap a frustrating eight-game losing streak against its biggest rival but they were dealt a serious blow heading into Saturday's game.
Kansas senior guard Lagerald Vick is taking a leave of absence from the team, effective immediately, the school announced.
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Another Australian summer has been marked by disasters triggered by extreme weather. Some came out of the blue, like the Townsville floods. Others unfolded gradually, like the drought afflicting much of eastern Australia.
Townsville residents are cleaning up after recent flooding. Credit:AAP
But theres one characteristic our natural disasters have in common: their high price tag when compared with the rest of the world.
The World Disasters Report 2018, prepared by the Red Cross, found Australia was ranked 10th in the world for the cost of damage caused by disasters between 2008 and 2017. It estimated our disaster damage bill over that decade to be a hefty $US27 billion ($38 billion).
A separate study by London-based charity Christian Aid rated Australias lingering drought as the worlds seventh most costly weather-related disaster of 2018 (between US$5.8 and $9 billion).
With their two young kids in tow, Juston and Kristen Herbert drove to a Target near their home outside Scottsdale, Arizona. It was time to get to work.
The Herberts were on the hunt for all of the Contigo water bottles the store had in stock, and kept the camera rolling for their 6400 YouTube subscribers. Within minutes, an employee pulled out 32 two-packs - sold on clearance for $US5 each - from a back storage room.
Through Fulfillment By Amazon, people can add their own products to Amazon's vast online catalogue. Credit:AP
For two people who recently left their jobs in finance, the blue-and-black plastic bottles might as well have been made of gold. The Herberts would resell the two-packs on Amazon for $US19.95. Subtracting some taxes and fees, they'd clear $US6.16 in profit. All told, the Herbert's 10-minute Target run earned them $US198.
Juston, 30, and Kristen, 28, estimate they can reel in $US150,000 this year from their newest gig: retail arbitrage. The basic idea is to buy up a bunch of the same item - from water bottles to vacuums to Monopoly boards - and then resell them online for a handsome profit.
Even the world's richest person couldn't stop a nude selfie leak.
When Jeff Bezos alleged in a blog post on Thursday that he was the victim of blackmail attempts by the publisher of the National Enquirer, it probably sent chills down the spines of billionaires everywhere.
"The perception among very affluent people is often 'I have this level of wealth, I'm untouchable,'' said Mark Johnson, chief executive of Sovereign Intelligence, a Virgina-based risk analytics firm.
"But the systems they have in place for protecting their personal identifiable information are very weak."
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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police are still investigating a multiple stabbing that left two males with multiple stab wounds on Friday afternoon.
Police responded to the vicinity of Hill Street and Tompkins Avenue near PS 78 on Friday at approximately 4:24 p.m. where a 50-year-old and a 17-year-old male had been stabbed.
Several NYPD cops, detectives and emergency personnel responded to the scene. Officers were seen canvassing the area and setting up crime scene tape by the side of the school on Hill Street.
A spokesman for the NYPDs Deputy Commissioner of Public Information said the 50-year-old male suffered a stab wound to the back and slash wounds to the chest and ear.
The 17-year-old male was stabbed in the leg, the spokesman said.
Both victims were taken to Richmond University Medical Center in West Brighton with non-life-threatening injuries, he said.
According to police, the victims are being uncooperative with the investigation.
There have been no arrests and there is no suspect description at this time, the spokesman said.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.-- Authorities are still searching for the perpetrator who allegedly stabbed two teens in Stapleton Friday afternoon, police said.
The victims were attacked in the vicinity of Hill Street and Tompkins Avenue, near PS 78, at around 4:20 p.m., according to the NYPD.
A 15-year-old male was involved in a dispute with an unknown individual before he was slashed in the chest and right ear, said police. The teen also suffered a puncture wound to the back.
A 17-year-old male was stabbed in the thigh during the incident, officials said.
Both victims are in stable condition at Richmond University Medical Center in West Brighton.
A knife was recovered at the scene, said an NYPD spokesman.
Several officers and emergency personnel responded to the scene. The cops were canvassing the area and setting up crime scene tape by the side of the school on Hill Street.
There have been no arrests and the investigation is ongoing.
A previous Advance report misstated one of the victims ages.
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KIEV, Ukraine Ukraine must join the European Union and NATO to protect itself from Russias expansionist actions, President Petro Poroshenko said Saturday as he officially launched his re-election campaign.
Poroshenko, who is seeking a second five-year term in the March 31 vote, accused Russia of planning to meddle in the election. He charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to destroy Ukrainian independence and described the nations presidential election as a general battle for Ukraine.
Only full-fledged membership in the European Union and NATO can decisively and irrevocably guarantee our independence, national security, freedom and well-being, Poroshenko told supporters in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
Opinion polls show Poroshenko trailing behind comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who plays the nations president in a hugely popular TV series, and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Election officials said Friday that a record 44 candidates have registered for the March vote including an obscure man who has the same last name and initials as Tymoshenko. She accused Poroshenko on Friday of trying to confuse voters and erode her support with the mans inclusion on the ballot.
The nation has a long history of vote-rigging and other election fraud.
Ukraine has struggled economically following Russias 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, leading to a sharp decline in living standards that has hurt Poroshenkos standing. The governments failure to combat corruption has also eroded his popularity.
We have moved past the worst, Poroshenko said. The crisis caused by the war, economic aggression and the Russian blockade is easing. The renewal of economic growth will open opportunities to restore living standards.
Poroshenko has sought to shore up his sagging support by spearheading the creation of a new Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent from Moscow Patriarchy.
Earlier this month, the newly elected head of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church officially assumed office in Kiev, a month after the church severed its centuries-long ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Yuras Karmanau is an Associated Press writer.
BEIRUT U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian forces said Saturday they have opened a final push to defeat the Islamic State group in the last tiny pocket the extremists hold in eastern Syria.
Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman Mustafa Bali tweeted that the offensive began Saturday after more than 20,000 civilians were evacuated from the Islamic State-held area in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour. An SDF statement said the offensive was focused on the village of Baghouz.
The SDF, backed by U.S. air power, has driven the militants from large swaths of territory it once controlled in northern and eastern Syria, confining the extremists to a small pocket of land near the border with Iraq.
Scores of Islamic State fighters are now besieged in a small area consisting of two villages, or less than once percent of the self-styled caliphate that once sprawled across large parts of Syria and Iraq. In recent weeks, thousands of civilians, including families of Islamic State fighters, left the area controlled by the extremists.
The decisive battle began tonight to finish what remains of Daesh terrorists, Bali said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
President Trump predicted Wednesday that Islamic State will have lost all of its territory by this week.
It should be formally announced sometime, probably next week, that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate, Trump told representatives of a 79-member, U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.
U.S. officials have said in recent weeks that Islamic State has lost 99.5 percent of its territory and is holding on to about 2 square miles in Syria in the villages of the Middle Euphrates River Valley, where the bulk of the fighters are concentrated.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that since the SDF began its offensive against Islamic State in the area on Sept. 10, some 1,279 Islamic State gunmen and 678 SDF fighters have been killed. It said 401 civilians, including 144 children and teenagers, have been killed since then.
Earlier Saturday, Islamic State militants attacked SDF fighters near an oil field in the countrys east, triggering air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition.
The Observatory said 12 gunmen attacked the SDF and clashed with them for several hours until most of the attackers were killed. It said 10 attackers were killed, while two managed to flee.
Bassem Mroue is an Associated Press writer.
JERUSALEM Israeli police said Saturday they arrested a Palestinian suspect in the killing of an Israeli teenager, as thousands of people in Gaza buried two Palestinian teenagers killed by Israeli fire a day earlier in protests along the perimeter fence.
Police said Arafat Arpaya, 29, was arrested in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, but originally comes from the West Bank city of Hebron. Police did not say when the arrest took place and said the motive for the killing was still under investigation.
The body of Ori Ansbacher, 19, was found in the woods near Jerusalem on Thursday with stab wounds. She was buried Friday in the Israeli settlement of Tekoa amid calls by hard-line Jews for revenge.
Over 600,000 Jewish settlers live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories the Palestinians want as part of their future state.
In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians attended funerals for the teenagers.
The mother of 14-year-old Hassan Shalabi wailed as mourners brought his body on a stretcher for a final farewell at their home in the Nusseirat refugee camp.
He was everything beautiful at home; his voice, his happiness fills the house, said the mother, Fatma, soon after the body was carried away, wrapped in a Palestinian flag.
The two teenagers were standing 160-200 feet from the fence at separate protests when they were shot by Israeli forces, according to rights group al-Mezan.
In Gaza City, mourners buried Hamza Ishtiwi. The Health Ministry put his age at 18, but Mezan said he was 17. Footage of Hamza lying on his back the moment after a bullet struck him in the neck spread on social media.
Gazas Hamas rulers have organized mass demonstrations along the frontier every Friday since March, in part to protest against the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the territory, which was imposed when the Islamic militant group seized power in 2007. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed and thousands have been wounded.
The protesters frequently hurl rocks and firebombs, and Israeli soldiers respond with tear gas and live fire. Israel, which has been accused of using excessive force, says it does what it must to protect its borders.
The U.N. childrens agency, UNICEF, condemned the killing of the two Palestinians, warning of the significant violence Palestinian children endure.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) accused Silicon Valley companies of committing "wage theft" by not paying employees enough, and warned of a growing "populist backlash" against big tech companies during a Friday appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News.
Khanna and Carlson singled out Instacart, a grocery delivery company that recently came under fire for using customer tips as a part of employees' base pay.
"It's outrageous," Khanna told Carlson. "It's a $7 billion company, they're going IPO and they're basically having wage theft. They're stealing the tips that should go to the employees to lower their base pay."
Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley in California's 17th congressional district, also called out Instacart for setting the default tip at 5 percent.
"Who tips 5 percent?" he asked. "They actually have a lower default tip because they don't want to make it seem like customers should pay more, and then if you do pay more, they're taking that tip away. I mean, it's just a scam."
Prior to introducing Khanna, Carlson said that "exploitation is now the standard in the brave new economy the donor class has created."
"Almost all gig economy workers are contract employees, that means they don't get health insurance, they don't make enough to support themselves," the conservative host said. "Tax payers make up the difference with social programs, and that's one of the reasons your taxes keep going up, so that the hipsters who run Uber can afford to buy another compound in Hawaii."
Carlson blamed this "exploitation" for the increasing popularity of socialism in America.
"If you keep it up, sensible people will become socialists," he said. "If you keep it up long enough, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will become president of the country."
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Khanna touted his support for Bernie Sanders' "Stop BEZOS Act," a bill that would require large companies to pay for some of the social programs their employees use.
"We were paying for food stamps and we're paying for a lot of the social programs, and here the richest company in the world wasn't paying a $15 minimum wage," he said. "In response to that, Bernie Sanders and I had that legislation. Bezos announced a $15 minimum wage, so they felt some pressure and did raise wages."
The Bay Area lawmaker also ripped into tech companies for outsourcing jobs overseas, and said the benefits of the "digital revolution" are only going to wealthy executives on the coasts.
"If you want to prevent a populist backlash in this country to what's happening, you need to be forward-looking," he said.
You can watch the full exchange in the video above.
Eric Ting is an SFGATE staff writer. Email him at eting@sfchronicle.com and follow him on Twitter
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"Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson is no fan of Senator Kamala Harris' (D-Calif.) priority to plan a universal Medicare policy in the United States.
Last week, Harris, who recently announced a presidential bid for 2020, said that she "strongly" believes in a "Medicare for all" policy and that "access to health care should not be thought of as a privilege."
Robertson called out Harris specifically on Fox Business Network earlier this week, while he was on the show to promote his new book, "The Theft of America's Soul: Blowing the Lid Off the Lies That Are Destroying Our Country."
During the segment, the show's host, Neil Cavuto, read a portion of Robertson's book which sums up the reality television star's political ideology:
"My view is simple: No government program whether health care, Social Security ... can save you. It may put food in your belly at great expense, it may get you in the hospital at even greater expense, it may provide for you in the dog days of your life, but only one thing will and that's Jesus."
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When asked to expand on his thoughts, Robertson called out the former San Francisco district attorney by name.
"Contrary to what Kamala Harris said, she says, 'Elect me and everything's free. Look, everybody can have their own health care, the government's going to finance the whole thing. It's not gonna cost but $30 trillion. I'm offering you the greatest deal you ever had. Elect me and everything will be free.'"
Cavuto jumped in to say that Harris is promising that the wealthy will pay for the policy.
RELATED: DiFi reveals who she wants to run in 2020. It's not Kamala Harris.
Then Robertson took things in an odd direction:
"What I'm saying is, Kamala I already have health care," Robertson continued. "It's given to me by God, eternal health care. I'm guaranteed to be raised from the dead. I have life and immortality given to me by God through Jesus."
Cavuto asked him to clarify, but Robertson doubled down.
"I didn't have health care for 50 years and someone says, now I'm rich and famous," Robertson said. "So I said, 'Miss K, you can buy every kind of insurance known to man if you want to, but I've never needed it for 50 years. So there ya go."
Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.
The old Court house that has been burned down.
Police are asking San Francisco residents to avoid an area in Noe Valley Friday as they investigate reports of a suicidal woman.
Around 12:21 p.m., officers responded to an apartment building in the 200 block of 27th Street near Dolores Street, Officer Robert Rueca said.
Officers made contact with the woman but she has refused to come out.
"We are currently in communication with them. We are seeking the most peaceful resolution to this matter," he said.
Although pedestrian and vehicular traffic has been closed in the 200 block of 27th Street, Rueca said there is no threat to the public.
Residents in the area, however, are being asked to shelter in place as the incident continues, he said.
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SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)
Famed musician Michael Franti is set to perform at San Francisco's Glide Memorial Church this weekend for their Sunday Celebration.
Franti, also a Bay Area native and social activist, will join The Glide Ensemble and the Change Band at the church, located at 330 Ellis Street, at 11:00 a.m., Glide officials said.
In addition to the Glide Ministry Team, Glide's co-founders Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani are set join the celebration, as well as Glide President and CEO Karen Hanrahan.
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Franti recently released "The Flower," a song advocating for tighter gun control laws in the U.S., and featured Glide employees in the music video.
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)
A deadly explosion near Concord and a subsequent mutiny trial at Naval Station Treasure Island 75 years ago will be remembered Saturday afternoon at the Treasure Island Museum.
The Port Chicago explosion on July 17, 1944, killed 320 people, 202 of whom were young black sailors ordered to load and unload explosives with no training and inadequate equipment.
The explosion and the subsequent mutiny trial helped lead the way to desegregation of U.S. armed forces and was also an early step for Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel for the NAACP, toward becoming one of the most respected Supreme Court Justices in U.S. history, organizers said.
In recognition of Black History Month, the Treasure Island Museum will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the disaster and trial on Saturday by presenting a special program titled "Lighting the Fuse to Civil Rights: The Port Chicago Trial at Treasure Island."
Saturday's event is free and open to the public, and will be held from 1 to 4:30 p.m. in Building One at Treasure Island. Reservations are suggested. More information is available at https://www.treasureislandmuseum.org/portchicago.
An exhibition on Port Chicago will be on view in the Building One lobby on Treasure Island through July 9, presented by the S.F. Public Library and the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial.
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A Bald Eagle that was shot with a pellet gun and rescued last week in Petaluma was euthanized Friday morning, Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue said.
The male eagle was found with a fractured wing Jan. 31 near Corona Road in Petaluma. Two members of Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue captured the majestic adult bird and it was taken to the veterinary hospital at University of California at Davis for surgery Thursday.
An X-ray showed the eagle's ulna was fractured into several pieces in the shooting, and the injuries occurred in the immediate area where the eagle was found, according to Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue.
The location of the fracture also carried a high risk of restricting the eagle's full use of an elbow, which is critical for the eagle's ability to fly, officials with the wildlife rescue said.
The eagle's initial response to medical care was promising. Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue offered a reward for information that would help identify the person who shot the eagle and began accepting donations to pay for the thousands of dollars in treatment and recovery for the eagle.
But it also was determined the eagle had elevated lead levels that possibly could have an adverse impact on its heart. The UC Davis exotics and cardiology departments determined the eagle's heart was severely and fundamentally compromised, and in the absence of a treatment that would reverse the damage, the eagle was euthanized this morning, Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue said on its Facebook page.
The type of cardiac change the eagle suffered is associated with lead toxicity caused by chronic lead exposure, and there will be post mortem testing, Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue officials said.
Lead exposure usually occurs when raptors consume rodents or other animals with lead shot in them. For this reason, lead shot has been illegal in California for the past few years, but all too much remains unused, according to the wildlife rescue said.
Donations to Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, however, were greater than the expenses for the eagle's care, and the wildlife rescue said it will return any donation if requested.
"Our default plan would be to put all additional donations specifically toward caring for other local raptors who will come to our facility for care this season," the rescue group said.
VALLEJO (BCN)
The Drug Enforcement Administration arrested a couple Thursday on suspicion of manufacturing counterfeit pills containing methamphetamine in their Vallejo care home for the elderly.
Agents seized 31 pounds of tablets containing suspected methamphetamine, approximately 17 pounds of suspected methamphetamine and possibly other evidence from the Genesis Care Home at 1169 Lewis Ave.
Henry Benson, 37, and Roselle Cipriano, 36, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute a mixture and substance containing the drug and the manufacture and distribution of a mixture and substance containing methamphetamine.
The DEA's Sacramento District office began investigating a counterfeit tableting operation in the Vallejo area in 2017. Court documents allege there were multiple purchases of thousands of tablets that varied in color and markings during the investigation.
There were yellow tablets bearing a Kool-Aid smiling pitcher, yellow tablets with the likeness of President Donald Trump and the word "Trump" stamped on the back, yellow tablets with the Tesla emblem and blue minion-shaped tablets, according to the DEA. Lab tests indicated the presence of methamphetamine, according to the DEA.
Benson and Cipriano, who are married, were identified as the suspected source of the pills, and they were associated with their residence and the Genesis Care Home, DEA officials said.
Benson and Cipriano were scheduled for a detention hearing in Sacramento Federal Court Friday, and the Genesis Care Home remains open and in the care of medical staff, the DEA said.
Vallejo police and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection also investigated the pill manufacturing operation.
Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
OAKLAND (BCN)
In what appears to be an unprecedented case in California, the attorney for a man accused of sexually assaulting three underage girls in Berkeley in 2008 when he was 16 argued Friday that the juvenile system doesn't have jurisdiction over him anymore because he's now 27.
Johnny Dunbar is charged with four felony counts, including two counts of forcible rape and one count each of forcible oral copulation and attempted forcible copulation, for incidents in Berkeley on June 21, July 8 and July 21 in 2008.
Dunbar is accused of using knives in two of the incidents and a gun in the other incident.
Dunbar also is accused of committing two of the alleged sexual assaults during the course of first-degree burglaries. Prosecutors allege that two of the victims were under 14 at the time they were assaulted and the third was under 16.
Berkeley police weren't able to solve the case until 2016, when they arrested Dunbar, who was 24 by then, for a traffic warrant.
The fingerprints they obtained from Dunbar during that jail booking process matched the fingerprints that police obtained at one of the crime scenes in 2008.
The Alameda County District Attorney's Office charged Dunbar as an adult on July 7, 2016, but in November 2016 California voters passed Proposition 57, which took away prosecutors' ability to charge minors accused of serious crimes such as murder and rape directly in adult court.
Instead, judges must now hold hearings to determine whether adult or juvenile court is the most appropriate for youths accused of serious crimes.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Rhonda Burgess, who currently is overseeing Dunbar's case, hasn't yet ruled whether he should stand trial in adult or juvenile court.
But Dunbar's lawyer Ernie Castillo argued on Friday that Burgess should just dismiss Dunbar's case now before she even rules on which court is most appropriate for him.
Castillo noted that juveniles who are convicted in the juvenile court system can only be held at the California Youth Authority until the age of 25, even for serious crimes such as murder and rape, and pointed out that Dunbar is now 27.
"Because of his age there's nothing this court can do," Castillo said.
But Alameda County prosecutor Melissa Demetral said, "The issue is which court if best for Mr. Dunbar and for society and that's not juvenile court."
Demetral also said, "The victims in this case have a right to be kept safe and society has the right to be kept safe."
Castillo said Dunbar had turned his life around between the time of the alleged offenses in 2008 and when he was arrested in 2016.
Castillo said that although Dunbar had a difficult childhood in which he was a victim of child molestation and suffered from a learning disability he was able to go to community college and start his own business.
"He had his whole life together" before he was arrested, Castillo said.
Burgess will rule on the motion to dismiss the charges against Dunbar on March 1. If she denies that motion she will then rule on whether he should stand trial in adult court or juvenile court.
Castillo said after the hearing that there's no case law in California on the issue of whether defendants charged with crimes as teenagers can be prosecuted when they're over the age of 25.
He said if Burgess denies his motion to dismiss the case he probably will take the issue to the appellate courts because there's no legal precedent on the issue.
Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
LAWRENCE, Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., formally announced that she was running for president Saturday at a rally in this former mill town. She was expected to travel later in the day to New Hampshire, before heading to Iowa and four other states.
The selection of Lawrence was symbolic: It was the site, in 1912, of one of the most famous labor strikes in U.S. history, started by a group of women at Everett Mill, where Warren made her announcement. Warren drew on the story of the strike as an example of women, many of them immigrants, taking on a system that was heavily stacked against them and triumphing, gaining raises, overtime and other benefits. She described the U.S. economy today as similarly tilted against the middle class, with government catering to the wealthy donors who fund political campaigns.
Today, millions and millions and millions of American families are also struggling to survive in a system that has been rigged by the wealthy and the well-connected, Warren said in prepared remarks, adding, Like the women of Lawrence, we are here to say enough is enough!
In her prepared remarks, Warren described how she rose from a childhood as the daughter of a janitor to become a law professor and a senator. That breadth of opportunity, she argued, had diminished in recent decades, as wealth had become more concentrated at the top and the government was controlled by rich donors.
As a law professor, she said, she had studied what happened to families who were economically struggling.
What I found was that year after year, the path to economic security had gotten tougher and rockier for working families, and even tougher and even rockier for people of color.
Later in the speech she said: When I talk about this, some rich guys scream class warfare!' Well, let me tell you something, these same rich guys have been waging class warfare against hardworking people for decades I say its time to fight back!
In her prepared remarks, Warren touted proposals aimed at diminishing the financial industrys power in Washington and touted her proposed tax on the wealthy, which she dubbed an Ultra-Millionaire Tax.
I will fight my heart out so that every kid in America can have the same opportunity I had a fighting chance to build something real, she said.
Warren also received two important endorsements Saturday, from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and from Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III of Massachusetts, who introduced her Saturday.
In practical terms, Warren entered the presidential race over a month ago and has campaigned in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Puerto Rico since then. But as the Democratic field becomes increasingly crowded, the event in Lawrence was seen as a way to draw a fresh burst of attention to her candidacy.
Her announcement comes as she seeks to establish herself in the race as a champion of liberal policy, like her newly proposed wealth tax, but also as she continues to face questions about her claims to Native American ancestry and her sometimes awkward attempts to settle the issue.
Questions about Warrens ancestry first arose in 2012, when she was running for the U.S. Senate against Republican Scott Brown and it became widely known that she had identified herself as Native American during her early career as a lawyer and law professor. Warren has said that family lore held that her maternal ancestors included members of the Cherokee and Delaware tribes.
Although there is no evidence that claiming Native American identity helped her professionally, the matter has dogged her throughout her political career. President Donald Trump has long branded her with the slur Pocahontas, suggesting that she made up a minority identity.
Brad Parscale, campaign manager of Trump's re-election effort, Saturday hit her on the Native American issue and said, The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and crush Americas middle-class.
Warren also stepped afoul of some Democrats last year when she took a DNA test to prove Native ancestry, which angered some social justice activists and Native American leaders who felt that she conflated tribal blood with citizenship.
Warren apologized to the Cherokee Nation last week, after months of resisting her own advisers and staff, some of whom had called for her to show contrition earlier. Democratic voters at Warrens early campaign stops have repeatedly said the issue was not important to them, but it continues to be discussed.
This week, new questions were raised when The Washington Post reported that in 1986 Warren filled out a registration card for the State Bar of Texas on which she listed her race as American Indian.
Some activists within the party seem to have been satisfied by Warrens apology.
Asked about the issue Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who is seen as a leader of the leftist movement within the party, said on MSNBC that it had not shaken her confidence in Warren and that Warren still had time to talk about the difference between recounting her personal history and claiming an identity.
I look forward to her modeling a public learning process and uplifting those voices, Ocasio-Cortez said.
Joel Benenson, who was chief pollster for former President Barack Obamas 2008 and 2012 campaigns and the chief strategist for Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign, said he would be surprised if the issue still lingered by the time votes are cast next year.
But he said that she needed to find a way to address it forthrightly and give voters who have made a judgment about it a chance to reconsider.
Shes probably got to find something between now and then, at least within the Democratic field, to lay it to rest, he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
Police in New York City are searching for a man who slashed a woman's face during a robbery.
WPIX reports Dana Sagona, 31, was approached by a man in Williamsburg at about 7:45 a.m. Sunday.
Fox 5 reports the man reportedly said, "You pretty. Are you scared?"
When Sagona said she wasn't scared, the man grabbed her, according to The New York Post.
I thought it was going to be a rape because he didnt ask me for anything by that point, he was just grabbing me, Sagona told The Post.
Sagona said the man threatened to kill her as they struggled over her purse.
He then reportedly punched her and slashed her face with a razor blade.
The blood was gushing, it was pooling in my scarf, Sagona said. When I saw how big it was, I was shocked. Im still in shock at the size (of the cut)."
The laceration reportedly needed 44 stitches to close.
The man wanted in the slashing is described as Hispanic and in his 40s. He got away with the victim's purse and phone. The NYPD released images of him caught on surveillance cameras.
SAN DIEGO Central Americans are increasingly entering the United States illegally in groups of at least 100 people in rugged, remote stretches of the Mexican border, authorities said upon releasing January figures that show total arrests fell for a second straight month.
A group of 325 Central Americans surrendered to agents Thursday near Lukeville, Ariz., according to Customs and Border Protection. Migrants told authorities that buses and trucks dropped them off throughout the night on a nearby Mexican highway that runs parallel to the border and they entered the U.S. together to wait for agents to find them. There were nearly 150 children, including 32 who were traveling alone.
And on Friday, Border Patrol agents arrested 290 Central Americans who entered the country illegally near a port of entry in a remote area near Antelope Wells, N.M. The group from Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras included a boy who appeared to be ill and who was taken to a hospital for treatment.
The Border Patrol has encountered groups of at least 100 people 60 times since Oct. 1, compared to 13 during the entire 2018 fiscal year and two in the 2017 fiscal year, officials said.
It is unclear whats driving the sudden uptick of large groups in remote areas but families, many of them Central American asylum seekers, make up a large and growing percentage of arrests across the border.
U.S. authorities arrested or stopped people for immigration violations 58,207 times in January, down 4 percent from 60,779 in December but up 62 percent from 35,905 in January 2018. It was the second straight monthly decline, though arrests typically fall from December to January.
Families and children traveling alone accounted for 33,861 of those encounters, or nearly 6 of every 10 stopped at official crossings or arrested for entering the country illegally between crossings, mostly from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Thats a dramatic change from several years ago when most people who crossed illegally were single Mexican adults.
The January numbers are unlikely to swing public opinion either way in President Trumps showdown with Democratic leaders in Congress over funding to replace and extend border walls with Mexico. The impasse led to a five-week partial government shutdown that ended when Trump agreed to reopen the government until Feb. 15.
The large percentage of families and young children has stretched U.S. authorities, even more in remote areas where staffing is thinner. Customs and Border Protection says medical attention was needed about 12,000 times for border crossers in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30.
Elliot Spagat is an Associated Press writer.
Four teenage boys, all 16 or 17, have been arrested and are suspected of committing a string of 19 armed robberies throughout the Bay Area over the past month, San Leandro police said in a press release Friday.
Police said the robbery spree began in early January in downtown Oakland and included four incidents in San Leandro. Most of the robberies took place at ATM machines, according to the San Leandro Police Department.
One of the earlier incidents in the alleged spree happened at the Fruitvale BART station to Brian Krans of Oakland, a KCBS writer/editor/producer and an aggressive inline rollerblader.
"I just got robbed at gunpoint. Cops are here," Krans wrote after the robbery, which he later found out was connected to the spree, on Twitter just before 9 p.m. on Jan. 3. "I'm fine. Guys are going to be pissed when they find only a sweaty pair of rollerblades."
The robbery happened when Krans was starting his walk home from Fruitvale BART after commuting from work at KCBS in San Francisco. He crossed a dark parking lot when he heard someone yell, "Hey!"
"And I was like, 'Oh crap, that's not a friendly greeting,'" he recalled. Then, he said, he saw a young man with a gun pointed at him, so he handed over his backpack and wallet. "It was over really quickly, but having a gun pointed at you is never really a fun experience."
He posted a screenshot of the tweet announcing the robbery on Facebook, where friends and family sent their love, expressed their concern and commiserated with him.
A few offered to donate money to help buy new rollerblades for Krans, who is an award-winning rollerblading journalist and hosts a rollerblading podcast called the Rock Town Podcast. A day after he was robbed, a few of the rollerblading companies in his social network, Intuition Skate Shop, THEM and 50/50 Frames, chipped in to send him a new pair of rollerblades.
In the moments after the robbery before the police showed up Krans said he felt "vulnerable." But "then not having to wait for the criminal justice system to be made whole again, that felt really great."
He said the biggest disappointment was having his skates, which he had only been skating on for eight days after he customized them, stolen from him. "They're of no use to most people, but I had been skating [in them] eights day in a row, and then someone stole my skates, so it was just really comforting knowing that I'm part of this community that was like, 'Screw these guys, we got you.'"
Then, two weeks ago, he said he received phone calls from the Pleasanton and San Leandro police departments a day apart from each other. The Pleasanton police had his wallet, which Krans said was given as a wedding gift, and the San Leandro police found his KCBS wallet and rollerblades in a car they had pulled over.
The San Leandro police had been investigating the four armed robberies that took place in their jurisdiction. Earlier this week, they found a small piece of evidence that led to several leads. After investigating the leads, they found addresses, one of which led to the discovery of a vehicle that was used in several of the crimes, police said.
On Wednesday, San Leandro police detectives began a large scale surveillance operation on the vehicle, which included a team of detectives, patrol officers and an aerial unit. Police said that they followed the four suspects in the vehicle as they drove through communities in East Contra Costa County. The suspects, the police said, stole a license plate from a vehicle and affixed it to their vehicle.
After that, they began casing ATMs and banks in East Contra Costa, Livermore and Dublin, all while police tailed them. Then they returned to San Leandro and stopped at a gas station at the intersection of San Leandro Boulevard and Davis Street.
As police approached the vehicle, one of the passengers got out and began to run. Officers chased the suspect, who they said threw a handgun on the street as he ran away, and eventually caught him.
A second suspect attempted to fight with the police, the SLPD press release said, but was eventually detained. The driver of the vehicle was detained without incident, and the officers found a second handgun. The fourth teenager, who the police said was riding in the vehicle earlier, was arrested at his home in Hayward.
According to the SLPD, the suspects are cooperating with the investigation and have confessed to many of the robberies.
"Our team conducted a phenomenal investigation, looking at every piece of evidence for the smallest lead," said San Leandro police Lt. Isaac Benabou. "These are violent crimes with the potential of someone getting very seriously hurt or killed. We were shocked to find that these crimes were orchestrated by juveniles."
The four teenagers are in custody at Alameda County Juvenile Hall, and will be investigated by other law enforcement agencies that are investigating similar crimes.
Krans said what he wants most of the situation, now that he's gotten his belongings back, is to meet the teenagers who committed the crimes. "If anything I want to meet the kids to find out their situation. Like, 'How did you get into this situation where you felt like you needed to this?'
"One of the lieutenants said to me that they hope that these kids can get the resources that they need to kind of hopefully straighten their lives out."
In a direct challenge to Facebooks business model, Germanys competition authority has sharply curtailed how the company may profile people, saying that users could refuse to allow the company to combine their Facebook information with data about their activities on other sites.
The agency, in a novel antitrust argument, said the company had exploited its dominant position in the German market by coercing people into giving up their personal data. The social networks terms of service, regulators said, had unfairly forced people to make an all-or-nothing choice between submitting to unlimited data collection by the company or not using Facebook at all.
The practice has enabled the Menlo Park company to collect data about its users activities on millions of non-Facebook sites, personal details that helped make the social network a worldwide powerhouse of personalized advertising.
But German regulators ruled Thursday that Facebook would now have to stop automatically collecting and combining that data and instead give German users a choice. They also prohibited the company from merging information from Facebook accounts with data from the users accounts on other Facebook-owned services, like Instagram and WhatsApp, without permission.
Facebook will no longer be allowed to force its users to agree to the practically unrestricted collection and assigning of non-Facebook data to their Facebook user accounts, Andreas Mundt, president of the Federal Cartel Office, the German competition authority, said in a statement. The combination of data sources substantially contributed to the fact that Facebook was able to build a unique database for each individual user and thus to gain market power.
The German ruling comes at a critical moment for Facebook. The company is under intense scrutiny by officials in the European Union and the United States after a series of scandals last year raised questions about how it collects and handles personal information. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Facebooks data-sharing practices violated a 2011 consent agreement prohibiting it from deceiving users on privacy. A decision on that case is expected soon.
Although the German decision affects only about 32 million of Facebooks more than 2 billion active monthly users, it could have far-reaching implications.
Authorities in Germany and some other European countries contend that Facebook has unfairly used its leverage to freely collect details about users on millions of third-party sites that use tools like Facebooks like and share buttons and its analytics service, called Facebook Pixel. In doing so, the German agencys ruling is advancing a larger antitrust argument: that a tech companys abuse of its market dominance to amass information about and profile its users can amount to a kind of data coercion.
The Facebook decision is quite a fundamental decision, Mundt said in a phone interview. If we have similar companies creating similar problems, of course, one could take a look at those as well.
Facebook disagreed with the ruling, saying it is merely popular in Germany, not dominant, and is being unfairly targeted. It also said its ability to use data from beyond its main Facebook site helped both improve services and protect its users information.
Facebook added that German regulators had unfairly singled out the company for business practices that are common in the industry.
All of this should be and is a legitimate area of focus for regulators and policymakers around the world, the company said in a statement. Yet German regulators, the company said, are trying to implement an unconventional standard for a single company.
Facebook plans to appeal the decision, a move that must be made in the next month. The ruling does not impose fines on Facebook because the German agency conducted the case as an administrative proceeding, an approach intended to compel companies to change their practices rather than punish them.
For years, Europe has emerged as the worlds leading watchdog of the technology industry, punishing Amazon, Apple, Google and Qualcomm for tax evasion and anti-competitive behavior. Margrethe Vestager, the European Unions antitrust chief who has clashed with Silicon Valley, argues that regulators must be more wary of a companys accumulation of data to accumulate power and stifle competition.
European regulators have also been empowered by a tough new EU law, called the General Data Protection, or GDPR, governing how companies and institutions handle peoples personal information. The law allows regulators to fine companies up to 4 percent of their global revenue, or about $2.1 billion in the case of Facebook. Regulators in Ireland and Britain are among those investigating Facebooks data-handling practices under the new law.
Among other rules, the new European law generally requires companies to obtain a persons freely given consent before collecting and using their personal information.
German regulators made their ruling under the countrys competition law. But Mundt said Facebook had also violated the EU data protection law by essentially forcing users to agree that the company could freely amass their data a process he referred to as involuntary consent. He added that, while many people understood that Facebook collected data about their activities on the social network, they did not understand that Facebook could collect data about them from millions of non-Facebook sites.
Natasha Singer is a New York Times writer.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark A nationwide experiment with basic income in Finland has not increased employment among those participating in the two-year trial, but their general well-being seems to have increased, a report said Friday.
The Social Insurance Institution of Finland, or Kela, said it is not yet possible to draw any firm conclusions from the first half of the experiment, where about 2,000 randomly selected, unemployed people age 25-58 got tax-free income of $636 a month with no questions asked.
Finland is looking into ways to reshape its social security system and became in January 2017 the first European country to begin the trial, which ends in 2020.
Critics say universal basic income reduces incentives for people to look for work.
Proponents say it can encourage people to start businesses, knowing that they would continue to receive monthly income even if they failed. It can also encourage people to try a new job without the fear of losing their unemployment checks or having to go through the paperwork of reapplying for benefits.
Earlier, I didnt accept all small jobs out of fear of losing my benefits and having to reapply for them, said writer Tuomas Muraja as he was on his way to a sauna before heading out for an evening at the opera.
I feel much more secure now that short-term jobs no longer reduce my benefits or delay their payment.
In the Finnish experiment, the basic income is below what unemployment benefits pay, which is about $1,135 a month subject to income tax of about 30 percent. The basic income is tax free, but barely enough to live on for someone paying rent, so it keeps pressure on the recipients to join the workforce.
Minna Ylikanno, a researcher with Kela, said the income recipients appeared less stressed, healthier and more confident in the future than a 5,000-member control group of unemployment benefits recipients.
The report found that those on basic income and the unemployed people in the control group ended up working roughly the same number of days.
The basic income may have a positive effect on the well being of the recipient even though it does not in the short term improve the persons employment prospects, Ylikanno added.
The participants in both the trial and the control group were selected randomly among those who received unemployment benefits from Kela in November 2016 , Ylikanno told the Associated Press.
Jan M. Olsen is an Associated Press writer.
Powerful California Democrats who lined up to oppose Brett Kavanaugh for Supreme Court consideration last year amid decades-old attempted rape allegations and publicly sided with his accuser have been muted in reaction to sexual assault accusations against one of their partys rising stars.
Late Friday, Sen. Kamala Harris became an exception calling for Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax to resign because of corroborated, painful stories of sexual assault and rape.
The Fairfax and Kavanaugh cases have obvious parallels. Palo Alto University Professor Christine Blasey Ford said Kavanaugh had tried to rape her when they were teens, which he strongly denied. Two women have now accused Fairfax of sexually assaulting them, one in 2004 and one in 2000, charges that he, too, has strongly denied.
The latest allegations against Fairfax became public late Friday. But high-ranking Democrats had already had two days to consider the assault accusations lodged by Vanessa Tyson, a Scripps College professor and visiting fellow at Stanford University. Several called for investigations and some said Tyson appeared to be credible, but until Harris issued her call late Friday, none was calling for Fairfax to step down.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who led several members of her Democratic caucus in urging Kavanaugh to withdraw as a nominee in September, said the accusations against Fairfax were something for Virginia to sort out.
Its sad because they have some very talented leaders there, but they have to have the confidence of the electorate and they have to have the confidence of the legislature that they have to work with, Pelosi said Thursday. But, Ill leave that up to them. I have enough to do here without getting involved in the affairs of Virginia.
Harris, whose grilling of Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings helped to boost her national profile, first called for an investigation into the accusations against Fairfax. Late Friday, she became the first major Democratic presidential candidate to call for him to step down after the second woman to accuse Fairfax of sexual assault, Meredith Watson, went public.
The allegations by Dr. Vanessa Tyson and Meredith Watson are corroborated, painful stories of sexual assault and rape, Harris tweeted. Its clear Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax should resign his office.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the first lawmaker to learn of Blasey Fords charges, said Friday: Professor Tyson should be shown respect.
I believe Professor Tysons allegations are credible, Feinstein said. They should be taken seriously and investigated appropriately.
Both Feinstein and Harris were among Judiciary Committee Democrats who called on President Trump to withdraw Kavanaughs nomination or order an FBI investigation after Blasey Fords accusation became public.
Fairfaxs future is problematic for national Democrats. At 39, he was considered a possible leader of a state that has trended more Democratic in recent elections. That possibility became far more immediate when Gov. Ralph Northam was engulfed in a scandal over racist photos that were published on his page in a 1980s medical school yearbook.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, a sexual assault survivor who led an effort toughening sexual harassment rules for House members, took a slightly tougher stand against Fairfax than some of her colleagues.
I do not believe that Lt. Gov. Fairfax should be elevated pending an investigation, which should be done by a reputable third party, and all of the witnesses should be interviewed, Speier told The Chronicle on Friday.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Dublin Democrat who is considering a White House run, said Friday that the central lesson of the #MeToo movement is that victims must be taken seriously, and a credible allegation has been made.
Fairfax was duly elected by voters something that wasnt a factor in the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, who was seeking a promotion, said Swalwell, who also said he supports an investigation. But if the claims against him are borne out, he should resign.
A friend of Tysons, Menlo College political science Professor Melissa Michelson, said calling for an investigation is a wishy-washy response that sort of gives them political cover.
If public opinion turns against her, or if it turns against him, it gives them the leeway to follow the crowd, Michelson said. She helped to start a GoFundMe campaign to defray any legal expenses Tyson may have. In three days, it has raised more than $21,000.
The Fairfax case is a charged one for national Democrats. Both he and Tyson are African American, and blacks and women are such important demographics in the Democratic Party, said Lori Cox Han, author of Women, Power, and Politics: The Fight for Gender Equality in the United States.
Democrats tapped into the political power of the #MeToo movement to get more women to vote, said Han, a professor of political science at Chapman University in Orange County.
Democrats want to be seen as out front on these #MeToo issues, she said. But its tough because Fairfax was seen as a rising political star. Theyre trying to do to right thing but not offend anybody.
His support may be evaporating, however. In addition to Harris, Democrats in the Virginia House and Senate issued a joint statement late Friday calling on Fairfax to leave office because he can no longer fulfill his duties to the commonwealth.
James Taylor, a University of San Francisco professor of political science and expert on African American politics, said that if Democrats dont take a principled stand in Virginia, then it undermines their moral authority in 2020 against Donald Trump, who has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior by at least 19 women.
There are other racial politics at play. It must have been especially difficult for Tyson to come forward with allegations against Fairfax because she has to deal with the specter of bringing down a black man when there is a scarcity of black men in power, said Taylor, the author of Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama. Only four African Americans have ever served as state governors.
With all that at play, calling for an investigation seems like its a delaying tactic, Han said. Maybe theyre trying to delay to see what (Gov. Ralph) Northam will do. I wouldnt want to be a strategist for the Democratic Party now.
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
Regarding Answers elusive as meth toll rises (Page 1, Feb. 8): What we really need, as a nation supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of happiness, is some serious, collective self-reflection as to why there are so many unhappy people in this country.
Overdoses of methamphetamine, opioids, heroin and other addictive escape mechanisms are only some of the manifestations of that unhappiness. Others include mass shootings, teen suicides, domestic violence, etc.
We are a nation suffering perpetual PTSD of both military and domestic origin. Much more than mental illness, such feelings of despair and estrangement are all symptoms of an epidemic of emotional and even spiritual emptiness, feelings of not belonging and not having meaning or a purpose in life. What does it say about us, about our culture, to have had a president who, as a palliative for our national trauma, grief and disorientation following 9/11, could only advise us to go shopping? The root cause lies somewhere deep within our cultural norms and values, and we will only find solutions through some serious national soul-searching and self-reflection. Cultures are supposed to be the mediums for growing things, for nurturing life. Ours clearly is falling short.
Michael Abkin, Hillsborough
You can keep the hat on
I keep reading editorials about those Make America Great Again hats, and far too many of the writers have complained about people wearing hats in restaurants at all. I respect the right of the owner of a nice establishment to ask me to remove my hat, but I am tired of people who tell me what I should or should not wear in a restaurant. In more than a couple of these editorials, the writer refers to those wearing hats in restaurants as slobs. Does that include religious headwear? Give me a break! I wonder who made these rules up, and why people act as though, like with the rules of our Founding Fathers, they must be followed for an eternity. I do not wear my hats at fancy restaurants, and often I choose to remove them in lesser establishments, but it is my choice. If I have been outside doing physical work, or exercise, which might just have been the walk to the restaurant on a hot, humid day, I often choose to keep my hat on when I stop at a diner for lunch rather than expose my greasy hair. The real slobs are the judgmental people who feel a need to tell us what we should or shouldnt wear and try to enforce their idea of respectable behavior upon us. It is a free world, sometimes.
Mitchell Goldman, Richmond
Shut off the gas
Im confused about the length of time it took for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to shut off the gas at Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. Are all gas valves for the city to be found way under layers of cement and asphalt? Are there really no shutoff valves in easy to reach but secure places? As a homeowner in suburbia, it is my responsibility to keep my shutoff valve in an accessible area, clear of brush and dirt, etc. Why would we not have the same standard in a big city?
And if they had to shut off the wrong one, does it really matter? Just do it! What would have happened if those flames caught another few buildings? Incredible.
Margaret Flaherty, Berkeley
Wrong priorities
Regarding Trump puts U.S. on new foreign policy path (Feb. 8): Andrew Malcolm praises the Trump administrations recognition of Juan Guaido, Venezuelas opposition leader and self-proclaimed interim president, as part of its new muscular foreign policy in Latin America. However, the presidents policy toward Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador where violence and extreme poverty are causing citizens to flee and try to emigrate to the U.S. is (to use one of his insults) weak. If President Trump truly believes there is a caravan of migrants massing at our southern border, he should be offering their home countries more financial aid and diplomatic solutions to reduce violence, not engaging in nation-building in Venezuela.
Herman Rivera, San Jose
Respond to attacks
According to Branded socialists, Dems happily own it (Feb. 8) by The Chronicles Joe Garofoli, President Trumps response to Democrats who are calling for Medicare-for-all, tuition-free college and raising taxes on the wealthy, was to declare America will never be a socialist country?
Well, I hope that the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee will respond to Trumps attacks on our free press, slander of judges who rule against him and disregard of our nations Constitution by declaring America will never be a fascist country.
Julian Grant, Pacifica
Coequal partners
Concerning Trump should be harassed (Editorial, Feb. 8): Thank you for pointing out that Congress, as part of the legislative branch, does not exist to simply defer to executive branch actions. Rather, it is a coequal partner in our government whose committees have an obligation to conduct investigations of public concern including presidential misconduct.
For President Trump, who regularly insults and attacks his critics, to call such investigations presidential harassment is a prime example of the pot calling the kettle black.
Jennifer Erickson-James, San Francisco
Four armed bank robbers opened fire on police on crowded streets in Pleasanton, disabling a patrol cruiser before carjacking another vehicle and vanishing, officials said Friday.
The dramatic episode unfolded around 10:40 a.m., when police got a call about an armed robbery at the Wells Fargo Bank at 4967 Hopyard Road, said Shannon Whitaker, a Pleasanton police spokeswoman.
A 28-year-old Antioch man who shot a cop in the head is facing a life sentence after a jury found him guilty of attempting to murder two police officers following a three-day crime spree, the Contra Costa County district attorneys office said Friday.
In addition to attempted murder charges, Mario Serrano was found guilty Wednesday of assault with a firearm of a peace officer, vandalism, arson of a property, first-degree residential burglary, petty theft, driving or taking a vehicle without consent, carjacking and shooting at an inhabited dwelling. He also faced enhancements with each charge.
Serranos crime spree began May 2, 2016, when he went to a McDonalds where his ex-girlfriend worked and used a lug wrench to smash the front doors of the establishment.
He became convinced that his girlfriend was cheating on him, and so he lashed out, said Kevin Bell, the deputy district attorney in the case. I dont really know what his ultimate goal was in some of this stuff.
After smashing the windows, Serrano went to the Mt. Diablo Landscape Center on the Pittsburg Antioch Highway, doused his girlfriends car in gasoline and set it on fire, prosecutors said.
He told officers he didnt want another man to drive the car, Bell said.
Between May 2 and May 4, Serrano broke into an unoccupied home in a rural area of unincorporated Clayton, where he nailed the doors and windows on the first floor of the house shut and created what appeared to be a snipers nest inside the house. The lookout was created in the interior balcony of the home so it had a view of the front door and gave him a position of cover to shoot from, Bell said.
Serrano then stole a truck and shotgun from the home, before returning to the McDonalds where his ex-girlfriend worked at about 10:30 a.m. on May 4. Once outside the restaurant, he fired four shots, one of which went into the Childrens Playland.
No children were in the playground and no one was injured in the shooting.
I think he was trying to get her to lose her job, Bell said.
A man who was behind Serrano at the drive-thru of the fast-food restaurant caught the shooting on his dashcam.
Serrano proceeded to drive to his ex-girlfriends cousins home in Pittsburg and used the same shotgun to fire a bullet through the window. He then carjacked a BMW from a group of high school students because the truck he had was running out of gas, Bell said.
Police started to pursue him as he drove back to Antioch in the stolen BMW.
Serrano eventually crashed into an SUV at the intersection of Loveridge Road and East Leland Road in Pittsburg.
He then got out of his car, grabbed his shotgun and set up a shooting position, said Scott Alonso, a spokesman for the district attorneys office.
Officers Thomas Smith and Scott Duggar were pursuing Serrano in separate patrol cars when they were met with gunfire, leading to a shootout.
Smith was hit in the head with a birdshot the smallest size of bullet for shotguns and was severely injured.
Duggar was not injured in the shooting and neither was Serrano.
The shooting ended when Serrano ran out of ammunition. He will be sentenced April 12.
Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
Universal health care in California could cost $17.3 billion a year, under one plan proposed Friday by UC Berkeley health policy researchers.
The paper offers one path for getting about 3 million uninsured Californians health coverage. It is one of several recent estimates from researchers and legislators who have devised various ways to work toward universal coverage in the state. It is not a plan for a single-payer system.
The figure is significantly higher than other analyses, which found that working toward universal coverage by expanding Medi-Cal insurance for the poor would cost less than half of that. That is because the paper builds in the assumption that the uninsured would get on private health insurance plans, whereas other estimates factor in federal funding for getting more people on Medi-Cal, which is jointly paid for by the federal and state governments.
The paper, by Richard Scheffler and Stephen Shortell of Berkeleys School of Public Health, proposes a mix of new taxes on the health care industry, California employers and airline travelers, paired with contributions from the states general fund and premium payments from individuals who are now uninsured.
The ideas, presented Friday to a group of California health policy researchers and advocates, are considered one early stab at financing universal coverage and are not included in legislative proposals.
The largest source of financing, 41 percent, would come from a 3 percent tax on the revenue of hospitals, nursing homes, drug companies, home care providers and insurance companies, which would generate an estimated $7.2 billion a year. The tax would not apply to public hospitals.
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The next largest source of funding, 31 percent or $5.2 billion, would come from currently uninsured residents who would pay a monthly premium for a health plan envisioned as a plan bought through the insurance marketplace Covered California. The premium would be paid by those who earn too much to qualify for Medi-Cal, the insurance program for the poor, and would average out to $123 a month per person. The authors do not specify how many people would pay this premium, or address how to incentivize this population many of whom are undocumented and hesitant to participate in government programs to buy into the system.
The paper also proposes a tax on international and business class travelers who fly into and out of Californias five largest airports: Los Angeles International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, San Diego International Airport, Oakland International Airport and San Jose International Airport. The taxes would be $50 per ticket for domestic business class passengers, $60 per ticket for for economy international passengers and $250 per ticket for international business passengers. These five airports see a collective 188 million passengers each year, according to the authors analysis of California Department of Transportation air passenger traffic data. The tax would generate $2.3 billion a year.
The remaining funding would come from the states general fund in the amount of $1.7 billion, and a tax on employers that would generate $979 million. The employer tax would be modeled after Healthy San Francisco, a program started in 2007 to cover the citys 14,000 uninsured residents. It would require employers that dont provide insurance to their workers to pay into a fund by levying a 4 percent surcharge on customers. It would apply to for-profit employers with more than 20 workers and nonprofit employers with more than 50 workers.
Under the plan, the revenue generated through these proposed new taxes would go toward whats known as integrated care systems to expand their geographic reach and offer more insurance plans on Covered California. The biggest and most well-known integrated system is Kaiser, which provides both the insurance coverage and health care services to its patients, but others have started forming their own integrated care systems in recent years including Sutter Healths HMO plan, Sharp Health Care in San Diego and HealthCare Partners in Los Angeles. Those integrated care plans would be offered on Covered California.
Scheffler and Shortell say they hope their ideas are a starting point for debate and will inspire action by state legislators.
Were hoping for some interest from Sacramento, Scheffler said.
Some policy experts who reviewed the paper raised questions about some of the proposed taxes and the cost estimate. Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center, said $17 billion is much too high for achieving universal coverage because it doesnt take into account the federal dollars that would be available if the state were to expand Medi-Cal to more uninsured people.
Interactive Vaccine Tracker: Latest developments Detailed information about the coronavirus vaccines as it becomes available.
A state-level employer mandate could face legal challenges, as Healthy San Francisco did, because of federal preemption issues under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, Jacobs said. Similarly, the airline tax might run afoul of federal laws regulating interstate commerce and airlines. And the tax on hospitals would need a two-thirds vote in the Legislature and buy-in from health care providers.
I look at the (financing) as throwing some ideas on the table to start a discussion, Jacobs said.
Other proposed measures and analyses put different cost estimates for getting California closer to universal coverage. A report released this month by Covered California found that providing more financial assistance to consumers to buy plans would cost between $2.1 billion and $2.7 billion a year.
One bill, AB-4, proposes expanding Medi-Cal to all undocumented adults a move the Legislative Analysts Office has estimated would cost $3 billion annually. Another bill, AB-174, aims to provide financial assistance to those making between $48,000 and $72,000 to buy insurance. It would cost $40 million to $75 million a year, according to estimates included in a previous bill.
Gov. Gavin Newsoms proposed budget included expanding Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented young adults between ages 19 and 25, and providing state-funded financial assistance to help Californians buy insurance both of which would be steps toward universal coverage in the state. It is unclear how much the initiatives would cost.
Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho
Caltrans began working Friday night on an emergency fix to the haggard Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, where bits of concrete broke loose from the upper deck Thursday and pelted a car below.
They shut down one lane in each direction at about 9 p.m. and were expecting to continue working on Saturday to replace a metal plate that was installed on Thursday to patch a 6-foot cavity below the roadway of the upper deck. A larger plate is being installed.
On Monday, workers will get started on what Caltrans called a permanent fix of the bridge. Crews will cut a portion of the span to repair the expansion joint underneath, the latest part to fail on a bridge thats known for perpetual decay and steel architecture that some compare to a bent coat hanger.
The project will cost an estimated $300,000, officials said Friday.
The permanent fix will probably take weeks and will require crews to pour new concrete over the lanes of the bridges upper deck, Caltrans District Four Director Tony Tavares told reporters at the agencys headquarters in downtown Oakland.
A top engineer at the state transportation agency blamed the bridges age for its crumbling material, which forced a nine-hour shutdown and caused traffic jams throughout the region.
Such erosion is a fact of aging infrastructure, said Ken Brown, chief of structures maintenance and investigations at Caltrans. He assured that the bridge is structurally sound and safe to cross.
Throughout the weekend, crews will monitor the 5.5-mile cantilever span that carries 82,000 motorists over the choppy water of the bay each day 87,000 a day during peak months. Caltrans has engineering contractor O.C. Jones & Sons Inc. on standby to mend the expansion joint, Tavares said.
In the meantime, the agency installed plywood underneath the chipped section to prevent more pieces from falling.
Built in the 1950s, the dilapidated span has suffered breaks and gashes over the years, including some holes wide enough to see the water below. Chunks fell off the roadway several times in the early 2000s, requiring Caltrans to close a lane during commute hours while crews scurried to cover the holes with metal plates.
A similar commotion occurred Thursday morning, when a piece of debris fell onto a white Mercedes, forcing the agency to close the bridge twice so that workers could install a steel plate in the center lane.
Inspectors had not identified the site during a routine check in August, in which they found several other spots that needed repair, said Andrew Fremier, deputy executive director of operations at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
Richmond-San Rafael Bridge Opened: 1956 Capacity: 82,000 to 87,000 cars per day Style: double-decker dual cantilever with a P ratt truss approach See More Collapse
It was not obvious, Fremier said during a commission meeting Friday morning.
He said that joints, which connect sections of the roadway and allow the bridge to move when the temperature changes, endure punishment throughout the day: briny air, rain, mist, and constant pounding from cars and trucks. All those stresses cause corrosion.
These joints, theyre kind of like the gutters on your house, Fremier said. They get a lot of water, and theyre a good place for birds to hang out.
And theyre not the only problem for the battered bridge, which also has concrete falling from its sides, like stucco bricks pried loose from a house.
We want to reiterate that the bridge is safe, Brown said.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
Paul Chinn / The Chronicle
Police officers recovered the body of a woman near San Franciscos Pier 43 early Saturday, authorities said.
The San Francisco Medical Examiner took custody of the body. No identifying details have been provided and the cause of death is under investigation, police said.
In 2014 and 2015, Chinese real estate development company Z&L Properties jumped into the California market with a splash, going on a buying spree that would eventually include 12 housing sites in the Bay Area and Los Angeles that, when built out, would yield 3,400 condos.
The portfolio of valuable land most of the parcels had already been approved for development included San Francisco sites in the Transbay area, Hayes Valley, Mid-Market and South of Market. It contained four sites in San Jose, including the 643-unit Silvery Towers development downtown and two high-rises with 708 condos on the former Greyhound bus storage yard.
There were additional sites in Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Marin County. Z&L Properties, a U.S. spin-off of the Chinese giant R&F Properties, was destined to become Californias premier condominium developer, the company website stated at the time.
That hasnt exactly happened. Instead, years after the sites were purchased, none of the projects has been completed, and several have been derailed by lawsuits, cost overruns and building code violations. One project has been delayed because it is no longer economically feasible. Another was started in September 2017 and then construction was abruptly shut down after the site had been excavated. Another has been under construction for five years three times longer than it should have taken and still is not finished.
At a time when the city is facing a historic housing shortage, the difficulties that Z&L Properties has encountered illustrate the challenges many developers are grappling with. Construction costs, which have doubled since Z&L acquired most of its sites, are too high to make some projects economically viable.
Lenders have become more conservative, requiring developers to invest a lot more of their own money before a loan is approved. San Franciscos permit process is notoriously slow, with projects stalling for months between the Department of Building Inspections and other agencies that must sign off on plans, including Public Works and the Fire Department.
But Z&Ls rocky entry into the world of Bay Area development also shows the rude awakening that some Chinese developers have experienced in San Francisco, where the planning and building requirements are far more restrictive than in their home country boomtowns. The problem is made worse by government restrictions on investment money leaving China.
555 Fulton St., a 139-unit condo building in Hayes Valley, has been under construction for almost five years, three times longer than it would normally take to build four stories of condos above retail.
During that time Z&L has run afoul of city planners, neighbors and elected officials. Dozens of buyers who had signed up for units walked away, as did its anchor retail tenant, grocer New Seasons of Oregon. Dozens of complaints about the project have been filed with the citys Department of Building Inspection, most of them alleging that the developer regularly started construction work as early as 5:15 a.m. well before the citys legal start time of 7 a.m.
Much of the delay was caused by the developer redesigning the buildings exterior, without city permission, after it had been approved. The builder was forced to go back to the approved and more expensive glass exterior, which caused more than a year of delays.
Robert Buckner, chief financial officer of Z&L Properties, said the project is finalizing construction and the developer hopes to get its temporary certificate of occupancy by the end of March, weather permitting. He said Z&L is negotiating with a new grocer and that he expects a lease to be signed this quarter.
But in the demanding world of San Francisco politics, it may not be that easy. The new grocer will have to pass muster with the neighborhood and commit to the same requirements that New Seasons did namely, offering what the city defines as affordable groceries and also to hiring locally, District Five Supervisor Vallie Brown said.
Brown said the developer should not get its temporary certificate of occupancy until a lease has been signed for an affordable grocery store. Mayor London Breed, who represented the neighborhood before she was elected mayor, had worked to bring a full-service grocery store to the neighborhood, recruiting New Seasons to the site and sponsoring legislation that exempted the property from a law that bans retail chains in Hayes Valley.
Brown said that the exception granted to the ban on formula retail in essence, chain stores has expired and that she wants to see a grocery store lease and the project completed before it is renewed.
They have been so hard to work with the exemption (to the chain store ban) has been our bargaining tool, Brown said. Its been a struggle, and we are waiting to see what happens.
Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association President Gail Baugh also said the city should not give the developer a temporary certificate of occupancy if there is no deal with a grocer. After more than five years of tolerating noisy construction and losing valuable street parking, the residents are not likely to give Z&L the benefit of the doubt.
We have been advised a number of times of deadlines, and none of them are ever met, she said. We were told the building would be completed by last September. We were told there would be a lease with a new grocery store. We dont believe or trust this developer to follow through on promises they make to the community.
Not far from 555 Fulton St. is another another Z&L-owned site: 1554 Market St., just west of Van Ness Avenue. There Z&L excavated a foundation in September 2017, only to abruptly halt construction because, the company now says, costs came in $10 million over earlier estimates.
The project unfortunately became economically unfeasible, and no lender would fund it, said Buckner, who added that the group is in talks with a new contractor that has come in with a more reasonable construction budget.
Construction costs in San Francisco have more than doubled in five years the average cost of building a new home in San Francisco is now more than $700,000, and it is even higher for high-rise buildings like the 325 Fremont St. project, which is approved for 118 condominiums in 25 stories. While the building permit for that project was obtained in September 2017, it doesnt work economically now and there is no timetable to start construction, Buckner said. Currently, its a vacant lot.
The significant increases in construction costs have far outpaced the amount that developers can pass on to people who buy the new units, Buckner said. These cost increases have caused projects that once penciled out just a few years ago to be put on hold.
Darlene Chiu Bryant, executive director of ChinaSF, a group that works in partnership with city government to connect Chinese and American investors, said Z&L Properties problems stem from a combination of bad advice, bad timing and cultural differences.
The majority of the Chinese developers have been challenged in that they are taking whatever customs and methods they have in China and bringing them over here, she said. Thats been our biggest challenge: getting them to understand that business is done differently in S.F. and the USA. The ways of doing business in China dont work here. Its been a big learning curve, especially if they decide to be their own general contractor.
Problems are multiplying for other Chinese developers, who have been among the most aggressive purchasers of downtown urban sites on both U.S. coasts over the past half-dozen years. Chinese investment in U.S. companies and real estate soared from less than $1 billion per year before 2008 to $46 billion in 2016, according to a 2018 report from the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and the Rhodium Group, an independent researcher.
That number tumbled to $29 billion in 2017, and even fewer deals were announced in 2018. Meanwhile, with the Chinese government restricting investment in the U.S., companies invested in development deals here have been running into cash flow issues. Oceanwide, a developer constructing the largest projects under construction in both downtown San Francisco and downtown Los Angeles, recently shut down its $1 billion Oceanwide Plaza L.A. project temporarily because of a lack of liquidity.
Construction at the San Francisco development, the $1.6 billion Oceanwide Center at First and Mission streets, is still going on, although the developer has been looking for a short-term loan or a new capital partner, according to real estate sources.
Anchor Pacific Capital Managing Partner Anton Qiu, who works with many Asian investors, said he could not comment specifically on the Oceanwide or the Z&L situation. But he said Chinese government restrictions on money leaving the country over the past 18 months have forced some Chinese developers to sell sites outright or bring on new capital partners.
Projects like these have long cycles and are financed with short-term loans, Qiu said. Its a big problem. You have five-year projects, and the developers assumed the money would come out of China to support it. Now the money has been cut off.
Its the opposite of four years ago.
J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen sought to reassure 50 apprehensive entrepreneurs Friday that she was doing her best to ensure they wouldnt be forced out of the offices theyre renting inside ActivSpace, a multiuse building on 18th Street in the Mission District.
Potentially hundreds of ActivSpace tenants practicing a broad range of trades everything from marriage counselors to hairstylists to tattoo artists could be at risk of eviction because their businesses are out of step with the buildings zoning.
ActivSpace is zoned for production, distribution and repair work, considered light industrial activities and known as PDR. The tenants are concerned that theyre technically operating illegal businesses and would be forced to vacate.
Im very concerned that myself and possibly hundreds of businesses will be put in the street without options, said Kathy Hentges, a certified financial planner and tax preparer who works in ActivSpace. This would be a terrible time to lose my business. Its tax season!
But Ronen, who represents the Mission District, said her office was working alongside the city attorneys office and other agencies to find a swift legislative fix to the problem.
We do not want to see a single business displaced from this building, Ronen said. Were going to do what we need to do to make it happen.
The zoning issues at ActivSpace were brought to light a few weeks ago after the Department of Public Health sent violation notices to 51 massage therapists and tattoo artists in the building. They needed to obtain a health permit within 40 days, the violation notices said.
That requires the approval of the City Planning Department. Planning, however, would not grant them permits because the building wasnt zoned for massage therapy work or tattooing.
ActivSpace told the massage therapists they had to decide by Sunday whether theyd stay in the building, and some massage therapists said theyd already begun looking for new places to work.
Ronen said that if business owners wanted to remain in their offices, they would be able to do so. She added that the Health Department would hold off enforcing the 40-day notice, so long as the massage therapists and tattoo artists worked with the agency in good faith to get the permits they need.
Many of those who assembled at the Asiento tapas bar in the Mission on Friday afternoon were massage therapists. Not every one of them received violation notices, but most had their own stories about trying to navigate the city bureaucracy that surrounds permitting for massage work.
Ronen is considering legislation to protect ActivSpaces existing tenants from eviction, while preserving the buildings PDR zoning.
Steven Vettel, an attorney at the law firm Farella Braun + Martel representing ActivSpace, declined to comment Friday.
I was very, very relieved that they came in with some pretty solid solutions, said Daniel Davies, one of the massage therapists who received a notice just over two weeks ago.
I didnt want to stand there and be angry for an hour and convince people why this is so important. I felt these people do care ... and they can see weve been caught in some kind of horrible scenario and theyre doing their hardest to unravel that.
Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
The National Weather Service issued a rare winter weather advisory for much of the Bay Area on Saturday, warning of near-freezing temperatures and slick, even snowy roads through Sunday afternoon.
The cold front that blanketed much of the Pacific Northwest with snow early in the weekend was expected to hit the the Bay Area overnight Saturday, pushing snow levels outside San Francisco to as low as 1,500 feet.
Forecasters advised Sunday travelers of snow accumulation and potentially hazardous driving conditions on Grizzly Peak Boulevard in the Berkeley hills, Highway 29 in Napa County, Highway 130 in Santa Clara County and Highways 9, 35 and 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Conditions on smaller mountain roads could also be dicey.
By midday Sunday, as much as 4 inches of snow is expected in the North Bay hills, the East Bay hills and the Santa Cruz Mountains. The peaks in Big Sur could see up to 8 inches of snow, forecasters said. Parts of the Santa Cruz Mountains already had seen a dusting Saturday, while hail was reported in some parts of the Bay Area, including Sausalito.
Lower elevations are forecast to receive between 0.25 and 0.75 inches of rain through Sunday. The weather system is expected to be accompanied by strong winds, with gusts up to 40 mph, adding to the chill.
The National Weather Service said temperatures dipping into the 30s overnight Saturday, and possibly the 20s Sunday night, could pose problems for vulnerable populations, plus plants, crops and outdoor animals.
At Lake Tahoe, 6 to 10 inches had already fallen Saturday, and the next front is expected to bring even more, forecasters said.
This storm (Friday) was very strong, but the one (overnight Saturday) will be significantly stronger, said Mark Faucette, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno.
Up to 2 feet of snow is forecast for Lake Tahoe with as much as 3.5 feet expected to fall on the peaks above the lake, Faucette said.
Californians will only get a brief reprieve after the weekend system passes.
Another storm is forecast for the Sierra on Tuesday night or Wednesday, though weather watchers are still uncertain of its potential. Showers are expected again in the Bay Area on Tuesday night and could continue through at least Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.
Its not a big storm like a week ago and not quite as cold but still cold nonetheless, said Steve Anderson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
At Yosemite National Park, roughly 18 to 24 inches of snow in the past week caused several hundred trees to topple and damaged dozens of park facilities and vehicles, officials said Friday. The park remained open, but some roads were closed because of snow.
Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor
It wouldnt be Valentines Day in the Bay Area without a little rabbit stew and orchid sex. Also puppy love.
All of that, and more, are on the agenda as lovebirds get together for the annual rose and chocolate-infused mating rite known as Valentines Day.
This year, the roses are sharing the stage. In Richmond, theyre sharing it with a night of pillaging, and eating rabbit stew with your fingers.
There wasnt to be any real pillaging this weekend at the Valkyrie-themed Very Viking Valentines, said Gregory Zobel, owner of the Armistice brewery in Richmond, but there was to be real rabbit stew, real Viking costumes, and real plastic swords for having fake sword fights. All that cost $85 per person.
Doing war cries and eating with your hands is probably not for everyone on Valentines Day, said Zobel, who added that no one fell in love at last years Viking Valentines Day. But theres always hope and second chances when it comes to love, which is why it was held on Friday and will be again on Saturday. There is likely to be a lot of drinking, leading to judgment as hazy as the brewerys trademark hazy IPA. But more than hazy judgment is required for falling in love, experts say.
Chocolate, an aphrodisiac on Valentines Day as well as the 364 other days of year, is something to study in earnest at the Exploratorium science museum on the Embarcadero.
Valentines Day Here is a partial list of Valentine Day-related events happening around the Bay Area: "Aphrodisiacs of the Tropics" Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. For $35, you get a free drink, some chocolate and a docent lecture on how plants, for millions of years, have made more plants without having to ask each other out first. "After Dark: Chocolate" Exploratorium science museum on the Embarcadero. For $20 you can find out about the DNA of the cocoa plant and then eat some of it, along with the rest of the chocolate samples being offered. "Rope Burn" Men can learn the safe and sane way to tie up other men with ropes. Admittance to the bondage training session, held at Catalyst at 1060 Folsom St. at 7 p.m., is free, but donations are requested. "Bridgewatch Angels" Golden Gate Bridge at 2 p.m. for Valentine's Day training for volunteer patrol to prevent bridge suicides. Valentine's Day, organizers say, is a time when the distraught often feel their losses most acutely. To sign up for the training, visit the Bridgewatch Angels page on Facebook. See More Collapse
For $20, lovers and other scientists can attend a scientific lecture on the genetic engineering of cocoa beans, followed by a lecture on the history of cocoa beans in the Americas, followed by an art workshop in which museum-goers can paint pictures presumably brown ones using molten chocolate.
Were always looking for interesting connections across the genres, said Exploratorium spokeswoman Avi Martin.
BART, which has been called many things besides lovey-dovey, is holding a Valentines contest, asking patrons to explain in a one-page essay what makes BART such a romantic way to get around on Valentines Day. The winners get overnight stays in San Francisco, Berkeley and Walnut Creek. Transportation to those cities by BART is not included in the prize, which means that the folks at BART might know a thing or two about BARTs romantic qualities.
Sex being a big deal on Valentines Day, regardless of species, the Conservatory of Flowers experts will be holding a special session to explain to visitors how orchids do it.
Roaming docents will go into exuberant detail on plant reproduction, with a focus on the sex life of orchids, the conservatory said in an announcement about the event, called Aphrodisiacs of the Tropics. Theyll also talk about vanilla, cinnamon, hibiscus flowers, coconuts and other organisms that, for millions of years, have known how to reproduce without human assistance.
The giant greenhouse on Kennedy Drive, already a steamy place, is bound to get steamier.
Admission is $35, which is four times the normal price of a ticket to the conservatory, but Valentines Day has never been about saving money. Included are one drink and some chocolate.
Orchids arent the only pricey things with petals. At $100 or so per dozen, red roses arent cheap, either and the rules for getting them delivered on Valentines Day are different.
At Elizabeths Flowers in Hayes Valley, you dont get to choose what time of day your sweetie gets the flowers. Most days you do. But on Feb. 14, the florist said, business is so frantic that we cannot accommodate requests for specific delivery times.
A dozen roses cost $125 and two dozen roses cost $200. That means the second dozen costs only $75, but you cannot order the second dozen without the first dozen, even though the flowers may not know the difference.
Like other commodities, red roses are subject to supply and demand. On Valentines Day, the demand can make a wholesale red rose many of them imported from South America double in price. A couple of bucks or more per stem is typical. Florists refer to a red rose or any other flower as a stem, which sounds as romantic as a ride on BART to Walnut Creek.
Also for $200, you can order a singing telegram. Jeff Silverman, proprietor of Rock Star Singing Telegrams of San Francisco, will dispatch a guitar-toting musician throughout the Bay Area to deliver a 5- to 10-minute performance of any popular rock tune, which most often turns out to be Brown-Eyed Girl. For Valentines Day, his busiest of the year, hes already booked 10 singing telegrams.
Western Union stopped sending written telegrams in 2006. A musical performance isnt really a telegram, Silverman acknowledged, although if a customer really insists on a written message, hes willing to scribble something on a piece of paper and deliver it after the performance, no extra charge.
Millennials have no idea what a telegram is, Silverman said. Thats something of an obstacle for our business.
Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@
sfchronicle.com
A federal appeals court ruling that barred San Francisco from requiring advertisers of sugary drinks to include large warnings on their display ads about potential health effects was disappointing to city officials but, in the current judicial climate, not especially surprising to the legal community except for a separate opinion by two of the 11 judges.
The pair, who included the courts chief judge, Sidney Thomas, argued that a warning that sugary beverages can cause diabetes was simply untrue. Health care advocates fear the opinion, if adopted by other courts, would undermine efforts to inform consumers about dangerous products.
The ordinance, passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors in 2015 but never implemented, would require that 20 percent of display advertising space be devoted to a warning, attributed to the city, that drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay.
All 11 judges on a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel agreed Jan. 31 that the warning was probably unconstitutional in light of recent Supreme Court rulings, including one that struck down notices required by California at antiabortion clinics. The lead opinion by seven judges, led by Susan Graber, suggested the city might meet free-speech standards with a smaller notice perhaps 10 percent of the overall space that didnt overwhelm the advertisers message.
But in a separate opinion, Judge Morgen Christen, joined by Thomas, said the citys notice was unacceptable at any size because the warning about diabetes was untrue.
Thats because there are two kinds of diabetes, Christen said: Type 1, which arises, often at an early age, from the bodys inability to produce insulin, and Type 2, usually developed in adulthood. Research shows that sugary foods and drinks can lead to Type 2 diabetes which accounts for 90 to 95 percent of all U.S. diabetes cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but they do not cause Type 1.
That means San Franciscos warning that drinking those beverages contributes to ... diabetes, without distinguishing between varieties of the disease, is devoid of scientific support, Christen said.
Requiring such precision may seem persnickety, she said, but there are significant constitutional implications whenever the government seeks to control our speech. There are also societal consequences to inaccurate government-mandated messages.
At the courts Sept. 25 hearing on the case, Thomas expressed a related objection: Type 1 diabetics who take insulin can sometimes suffer dangerously low levels of blood sugar. In that event, he said, a warning like San Franciscos may deter somebody from getting what could be a lifesaving administration of soda.
I would hope that someone with Type 1 diabetes has been educated by a doctor, replied Deputy City Attorney Jeremy Goldman.
Christens opinion was only a concurrence that lacked the majority vote needed to set a legal precedent. But it goes into the casebooks bearing the names of the two judges, both appointees of Democratic presidents, on the nations largest and one of its most liberal federal appellate courts.
To advocates of government health warnings, the opinion was astonishing.
I was gobsmacked, said Doug Blanke, executive director of the Public Health Law Center, which signed arguments supporting San Franciscos ordinance. Its hard to think what warning label would satisfy this standard.
For example, he said, some government-mandated labels of cigarette packages say smoking causes cancer, though it hasnt been conclusively linked to all forms of cancer. Other labels say smoking causes strokes and heart disease, which clearly have other causes. And the government warning on alcoholic beverages says drinking may cause health problems.
As for diabetes, Blanke said, Type 2 not only accounts for the overwhelming majority of cases, its also the only kind you can do something about by watching what you eat and drink.
Attorney Tom Bennigson of the Public Good Law Center in Berkeley filed arguments on behalf of the American Heart Association and other health organization supporting the warning labels. He said the only way to comply with objections like Christens would be to attach footnotes to every label detailing the types of illnesses a substance does and doesnt cause.
How are you going to fit it on the sign? Bennigson said. It would make it impossible to have warnings that would meet the standard of not being unduly burdensome.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
A new California law requiring cities to unseal police misconduct records applies to past records as well as new ones, a judge decided Friday in denying injunction requests from several police unions fighting to prevent the release of pre-2019 records.
Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Charles Treats decision is the first in a wave of lawsuits across the state by unions that say the states transparency law, SB1421, should not force cities and counties to release police misconduct records created before the law took effect on Jan. 1.
Six law enforcement unions in Contra Costa County in Concord, Richmond, Antioch, Martinez and Walnut Creek, as well as the Contra Costa County Deputy Sheriffs Association sought preliminary injunctions to bar officials in their cities and county from releasing pre-2019 personnel records. Several law enforcement associations in Southern California have filed similar suits in their own counties.
Treat said the attorneys for the unions in Contra Costa County failed to convince him the law should apply only to new documents. He denied their requests for preliminary injunctions.
Treat, however, ordered that the records remain withheld for 10 more days to allow unions time to appeal, should they choose to do so. Treat had recently issued a temporary restraining order to prevent cities from releasing the documents while the matter was pending in court.
SB1421, by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, is intended to unveil certain California police personnel files, which for decades have been guarded by some of the most rigid privacy laws in the nation.
The law applies to records maintained by an agency involving sustained findings of sexual assault or dishonesty by law enforcement officers while on the clock, and for records involving deadly or serious use of force, regardless of whether the force was deemed justified. Some agencies, including Fairfield police, have already released some of these records in response to public records requests.
The California Supreme Court has already declined to weigh in on the matter, after the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Employees Benefit Association filed a similar suit with the high court.
This leaves the cases to be handled by local courts. Treat was the first to officially rule one way or another, but his order doesnt set a precedent for other counties. The issue could make it back to the California Supreme Court if another judges ruling favors the unions.
The hearing drew about 15 protesters to the downtown Martinez courthouse Friday afternoon, with signs and chants demanding that the records be made public.
Inside the courtroom, union lawyers battled not the cities that maintain the records but attorneys representing the American Civil Liberties Union and various media outlets. Attorneys for the cities declined to lodge any arguments before the court.
The ACLU is seeking several of these secret documents, including records on eight fatal Bay Area shootings. Among the requested records are documents pertaining to the shooting of Oscar Grant at an Oakland BART station 10 years ago and last years Sacramento police killing of 22-year-old Stephon Clark.
Among his arguments, union attorney Timothy Talbot said some officers may have dealt with misconduct accusations differently in the past if their records werent kept confidential.
Some officers, he said, may have forgone an opportunity to appeal or challenge administratively some finding to the highest level, knowing that protection existed.
Talbot said the burden was on his opponents to prove that the law was intended to apply to incidents before this year, not the other way around.
Were fighting for those rights that existed prior to 2019, which precluded that limited disclosure, he said.
Kathleen Guneratne, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, said that police unions were well aware of the effects of SB1421 as it was making its way through the Legislature, and unions fought it then, too.
She said there essentially is no retroactivity argument, and that public records laws apply to any documents currently maintained by a government agency.
Guneratne called the unions court battles a last-ditch effort to subvert the will of the people and the statute.
We dont think that the language records maintained by an agency is ambiguous, she said. Records maintained by an agency means records in the possession of that agency.
Treat seemed to agree. In his ruling, the judge wrote that it makes little sense to suppose that the Legislature saw these serious problems and concerns as applying strongly to police personnel records dating to 2019 but that it viewed the same problems and concerns as categorically inapplicable to police personnel records dating to 2018 or earlier.
When speaking to reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing, Talbot said they would probably file an appeal in the short window available, but the decision was ultimately left to his clients.
Megan Cassidy is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganrcassidy
With any luck, Bay Area peaks might get another layer of snow this weekend.
Back-to-back storms overnight Friday and again Saturday will bring chilly air and rain, even flurries, to the region as two fronts move in from the Gulf of Alaska, forecasters say. Snow levels could drop as low as 1,500 feet overnight Saturday, bringing a dusting to the Bay Areas highest hills and as much as 4 feet of powder to the Lake Tahoe area.
And the soggy weather doesnt end there. Forecasters say rain and snow are likely to continue on and off through the end of next week, extending whats already been a relatively wet month and helping push Californias fickle water supplies into safe territory at least for the time being.
The systems sort of keep marching through, said Jan Null, meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services. This is actually very typical of this time of year. The atmosphere gets into a pattern and it locks in for three to seven to 10 days sometimes.
As it stands, San Francisco has seen about 13 inches of rain since Oct. 1, the start of the wet season. Thats about 89 percent of average, with as much as another inch of rain expected by the end of the weekend. The Northern Sierra eight-station precipitation index, meanwhile, which serves as a bellwether of state water supplies, measured 103 percent of average Friday. Snowpack in the Sierra was at 123 percent of average for this time of year.
The robust precipitation totals are good news for California water managers who have seen mostly below-normal figures for five of the past seven years. Memories of brown lawns, short showers and dirty cars are still fresh for residents forced into water conservation in many parts of the state.
Heading into December we were behind, said Mike Anderson, state climatologist at the California Department of Water Resources. As we have gone through the winter, weve caught up. Well see how the rest of the winter holds up.
In Bay Area cities, between 0.25 and 0.75 of an inch of rain was expected to fall by Saturday morning, according to the National Weather Service. The North Bay mountains, East Bay hills and Santa Cruz Mountains were forecast to see 1 to 1.5 inches.
After a brief respite Saturday, a blast of wet weather in the evening is expected to deliver another quarter inch of rain in urban areas and more at higher elevations.
Bay Area highs were forecast to be in the low to mid-50s through the weekend. Lows in San Francisco were expected be in the 40s, while hills and valleys outside the city could see nighttime temperatures in the low to mid-30s.
Temperatures will be a bit below normal, said Spencer Tangen, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
In Lake Tahoe and other parts of the Sierra Nevada, where ski resorts have enjoyed prime snow conditions recently, a winter storm warning was issued by the National Weather Service through 10 p.m. Sunday. Forecasters said Sundays ski commute could be difficult and advised travelers to avoid the passes if possible.
Its a challenge to get up here so people dont come up, but when roads are open and clear, they do, said Kevin Cooper, a longtime Lake Tahoe resident and ski expert. Its kind of feast or famine.
Once skiers and snowboarders arrive in the high country, Cooper said, they cant ask for much better. Blustery temperatures and the steady stream of storms have made for ideal conditions, he said.
While the cycle of storms may have slowed weekend visits, mountain areas are seeing a surge in midweek hotel bookings, resort managers say.
It just correlates to people wanting to get up here when its fresh, said Jon Slaughter, a spokesman for Sugar Bowl Resort.
Last week, even the Bay Area got a taste of snow, and residents flocked to Mount Diablo and other peaks for a rare dusting that painted the hillsides white.
Operators of Californias biggest reservoirs said Friday they still had plenty of room to take in water from the expected storms. Smaller facilities, however, such as the South Bays Anderson Reservoir, were making releases to accommodate the high inflow projected.
Beyond the weekend, the timing of the next round of wet weather remained uncertain. Most models showed a chance of more cold rain and snow late Monday and into Tuesday with another another larger but warmer system forecast for Wednesday or Thursday.
The late-week storm could register on the newly published scale of atmospheric rivers, said Anderson, with the Department of Water Resources. The rating system, published this week and yet to be widely adopted, seeks to characterize the narrow plumes of water vapor that account for much of Californias precipitation. At this point, the expected storm is rated a Category 1, the mildest category, Anderson said, but the front could grow.
It could be anything from a run-of-the-mill storm to a very significant event, he said.
Gwendolyn Wu and Kurtis Alexander are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: gwendolyn.wu@sfchronicle.com kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @gwendolynawu @kurtisalexander
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In the mood for a stirring story? Check out this week's lineup of dramas showing on the big screen in and around Tacoma.
Here are the highest rated drama films to catch in theaters, based on critical scores sourced from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. (Movie descriptions courtesy The Movie Database; showtimes via Fandango.)
The Favourite
In 18th century England, the close relationship between Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill is threatened by the arrival of Sarah's cousin, Abigail Hill, resulting in a bitter rivalry between the two cousins to be the Queen's favourite.
With a critical approval rating of 94 percent and an audience score of 62 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, "The Favourite" has become a favorite since its release on Dec. 14. Per the site's summary of critic reviews, "'The Favourite' sees Yorgos Lanthimos balancing a period setting against rich, timely subtext - and getting roundly stellar performances from his well-chosen stars."
Want to see for yourself? It's playing at The Grand Cinema (606 S. Fawcett Ave.) through Thursday, Feb. 14. Click here for showtimes and tickets.
Stan & Ollie
With their golden era long behind them, comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy embark on a variety hall tour of Britain and Ireland. Despite the pressures of a hectic schedule, and with the support of their wives Lucille and Ida a formidable double act in their own right the pair's love of performing, as well as for each other, endures as they secure their place in the hearts of their adoring public
With a critical approval rating of 92 percent and an audience score of 62 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, "Stan & Ollie" has garnered plenty of praise since its release on Dec. 28, with a consensus that "'Stan & Ollie' pays tribute to a pair of beloved entertainers with an affectionate look behind the scenes and a moving look at the burdens and blessings of a creative bond."
Catch it on the big screen at The Grand Cinema (606 S. Fawcett Ave.) through Thursday, Feb. 14. Click here for showtimes and tickets.
Cold Pursuit
Nels Coxman's quiet life comes crashing down when his beloved son dies under mysterious circumstances. His search for the truth soon becomes a quest for revenge as he seeks coldblooded justice against a drug lord and his inner circle.
Set to be released on Friday, February 8, "Cold Pursuit" already has a critical approval rating of 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with a consensus that "'Cold Pursuit' delivers the action audiences expect from a Liam Neeson thriller along with humor and a sophisticated streak that make this an uncommonly effective remake."
Want to see for yourself? It's playing at Century Point Ruston and XD (5057 Main St.) through Thursday, Feb. 14. Click here for showtimes and tickets.
On the Basis of Sex
Young lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg teams with her husband Marty to bring a groundbreaking case before the U.S. Court of Appeals and overturn a century of gender discrimination.
With a 72 percent critical approval rating and an audience score of 72 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, "On the Basis of Sex" is well worth a watch. Per the site's summary of critic reviews, "'On the Basis of Sex' is nowhere near as groundbreaking as its real-life subject, but her extraordinary life makes a solid case for itself as an inspirational, well-acted biopic."
Want to see for yourself? It's playing at The Grand Cinema (606 S. Fawcett Ave.) through Thursday, Feb. 14. Click here for showtimes and tickets.
Snowmageddon did, in fact, materialize in Seattle, despite nay-sayers Friday evening wondering if the initial snowfall was the whole shebang.
Reports within the city ranged from 4 to 8 inches, while reports from outside city limits ranged to up to more than 10 inches. Sea-Tac Airport recorded 6.4 inches Friday, making for the second-most snow in a single day in the last 20 years, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
More far-flung areas saw much more snow pile up. One report from Puyallup put the total at 12 inches, while areas in the Olympic Foothills near Port Angeles recorded 21.5 inches.
RELATED: Up to 4 inches snow in Seattle, state emergency in place
Traffic cameras showed major thoroughfares and freeways relatively free of snow, but with few drivers taking the leap. Surface streets were another thing; cameras showed snowy white lanes where blacktop roads normally are seen. Officials continued urging drivers in Western Washington to stay off the roads if at all possible.
Gov. Jay Inslee on Friday declared a state of emergency as the storm bore down on the region, cautioning people across Western Washington to prepare to be hunkered down with power outages and other issues possible.
"Everyone in our state needs to focus on preparing for the snow and staying safe," Inslee said in a news release. "Weather forecasters predict this may be a storm unlike one we've seen in many years. I encourage everyone to stay off the roads if possible and plan ahead if you must travel."
RELATED: 'Combat shopping': Mayhem at Seattle stores as shoppers clear shelves pre-snow storm
In Seattle, officials opened up extra shelters for people experiencing homelessness and assured people that they would not be turned away during the storm.
Puget Sound Energy reported more than 50,000 power outages around Western Washington, while less than 1,000 were out in Seattle.
The storm delivered, continuing to drop snow around the region Saturday morning, and forecasters said that wasn't going to be the end of it.
Seattle was in for another 2 to 3 inches from what NWS called a quick storm Sunday afternoon into Sunday night. That was expected to be a relatively mild system, but then a more significant snow storm was on track for Monday night into Tuesday. Forecasters called it a "much stronger system" than Sunday's, and more snow was "becoming increasingly likely," they said in updates Saturday. That storm could drop another 5 to 8 inches over the city by Tuesday.
Seattleites already laid grocery store shelves bare Thursday night in preparation for Friday's storm, with shoppers lining aisles trying to check out with carts full of food and other supplies. It seems that prepping may not have been in vain.
By FreebBeacon , Feb . 08, 2019
The Boston Globe editorial board on Friday called on Sen. Elizabeth Warren to "put all the facts about her past in front of voters," in the wake of a report that the Massachusetts Democrat identified herself as "American Indian" on her registration card for the State Bar of Texas in 1986.
"Warren grew up believing she was part Cherokee. But answering the question the way she did was a mistake, even by the standards of 1986," the editoril board wrote. "Warren's never been a member of any tribe. She's white. Playing loose with the facts about identity is bad within the current political climate of the Democratic Party, where issues of race have come to the fore."
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FLORENCE, S.C. Two Florence One high schools will have at least one new assistant principal next year. The Florence One Schools Board of Trustees approved administratively recommended new hires during its June 17 board meeting. We are happy to have all of these administrators coming on board, said Florence 1 Schools Superintendent Richard OMalley. Administrators play a vital role in our school community and we look forward to the fresh ideas they will bring to their schools and the district.
Athletes know a vigorous workout can release a flood of endorphins: "feel-good" hormones that boost mood. Now there's evidence that exercise produces another hormone that may improve memory and protect against Alzheimer's disease, according to a study co-led by Ottavio Arancio, MD, PhD, a researcher at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain.
The study was published in Nature Medicine.
Physical activity is known to improve memory, and studies suggest it may also reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease. But researchers don't understand why.
A few years ago, exercise researchers discovered a hormone called irisin that is released into the circulation during physical activity. Initial studies suggested that irisin mainly played a role in energy metabolism. But newer research found that the hormone may also promote neuronal growth in the brain's hippocampus, a region critical for learning and memory.
"This raised the possibility that irisin may help explain why physical activity improves memory and seems to play a protective role in brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease" says Arancio, who is a professor of pathology and cell biology and of medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Irisin is reduced in brains of people with Alzheimer's
In the new study, Arancio and his colleagues at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Queens University in Canada first looked for a link between irisin and Alzheimer's in people. Using tissue samples from brain banks, they found that irisin is present in the human hippocampus and that hippocampal levels of the hormone are reduced in individuals with Alzheimer's.
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To explore what irisin does in the brain, the team turned to mice. These experiments show that irisin, in mice, protects the brain's synapses and the animals' memory: When irisin was disabled in the hippocampus of healthy mice, synapses and memory weakened. Similarly, boosting brain levels of irisin improved both measures of brain health.
Swimming boosts irisin, protects memory in mice
The researchers then looked at the effect of exercise on irisin and the brain. In the study's most compelling experiments, the researchers found that mice who swam nearly every day for five weeks did not develop memory impairment despite getting infusions of beta amyloid -- the neuron-clogging, memory-robbing protein implicated in Alzheimer's.
Blocking irisin with a drug completely eliminated the benefits of swimming, the researchers also found. Mice who swam and were treated with irisin-blocking substances performed no better on memory tests than sedentary animals after infusions with beta amyloid.
Together the findings suggest that irisin could be exploited to find a novel therapy for preventing or treating dementia in humans, Arancio says. His team is now searching for pharmaceutical compounds that can increase brain levels of the hormone or can mimic its action.
"In the meantime, I would certainly encourage everyone to exercise, to promote brain function and overall health," he said. "But that's not possible for many people, especially those with age-related conditions like heart disease, arthritis, or dementia. For those individuals, there's a particular need for drugs that can mimic the effects of irisin and protect synapses and prevent cognitive decline."
If you've ever walked past a bee's nest on a hot summer day, you've probably been too focused avoiding getting stung, rather than stopping to wonder how all those bees stay cool. Don't worry, Harvard scientists have braved the stingers to ask and answer that question for you.
Honey bees live in large, congested nest cavities, often in tree hollows with narrow openings. When it gets hot inside the nest, a group of bees crawl to the entrance and use their wings as fans to draw hot air out and allow cooler air to move in. The question is, how do bees self-organize into these living ventilating units?
Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) have developed a framework that explains how bees use environmental signals to collectively cluster and continuously ventilate the hive.
"Over millennia, social insects such as bees have evolved to harness and exploit flows and forces and collectively solve physiological problems such as mechanical stabilization, thermoregulation and ventilation on scales much larger than the individual," said L Mahadevan, de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Physics, and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and senior author of the study. "A combination of measurements and computational models quantify and explain how fanning bees create an emergent large-scale flow pattern to ventilate their nests."
"We have demonstrated that bees don't need a sophisticated recruitment or communications scheme to keep their nests cool," said Jacob Peters, a postdoctoral fellow in SEAS and OEB, and first author of the paper. "Instead the fanning response of individual bees to temperature variations, and the physics of fluid flow leads to their collective spatial organization, which happens to lead to an efficient cooling solution."
The paper is published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
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Experiments began in the dog days of the summer of 2017. Over the course of several weeks, Peters, Mahadevan and former postdoctoral fellow at SEAS Orit Peleg monitored a group of artificial beehives in Harvard University's Concord Field Station.
The research team measured temperature, air flow into and out of the nest, and the position and density of bees fanning at the nest entrance. They observed that rather than spreading out across the entirety of the nest entrance, the bees clustered at the hottest areas and kept those areas, which had the highest air outflow, separate from the cooler areas with the highest air inflow. Importantly, they found that different bees had different temperature thresholds above which they would begin fanning, so that collectively they were better at responding to temperature variations.
In modeling the system, the researchers found that all these behaviors linked to the environmental physics of the nest. Fanning outward allows the bees to sense the upstream nest temperature; different thresholds of temperature allows for more continuous ventilation and more stable hive temperatures; and, because of the physics of friction and flow, clustering to separate inflow from outflow allows more cool air to enter the nest because of the physics of friction and flow.
"Our study demonstrates how harnessing the dynamics of the physical environment allows for large-scale organization of a physiological process," said Peleg, who co-authored the paper and is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.
"Although this is a physics-focused story, biological variation with roots in genetics and evolution likely plays a big role in order for this system to work," said Peters. "Our theory suggests that not only does individual variability in temperature threshold lead to a more stable hive temperature but also this diversity is critical to the stability of the patterning of fanning behavior which is required for efficient ventilation."
"In everything from large HVAC systems to the fans that cool our computers, bioinspired, self-organizing systems may be able to adapt and respond to specific demands better than current systems," said Peters.
"More broadly, our study highlights, yet again, the need to consider both biological organisms and their physical environments to understand the richness of collective eco-physiology, a hallmark of life itself," said Mahadevan.
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation.
The so-called Abelian sandpile model has been studied by scientists for more than 30 years to better understand a physical phenomenon called self-organized criticality, which appears in a plethora of real-life situations such as the coordinated firing of brain cells, the spread of forest fires, the distribution of earth quake magnitudes and even in the coordinated behavior of ant colonies. Even though the sandpile model serves as the archetypical model to study self-organized criticality, questions about its characteristics are still open and remain an active field of research.
Moritz Lang and Mikhail Shkonikov from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) have now discovered a new property of this mathematical model: by adding sand grains in a specific manner to the sandpile, they induce dynamics reminiscent of the emergence, movement, collision and disappearance of sand dunes in the Gobi or the Namib desert. Different to real-world sand dunes, however, the dunes in their work -- which is published in the current issue of PNAS -- are composed of self-similar fractal patterns, somewhat similar to the famous Mandelbrot set.
The rules of the "sandpile experiment" are fairly simple: The model essentially consist of a grid of quadratic fields, similar to a checkerboard, onto which sand grains are dropped randomly. Fields that end up with less than four grains of sand remain stable, but when more grains accumulate on a field, the field becomes unstable and "topples." In such a "toppling," four grains of sand are passed on to the four neighboring fields: one to the top, one to the bottom, one to the left, and one to the right. This might cause the neighboring fields to also become unstable and topple, which then in turn may cause the next neighbors to topple and so on -- an "avalanche" emerges. Similar to real-world avalanches in the Alps, these "sandpile avalanches" have no characteristic size, and it is extremely challenging to predict if the next sand grain will cause a huge avalanche, or nothing at all.
While, due to the simplicity of these rules, the sandpile model is regularly used as an easy example in elementary programming courses, it nevertheless displays various mathematical and physical phenomena still unexplained today -- despite more than 30 years of extensive research. Among the most fascinating of these phenomena is the appearance of fractal sandpile configurations. These fractal sandpiles are characterized by repetitive and self-similar patterns where the same shapes appear over and over again, but in smaller and smaller versions. The occurrence of these fractal patterns has yet evade any mathematical explanation. While the researchers at IST Austria could also not solve this mathematical riddle, they rendered this phenomenon even more mysterious by showing that these fractal patterns can seemingly continuously transform into one another: They were able to produce movies in which the fractal patterns display dynamics which are, depending on the background of the observer, either reminiscent of the movement of real-world sand dunes, or of "psychedelic movies" characteristic for the 70'ies.
Not solving a mathematical question but only making it appear to be even more mysterious might at first sight not seem to be the ideal outcome. However, the two scientists -- Moritz Lang who is a postdoc in the research group of Professor Calin Guet, and Mikhail Shkonikov, a postdoc in the group of Professor Tamas Hausel -- believe that their "psychedelic movies" might be the key to a better understanding of the sandpile model, and maybe also of many other physical, biological or even economical problems. "You could say that we have found universal coordinates for the sandpile," say Mikhail Shkonikov, "essentially, we can give every sand dune in the desert a very specific identifier." Moritz Lang, who is a theoretical biologist, adds: "the key to understand any physical or biological phenomenon is to understand its consequences. The more consequences we know, the harder it becomes to develop a scientific hypothesis which is in agreement with all those consequences. In that sense, knowing all possible sand dunes and how they move represents a lot of constraints, and we hope that, in the end, this will remove sufficient hay from the stack such that we can find the needle."
The two researchers see many applications of their theoretical work to real-world problems like the prediction of earthquake magnitudes, the functioning of the human brain, physics, or even economics: "In all these fields, we find haystacks which look similar, very similar. Maybe it turns out that all haystacks are the same, and that there is only one needle to find."
Moritz Lang finished his PhD at ETH Zurich in spring 2015 with a thesis entitled "Modular identification and analysis of biomolecular networks." He joined IST Austria in August 2015. Mikhail Shkonikov obtained his PhD from the University of Geneva and joined IST Austria in 2017.
Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, PoolPresident Donald Trump gives his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, as Vice President Mike Pence, left, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi listen.
FILE - This Aug. 29, 2018 photo shows an arrangement of prescription Oxycodone pills in New York. In a report released on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2019, health officials are looking into a possible link between prescription opioids and a birth defect called gastroschisis. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Associated PressThis undated photo provided by the FBI shows a gold bar that was recovered in Miami from a heist in North Carolina on March 1, 2015. Federal prosecutors have formally charged a fugitive in the 2015 robbery of a tractor-trailer carrying almost $5 million in gold bars.
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Chandigarh, February 9: We are back from the virtual hell and want express our profound gratitude to Aam Aadmi Party (AAM) MP Bhagwant Mann, for whose intervention, we would have never returned home. Mann sir has acted as a true Messiah for us, this is how the youth trapped in Armenia expressed their ordeal with media persons here upon landing at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi.
These hapless youth were received at the airport by, besides their shock-shelled families, MP Bhagwant Mann, who had specially reached the airport to ensure that the youth faced no immigration hassles. The aggrieved youth from Punjab, who were trapped in Armenia for months, narrated their tales of woe while in Armenia, to the media persons in the presence of Mann.
The youth thanked Mann for his making personal efforts by broaching the issue with the ministry of external affairs, urging it to take prompt action to facilitate the release of the youth ensuring their safety and security. While speaking to scribes at the airport, Mann demanded that the Captain Amarinder Singh government should act fast against the travel agents and arrest them, who, he said, were indulging in an unlawful activity in connivance with those at the helm.
We are back from the virtual hell
Mann expressed satisfaction over the arrest of two of the accused running a well-knit racket and further said that the government should expedite the process of nabbing the other four, who were reported to be on the run. Mann said that hundreds of travel agents were running the nefarious trade illegally under the nose of the sleepy dispensation. He expressed his dissatisfaction over the way the government in the saddle,
like the erstwhile SAD-BJP government, was dragging its feet on mounting a crackdown on the travel agents engaged in duping the youth from on promises of bagging them high profile jobs on the foreign shores. Mann informed the media that the trapped youth had no money suffice enough to buy bus tickets to reach their families back home.
Mann assured them that he and his party would move heavens and earth do their best to pressure the government to launch a manhunt for the runway accused and to restore the money with interest usurped by the travel agents. Mann said that, on the basis of the startling revelations made by the youth to scribes, the government should act fast on tracking those into the illegal trade of trapping gullible youth on the false promises arranging of high profile jobs abroad.
Trapped youth had no money suffice enough
Mann further said that the cases against the erring travel agents across the state running their lucrative business be slapped sooner than later to ensure that no youth was trapped in the vicious cycle of landing attractive jobs abroad. He urged that the union government should come up with a lasting solution to the menace and to stamp out the practice thus saving job seekers being trapped spending a fortune.
Bhopal, Feb 9: Congress chief Rahul Gandhi Friday mocked the Modi government for announcing support of Rs 6,000 per year to small and marginal farmers when it "wrote off" Rs 3.5 lakh crore loans of 15 big industrialists. Gandhi also reiterated that the PMO was directly involved in conducting negotiations with the French side on the Rafale deal. The Congress would ensure minimum income guarantee for the poor if elected to power after the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, he said.
Modi govt wrote off 3.5 lakh cr debt of industrialists: Rahul
Addressing a Kisan Aabhar Sammelan (thanksgiving rally) here, the Congress president said that the BJP hailed the announcement of the cash support for farmers in the Lok Sabha when the interim Union Budget 2019-20 was presented. "They were hailing the decision, but announced only Rs 17 assistance per day to farmers. On one hand, the government wrote off Rs 3.5 lakh crore loans of 15 big industrialists, but gave Rs 17 per day to farmers. "If you divide that amount further, it comes down Rs 3.5 per person," he told the gathering. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath was also present on the occasion.
Maharajganj (UP), Feb 9: BJP president Amit Shah Friday called illegal migrants a vote bank of the SP and the BSP and also targeted the opposition over the issues of triple talaq and the Ayodhya dispute. He said from Kashmir to Kanyakumari , every intruder will be sent home if the BJP returns to power. Shah said the party remained committed to the construction of the Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, and challenged the opposition parties to spell out their its own stands on the issue.
He was addressing booth-level party workers, in a series of such interactions in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. "Should the intruders not be thrown out of the country? Shah asked them, in an apparent reference to migrants from Bangladesh. He said the recent exercise on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam had identified 40 lakh such people, and the process of throwing them out has started.
"If UP elects the Narendra Modi government again in 2019, every single intruder will be ousted from Kashmir to Kanyakumari," he said. "These intruders may be a vote bank for "bua and bhatija , Shah said, referring to alliance partners Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav. For us, it is national security that is most important."
Akhilesh Yadav
The Bharatiya Janata Party chief said all BJP workers want to know the party's stand on the Ram temple. "I want to make it clear that the BJP is committed to building a grand Ram temple at the same place at the earliest," he said. He charged that the Congress wanted the Ayodhya land case taken up only after the elections. He said the faith of crores of people was attached to the case, and asked the Congress, Whom do you want to appease?"
"I have said here that the BJP is committed to the Ram temple's construction, but I want to ask bua-bhatija and Rahul baba to clear their parties' stand on it, he said, throwing a challenge at UP's opposition alliance and the Congress. If they do not want it, they should clearly tell the people. Whatever their stand is, the BJP will get a grand temple built there," he said. Shah recalled that the Centre has moved the Supreme Court seeking permission to return the uncontested land adjacent to the disputed site to its original owners.
He referred to Congress women wing chief Sushmita Dev remark Thursday that the party will scrap the triple talaq law if it comes to power. "Should Muslim women and girls not get their rights? he said. Every woman in the country has the right to her dignity and Modi will give this right to Muslim women as well," Shah said
Faizabad (UP), Feb 8: Union minister Nitin Gadkari said Friday that waterways would be developed in the Saryu river that would facilitate smooth travel to Bangladesh via Varanasi. The Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Shipping and Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation laid the foundations of several projects worth Rs 7,195 crore, including the construction of 632 kilometres of national highway in eastern Uttar Pradesh, here.
Waterways will be developed in Saryu river
"I am bringing an airboat from Australia that can land in water. Next time when I will come I will come in airboat. This airboat will operate from Varanasi to Allahabad. We also have plans to operate double-decker buses that can fly," he said. Addressing Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, who was present on the dais, Gadkari said, "Maurya-ji you also start such air buses in Uttar Pradesh.
Keshav Prasad Maurya
It will solve your problem of traffic jam and this double-decker air busses are much cheaper than Metro." The minister also said river ports are also being developed that will help in smooth movement of goods to Myanmar and Bangladesh. He claimed the department of River Development and Ganga Conservation has cleaned 30 per cent of the Ganga river and announced that by next March, the river will be 100 per cent clean and one can drink water from the river directly.
A man accused of shooting a Danville man to death at a Dec. 23 party was arrested in Texas, police say.
U.S. Marshals found Antwain Maurice Jones, 34, of Culpeper, in Longview, Texas, on Thursday and are holding him in connection to the December shooting death of David Bernard Steward, 31.
The early-morning party on the 400 block of Downing Drive gave way to gunshots, Lt. Richard Chivvis said. On the day of the shooting, a warrant for Jones was taken out on a charge of possession of a firearm as a convicted felon in relation to the shooting.
Jones is being held in Gregg County, in eastern Texas, without bond in preparation for extradition to Virginia.
Officers arrested him without incident at a house located in Longview.
Police did not disclose what he was doing there or how he got there. How Jones made his way to Texas, Chivvis said, may be part of the investigation.
According to a news release from the Danville Police Department, more charges are expected to be filed against Jones.
Commonwealths Attorney Michael Newman said that, because the investigation is ongoing, he could not comment on what types of charges may be filed against Jones.
It would be improper to comment on what any possible charges could be prior to any presentation to a grand jury or magistrate, Newman wrote in an email. At this time he will be extradited back to Virginia on his charge of possession of firearm by felon.
A former Virginia Tech student on trial for raping a classmate listened as a jury heard the prosecutions evidence then pleaded guilty last week in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
Yeabsira F. Lemma, 20, pleaded guilty to rape and animate object sexual penetration soon after the prosecution rested at his Monday jury trial. Judge Robert Turk ordered a pre-sentencing report and scheduled a May 7 hearing to decide Lemmas punishment.
The mid-trial guilty pleas pre-empted a jury verdict, and also assuming there would have been a guilty verdict prevented a jurys sentencing recommendation.
Lemma was accused of attacking another Tech student after a Jan. 21, 2018, party. According to prosecutors, Lemma told the victim he would take her from the party to his apartment where a mutual friend was waiting for her.
The woman had consumed several mixed drinks and was intoxicated.
She had episodes of vomiting throughout the night, prosecutors said. She remembered being on Lemmas bed as he pulled her pants off and had sex with her.
The Roanoke Times is not identifying the woman in this case.
During his teaching career of approximately 10 years, Wythe, a gentleman and scholar, qualified up to 300 future state and national leaders for honorable service in the government and judiciary. Not content simply to teach his law students a trade, a profession, he insisted that they also receive a first-rate liberal arts education to become well-rounded thinkers.
Beyond that, he inspired them to become ethical public servants. By his own example, his students knew that it would be better to cut off a hand than to dip it into the public till for personal gain.
Wythe set a dramatic stage for training his future leaders Virginias stately old Colonial Capitol building in Williamsburg. There, he had served as speaker of the House of Delegates and clerk of the House of Burgesses. In this august setting, he taught future lawyers to practice their craft in moot courts, and future statesmen to argue policies in mock legislatures all to admiring audiences. It was said that Wythes statesmen-in-training were often far more informed and capable than their elders who served in the actual legislature in Richmond.
Measles, a disease once all but eliminated in the U.S., has returned at epidemic levels. Since Jan. 1, at least 79 new cases have been reported in 10 states. We have commented on this before and we will keep commenting because these outbreaks are completely avoidable. While measles is one of the most contagious viruses known to man, the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, administered correctly, is 97 percent effective. To prevent measles from spreading, a minimum of 93 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated. Thats not happening in communities with large clusters of anti-vaxxers people who choose not to vaccinate out of fear or for philosophical or religious reasons. In Clark County, Wash., only about 78 percent of children between kindergarten and high school are vaccinated. Since Jan. 1, 49 children there have been diagnosed. Outbreaks have been reported in New York, Houston, Portland, Phoenix, and several other cities. Measles can cause pneumonia, encephalitis, deafness, and other problems and death. The one bright spot in the news this week is the huge spike in orders for the vaccine. Even in ardently anti-vax Clark County, Januarys requisitions jumped 500 percent over last years. If you havent gotten yourself or your children vaccinated, please do it now. Herd immunity is the best way to keep everyone healthy .
Its difficult to comment on the latest news in Virginia when a new shocker seems to arrive every hour. Its hard to recall that just last Friday afternoon that would be Feb. 1 the commonwealth was relatively calm, although Gov. Ralph Northams startling comments on late-term abortion had rightfully disturbed many of his constituents. But oh the storm that lurked just below the horizon. That fateful Friday afternoon, the now infamous Northam blackface-KKK photo was made public. Later that night, the governor apologized. Many, including this newspapers Editorial Page, called for his resignation.
In a strange press conference on Saturday, Northam said he was not in the photo he had apologized for the night before, but admitted he had worn blackface in 1984 as part of a Michael Jackson dance contest. Confusion mounted, as did calls for his resignation. The governor declined to depart, and a week later, reports indicate he is prepared to fight to retain his office and restore his reputation. His poll numbers have plunged but he appears to be slowly gaining support, though not among the Democratic leadership.
Looking for something else to feel guilty about? Well, if you didnt feel rotten enough already about what were doing to the environment now, add this to the pile of things for which no amount of self-flagellation will suffice. Scientists at University College, London, have decided that the arrival of Europeans in the Americas after 1492 not only killed millions of Native Americans, which was horrible enough. But this campaign of genocide, which reduced the population of the Americas from 60 million people to as few as 5 million in a single century, also caused climate change. The Great Dying, as it was called, brought on the Little Ice Age.
Theres some disagreement about how long the Little Ice Age lasted, though it spanned the time of the extreme frost at Jamestown well into the 1800s. During the first year of the 19th century you could ice skate from what is now Lower Manhattan all the way to Staten Island. There is also considerable dispute over what caused the Little Ice Age, though changes in population have for some years been thought of as a contributing factor.
On Friday, Feb. 1, Northam said he was in the Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook photo, which showed one man wearing blackface and another man wearing Ku Klux Klan garb. But the next day, he said he was sure he was not in the photo. He said he had dressed in blackface at another point in 1984 to play Michael Jackson in a dance contest, and in 2017 an aide helped him understand that it was hurtful to African-Americans.
Northams scandal was followed in a surreal week by two sexual assault allegations against Fairfax, which the lieutenant governor denies, and an admission from Attorney General Mark Herring who had called on Northam to resign over his blackface scandal that he wore blackface at a college party to portray a rapper.
While virtually every major elected Democrat in Virginia, including Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, called for Northam to resign, they did not call for Herring to resign. Democrats calls for Fairfax to resign multiplied quickly Friday after a second woman came forward to accuse him of sexual assault.
Fairfax said he knows his encounters with both women were consensual.
I am asking that no one rush to judgment and I am asking for there to be space in this moment for due process, he said.
Late Saturday, Watsons lawyer responded to Fairfaxs statement, saying Watson is willing to testify at an impeachment hearing and produce more corroborating evidence.
We will provide at least two witnesses whom Ms. Watson told of the assault the day after Fairfax raped her, said a statement from Nancy Erika Smith. We will also produce documentary evidence of Ms. Watson revealing to others the fact that Fairfax raped her.
The statement also said Watson may seek a criminal case against Fairfax in North Carolina.
Tyson's attorneys also confirmed she'd be willing to testify at an impeachment hearing and cooperate with any law enforcement investigation.
COLUMBUS -- Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof on Thursday joined Linda McMahon -- head of the U.S. Small Business Administration and a member of President Trumps cabinet -- at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) to meet with small business owners from northeast Ohio.
Obhof (R-Medina) represents the 22nd Senate District, which encompasses all of Richland, Ashland and Medina counties, as as well as portions of Holmes county.
They were also joined by Greater Cleveland Partnership President and CEO Joe Roman, Tri-C President Dr. Alex Johnson and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
McMahon led a conversation with local business owners, economic development leaders and college students about empowering the small businesses that innovate and create jobs, as well as the workers that contribute to the countrys thriving economy.
They also toured Tri-C's Manufacturing Technology Center which prepares students for in-demand careers in manufacturing jobs.
I appreciate the leadership that Administrator McMahon and the Trump Administration are providing on issues vitally important to our job creators, such as reducing red tape, securing better trade deals and reducing taxes, Obhof said.
Small businesses are the backbone of our states economy, and we must continue our efforts to compete on a global stage and help our businesses and hard-working men and women realize their full potential," Obhof said.
Col. Rick J. Rathbun is sworn in as chief of the Warwick Police Department on Monday. He was given his oath of office by Warwick Mayor Joseph J. Solomon.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says Kyiv must join the European Union and NATO to protect itself from Russia as he officially launched his reelection campaign.
Poroshenko, who is seeking a second five-year term in the March 31 vote, accused Moscow of planning to interfere in the election.
Poroshenko also charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to destroy Ukrainian independence and described the nation's presidential election as a "general battle for Ukraine."
"Only full-fledged membership in the European Union and NATO can decisively and irrevocably guarantee our independence, national security, freedom, and well-being," Poroshenko told supporters in the capital on February 9.
The 53-year-old Poroshenko, one of Ukraines richest men, came to power in the aftermath of the pro-European Maidan protests that pushed Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych out in February 2014.
He has vocally advocated closer integration with the West and criticized Russia following Moscow's seizure of Ukraines Crimea region and amid a continuing war against Russia-backed separatists in the eastern region known as the Donbas.
Recent polls indicate former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy will be Poroshenko's closest rivals in the March 31 election.
Ukrainian election officials said a record 44 candidates have registered to run in the election.
Based on reporting by AP and dpa
Pakistan authorities have arrested a journalist known for his criticism of the government.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said it arrested journalist Rizwan Razi at his residence in the city of Lahore on February 9.
The FIA, Pakistan's law-enforcement agency, said Razi was arrested on a charge of violating the country's cybercrime law.
Razi, who worked for private Din TV, was being investigated for "defamatory and obnoxious" comments about the judiciary, government, and intelligence services, according to FIA.
Razi's son, Osama, told Reuters and AP that unknown men attacked and then dragged his father into a car.
Pakistani journalists say they are facing unprecedented pressure from the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan and the country's all-powerful army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, which have an oversized role in domestic and foreign affairs.
Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
Pakistan has arrested a journalist and academic known for their criticism of the government, as media workers and activists face unprecedented pressure from authorities.
Dozens of rights defenders and journalists critical of authorities have been detained, arrested, or fled the country out of fear for their safety in recent years.
On February 9, Ammar Ali Jan, a college professor in Lahore, was arrested after taking part in a protest organized by the Pashtun Protection Movement (PTM). He was later released on bail.
A message on Jan's Facebook page on February 9 said he was arrested at 4 a.m. "I am a law-abiding citizen and will not be deterred in the fight for justice," it said.
Police said Jan was charged with taking part in a rally, blocking a road, and making "antistate" speeches.
The PTM organized a series of protests in various cities this week after the death of PTM regional leader Muhammad Ibrahim Arman Luni in the southwestern province of Balochistan.
Authorities ordered an inquiry into Luni's death, which the PTM blamed on police.
Pakistani authorities have arrested dozens of activists taking part in PTM rallies.
Amnesty International condemned Jan's arrest in a statement on February 9, saying Pakistan must stop using heavy-handed methods to intimidate peaceful protesters.
The PTM, whose support comes mainly from the Pashtun ethnic group in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, has been holding rallies across Pakistan since early 2018 to protest against what it says are human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings by security forces in the tribal regions.
Pakistani activists say they are facing widespread pressure from the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan and the country's all-powerful army, which has an oversized role in domestic and foreign affairs.
Separately on February 9, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said it had arrested journalist Rizwan Razi at his residence in the city of Lahore.
The FIA, Pakistan's law-enforcement agency, said Razi was arrested on a charge of violating the country's cybercrime law.
Razi, who worked for private Din TV, was being investigated for "defamatory and obnoxious" comments about the judiciary, government, and intelligence services, according to FIA.
Razi's son, Osama, told Reuters and AP that unknown men attacked and then dragged his father into a car.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
Greeces prime minister hailed North Macedonia as a friendly partner and called on it to join efforts to establish safety, stability, and cooperation in the Balkan region after his parliament approved a measure for it to join the NATO alliance.
"I would like to again welcome North Macedonia, a country that is friendly toward Greece," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told Greek lawmakers on February 8 shortly before they voted on North Macedonia's bid to join NATO.
North Macedonia is "a country that must be a supporter and not an opponent of our efforts to establish safety, stability, and cooperation in the wider region," he added.
The 153-140 vote in favor of the former Yugoslav republic's NATO membership came after the country agreed last year to change its name to North Macedonia and following ratification of the deal by the countries parliaments.
Greece's objections to Skopjes use of the name Macedonia since the country's independence in 1991 complicated bids by the small Western Balkan nation to join the European Union and NATO.
Athens asserted that the use of the name Macedonia suggested Skopje had territorial claims to Greece's northern region of Macedonia.
With Greece's ratification of the NATO accord, the former Yugoslav republic will now write to the United Nations, its member states, and international organizations, formally announcing the name change.
A government spokesman told the AP this would happen "in coming days."
After all NATO members approve the protocol -- a process expected to take a year -- North Macedonia will become an official member of the alliance.
The deal was strongly supported by Western nations, with many seeing it as a measure to reduce Russian influence in the country and the region. Moscow has expressed strong opposition to NATO expansion during the alliances move eastward.
"Clearly it is in Greece's interest to promote a European course for all its neighbors, not just for North Macedonia and not [back] the influence of third forces in the neighborhood, with different aspirations and pursuits," Tsipras said.
Negotiations between Greece and Macedonia were protracted and difficult.
Nationalist groups in both countries opposed the deal, with many saying it gave up too much to the other side.
"[We] will vote against the accession protocol because it is, simply, the final act or the final act of a damaging agreement," conservative opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament prior to the vote.
With reporting by AP, dpa, and Reuters
The governments of Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland have announced they will pledge some $14 million over the next three years to a UN project to promote social cohesion and strengthen regional governance in eastern Ukraine.
More than 10,300 people have died since fighting erupted in April 2014 in eastern Ukraine between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces. Thousands have been wounded and more than 1.5 million people have been internally displaced.
In a press release on February 8 to announce the new initiative, the three states said the breakdown in trust in the conflict-hit region can only be overcome by job creation, poverty alleviation, anti-corruption measures, law enforcement and judicial reform, and the promotion of human rights.
"The trust of citizens in conflict-affected areas in governmental institutions will improve and they will feel safer if administrative, law enforcement, and security capacity are strengthened, and it becomes easier for them to access justice and environmental protection. This project will help to support these changes, said Victor Munteanu, the manager of the UNs Recovery and Peacebuilding Program (RPP).
According to the press release, Denmark has pledged to contribute more than $9 million; Sweden $3 million; Switzerland $2 million.
RPP has addressed priority needs in eastern Ukraine since the armed conflict erupted in the spring of 2014 after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
According to the UN, the RPP is aimed at strengthening community security and social cohesion, supporting the economic recovery of conflict-affected communities. It also works to further decentralize and reform the health-care system in government-controlled areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The RPP is being implemented by four United Nations agencies and is supported by the European Union, the European Investment Bank and the governments of Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan. Its total budget for 2019-2022 is over $50 million.
The United States on Friday welcomed news that Thailand will investigate the disappearance of Truong Duy Nhat, a Radio Free Asia blogger from Vietnam who went missing on Jan. 26 after fleeing to Thailand to seek political asylum with a U.N. refugee agency.
Nhat, a former political prisoner and weekly contributor for RFAs Vietnamese Service, vanished at a shopping mall on the outskirts of Bangkok after going the day before to the Bangkok office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
On Thursday, Thailand said that though it had no record of Nhat entering the country, it would look into his case to see if he had crossed into Thailand illegally and would attempt to learn what had happened to him.
Ive ordered an investigation into this matter, Thai immigration chief Surachate Hakparn told the Reuters news service on Thursday.
In a Feb. 8 statement, the U.S. State Department said it welcomed the Thai governments investigation into Nhats disappearance, adding, We are monitoring the situation closely.
Press freedom is fundamental to transparency and accountable governance. Journalists often do their work at great risk, and it is the duty of governments and citizens worldwide to speak out for their protection, a State Department spokesperson said.
Nothing has been heard of Nhat since his disappearance, and rights groups and members of the Vietnamese exile community say they fear he may have been abducted by Vietnamese police and taken back to Vietnam.
Viet Nam security forces have abducted exiles and refugees from Thailand and elsewhere in the past, Amnesty Internationals Senior Director for Global Operations Minar Pimple said in a Feb. 6 statement.
Truong Duy Nhat is at clear risk of torture or other ill-treatment if his abduction is confirmed, Pimple said.
Press freedoms group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) meanwhile urged Thai authorities to make every effort to investigate Nhats disappearance.
If the Thai authorities prove not to have been involved, this would mean that Vietnamese agents are no longer bothered by international law and violate a partner countrys sovereignty to pursue their critics, Daniel Bastard, head of RSFs Asia-Pacific desk, said in a Feb. 6 statement.
This sends an absolutely terrifying message to the community of Vietnamese bloggers who have sought refuge in Bangkok, Bastard said.
Reported by Richard Finney and Matthew Pennington.
Police officers arrest activists during a protest against a statue of General Aung San, Myanmar's independence hero and the father of leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in Loikaw, capital of eastern Myanmar's Kayah state, Feb. 7, 2019.
Police in eastern Myanmars Kayah state this week broke up protests by ethnic Karenni youths calling for the removal of a newly inaugurated statue of national independence hero General Aung San in the state capital Loikaw, charging dozens with unlawful assembly, a group whose members participated in the demonstrations said.
Authorities arrested the protesters on Monday, Thursday, and Friday as they staged sit-ins outside the state headquarters of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party, the Union of Karenni State Youth said on its Facebook page.
NLD party supporters plan to celebrate what would have been Aung Sans 104th birthday on Feb. 13, according to the Myanmar Times.
Three dozen protesters taken into custody on Thursday were later released on bail, the youth group said. Six of them plus another youth activist resumed the protest on Friday were again taken into custody.
Those arrested have been charged with violating Article 19 of Myanmars Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law, which allows public demonstrations only if organizers first obtain permission from local authorities. Some have also been charged with defamation and incitement.
Some friends of those who were re-arrested on Friday said those protesters have not yet been freed on bail.
Calls by RFAs Myanmar Service to a police station in Loikaw went unanswered.
Aung San, father of current State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, played a key role in freeing Myanmar from British colonial rule 70 years ago and in signing a pact with ethnic minority leaders to grant their groups ethnic autonomy within the independent nation. But decades of civil war have prevented successive governments from forming a democratic federal union that includes ethnic minorities.
Members of the Karenni minority in Kayah state first protested in July 2018 when officials announced that they would erect the expensive bronze statue of Aung San in a public park in Loikaw.
They began their protests anew this week in response to the state governments inauguration of the monument to the military leader, who came from the countrys ethnic Bamar majority.
Young people have respect for General Aung San, said Kyaw Htin Aung, a leader of a technical group that supports the Union of Karenni State Youth.
[But] its time now to implement General Aung Sans promises, he said. Opposition to building the statue has emerged because we think the [governments] focus should be on equal rights for ethnic minorities rather than statues.
Totally oppose the plan
Political observer Than Soe Naing asked why officials should erect a statue of Aung San in ethnic minority states like Kayah, which have their own local heroes.
Its damaging to General Aung Sans reputation to forcibly build the bronze statue and ignore peoples wishes, he said. I dont think they [officials] should do that.
Kwan Gaung Aung Kham, chairman of the Kachin Democratic Party, noted that when officials announced plans to erect a bronze statue of Aung San in northern Myanmars Kachin state, local political parties issued statements rejecting the move.
But it was ignored, and they built it, he said, adding that additional monuments will also be built.
I totally oppose the plan, he said. If they keep doing this, there will be more differences between the ethnic groups and the government of Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyi.
Myanmars de facto leader is spearheading the countrys sporadic peace talks in a bid to end fighting between ethnic armed groups and the national military and to create a federal system in the country.
Myanmar has not guaranteed ethnic people self-determination and autonomous rights since its independence in 1948, said political observer Yan Myo Thein.
Thats why we havent had peace in the country up to now, he said.
Its important to hold talks with leaders of Myanmar civil society organizations, ethnic leaders, and military leaders for building a democratic federal union, he said. If you consider it like this, then we need to stop building General Aung Sans statues in ethnic states without their willingness.
Ngo Than Kap of the Chin Progressive Party in western Myanmars Chin state, said All of us from ethnic states respect and recognize General Aung San, but it is more important to work on implementing his promises, such as equal rights for ethnic [minorities] and self-determination.
If not, what is the benefit of erecting his statue? he asked.
Demonstrators march to demand that the Myanmar government permanently stop the construction of Myitsone Dam, in Myitkyina, capital of northern Myanmars Kachin state, Feb. 7, 2019. Credit: RFA Dam protest organizer charged
Meanwhile, police in Kachin state have arrested the organizer of a mass protest against a controversial dam project held on Thursday, charging her with violating Article 20 of the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law, according to a local resident.
Ja Hkawn helped organize the 10,000-strong rally in the state capital Myitkyina, during which ethnic Kachin activists, political party leaders, civil society groups, and Buddhist monks demanded the complete halt of the Chinese-backed hydropower project.
Though the project was suspended in 2011 because of widespread opposition to its expected environmental and social impacts, China has pressed the current NLD government to allow it to resume.
Police said protesters were issued a permit to hold the rally, but they did not obtain official permission to use loudspeakers, wear headbands saying No Myitsone Dam, and make speeches, according to a Myitsone area resident named Lura who participated in the protest.
The Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law requires protest organizers not only to notify local authorities of demonstrations in advance, but also to provide information about slogans and speakers.
Ja Hkawns first hearing is set for Feb. 11.
She faces a maximum of one month in prison and/or a 10,000-kyat (U.S. $6.50) fine, the online journal The Irrawaddy said.
Reported by Thiri Min Zin and Elizabeth Jangma for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane, Nandar Chann, and Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Blocks of methamphetamine confiscated by Chinese police during their latest crackdown on drugs are displayed at the Changsha Public Security Bureau in Changsha city, central China's Hunan province, March 18, 2013.
Many North Koreans are spreading holiday cheer this year by giving each other illicit drugs as gifts, sources in the sanctions-hit reclusive nation say.
Known in the West as crystal meth and going by the street name ice in North Korea, the drug has gained popularity, and caused many problems in recent years.
During the lunar new year holiday, one of the two most important holidays on the Korean peninsula, Koreans visit their family members bearing gifts. In South Korea the gifts might be cans of spam, fruit or other edible items that can be shared. Meanwhile, young North Koreans instead share meth and other drugs, causing great concern for North Korean authorities.
Ice has become a best-selling holiday gift item, said a source from North Hamgyong province in an interview with RFAs Korean Service.
Drug dealers dont have enough supply for their buyers, the source said.
The bigger problem is that most of the buyers are young people, even those still in middle school, the source said.
In the past, ice users would try to be discreet, not wanting others to know that they were buying, but these days nobody seems to care, said the source.
They usually buy ice to snort together during holidays, said the source, adding, They want to forget their harsh reality and enjoy themselves.
Since the mid-2000s, drugs have become commonplace and the people now think that the holidays are not a joyful time if there are no drugs for them to enjoy, said the source.
Social stigmas surrounding drug use [have disappeared], so people now feel that something big is missing if they dont have ice or opium prepared as a holiday gift, the source said.
People usually carefully check the price of products prior to purchase, but they dont think twice about splurging for meth during the holiday season. [Most people] are close to becoming addicts, said the source.
Not just a city problem
Another source, from neighboring South Hamgyong province, said that drug use is widespread and not limited to the big cities.
An increasing number of people are becoming addicted, and ice is sold even in rural and remote areas, said the source.
People like ice better than opium because ice costs less and it is stronger, the source said.
Ice makers and dealers can be punished with up to the death penalty if they get caught, but they can make a lot of money fast, said the source, adding, There are so many people looking for drugs, so nothing is going to stop [the drug trade].
The North Korean methamphetamine trade has made headlines recently as the drug has gained popularity.
In August 2016, RFA discovered that construction managers in the capital Pyongyang were supplying ice to workers in hopes of completing showcase projects faster.
Realizing that rampant methamphetamine use among young people could lead to massive social problems, North Korean authorities have tried to stop students and young adults from using the drug, even going as far as interrogating elementary school students.
As efforts to combat the widespread manufacture of ice in North Korea have stepped up though, some North Koreans have set up shop in China and have begun smuggling it over the border.
A few of these entrepreneurs have even realized the market potential for the drug within China itself, foregoing smuggling altogether.
Reported by Myungchul Lee for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
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NORFOLK Norfolk Land Trust, Inc. is in the process of applying for renewal of its national accreditation.
The land trust accreditation program recognizes land conservation organizations that meet national quality standards for protecting important natural places and working lands forever. A public comment period for the Norfolk trusts accreditation is now open.
The Land Trust Accreditation Commission, an independent program of the Land Trust Alliance, conducts an extensive review of each applicants policies and programs. NLT went through this process and was accredited for the first time in 2013.
Accreditation is important for land trusts, because it provides guidance for adhering to high standards of nonprofit governance.
The commission invites public input and accepts signed, written comments on pending applications. Comments must relate to how NLT complies with national quality standards. These standards address the ethical and technical operation of a land trust. For the full list of standards see http://www.landtrustaccreditation.org/help-and-resources/indicator-practices
To learn more about the accreditation program and to submit a comment, visit www.landtrustaccreditation.org, or email your comment to info@landtrustaccreditation.org. Comments may also be faxed or mailed to the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, Attn: Public Comments: (fax) 518-587-3183; (mail) 36 Phila Street, Suite 2, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866.
Comments on Norfolk Land Trusts application will be most useful by April 25.
For information, contact the trusts board president, Libby Borden, at 860-542-5106 or libbygp@aol.com
Youth theater holding auditions for The Tempest
BERLIN Shakespeares last play (written in 1610-11) and maritime romance of shipwrecks, sorcery, and spirits will be staged by the Teen Company of No Boundaries Youth Theater in June.
The Tempest tells the story of a sorcerer, living on a remote island with his daughter and some magical beings, who conjures a storm to correct their past and change the course of their future. When the storm capsizes a ship, the island inhabitants meet the castaways from a brave new world. The NBYT production will be set in the nineteenth century and inspired by the Connecticut whaling industry, which peaked between the 1840s and the end of the century.
Auditions will be held on Monday, Feb. 18, and Wednesday, Feb. 20, at the studio space at the New Britain-Berlin YMCA Program Center, 362 Main St., Berlin. Audition times both days begin at 6 p.m. Rehearsals scheduled for Monday and Wednesday evenings. Additional evenings may be added as needed nearer to the performance dates.
The production will be performed on the grounds of the New Britain Museum of American Art, Thursday and Friday, June 20 and 21, and Sunday, June 23. An additional performance will be held June 22 at a location to be announced.
Auditions are open to 13- to 20-year-olds from any town, and a diverse cast with all levels of experience is sought. Those auditioning should prepare a 30 to 60-second Shakespeare monologue. Actors will also be given dialogue from the script to read at auditions.
To schedule an audition, visit www.nbyt.org, email auditions@nbyt.org, or call 860-515-8115. Pre-scheduled auditions are preferred, but walk-ins are welcome. Those cast will be asked to pay a participation fee of $150 but partial financial waivers and payment scheduling are available. Teens may also contact NBYT with interest in helping backstage.
Barkhamsted will return construction plans
BARKHAMSTED Residents who have constructed a new home or addition in Barkhamsted in the last two years have their plans stored in town hall, and may pick these up during Town Hall hours prior to March 15. If you do not need your plans, they will be destroyed. For information, call Debbie Brydon at 860-379-1314.
Geology lecture series continues
ROXBURY Professor Robert Thorson of UConn presented the initial talk in the Minor Memorial Librarys series Land and Culture: A Deep Look at the History of Land Use Feb. 7.
This series of talks, co-sponsored by the Roxbury Conservation Commission and the Roxbury Land Trust and funded by a grant from Connecticut Humanities, will explore the many ways people and their cultures have interacted with the local landscape.
The series continues on Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. with a presentation by Lucianne Lavin of the Institute for American Indian Studies on the ways in which Native Americans interacted with the local landscape, and on March 7 with a discussion of the rise and fall of water-powered industry in Litchfield County presented by Peter Vermilyea.
The series concludes with two presentations by Kyle Turoczi on how to read the landscape. On Thursday March 21, Turoczi will present an illustrated lecture on land features that can be read: and on Saturday, April 6 he will lead a field walk on a Roxbury Land Trust Property.
The mission of the Minor Memorial Library is to promote and encourage literacy and to serve the needs of the Roxbury Community by providing free access to ideas and information through a diversity of library materials, programs, services, and experiences.
The library is handicapped-accessible. Call the library at 860-350-2181 or visit the website at www.minormemoriallibrary.org for more information and directions.
Homeowners tax credit applications available
NORTH CANAAN The Town of North Canaan Assessors Office will accept Elderly Homeowner Tax Credit applications from Feb. 1-May 15, and is also accepting applications for the State Additional Veterans Exemption and Local Option Veterans Exemptions, Feb. 1-Oct. 1.
If you are on any of the programs already, applications will be mailed. If you are a first time filer, applications are available in the Assessors Office.
The programs are income based. For more specific details, visit the Assessors Office Monday - Thursday 9 a.m.-12 p.m. and 1-4 p.m. or call 860.824.7313, extension 108
Mary Sue Hesselberg, 86, of Beckley, WV, passed away Friday, June 18, 2021. Services will be 11:00 a.m. Friday, June 25, 2021, in the Calfee Funeral Home Chapel. Friends may visit with the family from 10:00 a.m. until service time. Burial will follow in the Donel C. Kinnard Memorial State Ve
Source:
February 09, 2019 19:19 IST
China on Saturday firmly opposed Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Arunachal Pradesh, asserting that it has never recognised the sensitive border state and the Indian leadership should refrain from any action that may complicate the boundary question.
Prime Minister Modi on Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation stone of projects in Arunachal Pradesh worth over Rs 4,000 crore and said his government was giving a lot of importance to improve connectivity in the border state.
Modi said his government was giving importance to improve the highway, railway, airway and power situation in Arunachal Pradesh, which was neglected by the previous governments.
In New Delhi, ministry of external affairs reacted sharply to Chinas remarks, saying the state of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India.
Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions, the MEA spokesperson said in a statement.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in response to a question on Modis visit said, Chinas position on the China-India boundary question is consistent and clear-cut. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called Arunachal Pradesh and is firmly opposed to the Indian leaders visit to the East Section of the China-India boundary.
China urges the Indian side to bear in mind the common interests of the two countries, respect the interests and concerns of the Chinese side, cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral relations, and refrain from any action that may lead to the escalation of disputes or complicate the boundary question, she said in her reaction posted on the Chinese foreign ministrys website.
China claims the north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet. India and China have so far held 21 rounds of talks to resolve the border dispute.
The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control. China routinely objects to Indian leaders visiting Arunachal Pradesh to highlight its stand.
MEA dismisses China opposition to Modis visit to state
India on Saturday asserted Arunachal Pradesh is its integral and inalienable part after China opposed Prime Ministers Narendra Modi's visit to the border state.
The ministry of external affairs said India has conveyed its consistent position on the issue to China on several occasions.
The state of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions, the MEA said in a statement.
Modi on Saturday visited Arunachal Pradesh during which he inaugurated and laid foundation stone of projects worth over Rs 4,000 crore and said his government was giving a lot of importance to improve connectivity in the sensitive state.
Source:
Last updated on: February 09, 2019 19:14 IST
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation stone of projects in Arunachal Pradesh worth over Rs 4,000 crore and said his government was giving a lot of importance to improve connectivity in the sensitive border state.
Addressing at function at IG Park, he said his government was giving importance to improve the highway, railway, airway and power situation in Arunachal Pradesh, which was neglected by the previous governments.
Terming the state pride of the country, Modi said it is the gateway of the nation as it guards the frontier. It is the duty of the government to develop the state at any cost, he said.
Arunachal is a symbol of faith for the country as it gives us strength. The people used to greet each other with Jai Hind and I salute the people for their patriotism, the prime minister said adding, India will develop only if Arunachal and the entire northeast develops, he said.
In the past 55 months, I have paid several visits to Arunachal Pradesh and today inaugurated and laid foundation of projects worth over Rs 4,000 crore, he said.
The prime minister said work is going on for projects worth Rs 13,000 crore in the state and alleged that the previous regime neglected the northeast region.
Compare us with the previous government and see the difference, he told the audience.
Modi added that his government has allocated Rs 44,000 crore for the region which is double of the previous United Progressive Alliance government.
The previous governments did not care about youth and border security, he claimed.
Modi laid the foundation stone for construction of greenfield Airport at Hollongi and inaugurated an upgraded and retrofitted airport at Tezu in Lohit district at a worth of Rs 125 crore through remote at a function at IG Park here.
The Tezu airport will connect Guwahati, Jorhat and Hollongi. Fruit and flowers of the region can reach any market of the country in a few hours, he said.
Terming tourism as a money spinner for the state, the prime minister said that with the coming up of the greenfield airport and rail network, the industry would flourish and many unemployed youth would get employment opportunities.
The prime minister laid the foundation stone of Sela Tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh. It will provide all weather connectivity to Tawang Valley for civilians as well as security forces. The tunnel will reduce travel time to Tawang by an hour and boost tourism and related economic activities in the region.
He inaugurated the new Doordarshan 24-hours channel for Arunachal Pradesh, DD Arun Prabha. The channel will be the 24th channel operated by Doordarshan.
The prime minister also dedicated to the nation the 110 MW Pare Hydroelectric Plant.
The hydro elected project constructed by NEEPCO will harness hydro power potential of the river Dikrong (tributary of Brahmaputra) and provide cheap hydro electric power to the northeastern states, thereby improving power availability in the region.
Modi also declared 100 per cent household electrification in Arunachal Pradesh under Saubhagya Scheme.
He also laid the foundation stone for a permanent campus of Film and Television Institute of India at Jote.
The prime minister inaugurated 50 health and wellness centres in the state also through a remote at the function at IG Park.
He said under the Ayushman Bharat scheme, 50 health and wellness centres have been inaugurated which would provide medical care to the poor and needy especially pregnant women.
In this year budget we have introduced a new scheme PM Kishan Sanman Nidhi, under which an amount of Rs 6000 will be deposited to the account of the farmers per year who have only five acres of cultivable land in order to support them, Modi said and assured all possible support to the state.
He said the development trajectory of the state is taking at a faster pace with National Democratic Alliance and Pema Khandu-led Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state are working in close coordination.
The prime minister said under the UDAN scheme, steps were being taken to provide service of civilian aircraft at a lower cost in the state and road projects worth 50,000 crore are going on which will connect about 1,000 villages.
In several places of the state, survey is going on for construction of railway lines out and the survey was completed in three places, he said.
The government is also laying stress on power generation and accordingly sanctioned an amount of Rs 3,000 crore to erect transmission lines to be connected in the grid.
Modi also laid the stones of seven 132/33 KV and 24 33/11 KV electric substations under Comprehensive Scheme.
The Congress held protest demonstration against the citizenship bill during Modis visit to the state.
A number of Congress workers holding black flags, placards and banners led by Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Chera Taya took out a rally and tried to proceed to the venue of the PMs function but were stopped by the police.
February 09, 2019 09:41 IST
'The Republic is currently captained and crewed by people who seem interested in the safety and well being of only a select kind of passenger, advising the rest to swim for Pakistan,' points out Mitali Saran.
Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com
Republic Day is traditionally the time to reflect on our history and make fun of the floats. Everyone has their favourite marching contingent, most of us are happy to have the day off, and who doesn't love a good flypast? It only remains to ditch the joyless belief that national days should be alcohol free.
Still, after four years of loud chest-thumping, this year's Republic Day felt slightly subdued. People are so busy sulking at each other across political differences that it is hard to paste a smile on, though we can still encourage each other to go fly a kite.
Politicians in particular cannot afford to be misty-eyed about the past -- they are keeping their eyeballs polished and beadily focused on the future.
The big old ship of the Republic has weathered plenty of horrendous storms, and will see plenty more. But the 2019 general election is a special challenge, and everyone knows it.
The Republic is currently captained and crewed by people who seem interested in the safety and well being of only a select kind of passenger, advising the rest to swim for Pakistan. So it has been a hoot to watch politicians across the board sink their egos, gather on the same platform, make seat sharing agreements, and shake hands across their differences, swearing to oust Narendra Damodardas Modi's government.
They are even saying nice things about each other occasionally. And chances are, for a change, that they are doing it all for the right reasons.
Those reasons should be familiar to those who saw the Emergency, when even the Sangh held hands with their mortal enemies the Commies, to oust Indira Gandhi; but oddly, Mr Modi is spending a lot of rally time crying, 'No fair, all they want is to get me out.' It is as if he has no idea what elections are for.
Even Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who thus far has steadfastly remained a backroom operator and election campaign cameo player, has taken an official seat at the table. I can't imagine too many other political situations that could have convinced her to do so.
Her actual effect on Congress party workers and on the electorate remains to be seen, but she has plenty of fight to bring eyeball to eyeball with the prime minister, and what could be more fun than to watch him have to diss a smiling young woman?
On the subject of gushy comparisons between Priyanka and Indira Gandhi, one can only hope that they don't run too far beyond the striking physical resemblance. We should all hope that the Gandhi siblings's youthful idealisation of their grandmother, in her capacity as politician, has been tempered by a long and clear-eyed study of power.
Both Indira Gandhi and Narendra Damodardas Modi have shown that a. leaders who fear losing power can wreck a country, b. strong leaders tend to overestimate their own strength and popularity, and c. there are many ways to skin a democracy, each of them very effective.
I like the idea that that Priyanka Gandhi comes to an official role in politics after spending a great deal of time examining herself and her motivations.
And I, for one, am always glad to see one more intelligent, secular, and apparently compassionate person throw her hat in the ring. We'll find out, over time, what she is made of.
The idea of a Mahagathbandhan, or Grand Alliance, is regularly pooh-poohed as a useless khichdi of people who spend all their time jockeying for power. I would say that 'Grand Alliance' sounds like something out of a Tolkienesque wizarding war, and wish it could be toned down to 'Greater Alliance' or something, but it beats me how people can so easily forget that coalitions have done their fair share in bringing India into the 21st century, not to mention that this time the protagonists have uncommon common cause.
A coalition might involve slower consensus and be more difficult to manage, but a secular, diverse coalition would almost certainly do less damage than the strong, centralised Hindutva-inclined leadership we have now.
A smart coalition will never forget that what it is fighting today, it will be fighting for a very long time.
The heart of every January 26 celebration, ultimately, is the citizen -- that long-suffering creature, shafted by every government in one way or the other, and justifiably cynical -- who periodically recreates the Republic from the voting booth.
This year, as the tanks rolled and the camels preened, we cheerily took the day off to celebrate the fact that this summer we get to extend its life once again. And, of course, to make fun of the floats.
February 09, 2019 11:06 IST
In the run-up to the 2019 election, netas of all hues are reiterating their devotion for all things bovine, says Geetanjali Krishna.
Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com
The Babri Masjid is on my mind as I write this column. On December 6, 1992, when the Masjid fell to a horde of Hindu right-wingers, I'd never imagined that the Hindutva brigade's myth, that the largest numerical and power majority in India is somehow threatened by minority religions, would gain the force that it has today.
Or that cow love would reach the fever pitch that it has today.
In the run-up to the 2019 general election, netas of all hues are reiterating their devotion for all things bovine. It is when one travels to Indian villages that one can understand the impact of all this.
Recently in Mirzapur, we drove to one of the many streams that dot its landscape to watch the sunset. Enveloped in a forest, this once used to be a favourite picnic spot. That day, however, an overpowering stench of rotting flesh made it impossible to even stand close to the water.
Suddenly, I heard a rustle from a nearby bush. It was an emaciated cow, too weak to even stand. Not far from it was a pile of bones, picked clean.
I realised that this was perhaps one of the several places in the countryside where farmers left their sick and ageing cows to die.
Of course this was terrible and heart-rending from an animal rights perspective. But I chatted with a local farmer for another perspective.
"I have six cows which my school-going son takes to the hills nearby to graze," he said. "For all that we expend in energy and money to keep them, they give barely a couple of litres of milk each."
Why then, I asked, did he rear cows anyway?
It was a family tradition and he used to get good prices for their female calves, he said. "At that time, if a cow didn't give much milk, or became sick, farmers like me had other options," he said.
It is common knowledge that until three years ago, farmers, under the radar, of course, would sell cows that stopped producing milk to the local abattoir or tannery. But now, with growing cow vigilantism, this had become impossible.
"It is hard for poor farmers to rear cows now," he said. "Fodder and medicines are expensive, and what's more, cows can live for 20 years after they stop giving milk."
While reiterating that he, of course, would never abandon his animals, he said he could well understand why others would do so.
"But they do so only when desperate," he whispered. "Everyone fears reprisals from the gau-bhakts, cow devotees..."
Which is why it didn't surprise me at all to learn that thousands of deserted cattle die each year in Uttar Pradesh.
Local farmers complain that these animals have turned into agricultural pests as they forage in fields to survive.
Most, however, aren't lucky enough to feed in a field -- they dine off rubbish heaps and often die after ingesting plastic and other toxics.
"It pains me to see these animals," said the farmer. "But often for people like me, it is a choice between feeding the animal or feeding one's own children..."
Back at that waterfall, I looked sadly at the dying cow. It was the first time I'd seen a creature dying because the government had loved it too much.
February 09, 2019 12:04 IST
By clinging to the past misdeeds of some Islamic rulers, present day Muslims are making reconciliation of communities an impossibility, says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Photograph: PTI Photo
In these times fraught with armies of trolls ready to pounce on you to label one as a 'bhakt' or 'sickular' at a drop of hat, it is necessary to make a disclosure about one's beliefs ab initio.
I believe in a secular and free India where all faiths are welcome and have equal rights. But I am also conscious of the Indian historical heritage that makes India unique as a civilisational State.
I also believe that the true calling of history is the search for truth, howsoever unpalatable it may be and be regarded as politically incorrect.
In an earlier judgment of a three-member bench, the Supreme Court asserted that it is looking at it as purely a property dispute. The layman's understanding of the role of the Supreme Court is that it is a forum that deals with issues only when the interpretation of law or Constitution is involved. It was in that sense a departure from norm.
When the Chief Justice of India announced a five-member Constitutional bench, he further signalled the extraordinary importance of the case.
Surely the dispute over the small piece of land is historical in as much as the original litigation goes back to 1950. But more than being historical, it is also a dispute about history.
The people opposing the temple at the birthplace of Shri Ram claim that there never was a temple that was demolished. While those proposing a Ram temple in Ayodhya claim that a temple was destroyed and a mosque was built at that very place by Mir Baqui, a general in Babur's army in the 16th century.
The matter took an even more curious turn when the erstwhile UPA government filed an Orwellian affidavit (in another matter) claiming that Ram was not a historical figure but a 'myth'.
The matter had already been muddied when in the 1970s and 1980s, as the demand for the construction of a Ram temple at his birthplace peaked, a cabal of Delhi-based 'eminent' historians claimed that the original Ayodhya was either in Afghanistan or even in Thailand (where there is an ancient town by the name of Ayodhya). A Delhi-based 'eminent historian', who specialises in ancient Indian history (without knowing Sanskrit), spearheaded the movement.
Even the Baburnama, the record of Babur's rule, could not throw much light on the issue as the 20-odd pages dealing with the episode were 'missing' from the original held in the British Museum.
The clever British saw great potential in the Ayodhya dispute to continue with their 'divide and rule' policy and the pages of Baburnama going missing is par for the course for British intrigue.
Before the Anglophiles (of whom there is no dearth in India's English-speaking elite) jump at my throat, let me share an incident that happened to me in July 1991.
I was then in London's India Office Library and Records working on the history project on the Anglo-Maratha wars as a fellow of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis, New Delhi.
I had done my homework before reaching there and wanted the Court of Director's documents dealing with the Battle of Assyee 1803 between the Marathas led by the Scindias and Arthur Wellesley (later the duke of Wellington who won the battle of Waterloo against Napoleon).
After waiting for nearly two days, I got a stock answer that the documents wanted by me were 'missing'.
Frustrated at these delaying tactics, I sought a meeting with the director, one Mr Carrington, and bluntly told him that if the documents were not made available to me I would draw the conclusion that the British wished to hide the truth about the battle even after 200 years and that I would mention this in my work.
He then asked me why I was working on this battle when there were enough accounts already available that showed that it was a British victory.
Luckily, I was carrying with me a copy of Philip Mason's popular version of the history of the Indian Army where the author completely omitted to mention the British defeat at the hands of the Marathas in the Battle of Wadgaon (January 13, 1779).
Then I drew his attention to the official history of the British army that clearly brought out the facts about the British defeat. I then went on to say that I want to search for the 'truth' about the Battle of Assyee, by far one of the most decisive battles of the second Anglo-Maratha war.
The reason to narrate this elaborate story is that the reason for the missing 20 pages of Baburnama may not be simple negligence, but part of well-crafted British policy.
Those interested in getting at the truth about British 'tricks' are requested to go through the biography of Eric Blair, popularly known as the famous author George Orwell. As a police officer between 1922 and 1927, he was disgusted with how British provoked communal riots by throwing pig carcass into mosques and beef into temples.
Denial of the historicity of India's ancient past has long been a part of British colonial enterprise. Western historiography regards all events pre-Christ as a 'myth'.
Interestingly, even the existence of Troy, mentioned in the Illiad, was denied right till 1993 when archeological excavations proved conclusively that Troy indeed existed and the Illiad was not an imaginary story.
Indian historians who deny the existence of Ram ignore the existing evidence on the Java island of Indonesia at Prambanan and other places where the Ramayan story is depicted in murals. These artifacts date back to the 5th century.
It is intriguing that this 'evidence' is well preserved in a country with the largest Muslim population, Indonesia, and is located in Java that has 95% Muslim population.
The largest Hindu temple in the world is in Cambodia at Angkor Wat. It has a brass relief mural of the entire Ramayan dating back to the 12th century.
To question the historicity of Ram in the face of evidence in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia and Cambodia is the new 'myth' created to suit current prejudices.
Destroying prominent temples which could act as a focal point of resistance was a common practice of Islamic rulers.
The Krishna Janambhoomi in Mathura, the Kashi Vishwanath temple that is now the Gyanwapi mosque are some examples that come to mind. Invaders also disliked grand Indian monuments and made sure that they were destroyed.
Even the British were no exception to this rule.
On February 17, 1828, a 'mysterious' fire burnt down the seven storied palace in Poona, at that time possibly the tallest building in India. The British made sure that this symbol of Maratha power was destroyed.
Babur and many others viewed temples in the same light, and added to this was the Islamic zeal of destroying statues as 'duty'.
It is a historical fact that the Marathas, when they marched to Panipat in 1761 to face Ahmed Shah Abdali, had a far grander plan to also 'liberate' Hindu holy sites from Mughal control.
The war directive issued by Peshwa Balaji Bajirao explicitly mentions this. Attracted by the opportunity to visit holy sites, a large number of family members of the Maratha soldiers accompanied the army.
Defeat at Panipat put paid to those plans, else we would not have had the Ayodhya dispute at all.
This is no figment of my imagination. When the Marathas took over Malwa, General Ranoji Shinde destroyed the mosque built by Sultan Iltamsh in 1234 and re-established the famous Kalbahireshwar temple in Ujjain in 1734. Even the current Kashi temple is built by Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar.
The final clinching argument about the existence of a Ram Janambhoomi temple is circumstantial. The very location of the erstwhile mosque in a congested locality, surrounded by numerous temples of Hanuman, Sita etc, makes it inconceivable that the place would have been empty.
A lack of written account about the temple is a perennial problem faced by all Indian historians. As I researched Maratha history, one had to perforce rely on secondary documents since the Maratha daftar (government documents) located at the capital at Raigad, was destroyed by the Mughal general Zulfikar Khan in 1689.
In the case of the history of North India, the great libraries of Nalanda and Taxila were burnt down by the invaders. The idea was to wipe out the past.
Finally, the fact is that Christians have their Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Rome, Muslims have their Mecca, Medina and Karbala, but in the Hindu holy places of Mathura, Kashi and Ayodhya there are mosques!
Would it not be generous on the part of Indian Muslims to restitute these holy sites to their rightful owners?
Indian Muslims have made tremendous contributions in preserving Indian arts and culture. Ibrahim Khan and many more fought bravely for their country at Panipat.
By clinging to the past misdeeds of some Islamic rulers, present day Muslims are making reconciliation of communities an impossibility.
Why does the present generation not jettison the ugly past and make a new beginning? They would find many supporters like me in their 'real' fight against economic and social insecurities.
Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is a military historian.
February 09, 2019 09:00 IST
And it's a strategy that seems to have paid off. Online booking for the motorcycle has been temporarily halted given the huge waiting list of buyers. Orders are still being taken at the dealerships, but the earliest one can expect a delivery is by the end of 2019, reports T E Narasimhan.
Image: The Jawa 250 held sway for 10 years, but from 1971, the brand sold under the Yezdi label in India. Photographs: Courtesy, Jawa Motorcycles
Booked out till September 2019, the newest two-wheeler brand to hit the Indian roads is actually the oldest kid on the block.
And as it looks to spread its footprint and build a premium clientele among a new generation of bikers, its joint owners -- Classic Legends, a 60:40 partnership between Anand Mahindra and Boman Irani along with Phi Capital's Anupam Thareja -- are revving down nostalgia street.
Its more than 100-year old history is being used in a variety of ways, through merchandise, communication initiatives and design throwbacks, to craft a brand story that resonates with young premium bike aspirants.
"We are trying to create warm brand experience," says Ashish Joshi, chief executive officer, Classic Legends.
One way the company is looking to do that is to present the bike as more than a pair of wheels; much like what Royal Enfield has done in the past, its dealerships have been tailored to look more like experience centres.
Here buyers can walk in, read about the bike's Czech origins, dig into motorcycle folklore or buy T-shirts and accessories or browse around the small library of books located in the space.
These centres aim to re-tread the brand's classic appeal and present a strong contender to Royal Enfield.
Most Jawa centres are located just a short walk away from Royal Enfield's company owned outlets; the deliberate choice of locations sending out a clear signal that it is looking to play the role of the challenger brand, notwithstanding its age and legacy.
Image: The Jawa 42. Photographs: Courtesy, Jawa Motorcycles
The target consumer is the young rider (most customers who have booked are between 24 and 30 years) in the market for a 250-500cc motorcycle segment and willing to shell out upwards of Rs 1.5 lakh for a bike.
The three models that were showcased in November 2018 were: Jawa, Jawa 42 and Jawa Perak (to be launched), starting at Rs 1.55 lakh and going up to Rs 1.89 lakh (all prices ex-Delhi). It is more expensive than Royal Enfield's 350cc (Rs 1.39 lakh).
Online booking for the first two products has been temporarily halted given the huge waiting list of buyers.
Orders are being taken at the dealerships, but the earliest one can expect a delivery is by the end of 2019. "If you book today, delivery could be no earlier than November," says Joshi.
Image: The Jawa Perak is yet to be launched in India. Photographs: Kind courtesy, Jawa Perak/Facebook
The bike category that Jawa is in is expected to grow at more than 25 per cent annually through 2021.
It grew to 8.33 lakh units at the end of 2017-18 accounting for 6.6 per cent of the overall motorcycle market and Royal Enfield holds nearly 95 per cent of the segment.
In such a scenario, Joshi says, Classic Legends will be an aggressive player. It has planned to open 105 dealerships by the end of February 2019, up from the current 23. "This will be the fastest ramp-up," says Joshi.
The emphasis is on legacy but the brand cannot be built on its past alone, the company said. Customer experience via the product, through sales and through service will be key too.
For the Czech brand, India is not a new market. The company had a factory in Mysore in 1961 that sold the Jawa 250, a descendant of the Jawa 'Perak'.
The Jawa 250 held sway for 10 years, but from 1971, the brand sold under the Yezdi label in India.
Yezdi found its way into popular culture, turning into a generic reference for all bikes and an integral part of chase scenes in Hindi movies.
However in 1996, Jawa/Yezdi moved out of the market given the change in bike emission norms.
In its new avatar, Jawa plans to dig into old networks that still hold a strong recall for the brand.
It will also wait and watch how the two models do in the market and bring the Jawa Perak later this year. "We will consolidate with the three products, before looking at bringing the third product," Joshi said.
The aim is to go deep before going wide with the brand. The company will temporarily stop dealership expansion at the 120-mark.
The network will cover nearly 80 per cent of the market and nearly 83 cities. And keeping in mind the criticism that Jawa drew in the past, over easy access to service centres and replaceables, the company says it has put its energy behind these areas this time around.
The marketing push is aggressive on social media, but in towns where online penetration is still low, the company has a slew of on-ground promotions planned.
February 09, 2019 12:27 IST
GST rates on under-construction houses maybe reduced from 12 pc with input tax credit to 5 pc without ITC. Similarly, the rate for under-construction affordable houses could come down to 3 per cent without input tax credit, from the current 8 per cent.
Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters
The struggles of Indias beleaguered real estate sector might end soon. A group of ministers on Friday batted for a cut in the goods and services tax (GST) rates on under-construction houses.
At its first meeting in New Delhi, the panel, headed by Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel, favoured lowering of GST rates on under-construction houses, from 12 per cent with input tax credit (ITC) to 5 per cent without ITC. Similarly, it pitched for reducing the rate for under-construction affordable houses to 3 per cent without input tax credit, from the current 8 per cent.
Some experts say this will lead to reduction of home prices by as much as Rs 3,00,000 for super built-up area of 1,000 sq feet. However, others believe the net benefit will depend on the percentage of input taxes forgone under the proposed regime.
At present, GST is levied at 12 per cent with ITC on payments made for under-construction property or ready-to-move-in flats, for which completion certificate has not been issued at the time of sale. The effective pre-GST tax incidence on such housing property was 15-18 per cent.
GST, however, is not levied on property for which completion certificate has been issued at the time of sale. There have been complaints that builders are not passing on the ITC benefit to consumers by way of reduction in price of the property, after the roll-out of GST.
Officials said the report of the panel will be finalised within a week, and be placed before the GST Council in its next meeting, the date of which is yet to be fixed.
Patel told Business Standard the committee will recommend lower tax on these two categories. This, he said, will help both the industry and consumers. Further, the Centre and states will collect a larger sum as GST as more houses get sold, he said.
"All this will lead to generation of more employment in the realty sector," Patel hoped. The panel was set up last month to analyse tax rates, issues and challenges being faced by the sector under the GST regime.
Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had reiterated his plan to bring down GST rates for under-construction houses to 5 per cent.
We wanted to do that but there were reservations. So, the GST Council could not do it, and it has now gone to the committee. We will try to ensure the committees report is expedited, Modi had said.
If flat 5 per cent GST is levied, a buyer will save Rs 3,00,000 on property with super built-up area of 1,000 square feet (carpet area 780 sq ft), and priced at Rs 6,000 per sq ft, said Anuj Puri, chairman of Anarock Property Consultants.
Any cut in GST should reduce the adverse impact on the land abatement rate, which is 33 per cent under the present system.
The composite rate of 5 per cent will not only address the imbalance under the present regime -- which applies to under-construction projects but not to completed units -- but also free the industry from the requirement of filing monthly returns to avail ITC, which is cumbersome, said Jaxay Shah, president of industry body Credai.
Shishir Baijal, chairman and managing director of Knight Frank India, said lowering the GST rate will breathe a new life in to the sector. The existing regime has been a major deterrent for sales in under-construction projects. This could be a vital link in the recent chain of events, which include incentives of the interim budget and the rate cut by the RBI, he said.
February 09, 2019 08:36 IST
'There is merit in keeping the central bank's balance sheet strong if the government's fiscal balance sheet is weak.'
Anup Roy reports.
Former Reserve Bank of India governor Dr Y V Reddy sharply criticised the government for intervening in the central bank's affairs and asking money from the past reserves.
In a speech delivered at Pune on Friday, February 8, Dr Reddy, who was also chairman of the 14th Finance Commission, endorsed critics stating that the 'automatic monetisation of the pre-reform period' is being replaced with 'coercive monetisation of fiscal needs'.
In the Kale Memorial Lecture, delivered at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Dr Reddy said that by taking recourse to unprecedented practice of interim dividend, the government has compromised on the established mechanism of 'ways and means', a temporary loan facility extended to the government by the RBI.
The reserves act as insurance for the future, and needed to be fortified, instead of taken away.
'The immediate fiscal needs seem to take precedence over a renewed assessment of the capital needs of the RBI,' Dr Reddy said.
This is contrary to what the government did in 2013 when it shared the excessive cost of sterilisation so that the central bank balance sheet remains strong and reserves get added.
'There is merit in keeping at least the central bank's balance sheet strong if the government's fiscal balance sheet is weak,' Dr Reddy said.
The government expects Rs 28,000 crore (Rs 280 billion) as interim from the RBI and the finance minister recently said he expected another about an equal amount from past reserves as well.
In 2015, the government decided that the RBI holds more reserves than required and the entire money, therefore, should be transferred. The chief economic adviser had already advocated that the excess money should be used to recapitalise banks.
'There is no doubt that in the ultimate analysis, the government as the owner has a claim over the reserves, but the way it exercises gives signals to the market and influences public opinion,' Dr Reddy said.
There is also the issue of 'Constitutional propriety' of using the reserves directly to fund capital of the banks instead of crediting it to Consolidated Fund of India.
The proposal to invoke Section 7 of the RBI Act, which is used by the government to direct the RBI what to do, was an 'unprecedented move', which, in many ways, raised 'fundamental questions on governance,' Dr Reddy said.
The invocation of the Act 'virtually meant that the channels of normal communication for reaching agreed position between government and governor RBI had broken down', and which ultimately culminated in Dr Urjit R Patel's resignation as RBI governor.
The Centre's demands of relaxing prompt corrective action rules for banks dilutes 'both the autonomy and accountability of the RBI', Dr Reddy said.
Dr Reddy was also against the government's demand to dilute Basel III norms which are perceived to be more stringent in India than the global norms.
According to Dr Reddy, the RBI should be 'concerned at the risk assessment capabilities of public sector giants like LIC and SBI' that allowed the mess at IL&FS even as the former entities were large shareholders in the company.
By encouraging aggressive lending to small and medium enterprises, the government could be jeopardising depositors's interest or inducing systemic instability, and any extra support to this segment should be given from budgetary resources such as what is done in case of farm debt waiver.
The current composition of the central bank's board is appropriate, according to Dr Reddy. The board provides advisory and guidance on policy matters, but the government is trying to revise the role of the board to a more assertive one.
Thomas Gene Weatherholt approaches the bench during his hearing at the 13th Circuit Court in Traverse City on Friday. Weatherholt pleaded no contest to second-degree murder charges in the death of a 3-week-old baby girl. He faces life in prison and will be sentenced March 8.
Kim Kardashian says her family will feel "even" once baby No. 4 arrives.
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The 38-year-old television personality discussed her unborn fourth child with husband Kanye West during Thursday's episode of "The Tonight Show" starring Jimmy Fallon
"Baby number four on the way!" she confirmed.
"Yeah, but, I was kind of stressing. It's just -- my house is so full. But I heard that parents of four are the most enlightened and calm of all parents. The most calm."
Kardashian is parent to 5-year-old daughter North, 3-year-old son Saint and 1-year-old daughter Chicago, and confirmed in January she's expecting another son with West.
"I felt the huge change -- from one to two felt like one to 20," the star said of her family growing. "That was harder than two to three for me."
"I feel like four is going to be really even, though, because I just -- you know, right now, it's like me with two always. And Kanye just has one. So he's, like, still living his life, and I'm -- you know," she said.
The "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" star also said North and Saint are "finally" getting along after previously comparing their relationship to "full war."
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"It's, like, the best moment as a mom," she said.
Kardashian later addressed rumors her sister Kylie Jenner is engaged to Travis Scott.
Reports circulated after Jenner shared a photo of herself wearing a large ring on her left hand at Super Bowl LIII.
"I think she would have told me," Kardashian said. "I mean, she's pretty secretive, but I'm sure she would have told me. I'm not really sure, but I don't think so."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren's insistence that she is Native American has drawn racial taunts from President Donald Trump, who frequently refers to her as "Pocahontas," as well as reprimands from tribal leaders, who note that tribes themselves determine tribal membership. She has frequently said that she grew up believing she had Native American ancestors and occasionally claimed her family is Cherokee and Delaware, even offering a recipe for a cookbook titled "Pow Wow Chow." Earlier this year, Warren released the results of DNA tests that showed she did have a very distant relative -- in the neighborhood of six to 10 generations ago -- who was Native American, but that is hardly the impression she has tried to give over the years. This week, The Washington Post revealed a handwritten document, submitted in 1986 when Warren became a member of the Texas state bar, in which she listed her race as "American Indian." This latest controversy in Sen. Warren's identity politics threatens to complicate her bid for the presidency.
Why should it matter what race or ethnic origin Sen. Warren claims? Under usual circumstances, it wouldn't. Looking at Sen. Warren -- with her fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair -- one would assume she is of northern European ancestry. But because she has taken it on herself to assert that she is not what she appears but is rather a member of a group that has long faced discrimination in America, the claim takes on significance -- especially in the Democratic Party. The field of Democratic candidates who have announced their candidacy for president or are about to is a veritable rainbow of minorities. From former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, whose grandmother was a Mexican immigrant, to Sen. Kamala Harris, whose parents were born in Jamaica and India, to Sen. Cory Booker, a man whose ancestors include both blacks and whites, as noted in an episode of "Finding Your Roots," to Tulsi Gabbard, born in American Samoa to a white mother and part-Samoan father, the Democratic candidates are the most ethnically diverse in the history of U.S. presidential politics.
There is much to be applauded in such an ethnically and racially broad group of candidates, but more because of what it says about success and assimilation in the American model than it does about discrimination.
The new industry of DNA testing has made it possible for Americans to get a better idea about their origins than relying on family myth. In melting-pot America, the desire to discover more about ancestry is driven by a sense that most of us have ancestors who hailed from someplace else and the wish to learn more about where that was. But Sen. Warren's quest seems very different. By asserting actual kinship with Native Americans, she has frequently used her "roots" to play a role in identity politics. She listed herself as Native American on prestigious law school faculties where she taught and as a "minority" professor in the Association of American Law Schools' staff directories, among other places. But nothing in Warren's background suggests that Native American culture, much less tribal affiliation, was hers to claim. Whether she gained any benefit from her "minority" status in affirmative action hiring is difficult to assess, but it definitely made her a part of the coo!
l diversity crowd on campus, where being a white woman wouldn't automatically have entitled admission.
Perhaps the best rebuke to Warren was inadvertently given by her rival for the Democratic nomination, Kamala Harris. When asked whether she had ever grappled with introspection about her own mixed-race status, Harris quickly answered, "No." She explained to The Washington Post that when she first ran for office, she didn't like having to define herself into a compartment: "I am who I am. I'm good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I'm fine with it." Harris has solved her own racial identity by calling herself "an American." Elizabeth Warren might think of dropping the "Native" and do the same.
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Early one morning last December, Jeff Gracik was heading to his Southern California home's garage-workshop, where he makes his living, when he heard a loud, hurried knock on his front door. Thinking it might be a rushed UPS driver, he quickly opened the door. But it wasn't UPS. Standing on his doorstep were three badge-flashing inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. They had come to inspect Jeff's business.
Just what is Jeff's business? Does he produce food? No. Does he produce drugs? No again. So why the unannounced visit by FDA inspectors?
Jeff makes pipes for tobacco pipe smokers. He doesn't make tobacco, mind you, which (alas) Congress empowered the FDA to control. He makes pipes, most of which are made from wood (most commonly briar but other varieties, too), materials such as acrylic and vulcanized rubber for the mouthpieces, and wood stains, which Jeff buys but does not make.
In its wisdom, the FDA has deemed pipes "tobacco products," a category of things it regulates under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, or TCA. Forgive the bureaucratese I'm about to shovel your way, but an FDA document states:
"The definition of 'tobacco product' ... includes all components, parts, and accessories of tobacco products [except for raw materials other than tobacco used in manufacturing a component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product]. FDA interprets [italics mine] components and parts of a tobacco product to include any assembly of materials intended or reasonably expected: 1) to alter or affect the tobacco product's performance, composition, constituents or characteristics; or 2) to be used with or for the human consumption of a tobacco product. Both e-cigarettes and pipes meet this definition."
You may find it odd that the FDA chooses not to regulate lighters, matches, ashtrays, humidors and the like, but it has its reason. It deems such things to be accessories, not components and parts. Accessories, the FDA says, "do not contain tobacco, are not derived from tobacco, and do not affect or alter the performance, composition, constituents, or characteristics of a tobacco product." Since pipes do those things, they are deemed regulated components rather than unregulated accessories.
Who knew the FDA personnel had the wisdom to make such fine distinctions?
Note the word I emphasized a couple of paragraphs earlier: interprets. The FDA admits it has no explicit statutory authority to regulate things not made or derived from tobacco even if they can be used to consume tobacco. Did the members of Congress who wrote and voted for the TCA (which amended the FD&C) deem non-tobacco products such as wooden pipes to be tobacco products? It appears not. The legislation states that the "term 'tobacco product' means any product made or derived from tobacco that is intended for human consumption, including any component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product [except for raw materials other than tobacco used in manufacturing a component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product]."
The word "including" would seem to limit the covered components, parts, and accessories to things "made or derived from tobacco," of which the briar root Jeff Gracik uses is not an example. Briar comes from the root of the flowering plant called Erica arborea, or tree heath.
To reinforce my point, note that the word "pipe" appears in the TCA only as a qualifier for the word "tobacco." The statute's authors wanted to ensure that "tobacco" is understood to include pipe tobacco and not just cigars and cigarettes. But the legislation contains not one single reference to pipes per se. So Congress apparently did not intend to authorize the FDA to control anything other than tobacco or things derived from it, even things that are likely to be used to consume tobacco.
But no matter. The FDA has assumed the power to deem non-A to be A. Logic and common sense be damned.
At any rate, three FDA inspectors (two of them trainees) turned up unannounced at Jeff Gracik's door to say that they had the authority under the TCA to enter his premises -- right then -- and inspect his home workshop. Actually, he had "consented" to inspections once every two years when he registered with the FDA as a pipe maker. Jeff had learned earlier that under the law, retailers could not sell his pipes unless he was registered, so he allowed a retailer to register him, saving him the trouble of doing the paperwork himself. He had no choice; he earns his living as a full-time pipe maker and wants to keep doing so.
Jeff, who is 39, started making pipes in 2003. He sold his first one a year later and has since built a sterling reputation among pipe collectors. He makes 100 to 125 pipes a year -- which sell for $800 to $3,000 apiece -- under the name J. Alan Pipes. Jeff is an artisan; he makes pipes one at a time by hand. Each is unique, a thing of beauty, a dazzling collaboration of nature and human being. He and brother Jeremy have a second, lower-priced line of partially machine-made pipes under the name Alan Brothers.
Needless to say, Jeff was unaccustomed to having federal agents traipsing around his workshop. "I was so shocked," he told me. He said the inspectors were friendly but firm -- and apparently unsure what they were supposed to be doing. This might have been their first venture into unknown territory. (Other pipe makers are being similarly visited.) The inspectors started asking questions, "most of which were not really relevant to pipe making. Things like: 'Tell us about all the materials you use. Tell us about where they're from. Do you have receipts for where they're from? We need the names for all the distributors for all your materials. We need to know exactly the ingredients with which they're treated; so, for instance, briar, how is it treated?' Of course, I'm an artisan. I don't have those kinds of records."
That was just the beginning. "They had me demonstrate how to make a pipe. So I had to take a block of briar and chuck it in my lathe. ... And as the day went on, they became more and more interested in what I was doing." He said some of their questions suggested they were interested in the potential toxicity of materials and ingredient, but that's as far as that went. They tested no materials or stains and took no sample with them. Jeff was not told to submit anything for approval.
The visit lasted 6 1/2 hours, as if this small-business man had nothing better to do than entertain a group of FDA inspectors. "I got nothing done that day," he said.
"They wanted to see written procedures," he explained. "How do you do A to Z?" He told them that as a craftsman and unlike a factory, he has no written procedures As the hours went by he sensed he was almost gaining sympathy from the inspectors.
Jeff said he did his best to comply with all requests, including requests for documents going back to 2006. "If they shut me down because I failed to answer a question to their satisfaction," he said, "then my kids don't eat and we foreclose on our house."
For the record, the TCA states that regulations "shall not impose requirements unduly burdensome to a tobacco product manufacturer or importer, taking into account the cost of complying with such requirements and the need for the protection of the public health." Decide for yourself whether the FDA obeys that prohibition.
The FDA and those who support government control will point out that even though pipes are not made from tobacco, they are used to consume tobacco. That's true. But Gracik points out that some people who buy his pipes, which can be as beautiful as any work of art, are collectors who don't smoke. (Interestingly, his grandmother's first cousin was Andy Warhol.)
It's hard to say how many pipe makers we have in America. People connected with the industry and hobby estimate the number of full-timers at 25 to 30, with a few hundred more who make and sell pipes part time. Jeff is afraid that the thicket of rules could persuade many of them to "throw in the towel." He says: "It scared the hell out of a lot of pipe makers when we found out we were under this kind of scrutiny."
The pipe makers certainly could use a trade association to protect them. But Gracik says they are, unsurprisingly, individualists and so discussions about forming an association have gotten nowhere.
So the FDA harasses -- even if it's with a smile -- small-scale artisans who scratch out livings working by hand with wood and other harmless materials. To what end? It's all part of a larger puritanical campaign to harass peaceful Americans who enjoy consuming tobacco via cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and smokeless tobacco and using non-tobacco nicotine e-cigarettes.
"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits," Mark Twain said.
Using tobacco is not risk-free, of course, but most things in life are not risk-free. In the real world, risk can be managed and minimized but never eliminated, and in a free society, individuals have the right to decide for themselves how to go about doing it.
COPYRIGHT 2019 THE LIBERTARIAN INSTITUTE
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The Biggest Threat to Press Freedom Is the Media Itself
Major media organizations are about to be sued for irresponsibly turning innocent Covington Catholic school boys into objects of national hatred.
Businesses, like people, seldom if ever fail solely because of lack of money. They fail because of a lack of ability, judgment, wisdom, ideas, organization, leadership. When these qualities are present, money is seldom a problem. Warren Brookes, The Economy In Mind
I care deeply about the mission and about breaking out of poverty and achieving growth. Those are the words of David Malpass, at a news conference during which President Trump nominated him to head the World Bank.
For those who dont know Malpass, his expressed desire to shrink poverty and expand growth might read as the typical - and invariably empty - platitudes of the newly nominated. Thats not the case with Malpass. His words were anything but empty. He believes deeply in the importance of economic growth, and knows the policies necessary to achieve just that.
While hes plainly succeeded in the political world as evidenced by his senior service in no fewer than three Republican presidential administrations (Reagan, Bush #41, Trump), Malpasss passion is policy. Hes been talking the policies of growth for decades, has been speaking about them, writing about them, etc. Malpass is one of the rare true believers, which helps explain why hes expressed skepticism about the World Bank.
And its his expressed skepticism about the Institution that makes him an ideal choice to run it. For so long Republicans have talked the talk of limited government and government harming us in its attempts to help us, but in Malpasss case its not unreasonable to assume that he can see the meaning beyond the rhetoric. Malpass knows that government money all too often subsidizes impoverishing stasis, all the while muzzling the natural human desire to grow.
In Malpasss case, he intimately understands that the path out of poverty on the way to growth is economic freedom. He knows that in countries where the penalty placed on work (taxation) isnt suffocating, that people are more likely to produce. He knows that regulation is frequently an ineffective tax on production that limits the ability of the enterprising to create. He knows that investment is the driver of growth, but that corrupted, unstable currencies frequently act as a barrier to the latter for them wiping out returns on intrepid investment. As for trade, despite a rather disappointing and all-too-political embrace of some of the anti-China, protectionist leanings of the Administration he presently serves, Malpass deep down knows that individuals trade, not countries, and that individuals always benefit when talented people the world over are competing to serve their needs. Malpass knows that the more individuals can divide up labor with the rest of the world, the more that they can specialize, and by extension thrive.
Malpasss extensive knowledge of what works arguably explains his skepticism about the World Banks mission. He knows well (as will soon become apparent) that in countries where the policies of growth are broadly in place, theres no need for World Bank loans.
Indeed, it cant be stressed enough that whats true for a company is true for a country. If a company is well run, it never needs to ask government for a loan. The act of doing so is an admission of bankruptcy, and an explicit admission that market disciplined doors were repeatedly slammed on the errant corporation. Countries are no different.
If a country requires government support, or a World Bank loan, its a sign that the countrys citizens arent economically free. If they were, as in if they were free to prosper, private sources of credit would line up to fund all manner of private sector and governmental activities. Looked at in terms of the United States, and without defending government spending for even a second, theres a reason the U.S. Treasury doesnt require World Bank finance: investors around the world line up to buy Treasury debt simply because its backed by some of the freest and most productive people on earth.
Malpass plainly gets this as evidenced by his proper skepticism about World Bank lending to China: Well, China has plenty of resources, is how Malpass put it in 2017 at the Council on Foreign Relations, when asked to explain his desire to cease World Bank lending to the happily growing country. Yes, China has resources because its people are increasingly free to produce in awe-inspiring ways.
Which speaks to the obvious problem with World Bank loans. They correlate with povertys perpetuation. That they do is a statement of the obvious. Economically free countries led by broadly reasonable politicians dont need World Bank financing. That they dont is a simple reminder about the countries that do line up for World Bank funds: its a safe bet that most arent operating in ways that appeal to market-disciplined investors. Is it any wonder then, that World Bank finance has long correlated with povertys continuation? The finance subsidizes whats not working, and often whats being overseen by the thoroughly corrupt, while private finance generally finances whats actually working.
Malpass is necessary for the World Bank because its necessary for the countries that vie for the money under its control to be told theres a better way. Along these lines, what a refreshing change it will be to read about a World Bank head extolling the virtues of light taxation and regulation, quality money, and the freedom to trade. Rest assured that countries willing to embrace the basics of prosperity will soon enough not need the World Bank. If so, as in if Malpass can convince countries that true prosperity will result much more from freedom than from World Bank funds, what a happy story for him to tell.
It should be Malpasss goal to tell many stories of countries freeing themselves from the lack of progress that correlates with World Bank largess. Malpass is not like the others, and because he isn't he should be held to an entirely different standard whereby his tenure is judged by the number of countries that put the World Bank in the rearview mirror on his watch. Many will if Malpass energetically communicates his message of prosperity to governments and people that desperately need it. Malpass gets it.
In short, Malpass should run the World Bank while imagining that hes critiquing it. If so, hell be less likely to veer off course into mission creep that will surely suffocate true human progress. David Malpass will succeed if the bank hes been nominated to lead lends less precisely because client countries listen to him more.
After foreshadowing the move late last year, President Donald Trump confirmed on 1 February that the U.S. was leaving the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The 1987 agreement banned the U.S. and Russia from having land-based missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometres. Specifically, the U.S. suspended its compliance with the INF Treaty, and served formal notice that it will withdraw altogether in six months (the minimum notice period allowed under Article XV).
The statement released by the White House technically allowed room for the INF Treaty to survive, but only in the event that Russia destroyed all of its violating missiles [and] launchers. The last ray of hope for such a prospect didnt last the weekend: President Vladimir Putin followed Americas lead on 2 February by announcing Russias suspension of compliance.
To some extent, these events represented a natural continuation of Trumps public frustrations with various Russian missile provocations. Indeed, the U.S.s anger at Russias non-compliance with the INF Treaty long precedes the current administration. President Barack Obama wrote to Putin in 2014, alleging Russia was in breach of its treaty obligations. For its part, Russia contends that the U.S. has been violating the INF Treaty since 1999.
Even in this atmosphere of longstanding agitation, the U.S. and Russia ending the INF Treaty has provided analysts with a surge of new reasons to believe that a new nuclear arms race may be underway. In a written statement, Trump said, We will move forward with developing our own military response options, underscoring his more bombastic line last year that, Well have to develop those weapons.
Unsurprisingly, Putins statement mirrored Trumps: They said that they are engaged in research, development and design work, and we will do the same. Putin explicitly denied that Russia would be drawn into a nuclear arms race, but the implied threat is difficult to miss. Putin used the same statement to publicise Russias plans to construct a new medium-range supersonic missile.
Despite this Cold War rhetoric, the geopolitical balance between the U.S. and Russia in 2019 is clearly incomparable to that between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. World Bank data shows the nominal annual GDP for the U.S. in 2017 as U.S.$19.3 trillion, compared with U.S.$1.6 trillion for Russia. Americas military budget is 10 times bigger than Russias. Talk of an arms race belies the asymmetrical balance of power.
This dynamic helps explains whyfor all the talk of belligerent Russian breachesit is the United States thats driving the destruction of the traditional nuclear order. Putin, after all, suggested to Trump in February 2017 that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) be extended. The new American president comprehensively rejected the overture. Whether New START will survive its 2021 expiration date is deeply unclear.
Admittedly, we cant be sure whether the Trump administrations agenda for dismantling arms agreements is reflective of a wider strategic objective, as opposed to an ideological distaste for international agreements. For example, Reuters reports that when Putin raised New START in 2017, Trump had to pause to ask his aides what the treaty wasbefore quickly panning it as one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration. Trumps proclivity for axing international agreements is well documented.
In any case, Americas haste to end the INF agreement shouldnt be considered without reference to the geopolitical elephant in the room: China, and President Xi Jinpings nascent missile program. Never bound by the INF Treaty, China has quickly developed an arsenal of nuclear missiles as part of its wider efforts to scale up and modernise its military.
There can be no doubt that the latent Chinese threat has helped galvanise senior American advisers. Trumps national security advisor, John Bolton (a longstanding China hawk), has reportedly told U.S. allies that the INF Treaty puts America in an excessively weak position against Russia and more importantly China. For what it is worth, Bolton is also a critic of New START, describing it as unilateral disarmament on the part of the U.S..
One of the most important things to watch following the U.S. exit from the INF Treaty will be whether Washington begins to scale up its own arsenal of missiles in the Pacific. Beijing released a statement on 2 February denouncing the regrettable U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty, but rejected the possibility of Chinas joining any new treaty on intermediate-range weapons.
Even in the context of the Pacific power balance with China, however, its not obvious that scrapping the INF Treaty confers any real advantage on the United States. The INF Treaty only limits ground-based missiles, and the U.S. doesnt enjoy significant access to much land around China. Placing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in a country like Japan would be an operation laden with risks and complications (especially compared with sea- and air-launched missiles).
No matter the U.S. strategic agenda, the demise of the INF Treaty is a blow both to the Cold War arms control architecture and prospects for global disarmament. Relations between Russia and the U.S. will perhaps suffer a rupture, but look to the Pacific as the real harbinger of troubles to come.
NORWAY: State-owned rolling stock leasing organisation Norske Tog is to deploy Trimbles E2M engineering asset and maintenance management system on the fleet of vehicles it is to lease to operating contractors.
The very finest travel writing, Mark Mackenzie writes in the introduction to the forthcoming Lonely Planet anthology Curiosities and Splendour, elevates the everyday to the sublime. The coming season brings titles that recall the simple pleasuresstriking up a conversation with a stranger, or tasting a really good olive oilas well as the often challenging realities of travel.
An Arabian Journey
Levison Wood. Atlantic Monthly, Feb.
Wood is a British army officer and also the author of four previous books based on his travels by foot through Africa, the Americas, and Asia. His new work details six months in the Middle East, where some of this centurys deadliest wars are ongoing. He questions whether its ethical to journey into a war zone, but his doubts are banished, he writes, by the people he meets along the way who beg him to tell the world their stories.
Around the World in 80 Trains
Monisha Rajesh. Bloomsbury, Mar.
British journalist Rajesh swore she was done with trains after an earlier ride on the rails to the four points of Indias diamond-shaped borders, travelling a distance of 25,000 miles. Little did I know that the railways had followed me home, she writes. Five years later, and with fiance in tow, Rajesh sets out to circle the entire globe.
Curiosities and Splendour
Lonely Planet, Aug.
In this travel-narrative anthology, stories bounce around continents and the centuries, from the rise of the Persian empire to the Rocky Mountain frontier. Alongside tales of adventure and exploration are quieter accountsEdith Wharton, for instance, tours Morocco with an eye for architectural detail, and Henry James describes foggy, expansive London.
Off the Rails
Beppe Severgnini, trans. from the Italian by Antony Shugaar. Berkley, Feb.
Train travel, Italian journalist Severgnini writes, is an opportunity to understand what were like and what weve become. Severgnini recounts decades of observations gleaned from train depots and carriages across four continents, starting with his most recent, a U.S. coast-to-coast trip with his 20-year old son, in a book our review called funny and perceptive.
See You in the Piazza
Frances Mayes. Crown, Mar.
Under the Tuscan Sun author Mayes returns to Italy in search of, she writes, quintessential tastes of each place. She and her husband, Ed, travel from north to south, sharing every sip and bite along the way. Readers will want to take their time, our starred review said, savoring this poetic travelogue like a smooth wine.
Spying on the South
Tony Horwitz. Penguin Press, May
Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter whose previous books include Confederates in the Attic, retraces the route of young travel writer Frederick Law Olmsted, who was sent on assignment by the then-fledgling New York Times to explore the South as the nation splintered into the Civil War. Many of the towns Olmsted described are wisps of their former selves, but the same fault lines remain. On the eve of Horwitzs journey in a West Virginia bar, for instance, a woman studies himin his horn-rimmed glass with notebook and penand offers this assessment: Yankee boy, spyin on us hillbillies.
Squeaky Wheels
Suzanne Kamata. Wyatt-MacKenzie, Mar.
An American writer who lives in Japan, Kamata describes her experiences traveling around the world with her teenage daughter, Lilia, who is deaf, has cerebral palsy, and uses a wheelchair for mobility. Kamata shares the challenges and joys they encounter as they navigate different cultures and varying degrees of accessibility awareness.
Ten Years a Nomad
Matthew Kepnes. St. Martins, July
Kepnes, known as Nomadic Matt, has built an online following some 100,000 strong by advising readers how to hit the road without breaking the bank. He quit his cubicle job in 2006 and now spends about six months of every year traveling, racking up more than 90 countries and hundreds of thousands of miles. He follows the budget guide How to Travel the World on $50 a Day with this book, which the publisher describes as part memoir, part travel manifesto.
Return to the main feature.
Its an ongoing conundrum for guidebook publishers: how to encourage tourism without engendering overtourism, a term thats become increasingly prevalent in the travel industry. With major European cities inundated by visitors, signs of a backlash have prompted local governments and travel organizations to collaborate on solutions that would ease the crush without stymieing an industry that pumps millions of dollars into regional economies. We are looking at how to facilitate this dialogue between government and industry and then also providing a voice to support solutions, the CEO and president of the U.S. Tour Operators Association, Terry Dale, told trade publication Travel Weekly in a January article titled 2019 Opens with Strict Measures Combating Overtourism.
Guidebook publishers are playing a role, by encouraging responsible travel that focuses on experiencing city life like a local, which often means venturing outside the touristy center. Take Rome, for instance. Much of the city has no tourism at all and prices that are about half the price of what you find at Piazza Navona, Rick Steves says, referencing a square thats popular with visitors. You can see all the clichesand thats okayor you can make friends and have a transformational experience. Those experiences are available in even the most popular destinations, he adds. You can go to those touristy cities and you can do them differently.
The notion of experiencing destinations in new ways drives several initiatives being put forth by travel publishers. Whether theyre enticing tourists to venture beyond a citys well-trod attractions or introducing a standalone guide to a region that was previously dispensed with in a single chapter of a longer book, travel publishers are responding to the challenges presented by modern tourism.
Urban Renewal
In May, Moon is launching the Moon City & Beyond series, which acknowledges overtourism by steering travelers toward less-visited neighborhoods and day-trip destinations. Grace Fujimoto, Moons v-p of acquisitions, says the issues that Barcelona in particular has facedslashed tour bus tires and antitourism graffiti there have garnered international headlinesdirectly influenced the philosophy behind the series.
Moon Milan & Beyond by Lindsey Davidson, for instance, not only mentions Lake Como, where George Clooney famously has a home, but also covers Lake Garda and Lake Maggiore, which may receive less media attention but still hold plenty of appeal. In Moon Florence & Beyond, Alexei J. Cohen recommends various strategies for avoiding the citys infamous crowds: lingering over lunch the way Florentines do, or heading to nearby Pistoia, where an 11th-century palace dominates the main square.
These books are different in terms of the pace were encouraging, Fujimoto says. Were showing how to slow things down. The series adds two titles in July, covering Venice and Copenhagen.
Even guidebooks that dont specifically grapple with issues of overtourism are adopting many of the same tenets as they reach out to younger travelers, who tend to be more willing to explore emerging neighborhoods in search of a citys creative pulse. Fodors is launching the Inside city guide series, a spiritual successor to 2015s Fodors Brooklyn, says editorial director Douglas Stallings. The typical Inside guide will zero in on a city that hasnt yet reached peak tourist attentionInside Lisbon, Inside Nashville, and Inside Berlin pub in Juneand appeal to a different kind of traveler, whos looking for more than just tourist sites, he notes. (For more about Inside guides, see Drawn from Experience.)
Mays Inside Paris differs in that its a mature destination, Stallings says, but here too, the book glances at the citys iconic monuments but focuses on neighborhoods off the typical tourist route. To see the most interesting street art, for instance, the guide directs travelers to the Oberkampf and Canal St.-Martin neighborhoods. We acknowledge that people still want some guidance, so we look at 1015 hotels that we really like, he adds. But the focus in these books is not where to stay but how to enjoy a place.
Hardie Grant has a few new offerings in this vein. It launched its Curious Travel Guides, which delve into art, culture, cuisine, and coffee, with 2018s Sundays in Paris by Yasmin Zeinab. In March the series turns to the Tuscan capital with Lost in Florence by Nardia Plumridge, who, like Zeinab, is a blogger with a follower count in the several tens of thousands. You dont really need a book to tell you the obvious tourist stuff, says publisher Melissa Kayser. People are still looking for unique or hidden experiences.
Australian travel writer Ben Groundwater seeks out the atypical in 10 international citiesincluding Esfahan, Iran, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamin Go Your Own Way (Hardie Grant, Apr.), a guide geared toward solo travelers.
Also from Hardie Grant, the new Half-Full Adventure Maps (Feb.) target a different niche group, Kayser says: college students. Launching with London, Melbourne, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo, the fold-out maps depict illustrated, walkable itineraries and include call-outs to supplemental online content, including a local music playlist. Blank spaces allow users to record their experienceshence the half-full map.
Countryman Press, with its new Weekender line, hopes to appeal to the young denizens of particular big cities, says senior editor Roisin Cameron. The series kicks off in June with Beachy Weekend Getaways from New York City by Teddy Minford. A sample three-day itinerary imagines a traveler on the four oclock train out of town and schedules a weekend full of locally sourced seafood and plenty of cocktails, helpfully suggesting where to get the best hangover-curing greasy breakfast on Sunday morning. In Easy Weekend Getaways from Seattle, also out in June, Anna Katz offers two-day sample itineraries for both adrenalin and bliss seekers, and assumes that both will want to find the nearest winery by the end of the day.
The World on a Platter
Travelers hunger for authentic experiences is also literal, giving rise to culinary-focused tourism that privileges what to eat over what to see. Its popular enough that publishers are devoting entire series to the phenomenon.
Food is never just about foodits access to an experience, begins Bloomsburys Eat Like a Local New York, part of a series that debuts in March with guides to London, Paris, and Tokyo, in addition to New York. Each guide lists more than 100 restaurants, cafes, bars, and markets recommended by a cast of locals. A short essay introduces each section, imparting visiting epicures with the sorts of tips that come from years of gastronomic trial and error. An appropriately crackly-meets-squishy bagel could never be mistaken for bread, as the New York locals boast in a section on the ubiquitous breakfast carb.
The 12 Dishes guides from niche publisher Red Pork Press (dist. by IPG), which arrive in North American bookstores for the first time this spring, aim to demystify regional specialties for new visitors and nudge travelers to the side streets and alleyways where locals congregate, and where menus arent necessarily written in English. Travel has become so much more homogenous, and food is one way to tap into whats authentic, says Leanne Kitchen, who coauthored the series with Antony Suvalko. You will have much more memorable travels if you put yourself out of your comfort zone. Were telling you, Heres where to go and how to do it.
Penang in 12 Dishes (Mar.) leads gastronomes through the citys melting-pot of Indian, Malaysian, and Hokkien Chinese flavors, and offers advice on how to pick out a durian, which beach bars to visit, and more. Ho Chi Minh City in 12 Dishes (Mar.) serves up showcase bites and makes a detour through the citys rich coffee culture. Guides to Shanghai and Singapore will be released in June.
At Countryman Press, L.A. by Mouth (Mar.) by comedian and food and travel writer Mike Postalakis is the second entry (after 2018s Buffalo Eats by Arthur Bovino) in the Travel to Eat series. Postalakis angles his coverage toward his particular interestsstandout tacos, hangover-helper brunches, and the best burgers.
In May, having already poured beer and coffee, Lonely Planet Food adds to its Global Tour line with a close-up on spirits. Global Distilleries Tour offers readers the choicest tipples in more than 30 countries, including singani, made in Bolivia from white Muscat of Alexandria grapes, and rakija, or Balkan fruit brandy.
Expanding Horizons
Amid the books that zero in on a single city or interest, guidebooks that offer a broader scope remain popular. Moon is combining two areas of travel that it previously treated separately with the Drive & Hike line, launching in May. Moon Drive & Hike Appalachian Trail itineraries supplement road-trip info with maps for day hikes of six miles or less. The guide also offers coverage of breweries, barbecue, and more in towns along the way. People are more interested in outdoor travel plans, Fujimoto says. This makes it more accessible. Additional Drive & Hike guides will include one for the Pacific Crest Trail.
In April, Firefly Books is adding more Canadian provinces to its Nature Hot Spots series with 110 Nature Hot Spots in Manitoba and Saskatchewan by Jenn Smith Nelson and Doug ONeill, and the series is venturing to the U.S. for the first time with 150 Nature Hot Spots in California. The states topographical diversity, coupled with a population greater than that of Canada, made it a natural choice for the lines debut in the U.S., says editorial director Steve Cameron.
Insight Guides responds to calls for more sustainable travel with a second edition of Insight Guides Great Railways (Apr.), which had gone out of print. The ubiquity of inexpensive, short-haul flights has made Europe smaller than ever, but it has also made many Europeans more aware of their growing carbon footprint, says Nick Inman, one of the contributing authors to Insight Guides Great Railways. Theres far more consciousness about climate change, he notes. People are starting to rediscover trains and realizing Europe has a brilliant network.
The books rail itineraries connect points throughout Europe and could be used, for example, to transport a traveler from London to Romania, a country that is also getting a major guidebook update. An uptick in interest in Eastern Europe since Insight Guides Romania pubbed in 2007 indicated it was time for a refresh, travel editor Tom Fleming says.
Insight Guides isnt the only publisher casting an eye toward Europes geographical margins. Though Rick Steves Italy has been in publication for more than 20 years, its coverage never included Sicily. That changes in April when Avalon publishes the first edition of Rick Steves Sicily, a destination the eponymous author says surprises and delights first-time visitors. Sicily doesnt hit you on the head like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or Big Ben, Steves says. Instead, it offers some of the best examples of Greek architecture that arent already overrun with tourists. I was blown away by the ancient sites.
What truly draws Steves to Sicily, he says, are the people. Tourists are not only welcome in Sicily, which has lagged far behind the mainland in receiving visitors, but, he adds, theyre invited to the party.
Because Sicily sees fewer tourists, Steves says, it offers a traveler the opportunity to become a cultural chameleon. Those looking for that sort of local immersion will find guidance in Stevess new guidebook and in many others this season.
Jasmina Kelemen is a writer who divides her time between Houston and Caracas and has reported from Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.
This article has been updated with new bibliographic information.
Below, more on the subject of travel books.
Drawn from Experience: New Travel Books 2019
Illustrations provide an antidote to travel-photo overload.
On the Road, Again: New Travel Books 2019
These titles say, Traveler, take the wheel.
View Masters: New Travel Books 2019
Photo-heavy travel books help readers imagine themselves in the picture.
Campus Tours: New Travel Books 2019
University presses shine a spotlight on regional attractions.
Shared Experiences: New Travel Books 2019
The coming season brings titles that recall the simple pleasures as well as the often challenging realities of travel.
Europes Common Path: New Travel Books 2019
To commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day , the Liberation Route Europe Foundation has partnered with Rough Guides to produce a travel guide steeped in history.
Many startups that launched at the beginning of publishings digital transformation later pivoted to find a way to actually earn a profit. Some succeeded; many didnt. One of the oldest of the many digital publishing startups is Open Road Integrated Media, founded in 2009 by former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman and Jeffrey Sharp. Now led by Paul Slavin, the company has been gradually repositioning itself, shifting from its functions as a publisher to those of a marketing company.
That switch, Slavin said, doesnt mean that Open Road is abandoning its role as a publisher of almost 11,000 backlist titles. What it does mean is that Open Road is devoting more resources to promoting e-book editions of backlist titles from other publishers.
Under its Ignition marketing services program, Open Road promotes titles from other publishers through its various digital platforms. When entering the program, publishers provide Open Road with a historical sales baseline for each title (such as 100 downloads per month). The publisher receives 100% of sales until the baseline is reached, after which Open Road and the publisher split the additional sales.
So far, surpassing the baselines hasnt been a problem. According to the most recent data from Open Road, titles in the Ignition program have seen sales nearly triple from average sales before they were in the program. Thirty publishers put a total of more than 6,100 titles in Ignition last year.
One impetus for starting Ignition was that Open Road needed to find more content to promote to its readers. With a total of 24 million consumers viewing its six verticals last year, Slavin said, we found we didnt have enough content to meet demand. He noted that every publisher that has participated in Ignition has put additional titles into the program. He believes publishers are attracted to Ignition because it helps solve their biggest challenge in the digital age: discoverability.
Open Road takes care of all of the marketing of titles in Ignition and places them in the appropriate settings. Its platforms include Early Bird Books, a daily e-book deals newsletter and website; The Lineup, aimed at fans of true crime, horror, the mysterious, and the paranormal; The Portalist, targeted to fans of science fiction and fantasy; Murder & Mayhem, for mystery and thriller readers; The Archive, for fans of history and nonfiction; and A Love So True, for fans of romance.
Slavin credits Open Roads two data teams and its marketing group led by Mary McAveney for building a base of consumers. Our job is to know what our consumers want, Slavin said.
That knowledge has allowed Open Road to counter the downward e-book sales trend traditional publishers are encountering. Were not seeing any decline in e-book sales, Slavin said. In January, sales of all of Open Roads e-books, including those on Ignition as well as those sold from its own catalogue, rose 40% over January 2018, he noted.
The launch of Ignition also helped Open Road stay in the black after a number of years of losses. We will never be not profitable again, Slavin vowed. To that end, he is looking to add at least 7,000 new titles to Ignition this year from a combination of current publishers and new clients.
I think we have the scale and understanding of the data to continue to drive this business, Slavin said.
Deal of the Week: Gladwells Strangers Finds Home at LB In a North American rights acquisition, Little, Brown nabbed Malcolm Gladwells next book, Talking to Strangers. Tina Bennett at William Morris Endeavor sold the book, which is slated for September, to Asya Muchnick. Talking to Strangers is Gladwells first book since his 2013 bestseller David and Goliath and is, LB said, a classically Gladwell-ian intellectual adventure in which he examines why there is something very wrong with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we dont know. Calling the title a gripping guidebook for troubled times, LB added that it shows how our inability to meaningfully talk to strangers is inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.
FROM THE U.S.
Guillory Re-ups with Berkley
Jasmine Guillory, whose 2018 sophomore novel The Proposal was recently named the February pick of Reese Witherspoons Book Club, closed a four-book deal with Berkley. Cindy Hwang took world English rights to the titles from Holly Root at Root Literary. Guillory, Berkley noted, has been at the forefront of a new wave of interest in romance novels; she was also mentioned in a 2018 PW article about a renewed interest in the genre from indie booksellers. The first book under this deal is set for 2020.
Hachette Picks Up Gordons Conversations
Ed Gordon, a journalist and host of the BET show Weekly, sold Conversations in Black: On Power, Politics, and Leadership to Krishan Trotman at Hachette Books. Regina Brooks at Serendipity Literary Agency brokered the world rights agreement. The book, which is based on conversations with notable African-Americans such as politician Maxine Waters and actress Kerry Washington, will, according to Hachette, explore and debate the tactics used to secure black Americas rightful place in the home of the brave and serve as a blueprint for navigating race in a new American landscape.
Firestone Gets Coded at Putnam
After a six-figure preempt, Putnams Stephanie Pitts acquired Carrie Firestones debut middle grade novel, Dress Coded. The title, which Sara Crowe at Pippin sold in a two-book, world English rights agreement, follows an eighth grader who launches her own podcast to challenge her schools dress code. The show, Putnam explained, sparks a rebellion, and the heroine must deal with that while also juggling changing friendships and her older brothers vaping addiction.
Canadian Social Media Star Strikes U.S. Deal
Humble the Poet closed a rumored six-figure, two-book deal with HarperOne. Humble, whom his new publisher called a rapper, poet, and social media influencer, is already a bestseller in his native Canada, where he self-published Unlearn: 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life. (After self-publishing Unlearn, Indigo acquired Canadian rights.) In the deal, HarperOne took world rights, excluding English-language print in Canada, to Unlearn, and world rights, excluding English-language in Canada, to a new book titled Things No One Else Can Teach Us. The U.S. edition of Unlearn is slated for April 9, while Things is set for fall 2019. Unlearn, the publisher said, provides counterintuitive advice for shedding the things that hold us back. Things, meanwhile, offers lessons for finding the silver linings in our hardest times. Anna Paustenbach preempted the books from Marc Gerald and Jaime Chu at Europa Content.
Boynton Closes Double at Workman
Sandra Boynton (Hippos Go Berserk) struck a two-book world rights agreement with Workman Publishing. A songwriter, author, humorist, and illustrator, Boynton has written more than 60 books for children and has been publishing with Workman for over 30 years. In that time, Workman said, she has sold more than 70 million copies. Book one in this deal, Dinosnores, is about, per the publisher, a group of very noisy dinosaurs who snore throughout the night. The title is set for fall 2019. Workmans Daniel Reynolds brokered the agreement directly with Boynton.
Lubins Moms Heads to HC
In a rumored six-figure deal, Wall Street Journal editor Joann Lublin sold Power Moms to Hollis Heimbouch at HarperCollins. Heimbouch took world rights from Karen Gantz, who has an eponymous shingle. Gantz, who noted that for the first time in our countrys history a significant number of mothers have reached upper management, said the book compares the first generation of trailblazer executive mothers with young power moms today.
INTERNATIONAL
Laura Cumming, an art critic at the Observer, sold a memoir called On Chapel Sands, about the childhood disappearance of her mother, to U.K. publisher Chatto & Windus. The imprint, part of Penguin UK, called the book, which is subtitled My Mother and Other Missing Persons, astonishing. In the States, Nan Graham at Scribner took U.S. rights. [The Bookseller]
Viking in the U.K. has nabbed U.K. and Commonwealth rights to a translation of French author Philippe Bessons award-winning novel Lie With Me (published in France by Editions Julliard). Actress Molly Ringwald is doing the translation. Scribner, which is publishing the book in the U.S. in September, brokered the agreement with Viking. [The Bookseller]
PAGE TO SCREEN
Fox 2000 has optioned Angie Thomass On the Come Up. The authors sophomore novel was published last week by HarperCollinss Balzer + Bray imprint. The deal sees the continuation of a relationship between Thomas and Fox 2000, as the studio also released the 2018 film adaptation of her debut bestseller, The Hate U Give. [Deadline]
The long road to this Marchs publication of The Trial of Lizzie Borden, Cara Robertsons thorough and provocative telling of the 1892 crime that gripped America and its aftermath, is a unique story second only to the mystery surrounding Lizzie Borden herself, according to Jonathan Karp, president and publisher at Simon & Schuster. Borden, infamous mainly from that earworm childrens jingle, was a genteel young lady who was accused of axing her father, Andrew, and stepmother, Abby, to death in their Fall River, Mass., home and was acquitted in a sensational trial.
In 2002, when Karp was a Random House editor, he bought North American rights to the book from Tina Bennett, then at Janklow & Nesbit; publication was set for 2005. Karp purchased the book on a detailed proposal and says he was knocked out by it. His enthusiasm hasnt waned over the intervening years. First of all, Karp tells me, when Tina Bennett calls, you snap to attention, and this was in the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial. He adds, I had never thought of the Lizzie Borden story as a trial, but here was this authora serious scholar who was writing history that read like fiction. Robertsons pitch, he says, had him in six words: Locked room mystery written by Sophocles.
As of 2005, Karp hadnt seen anything else. He left Random (I was sad to leave this book) and Bennett joined William Morris Endeavor.
Robertson tells me, Looking back, it seems like it should have been easier to write this book, but it took me a long time to figure out how to tell the story. I think I had to age into it.
Borden was the subject of Robertsons undergraduate thesis at Harvard in 1990. She says that a professor suggested she take a year to make it into a book. Instead Robertson went off to Oxford for a PhD in English, followed by a law degree from Stanford (she was at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague when she signed with Karp in 2002). But the story kept calling to me, she says. I love archiving and researching, and something new and tantalizing was always turning up, like the papers of the prosecutor, Hosea Knowlton, because Yankee families were reluctant to reveal what they knew. Robertson notes that public trials are a window into the culture of each age; they highlight the tender points, she says.
Bennett met Robertson through an industry friend from Stanford and from Robertsons background knew there was no question she was a serious person with an extraordinary mind. When I comment that the Borden story has been widely covered, she astutely corrects me: Its a legendary true crime story. But I dont think many people actually have a clear picture of what happened, or of the Gilded Age world Lizzie lived in.
Bennett says she originally sold the book to Karp at auction (Jon instantly understood the dark allure of the story, both as an important episode in American history, and as an intimate, immersive read), and when it again became available, she sent the manuscript to him, as an exclusive, in fall 2016. They signed the deal in September. I never gave up, Karp says. It was like I recovered my lost youth!
An interesting aspect of the Borden story, according to Karp, is that its meant something different to each generation. Theres a changing kaleidoscope of motivations and preoccupations, and Cara has been assiduous in sorting through the different theories, he says.
Bennett adds that the psychological mystery of the story captures every generation in a different way.
The story can be seen through the prisms of mental illness, parental neglect, abuse, and feminism. Karp tells me there was no consensus among early S&S readers as to Bordens guilt or innocence. Robertson says that she deliberately kept the possibilities open as she went back and forth. The enigma continues: who else could have done it? The murder was so violent, done in such close proximity. How could an ordinary woman have committed such a vicious act?
Robertson says shes decided not to spoil the experienceto let readers puzzle it out for themselves. And she adds, If there was an easy answer, it wouldnt be so intriguing.
Karp sees The Trial of Lizzie Borden as a womans story, important in todays climate. A cross-country tour is planned, including appearances in Boston, Cambridge, and, yes, Fall River. As for what Karp paid this second time around, he will only say, Anything associated with Lizzie Borden is a killing!
Americas scenic roadways got a major boost in Congress today as the House of Representatives passed a bill to restart the dormant National Scenic Byways Program, while companion legislation was introduced in the Senate.
We are thrilled with Congress support for scenic byways, said Mark Falzone, president of Scenic America. The National Scenic Byways Program is a proven winner: it protects places with historic, scenic and cultural significance and contributes to local economies by promoting them as destinations.
The House Bill, H.R. 831, sponsored by Rep. David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Rep. Garret Graves, Republican of Louisiana, passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 404 19.
As Rhode Islanders know, our state is home to some of the most beautiful scenic byways in the country, said Rep. Cicilline. This bipartisan bill will allow us to capitalize on our states natural beauty and generate millions of dollars in new economic activity. Im pleased that this bill passed the House today and I look forward to seeing it signed into law.
Louisianas historical byways weave through her natural beauty and help tell the story of our history and unique culture. They are critical to preserving our heritage, growing our economy for the future and caring for our rural communities, said Rep. Graves.
The Senate bill, S. 349, also enjoys bipartisan support and is sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland.
I am proud that my home state of Maine boasts not only three National Scenic Byways, but also the Acadia All-American Road. These roadways provide Mainers and tourists alike with spectacular views and memorable experiences, while at the same time spurring much-needed economic activity in the surrounding areas, said Senator Collins. The National Scenic Byways Program represents a true win-win scenario by protecting precious corridors and providing tangible benefits for local communities.
Maryland is home to 18 designated byways, and the reopening of this program will be beneficial to future development and maintenance of these important routes, said Senator Cardin. This program helps direct visitors to areas of interest along our scenic byways, and generates revenue for the surrounding communities.
We applaud the exemplary leadership of Rep. Cicilline and Rep. Graves resulting in todays passage of scenic byways legislation in the House, said Falzone. And we extend our sincere appreciation to Senator Collins and Senator Cardin for their visionary support of our countrys scenic roadways and rural economies. We look forward to helping pass their bill in the Senate.
Since its inception in 1991 the program has bestowed the National Scenic Byway designation on 150 roads around the country, but the last round of designations occurred ten years ago and Congress officially pulled support for the program in 2012.
National Scenic Byways have been shown to generate significant economic activity for nearby communities, many of which are small and rural in nature. A 2010 report from the University of Minnesota showed a $21.6 million economic impact from traveler spending along both the Paul Bunyan Scenic Byway and nearby Lake Country Scenic Byway. A 2013 study of Scenic Byway 12 in Utah found that the byway generated nearly $13 million annually in local spending.
A recent survey found that 44 state scenic byways across the country are prepared to take advantage of the legislation as soon as the program is reopened. The National Scenic Byway designation means these roads are sought out by both domestic and international travelers, and its critical that we provide local byways with the opportunity to seek the national recognition and reap the well-established benefits, said Falzone.
What an honor to host the Red Arrows and the Royal Air Force, said Bryan Lilley, Chairman of the New York International Air Show. This is the third international jet team weve hosted in the five year history of the event, so we feel its time to brand the show with International in its title.
They will join the U.S. Navy Blue Angels in headlining the event that will also feature the Northeast debut of the U.S. Air Force F-35 Lightning II Demo Team.
The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, the Red Arrows, are coming to North America for the first time in over a decade. They are one of the worlds premier aerobatic display teams, representing the speed, agility and precision of the Royal Air Force. They assist in recruiting to the Armed Forces, act as ambassadors for the United Kingdom at home and overseas and promote the best of British.
What an honor to host the Red Arrows and the Royal Air Force, said Bryan Lilley, Chairman of the New York International Air Show. This is the third international jet team weve hosted in the five year history of the event, so we feel its time to brand the show with International in its title.
The New York Air Show has been a tremendous success since we brought it back to Orange County in 2015. The addition of the Royal Air Force Red Arrows to an already impressive lineup is a testament to that. This will be the biggest New York Air Show ever and we are eager and excited to host this event with our partners, the Port Authority and B. Lilley Productions," said Orange County Executive Steven M. Neuhaus.
The Early Bird Sale is going on now for Flight Line Club VIP, and general admission tickets for the New York International Air Show at a savings of 35 percent off the day-of-event price.
Sponsorship opportunities and corporate hospitality packages are also available and volunteer registration is now open. For more information on the Royal Air Force Red Arrows and the event please visit http://airshowny.com/ or follow the event on Facebook.
Models at the Joseph Abboud fall 2019 collection conveyed the stepped-onto-Ellis-Island look with MENAJI's skincare artistry and beautifully tailored fashions. Photography by Shawn Punch Photography The ability to integrate Abbouds vision through mens skincare secures MENAJI as the brand of choice for fashions most esteemed designers.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, wrote Emma Lazurus, which is forever inscribed on the Statue of Liberty as she welcomes weary travelers in search of a new life. Poetry that further serves as the inspiration for Joseph Abbouds Fall 2019 collection. Paying homage to turn-of-the-century immigrants, makeup artist Judy Chong further sealed the image by using MENAJIs range of mens skincare products and undetectable cosmetics on the models.
The ability to integrate Abbouds vision through mens skincare secures MENAJI as the brand of choice for fashions most esteemed designers. And not just for high impact performances but lifelong healthful habits that models and makeup artists swear by.
Abboud models looked rugged, handsome, and evoked the period details of travelers who endured a hard journey for a better life. The themes symbol were abundant, first from the South Street location, where models went up the bowels of the ship, down a gang plank, and dazzled the audience who were suddenly transported to another time.
To further the vision of this epic collection, MENAJIs ClearShave was used to prep the skin since the models had some facial hair to touch up the beards, says MENAJI President Pamela Viglielmo. The Power Hydrator moisturized and primed the skin for other products, such as our concealer sticks that covered up unsightly areas. Our Anti-Shine powders knocked out shine, which worked well under the cameras. The results reinforced the story of an immigrant arriving to America.
Abbouds fashions were layered, rich in earth tone colors and fabrics. Vests, scarves, jackets with twice-waist wrapped belts, tapestry fabric carpet bag handles and warm kid leather gloves were the details to evoke the period. MENAJIs ability to make men look good and natural ensured a spectacular runway show in respect to their quality products and undetectable cosmetics with high DEF coverage.
Says Abboud, Set in the spirit of Ellis Island at Pier 16part of the South Street Seaport Museumthis show honors who we were and who we are. As the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, it gives me great pride to celebrate Americas rich tapestry and diverse heritage the best way I know how: By making timeless, authentic, and quality clothes for all Americans.
Get the MENAJI + Abboud Look: The curated grooming kit for Josephs Abboud Fall 2019 Collection included ClearShave, Power Hydrator and CAMO Conceler. Skin perfecting products used to prime the skin, hydrate, and add shading in a neutral earthy color palette to conjure up images of the handsome rugged traveler.
Credits:
Makeup Judy Chong for MENAJI
Hair Thom Priano for R+CO
Production Moda Tech
Social Media Tags: @menaji_skincare @realurbancamo @juju_glam
ABOUT MENAJI WORLDWIDE
For nearly 20 years, MENAJI has been recognized as the established leader in offering products specific to a mans needs while investing in research and product testing to create the best formulations a man can use. The company has enjoyed a meteoric following, coinciding with the social media mentality that a mans self-esteem is improved when looking his best.
Refining the standards men have toward their grooming regiment, MENAJI is known for such cutting-edge products as Liquid Powder Shine Eliminator, the product makeup artists swear by due to its results-driven performance as well as the Urban Camouflage Concealers that coverup dark circles and blemishes with a natural application.
For a second consecutive year in a row, UVCA, Western NIS Enterprise Fund, Victor Pinchuk Foundation, and Horizon Capital launched Ukrainian House in Davos to showcase the new Ukraine, a vibrant and dynamic European democracy leveraging its competitive advantages in brains, hands, and grains. The theme of this year was Ukraine: Creativity, Innovation, Opportunity. Ukraine House Davos was held at Promenade 62, Davos, Switzerland from January 21-25, 2019.
Intetics is proud to have the opportunity and join the influential thinkers, leaders, entrepreneurs and business people. Together with Intetics President and CEO Boris Kontsevoi, and CTO Sergey Kizyan, they discovered one of Europes most promising markets.
Ukraine is a modern, European country with a rich heritage and cultural legacy spanning over a thousand years, undergoing the most extensive societal and economic transformation in its history, said Alexa Chopivsky, Executive Director of Ukraine House Davos. We are delighted to amplify Ukraines voice on the global stage and substantial progress made, resulting in a paradigm shift in investors perception of Ukraine and its talented people.
Ukraine House Davos featured panels on women trailblazers, technology, new energy, creative industries, character in leadership and more. Among invited speakers were Petro Poroshenko, President of Ukraine; Vitali Klitschko, Kyiv Mayor; Malala, the Nobel Prize winner; Gerard Seijts, Ivey Business School, Executive Director, Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership; Elliot Gerson, Executive Vice President, Aspen Institute; Fred Kempe, President, Atlantic Council; Ieva Ilves, former First Lady, Estonia; Daniel Bilak, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, UkraineInvest; Michael Yurkovich, CEO of TIU Canada; Karl Sturen, founder and CEO Vindcraft; Fabienne Demol, Executive Vice-President, Global Head of Business Development, Total Eren; and actress Lupita Nyongo.
Ukraine House pulled together top-quality panel discussions, events promoting the country, investment sessions and networking receptions.
During the event, it was noted that the Ukraine's tech sector grew at an average of 28 per cent annually over the last three years and the capital Kyiv is now challenging more established centers to become one of the top tech hubs of Europe. The growth and development of such Ukrainian IT giants as Bitfury, GitLab, Softserve, and Ciklum proves this point.
I was excited to participate in such a great event and meet worlds influencers. Davos is really the place to be if you want to stay ahead of the pack, said Boris Kontsevoi, President and CEO Intetics Inc.
The business community covered numerous ideas, plans, predictions and issues. Among those were discussions on the latest trends in global investing in artificial intelligence startups, emerging markets, privacy in the digital age, future of healthcare and mobility.
Special attentional was paid to the topics covering blockchain technologies and crypto currencies. It is expected that these technologies would have positive affect in the coming years.
All these discussions were accompanied by the exciting fire chats, the fashion and Ukrainian House parties.
4 days, 14-15 working hours daily. Dozens of meetings with amazing people: politicians, entrepreneurs, businessmen, fashion people, artists. These were amazing days. We got numerous thought-provoking insights. I am looking forward to Davos 2020 (50 jubilee time), said Sergey Kizyan, CTO Intetics Inc.
More information can be found on http://www.ukrainehousedavos.com.
SOURCE: Ukraine House Davos
About Ukraine House Davos
Ukraine House Davos is a multi-format venue, powered by Co-Organizers Ukrainian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (UVCA), Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), Victor Pinchuk Foundation and Horizon Capital. Ukraine House Davos is proud of its all-female, five-member Organizing Committee who have volunteered significant time and energy to launch this event, including Svitlana Grytsenko (Victor Pinchuk Foundation), Jaroslawa Johnson (WNISEF), Lenna Koszarny (Horizon Capital), Olga Afanasyeva (UVCA), and Alexa Chopivsky (Ukraine House Davos).
In addition to the generous support of its Co-Organizers and Gold Sponsor Temerty Foundation, Panel Sponsors of Ukraine House Davos include EBS, Effective Investments LLC, First Generation Capital, ICU, IT Ukraine Association, TA Ventures, TIU Canada, and UFUTURE Investment Group.
Ukraine House Davos is supported by UkraineInvest, National Investment Council, Ukrainian World Congress, Aspen Institute, Aspen Institute Kyiv, and the Atlantic Council.
https://intetics.com/
About Intetics Inc.
Intetics Inc. is a leading global technology company focused on creation and operation of distributed professional teams for custom software development, software testing, systems integration, and data processing. Intetics is the pioneer of Offshore Dedicated Teams, the inventor of Remote In-Sourcing, Predictive Software Engineering framework and Technical debt reduction platform (TETRA). Intetics has broad industry experience, deep software engineering expertise, an outstanding quality management platform and an unparalleled methodology for talent recruitment, team building and talent retention that guarantee that clients receive exceptional results for their software applications and data processing projects. At Intetics, our outcomes do not just meet clients expectations, they have been exceeding them for our two decades in business.
Intetics is ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 27001 (security) certified and Microsoft and Oracle Gold Partner. The companys innovation and growth achievements are reflected in winning prestigious Inc 5000, Software 500, Chicago Innovation, CRN 100, Deloitte Technology Fast 50, European IT Excellence and Best European BPO awards, and inclusion into Top 100 Global Service Providers and Top 100 Outsourcing Companies lists.
Earning the Best of Staffing Diamond Award year after year validates our team's daily commitment to living Insurance Relief's Mission: 'Consistently provide client experiences focused on what they value most'
Insurance Relief, a part of the PrideStaff companies, is pleased to announce that they have earned one of ClearlyRateds Best of Staffing Client and Talent Diamond Awards, after winning the Best of Staffing Client and Talent Awards at least five years in a row for providing superior service to their clients and job seekers.
Each year, fewer than 2% of all U.S. and Canadian staffing agencies earn a Best of Staffing Award, and just 35% of the 2019 winners earned the Diamond Award distinction. This is the fourth consecutive year Insurance Relief has earned the Diamond Award for client satisfaction and the third consecutive year they have won for talent satisfaction, which makes them part of a truly elite group of staffing companies.
Presented in partnership with CareerBuilder, ClearlyRated's Best of Staffing winners have proven to be industry leaders in service quality based entirely on ratings provided by their clients and the employees theyve helped find jobs. On average, clients of winning agencies are 2.2 times more likely to be completely satisfied and job seekers who work with winning agencies are 1.7 times more likely to be completely satisfied with the services provided compared to those working with non-winning agencies.
"Earning the Best of Staffing Diamond Award year after year validates our team's daily commitment to living Insurance Relief's Mission: 'Consistently provide client experiences focused on what they value most'," said Kade Houston, Division Manager at Insurance Relief. "By focusing on both client and talent satisfaction, we enable our clients to secure the qualified insurance talent they need to succeed in a tight candidate market, while providing job seekers and associates with outstanding employment opportunities."
"This recognition is especially meaningful, because it's a direct reflection of the quality of service we provide," continued Houston. "As we look to the year ahead, we're committed to raising the bar on service excellence and working even harder to deliver world-class experiences for everyone we serve."
"In todays historically tight labor market, hiring managers and job seekers need a clear and reputable way to vet potential staffing and recruiting partners," said ClearlyRateds CEO Eric Gregg. "Best of Staffing winners have set themselves apart by demonstrating their ongoing commitment to client and candidate service, consistently investing in a survey and feedback program that brings transparency to the client and talent experience at their firm. Im thrilled to showcase these service leaders alongside their validated client and talent ratings on ClearlyRated.com!"
About Insurance Relief
A division of PrideStaff, Insurance Relief specializes in recruiting top candidates for companies within the insurance industry. The parent company was founded in the 1970s as 100 percent company-owned units and began staffing franchising in 1995. They operate over 80 offices in North America to serve over 5,000 clients. With over 40 years in the staffing business, headquartered in Fresno, CA, all PrideStaff brands offer the resources and expertise of a national firm with the spirit, dedication and personal service of smaller, entrepreneurial firms. For more information on Insurance Relief services, visit http://www.insurance-relief.com.
PrideStaff and Insurance Relief's shared Mission: Consistently provide client experiences focused on what they value most.
About ClearlyRated
ClearlyRated (formerly known as Inavero) administers more staffing agency client and talent satisfaction surveys than any other firm in the world, reporting on more than 1.2 million satisfaction surveys from staffing agency clients and job seekers each year. Committed to delivering ongoing value to the industry, ClearlyRated is proud to serve as the American Staffing Associations exclusive service quality partner. Learn more at ClearlyRated.com/Solutions.
About Best of Staffing
ClearlyRateds Best of Staffing Award is the only award in the U.S. and Canada that recognizes staffing agencies that have proven superior service quality based entirely on ratings provided by their clients and job candidates. Award winners are showcased by city and area of expertise on ClearlyRated.com an online business directory that helps buyers of professional services find service leaders and vet prospective firms based exclusively on validated client and talent ratings and testimonials.
More and more investors are turning to real estate as an investment class.
About the Series: Investors considering making an investment in real estate have a variety of choices: retail, office buildings, industrial, raw land, and, of course residential. We will cover the several types of real estate classes that one may choose to invest in, explaining where to look for opportunities, how to diligence them, possible funding solutions, and best practice for execution.
About the Episode: We will look at the critical steps involved in the process of choosing the right investment, finalizing the contract, negotiating the deal at closing, and beyond.
To learn more, click here.
The webinar will be available on-demand after its premiere. As with every Financial Poise Webinar, it will be an engaging and plain English conversation designed to entertain as it teaches.
About Financial Poise
Financial Poise has one mission: to provide reliable plain English business, financial and legal education to investors, private business owners and executives, and their respective trusted advisors. Financial Poise content is created by seasoned, respected experts who are invited to join our Faculty only after being recommended by current Faculty Members. Our editorial staff then works to make sure all content is easily digestible. Financial Poise is a meritocracy; nobody can buy their way into the Financial Poise Faculty. Start learning today at https://www.financialpoise.com/
(L) Feryal Ahmadi, Chief Operating Officer, DMCC (R) Vandana Yadav IAS, Managing Director, WBIDC As we deepen our already strong partnership with the business community in India, DMCC takes pride in collaborating with WBIDC, and the state of West Bengal, to seek new ways to attract, facilitate and promote trade.
DMCC, the worlds flagship Free Zone and Government of Dubai Authority on commodities trade and enterprise, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation Ltd, Government of West Bengal (WBIDC).
Feryal Ahmadi, Chief Operating Officer of DMCC and Vandana Yadav IAS, Managing Director of WBIDC signed the MoU at the 5th Bengal Global Business Summit in Kolkata, India, further cementing the strong bilateral trade relations between DMCC and a rapidly growing Indian business community. Representatives of both Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in India and Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry attended the ceremony in support of DMCC.
As we deepen our already strong partnership with the business community in India, DMCC takes pride in collaborating with WBIDC, and the state of West Bengal, to seek new ways to attract, facilitate and promote trade. As a result of our relationship with WBIDC, the initiatives outlined in this MoU serve as a launch pad for Indian businesses looking to grow in Dubai and beyond, said Feryal Ahmadi, Chief Operating Officer, DMCC.
India is the UAEs second largest trading partner by volume. Both countries are making a concerted effort to strengthen commercial ties, create an environment that is even more welcoming to investment, removes unnecessary bureaucracy and opens the door trade. By signing this MoU, we are delighted that DMCC and State of Bengal are clearly embracing this approach and one that will only serve to benefit both countries, said Ahmad Alfalahi, Commercial Attache for the UAE Embassy - India.
The MoU commits both parties to raise awareness around export promotion, facilitate trade, boost investment interaction and connect businesses from across geographies, sectors and industries.
There is a strong synergy between Dubai and the state of West Bengal. Looking ahead, there is a signficant opportunity to strengthen ties, collaborate further and work even closer together to boost business activity and knowledge transfer. DMCC is a strong partner, and will help Dubai, India and West Bengal do precisely that. We look forward to working with the worlds leading Free Zone and meet the ambitious targets outlined in our MoU, added Vandana Yadav IAS, Managing Director, WBIDC.
With over 15,000 member companies in its Free Zone, DMCC has a track-record providing attractive business solutions in a regulated, business friendly environment, including its much anticipated Uptown Dubai district.
One Indian company joins DMCC every single working day. Leading Indian firms based in DMCC include: Tata Group, Reliance, Hakan Agro, Rosy Blue and Adani Group.
Island Seafood Stew is one of the many seasonal plates with surprisingly modern twists that populate the newly opened AND Fish Kitchen + Bars eclectic menu. Guests of the resort can now enjoy our new seaside-inspired dining experience filled with flavorful small plates and artisan entrees created for the most discriminating of palates.
AND Fish Kitchen + Bar, South Floridas newest fresh-catch culinary experience located inside the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Pompano Beach Resort & Spa, celebrated its grand opening on Thursday, February 7. The new restaurant complements the City of Pompano Beachs ongoing evolution and expansion of new dining, cultural arts, shopping and residential options.
Were grateful for the overwhelmingly positive community and industry welcome to our AND Fish Kitchen + Bar grand opening, said Marco Fuentes, general manager of Fort Lauderdale Marriott Pompano Beach Resort & Spa. Guests of the resort can now enjoy our new seaside-inspired dining experience filled with flavorful small plates and artisan entrees created for the most discriminating of palates.
The 115-seat indoor restaurant boasts an exceptional wine list with hand-crafted cocktails and signature dishes served in a contemporary nautical setting designed by Bigtime Design Studios of Miami. Its decor features subtle sea and sand graphic nods to its beachfront locale, marine life and fishing and diving lore with ship ropes and rigging accents.
Classic flavors and seasonal plates with surprisingly modern twists populate AND Fishs eclectic menu. Seafarer selections include Blue Point Oysters, Grilled Octopus, a Lobster Roll on artisan bread and Island Seafood Stew in a Thai Curry Broth over Coconut Rice. Landlubbers can dig into the Chairmans Dry-Aged Bone-In Rib Eye with Compressed Yukon, Rainbow Chard and Bone Marrow Butter with a Red Wine Reduction. Each dish has an accompanying wine recommendation, hand-picked for a perfect pairing by the culinary team. Delectable desserts include a tantalizing Strawberry Shortcake, Florida Key Lime Pie and more.
AND Fish is open Monday through Sunday, daily, for dinner with a leisurely extended Happy Hour from 3 p.m. 7 p.m.
Reservations for AND Fish are now being accepted at (954) 944-9515 or by visiting opentable.com.
About AND Fish Kitchen + Bar
AND Fish Kitchen + Bar is a fresh-catch culinary experience inspired by Pompano Beachs casual coastal charm, world-class fishing and abundant diving. The heart of AND Fish resides in its diverse seafood options, mainland favorites, hand-crafted cocktails and expertly curated wine list served in a contemporary nautical setting. Its eclectic menu features classic flavors and seasonal dishes with surprisingly modern twists including raw bar delicacies, island seafood creations, citrus-marinated salads, Far East spiced main plates and artfully grilled chicken and dry-aged steaks, all skillfully prepared and presented with carefully chosen wine recommendations for the perfect pairing. AND Fish is open Monday through Sunday, daily, for dinner with a leisurely extended Happy Hour from 3 p.m. 7 p.m. AND FISH Kitchen + Bar is located at 1200 North Ocean Boulevard in Pompano Beach (inside of the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Pompano Beach Resort & Spa). For reservations, call (954) 944-9515 or visit opentable.com.
Skopje, Feb 10 : The presidential elections in Macedonia will be held on April 21, Macedonian Speaker of Parliament Talat Xhaferi has said.
Xhaferi on Friday said that the second round of elections will be held on May 5, if needed, Xinhua news agency reported.
The term of the current Macedonian President, Gjorge Ivanov, ends on May 12.
Meanwhile, Macedonian parties are intensifying the process for the nomination of their candidates in the presidential election.
Zoran Zaev's ruling Social Democratic Union party (SDSM) hasn't announced the candidates' names, so far. SDSM has announced that the party will choose its candidate at a party conference to be held on March 3.
VMRO-DPMNE's main opposition party in Macedonia will announce its candidate on February 16.
As of now, nine contenders have submitted their candidature.
The term of the President's office in Macedonia lasts five years.
Bengaluru, Feb 9 : Calling for an inquiry into the audio tape to ascertain if its voice was that of BJP leader B.S. Yeddyurappa, Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Saturday offered to quit politics if it was proved fake and fabricated.
"I call for an inquiry into the audio tape voice, in which names of state assembly speaker (K.R. Ramesh Kumar), BJP President Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were mentioned. Let truth prevail," Kumaraswamy told reporters at Dharmasthala, about 300 km from here.
Yeddyurappa on Friday termed fake the audio tape in which a voice likened to his allegedly lured Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) Gurmitkal legislator Nanganagiuda Kandakur to join the BJP through his son Sharanagouda.
Quoting Sharanagouda, Kumaraswamy said here on Friday that Yeddyurappa had told the former to go Mumbai for collecting payment from his son B.S. Raghavendra as a price for Kandakur's defection to the BJP.
Clarifying that he did not say that the voice in the tape he released on Friday was that of Yeddyurappa, the Chief Minister accused the BJP of trying to destabilise his 8-month-old coalition government by luring legislators of the JD-S and Congress allies.
Refuting Kumaraswamy's charge, Yeddyurappa said he would resign as a legislator and quit politics if the voice in the tape was proved to his.
Admitting that he was basically film producer, Kumaraswamy said he did not do anything like the state BJP leaders who fabricated an audio tape in his voice in a scam.
The Chief Minister was at the pilgrim town to unveil public welfare schemes on the occasion of the anointment (maha-mastakabhisheka) of Jain seer Bahubali.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : The CPI-M on Saturday slammed the Kamal Nath-led Congress government in Madhya Pradesh for invoking the stringent National Security Act (NSA) in cases of alleged cow slaughter, terming it as an attempt to "appease the communal forces".
The condemnation came during a two-day meeting of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) that concluded on Saturday.
"This stringent legislation was meant to be used against anti-national terrorists. Its invocation over such allegations displays an effort to appease the communal elements," party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said while briefing the media after the meet.
He demanded the revocation of the NSA slapped against five persons in Madhya Pradesh by the Kamal Nath government.
Notably, Congress President Rahul Gandhi too has conveyed his reservations about Madhya Pradesh government's action to Chief Minister.
Asked if 'Mahagathbandhan' or the grand alliance of the non-NDA parties would take shape, Yechury said that alliances and understandings between like minded parties would happen statewise with different dynamics in each state.
He, however, asserted that a coalition would take place after the Lok Sabha elections just as it has happened on several occasions in the past.
Kolkata, Feb 9 : Trinamool Congress legislator Satyajit Biwsas was shot dead by unidentified assailants at a Saraswati Puja programme in West Bengals Nadia district on Saturday evening, police said.
The Trinamool accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of being involved in the murder, but it denied the charge and called for a Central Bureau of Investigation enquiry, if needed.
Biswas, 37, the lawmaker from Krishnaganj (SC), was fatally shot while attending the puja inauguration programme in Phulbari along with state minister Ratna Ghosh and Trinamool district president Gourishankar Dutta.
The newly-married legislator was fired upon multiple times from close range when he was coming down the stage after the programme.
Biswas, a popular scheduled caste leader, was rushed to a local hospital where he was declared dead.
The Trinamool alleged a BJP hand behind the crime.
"BJP and (its leader) Mukul Roy harboured a deep grudge against him as Biswas became an MLA at a time when Roy had betrayed us. The killing is the result of that conspiracy. We will see its end. There will be an inquiry by the police.
"But whoever has murdered, has done it with the blessings of Mukul Roy. This aspect cannot be glossed over.," Dutta alleged.
BJP state president Dilip Ghosh called the murder "unfortunate", and said it was Trinamool's habit to link his party to every such killing of its leaders.
"This is a very unfortunate incident. Last month, the MLA of Joynagar had a close brush with death. Now the BJP is being made the sacrificial lamb.
"Earlier, lot of murders had taken place in Birbhum district, their workers were also killed . They tried to implicate us in all these killings also. But the victims' families pointed fingers at the factional feuds with within the Trinamool.
"We want the truth to come out. Whoever is guilty, should be punished. This politics of murder should stop in West Bengal," said Ghosh.
He said murderers and anti-social elements have now taken up the Trinamool flag. "These people are committing such murders," he said.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday attacked West Bengal Chief Minister for "choosing the path of falsehood" to protect those involved in the chit funds scam.
Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters, party MP Meenkashi Lekhi said: "The condition of West Bengal for last few years is in front of all of you.... how the permission for the Durga Puja and Saraswati Puja is denied and how the Rath Yatras are being stopped."
"These are the same people who keep on saying that the democracy is in danger. If the democracy is in danger in India, then it is for the two reasons, one of the reasons is corruption and the other is falsehood.
"And Mamata is involved in corruption," she alleged, adding that Banerjee's government is trying to protect the corrupt people involved in the chit funds scams involving thousands of crores.
Hitting at Banerjee, also the Trinamool Congress chief, Lekhi said, "Today she is not allowing BJP rallies on the false law and order situation in the state. It is done because BJP is gaining people's support."
"And this has been proved in a sting operation carried out by a news channel," she said referring to a sting conducted by India Today television.
She said that there are many states in the country where BJP is not in power but they organised rallies using their constitutional right.
She also said that Banerjee violated the oath of the Constitution itself because she is not understanding the fact that Bengal is part of India and the Union government has as much authority in Bengal as the state government.
Jaipur, Feb 9 : The Rajasthan government's attempt to persuade the protesting Gujjars blocking the Delhi-Mumbai railway route failed on Saturday, even as rail traffic remained disrupted on the section for the second consecutive day.
The Gujjars are demanding 5 per cent reservation in jobs and education institutes in the state.
The state government has deputed Tourism Minister Vishwendra Singh and IAS officer Neeraj K. Pawan to hold talks with the Gujjar Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti.
However, the talks could not materialize and the Gujjars decided to continue their stir. Many trains were diverted or cancelled for the second day.
The protesting Gujjars continue to block Malarna Dungar railway tracks on Delhi-Mumbai route.
More than 24 hours after the agitation began, Singh along with Pawan visited the agitation spot to talk with the Gujjars.
Singh conveyed the message of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, inviting them to Jaipur for discussions.
The Minister said the talks needed pointwise deliberation.
Speaking to Col. Kirori Singh Bainsla, the Gujjar leader, Singh said railway tracks cannot be the place to hold such talks.
However, Bainsla reportedly rejected the proposal.
Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday accused the Congress-led Gehlot government of ignoring crucial warnings given by the Gujjar leaders.
"In their election manifesto, Congress had promised reservation for Gujjars," said BJP leader and former Rajasthan Minister Arun Chaturvedi.
"The Congress government has neither given a complete loan waiver to farmers as promised nor has it provided unemployment allowance. They have also failed to deliver on their promise of Gujjar reservation," he said.
Kolkata, Feb 9 : Trinamool Congress legislator Satyajit Biwsas was shot dead by unidentified assailants while attending a Saraswati Puja programme in West Bengals Nadia district on Saturday evening, police said.
Biswas, 37, the MLA from Krishnaganj (SC), was fatally shot when he was attending the programme in Phulbari along with state minister Ratna Ghosh and Trinamool district president Gourishankar Dutta.
The newly-married legislator was fired upon multiple times from close range when he was coming down the stage after the programme.
Shillong, Feb 9 : Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar was on Saturday questioned for eight hours by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) here in the chit fund scam, and has been asked to appear again on Sunday for further examination.
Former Trinamool Congress MP Kunal Ghosh, who was arrested in November 2013 in connection with Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund scams and granted interim bail by Calcutta High Court in 2016, has also arrived in Shillong after the CBI summoned him.
"He (Kumar) was questioned for almost eight hours since 10.45 a.m. He has been asked to appear again tomorrow (Sunday) for further questioning into the matter," a CBI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told IANS.
"We cannot say if Ghosh will be asked to appear before the team tomorrow (Sunday)," the official said.
Kumar arrived in Shillong on Friday evening from Kolkata via Guwahati after the Supreme Court, while hearing the matter on Tuesday, directed him to join the CBI probe at a neutral place in Shillong.
He was accompanied with three other senior state police officers - Additional Police Commissioner Javed Shamim, STF chief Murulidhar Sharma and CID chief Praveen Kumar Tripathi.
"There is no question of not cooperating. He has cooperated before and is doing now too. We are here because of the Supreme Court order," Kumar's legal counsel, Biswajit Deb told journalists after emerging out of the CBI office.
Meghalaya Police is providing adequate security cover to Kumar while the CBI office at Oakland has turned into a fortress with the Meghalaya Police Special Force (SF) 10 guarding it.
Meghalaya Police chief R Chandranathan walked by the CBI office with his bodyguard while his Kolkata counterpart was being grilled by the interrogators but refused to speak to some journalists there.
"The DGP came to see the security arrangement but he did not speak to anyone," a Meghalaya Police official said.
A CBI team was allegedly roughed up and detained for a few hours when it went to question Kumar at his residence in Kolkata last Sunday in connection with its probe into the Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund cases.
Following the face-off between the CBI and Kolkata Police, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee staged a sit-in protest for over 45 hours.
The matter went before the Supreme Court which asked Kumar to appear before the agency in a neutral place but restrained it from arresting him.
Meanwhile, Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy, in a tweet, welcomed both the Kolkata Police Commissioner and the CBI team to Shillong.
"Pity I'm out of town! Welcome to Meghalaya,the abode of the clouds. Happy questioning,happy answering," Roy tweeted.
Panaji, Feb 9 : Hinting at a more active role in the campaign for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Saturday said he would be making longer speeches on campaign trail.
The announcement comes at a time when ruling BJP leaders as well as those from the Opposition have questioned his ability continue as the Chief Minister and lead the campaign, in view of his prolonged treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer.
"I will not give a big speech. I will reserve those for elections," said Parrikar at a meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) booth workers, chaired by party President Amit Shah, on Saturday.
According to state BJP President Vinay Tendulkar, Parrikar who makes rare public appearances on account of his poor health, was not scheduled to attend the rally, held at the outskirts of Panaji, but reached there in the company of Shah.
Parrikar had to be assisted to climb the stairs to the stage and was accompanied by a government surgeon, who was holding urinary drainage bag attached to a catheter.
The Chief Minister spoke for a barely a couple of minutes, in course of which he tried to pump up the morale of the party workers.
"Let us all come together, forget small difference and let us fight to make (Narendra) Modi our Prime Minister once again," Parrikar said.
Parrikar has been ailing from advanced pancreatic cancer and was recently discharged from the New Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) earlier this week. He has been in and out of hospitals in Goa, Mumbai, New York and Delhi, ever since he was diagnosed with cancer in February 2018.
Lucknow, Feb 9 : The death toll in the hooch tragedy in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand went up to 47 on Saturday evening even as raids continued across the state.
As many as 175 persons have been arrested so far in connection with the tragedy while 297 cases were registered against the hooch trading mafia, officials said. Thousands of litres of spurious liquor were also recovered in the statewide crackdown.
As per latest reports, 36 persons have died after consuming spurious liquor in Saharanpur district of western Uttar Pradesh while 11 persons have died in Kushinagar district.
District Magistrate (DM) of Saharanpur, Alok Kumar Pandey, told IANS that so far 36 deaths were confirmed but the number could go up with more deaths being reported from neighbouring Meerut.
"Three persons undergoing treatment locally are showing signs of improvement, while six have been referred to the Meerut Medical College as they were critical" Pandey said.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.
According to officials, the victims had attended a funeral in neighbouring Ballupur village in Haridwar district and had consumed liquor there. They fell ill thereafter.
Raids were being conducted in various parts of the state, including Banda from where a large quantity of illicit liquor was seized. The state government has already suspended the District Excise Officer and District Excise Inspector of Kushinagar, among many others.
Jyotiraditya Scindia, Congress general secretary in-charge of western UP, expressed anguish over the deaths and tweeted that he has since spoken to the Saharanpur DM, seeking details of the tragedy.
Agartala, Feb 9 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday that with help from the Bangladesh government, and by using their ports and other infrastructure, Tripura would become the gateway to Southeast Asian countries.
Apart from its 165 km border with Assam and Mizoram, Tripura is all surrounded by Bangaladesh with which it shares a 856 km border.
Addressing a public rally at the Swami Vivekananda Stadium here, the Prime Minister said that a spate of development projects in the state would turn Tripura into the best state in the country.
However, in his 25-minute speech in Hindi, he did not for once refer to the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill against which massive agitations were going on in the entire northeastern region, including Tripura.
Three CPI-M MPs of the state and the Tripura Student Federation (TSF) boycotted the Prime Minister's programmes on Saturday as a mark of protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. The Congress also displayed black flags and released black balloons in the city on the same issue.
Lashing out at the opposition parties' 'Mahagatbandhan' (grand alliance), the Prime Minister, without naming the Congress, said the party which led the Central government for more than 55 years are now keen to form a 'majboor' (desperate) government while the Bharatiya Janata Party would form a 'mazboot' (strong) government after the upcoming general elections.
"Instead of looking into various issues, they (opposition parties) are only giving 'gali' (abuse) to Modi. It seems an Olympics is going on to deride me," the Prime Minister said.
"While coming to Agartala city from the airport, I saw cheerful faces of the people as they are now free from the clutches of the previous government's rule after 25 years," he said, without naming the former Communist Party of India-Marxist led Left Front government.
Modi said that huge amounts were earlier sanctioned by the Centre for many projects and schemes, but the previous government in the state siphoned off the funds.
"They (CPI-M led Left Front) only did politics with the people, especially with the poor and the working class. Earlier, people belonging to only one party were benefited. But now the government benefits are for all and are very transparent."
Elaborating his government's welfare measures, the Prime Minister said the Central government has recently taken steps to empower the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) for the all-round development of the tribals in the state.
Before his rally, Modi dedicated a 23.32 km railway track in southern Tripura to the nation and inaugurated the new complex of Tripura Institute of Technology (TIT) at Narsingarh, near here.
He also released a book written in Hindi and Bengali by Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Tripura's last king Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya (ruled 1923-1947).
In his address, Deb thanked the Prime Minister for increasing the allocation for northeastern states by 21 per cent in the interim Budget.
Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Dev Varma also spoke on the occasion.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : RSS ideologue Seshadri Chari on Saturday expressed fears that "too much publicity" to Robert Vadra, the brother-in-law of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, could help the Congress bounce back, like former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did after the 1980 general election.
"I hope too much publicity to Vadra does not end up like Indira Gandhi bouncing back after the Janata Party government. Conviction is not possible in a month's time and by then, election schedule could begin," he said in a tweet.
The former editor of 'Organiser', the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) mouthpiece, stressed the need to project positive, affirmative, people-friendly projects initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Seshadri Chari's remarks came in the wake of Vadra appearing for the third consecutive day before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for the third round of questioning in a money laundering case.
Vadra's wife Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who recently entered active politics and was appointed Congress General Secretary, has accompanied Vadra to the ED office to drop and pick him in the past few days.
Chari also suggested the BJP backroom boys scale up the corruption issue to at least the 2014 level if they want to achieve the target of "ab ki baar, teen sow paar" ('this time, above 300 seats' -- the BJP slogan).
"The general perception that Congress' first family greatly benefited from corruption will have a great impact in the coming months," he said in an article which he shared on his official Twitter handle.
In the 1977 general election held after the Emergency, Janata Party emerged victorious defeating the Congress, and Morarji Desai became the Prime Minister. He was later succeeded by Charan Singh.
But in 1980 general elections, the Congress, led by Indira Gandhi, bounced back to power winning a handsome 353 of 529 seats.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : Congress MP Sushmita Dev has said she stands by her statement that the Congress would scrap the triple talaq bill if it comes to power and instead go for an alternative that emerges out of discussions within the Muslim community.
"What I said in that day's (Thursday's) meeting is what I have said inside Parliament. Any law that criminalises triple talaq will not be tolerated by the Congress," Dev told IANS.
"And I followed it up by saying any law that is for women empowerment, we will support that law. But we will not support criminalisation (of divorce)," she said.
At the Congress's minority convention on Thursday, Sushmita Dev, also the President of party's women wing, said the party would scrap the triple talaq bill if voted to power in the next elections.
"Our stand inside Parliament and outside is the same. We are opposing criminalisation of triple talaq and will continue to do it. And there are solid legal reasons behind it. The common man understands it," she said.
Asked if the BJP may play up her statement in a different context, she said: "The BJP twists nine out of ten things that the opposition says. (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi has emerged as the king of misrepresentation. Even a small child knows that."
On the alternative, she said this is a "subject that needs to be discussed with the community".
"You cannot dole out a solution acting as a messiah for that community. You have to consult them, which this government has not done," she said.
Listing her objections to the bill brought by the Modi government and passed by the Lok Sabha, she said the credit for banning the triple talaq goes to the Supreme Court and not the Modi government.
"The provisions of sustenance to the divorced wife and custody of children are already covered in the existing laws. The only thing that the Modi government has brought to the table is the criminalisation, which is unwanted and uncalled for," she said.
The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill is pending in the Rajya Sabha where the Congress-led opposition wants it to be sent to a Select Committee of the House for wider discussion.
The government has brought an ordinance and if the bill is not passed in this session, it will re-promulgate the ordinance.
A number of Muslim organisations including the Muslim Personal Law Board and the Jamat-e-Islami Hind have appealed to the Rajya Sabha members of non-NDA parties to not support the triple talaq bill in its present form.
Women activists, including Shaista Ambar, who fought the legal battle against triple talaq, have also expressed reservations over the penal provision in the bill. They say they were not consulted in the drafting of the bill.
Washington, Feb 9 : A 29-year-old American was arrested at the JFK Airport while he was about to leave the country to join Pakistani terror organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which was responsible for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.
Authorities said on Friday, Jesus Wilfredo Encarnacion from Manhattan allegedly told an unnamed co-conspirator in November he wanted to contact the terror group, which was behind the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, the New York Post reported. He was arrested from the airport on Thursday.
"I want to execute. I want to behead. Shoot," Encarnacion told an undercover agent, according to a Manhattan federal criminal complaint..
According to prosecutors, Encarnacion also went online in a bid to join LeT, which has been designated global terrorist organisation by the UN and the US.
"Encarnacion allegedly attempted to travel to Pakistan to join a foreign terrorist organisation and conspired with another individual to provide that organisation with material support," said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.
The co-conspirator connected Encarnacion with a "recruiter" to help him travel to Pakistan and be trained with the terror group, officials said. But the "recruiter" was actually an undercover agent, the complaint stated.
It said Encarnacion told the agent since the 9/11 attacks he has dreamed of carrying out a terror assault. "The terrorist attack. 9/11. I want to be (the) one to attack," he said.
He told the agent that he couldn't wait to go to Pakistan, the papers said.
Encarnacion appeared in the Manhattan federal court on Friday, where a judge remanded him. He was charged with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation and conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation. If convicted, he could get 40 years in prison.
Kottayam : Feb 9 (IANS) Four Kerala nuns, who protested last year demanding rape accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal's arrest, and were handed transfer orders, got relief on Saturday when the church authorities cancelled transfer orders and allowed them to continue, here at the convent, as long as the case was in court.
"We have received a letter from the new Bishop of Jalandhar stating all the transferred nuns can remain at the Kuruvilangad convent, till the case is over," said Sister Anupama.
The news of revocation of transfer orders was read out by Sister Anupama, one of the four nuns, at a public meeting organised near here, to protest against the manner in which they (the nuns) were being hounded.
The 'protest' meeting saw good participation from a cross section of the society. But trouble broke out when five people, believed to be sympathisers of Bishop Franco, created a flutter at the venue.
The five protesters were quickly taken into custody and removed from the venue.
Last month, the four nuns, who are presently attached to the Kuruvilangad convent, were transferred to four different places in the country.
They sought Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's intervention in the matter, But as nothing much happened, they decided to organise the protest meeting on Saturday.
All the four nuns are witnesses in the case against former Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal, accused of sexually assaulting a nun repeatedly between 2014 and 2016.
Mulakkal was arrested on September 21, 2018 on rape charges after the four nuns joined a public protest in Kochi that forced the police to take strong action against the bishop.
Mulakkal had secured bail on October 16, 2018 and is now back in Punjab, but is no longer the diocesan head.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Saturday said parks and memorials were built in Uttar Pradesh during her regime to honour great men from among oppressed Dalit and OBCs. These have become tourist spots, generating revenue for the government, she added.
"Marvellous sthals/memorials/parks built to honour hitherto ignored great saints, gurus and great men born in deprived and oppressed Dalit and OBCs are new grand identity and tourist attraction of Uttar Pradesh, which gives regular income to government," Mayawati said in series of tweets.
"Humble request to media, please don't distort oral observation of court. Sure to get justice in this matter also. Media and BJP leaders please stop kite flying," she tweeted.
Her remarks have come a day after the Supreme Court said it was of the "tentative view" that she should reimburse the public exchequer the money spent on putting up statues of elephant in Lucknow and Noida.
Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi on Friday, while hearing a plea seeking recovery of the amount spent on statues in memorial parks dedicated to BSP founder Kanshi Ram in UP, said "this is our tentative view that Madam Mayawati reimburse the public exchequer all the money spent on these elephants".
The next hearing will be on April 2.
Kolkata, Feb 9 : A man and his daughter were killed after a dumper truck lost control and rammed into their house in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district, police said on Saturday.
The incident took place in district's Shayamnagar village early on Friday.
"A dumper truck allegedly lost control and rammed into the house of Maidul Islam, 48, in Shayamnagar. He died on the spot. Later his daughter Asifa Islam, 17, was declared dead at a local hospital," an officer from Kashipur police station said.
"It is not sure whether the accident happened due to over-speeding or any mechanical failure in the dumper. The vehicle has been seized but the driver and the helper of the dumper have fled the spot," he said.
Following the incident, an angry mob agitated with the dead body of Islam and blocked parts of the adjoining Haora road after half an hour before they were dispersed.
Washington, Feb 9 : With its eyes set on returning humans to the moon, NASA is inviting US-based companies to help design and develop lunar landers, reusable systems for astronauts to land on the earth's natural satellite.
"We want to get started as quickly as possible. We are inviting industry and other potential partners to meet with us next week at NASA headquarters to discuss human lunar landers," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote in an op-ed at news site OZY.com on Friday.
The US space agency is planning to test new human-class landers on the moon, beginning 2024, with the goal of sending a crew to it 2028.
Through multi-phased lunar exploration partnerships, NASA is asking American companies to study the best approach to landing astronauts on the moon and start the development as quickly as possible with current and future anticipated technologies.
"Building on our model in low-Earth orbit, we'll expand our partnerships with industry and other nations to explore the moon and advance our missions to farther destinations such as Mars, with America leading the way," Bridenstine said in a statement.
"When we send astronauts to the moon in the next decade, it will be in a sustainable fashion," he said.
Addis Ababa, Feb 9 : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres here on Saturday called for more coordinated efforts to fight climate change.
"The international community needs more political will to undertake climate change mitigation, adaptation and climate finance activities," Guterres was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.
"We are losing the race for climate change, which could be a disaster for Africa and the world. Africa will pay even higher price because of the dramatic impact in the continent even though Africa doesn't contribute much to the warming of the planet," the UN chief told a press conference on the sidelines of the 32nd ordinary session of the Assembly of the African Union (AU).
Guterres said the UN was undertaking activities to raise awareness of the international community to do more in addressing challenges of climate change, despite inadequate attention given to the threat.
The UN chief also praised African countries for hosting fellow African refugees despite limited domestic resources. On Friday, the AU said Africa was home to over one third of the global population of displaced people.
The theme of this year's AU summit is "Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Towards Durable Solutions to Forced Displacement in Africa."
Lucknow, Feb 9 : The death toll in the hooch tragedy in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand went up to 47 on Saturday evening, an official said.
As per latest reports, 11 persons have died in Kushinagar district, while 36 have succumbed after consuming spurious liquor in Saharanpur district of western UP.
District Magistrate (DM) of Saharanpur, Alok Kumar Pandey, told IANS that so far 36 deaths are confirmed but the number could go higher with more deaths reported from neighbouring Meerut.
"Three other persons undergoing treatment locally are showing signs of improvement, while six have been referred to the Meerut Medical College as they are critical" he said.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.
According to officials, the victims had attended a funeral in neighbouring Balupur, Haridwar, and had consumed liquor there. They fell ill thereafter.
Meanwhile, the state police, at the instructions of the Chief Minister, has started a crackdown on illicit liquor manufacture and sales.
Raids have been conducted in various parts of the state including Banda where a large quantity of illicit liquor was seized. The state government has already suspended the District Excise Officer and District Excise Inspector of Kushinagar, among many others.
Meanwhile, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Congress general secretary in-charge of western UP, expressed anguish over the deaths and tweeted that he has since spoken to Saharanpur DM, seeking details of the tragedy.
Chennai, Feb 9 : Apollo Hospitals Enterprises Ltd has approached the Madras High Court to restrain the Justice A. Arumugaswamy Commission from probing into the adequacy or correctness of the treatment given to late Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa at the hospital.
Jayalalithaa was in Apollo Hospitals here for 75 days in 2016 before she died there due to cardiac arrest on December 5, 2016.
The Apollo Hospitals have also filed a petition in the high court to appoint an independent medical board, if the Commission's terms of reference also cover an inquiry into the treatment given to Jayalalithaa.
"We feel the Commission is going beyond its terms of reference. The terms of reference for the Commission does not intend to go into the adequacy of the treatment given to Jayalalithaa. The inquiry is now changing towards a case of medical negligence," a person close to Apollo Hospitals told IANS.
The Apollo Hospitals had filed the petition on Tuesday and the matter is coming up for hearing on February 11.
The Commission had earlier turned down the request of Apollo to set up a medical board.
In an order issued detailing the terms of reference of the inquiry commission, the Tamil Nadu government had said it would "inquire into the circumstances and situation leading to the hospitalisation" of Jayalalithaa on September 22, 2016 and "subsequent treatment provided till her unfortunate demise" on December 5 that year.
Ever since Jayalalithaa's death, there have been allegations of foul play.
Dhaka, Feb 9 : Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan has been ruled out of the three-ODI series against New Zealand due to fractured finger.
Shakib injured his left ring finger while batting against Thisara Perera in the final of Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) 2019 on Friday and will be rested for at least three weeks, which implies the tourists will be without him for the entire ODI series, starting on Wednesday in Napier.
"An X-ray was done after the match, which confirmed a fracture on the left ring finger," Dr Debashis Chowdhury, the BCB's chief physician, was quoted as saying by espncricinfo.
"The affected area will have to be immobilised for around three weeks," he said.
The 31-year-old's injury will be a big loss to the tourists in New Zealand, considering the red hot form he was in the BPL 2019. He ended the BPL as top wicket-taker with 23 scalps and amassed 301 runs with the bat.
The three ODIs will be played in Napier, Christchurch and Dunedin on February 13, 16 and 20, respectively.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : A Mumbai-Dehradun Jet Airways flight was diverted to Chandigarh on Saturday morning due to "technical reason".
"Jet Airways flight 9W 703 from Mumbai to Dehradun was diverted to Chandigarh and has landed safely. The diversion was necessitated due to a technical reason and as per the procedure," the spokesperson said.
The airline spokesperson said the incident is under investigation and has been reported to authorities. An alternate aircraft was arranged for guests with a revised departure time for their destination.
"Our team of engineers are travelling to Chandigarh for inspection and rectification of the aircraft."
The plane, which had departed Mumbai at 6.10 a.m., was few minutes away from its destination when it was diverted.
Shillong, Feb 9 : Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Saturday said his party will contest all the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the northeast, including Sikkim.
The national general body meeting of the National People's Party (NPP) also resolved to snap ties with the BJP-led NDA if the Citizenship Amendment Bill is passed in the Rajya Sabha.
The party is supporting the BJP-led government in Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, the People's Democratic Alliance government in Nagaland and the BJP in Meghalaya.
"We are keen to contest all the Lok Sabha seats in the northeast and will work out how to go forward. The party election committee will work on it," Sangma, unanimously re-elected national president of NPP, told reporters.
He said the party will contest the upcoming elections to the 60-member Arunachal Pradesh Assembly.
In Assam and Mizoram, he said a committee has been set up to conduct election to the post of state party presidents.
The tribal centric-based political party, set up by former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno Agitok Sangma, will inaugurate its office in Guwahati, Assam, on February 17.
Amaravati, Feb 9 : A day ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Andhra Pradesh, protests were held at various places in the state on Saturday with protesters raising 'Modi go back' slogans.
Protests were staged in 13 districts of the state by leaders and workers of the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Congress, Left parties, student groups and mass organisations fighting for the special category status for Andhra Pradesh.
Carrying black flags, they took out rallies and staged sit-ins at different places. Some could also be seen shirtless.
Leaders of the Left parties held protests by smashing empty pots in Vijayawada. They also threatened to disrupt Modi's rally in Guntur on Sunday.
Addressing a meeting in the Nellore district on Saturday, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said Modi had no right to visit the state as he betrayed Andhra Pradesh by not fulfilling the promise to accord special status and other commitments made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act 2014.
He called upon the people to register their protests against Modi's visit. Claiming that people boycotted BJP President Amit Shah's visit to the Srikakulam district last week, Naidu said a similar situation awaited Modi in Guntur.
Communist Party of India (CPI) state Secretary K. Ramakrishna said Modi had no moral right to visit the state as he did not honour the commitments made in Parliament.
CPI-M leader P. Madhu said party workers would hold protests with empty pots in Guntur to foil Modi's rally. He recalled how Modi had come to the stone laying ceremony of Amaravati, the new state capital, carrying a pot of soil and water and promised all help to the state. "He has gone back on every promise he made," said Madhu.
State Congress chief Raghuveera Reddy said his party would organise protests with black flags across the state on Sunday. He appealed to all political parties to join the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, security has been tightened in Guntur ahead of Modi's rally. The Special Protection Group (SPG) was busy giving final touches to the security arrangements in coordination with the state police.
State BJP chief Kanna Laxminarayana alleged that the TDP and other parties were planning to disrupt the rally. He said Modi would expose the TDP government's corruption and counter its false propaganda by highlighting the steps taken by the Centre to help the state during the last four-and-a-half years.
This will be Modi's first visit to Andhra Pradesh after the TDP pulled out of the BJP-led NDA last year.
Guwahati, Feb 9 : Unfazed by the resistance in the Northeast , Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said his government's intention is to pass the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill but assured the people of the region that it will ensure that the legislation does not cause any harm to Assam and its neighbouring states.
The Prime Minister was addressing a public rally at Changsari near Guwahati while inaugurating several development projects amid protests by various organisations across the region which showed him black flags on Friday.
"The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 is not for Assam or northeastern states. It is for the whole country. The Bill is a national commitment considering the plight of the persecuted minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The passage of the Bill will ensure that those who were left out during the Partition and who still love India more than their lives are accommodated in the country. It is the responsibility of India to accept those people," he said.
"I am here to assure you that the Bill will not harm Assaducted a raid at a gold workshop in Nalin Sarkar Street, Burrabazar area, on Friday and seized the gold.
"A total of 120 gold biscuits, weighing 116 grams each, and two gold bars, weighing one kg each, were seized from a workshop. The worth of the seized gold is Rs 6.57 crore," said Deep Sekhar, Customs Commissioner (preventive).
All biscuits carried foreign manufacturers' hallmark, he said and added three persons have been arrested.
According to the official, the gold biscuits that originated in West Asia had been brought to India through Bangladesh.
"The biscuits were brought to the workshop for melting. In India, such smuggled gold biscuits are melted to make one kilogram bars and then shipped to other destinations,: the official said. These kind of work is done at . There are many shops in the area, he added.
The official said, over 80 kg of smuggled gold have been recovered from Kolkata in the last one year.
Guwahati, Feb 9 : Assam witnessed yet another nude protest on Saturday when a group of six persons stripped off their clothes and marched in front of the state secretariat at Dispur, shouting slogans against the Citizenship bill.
The incident took place prior to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's public rally at Changsari, around 50 km away from Dispur. The Prime Minister is in the state to inaugurate several developmental projects including laying of foundation stone of All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) at Changsari.
Police said that six persons marched naked on the Guwahati-Shillong Road before police personnel spotted them near the secretariat and took them into custody. The agitators were identified as members of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), an organization opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016.
On February 1, three persons protested against the bill by standing nude in front of the high security Janata Bhavan in Dispur.
Last month, at least ten youths from Assam staged nude protests in front of the parliament in New Delhi against the contentious Bill.
Both the BJP-led governments at the Centre and in Assam have been receiving flak over the Citizenship bill which has led to protests all over the northeast with people from all walks of life coming out to the streets to oppose the measure.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : India on Saturday dismissed China's opposition to the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Arunachal Pradesh, saying the state was an intergral and inalienable part of India.
"The state of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India," the External Affairs Ministry said.
"This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions."
As Prime Minister Modi on Saturday inaugurated several developmental projects during his one-day visit to Arunachal Pradesh, China, which slams visits by Indian leaders and foreign dignitaries to the state which it terms "South Tibet" and claims it as its own, said such actions would "escalate" and "complicate" the border dispute.
"China's position on the Sino-Indian border issue is consistent and clear. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called Arunachal Pradesh and resolutely opposes the activities of Indian leaders to the eastern section of the Sino-Indian border," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in Beijing.
China said such actions would also hurt the progress made by both sides, especially after the pathbreaking meet between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan last year.
In 2017, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh infuriated China, prompting it to rename some towns in the Indian state.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday returned to India after spending four weeks in the US where he underwent medical treatment.
"Delighted to be back home," Jaitley said in a tweet. In his absence, Railways Minister Piyush Goyal has been given the charge of the Ministry of Finance on a temporary basis.
On February 1, when Goyal presented the Interim Budget, Jaitley via video conference told reporters that he was getting better and would return soon.
Jaitley, 66, who is convalescing from a surgery, has presented the last five Budgets of the Narendra Modi government.
Goyal was given additional charge of Finance Ministry on January 23, 10 days after Jaitley left for the US.
According to the earlier direction of the President of India, Goyal will continue to hold the portfolio of Finance and Corporate Affairs on a temporary basis "during the period of indisposition of Arun Jaitley". There is no confirmation as to if and when Jaitley will resume work.
Jaitley had a renal transplant surgery on May 14, 2018. In his absence, Goyal was given the additional charge of the Finance Ministry between May 14 and August 22, 2018.
Earlier, in September 2014, Jaitley underwent gastric bypass surgery for diabetes management.
Geneva, Feb 9 : The UN refugee agency has called on Bangladeshi authorities "to continue to allow" into the country people fleeing ongoing violence in Myanmar amid the deteriorating security situation there.
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) issued the statement on Friday amid its concern about the humanitarian impact of continuing violence in southern Chin State and Rakhine State in Myanmar, bdnews24.com reported.
UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic in Geneva said it was aware of reports of escalating violence and a deteriorating security situation in Myanmar's states. "This has reportedly led to internal displacement and a number of new arrivals from Myanmar seeking safety in the Bandarban border region of Bangladesh.
"The UNHCR is deeply concerned about the humanitarian impact of continuing violence in Myanmar and the potential for both further internal displacement and the outflow of refugees," Mahecic said.
He added that as part of inter-agency efforts, the UNHCR was ready to support the humanitarian response in the affected areas in Myanmar.
"The UNHCR has also offered its support to the government of Bangladesh to assess and respond to the needs of people who have arrived seeking safety from violence in Myanmar."
Bangladesh has given shelter to over 720,000 Rohingya who have fled ethnic cleansing since August 2017. The figure has taken the number of Myanmar nationals living in Bangladesh to more than 1.1 million.
But their return plan to Myanmar has been postponed as they do not want to go back fearing their safety and security. The UN agencies, including the UNHCR, have been advocating for safe, voluntary and dignified return to Rakhine State.
Manama, Feb 9 : India's young paddlers stole the limelight in the Bahrain Junior and Cadet Open, clinching a rich haul of four medals, including a gold, two silver and a bronze here.
All three Indian teams in fray in the Cadet Girls' Team category displayed great skill and grit to pave their way into the semifinals of the tournament that is part of the ITTF Premium Junior Circuit.
Team India 2, comprising Yashaswini Ghorpade and Kavya Sree Baskar, faced off against the mighty Egypt 1 team for a place in the final while it turned out into an all-Indian clash in the second semifinal.
Yashaswini led from the front and won both her singles, including the decider to help India 2 to a hard-fought 3-2 victory over Farida Badawy and Hana Goda of Egypt late Friday night.
India 1, comprising Suhana Saini and Anargya Manjunath, proved to be too strong for their compatriots India 3 (Radhika Sakpal and Hardee Patel), beating them 3-0 to set up an all-Indian clash in the finals.
India 3 had to be content with a bronze medal for their efforts.
In the final, the duo of Suhana and Anargya were in red hot form, steamrolling past Yashaswini and Kavya (India 2) 3-0 to clinch the gold medal. India 2 picked up the silver.
India were among one of the five teams in fray in the Junior Girls' category, which was played in a round robin format, with each team bagging two points for a win and one for a defeat.
The Indian team which consisted of Manushree Patil and Swastika Ghosh got off to a flier and recorded a thumping 3-0 victory over Malamatenia Papadimitriou of Greece and Aya Ali of Syria.
They continued their momentum and picked up a hard-fought 3-2 win over Egypt 1 and then scampered past Egypt 2 (3-1) to make it three consecutive wins.
Their run came to an end against Russia, the eventual champions, losing 0-3 to finish with seven points and the silver medal.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : Top Twitter officials, including its CEO Jack Dorsey, have declined to appear before a parliamentary committee that had summoned them next week over the issue of safeguarding citizens' rights on social media platforms citing "short notice" period.
Sources said Twitter has written a letter conveying their inability to appear before the committee because of the short notice. The Twitter officials have been asked to appear before the panel on February 11 for alleged bias against "nationalist" accounts.
Twitter's letter has not gone down well with the panel members in what is perceived as "lack of seriousness".
The Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology, headed by BJP Member of Parliament Anurag Thakur, had issued summons to Twitter through a letter sent on February 1. It had said that the head of the organisation has to appear before the panel and may be accompanied by another representative.
The parliamentary panel, which has 31 members, had also summoned representatives from Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and sources said its meeting will go ahead as scheduled.
Twitter had said on Friday that it was proactively working with political parties to verify candidates, elected officials and relevant party officials whose accounts will be active in public conversation.
Agartala: Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveils the plague to inaugurate Garjee-Belonia railway line in Agartala, on Feb 9, 2019. Also seen Tripura Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki and Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News
Agartala, Feb 9 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday dedicated a 23.32-km railway track in southern Tripura to the nation and inaugurated the new complex of Tripura Institute of Technology (TIT) at Narsingarh, near here.
The 23.32-km Garjee-Belonia section, built at a cost of Rs 400 crore, is part of the Rs 3,407-crore Agartala-Sabroom (115 km) national railway project aiming to link southern Tripura's last border town (Sabroom), which is just 72 km away from the port of Chittagong.
The Prime Minister, who arrived here from Guwahati, was accompanied by Tripura Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki and Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb.
Using a remote control system, Modi dedicated the new railway line to the nation and inaugurated the new complex of TIT from the Swami Vivekananda Stadium here.
The new TIT complex was built at a cost of Rs 103 crore, which was shared by the state and the Central government.
The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has been laying new railway tracks in three places, including the Agartala-Sabroom route along India-Bangladesh border in Tripura, and that would facilitate the carriage of goods and passengers from the northeastern states on the Bangladeshi railway network.
The Indian and Bangladeshi railways are laying 15 km of tracks at a cost of Rs 963 crore between Agartala and Akhaura in Bangladesh to link the networks of the two neighbouring countries.
NFR's Chief Public Relations Officer Pranav Jyoti Sharma said that the broad gauge railway line from Agartala to Sabroom was sanctioned in the Rail Budget of 2007-08 as a National Project.
The 115-km long Agartala-Sabroom railway line passes through four of the eight districts of Tripura - West Tripura, Sepahijala, Gomati and South Tripura.
"There is no good transport link in Tripura. Therefore, the train service would be a boon to the people of Tripura," Sharma added.
The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention has found that in North Carolina, 61 children of Asian descent (specifically, Indians, Pakistanis and Afghans) have elevated blood lead levels (BLLs). They used non-edible (kumkum, sindoor, surma) and edible(saffron, turmeric) items that had high lead levels. Some children ate Balgutti Kessaria (an Ayurvedic medicine) which contained very high lead levels. The CDC is diligently following up these cases.
High blood lead levels in the Indian population are a very serious issue.
A recent meta-analysis identified 1,066 articles on blood lead levels in various Indian populations (Environment International, December 2018). The researchers estimated that lead exposure resulted in 4.9 million Disability Adjusted Life Years - 4.9 million years lost due to ill health, disability or early death. Worldwide, this number for 2016 is 13.9 million years.
Researchers from Aligarh Muslim University and King George Medical University reported in Indian Pediatrics of January 2018 that 44.2 per cent of children in their study had blood lead levels above 10 microgramme per dL (100 ml), the WHO cutoff.
Researchers from CMC Vellore reported similar results (Indian Pediatrics 2014). They found that 31 per cent (21/67) of the children with elevated blood lead levels had poor cognitive scores. If the US CDC reference level of 5 microgramme per dL is accepted, 90 per cent of preschoolers in the slums of Vellore have high BLLs, Dr. Venkata Raghava Mohan a researcher in the Vellore study responded to this writer's query.
Values in the DOE report ranged from 101 ppm to 130,797 ppm.
The central and state governments must enforce the rules strictly and act now against this eternal source of lead for the sake of our children.
The WHO (Lead Poisoning and Health, August 2018) cautioned that lead is toxic; it accumulates in the body and affects multiple systems; it is particularly harmful to young children. Once in the body, lead is distributed in the brain, liver, kidney and bones. Teeth and bones store them; it accumulates over time. Specialists usually assess human exposure to lead by measuring lead in blood.
"Lead can affect children's brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient, behavioural changes such as reduced attention span and increased anti-social behaviour and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immuno-toxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioural effects of lead are believed to be irreversible." WHO added.
Pregnant women exposed to lead will have lead-tainted bones that may release lead into blood and act a source of exposure to the developing fetus.
There is no safe threshold for lead exposure.
If we have to go by the US experience, lead-tainted paint will be a major source of lead poisoning in India. Universal screening of children may not be feasible. However, preventive steps must start now.
Reports from BARC in the 1990s highlighted the need to screen lead in spices, herbal remedies and ceremonial powders.
Blood lead levels that were considered previously to be safe are now understood to compromise health and injure multiple organs, even in the absence of overt symptoms." We must keep this WHO assessment in mind while formulating our policies.
(Dr K.S. Parthasarathy is a former Secretary of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board)
Guwahati: Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma during a public rally at Sangsari near Guwahati, on Feb 9, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News
Guwahati, Feb 9 : Reaffirming the BJP-led NDA government's intention to pass the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the government will ensure that the Bill does not cause any harm to Assam and other parts of the Northeast.
The Prime Minister was addressing a public rally at Changsari near Guwahati while inaugurating several development projects amid protests by various organisations across the region which showed him black flags on Friday.
"The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 is not for Assam or northeastern states. It is for the whole country. The Bill is a national commitment considering the plight of the persecuted minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The passage of the Bill will ensure that those who were left out during the Partition and who still love India more than their lives are accommodated in the country. It is the responsibility of India to accept those people," he said.
"I am here to assure you that the Bill will not harm Assam or any other state in the region. The Bill will only allow those persecuted minorities to apply for citizenship. There is no question of granting citizenship without verification," Modi said.
The Prime Minister said the government is committed to ensuring that there are no illegal foreigners in Assam and the country.
"Our government has started work for updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) under the supervision of the Supreme Court, which the previous government was not doing. Our government is also working at a faster pace to seal the India-Bangladesh border," Modi said.
The Prime Minister attacked the Congress by holding the opposition party responsible for the delay in conferring Bharat Ratna to the late Bhupen Hazarika and Gopinath Bordoloi.
"Although music maestro Bhupen Hazarika and Gopinath Bordoloi were worthy of Bharat Ratna, the conferring of the honour to them was delayed for decades by the previous governments. It is the BJP government during whose tenure Bharat Ratna was conferred to both the worthy sons of Assam," he said.
"I want to ask them why the real jewels had to wait for decades to be recognised as Bharat Ratna, while for some the honour was fixed immediately after their birth," said the Prime Minister, adding that the previous governments in Assam also failed to implement the Assam Accord for over 30 years.
"Our government has already instituted a committee to implement the Clause 6 of the Assam Accord and I firmly believe that the committee will be able to fulfill all the aspirations of the people of the state," he said.
New Delhi, Feb 9 (IANS) Stringent penalties like jail term for adulteration and endorsing false and misleading advertisements by celebrities may still remain a distant possibility as the much-awaited Consumer Protection Bill has fallen off the priority list of the lawmakers as the last Parliament session for the BJP-led government in its current tenure comes to an end.
If the Bill is not passed in this session of the Rajya Sabha, then it will be for a future government that comes after the elections to pursue it.
The proposed Bill, which is to overhaul the three-decade-old Consumer Protection Act 1986, was passed in the Lok Sabha in December last year after it was introduced in 2015.
It was decided in a meeting of leaders of various parties in the Rajya Sabha held last week that only non-contentious bills would be taken up for discussion.
CPI leader D. Raja, who is a member of the Upper House, said "We agreed only to passage of non-contentious bills such as the one relating to Scheduled Tribes."
Speaking about the Consumer Protection Bill, he said, "I do not think so. Since there is no consensus, we said the government should not bring those bills on which there is no consensus."
According to officials in the Consumer Affairs Ministry, the major opposition to the Bill is from the medical fraternity and e-commerce portals.
During the winter session of Parliament, Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Dr. Santanu Sen had raised objections to the Bill saying the entire medical profession and the small traders will be affected by it.
He had said there was no provision for penalty against false complaints which may encourage people to launch false complaints just for getting money and sought further amendments.
A senior ministry official told IANS, "We are taking our best efforts to ensure the Bill is passed. However, we cannot decide whether it comes up for discussion."
Sachin Taparia, Chairman of LocalCircles, a social engagement platform, said the Consumer Protection Bill is the biggest consumer reform in three decades.
"It seems that all parties have together prioritised six bills for clearance based on consensus and the Consumer Protection Bill is not one of them. They must not forget that all consumers are voters too and reconsider this decision," he said.
According to an online survey conducted by the LocalCircles, 81 per cent of the total 28,000 participants considered it one of the three critical pending bills.
The Bill seeks to ensure faster dispute redressal for consumers regarding defect in goods and deficiency in services and will allow the government to regulate e-commerce and direct selling.
The Bill also seeks to establish a Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) to protect consumer rights and look into the issues related to false or misleading advertisements.
It has provision for fine and ban on celebrities for endorsing misleading advertisements. They can be slapped with fines up to Rs 50 lakh and face a ban on endorsements for up to three years.
The fine on manufacturers and companies would be up to Rs 10 lakh and a jail term of up to two years for the first offence. For any subsequent offence, they would have to pay a fine of Rs 50 lakh and serve a jail term of five years. A life term jail sentence in case of adulteration has also been provided.
It also has provisions for post-litigation stage mediation as an alternate dispute resolution mechanism and also provides for product liability action.
(Saurabh Katkurwar can be contacted at saurabh.k@ians.in)
Bhubaneswar, Feb 9 : Commercial flight services at the Veer Surendra Sai Airport in Jharsuguda, Odisha, is likely to resume on March 31, airport director S.K. Chauhan said on Saturday. Low-cost carrier SpiceJet will start operations from the airport to Delhi, Kolkata and Hyderabad.
"As per the tentative schedule, SpiceJet has planned to start flights from the airport in the summer schedule, beginning March 31. The private airlines has decided to launch its flights to New Delhi, Kolkata and Hyderabad," said Chauhan.
A team of the SpiceJet officials on Saturday inspected security and infrastructure facilities at the airport.
The airport, Odisha's second, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 22, 2018. But operations stopped at the airport after scheduled commuter carrier Air Odisha suspended its services on October 6 citing technical reasons.
Later, the Ministry of Civil Aviation cancelled Air Odisha's licence in November 2018 citing poor performance.
Now the airport will be connected to Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Mumbai, Raipur, Hyderabad and Delhi under the 'Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik' (UDAN-3) scheme.
Beijing, Feb 9 (IANS) China on Saturday opposed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh and said such actions would "escalate" and "complicate" border dispute.
Modi on Saturday inaugurated several developmental projects during his one-day visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as its own and dubs South Tibet.
"China's position on the Sino-Indian border issue is consistent and clear. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called Arunachal Pradesh and resolutely opposes the activities of Indian leaders to the eastern section of the Sino-Indian border," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said here.
Beijing said such actions would also hurt the progress made by both sides, especially after the pathbreaking meet between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan last year.
"China urges the Indian side to bear in mind the common interests of the two countries, respect the interests and concerns of the Chinese side, cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral relations and refrain from any action that may lead to the escalation of disputes or complicate the boundary question," she added.
Beijing resents and slams visits by Indian leaders and foreign dignitaries to Arunachal Pradesh, a state in India's northeast at the heart of Sino-Indian border dispute.
In 2017, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh infuriated China, prompting it to rename some towns in the Indian state.
China and India, who fought a brief but bloody war in 1962, have a 3,444-km long boundary dispute.
The two sides, which have seen several skirmishes since then, almost came to blows in 2017 over building of a road by the Chinese at Doklam, an area claimed by Bhutan and close to an arterial Indian highway.
However, New Delhi and Beijing have tried to repair the damage and the ties have been on the upswing after Modi and Xi had an icebreaking meet last year.
Both the leaders pledged to keep the border quiet and peaceful.
(Gaurav Sharma can be contacted at sharmagaurav71@gmail.com)
Hyderabad, Feb 9 : In a shocking incident of medical negligence, surgeons at Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) here, left an artery forceps in a patient's abdomen during a surgery performed three months ago.
The incident came to light on Saturday when an X-ray report revealed that a pair of forceps was embedded in the stomach of Maheshwari Chowdary.
The 33-year-old, a resident of Mangahlat area, had undergone a surgery for hernia on November 2 last year at the government-run super-speciality hospital.
But even after the surgery, she complained of severe abdominal pain and an X-ray report revealed that surgeons had accidentally left the surgery tool in her stomach.
The patient's relatives staged a protest outside the hospital and lodged a complaint at the Punjagutta police station.
The woman is now admitted for another surgery.
NIMS Director K. Manohar said a team of gastroenterologists were doing various tests to find out at what depth the artery forceps is embedded and if it has damaged any organ.
He informed that the patient was admitted on October 31 and the surgery was performed by a team of three doctors from surgical gastroenterology.
"The patient was discharged on November 12. Today (Saturday) she was admitted to the hospital after she complained of abdominal pain and the X-ray report revealed that there is an artery forceps in her abdomen," he said.
He termed the incident as "unfortunate" and the first in the last 30 years.
"We have ordered an inquiry by a three-member team and will take action after we get the final report," he said.
The inquiry team comprises medical superintendent, dean and a surgical gastroenterologist from Osmania Hospital.
New Delhi, Feb 9 (IANS) Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram calls the direct income support scheme in the Interim Budget a "whimper" instead of being a trump card that leaves out an overwhelming majority of the poor and benefits only the land-owner class.
He also rejects criticism of Congress President Rahul Gandhi's announcement of loan waivers to farmers across the nation if his party comes to power, saying it was necessary to revive the agriculture sector "which is in the ICU" as a one-time measure.
The former Finance Minister defended the Congress's announcement of ensuring a minimum income guarantee for the poor if it is voted to power as "an implementable scheme" saying the Congress manifesto will explain the contours of the scheme justifying how it will be implemented.
"It (government's farmer relief scheme) is a whimper. It's not a trump card, to say that I will give you Rs 6,000 per family. Who will get these Rs 6,000? The land owner gets it. The land owner could be an owner-cultivator. But in many cases, it is an absentee landlord sitting in some capital city of the state," Chidambaram told IANS in an interview coinciding with the release of his book "Undaunted - Saving the Idea of India".
"The tenant farmer does not get the money. The farm worker does not get the money. The non-farm poor - goldsmith, carpenter, blacksmith, shopkeeper, tailor - in rural areas does not get the money. And no urban poor gets the money," he said.
The Congress leader said if the government was talking about helping the poor, it was leaving the overwhelming majority of the poor and giving it only to the land-owner class, "among whom there may be poor land owners, but there are also absentee land-owners".
"So this does not benefit the poor. It has already become a whimper," he said.
Rejecting criticism of loan waivers, including by Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian who called it "a moral hazard", Chidambaram said it was the duty of the government to help those in extreme debt.
"I laugh at the criticism that loan waivers are immoral. Then what do you call haircuts taken by banks for industrialists? So let's keep the morality argument out of it and look at the simple economics and the human problem behind agriculture," he said.
He said the average debt of agricultural families was Rs 90,000 to Rs 1 lakh.
"How can an indebted farmer ever repay Rs 90,000 to Rs 1 lakh? He is in the ICU. You have to first save his life, revive him. This is what loan waiver does... If people are deep in debt due to drought or flood or some other reason, how can a government say I won't relieve you of your debt?
"But I agree this is not a complete solution. After that, you have to ensure there is an increase in productivity, increase in production and the farmer gets fair price. If you fail to do that, 10 years later you will face the same problem," the Congress leader said.
He also defended Rahul Gandhi's announcement of a minimum income guarantee scheme for the poor as implementable and said liberal economists like Arvind Subramanian to right-wing conservative economists like Surjit Bhalla had said it was implementable.
"We have consulted a large number of economists of international repute. They say it's implementable provided it is carefully-designed, progressively rolled out. And it will be progressively rolled out," he said.
Chidambaram said while the contours of the scheme will be revealed in the party manifesto, the details would be fleshed out only if and when the Congress is voted to power.
Asked how much of an amount it was looking at, considering it called Rs 6,000 support to farmers - which translates to around Rs 17 a day - a "cruel joke", he said: "Obviously it has to be a minimum income into which every family will be brought so that the family can afford food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education."
He also attacked the government on lack of jobs and said Congress knew how to create jobs and would show it if it comes to power.
"Congress knows how to create jobs. We know which are the job-creating sectors. Our manifesto will spell out how jobs can be created through the well-known job-creating sectors.
"Had we not created jobs (during UPA government), there would have been a huge outcry. Have you ever seen an outcry in earlier period equal to the outcry you hear today? People don't cry out for the sake of crying out. They cry out because of their anguish, their suffering," he said.
Asked how the Congress planned to create jobs, he said: "I believe that high growth will create jobs. And since we had high growth for the first seven years of the UPA government, I believe that a large number of jobs were created."
Chidambaram, however, admitted that while the UPA did create jobs, they were not enough to take care of the number that was entering the labour force.
(Vishav can be contacted at vishav@ians.in and Anurag Dey at anurag.d@ians.in)
Imphal, Feb 9 : Thousands of women vendors who exclusively run the three main markets here staged a 12-hour sit-in protest on Saturday demanding a written assurance from the state government that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, will not affect Manipur and other northeastern states.
T. Rani, one of the women vendor activists, said: "The government should issue a written assurance to the effect that when enacted the Bill shall not affect the people of the northeasten states."
However, spokesperson of the BJP-led state government P. Saratchandra said: "The Citizenship Act was passed by the Centre in 1955 to save the people in some countries from religious persecutions."
A similar strike was imposed in Assam on Saturday after Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Guwahati on Friday to start his two-day visit to Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura.
There have been nocturnal torch light procession by the womenfolk in many parts of Manipur. On Thursday, a mass protest was held here.
Several protests against the Bill are being held in the northeastern states ever since it was passed by the Lok Sabha on January 8. It is still awaiting the nod of the Rajya Sabha.
Islamabad, Feb 9 : Pakistan's Interior Ministry on Saturday rejected pleas of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar seeking removal of their names from the Exit Control List (ECL).
In October last year, Sharif, his daughter and son-in-law had separately written letters to the ministry stating that Rule 2 of Exit From Pakistan Rules 2010 did not apply to them as they "were not involved in corruption, misuse of authority, terrorism or any conspiracy" and thus their names should be removed from ECL.
According to the News International, all the three were informed about the rejection of their applications. The report cited anti-corruption body's sources as saying that now all the three had no other option but to approach the court for the sake of removing their names from ECL.
The decision to place the names of the former Premier, his daughter and son-in-law was taken during the first federal Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan on August 20, 2018.
In July last year, an accountability court in Islamabad had convicted the three in the Avenfield properties corruption case and sentenced them to 10 years, seven years and one year respectively in prison.
Sharif and Maryam Nawaz were released from jail on September 19 after the Islamabad High Court suspended their sentences in the case.
However, in December, an accountability court in Islamabad sentenced Sharif to seven years in prison in Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption reference, while acquitting him in the Flagship Investment reference.
The anti-corruption watchdog, while sentencing Sharif, had ruled that Al-Azizia Steel Mills - a Saudi Arabian firm carrying the name of his son - belonged to the former Prime Minister, who was unable to demonstrate how the project was funded.
New Delhi, Feb 9 : Citing purported audio tape conversations allegedly involving former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, the Congress on Saturday accused the BJP of attempting to destabilise the Congress-JD(S) government in Karnataka through corruption and horse trading and sought to link its national leadership - Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President Amit Shah - in the episode.
Addressing a press conference, AICC General Secretary K.C. Venugopal and party chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said the Yeddyurappa tapes now establish a "new low" in the politics of corruption, bribery and "sinister attempt to misuse the entire judiciary up to the Supreme Court to bring down an elected government in Karnataka".
A scandalous claim has been made by naming Modi and Shah that the Supreme Court judges would be approached to fix the cases of the MLAs who will defect in violation of the anti-defection law, they said.
The audio clip relates to a purported discussion between Yeddyurappa and Shan Gowda, son of JD(S) legislator Nagana Gowda from Gurmitkal constituency, a few days ago.
"In this audio clip, it is said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah will approach Supreme Court judges and take care of any conflict that will arise from this," Surjewala said.
He asked whether the Chief Justice of India would take action and issue notice against BJP for such practices.
The two leaders said another "sensational revelation" from the audio clip was that the Governor was being treated as a "puppet" and was being used to destabilise an elected government in Karnataka and the BJP has "offered" Rs 50 Crore to the Vidhan Sabha Speaker.
"We witnessed the newest low in politics when not only BJP Karnataka's senior leaders were involved in horse trading and corruption but also revealed the role of Modi and Shah in it," Surjewala said.
He said that the audio clippings were making clear that Yeddyurappa was offering Rs 10 crore to each MLA and 12 people were offered ministerial positions and six were offered the position chairman of various boards.
"Where did this money come from? Is this black money or white money?" he asked.
Venugopal said that the Karnataka government will continue, irrespective of whatever the BJP may be trying.
"We are 100 per cent sure about it. BJP's type of politics should be condemned," he said.
"From day one, since H.D. Kumaraswamy became the Chief Minister, BJP's national leadership is trying to destabilise the government through horse-trading."
Itanagar, Feb 9 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated several developmental projects during his one-day visit to Arunachal Pradesh, including two airports, a tunnel and a film institute.
Following his arrival, Modi laid the foundation stones for the construction of the greenfield airport at Hollongi, the Sela Tunnel and a permanent campus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).
He also launched a new dedicated Doordarshan Channel for Arunachal Pradesh - DD Arun Prabha - and inaugurated a 110 MW Pare Hydroelectric Plant along with the upgraded Tezu Airport and 50 health and wellness centres in the hill state.
Modi addressed a huge public rally at the IG Park here, urging people to see what the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government at the Centre has done in the Northeast in the last four-and-a-half years compared to the last 55 years.
"Our government after coming to power, have taken up developmental works. I believe that we can build a strong and better India only when we develop the northeastern region," said Modi.
He said that the Centre has already sanctioned Rs 44,000 crore to Arunachal Pradesh.
"I am happy to inaugurate the two airports today. Never before in the history of Arunachal Pradesh, two airports were inaugurated in a single day.
"The two airpors will help bring more tourists to the state and help the youths with employment opportunities.
"In absence of airports, people from Arunachal Pradesh had to go to Guwahati by road. These airports will provide direct flight connectivity to the people of the state," the Prime Minister said, adding that his government has also sanctioned seven surveys for railway line extension, out of which three have been completed.
Modi said that Centre also approved projects to produce 850 MW of power which will benefit the region.
Modi arrived in Guwahati on Friday evening. On his way to the Raj Bhavan from the airport, protesters demonstrating against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill waved black flags.
While leaving from the Raj Bhavan on Saturday morning to depart for Arunachal Pradesh, a group of students again waved black flags at the Prime Minister.
Srinagar, Feb 9 : A separatist-called shutdown on Saturday in the Kashmir Valley to mark the sixth death anniversary of Parliament-attack mastermind Afzal Guru, has paralysed life across the region.
Afzal Guru was executed in Delhi's Tihar Jail on this day in 2013.
While calling for the shutdown, the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), a separatist conglomerate headed by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, has reiterated their demand for handing over Afzal Guru's mortal remains to the family.
After the execution, Afzal Guru's body was buried within the precincts of the jail. He is survived by his wife, Tabassum and 18-year old son, Ghalib, who live in Tarzoo village near north Kashmir's Sopore town.
Authorities placed Mirwaiz Umer Farooq under house arrest on Friday at his residence on the outskirts of Srinagar.
Markets, public transportations and other business establishments remained closed in Srinagar and other major cities and towns of the valley.
Authorities made heavy deployments of police and paramilitary forces at law and order sensitive places in Srinagar, Sopore, Baramulla, but n o restrictions were imposed on public movement anywhere in the valley.
Ahmednagar : , Feb 9 (IANS) Apprehensive over political ramifications, the Maharashtra Police and local government officials forcibly broke a six-day long hunger strike by three daughters of poor farmers in Puntamba village, Ahmednagar district, on Saturday.
In a pre-dawn swoop, a police team raided the marquee where two of the three fasting girls -- Nikita Jadhav, 20 and Poonam Jadhav, 19 -- were resting along with relatives and supporters, and whisked them off to Ahmednagar Civil Hospital.
By 3 a.m., the police team uprooted the marquee, banners and posters put up for the agitation after local officials claimed they were "illegally erected". The girls' protesting relatives and supporters were detained while onlookers were chased away.
Angered by the action, the Puntamba village observed a spontaneous shutdown -- the second in three days -- demanding that the girls, including 19-year old Shubhangi Jadhav, who was bundled off to hospital on Friday, should be immediately released.
Following social crusader Anna Hazare's weeklong hunger strike in Ralegan-Siddhi, the Jadhav girls secured the support of several farmers' groups, ruling ally Shiv Sena and the Opposition Congress among others.
Nikita, Shubhangi and Poonam as well as their college students and friends launched the indefinite hunger strike from February 4 for various farmers' demands including full waiver of all farm loans, minimum support price for farm produce, pension for all farmers above 60 years age and free power for agriculture purposes.
The demands also included GST waiver on all farm equipments and machinery, raising procurement prices of milk which are now lower than soft drinks available in the market.
On February 6, schoolgirls and villagers in Puntamba staged a black flag procession which saw the participation of people from neighbouring villages.
While the media has been kept off-bounds, it is learnt that the girls are reportedly kept in the ICU against their wishes but they continued their agitation.
New Delhi, Feb 9 (IANS) Former high-profile Commerce and Industry minister Kamal Nath was once India's face at the troubled world trade negotiating Camelot.
He never backed down in the face of a concerted western fusillade on agricultural subsidies and walked out to protect Indian farmers' interests, virtually dismantling the WTO.
After holding several other key portfolios in UPA-II and even in earlier Congress governments, the nine-time Lok Sabha MP was recently the Congress face in Madhya Pradesh elections.
In a dynamic campaign fronted by the consummate 72-year-old politico, Kamal Nath ended Shivraj Singh Chauhan's multiple term tenure as CM. In a forthright conversation with IANS, the political and business savvy Doon School-educated Nath, once described as Indira Gandhi's 'third son' for his unparalleled proximity to Sanjay Gandhi, outlines his plans for middle India's key state.
After 15 years in BJP rule, there must be several things that the Congress led by him wants to fix in the state. IANS began by asking him what the five topmost items were on his agenda?
Nath explained: "It wouldn't be wrong to say that Madhya Pradesh is in a shambles after 15 years of bad governance. There are myriad things that need to be put into place. Our first priority will be the well-being of farmers and development of agriculture in the state. Farmers have been the worst victims of BJP rule, with hardly any reward for their hard work.
The focus would be on strengthening the agricultural sector and giving a boost to farm-based economy. The previous government made a bevy of promises. However, sadly enough, little has materialized. Next, will be to put the financial health of the state back on track. Owing to rampant expenditure by the BJP-government, the state economy went for a toss.
"We need to fix it. We are also working on generating employment opportunities for youth in the state. There has been a major drain of resources over the last decade which needs to be addressed. Also, as promised, we will provide safe and healthy environment for women in the state. Besides these, it is absolutely necessary to strengthen the delivery systems, so that people are benefited from government schemes," he said.
Hitting the ground running, as soon as he came to power, he delivered on his promise of a farm loan waiver, which many reckon is bad economics. But his thinking is predicated on the dire situation in the farm community that he had to opt for this option?
The Chief Minister at his most pragmatic said, "Ever since I assumed the role of a Chief Minister and, in fact, even prior to that, I have been asked this question time and again. Considering the condition of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, we had to take a step towards their well-being and waiving their loans was a logical solution. Most farmers are born in debt and even die with it which, taking into account the fact that we are an agrarian country, is very unfortunate.
"We are not doing any favour by helping state farmers. They are our principal food providers and the endeavour to waive their loan is a step towards upliftment of their condition and ushering in development in the state. I look at it as a long-term investment taken for the betterment of the state. Also, I believe those who call it bad economics, understand very little about both agriculture and economics. We are all aware of the fact that banks waive loans of industries and business houses, sometimes even up to 50 per cent. If waiving loans for the business community is good economics, how does it become bad economics when we do the same for impoverished farmers?"
As a long-standing and a top minister in various Union Cabinets, the new setting is different, so how does state politics sit with him?
Nath, who has nurtured his constituency Chindwara for years stated, "State politics is very different from union politics. There is a huge difference in being a Cabinet Minister and a Chief Minister. The dynamics are very unlike each other. State politics has a very wide spectrum and as the Chief Minister, things are encompassed around you.
"Also, the challenges to be met with and responsibilities to be taken up are huge. As a union minister I brought in changes that yielded positive results and I plan to replicate the same at the state level. However, what is common between the two is public service. Everybody involved in politics looks forward to serving people and the country and so do I. Whatever capacity I've worked in over the last four decades, the underlying goal has always been to serve people. Public service is the only motive that drives me."
"Of course, the challenge has to be difficult as a relatively backward state like MP, one of India's largest in terms of size has its own unique set of problems? Nath was quick to counter - "There are a multitude of challenges that Madhya Pradesh faces especially in terms of farmer suicides, unemployment etc. The state ranks very low in terms of Ease of Doing Business.
"These are some of the major reasons behind the backwardness of the state. As the second largest state of India, our horizon is very wide and possibilities unlimited. However, the previous government never thought of exploring opportunities and was rather busy exploiting resources. All their claims of uprooting it from the tag of a 'Bimaru State' were nothing but a complete pack of lies.
"In the last 15 years, hardly anything has been done to improve the economic condition of the state. Our growth model is that of a decentralized one. We are ensuring to create equal opportunities for all that will result in holistic development of the state. Our idea is to create governance at district level and ensure development starts from the grass-roots. All facilities should be available at the ground level so that people do not have to come to bigger cities to get their work done. The state also has a large number of departments, corporations, boards and even universities that needs revamping. We are also working on identifying and mending those areas."
Many also reckon that Nath as an astute politician is playing competitive cow politics. He is now going to set up gaushalas? One knows that it is a pre-election plan of the Congress, but isn't it regressive, one asked him?
Straight off the bat, Nath said - "The word 'regressive' intrigues me, simply because I fail to understand how building sheds for animals could be regressive! Construction of gaushalas was not a part of our manifesto initially but became one when, during a rally, I witnessed how badly cows were treated. It was a disturbing sight and so I announced it three months before the release of our manifesto.
"It was not a pre-election plan since as a party we do not believe in animal politics. It is simply that in a country where cows are accorded such amount of respect, I believe protecting them and building gaushalas in every Panchayat is important.
"It was not a pre-election plan and it was not competitive one either. Now, in four months we are going to establish one thousand Gaushalas in different villages of MP where homeless cows will be taken care of. These will be equipped with shed, tube well, biogas plant, etc.
"The model of Gaushala has been designed in such a way that society, farmers and common people will play a great role in running the Gaushala. This would increase public participation and make this model more sustainable. The Urban Development Department will be the nodal department for this project.
"The project will also create employment opportunities in the rural areas. It will also give an opportunity to people to render their participation in different ways like coming forward to construct a Goushala in government allotted land, taking care of functioning of Goushalas constructed on government allotted land, or taking charge of Gou Abhiyaran and Gou Sadan."
To be continued in Part II)
(Sandeep Bamzai can be contacted on sandeep.bamzai@ians.in)
New Delhi, Feb 9 : Robert Vadra, the brother-in-law of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, on Saturday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) here for a third round of questioning in a money laundering case.
Vadra, who was questioned for over six hours on Wednesday and Thursday, reached the ED's Jamnagar office at around 10.45 a.m.
He is being questioned on transactions, purchase and possession of certain immovable assets in London.
The ED case relates to the ownership of 1.9 million pounds of undisclosed assets abroad, allegedly belonging to Vadra.
The ED counsel had told a city court earlier that the London property was part of the kickbacks received in a petroleum deal. The money was transferred by Santech International, FZC, a UAE-based company.
Mumbai, Feb 9 : Actor Boman Irani has become a proud grandfather again as his son Danesh and daughter-in-law Reah have welcomed their second bundle of joy -- a girl.
The thrilled grandfather took to Twitter on Friday evening to announce the arrival of the newborn.
Boman posted a black and white photograph of Danesh and Reah, and captioned it: "There is nothing sweeter and warmer in the world than holding a newborn baby girl in your arms that will soon call you Grandpa! Love you more and more my son Danesh Irani and my darling daughter Reah."
Danesh and Reah tied the knot in 2011. The two welcomed their first born, a son, in 2016.
The 59-year-old actor and his wife Zenobia also have another son, Kayoze Irani, 31, who is a Bollywood actor and has featured in films such as "Student of The Year" and "Youngistaan".
On the work front, Boman will be seen in "Housefull 4" and has been roped in for the upcoming biopic titled "PM Narendra Modi".
Los Angeles, Feb 9 : Actor Chad Michael Murray has been cast in the recurring role of Edgar Evernever in the drama series "Riverdale".
The "A Cinderella Story" star, also known for his role on "One Tree Hill", will play the enigmatic leader of the cult-like Farm. He arrives in Riverdale to spread his teachings and heal the ravaged soul of the once-wholesome town, reports variety.com.
The teen drama follows Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge and Jughead Jones in this re-imagined spin on the Archie comics. Its third season premiered on October 10, 2018, and was renewed for a fourth installment in January.
Edgar had been mentioned in the show previously, and his daughter Evelyn played by Zoe De Grand Maison was introduced as Betty's classmate.
Murray previously made appearances on "Sun Records" series, as well as "Agent Carter" and the series "Chosen".
San Francisco, Feb 9 : The next version of Google's search browser "Chrome 73" would come with support for multimedia keys on desktop and laptop keyboards, the media reported.
The feature would initially support "play", "pause", "previous track", "next track", "seek backward", and "seek forward" keyboard commands as part of "Google Chrome 73", that is scheduled to release next month, Engadget reported on Friday.
The support for multimedia is being added at the browser level rather than the tab level, hence the multimedia buttons would work even when Chrome is operating in the background or is minimised.
"If you're watching a YouTube video and you pull up another app while the video is playing, hitting the pause button will still stop it," the report explained.
The feature would first be made available for Chrome OS, macOS and Windows and reach Linux users later this year.
The new addition would also ship with a "Media Session API" that would enable developers to customise how their sites and apps interact with multimedia keys.
Chrome would be the first browser to offer such support, the report added.
Amaravati, Feb 9 : Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday asked members and cadres of his Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to stage protests during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the state on Sunday.
Naidu, who is also the TDP President, told the cadres and party members during a teleconference calls that the protests, against the Centre's "betrayal" to the state, should be organised on a scale that the whole country should take note of it.
Modi is scheduled to address a rally in Guntur. This will be his first visit to Andhra Pradesh after TDP snapped ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last year.
The TDP chief, who will be holding a day-long protest in New Delhi on Monday, said protests should be organised with the spirit shown by Mahatma Gandhi.
The TDP chief alleged that Modi was coming to the state to see the destruction following the bifurcation in 2014.
"Is he coming here to see whether people are still alive?" Naidu had earlier remarked on Modi's visit.
Naidu said there was a conspiracy to destabilise the state government.
London, Feb 9 : Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the most prominent campaigner for Britain to leave the European Union (EU), has announced that if the country's exit from the EU was delayed, he would stand as candidate for a new pro-Brexit party.
Farage made the announcement in an op-ed for The Telegraph daily on Friday, reports CNN.
"I have made it clear many times that I will not stand by and do nothing, so should this (European Parliament) election need to be contested, I will stand as a candidate for the Brexit Party and I will give it my all," he said.
"In defence of democracy, we stand ready for battle."
The party's current leader, Catherine Blaiklock, a former UKIP member, had registered the group on Tuesday.
Farage saw the EU refeed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
On Tuesday, at least 18 PTM members, including rights activist Gulalai Ismail, were detained from outside the National Press Club in Islamabad.
Ismail, who was in detention for nearly 30 hours, was released on Friday.
Jan, known for his political views and activism, was barred to speak at a cultural event last November.
Sydney, Feb 9 : UNSW Sydney, one of Australia's world-class universities, joined the Indian community and business leaders to commemorate Indias Martyrs Day - the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhis assassination on January 30, 1948 - at the annual Gandhi Remembrance Ceremony and Gandhi Oration.
Launched in 2012, the Gandhi Oration is delivered by a person whose life work exemplifies the ideals of Gandhi. The Oration is preceded by a Remembrance Ceremony at the Gandhi bust on the Library Lawn of the 70-year-old university that has one of the largest numbers of Indian students. The ceremony includes the lighting of a ceremonial lamp, the singing of two hymns and a minute's silence before dignitaries place floral tributes on the bust of Gandhi.
The events signify the close ties between India and UNSW. The university is the only higher-education institution in Australia to celebrate Martyr's Day and is home to one of only two bronze sculptures of Gandhi in the country. UNSW also hosts the annual Gandhi Jayanti, a celebration of Gandhi's birthday on October 2.
During the commemoration earlier this week, UNSW President and Vice Chancellor Professor Ian Jacobs articulated the University's role in continuing Gandhi's vision for dismantling injustice, and championing human rights for all by bridging geographic and cultural divides through collaboration and student exchange. The University has identified India as a key strategic partner in its 2025 Strategy.
"UNSW is delighted that our partnerships in India are ever-growing in breadth and depth," Professor Jacobs said. "We acknowledge that we are fortunate to partner with a country that has held knowledge and learning in high esteem for millennia."
Jacobs continued: "I wanted to take this opportunity to say how proud I am that UNSW enjoys such a harmonious relationship with our Indian partners - and I look forward to the successes we will achieve for our communities because of that."
Attendees included Dr Ajay Gondane, India High Commissioner to Australia; Chandru Appar, Acting Consul-General of India in Sydney; Dr Neville Roach, Patron of the Australia India Institute; Rajni and Pawan Luthra, media partners from India Link; and Vikram Singh, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services in Australia and New Zealand.
This year's oration was delivered by Tim Costello AO, one of Australia's leading voices on social justice and humanitarian issues. Costello, currently Chief Advocate for World Vision Australia, said the fundamental issues Gandhi addressed almost a century ago - poverty and hunger, violence, war and injustice - still remain as the world grapples with the mixed benefits of the rise of globalisation, retribalisation, marginalisation of minorities and divisive populist politics.
"Many decades ago before the technological revolution with iPads, search engines, Facebook, Twitter and social media, Gandhi warned that people might learn to fly like birds and swim like fish but it would be of little use and even a disaster if they forgot how to walk like human beings," Costello said.
He implored audience members to play a role in ensuring a fair and just society and to remain optimistic that our world can change for the better.
"All of us have to be a part of the solution. We all have gifts, privileges and talents to make a difference," Costello said. "Gandhi's ideal of self-sacrifice over self-interest, individual obligations over individual rights, renunciation over consumption, and self-sacrifice over violence still ring true."
Costello concluded with a Gandhi quote: "In a gentle way you can shake the world" with the power of your beliefs, with the power of your conviction, with your devotion to the invincible truth. Love and truth are faces of the same coin, both very difficult to practise, and the only things worth living for."
Since its inception, the Oration has been delivered by Patrick Dodson in 2012, Justice Michael Kirby 2013, Dr Tom Keneally 2014, Ela Gandhi 2015, Peter Greste 2016, Dr Hugh Mackay AO 2017 and Indian journalist Shoma Chaudhury in 2018.
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Gandhi's birth on October 2, 2019, UNSW is releasing a book featuring a compilation of each Gandhi Oration since 2012.
Amaravati, Feb 9 : The Andhra Pradesh government has hired two special trains to ferry people to New Delhi for Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu's protest against the Centre on February 11, officials said here on Saturday.
The General Administration Department has released Rs 1.12 crore to hire the trains with 20 compartments each from the South Central Railway.
According to the orders issued by the Department, the trains from Ananthapur and Srikakulam will transport leaders of political parties, organisations, NGOs and associations to the national capital to enable them to participate in the one-day 'Deeksha' (protest.
Both the trains would reach New Delhi by 10 a.m. on Sunday.
The protest is against the Centre's refusal to grant a Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh and also its failure to fulfil other commitments made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.
Naidu, who is also the President of Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has appealed to all, including opposition parties, to make the protest a success.
Leaders of non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parties are also expected to join Naidu in the sit-in.
The TDP had pulled out of the BJP-led NDA government last year.
Mumbai, Feb 8 : Automobile major Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) on Friday reported a 11.43 per cent fall in its standalone net profit for the quarter-ended Decemeber 31, 2018-19.
Automobile major Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) on Friday reported a 11.43 it today anchored in history, culture, language and shared values of democracy, secularism, development cooperation and other commonalities.
The two countries signed three MoUs including on mid-career training of 1800 Bangladesh civil servants, on cooperation in the field of medicinal plants between AYUSH and the Ministry of Health of Bangladesh. A MoU was also signed between CBI and Anti-Corruption Commission of Bangladesh.
Momen, who had called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, conveyed the greetings of Sheikh Hasina, and her appreciation for Modi being the first foreign leader to congratulate her upon the victory of the Awami League in Bangladesh's parliamentary elections in December 2018.
Modi reaffirmed "India's abiding commitment to remain Bangladesh's most committed partner for security and development."
Modi also conveyed his good wishes to his Bangladeshi counterpart for her success in this third consecutive term in office.
During the JCC meeting, Sushma Swaraj and Momen also expressed satisfaction that both countries were "working closer than ever before" in every sector, from security and border management to mutually-beneficial trade and investment flows, power and energy, river water sharing, development partnership, transport connectivity, culture, people-to-people contacts.
"The External Affairs Minister expressed appreciation for the humanitarian gesture of Bangladesh in supporting a large number of displaced persons from the Rakhine region of Myanmar and assured the Foreign Minister of India's continued support for safe, speedy and sustainable return of the displaced persons to Myanmar," said a joint press release issued after the meeting.
Momen conveyed gratitude of Bangladesh government for the humanitarian assistance provided by India in four tranches since September 2017 to help meet the requirements of the displaced persons from Myanmar.
"The two ministers agreed on the need to expedite safe and sustainable repatriation of the displaced people from Rakhine State of Myanmar," the release said.
The ministers tasked their accompanying officials to develop a forward looking roadmap for bilateral cooperation "to make the partnership irreversible."
They said that partnership-building efforts should be enhanced in a manner commensurate with commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh's Liberation.
The ministers discussed the gamut of bilateral issues of mutual interest and implementation of decisions taken earlier.
They said the relationship was now broadening to include new and high technology areas for partnership, such as space, nuclear energy, IT and electronics.
An MoU was also signed between Hiranandani Group and Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority to facilitate investments in the Indian Economic Zone in Mongla.
Lahore, Feb 9 : A Pakistani academic was arrested here on Saturday "for participating at a protest", he said in a social media post.
In the Facebook post, Ammar Ali Jan wrote he was "under arrest at the Gulberg police station", reports Dawn news.
"There is an FIR against me for participating at the protest in Liberty against the killing of Professor Arman Loni," the post said, adding that he was taken into custody at 4 a.m. which is when he said "the police raided my house".
In the FIR, the complainant said that Jan was leading a group of 100-150 people that had blocked roads and chanted slogans against state institutions and intelligence agencies.
Protests have taken place in Quetta, Islamabad and Lahore over the death of senior Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) leader Arman Loni who was allegedly killed during a sit-in in Balochistan.
PTM is a social movement for Pashtun human rights based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
On Tuesday, at least 18 PTM members, including rights activist Gulalai Ismail, were detained from outside the National Press Club in Islamabad.
Ismail, who was in detention for nearly 30 hours, was released on Friday.
Jan, known for his political views and activism, was barred to speak at a cultural event last November.
Washington, Feb 9 : US President Donald Trump has said he will meet for the second time with Kim Jong-un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on February 27-28 in Vietnam's capital Hanoi.
The DPRK will embrace great economic development under Kim's leadership, Trump said.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong-un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump tweeted, referring to Stephen Biegun, US special envoy for DPRK-related issues.
"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," he later tweeted in a separate post.
"He (Kim) may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket -- an Economic one!" the White House host noted.
Madrid, Feb 9 : At least one person died and 95 injured following the collision of two trains between Manresa and Sant Vincenc de Castellet in east Spain, the state-owned railway infrastructure manager ADIF said in an official statement.
A passenger on Friday warned the emergency services at 18:20 pm local time of a collision of two trains travelling the usual route R-4 in Rodalies, linking two cities in the main industrial belt of Barcelona, Xinhua news agency reported.
It was a head-on collision of two trains, and a train driver was killed, according to state-owned railway operator Renfe Operadora.
A total of 95 people were injured during the wreck, three in serious condition, said local emergency services via their Twitter account.
Local councillor Damia Calvet told Ser radio Station that the accident was "due to a malfunctioning of the signalling mechanism that should have prevented a train from following the wrong direction", a possible "problem of manual systems".
An eye witness told local TV how she saw a train heading towards the other, with no sufficient time to stop. "Pieces of glass broke off and flew around," she described.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has sent his condolences to the victims and the family of the deceased.
"Keeping an eye on every piece of information that we can get from the emergency services regarding the frontal collision between two trains St Vicenc de Castellet and Manresa. My thoughts are with the deceased's family and those who were injured," Sanchez tweeted.
On Nov 20, 2018, a train carrying 133 people on the same route had an accident due to a landslide following heavy rains in the region, leaving one dead and 50 injured.
Grand Rapids : , Feb 9 (IANS) Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai has emphasised that China and the United States need to develop stronger ties in the future.
Cui made the remarks while addressing a public event held by a non-profit organization in the Midwestern US state of Michigan on Friday, Xinhua news agency reported.
"We need to develop even stronger relationship on the basis of coordination, cooperation and stability" between the two countries, the Chinese envoy said.
Asserting that China and the United States are "two very different countries" in terms of history and culture among other areas, Cui said it was important for the two sides to "have much better mutual understanding" for each other's intention and policy and identify common grounds to stabilize the relationship.
"We have so many global issues that we have to work together on," including climate change, terrorism, poverty, pandemics and natural disaster, the veteran diplomat noted.
"No country can handle it all by itself," he added.
More than 400 guests, including former US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, attended the luncheon held by the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, which aims to provide forums for conversation on international topics.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the China-US diplomatic relations.
Bilateral trade grew from less than USD 2.5 billion 40 years ago to more than USD 580 billion in 2017. Over the same period, the stock of two-way investment rose from practically nil to more than USD 230 billion.
Riyadh, Feb 9 : Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir has rejected the attempt to link Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
He told reporters in Washington that the claims were "baseless" and those involved will be held accountable, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday, citing Al Arabiya TV.
Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey's Istanbul in October 2018, and a number of top Saudi officials involved in the case were arrested.
The Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud also ordered to re-structure the intelligence authority. Last month, Saudi Public Prosecution demanded capital punishment against five out of 11 suspects in the murder case.
The operation wasn't authorised, Al-Jubeir affirmed, highlighting "no order was given to conduct this operation."
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., Esq., a partner at the law firm of Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF"), announces that KSF has commenced an investigation into Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL).
In January 2017 the U.S. Department of Labor ("DOL") filed suit against the Company's subsidiary, Oracle America, Inc., alleging systemic pay discrimination practices against female, African American, and Asian employees and other discriminatory employment practices. Recently, the presiding judge denied Oracle's request to dismiss the case and the DOL amended its complaint to add additional evidence that, among other things, Oracle underpaid female and nonwhite workers by more than $400 million over four years and steered such employees to low-level positions with low starting salaries resulting in "female, black and Asian employees with years of experience [being] paid as much as 25 percent less than their peers." Oracle has also been sued in a class action gender bias lawsuit filed in August 2017 on behalf of female employees alleging systematic underpayment, which is ongoing.
KSF's investigation is focusing on whether Oracle Corporation's officers and/or directors breached their fiduciary duties to its shareholders or otherwise violated state or federal laws.
If you have information that would assist KSF in its investigation, or have been a long-term holder of Oracle Corporation shares and would like to discuss your legal rights, you may, without obligation or cost to you, call toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or email KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn ([email protected]), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nyse-orcl/ to learn more.
About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC
KSF, whose partners include the Former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is a law firm focused on securities, antitrust and consumer class actions, along with merger & acquisition and breach of fiduciary litigation against publicly traded companies on behalf of shareholders. The firm has offices in New York, California and Louisiana.
To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com.
Contact:
Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC
Lewis Kahn, Managing Partner
[email protected]
1-877-515-1850
1100 Poydras St., Suite 3200
New Orleans, LA 70163
SOURCE Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC
Related Links
http://www.ksfcounsel.com
Waris Dirie, human rights activist, was the first person in history to publicize the violence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) on the world stage, saving millions of lives by raising the issue of FGM as an international human rights agenda and assisting in passing a UN resolution banning its practice. The Sunhak Committee acknowledges Waris Dirie's achievements in advocating for the rights of millions of women and girls in Africa.
"Thank you for your recognition. Thank you for everything that comes with it, this beautiful peace prize. It's all I dreamed [of] as a child. All I wanted was peace and to receive this, this is a great gift to me...You giving me a peace prize, it's because I believe in peace," stated Ms. Dirie during the press conference.
As a victim of FGM herself, having been circumcised at the tender age of five in Somalia, she quit a successful career as a supermodel and dedicated the past 25 years to making FGM a recognized worldwide human rights crisis. She served as UN Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation from 1997 to 2003.
Ms. Dirie is actively working to raise awareness of this violent act that has affected the lives of countless women and girls. Her advocacy focuses on education as the fundamental key to eradicating FGM and empowering women and girls to have the knowledge they need to protect themselves. She emphasizes the fact that until women have equal respect, there cannot be lasting peace.
In 2002, she founded the Desert Flower Foundation, an organization aimed at raising awareness of the dangers surrounding FGM. The Foundation raises money for schools and clinics in her native Somalia and supports the Zeitz Foundation, an organization focused on sustainable development and conservation.
She also runs FGM reconstruction surgery centers in Europe. In January 2009, she started the PPR Foundation for Women's Dignity and Rights, an organization founded along with French business tycoon Francois-Henri Pinault and his wife, Hollywood actress Salma Hayek.
For more information about the Sunhak Peace Prize and this year's laureates, please visit sunhakpeaceprize.org .
Contact:
Nancy Jubb
Communications Director
212-997-0057
[email protected]
Catherine Restivo
Irving Street Rep
973-643-6262
[email protected]
SOURCE Family Federation for World Peace and Unification
Related Links
http://www.familyfed.org/
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 9, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Winners of the 44th Annual HUMANITAS Prize were announced and honored tonight at The Beverly Hills Hotel. In addition to presenting awards to film and television writers in eight categories, winners were announced for NEW VOICES of HUMANITAS and PLAY LA, as well as The David & Lynn Angell College Comedy Fellowship and The Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Fellowship.
HUMANITAS Prize winners donated their $10,000 cash prize to non-profit organizations dedicated to affecting positive change both at home and on the world stage.
HUMANITAS Prize Winners
Drama Feature Film : ON THE BASIS OF SEX Written by Daniel Stiepleman
ON THE BASIS OF SEX Written by Comedy Feature Film: LOVE, SIMON Screenplay by Elizabeth Berger & Isaac Aptaker , Based on the Novel Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
LOVE, SIMON Screenplay by & , Based on the Novel by Family Feature Film: MARY POPPINS RETURNS Screenplay by David Magee , Screen Story by David Magee & Rob Marshall & John DeLuca , Based upon the Mary Poppins stories by P.L. Travers
MARY POPPINS RETURNS Screenplay by , Screen Story by & & , Based upon the stories by P.L. Travers Documentary: STOLEN DAUGHTERS: KIDNAPPED BY BOKO HARAM Written and Produced by Karen Edwards , Directed by Gemma Atwal
STOLEN DAUGHTERS: KIDNAPPED BY BOKO HARAM Written and Produced by , Directed by Independent Feature Film: BRIAN BANKS Written by Doug Atchison
BRIAN BANKS Written by 30-minute Comedy (tie): THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, "Mid-way to Mid-town" Written and Directed by Amy Sherman-Palladino and DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, "Volume 2: Chapter VIII" Written by Jack Moore
THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, "Mid-way to Mid-town" Written and Directed by DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, "Volume 2: Chapter VIII" Written by 60-minute Drama: GOD FRIENDED ME, "Pilot" Written by Steven Lilien & Bryan Wynbrandt
GOD FRIENDED ME, "Pilot" Written by & Children's Teleplay: ALEXA & KATIE, "Winter Formal: Part 2" Written by Matthew Carlson
Prizes Donated to Philanthropic Partners
A total of $80,000 was awarded to HUMANITAS Prize winners: $10,000 per category. Each winner designated a non-profit to receive their prize money. Our 2019 recipients:
The Children's Hospital Los Angeles - Matthew Carlson
A Place Called Home, The California Innocence Project - Doug Atchison
Story Pirates - Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt
and eQuinoxe Europe - David Magee
- The Trevor Project - Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger
and Ghetto Film School - Daniel Stiepleman
Alliance of Women Directors - Gemma Atwal
Arrupe Neighborhood Partnership - Jack Moore
Planned Parenthood - Amy Sherman-Palladino
College Fellowship Winners
The Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Fellowship and the David and Lynn Angell College Comedy Fellowship each include a $20,000 award. They are open to undergraduate and graduate students from almost 50 participating universities.
The David and Lynn Angell College Comedy Fellowship: FERNANDO - Adam Lujan ( NYU )
FERNANDO - ( ) The Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Fellowship: RUE PIGALLE - Jessica Shields ( Columbia University )
NEW VOICES Winners
Winners of the NEW VOICES program for emerging writers receive a $15,000 grant and write a pilot script under the supervision of one or more seasoned showrunners. This year's mentors included Chris Harris, Jay Kogen, Melanie Marnich, and Nancy Pimental. This year's recipients were:
Augusto Amador
Sydney Mitchel
James Pratt
Joel Sinensky
PLAY LA Winners
PLAY LA nurtures playwrights with unique voices and helps support the Los Angeles theatre community. Each year, the playwrights develop a new play from the ground up. In addition to receiving a $1,500 grant, writers are mentored by award-winning film, theatre, and TV professionals. This year's PLAY LA recipients were:
Jami Brandli
Leviticus Jelks III
Mariana Carreno King
Ashley Rose Wellman
Gina Young
Hosts and Presenters
The ceremony was emceed by the Executive Producer of Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, David Hudgins. The keynote address was delivered by Kieser Award recipient Marta Kauffman, winner of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for Friends. Kenya Barris, creator of black-ish, was honored with the Voice for Change Award in acknowledgment of the stories he tells that allow us to move closer to our shared universal truths.
Presenters included Gloria Allred, Ngozi Anyanwu, Jenny Bicks, David Kidd, John Eisendrath, Bill Lawrence, Ali LeRoi, Carol Mendelsohn, Holly Morris, Michelle Satter, Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, Robin Swicord, Aaron Thomas and David Zuckerman.
"We were extremely gratified to recognize this incredible group of writers, who have used their powers to write stories that unite us, rather than divide us," said HUMANITAS President Ali LeRoi. "And these winners are also using their prize money for good, by supporting amazing organizations devoted to empowering the next generation of writers."
"Now, more than ever, HUMANITAS is dedicated to shining a light on stories that reflect who we are as complex, fallible human beings, where we've been and where we're going," said Executive Director Cathleen Young. "The America we all grew up with is now increasingly fractured with new narratives taking root that foment hatred and bigotry and a level of divisiveness that threatens the very future of our democracy by breaking down all the core values that used to unite us. We must do everything we can to nurture and empower the next generation of journalists, film and television writers and playwrights."
About The HUMANITAS Prize
HUMANITAS exists to encourage, stimulate and sustain the nation's screenwriters in their humanizing task, and to give them the recognition they deserve.
For more information, please visit the HUMANITAS Prize at www.humanitasprize.org .
Media Contact:
The HUMANITAS Prize
Cathleen Young
Executive Director
[email protected]
(310) 454-8769
SOURCE The HUMANITAS Prize
Related Links
http://www.humanitasprize.org
Known worldwide for forecasts and warnings with proven Superior Accuracy, AccuWeather was one of the first enterprises to leverage data in a meaningful way for business and marketers, and has the world's largest collection of weather data.
An independently funded unit within IAB, the Data Center of Excellence was founded to expand existing IAB resources and drive the "data agenda" for the digital media, marketing, and advertising industry. Its mission is to help advertisers and marketers operationalize their data assets, while maintaining quality, transparency, accountability and consumer protection. IAB comprises more than 650 leading media and technology companies responsible for selling, delivering, and optimizing digital advertising or marketing campaigns.
Danetz's membership on the board broadens AccuWeather's proactive engagement in developing and promoting data practices and standards that protect consumers while supporting business innovation and growth. "I am extremely excited to help develop and implement best practices for data usage in our industry," said Danetz.
"The last few years have revolutionized the potential benefits and risks inherent in using data," Danetz said. "AccuWeather understands that this transformation also increases the importance of privacy and brand safety. As we use data to improve consumer experiences as well as expand contextually relevant ad products, partnering with other innovators like Foursquare and Beemray, AccuWeather is dedicated to being a compliant, transparent, and accountable organization. Joining the IAB Data Center of Excellence board will help us garner valuable insights on potential issues and trends, share the experiences and lessons we've learned, and work with other leaders to ensure the positive growth of our industry."
In addition to obtaining representation on the IAB Data Center of Excellence board, AccuWeather is working with the IAB in other ways to enhance the industry. AccuWeather was a VIP sponsor for the IAB Annual Leadership Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, and other activities are planned for 2019.
"We look forward to adding Eric's dynamic thinking and creativity to the IAB Data Center of Excellence Board," said Orchid Richardson, Vice President and Managing Director of the IAB Data Center of Excellence. "This board is focused on best practices for using data effectively in the supply chain - all to the benefit of publishers, brands, and consumers. We are pleased to have Eric on our team to tap into his expertise and leadership in this space to advance this objective."
Prior to joining AccuWeather, Danetz was Senior Vice President and General Manager, Time Inc. International, where he managed a multi-platform portfolio of more than 90 brands in 170 countries, published in 19 different languages. His other previous roles include Group Publisher of Fortune & Money; EVP, Chief Revenue Officer at Defy Media; and executive leadership positions at Newsweek, The Daily Beast, CBS Interactive, CNET and Ziff Davis.
About AccuWeather, Inc. and AccuWeather.com
AccuWeather, recognized and documented as the most accurate source of weather forecasts and warnings in the world has saved tens of thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of injuries and tens of billions of dollars in property damage. With global headquarters in State College, PA and other offices around the world, AccuWeather serves more than 1.5 billion people daily to help them plan their lives and get more out of their day through radio, television, newspapers, smart phones, tablets, connected TVs, the AccuWeather Network and AccuWeather.com. Additionally, AccuWeather produces and distributes news, weather content, and video for more than 180,000 third-party websites. Among AccuWeather's many innovative and award-winning features available free to the public are MinuteCast Minute by Minute forecasts with Superior Accuracy. Furthermore, AccuWeather serves more than half of the Fortune 500 companies and thousands of businesses globally. Dr. Joel N. Myers, Founder, President and Chairman, established AccuWeather in 1962 and is considered the "father of modern commercial meteorology." Dr. Myers, a leading creative thinker and visionary, has been named "the most accurate man in weather" by The New York Times and one of the top entrepreneurs in American history by Entrepreneur's Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs.
AccuWeather, AccuWeather MinuteCast, Minute by Minute and Superior Accuracy are all trademarks of AccuWeather, Inc.
The AccuWeather app for Android phone and tablet users can be downloaded free at the Google Play store. The AccuWeather iOS app is free at www.AppStore.com. Visit accuweather.com for additional information.
For more information contact:
Eston Martz / 814.235.8622 / [email protected]
Rhonda Seaton / 814.235.8555 / [email protected]
Geoffrey Phelps / 973.588.2000 / [email protected]
Jamie Paster / 973.588.2000 / [email protected]
SOURCE AccuWeather
Related Links
http://www.accuweather.com
2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Prince William community has proven resilient. The Prince William Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning --
4 WEEKS FREE DIGITAL AND PRINT ACCESS.
We understand the importance of working to keep our community strong and connected. As we move forward together into 2021, it will take commitment, communication, creativity, and a strong connection with those who are most affected by the stories we cover.
We are dedicated to providing the reliable, local journalism you have come to expect. We are committed to serving you with renewed energy and growing resources. Let the Prince William Times be your community companion throughout 2021, and for many years to come.
Population census results to be ready in August Provisional results from the 2021 National Population and Housing Census are
Ramaphosa's missing iPad excites social media A video of South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa that shows him asking where
Relentless Menzgold customers beg Speaker over locked up funds The Coalition of Former Menzgold Customers on Tuesday called on Speaker of
Ghana Premier League matchday 30 officials announced The Referees Committee of the Ghana Football Association has announced Match
Judiciary not above criticism NDC tells CJ, stands with Dr Ayine The NDC has jumped to the defense of Dr Ayine after the Chief Justice seeks to
3 players shortlisted for NASCO Player of the Month Award Three players have been shortlisted for the NASCO Player of the Month Award for
Police arrest two Karela fans over attack on Medeama players Police have arrested two persons believed to be Karela United fans who attacked
The family of Francis E. Carter will receive guests from 11 a.m. to 12 Noon, Thursday, June 24, 2021, at St. Joseph's Church in Dannemora. A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated at Noon. Burial will follow with military honors provided by the U.S. Marine Corps in the parish cemetery.
Now that COVID-19 cases are declining and the majority of Minnesotans have received vaccinations, what activities are you most looking forward to resuming this summer?
You voted:
ATLANTIC CITY The team of city code enforcement officials met up at North New Jersey and Magellan avenues shortly after 10 a.m.
After being briefed on the specific areas of Bungalow Park they each would be responsible for that day, the six inspectors parted ways.
The walk-throughs are part of an effort to update Atlantic Citys 2016 list of more than 500 abandoned properties. The city has 12 compliance officers to cover 11 densely populated square miles.
In the coming months, the city will do a walk-through in every ward.
Armed with a clipboard and a cellphone, code enforcement officer Clint Walden went directly to Connecticut and Melrose avenues, an area with which the city native is all too familiar.
A vacant building on the corner, which was once home to Friendship Outreach Deliverance Ministries, was Waldens first stop.
From the street, he pointed up through a second-story window toward the structures ceiling. Or rather, where the ceiling should have been.
The clear blue sky and its puffy white clouds could easily be seen through a hole in the ceiling.
The city is going to take them down, Walden said of the property at 302 N. Connecticut Ave. and the neighboring building at 308. Theyre scheduled for demolition, probably in the next three or four weeks.
Walden and the team of code enforcement officials were taking part in a regular practice of cataloging the citys housing stock, looking for vacant or abandoned properties and documenting others with clear violations. The intent is to determine properties for demolition or those that could be rehabilitated or refurbished.
On his clipboard, Walden meticulously worked through an abandoned-property checklist.
He and the other code enforcement officials combing through Bungalow Park that morning were looking for disconnected electric and gas meters, boarded up windows and doors, whether the exterior was in a state of disrepair and other signs of neglect.
During Waldens walk-through of the neighborhood, several residents some he knew personally, others strangers stopped him to offer their observations of properties in need of attention.
The city has been working diligently to get money for demolitions outside of the Tourism District, he said. Bungalow Park is an area and a community that is concerned about blighted conditions.
Elaine Jones, a lifelong resident of the neighborhood, said it was sad to see a once thriving, working-class community being tarnished by blight.
Its sad because the homes have history, they have families, she said. This neighborhood is still a big family.
Jones, 59, said the neglected properties tear down the fabric of the neighborhood, bringing down property values and contributing to concerns about safety.
But Jones, who several times during an interview on the street corner stopped to say hello to a passerby or wave to a friendly face, said she loves Bungalow Park and refuses to give up on it. She said the civic association was doing the work to restore Bungalow Park to its former glory, with the continued assistance of City Hall.
This is a great place to be, so we want to keep our neighborhood vibrant. But dont tell anybody, because were not accepting anybody new, she said with a smile.
People are talking about how to reinvent Atlantic City. Join the conversation here.
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Questions Cooper appointment
I felt a mix of envy, jealousy, laughter and loathing after reading that Alisa Cooper was picked as vice chair of the Casino Control Commission. I wonder what are her qualifications, other than her love of the city, her experience as an Atlantic County freeholder and playing the piano.
I too love Atlantic City and have worked in Atlantic City my whole life.
Her annual salary of $125,000 is a travesty for the workers of Atlantic City who are making $25,000 a year.
David Linblad
Atlantic City
Public smoking ban useless unless enforced
As of Jan. 16, it is illegal to light up in public parks, historic sites, forests, boardwalks and beaches anywhere in New Jersey. I assume signs will be posted in appropriate locations throughout the state.
Repeat violators risk the possibility of fines up to $1,000 per incident. Enforcement, especially on the states public beaches, will be challenging. Beach towns may have to hire patrols to enforce the law. Time will tell if the signs are enough to keep smokers from lighting up. This could end up being what I would call a feel-good law.
The editorial boards characterization of the Murphy administrations efforts to promote medical marijuana is inaccurate.
First, my lectures to teaching hospitals across New Jersey have reviewed many studies, including one that synthesizes results of over 50 clinical trials for chronic pain. To say the therapy is not supported by sufficient research is incorrect.
Second, I did not approve medical marijuana as a panacea for opioid addiction. Physicians can only use it in conjunction with medication-assisted treatment, the FDA-approved gold standard for addiction. The idea is to promote more use of MAT by adding marijuana as an adjunct.
Third, the boards claims of how evidence-based other medical therapies are is also inaccurate. For example, one study estimated that less than a third of official clinical guideline recommendations for heart disease are based on the level of evidence (e.g., randomized trials) you describe.
Regardless, better evidence is needed, and that has always been a key part of our message: Federal barriers need to be reduced to allow more research funding and FDA approval.
The cold that erased the taste of spring this past week will set the stage for not one, but two systems, to pass through early next week. At least some of it will be wintry.
We start the day much different than 24 hours ago.
The gray, quiet weather will be replaced by plenty of sunshine and wind. Temperatures will be the biggest difference, winding up 20 degrees colder than Friday morning. The wind chill will be in the teens, thanks to the strong northwest sustained winds around 15 mph.
As we go into the afternoon, the winds will relax. High temperatures will be in the upper 30s, about 5 degrees below average.
Saturday night will bring quick cooling on the mainland. Temperatures will range from the low teens in the Pine Barrens to the mid-20s at the shore.
Sunday begins as a quiet mid-February morning. Plenty of morning sunshine and southwest winds will quickly raise temperatures. Afternoon high temperatures will be around 40 seasonable.
The main attraction in the seven-day forecast will be a pair of systems that will pass through early next week.
Three men and a woman were arrested Friday morning after police found 22 grams of cocaine, 8 grams of marijuana and heroin during a car stop in Absecon.
At 11:47 a.m., Atlantic City police Detective Fariyd Holmes saw a car that was wanted in an ongoing investigation leaving the city on Route 30, according to a news release from city police.
Holmes was driving an unmarked car, and other officers responded to stop the vehicle in Absecon, police said.
The four people in the car were arrested after police found the cocaine and marijuana.
Rashad Bey, one of the passengers, also had heroin and additional cocaine, police said.
Bey, 20, of Pleasantville, was charged with three counts of possession of a controlled dangerous substance as well as possession with intent to distribute.
Juwan Miller, 23, of Pleasantville, Deante Ramseur, 21, of Absecon, and Nadiyah Thomas, 27, of Atlantic City, were each charged with two counts of drug possession and possession with intent to distribute.
All four were released on summonses.
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BRIDGETON A city woman was charged with murder Saturday morning after police found a childs remains at her home hours after she reported her 23-month-old son missing.
At 6:36 p.m. Friday, Nakira M. Griner, 24, told police her son, Daniel Griner Jr., had been abducted, according to a release from the Cumberland County Prosecutors Office.
The Child Abduction Response Team, city police, the Prosecutors Office, State Police and New Jersey State Park Police bloodhounds searched for the boy.
About 3 a.m. Saturday, a childs remains were found in the yard of Griners home in the first block of Woodland Drive.
Griner has also been charged with endangering the welfare of a child, desecration of human remains and tampering with evidence. She is in the Cumberland County jail pending a detention hearing.
The investigation is ongoing, but no additional arrests are expected, according to the Prosecutors Office.
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An Absecon couple will be headed on a Disney cruise to the Bahamas as part of the more than $59,000 in cash and prizes they won during Fridays episode of Wheel of Fortune.
Tianna and Jehron Holland met in college. They have been married for eight years and have three children. Tianna is a billing data analyst, and Jehron is a security officer, according to information provided by the show.
Wheel of Fortune was part of the Hollands love story.
When they were dating and living an hour away from each other, they made a tradition of watching together while talking on the phone, according to the show.
Jehron Holland submitted the video and application to appear on Wheel.
The Hollands competed against two other married couples during the shows Aulani Resort Hawaii Vacation week. They hoped to use any winnings to take their family on a vacation.
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She has gone cross-curricular with it. Its just not part of the history program, its part of language arts, its part of music. She incorporates it throughout the curriculum, which I think is very necessary, said Gary Melton, associate director of the executive office of the NJEA.
Melton said the union for education professionals has taken it upon themselves to see the Amistad curriculum put in place and began looking for inspirational educators to hold up as a standard. He said he was introduced to LaSure Owens work through another NJEA member and met her at the unions annual convention in Atlantic City.
With everything she is doing, its not just siloed into her classroom. Its spreading out into other areas of the school, Melton said.
There is hardly one square inch of the walls inside LaSure Owens classroom not covered in educational posters.
In the first-grade hallway, she has hung maps, drawings and posters of famous black Americans, including New Jersey representatives such as Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver and Atlantic Cape Community College President Dr. Barbara Gaba.
We know that resources are minimal to none, so weve been writing grants, buying things, doing what has to be done, being resourceful, she said.
You might see a household (with) five people, and only one person is registered, Goodman said. You might just see a household with three or four people, and nobodys registered.
That has implications beyond two or three wasted votes, Goodman said.
Until we get people out to vote, were not going to be taken serious, he said. But when we do, and when we effect the change we have the percentages to effect the change then were taken serious.
The chapter is partnering with the League of Women Voters and Stockton Universitys NAACP chapter to put on a voter education forum at the colleges Atlantic City campus later this month. Melville and Shabazz are among those who will speak in the Fannie Lou Hamer event room, named for the civil rights icon who, at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, uttered her most famous words: Im sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Melville feels much the same way. Many of the battles civil rights leaders of the 1960s fought are still underway today, she said. The Stockton forum will focus on redistricting. With the 2020 census not far off, how those data are used to draw district lines that isolate or wash out minority voting blocs will again come to the forefront, she said.
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The Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, on Friday came alive as ex-workers of Nigeria Airways Limited staged a rally to support the reelection of President Muhammadu Buhari.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the pensioners and ex-workers of the defunct national carrier declared their support for the president for paying N22. 6 billion as part payment of their entitlements in October 2018.
The pensioners, who turned out in their numbers, moved from the premises of the Skypower Catering Services through the airport environment chanting Sai Baba and Next Level, to publicly show their support for Mr Buhari.
Speaking on behalf of the Nigeria Airways ex-workers, Lookman Animashaun, said the rally was to show appreciation to the president who came to their rescue after many years of neglect by previous administrations.
Words are not enough to express the profound gratitude of the over 6,000 pensioners and ex-workers of Nigeria Airways to Buhari for his timely intervention in the payment of our benefits.
For 14 years, we were abandoned, humiliated and frustrated in our demand to be paid what was due to us by successive governments, whose stock in trade was tissues of lies designed to hoodwink the public.
In the process, about 800 of our members lost their lives.
But today, PMB has wiped out our tears, put smiles on our faces and restored hope to our members and their families with the part payment of our benefits.
According to him, the ex-workers of Nigeria Airways are optimistic that Mr Buhari will pay the outstanding balance soon as promised.
Also, Sam Nzene, National Chairman, Nigeria Airways Pensioners, told NAN that the former staff and their families would cast their vote for Mr Buhari because it was the right thing to do.
This is a man who saved us, who brought smiles to our faces, who rescued our families when others refused to show concern.
He did promise that he will do it and he actually did it by paying part payment of our benefits that have not been paid for over 14 years.
So we decided to show gratitude to him by organising this rally because one good turn deserves another.
We have decided that we and our families will vote for him. We want to tell Nigerians to vote for him because he is a man with a kind heart, Mr Nzene said.
He said the outstanding payment of their entitlements was already captured in the 2019 budget, which was a clear demonstration that the money would soon be disbursed to the beneficiaries.
NAN reports that the former national carrier was liquidated in 2004 by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration. But the workers were not paid their severance packages as stipulated in extant labour laws.
The workers were paid a fraction of their entitlements by the late President Umaru YarAduas regime in 2008 before Buhari approved the part payment of N22. 6 billion to them.
The government has also promised to pay the other half of the money to them as soon as funds are available. (NAN)
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The Nigerian Army has debunked a report that troops of Egwu Eke III, also known as Operation Python Dance 3, shot or wounded persons in Aba, Abia.
Sagir Musa, Deputy Director, Public Relations, 82 Division of the Nigerian Army, made the denial in a statement in Enugu on Saturday.
Mr Musa, a colonel, urged members of the public to disregard the information.
He, however, said that six members of proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) were arrested and handed over to Abia State Police Command by the troop.
According to him, the attention of the division was drawn to an online news publication alleging that some soldiers of 144 Battalion on routine patrol in Aba shot three persons and one of them died instantly.
The division wishes to state that, although there was an incident involving 144 Battalion patrol team with some traders at Asa-Nnentu Spare Parts Market in Ugwunagbo Local Government Area of Abia, at no time was anybody shot at, wounded or killed as lopsidedly and wrongly reported by the online medium.
For record purpose, this was what happened: At 12.00 hours on Wednesday, Feb. 6, troops of the Battalion on exercise Egwu Eke III were alerted on the massive presence of some youths allegedly disrupting commercial activities and pasting posters with the inscription There will be no elections in Abia State and Entire Biafra Land, Support Biafran Referendum, Vote for Biafra, Vote for Total Freedom from Slavery among others, which were unusually widely pasted on private shops around Aloaji general area of Aba.
Consequently, as professionally responsive soldiers, the team moved to the area to ensure peace and security; no person was to be harassed or molested by miscreants or violent secessionist agitators.
Unfortunately, some of the misguided traders and hoodlums loitering around started chanting anti-soldier commentaries, with some of them boldly obstructing troops movements.
This situation, necessarily, in the circumstance, caused two of the personnel to fire warning shots to disperse the surging crowd, he said.
Mr Musa said that since that day, the area had been calm and the outlawed IPOB posters removed, while residents had been going about their normal businesses unhindered.
He warned individuals and groups o desist from confronting troops on legitimate duty.
Nigerian Army personnel will not tolerate violent secessionist agitation; we remain apolitical, neutral, professional and responsive in the discharge of our constitutional roles in line with the vision and policy directive of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.- Gen. Tukur Buratai.
Members of the public are requested to disregard the wrongful publication as there has not been a genuine report of any major fracas, rights abuses, shooting, wounding or killing of anybody by soldiers since the commencement of exercise Egwu Eke III, he said.
The deputy director said that the division appreciated and commended the cooperation from the public which, he said, assisted in the successes it recorded so far.
(NAN)
The Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, on Saturday, said his administration has nothing against Christians in the state.
He said that his decision to pick a Muslim running mate was not based on religion and ethnicity, as speculated.
Mr El-Rufai made the comment at a Town Hall Meeting With a group of pastors under the auspices of Pastors United For Change Association held in the state.
The governors choice of Hadiza Balarabe, from Sanga local government area of Southern Kaduna as his running mate, generated uproar, particularly among Christians across the state.
Mr El-Rufai repeatedly said his choice was not influenced by her religion but purely on her capacity to deliver.
According to him, he has been working with people around him based on competency to get results not minding their tribe or religion.
He urged the residents to unite for the progress of the state while urging the pastors to check his records of selfless service to the people.
He also maintained that his target is to end the religious, ethnic division and unite the people of the state.
In my life, I have never worked with people based on religious and ethnic consideration. Dont look at what people said but what I have done in the past.
Go through my records and see what I have done. On the issue of my running mate, we are encouraging women participation in politics. She is a competent woman, he said.
The governor also added that Kaduna State is the only state with male/female governorship ticket in northern Nigeria.
Late Prof. Andrew Nok, our late commissioner for education, brought Hadiza Balarabe when we were looking for someone that can revive our primary health in the state and she performed excellently well.
I dont know her before. Her choice as a running mate has nothing to do with religion. I am confident that my running mate will run the state effectively and will be fair to all in the state even if I am not around, he said.
The governor also said as a governor, he must be fair to all as he went ahead to list all his achievements in the last three years of his administration.
Check our records. In the last three years and six months, we have worked. We built, repaired primary, secondary schools. We fixed our primary health centres. I am human and I can make mistakes, like any other person.
I will be fair to everybody. We must unite our people for progress. I want Kaduna State to interact on the basis of humanity, not religion and ethnicity.
There are some shifts in some local government areas in Southern Kaduna, which favoured us, (with) which we will win this election, Mr El-Rufai said.
Earlier, the chairman of Pastors United for Change Association, David Adeniran, said with the governors explanation on issues, they understood that the governor wants a united Kaduna without religious, ethnic consideration.
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Our sincere clergymen and women, thank you for honouring the invitation. I believe many of you will go home with new thinking that something good is happening in Kaduna. This is a new Kaduna State. We here to interact on the next level in Kaduna State. Kaduna State will be better for all of us, he said.
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Gov. Abubakar Bello of Niger on Saturday took his campaign train to Evangelical Church of Winning All (ECWA) in Sarkin Pawa and donated N5 million for the purchase of land to another church in Gwada.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) report that the governor had earlier paid a visit to Musa Mohammed, district head of Sarkin Pawa.
The governor visited the church where women were holding their 7th Annual District Council Church Conference.
Mr Bello appealed to the women to vote for him as governor and other candidates of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in the forthcoming elections.
He called on the women to pray for the peace of the country and a successful election.
I understand that there is a land you are trying to purchase in Gwada. I am donating N5 million through the pastor for the land.
I appeal to you to use this conference to pray for peace of the country and pray for a peaceful forthcoming general elections. We need your prayers and support to succeed, he said.
The governor also directed the state Commissioner of Finance to release N10 million with immediate effect for construction of a new palace for the District Head of Sarkin Pawa.
He said that the government had put in place measures to address security challenges facing the area.
He advised the people to be wary of strangers coming into their communities and report any security threat to the appropriate authority.
Responding, the District Head of Sarkin Pawa, commended the achievements of the present administration on security.
He appealed to the governor to establish a sub-area security unit to tackle cases of armed banditry and kidnapping in the area.
Mr Mohammed urged the governor to deploy doctors and provide drugs to Sarkin Pawa General Hospital as well as renovate the Central Primary School in the area.
Since the hospital was upgraded to a general hospital, no doctor or drugs have been provided and majority of people from communities around patronise the hospital. We need doctors and drugs in the hospital, he said.
(NAN)
President Muhammadu Buhari Saturday inaugurated the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) and Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) advanced Cancer treatment centre in Lagos, with a pledge to ensure that facilities for the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of cancer are available to many more Nigerians.
At the inauguration ceremony of the state-of-the-art Centre in LUTH, Idi Araba, President Buhari announced that the model will be replicated across the country to bring quality, first-class healthcare services to cancer patients in Nigeria.
We are aware that up to 40% of funds spent by Nigerians on medical tourism is attributable to patients seeking treatment for cancer. Despite having an increasing number of citizens suffering from cancer, we until now, had only two working radiotherapy machines in the country.
Working through the NSIA and LUTH we utilized a PPP model that unlocked investment capital to directly address this issue. We will replicate this model across the country to bring quality, first-class healthcare services to as many Nigerians as we can.
Indeed, over the coming months, under our leadership, the NSIA will commission two Modern Medical Diagnostic Centres to be co-located in the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano State and the Federal Medical Centre Umuahia, Abia State, respectively, bringing additional investment to Nigerias healthcare sector, he said.
The President while wishing the management of the hospital good luck in operating the centre, emphasized the need for maintenance of the equipment.
Our goal today is not simply to celebrate and applaud the culmination of months of hard work to achieve this objective. Neither is it solely to revel in the successful completion of the most modern and best-equipped Cancer treatment centre in West Africa.
Indeed we are proud, but we recognize that this modest effort to address the gaps in our tertiary healthcare system alone is insufficient to address all the challenges faced by the sector.
Today, we showcase what feats we can accomplish when we are together, unrelenting in our effort to deliver a common objective.
No one ever prays to be diagnosed with Cancer, but if they are, what we have made possible here today is the hope that a true chance of survival and good quality of life becomes part of the story of many Nigerian patients with cancer, he said.
The President promised that his administration, which has introduced programmes to alleviate common diseases, including the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund targeted at ensuring access to primary healthcare for all Nigerians, will continue to push hard to raise awareness about cancer, educate the people and facilitate early diagnosis.
He noted that this objective was part of his solemn commitment to Nigerians four years ago to improve the quality of health care in the country.
The President, who performed the ceremony after attending the APC presidential campaign rally at the Teslim Balogun Stadium Surulere, Lagos, said his administration had focused on greater investment in the sector and worked hard to ensure increased access to safe, high-quality healthcare.
We promised to effect policies that would remove debilitating constraints on the sector and create sustainable structures to strengthen our healthcare institutions.
Today, we are gathered here to acknowledge the modest but laudable strides we are making in fulfilling that promise. We recognize that progress in the health sector is handicapped by several bottlenecks.
Accordingly, we have worked and we will continue to work to ensure that systems are introduced to bridge these gaps, he said.
The President told the audience at LUTH that the Federal Government has created an enabling environment for institutions such as the NSIA to help fund high impact projects on time and on budget, thereby delivering immense value for our people.
In the case of the Cancer Centre, we can measure this value in currency, but we prefer to measure the value in terms of its social impact, the number of lives of Nigerians that will be saved and positively affected as well as the impact of capacity building for our people, he said.
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In his remarks at the inauguration ceremony, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NSIA, Mr. Uche Orji said the Centre is expected to raise the bar in the quality and standard of cancer treatment in Nigeria with outcomes that would be consistent with the 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
In addition, this Centre will demonstrate the economic potential of healthcare investments in Nigeria and catalyse increased private sector participation, he said.
Also speaking, Professor Chris Bode, Chief Medical Director, LUTH, noted that the Centre is world-class and no Nigerian cancer patient needs to travel abroad again to receive treatment easily obtainable at home.
We, therefore, want to assure Your Excellency that we shall give what it takes to run this Centre as a pride to all Nigerians. NSIAs investment is not only safe but will yield ample dividend to encourage other deep pocket investors to open up the health sector as a veritable investors haven, he said.
Also speaking, the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole described the Centre as the single largest investment in cancer treatment in the country by any administration since independence.
Prof. Adewole added that the facility can cater for 100 patients daily and provide training for over eighty healthcare professionals, among many others.
Femi Adesina
Special Adviser to the President
(Media & Publicity)
February 9, 2019
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A former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, on Saturday attacked former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Mr Tinubu, a national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), said the former president was Nigerias greatest election rigger.
The former Lagos governor spoke Saturday afternoon at the presidential rally of the ruling APC which held in Lagos.
Mr Tinubu said the former president conducted one of Nigerias most flawed elections, which prompted late President Umaru Yaradua to admit that he was rigged into power after he was sworn in.
When he was asked, Umaru Musa YarAdua admitted that the election which brought him into office was rigged, Mr Tinubu told a large crowd at the rally in Lagos on Saturday.
Who conducted that election? he asked, rhetorically. Then the enthusiastic crowd screamed: Obasanjo!
The relationship between Messrs Tinubu and Obasanjo has often been frosty since the return to democracy in 1999 when both politicians held public offices.
Mr Obasanjo was Nigerian president for eight years between 1999 and 2007 while Mr Tinubu governed Lagos within the same period. Both men disagreed on resource allocation and other key governmental issues.
Earlier in January, Mr Tinubu had described Mr Obasanjo as an election rigger without peer in Nigeria.
As Nigerians prepare to cast their vote in the presidential election slated for next week, the hostility between both men appears to have been renewed. Both men have thrown their support behind different presidential candidates.
While Mr Obasanjo has thrown his weight behind his former deputy, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr Tinubu is in support of the reelection bid of President Muhammadu Buhari of the APC.
Obasanjo is the greatest election rigger in this country, Mr Tinubu said Saturday afternoon in Lagos.
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The presidential candidate of the Young Progressives Party, Kingsley Moghalu, has described the endorsement of his candidature by Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, as humbling.
Mr Moghalu, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said in a statement Saturday that the endorsement was important because of Mr Soyinkas reputation and the elaborate process his Citizen Forum went through before reaching their decision.
Our party the Young Progressives Party and I, salute the courage and the good judgment of the Nobel Laureate and icon of democratic struggle in Nigeria, Mr Moghalu said in the statement.
Mr Soyinka, a professor, had announced on Friday the decision of his Citizen Forum to throw their weight behind Mr Moghalu, describing the YPP candidate as the most qualified among the presidential candidates.
As Soyinka and the Citizen Forum have ended their search for a consensus candidate to lead the country in a new direction, I appeal to other Nigerians desirous of a new dawn, ushered by a competent and visionary leadership to also consider ending theirs with my candidacy.
We all should now approach the ballot with a single purpose of defeating the recycled old politicians, Mr Moghalu said.
The YPP candidate said he would form an inclusive government if he becomes president.
Working with Nigerians from all parts of the country, including our women and youth, we will transform our country from division to unity; we will create jobs and foster prosperity; and we will restore respect for Nigeria in the world, Mr Moghalu added.
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The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has suspended its presidential rally earlier scheduled to hold on Saturday. The opposition party said this follows the refusal by the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led federal government and the Buhari Presidency to grant it access to the venue of the rally.
The party, in a statement by its National Publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said the refusal is in spite of the fact that the party had made payments to the authorities and obtained official approval to host the mega rally at the Old Parade Ground, Garki, Abuja.
The PDP invites Nigerians to document this provocative action against our party and our presidential campaign by the Buhari Presidency and the APC.
It is also instructive to state that we had earlier scheduled our Lagos Mega Rally for the Tafawa Balewa Square on Saturday until the Buhari Presidency and the APC came up with same date forcing our campaign to opt for Abuja.
We hope they will allow the Lagos Rally to hold on Tuesday.
The PDP holds that these provocative actions, instead of deterring Nigerians from their determination to vote out President Buhari on February 16, has only succeeded in spurring more compatriots to support the peoples candidate, Atiku Abubakar, to victory.
Mr. Ologbondiyan said the PDP appreciates the commitment of Nigerians, particularly, those who have already converged on Abuja for the mega rally.
While we regret the inconveniences caused by the insensitive action of the Buhari Presidency and APC, we wish to inform that a rescheduled date for the rally will be communicated soon.
The party had earlier fixed Saturday for its grand rally in Abuja.
It was earlier scheduled to hold in Lagos but was moved due to the APC presidential rally scheduled to hold the same day.
A faction of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has suspended the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alfa Mohammed, for alleged anti-party activities.
A Daily Trust report indicates the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party made the announcement through a statement signed by the partys Director of Media and Publicity, Yemi Akinbode, on Friday in Abuja.
The official described Mr Muhammeds suspension from the party as long overdue.
The NEC also directed Mr Muhammed to stop parading himself as a member of the party.
The National Working Committee (NWC) wish to inform the general public, especially the media, that Alfa Mohammed has been suspended not only as Deputy National Publicity Secretary but has been suspended from the SDP.
And henceforth he has been banned from parading himself as a member of the party and under no circumstances whatsoever must any member of the public, individuals, or groups of individuals, media or institutions deal with Alfa Mohammed as he has ceased to be a bonafide member of the SDP, the statement noted.
He also said Mr Muhammed has been notorious in anti-party activities and had been suspended several times in the past.
The National Working Committee (NWC) wishes to put on record the misdemeanor, rascality, total disregard for the leadership and authority of the SDP by Mr Mohammed.
He was tactically recently reabsorbed by the National Chairman of the party Chief Olu Falae, CFR, GCON, thinking he would change from his nefarious and debilitating ways. So, the NEC had no option other than to show him the way out as provided by the constitution of the Party.
We can no longer tolerate the continued association of the great party with a fellow like Alfa. As a matter of fact, his suspension from the party was long overdue. You will recall that the same fellow was suspended from office as Deputy National Publicity Secretary in September last year for his afront and misbehavior in the party, Mr Akinbode said.
The party directed Mr Muhammed to hand over all party documents in his possession to the office of the administrator.
In addition to this, the ex-Deputy National Secretary is directed to hand over all party properties, documents, proprietary to the office of the Director of Administration or that of the Chief Protocol Officer within 48 hours.
Similarly, the party has also directed that all social media platforms opened with the authority of Alfa Mohammed on behalf of the SDP be shut down forthwith.
We wish to advise all members of the party across the 36 states and the FCT to remain calm, law-abiding and go about their normal party activities as the leadership of the party is focused on rebuilding and repositioning the party.
They are jokers
Meanwhile, Mr Muhammed in a telephone interview with PREMIUM TIMES described the statement as a joke.
There is a faction in the party already? We have a small group that is loyal to the running mate to Donald Duke, so they met differently, and they adopted Buhari without the backing of the stakeholders of the party. Even the Chairman, Mr Falae was angry because of that incident.
The genuine national committee would meet and we are going to decide their fate probably on Monday or Tuesday. They are just a faction of the party.
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I am the most popular person of the party. I am the grassroots person of the party. Everybody is looking forward to me. I am still the national publicity secretary of the party. The director of media that signed the statement does not have any power, he said.
Unending crisis
The party has been rocked by crisis in recent months over the judicial battles engaged in by a former governor of Cross River State, Donald Duke and an ex-minister, Jerry Gana over who would fly the partys presidential ticket.
The matter is yet to be resolved.
A faction of the party recently endorsed President Muhammadu Buhari as its candidate for the presidential election. The Adamawa State chapter of the party has distanced itself from the endorsement.
Mr Buharis main challenger, Atiku Abubakar, of the Peoples Democratic Party is from Adamawa.
The partys chairman, Olu Falae, on Friday stepped down from office citing age.
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A religious group, Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria (SCSN), has denied endorsing an opposition candidate against President Muhammadu Buhari.
The group in a statement Friday evening distanced itself from individuals it said are currently touring states to relay the fake information.
The statement signed by the chairperson of its political committee, Yakubu Hassan, said at no time did it take such position.
President Buhari is up against his major challenger and Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Atiku Abubakar, in the poll holding February 16th.
Lately, ethnic and religious groups have been dishing out endorsements for the two major candidates, with some of it generating internal ripples.
The Shariah council said individuals were free to hold political opinions but warned them to be courageous to do it on their ownnot attribute their opinion to the SCSN without its knowledge and consent.
The position of the SCSN has always been that leadership is a trust and burden which must only be given to trustworthy individuals at all levels.
Read the full statement below:
PRESS STATEMENT
In the name of Allah the Gracious the Merciful.
Assalaamu Alaikum,
It has come to our notice that some unscrupulous elements have been going round to states discrediting the government of President Buhari (PMB) in the name of the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria (SCSN). They also mobilise people to vote for a candidate of an opposition party in the forthcoming general elections.
There was no time the SCSN met and decided to pass vote of no confidence in PMB and his government or agreed to support any opposition candidate in the forthcoming general elections.
The general public, especially the esteemed Ulama and Islamic Organisations are called upon to disregard any such move. The SCSN operates and relates with Islamic Organisations through the Ulama and accredited representatives.
We call on all those involved to desist from using the name of SCSN. They are free to hold any political opinion and support any candidate. But they should be courageous to do it on their own. They should not attribute their opinion to the SCSN without its knowledge and consent.
The position of the SCSN has always been that leadership is a trust and burden which must only be given to trustworthy individuals at all levels.
Ahead of upcoming elections, the UN has advised Nigerian politicians to avoid messages of hate, politics of acrimony, bitterness and rancour to avoid undermining the peace and stability of Nigeria.
The special representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), Mohamed Ibn Chambas, gave the advice in Abuja on Saturday.
Mr Ibn Chambas spoke at a one-day national sensitisation workshop on Broadcast Media Coverage of the 2019 General Elections.
The workshop was organised by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) with the theme: Fake News, Hate Speech, Vote and PVC Buying.
Mr Ibn Chambas, represented by Zebulon Takwa, Peace and Development Advisor, Resident Coordinators Office, emphasised the need for all Nigerian stakeholders to eschew any form of discourse that could ignite tension and violence.
The envoy also urged the stakeholders to double their efforts in ensuring issue-based elections that would make Nigeria to succeed.
He expressed the hope that the country would overcome its challenges.
I hope that Nigeria continues to set the pace in establishing the positive tradition that, as leaders, access to power or quest to retain or consolidate it, must never be stained with blood of any Nigerian.
Nigeria occupies a strategic position in West Africa, the African continent and indeed, globally.
It is, therefore, crucial that Nigeria delivers credible, peaceful and fair elections in 2019, in a manner that improves upon the performance of 2015 elections.
Nigeria, as the `big brother`, has played a critical role in stabilising many parts of Africa and consolidating their democracy; therefore, Africa is looking up to you for leadership, Mr Ibn Chambas said.
He urged that all candidates and political parties be given a level playing field and treated with respect and fairness, saying that UN was looking forward to Nigerias 2019 elections with realistic optimism.
I have equally expressed my concern that fewer women and youth candidates have been fielded by political parties than expected of Nigeria with a large number of women voters and enthusiastic youths, who are eager to take part in nation-building as responsible leaders, he said.
Mr Ibn Chambas assured Nigeria of the commitment of UN to contributing toward violence-free and hitch-free elections that would symbolise global best practices.
The United Nations is committed to assisting with any measure that will enhance popular confidence in the electoral process, he said.
The Director-General of NBC, Ishaq Kawu, advised broadcasters to assist in deepening the democratic culture by refusing to air narratives dangerous to the peace of the country.
Mr Kawu said that over the past three years, NBC had been sensitising its licencees on the dangers associated with hate and dangerous speech.
In 2016, we commissioned a team of Nigerian researchers to do an in-depth study of the place of hate and dangerous speech in the 2015 General Elections as well as the manner that the broadcast media became suborned into the controversial political circumstances of the last elections.
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We had used the reports in gathering of broadcasters in Kaduna and Kano; just this week, we were in Lagos.
Todays gathering in Abuja is the final one, timed to bring critical stakeholders together on the eve of the 2019 General Elections, Mr Kawu said.
(NAN)
Edozie Madu is the presidential candidate and national chairman of the Independent Democrats (ID). In this interview with PREMIUM TIMES Kunle Sanni, the businessman turned politician proudly recalled how he supported the futile bid by Sani Abacha to transmute to a civilian president in 1998.
Mr Madu also spoke on current issues, including the preparation of INEC for the elections, the agitation for state police, the incessant strike by Nigerian university teachers and what his government would offer as national minimum wage.
PT: Tell us more about the role you played during the Abacha military government.
Madu: I was one of those people who supported former Head of State, General Sani Abacha, to come back to power in 1997. I am proud to say it and I would stand by it. But Abacha died and that dream collapsed because our objective then was that it was good for Abacha to transform to a civilian president
So since then, I have been in politics. I was in PDP from 1999. Before then I was the National Chairman for the Federation of Nigerian Youths in 1998.
I was in PDP during former President Obasanjo years and I left PDP in 2011. I was also the National Chairman of a political party, Congress for Democratic Change (CDC). In 2013, we formed the Independent Democrats party and it was registered in August 2013. We have 3.2 million members and 68 per cent of them are people between 25 and 40 years.
PT: So why do you want Nigerians to elect you as their president?
Let me tell you what I would do when I become president. I would abolish the issue of landlords. I am a businessman locally and internationally. I have done quite a lot of public relations jobs for multinational companies all over the world. I live in Abuja but I hail from Anambra State, Orumba South Local Government. I am also a director of so many companies as well. So apart from politics, I do business as well. I am married, I have four kids and we all live in Nigeria as well.
PT: What is the progress of your campaign?
Madu: Very well. The response is good. We have grassroots mobilisation, it is going massively and it is going on around the country. My manifesto contains the provision of infrastructure and jobs, which will resolve the major issues affecting the country, with more emphasis on solving the problem of electricity by crushing the cabal that wants you and I to be buying fuel and diesel every day. They constitute 65 per cent of the problems we have today with electricity.
PT: How prepared do you think INEC is ahead of the general elections?
Madu: I think INEC is prepared. But when you look at the previous elections conducted this year, I just have a problem with the collation of the results. And that takes us back to what I have said before on why I want to become president. I want to link up all these PVCs to BVN statistics. We have done the arithmetic that 73 per cent of people that have PVCs do not have bank accounts and that makes it now mandatory for you to have PVCs. Go to the polling units and exercise your franchise. What happens is that the rigging goes on at the collation. Also, I would make INEC truly independent to a point political parties would not be able to manipulate it.
That makes it now easier for you to Go to the polling units and exercise your franchise. What happens is that the rigging goes on at the collation. Okay, this local government is having this figure and let us go to this local government and rig this election or add the votes or places they feel is a stronghold of a particular political party. So this is one of the innovations that we want to bring on board. Also, I would make INEC truly independent. The political parties would have to nominate their own people to work at INEC as well as the appointment of state commissioners. Because when you do that, that is when people would feel they are part of what is going on. As far as I am concerned, the INEC Is appointed by the president.
Aside from the collation of results, every other thing is perfect. With the distribution of materials, I think INEC has done well. Also in terms of improvement with the card reader with what happened in 2015 to what is happening now.
Another issue I have is the issue of security agencies going to stop voters in areas they feel a particular candidate is popular. It happened in the just concluded Osun election. We only have to look again at our Electoral Act; how we are going to get the police involved during the elections and define their role as it concerns monitoring the elections.
PT: What do you think about restructuring and what are you going to do about it?
Madu: Restructuring is just rubbish. Instead, we should create equal states in the zones. Like South-east have five states, while some zones have six or seven.
PT: What do you intend doing differently when you become president?
Madu: Some politicians keep saying I would do this, I would do that. The question people do not ask is how do you intend to do this? We cannot be talking about the economy without talking about infrastructure, because infrastructure provides jobs. Basic infrastructure naturally gives jobs to the people. You cannot be on TV and you are not president already and you are already talking on the number of jobs you are going to provide. I would bring back the toll gates. The money generated from the toll gates is going to be used to maintain the roads. Monies collected through the system would be monitored with a camera. Not when you make an estimation and employers cannot account for the money. There is another job through the system where on 28th and 29th of every month, an audit department comes to take the video to look at what has happened from the first of that month and another accounting department looks at how many cars passed through that toll gate and how much was generated. How can you be talking about electricity when government offices do not pay for electricity?
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We have done statistics in the last eight month and realised that our government is going to pay N110,000 minimum wage. How? By cutting down the cost of running a presidential system of government. Just a state commissioner has about five aides while the governor has over 200 aides and a minister has 25 aides. They take all the money from government and still they cannot pay civil servants, teachers that have taught everybody to what we are today and you can pay politicians millions of naira every month. The presidential system of government takes about 65 per cent of your budget. You can quote me. We have to come back to the basics. You switch on your TV, you hear them talk about restructuring. These same people talking about restructuring, they were in the government at a time but they never did anything on restructuring. Now they are talking about it.
I have the plans to make Nigeria better and if Nigeria buys into my manifesto, they are going to vote for me. And I can tell you what we have like what they have in America; the undecided voters. They are comparing the 16 years of PDP and the three and a half years of APC, thinking should we try the PDP after 16 years when they did nothing or the APC? When they came in they promised to change and they did nothing. The people are wondering; is it not better we have a president of Nigeria who would provide standard mega health centres in all the 774 LG in Nigeria? I can do that as president. Remember there was a time we had a government in Babagindas regime that built party offices in all the local government areas in Nigeria. The NRC and SDP party offices. So why cant a government build 774 standard hospitals in all the local government? It can be funded by the bank tax. It can equally fund tertiary education in Nigeria. Bank tax is if a person is charged N500 at the opening of an account as bank tax for funding of all this. Multiply that by 60 million people. But these banks sit down every month, they deduct N400 from our account and we dont bother. At times, 200 multiplied by 60 million people. So you see the amount of money these people are making. So it is a must we establish bank tax on these banks at the opening of account so we can get funds to provide the institutions and health centres.
PT: Taking money from the banks, is it legal?
Madu: The banks that are taking money from the people, what they are doing is not legal. In Nigeria, we need to implement strong laws to get the magic working. We run a country were other zones in Nigeria has six, seven states. Southeast, where I come from, has five. It is an imbalance. What they need to as president is to send an executive bill to the national assembly to create one more state in the South-east no president has done that.
You talking about legal or illegal. I have travelled all over the world. Even in Afghanistan, there is no place where you would have things like banks making so much money and they dont pay something to government coffers.
PT: Should political parties be given grants?
Madu: Nothing wrong with the government giving grants to political parties. But it was abused by some parties to the extent that people were just forming parties just to get the grant from government. Parties with genuine membership can generate money from membership dues. In that way, it makes the party strong financially and not hijacked by a few moneybags.
PT: What are your plans on security?
Madu: We do not even know how many people we are in this country and there are no Identification cards for the people in Nigeria. We have to go back to the basics. No biometrics. When you get to South Africa, they have eyelash identification system. You are passing through their airports, you put on glasses at the immigration. You are asked to take off your glasses. All these things do not cost a lot. The money which Nigeria used in building the runway at Abuja airport is what South Africa used in building Oliver Tambo Airport. I am not castigating anybody. I am here to talk about what I want to do for Nigeria as president. President Buhari has done his bit considering the circumstances. After 16 years of looting our money, he came on board. I can give him credit in some areas. The only place that Mr Buhari has not woken up from slumber is on the issue of electricity. There is a cabal that wants Nigerians to be buying fuel. They are the people holding us down from solving our electricity problem. As president, I would make sure they do not operate. In Nigeria, we have a strong workforce and they do not have health insurance. All this would be put in place if I emerge as president
And you say you have workers that cannot use N2000 to buy a bus ticket for one month. If you are a civil servant, you should be able to buy a bus ticket for the one month. Government should be able to provide the infrastructure for the civil servants. If we do not go back to the basics we cannot move further even if the oil booms 25 times. I have the master plan to move to Nigeria. Look at the National Hospital that was done by Mrs Abacha. Look at the hospital now. It was supposed to be a world-class hospital. Are we supposed to be going out of Abuja with that hospital? No maintenance.
PT: Will you support state police?
Madu: I will not support state police because all the state governors would hijack it for their political gains. Because I know what goes on between the governors and the commissioners of police. You can imagine when the commissioners of police are now officially put under the control of the governors. The truth is that state police will make a mess of what the police is now. The governors control the commissioners of police in their states. They take directives from the governors which are wrong. As president, I will put a stop to it. However, what do you expect when state governments fund police by providing them with vehicles and communication gadget? It also means the federal government has failed in its responsibility by allowing state governors to now do their job.
PT: What are you going to do to end the incessant strikes by university teachers?
On ASUU I would make sure their salaries would be reviewed and put under the essential services payment scheme. Cut down on the money spent in paying political office holders and channel the money to education which covers payment of university lecturers and all.
Gina is a mother of four. She said she exclusively breastfed all her babies because she knows the importance of breast milk.
As a full-time housewife what excuse would I have not to breastfeed my babies well? she asked the reporter.
I resigned from where I was working before I had my first child. In the private firm where I was working, I realised it would not be easy when the child comes. So in the seventh month of pregnancy, I resigned and havent gone back to work since.
Before and during antenatal, I learnt about the nutrients in a mothers breast milk and the benefits to the child. So I made up my mind to breastfeed my kids exclusively for at least six months.
I am at home 24/7 so my babies had access to the breast milk any time. I have no excuse not to practice exclusive breast feeding.
Exclusive breastfeeding is when a child is only fed with breast milk without water, infant formula, any other liquid or food.
Breast milk contains antibodies and lymphocytes from the mother that helps the baby resist infections.
Why Exclusive Breastfeeding?
Health experts say breast milk gives infants a good start to life because it contains all the vitamins and nutrients needed in the first six months of their life.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) recommends that infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health.
Thereafter, to meet their evolving nutritional requirements, infants should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods, while continuing to breastfeed for up to two years or beyond.
Exclusive Breastfeeding has an important role in the prevention of different forms of childhood malnutrition, including wasting, stunting, over- and underweight and micro nutrient deficiencies.
Exclusive Breastfeeding in Nigeria
Sadly, despite the whole benefits associated with it, most mothers in Nigeria do not practise exclusive breastfeeding.
The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2017/2017 disclosed that Nigerias breastfeeding rate remains low overall. Only 23.7 percent of babies born in the country are breastfed exclusively.
According to the survey, women in Northern Nigeria rank lowest in breastfeeding their babies exclusively, while women in the South-west zone lead in the practice.
The survey also found that out of the 60 percent of child deaths is attributed directly and indirectly to undernutrition while two-thirds of the deaths are attributed to improper feeding during the first year of existence.
Malnutrition in Children
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From the survey, it is evident that the absence of exclusive breastfeeding remains a major drag back on the countrys efforts to stop malnutrition in children.
Data shows that malnutrition contributes to nearly half of all child deaths in Nigeria, that is more than three million children each year.
With over 25 million under-five children suffering wasting and over 10 million stunted, malnutrition has continued to ravage and kill children in Nigeria, especially in the northeastern states.
Cost of Inadequate Breastfeeding
According to UNICEF, inadequate breastfeeding is estimated to cost the Nigerian economy US$21 billion (N6.6 trillion) per year, or 4.1 percent of its gross national income.
Nigerian Mothers Speak
Ignorance is not the only reason most women do not practice exclusive breastfeeding. Studies show the work policies in Nigeria make it difficult for mothers to practice exclusive breastfeeding.
In some hospitals in Abuja, mothers explained the challenges that discouraged them from breastfeeding their babies exclusively for six months.
There is a major difference between my kids who I exclusively breastfed for six months and the youngest who I fed only breast milk for just two months, Kate Mbah a mother of three said.
I practised exclusive breastfeeding on two of my children but couldnt do same for my last daughter because I got overwhelmed with my new job and other life issues.
Im not saying she has a problem but her older siblings were more active and did certain things when they were her age, Mrs Mbah said.
The mother of three started working in a bank in 2015.
Like many other working mothers, Mrs Mbah said her banks work schedule did not permit her to exclusively breastfeed her daughter.
She said given experience with her first two older kids whom she exclusively breastfed, it is better to give infants only breast milk than giving them water and other liquids before six months.
Three Month Maternity Leave
Moyo, a second-time mother, said she only breastfed exclusively for the first three months and then started adding other foods because she had to return to work at the end of her maternity leave.
She said if new mothers are given at least six months paid maternity leave, most women would happily stay back at home to breastfeed their babies.
Ngozi, 35, said she was still breastfeeding her second child who is seven months old. The mother of two, however, said she could not practise exclusive breastfeeding for any of her kids because of the nature of her job.
Ngozi, who also works in a private organisation, wished she had more time to breastfeed her kids exclusively.
She felt guilty about it, she said, because she was aware of the importance of exclusive breastfeeding.
NUTRITION EXPERTS SPEAK
At a media dialogue in Yola last year, a nutrition consultant with UNICEF, Bamidele Omotola, spoke on the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding to both child and mother.
Any drink or food you introduce to that child before the liver and the kidney matures is a potential pathogen that can disturb the child.
Most women give their children water or herbal drinks within the first six month, which affects the system of the child. Most times, the child ends up with diarrhea because the quality of the liquids cannot be ascertained.
The second reason is that the childs stomach is so small, like about 30ml, so what it can take at a certain time is limited.
Mr Omotola said most mothers feed their child with other liquids apart from the breast milk because they are ignorant of the nature of the breast milk.
He said the breast milk contains fats immunes, which serve as the first immunisation to a child.
He also said children who are exclusively breastfed have higher IQ than children those not exclusively breastfed.
The nutritionist urged women to practise exclusive breastfeeding because a woman who does not feed her baby with breast milk also risks having breast cancer.
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Suke, thats the old mans trademark refrain, often said after a life has just been cut short. In the world of Fadeyi Oloro, no life is too important to be taken away from the owner, with or without consent. For his dexterity as a disciple of the grim reaper, Fadeyi towers above his peers and his exploits remain etched in every movie lovers memory.
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So there is a part of my memory that houses him, that fascinating demon. Fadeyi Oloro, originally christained Ojo Arowosafe, is the old Yoruba cinemas Deimos the quintessence of terror in Greek mythology and one distinct thing defines his stage persona. Dread.
Fadeyis darkened face, sometimes made more horrific by excessive cosmetics, was perhaps a reflection of what dwelled in his cinematic heart. Unlike the loquacious Arakangudu, Fadeyi rarely spoke; and he made no pretension to long, winding chant of incantations. All Fadeyi would not say with his mouth, he said loudly and, yes, violently through the barrel of the gun.
Fadeyi himself despised death, and he rarely acted in movies in which he would, by whatever design, be pronounced dead. Yet this man who would not accept to die, even if momentarily, killed people with fiendish delight: with a single shot, Fadeyi would snuff out the life of a hundred villagers. And his gun was no respecter of the dead; Fadeyi would kill a ghost again and again, transporting him to the place beyond the place beyond the great beyond.
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A master dribbler, Fadeyi was the old Yoruba Nollywoods response to Maradona. He would hide at the side of a lonely path and ambush villagers, mostly innocent travellers, make them wet their trousersor more appropriately now, Kijipaand, after a while, assure them he meant no harm. Ko si wahala, e moo relu yin lalaafia (No qualms, you may go to your villages in peace), he would say, tongue-in-cheek. The villagers would give thanks to Eledua and Obatala and their Ori for saving their lives. E seun baba o, (thanks, Old man) they would say and Fadeyi would retort, with cancerous smiles: Ah, aidupe ara eni, eeyanre nimieeyanre nimi o(Never mind, I am a good man). Before seconds would chameleon into minutes, and just before the innocent villagers would finish counting their blessings, Fadeyi would have performed wonders.
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Boooooooooooooom!!!, thats Fadeyi speaking eloquently in the language of betrayal, through the barrel of his gun. The result was always a marvel: in split seconds, the innocent villagers would have had their lives mercilessly looted by Fadeyi and his marauding men. Olorooooo Baba o!, his disciples, all messengers of death, would scream.
For some wierd effect, Fadeyi would stagger backward for a few minutes, then stumble onward, his huge Agbada flowing behind him, and his men would surround him, providing an unsolicited agency of support. Suke! the old man would say, with maniacal nonchalance.
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Ah, Fadeyi was a delight on the big screen!
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Yoruba movies, now studded with bland comedies, seem to have moved away from Fadeyi Oloros era an era defined by movies shot in traditional Yoruba settings, with ritual images, incantations, magic and all whatnot. To be sure, in terms of cinematic appeal and themes, those movies werent really Yoruwoods best outputs (most were at best byproducts of elevated mediocrity) but they were central to our formative years, and, alongside other works of art, defined our exposure to indigenous (Yoruba) arts.
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Ika lomo ejo. Osa Eleye. Koto Aye. Eran Iya Osogbo. Lagidigba. Ogbori elemoso. Orogun Adedigba. Adele. Abore. Omo inu Oku. Omo oLufa. Ibinu Olukoso.
Of course those guys were excellent actors, even though unlike some of the wooden characters that assault our senses on screen now, they earned peanuts.
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Beginning this month, this column wouod be dedicated to documenting the exploits of Fadeyi and his goons. Our concern would dwell, too, on that slayer of witches, Abija (Tajudeen Oyewole) and his Ajan, together with that diminutive Machiavelli, Kukute (Samson Folarin). We may look into the heart of that hot-tempered fiery fighter, Lalude (Fatai Ooodua) together with the one who chanted incantations like some terrible poems, Shokoti Alagbede-orun. Also important is that dark-skinned harbinger of disaster, Big Abass (Ade Ajiboye); the stone-hearted witches-romancing wizard, Ogunjimi (Ganiu Oyeyemi); the quiet one with serpentine venom, Alapinni Oosa ( Ganiu Nofiu); the boastful fighter of witches and other allied forces, Dagunro (Fasasi Olabankewin); the braggart who had a special interest in eye cosmetics, Arakangudu (Sikiru Adesina), among others.
The Ogogos (Taiwo Hassan) and Yinka Quadris of this world too may not be left out. It promises to be an exciting journey.
Sometime in 2018, I passed through the old ANTP meeting point in Meiran and saw a figure that looked like the old man, Fadeyi. Upon closer inspection, I realized he wasnt Fadeyi; he was just his doppelganger.
Before the Nigerian social space was occupied by unknown gunmen, there was Fadeyi-and he was a known gunman.
Suke!
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This column, Celluloid, seeks to documents happenings on and off the big screen, with bias for indeginous talents. Follow Oladeinde on Twitter via @ola_deinde.
Music icon, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, died on December 16, 2010 but the messages he left behind are relevant in this coming elections. The late Fuji musician, well respected for his deep and philosophical lyrics, also remain largely alive in the hearts of his fans.
On Friday, one of his most ardent fans, Gani Kayode Balogun Jr., translated a track Oro Ibo (Election Blues) from one of the musicians most popular albums from Yoruba to English.
That album, NIGERIA, was released in the run-up to the 1983 general elections. But the messages therein remain as relevant as ever, especially now that the country is days away from crucial general elections.
The album, Nigeria, with the Oro Ibo (Election Blues) track, was produced under Siky Oluyole Records in 1983.
Until his death, Ayinde Barrister was regarded as the pioneer of Fuji music.
Below is the translated version of the ever-relevant album. It is a powerful message as Africas most populous country inches towards elections.
Mr Balogun gave PREMIUM TIMES the permission to publish the translation.
ORO IBO (ELECTION BLUES)
From the album NIGERIA
By the Late AARE SIKIRU AYINDE BARRISTER, MFR (Creator of Fuji Music)
February 9, 1948 December 16, 2010.
Copyright Owner: Siky Oluyole Records1983
Translated by Gani Kayode Balogun Jr
The issue of the upcoming elections that is giving everybody sleepless nights.
By the grace of God, the Glorious One, the dangling sword will not fall.
Ayinde, by the grace of God, the Almighty.
The dangling sword will not fall.
My people, wisdom is mightier than power,
But power resides with the politicians.
I fully comprehend, Ayinde olokun ola,
That the colonialists tried their best,
Before handing over to the indigenes.
It is we Nigerians that demanded independence from the British.
Insisting that we want freedom.
On the first of October, 1960, we got our independence. Nigerians were happy and prayed that freedom will not turn to hardship.
The Nigerian President was Nnamdi, Doctor Azikiwe that was so honoured.
Tafawa Balewa was the Prime Minister who held the power.
Opposition Leader was Baba Awolowo Obafemi, father of Oluwasegun father of Oluwole, the political giant from Ikenne.
In the blink of an eye, it was three years. In 1963, first of October, we became a republic, and we were grateful, and the trio continued to lead us.
15th of January, 1966 that went by, power shifted to the Military, with Aguinyi Ironsi becoming our leader.
He too, did all he could before death came calling.
General Yakubu became our new leader.
Under General Gowon, the country became prosperous, progressive and money flowed. Those who were not rich were at least comfortable. We were giving supplication to Allah in appreciation.
Nine years in power unchallenged.
Nigerians eventually chased Yakubu away. General Murtala Muhammad became our new leader.
Once Murtala assumed office, we started working harder, became more disciplined and therefore more productive.
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NEPA staff dare not tamper with electricity supply. Those of Water Corporation dare not switch off water supply. Doctors became more attentive, Engineers became more dedicated. Even teachers redoubled their output.
Any sector not putting in their best, the man would immediately pounce on them like a hawk, compulsorily retiring them, with or without benefits.
But good men do not last. He lasted only six months before Muritalabi was assassinated.
May your soul rest in peace with seven kurisiyus for you, Alhaji Muri.
Uncle General Siege became our new leader, Obasanjo the son of Owu, General the scion of Owu Oduru, He who wakes up to play with charms Obasanjo.
He too did his own and worked hard. No more war and strife for which we are grateful before he handed over to civilians.
On the first of October, 1979, Nigerians voted and elected Usman Aliyu as our new leader, Alhaji Shehu Shagari.
He too did his bit to which we Nigerians are thankful.
2
We are now on the eve of another election, you politicians.
Once you get into power, please redeem all the promises you made.
We the poor people are pleading with you.
It doesnt matter whether it is PRP, NPP, even it is NAP that wins, as long it is a party that will deliver, we the people will be grateful.
Whether it is the party with the house symbol, NPN that wins, even if it is the party with the candle Unity Party that wins or even GNPP we will accept.
As long as it is the party that will provide succour, let us get together and do it. After all, we are the children of the same father and the same mother. As long as Nigeria is progressing, we will support them.
The upcoming election is like the dangling balls of ram, in the name of God, it will not fall.
The politician that makes promises before assuming power and refused to deliver is an enemy of God.
Power resides with our politicians, but the wisdom of voters are also enormous. While the politician will spend his four-year tenure in full, he will not be there with us in the voting booth.
Please increase the salary of Nigerian workers. He who earns One hundred and twenty Naira a month will have to pay for transportation and for food, before feeding his wife and kids. By the sixth day, he is already broke.
This austerity measure is really biting hard.
As it affects the rich it also affects the poor. Only that the intensity differs. It is a lack of knowledge that makes us think it is unique to us.
As it happens in European countries, it also happens in the Americas and the world over. Even other African countries go through it, but it is far worse in Nigeria.
Truth be told, the poor are suffering. Let us stop paying for electricity we hardly enjoy and water that is never supplied.
Let Nigeria work and prosper, we poor people are really suffering I keep shouting. Do not say because someone is not a member of your party, then this duly approved building should be demolished for road expansion. Nigerian politicians should have the fear of God
It is better to live for twenty years for speaking the truth than live for a hundred years in a nest of lies.
Whatever I say today, Adeyinka, will not become toxic tomorrow in Gods name. Truth, they say, is always bitter. But we do not speak out today, then we cannot be critical tomorrow.
Please do not let it degenerate to the level of that other country before we wake up. When Nkrumah was their leader, they were prosperous and progressing, we even refer to the country as the pride of Africa.
But look at their lot today, Not that one is gloating, and I pray that God gives them succour.
But we should be a shining light, do not allow us to become a bad example.
C
Please ensure, Nigerian politicians, that we have electricity, the one that is constant. Please work harder to provide potable water.
Give us well-equipped hospitals.
Education is most essential. Please provide it.
As fine as Nigeria is, once there is blackout, all the beautiful layouts will disappear.
We are the ones who voted for you, and wisdom is stronger than power, my dear politicians.
I am not a politician nor affiliated with any political party, Agbaje.
The money from oil sales must go round.
Let some trickle down to the masses.
Even it is minuscule, just let it trickle down for peace to reign.
Politicians, please remember that it was our votes that put you in office and in power.
It is not we are stupid, we are wise.
A bowl of gari that was two shillings a while ago, is now six Naira per bowl.
Yam flour is now beyond reach, pepper and tomato are now untouchable. Palm and groundnut oil is too expensive for the masses.
Minerals that was sold for six kobos is now selling for nine kobos. Before you know it it will go for fifty kobos!
Only the rich can afford that for sure.
If we kept quiet and bear it, it is not because we are stupid, we are smart but powerless, so we expect those of you elected into office to do the job with the fear of God.
After all, we have seen princes who became paupers, and slaves become masters. My prayer is for us not to suffer a reversal of fortune.
Please remember the day of judgement and do the right thing. Because nobody plants vegetables and harvest onions.
I have said my bit, Ayinde olokun ola, so that if it becomes toxic tomorrow. But if we speak out, we die, and if we didnt speak out, we will still die.
Whoever is on top today should praise God, because we dont know who will be on top tomorrow. Because only God will decide.
If you win at the polls, please remember the masses, so they wont suffer, I plead.
YOU CAN LISTEN TO THE ALBUM BELOW.
The federal government on Friday signed investment agreements with three Development Finance Institutions Afreximbank, Bank of Industry and the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) for the development of special economic zones in the country.
With the signing, President Muhammadu Buhari, who presided over the ceremony at the Council Chambers of the Aso Rock Villa, declared that the investment company in the special economic zones (SEZ) will become operational.
Today, we are here to witness the signing of investment agreements, following which the Nigeria SEZ Investment Company Limited will become fully operational, he said.
The federal government set up NSEZCO Limited as a vehicle for participating in Public-Private Partnerships involving federal and state governments and local and foreign private investors to develop new Special Economic Zones all over the country, offering world-class infrastructure and facilities at competitive costs.
The projects in the pilot phase include Enyimba Economic City, Funtua Cotton Cluster and Lekki Model Industrial Park.
The three DFIs are among the five to partner with NSEZCO and the Ministry of Finance Incorporated. NSEZCO intends to raise at least $500 million in equity over the first five years in order to execute its ambitious strategy of becoming a leading investor in special economic zones in the country. The other investment partners are the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Africa Finance Corporation (AFC).
Called Project MINE (Made in Nigeria for Exports) the development of special economic zones under the direct supervision of the President Muhammudu Buhari, is a presidential special priority intervention aimed at using the zones to attract substantial foreign and domestic investment for the development of world-class facilities dedicated to export-oriented manufacturing in a range of industries across Nigeria.
Project MINE seeks to position Nigeria as the pre-eminent manufacturing hub in sub-Saharan Africa and as a major exporter of made in Nigeria goods and services regionally and globally; as well as boosting manufacturings share of Gross Domestic Product to 20 per cent; generating $30 billion in annual export earnings; and creating 1.5 million new jobs all by 2025.
President Muhammadu Buhari [Photo: Presidency]
Speaking at the signing ceremony, President Buhari said the federal government set up the Nigeria SEZ Investment Company Limited as a vehicle for participating in Public-Private Partnerships involving federal and state governments and local and foreign private investors to develop new Special Economic Zones all over the country. He said, the projects in the pilot phase include Enyimba Economic City, Funtua Cotton Cluster and Lekki Model Industrial Park.
The president said the federal government is implementing a comprehensive plan including: The invitation of experienced Special Economic Zone developers and operators to partner with us to upgrade the federal government owned Free Trade Zones in Calabar and Kano, to offer world-class standards of infrastructure and facilities. Whilst we await the completion of the process of bringing in these investors, the Federal Executive Council has approved the award of contracts in excess of N19.45 billion for the needed investment in Calabar and Kano Free Trade Zones and work is currently ongoing. This is the highest amount of capital investment ever in the history of these zones.
He said: We have allocated substantial funds to upgrade the capabilities of our people and the systems in the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority to strengthen it as a regulator of our Special Economic Zones; and
We are allocating substantial resources to the provision of outside the fence infrastructure to ensure that our Special Economic Zones are connected to global, regional and domestic markets.
We are reviewing our incentive framework to ensure competitiveness relative to the other countries with whom we are in the race to attract export-oriented global manufacturing investment.
He added that the federal government will extend the early successes achieved in Ease of Doing Business to the areas critical to globally competitive export-oriented manufacturing operations.
He thanked the investment partners for their strong demonstrations of support for the important initiative.
Okechukwu Enelamah, whose ministry, Industry, Trade and Investment is implementing Project MINE, recalled President Buharis choice for special economic zones to hasten industrial development and the mandate to the ministry to attract investors to participate in the project.
Minister of Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah
This is the reason we are here today. The investors have all agreed to partner with us, he confirmed.
He said the initial projects such as the Enyimba Economic City are underway, while a feasibility study is going on in eight states.
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The signing of the agreement was done by Benedict Oramah, President of Afreximbank; Kayode Pitan, Managing Director of Bank of Industry and Uche Orji, Managing Director of NSIA.
Femi Edun, a director of NSEZCO and Bakari Wadinga, Director, Ministry of Finance Incorporated, signed on behalf of the company.
Speaking separately, they all thanked the federal government for the opportunity to participate in the project and said they are happy to be partners because they believe in it and are confident of its success.
Project MINE seeks to achieve the following specific objectives:
Aid structural transformation of the Nigerian economy by increasing the manufacturing sectors contribution to GDP to 20 per cent by 2025;
Contribute to sustainable inclusive growth by creating 1.5 million new direct manufacturing jobs in the initial phase of Project MINE;
Increase and diversify foreign exchange earnings to at least $30 billion annually by 2025, by increasing manufacturing sector exports;
Create local models of global best practice in the provision of world-class infrastructure at competitive costs connecting SEZs to international and regional markets with transport links, uninterrupted power, ICT, water, sewage and other services to ensure smooth and efficient operation of SEZ businesses;
Promote the cluster effect to be gained by locating similar export-oriented manufacturing businesses within the same locality;
Attract world-class investors with strong positions in global supply chains and investors with the potential to increase the scale of operations rapidly to set up operations in SEZs; and
Create an enabling environment for SEZ businesses by instituting best in class legal and regulatory frameworks, using technology and streamlined processes to facilitate movement of people, goods and capital and easy access to government services, approvals and permits.
Arizona Man Saves a Life by Recalling Sitcom Scene
Tire shop technician Cross Scott had no idea his routine test drive for a customer would help save a life. During the test drive, Scott encountered another vehicle with flashing hazard lights, with the driver slumped over the wheel. Fearing the driver might be close to death, he sprang into actionuntil he realized hed never ...
2,000 Obituaries Reveal the Most Common Word
National Public Radio recently aired a segment on dying well and what the living can learn from the lives of the deceased. The segment featured a marketing expert named Lux Narayan. Narayan and his employees examined 2,000 editorial, non-paid New York Times obituaries over a 20-month period between 2015 and 2016. What surprised them was that the ...
PR-Inside.com: 2019-02-09 04:29:52
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Research Report Insights (RRI)42 Joseph StreetPort carling P0B 1J0Muskoka, Ontario1Phone - +1-631-721-4201Website: https://www.researchreportinsights.comEmail: sales@researchreportinsights.com+1-631-721-42016317214201
According to a report published by Research Report Insights (RRI), the global market for peripherally inserted central catheters is anticipated to surpass market valuation of US$ 673 Million by 2016 end. In terms of revenue, the global market for peripherally inserted central catheters is expected to witness a significant CAGR of over 5% during the forecast period (2016 2024).Factors such as the rise in healthcare expenditure, credible reimbursement policies, higher preference for peripherally inserted central catheters by clinicians and healthcare providers are likely to fuel the demand for such catheters during the forecast period. On the other hand, lack of expertise, concerns over bloodstream infections and growing preference for deep vein thrombosis and midline catheters are likely to inhibit the growth of overall market.Innovation in peripherally inserted central catheters and advanced technology of anti-thrombogenic peripherally inserted central catheters and anti-microbial peripherally inserted central catheters will define new market opportunities for manufacturers.Request For Report Sample: https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/sample/110114719/Peripherally-Inserted-Central-Catheters-Market By product type, the global market for peripherally inserted central catheters is bifurcated into conventional peripherally inserted central catheters and power injected peripherally inserted central catheters. Amongst the two, the latter is the predominant segment of the market, accounting for more than 80% value share in 2015. Further, the segment is anticipated to remain dominant through 2024. This is mainly due to the rapid adoption of newer products and convenient compensation policies.Based on design, the market is segmented into multiple lumen, double lumen, and single lumen. Demand for multiple lumen catheters is projected to be the highest in 2016, accounting for more than half of the total revenue share of the market. The segment will reflect a CAGR of over 6% during the forecast period primarily due to increasing prevalence of carcinogenic disorders that entail such lumen catheters.By end user, the market is segmented into ambulatory surgical centers, hospitals, and catheterization laboratories. In 2015, hospitals were the largest end user segment, accounting for over 68% share in terms of value. In addition, the segment is expected to account for 72% value share of the market by the end of 2024.Request Report Discount: https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/discount/110114719/Peripherally-Inserted-Central-Catheters-Market On the basis of region, the market is segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa (MEA). North America is the predominant market for peripherally inserted central catheters and is maintain similar position during the forecast period. The market in North America is expected to witness an absolute $ opportunity of over US$ 19 Million in 2017 over 2016. The region is projected to account for nearly 81% value share of the market by 2016 end. The market in Europe is anticipated to account for 10.5% value share of the market by the end of 2016. Asia Pacific is foreseen as one of the emerging market, which is expected to reflect a CAGR of over 11% during the forecast period.Key players operating in the market include C. R. Bard Inc., B. Braun Melsungen AG, Cook Medical Inc., Medical Component Inc., AngioDynamics Inc., Theragenics Corporation. Teleflex Incorporated, Medtronic plc, Vygon S.A, and Argon Medical Devices Inc. These companies are implementing strategies such as improvement of distribution networks and further product development in order to tackle market impediments.Report Analysis: https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/rd/110114719/Peripherally-Inserted-Central-Catheters-Market
PR-Inside.com: 2019-02-09 04:24:30
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Research Report Insights (RRI)42 Joseph StreetPort carling P0B 1J0Muskoka, Ontario1Phone - +1-631-721-4201Website: https://www.researchreportinsights.comEmail: sales@researchreportinsights.com+1-631-721-42016317214201
Research Report Insights (RRI) delivers key insights on the global hand tools market in its latest report titled Hand Tools Market by 2027. The long-term outlook on the global hand tools market remains positive, with market value expected to increase at a CAGR of 3.9% by 2027. Among application, the household & DIY segment is expected to expand at a significant CAGR in terms of value over the forecast period. Among product type, the metal cutting tools segment is anticipated to witness higher CAGR in terms of value over the forecast period. Global sales offhand tools is estimated to be valued at US$ 15,642.8 Mn by the end of 2017, witnessing a Y-o-Y growth of 3.9% over the year 2016. North America is estimated to account for a value share of 33.3% in the global hand tools market by 2017 end and it is anticipated to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period.Hand Tools has been identified as one of the most profitable and consistently performing industry despite being low profile. Use of hand tools is largely affected by the demographic conditions with majority of consumers utilizing hand tools for several DIY (do it yourself) and remodeling activities. On the other hand, in industries use of hand tools has been largely characterized by companies looking for state of art technology to produce high quality products. To respond to the needs of industries, producers are aggressively focusing towards product innovation to satisfy the needs of different customers. One of the several areas of product innovation where companies are primarily focusing is ergonomic design of hand tools to make it more precise and comfortable to operate. Industrial expansion worldwide is primarily driving the demand for hand tools since adoption of hand tools for several maintenance purpose is continuously increasing. Further, emerging demand of hand tools from automotive repair and maintenance industry has also witnessed the growth of high precision hand tools.Request For Report Sample: https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/sample/110114717/Cosmetic-Ingredients-Market However, the global hand tools market is expected to face certain challenges. Consumer shifting preference towards power tools mainly due to fast and easy operating feature is primarily restricting the growth of the market. Moreover, raw material price rise is also identified as the challenge for the companies to maintain price quality ratio of hand tools primarily during shifting trend toward adoption of power tools. The segment is anticipated to account for a market value of more than US$ 9,000 Mn in 2017 and is anticipated to be valued in excess of US$ 12 Bn by 2027 end, expanding at a CAGR of 3.9% during the projected period.Segmentation analysisOn the basis of product type, the general purpose tools segment is anticipated to continue to dominate the market in terms of value over the forecast periodOn the basis of application, the industrial segment is anticipated to dominate the market in terms of value. This segment accounted for 59.9% value share in 2015On the basis of sales channel, the online sales segment is expected to be the most attractive in terms of CAGR index. The growth of this segment is due to rising penetration of e-commerce and increasing demand for cross border products among consumers.Request Report Discount: https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/discount/110114717/Cosmetic-Ingredients-Market In terms of sales channel, retail segment is expected to dominate the market throughout the forecast period. Mass merchant retailers selling product at price below industry average in order to drive their sales is primarily fuelling the growth of this segment.Regional analysisNorth America and Western Europe are estimated to collectively account for 63.8% value share in the global hand tools market by the end of 2017. The North America hand tools market is expected to remain dominant over the forecast period. Although power tools are continuously replacing hand tools in North America and Western Europe, increasing product innovations and companies aggressive expenditure in R & D is expected to propel the growth of the market. Mexico is expected to hold dominant revenue share in the Latin America hand tools market over the forecast period. This is primarily due to higher per capita consumption of hand tools. Sales of hand tools in APEJ is expected to increase to US$ 3,916.8 Mn by 2027 end from US$ 2,186.0 in 2017.Vendor insightsThe report highlights and presents the market value share of some of the top companies operating in the global hand tools market such as Stanley Black Decker, Apex Tools Group, Snap-On, Klein Tools, Akbar Tools Ltd., Wera Tools, Channellock, Inc., JK Files (India) Limited and Kennametal Inc.Report Analysis: https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/rd/110114717/Cosmetic-Ingredients-Market
In analyzing the allegation that Virginias Lieutenant Governor, Justin Fairfax, committed sexual assault in 2004, Ive argued that, in the absence of corroborating evidence, Fairfaxs denial should be credited, or at least should keep him in office. If a second credible accuser came forward, I added, the matter would have to be viewed differently.
Now, a second accuser has emerged. The Daily Beast reports that Meredith Watson claims she was raped by Fairfax in 2000, when they were both students at Duke University. She characterizes the alleged attack as premeditated and aggressive. According to Watson, the two were friends, but had not dated.
Fairfax denies Watsons rape allegation.
Watsons allegation is, if anything, more substantial than that of his initial accuser, Vanessa Tyson. According to her lawyers, Watson told friends about the alleged attack at the time it occurred. Her lawyers say they have emails and Facebook postings that back this up. In addition, a classmate, Kaneedreck Adams, reportedly has told the Washington Post that Watson came to him in tears and said Fairfax had raped her.
Apart from Watsons statement, theres additional corroboration, of sorts, of Tysons assault claim against Fairfax. A former boyfriend of Tysons says, in essence, that she would not consensually have performed the act Fairfax admits she performed on him oral sex. This act was off-limits for Tyson, the boyfriend says, because of sexual abuse she suffered as a child.
At this point, I think we should believe the women, as the saying goes. Even Democrats now might have to.
Judith Curry is one of the worlds most respected climate scientists. On Wednesday, she testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources on the complexities and uncertainties that are too often unacknowledged in the debate over global warming. Her testimony is here and is worth reading in its entirety. Its rational, scientific approach contrasts strongly with the ill-informed hysteria that usually predominates on this topic.
On pages 7-8 of her written testimony, Dr. Curry addresses the recent natural gas brownout in central Minnesotaan event that illuminated the danger of reliance on green energy:
The recent record-breaking cold outbreak in the Midwest is a stark reminder of the challenges of providing a reliable power supply in the face of extreme weather events, where an inadequate power supply not only harms the economy, but jeopardizes lives and public safety. Last week, central Minnesota experienced a natural gas brownout, as Xcel Energy advised customers to turn thermostats down to 60 degrees and avoid using hot water.27 Why? Because the wind wasnt blowing during an exceptionally cold period. Utilities pair natural gas plants with wind farms, where the gas plants can be ramped up and down quickly when the wind isnt blowing. With bitter cold temperatures and no wind, there wasnt enough natural gas.
This paragraph was based on a Power Line post, and footnote 27 goes to Why Green Energy Is Futile, In One Lesson. We appreciate the fact that Dr. Curry recognized the importance of this event as a red flag for those who naively assume that green energy is a practical alternative to reliable energy.
My post consisted mostly of long quotes from a post by my colleague Isaac Orr at American Experiment.org. Isaac also authored an op-ed on the subject in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Everyone is having fun at the expense of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her band of merry pranksters, who may have proposed banning air travel and murdering all American cowsimagine what that would do for the beef industries of Canada, Argentina and Australia!or may have just gotten high and hit the publish button on what was meant as a joke. But it is important to realize that other proposals, regarded as serious in the press, are actually almost as fantastical.
Here in Minnesota, our legislature will take up a bill that would require 50% of electricity in the state to be produced by renewabledefined to exclude hydroelectric and nuclear generationenergy sources. Most dont realize that such proposals are only marginally more sane than AOCs fantasies. Isaac Orr and others in my organization have subjected this proposal to a rigorous cost analysiswhich, of course, the authors and supporters of the bill have not done. Within the next week or two, we will publish a paper demonstrating that the cost of implementing the 50% renewable standard would be on the order of $80 billionan utterly unfeasible numberand would depend largely on increasing the states supply of fossil fuel energy. This will come as a surprise to the bills proponents.
The same kind of thing is happening across the country. Stay tuned.
All signs indicate that Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar will announce her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination early tomorrow afternoon at Boom Island Park in Minneapolis. Klobuchar will emphasize the broad appeal she has demonstrated in three impressive statewide wins. Even if all is not as it appears, she has an appealing public persona. I experienced it myself when she called to thank me for something I wrote on Power Line.
In anticipation of Senator Klobuchars announcement, national political reporters have taken advantage of opposition research showing the other side of Klobuchars face. HuffPost has published Sen. Amy Klobuchars Mistreatment Of Staff Scared Off Candidates To Manage Her Presidential Bid and, most recently, Harry Reid Rebuked Amy Klobuchar For Mistreatment Of Staff. BuzzFeed has also gotten in on the action with Staffers, Documents Show Amy Klobuchars Wrath Toward Her Aides.
In his Morning Hot Dish newsletter this week, Star Tribune political reporter Patrick Coolican called Klobuchars bad reputation as a boss the worst-kept secret in DFL politics. The Star Tribune has nevertheless been good about keeping the secret. He added that no one is a closer reader of her own clips. On that point one can reasonably infer that he speaks from personal knowledge.
By contrast with the staffers quoted in the current stories about her, Senator Klobuchar is popular among Minnesotans who dont know her personally. She was just reelected this past November with 60 percent of the vote. She implied during the campaign that if reelected, she would serve her full term. She didnt need to misrepresent her intentions in order to prevail in the election, but she did.
To build her popularity in office Klobuchar has drawn on her genius for avoiding outspoken stands on important issues and leading the way on trivial matters calculated to garner broad public support. If she secures a favorable headline or two in the process, its no coincidence. It is the true object of her efforts.
Senator Klobuchar is a reliable vote for the Democratic Party line, but she is quiet about it. She doesnt want to upset anybody. She wants to preside over an era of good feelings of good feelings about Amy Klobuchar.
If I were Senator Klobuchar, I would be happy as hell to have arrived in the United States Senate largely on the strength of a good name. Her father was a talented sportswriter and daily columnist for the Minneapolis Tribune.
Early in her legal career I had a case with Klobuchar in federal court in St. Paul. In one court appearance, she identified herself for the record, as did each of the several attorneys appearing on the case. When the court reporter asked her to spell her name, the judge exploded: Good God, man, dont you read the newspaper? Having read the paper over the years, we all knew how to spell Klobuchar.
Like so many Senators, however, Klobuchar has aspirations for higher office. Thus her 2015 book The Senator Next Door: A Memoir From the Heartland. Even the title is warm and cuddly. In the summary posted at Amazon, we learn that she [has] fashioned her own political philosophy grounded in her belief that partisan flame-throwing takes no courage at all; what really matters is forging alliances with unlikely partners to solve the nations problems. As I say, she has a certain genius.
Im not sure her genius is in tune with the Democrat times, but she has the NeverTrump constituency among opinion columnists nailed down. Jennifer Rubin and George Will have both signed her dance card.
Klobuchar may well be able to expand her circle of love to Iowa Democrats next door to us. That is certainly what she is counting on. She took time out to visit Iowa even during her 2018 senatorial campaign. Early signs for her in Iowa are good.
Senator Klobuchar gives the appearance of moderation, yet she has already expressed her support of the idiotic Green New Deal resolution released this week (see tweet below). She participated with Cory Booker, Kamala Harris et al. in the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats coordinated disruption of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. In committee on Thursday she voted the party line against the confirmation of William Barr as Attorney General.
Klobuchars moderation is superficial. It is part of a political persona that is a matter of appearances versus reality.
News: Klobuchar IS signing onto the Green New Deal resolution, per her spox. Initial cosponsors list circulated by @justicedems this afternoon did not include her name. Elana Schor (@eschor) February 7, 2019
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Carl Hessler Jr. is a multi-media reporter who writes about crime and justice from the Montgomery County Courthouse for 21st Century Media Newspapers Greater Philadelphia area publications. Follow Carl on Twitter: @MontcoCourtNews
Bearing Witness by Adam DelMarcelle and co-curated by Ursinus College students, runs through May 18.
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NO HOME: Hayti Alvarado, 26, holds her son, Esteban Alvarado, 3, along with her daughter, Gabriella Alvarado, 11, (not shown) after being detained near the Rio Grande river. The Alvarado family had to flee their country after Gabriella was threatened at school. Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service
While the recent notice from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security banning the recruitment of H-2B workers from the Philippines was prompted by the high number of Filipino workers who stayed back or became human trafficking victims, Guam numbers reflect a different picture.
The Guam Department of Labor reported the data during an informational briefing Wednesday at the Guam Legislature.
The Department of Homeland Security, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, posted a notice in the Federal Register that the Philippines no longer meets the "regulatory standards" for its citizens to apply for H-2B visas. The Philippines will remain off the list for at least 12 months until DHS updates the list one year from now.
This informational briefing comes on the heels of this decision by DHS and its impact on our labor workforce, said Sen. Regine Biscoe Lee, legislative committee chairwoman.
The truth is that our island relies on skilled labor from the Philippines, and we are better and stronger as a community for it, she said.
The notice was prompted by what DHS called a high number of Filipinos who have stayed behind in the United States after their temporary work authorization expired, as well as those who became human trafficking victims after being issued H-2B visas.
Greg Massey, Guam Department of Labor administrator of the Alien Labor Processing and Certification Division, said that in general, around 3 percent of Guam's foreign laborers absconded. Employers are required to report their workers to the agencies when they abscond or leave.
That is the information we have. I dont have access to the federal database, he said.
Massey added, Just to account for the unreported, we went and doubled that figure just to be generous. If we are going to look at actual hard copies, it is more like 1 percent maybe.
Sen. Clynt Ridgell asked how the figures compare to what the federal government has reported.
Massey said the parameters for GDOL's data should be taken into consideration. There is a bunch of questions that needed to get answered on how they are measuring it so we can measure apples to apples, he said. But we are of the opinion that these are mainland data. It is definitely not Guam data. We havent had one trafficking incident with a Philippine citizen on Guam," Massey added.
David DellIsola, who recently was appointed to head GDOL, said the department has been trying to get information on how the federal agency quantified the estimated 40 percent overstay rate for Filipino H-2B workers.
We are optimistic that we will be able to help employers," Massey said. "We are strategizing with immigration attorneys right now.
The department is putting together documented evidence on what makes the island unique from the mainland.
We do have closed borders. Someone who comes to Guam is not going to the mainland U.S because they have to go through an immigration check, he said.
According to Massey, there are currently 641 workers out of the 1,390 slots approved for Guam under the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.
We are expecting to have an H-2 population of over a thousand by the end of March. It is possible to ramp up to a full 1,390 depending on the employers, he said.
Francine Clement, a teacher on Guam, is weighing what might be the hardest decision of her life: whether or not to go off island for continued cancer care.
Im so torn, she said.
Diagnosed with a rare type of the disease with less than 600 known cases, Clement said it was so fortuitous that she even received a diagnosis on Guam. Two years after her symptoms began, a doctor who recently moved to Guam from Houston just happened to walk by and look at her scan from Guam Radiology Consultants.
Because he came from Texas, it was something he was familiar with. But he had never seen a case of it because of its rarity, she said.
After having surgery at Guam Regional Medical City, she was told her cancer was back and she needed to seek further treatment elsewhere because there was nothing more that could be done for her here.
But leaving meant struggling with her insurance company. She eventually left without knowing whether her treatment would be approved. Im not going to sit on Guam and die waiting for them to figure out if they were going to cover me, she said.
Back on Guam after 1 1/2 years in Los Angeles, Clement is once again faced with leaving the island for care. I feel right now I can get better care back there, she said.
But having to make that choice sucks, she said. The hardest thing is being away from family. I just dont want to be without my kids again.
Clement is not alone.
'Everybody's journey is different'
Everybodys journey is different, said Marie Borja Luarca. Luarca also made the choice to seek treatment off island after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 at age 47, six months after her symptoms began. Mammograms do catch it, but mine didnt, she said.
While Luarcas insurance covered the cost of her medical treatment, she and her husband racked up $17,000 in credit card debt during their six-month stay in Hawaii. We didnt have a choice. You have to do what you have to do, she said.
But navigating cancer care on island is complicated it comes with more than just decisions on whether or not to leave the island.
Josette Marie Lujan Quinata, a social worker and advocate for cancer patients who combines the medical information with the emotional support, said a disconnect exists between local resources.
We do have resource on island ... but they are all working independently of one another and isolated, said Quinata.
Instead of navigating through all of these resources, we are navigating through gaps, she said.
Communication needs to be streamlined, she said. It comes back to communication providers arent sharing why or what to expect.
Daphne Lujan, a caregiver by profession, found this out firsthand when her boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer. She said they had to wait to get his diagnosis because the doctor who was treating her boyfriend was off island. We begged them to tell us, she said. The social worker knew before they did, she said. "But she was like, 'I couldnt tell you because Im not the doctor,'" said Lujan.
Like Quinata, Lujan said what is needed is a network for cancer patients.
Cancer costs can be crippling
Dr. Samuel Friedman, one of four oncologists practicing on Guam, said the majority of cancer treatment and diagnosis can be received right here on island.
Yet the choice for many may come down to not only whether a patient can get the necessary treatment but if they can afford it, too.
In regard to the financing of health care, every company would like to have care being done in an area that is somewhat more efficient cost-wise, if it is beneficial for a patient, because the family incurs expenses as far as a copayment, said Frank Campillo, health plan administrator at Calvos SelectCare, one of the health care insurance providers that covers cancer care on island.
Friedman said that while treatment off island may be cheaper, it comes with added expenses. If you cant be treated on Guam, then you have to go to Hawaii or the mainland and that entails a whole new bunch of expenses for travel, he said.
The problem is, the knee-jerk reaction with the private insurance is 'go to (the Philippines)' because its cheap, Friedman said.
Not so, contends Campillo. The individuals are given the option; they are not forced, he said.
The wide range of choices is matched by the high rate of cancer on island.
The island has a rare and high incidence of cancer, said Campillo. Some people are really concerned about this. The University of Guam in conjunction with the University of Hawaii are conducting studies on this.
What Friedman does agree on with Campillo is the cost of cancer can be crippling for many.
The cost of cancer care is insanely costly. Its one of the most expensive and shattering experiences one can have in many ways, Friedman said.
Topping the list of expenses is the cost of medications used to treat cancer.
Those medications are very expensive. Especially because of the drugs that are being used, and the companies are charging very high amounts, said Campillo.
Some cancer medication can cost up to $200,000 a year, added Friedman. Its just madness, he said.
'It takes a community'
For Clement and Luarca, the battle for their lives could not have been fought without an outpouring of support from family and friends. Both said they depended on donated leave in order to stay afloat financially.
Luarca worked at the Department of Public Health and Social Services at the time of her diagnosis and treatment, and said that between the donated leave from her colleagues at the department and donated leave by her husbands colleagues from the Guam Department of Education, they were able to avoid bankruptcy.
Clement said she has been on leave for more than two years and still is able to receive a paycheck only due to the generosity of donated leave from her family and friends.
Quinata, who has worked with cancer patients from all walks of life, stresses that it takes a community to combat the disease.
But she believes strides can be made in offering cancer patients more support here on Guam and said it starts with listening to those who are at the center of the storm.
The people out there need to hear from them, they need to hear from the actual people that are being affected, Quinata said.
Change, she said, is possible.
Can it happen? I believe it can, said Quinata.
Writings on the Wall
Over the last week, I have reviewed case law and various aspects of the FOIA process of the Guam Sunshine Law. Under this law, citizens have t Read more
Dave was the leader of a group of divers I had connected with while on a 1980 sabbatical in San Diego.
On one of our dive trips, we crossed the border and drove to Ensenada, Mexico, diving the rocky shores in search of lunch. Dave had told us when you see a shell embedded in the rocks, with the lower of its two halves hanging open, sneak up on it and stick your knife in before it closes.
If successful, he told us, just pry the lower shell half off the wall, use the knife to peel the muscle out, and eat away, even while underwater. No need to add salt to the tender muscle, as the ocean water does that.
I think this was my first experience eating scallops. The second, I recall, came years later at Michaels restaurant. Recently I bought a pound of scallops at the grand opening sale of a new Rochester grocer. I got 10 whitish-yellow adductor muscles of these shellfish, found off all the coasts of the U.S.
As I was recently eating a couple of those 2-inch wide scallops, I thought about how tender the meat was. Then I gave thought to another mollusk I had also harvested in California abalone, which have only one shell compared to the two halves of the scallops.
Abalone have a much tougher meat that needs to be beaten with a serrated wooden tenderizer, or with a hammer, as my brother and I did back in 1970.
Thinking about abalones and scallops made me realize the difference was the strong muscle needed to keep the abalone secured to rocky surfaces in very rough waters. The scallop didnt need such strength, growing one of its shell halves right into the rock, or just lying on the seafloor.
Researching more about scallops, I learned the ones I ate in Mexico were a less common variety called rock scallops. The ones I got at the local outlet recently were undoubtedly sea scallops. The Atlantic coast is one of the most productive areas for them.
Unlike rock scallops, sea scallops are not usually attached to anything and can propel themselves by "clapping" their shells, sometimes to avoid predators like starfish. Like many shellfish, scallops feed by filtering plankton out of the water. And, besides the edible muscle, scallop reproductive organs, called roe, are also edible unless taken from polluted waters.
Another variety, bay scallops, are smaller than sea or rock scallops, less than an inch across. They are typically found closer to coastlines in bays and estuaries. I picked up a few each of both bay and sea scallops at another local outlet and was amazed at the size difference. One might get a hundred bay scallops when buying a pound, but only 10 to 20 in a pound of sea scallops.
When buying this second batch of scallops, I asked if they were "wet" or "dry," after reading that scallops are often soaked in a brine solution to make them heavier by absorbing water. I noted that my "wet" bay scallops were in a milky colored liquid, and the dry sea variety in clearer water.
Most scallops are harvested by fishermen with trawler boats that drag large nets along the bottom in deep water. I watched one YouTube video of this, and was amazed to see them dredge hundreds of scallops up in one net, with a daily take of about 600 pounds being their goal.
Unfortunately, this type of fishing raises havoc with the sea-floor habitat, also resulting in bycatch of nontargeted species. British author and marine biologist Callum Roberts compares dredging for scallops to "cutting down a rainforest to catch a parrot."
More ecologically friendly harvesting is done by divers who pick only the large desirable scallops, leaving smaller ones for another year. Unfortunately, less than 1 percent of scallops sold are harvested by divers, and it is difficult to verify they are, unless bought directly from a scallop diving operator.
Ive decided to remove scallops from my menu, since I dont know how they were harvested, also because they seem more rich tasting and tender than I prefer. But if you havent tried scallops, you may want to get some and decide for yourself.
'Is There Love in the Air?'
Cherry Grove Church Basement Ladies will perform a one-act skit, "Is There Love in the Air, Or Not?" 11 a.m. Feb. 16.
A soup luncheon will follow the skit. A free-will donation will be collected. A silent auction and a live auction will be held following the luncheon with a variety of items including baked goods.
Doors open at 10 a.m. for silent auction bidding. Ladies, gentlemen and children are welcome. Cherry Grove United Methodist Church is at 18183 160th St., rural Spring Valley. The church is handicap accessible.
Attend FPU at South Troy church
South Troy Wesleyan Church is offering the Financial Peace University, 5 p.m. Sundays starting Feb. 10. It is a nine-week course.
To sign-up or for more information, go to www.daveramsey.com/fpuor contact Pastor Colleen at cobenik1@aol.com or 507-259-1442.
Also at South Troy church, Feb. 16 is Women's Power Hour starting at 10 a.m. The theme is "It's all about Love: From the Inside Out." Brunch and child care are provided.
The church is at 56817 U.S. Highway 63, Zumbro Falls.
Learn about our newest saint
A film depicting the life of Oscar Romero: Saint of Liberation, will be shown at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 18 at Assisi Heights in Rochester.
When the military junta in El Salvador seized control of the national government in 1979, Romero publicly criticized the United States' backing of the junta. The night before his murder at the altar, he pleaded with men of the army not to kill their own people. He said: "No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. It is time your recover your conscience, cease the repression of your neighbors."
In the eloquent speech, he upheld the gospel and simultaneously signed his own death warrant. He was canonized a saint in October 2018.
The film is being shown free of charge. Learn more and register at tinyurl.com/y75l8tah.
Assisi Heights is at 1001 14th St. NW.
Try meditation for mindfulness
Meditation is a practice of quieting the mind to bring forth clarity and tenderness, while cultivating forgiveness and love. It is a mindful practice of being aware and awake to the present moment. It demands of you to be truly present and at-one with those around you and with what you are doing. We open ourselves to the mysterious and silent space within.
Learn more about it in a session at Assisi Heights, 5:15 p.m. Feb. 20. The time begins with a short guided meditation followed by silence. A bell will ring every 15 minutes allowing you to enter or exit as needed. All spiritual paths are welcome. Donations appreciated.
Learn more and register at tinyurl.com/y8qtomnt.
Assisi Heights is at 1001 14th St. NW.
Supermarket Saturday is Feb. 16
Oasis Church will hold Supermarket Saturday, in partnership with Channel One Food Shelf, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Feb. 16.
You must present a photo ID with birthdate to pick up food at Oasis Church. You can visit only one Channel One food site per month. If you have any questions, call 289-8596.
Oasis Church is at 1815 38th St. NW in Rochester.
Dear Dave, my mom is single, and she co-signed on my student loans for college. Would it affect her credit if I couldnt or didnt make the payments? Terri
Dear Terri,yes, it would. The truth is, your mom shouldnt have co-signed for you in the first place. Theres only one reason lenders want a co-signer, and thats because theyre afraid the person taking out the loan wont be able to pay back whats owed.
Youll be trashing your and your moms credit if you dont pay the bills on time. If she co-signed for you, and you dont do the right thing and pay back the loans, shell start getting phone calls looking for the money, too. I dont think you want to subject your mom to the stress and hassle of collector calls or bad marks on her credit, do you?
Believe me, I understand what happened. Your mom loves you, and she wants the best for you. Shes willing to do whatever it takes to help her daughter succeed.
What I want you both to understand going forward is that the idea you have to borrow money to attend college or do anything else, really is a myth. There are many ways to get a great education, and find excellent career opportunities, without borrowing a dime. Scholarships and grants are everywhere these days. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with working before and during college to help cash-flow an education, or you can begin your studies at a community college where the costs are much less.
In addition to four-year schools and community colleges, anyone looking to further their education shouldnt ignore the possibility of trade or technical schools. At these institutions, you can get valuable training thats highly marketable. Not to mention completing a trade or technical school program usually takes less time and is cheaper than a bachelors degree.
My goal here isnt to fuss at you or beat you up, Terri. Its just very important you understand whats at stake now and in the future. My hope is to give you and your mom some good information that will help each of you make smarter, more informed financial decisions down the road.
Political Reporter
Caitlin Byrd is a political reporter at The Post and Courier and author of the Palmetto Politics newsletter. Before moving to Charleston in 2016, her byline appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times. To date, Byrd has won 17 awards for her work.
Columbia/Myrtle Beach Managing Editor
Andy Shain runs The Post and Courier's newsrooms based in Columbia and Myrtle Beach. He was editor of Free Times and has been a reporter and editor for newspapers in Charlotte, Columbia and Myrtle Beach.
The Post and Courier provides a forum for our readers to share their opinions, and to hold up a mirror to our community. Publication does not imply endorsement by the newspaper; the editorial staff attempts to select a representative sample of letters because we believe its important to let our readers see the range of opinions their neighbors submit for publication.
(CNN) U.S. President Donald Trump refused to meet a legal mandate Friday to tell Congress whether the White House thinks Saudi Arabia's crown prince is personally responsible for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
"The President maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate," a senior administration official told CNN.
The White House decision came a day after an explosive New York Times report that cited U.S. and foreign officials with direct knowledge of intelligence reports who say that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told a top aide in 2017 that he would use "a bullet" on Khashoggi.
The senior administration official said "the State Department updates Congress regularly on the status of actions related to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi," the former royal court insider who became one of bin Salman's most vocal critics.
'The law is clear'
Saudi Arabia has admitted that the father of four's killing in Istanbul was premeditated and carried out by a group of men in the prince's inner circle. The Washington Post has reported that the CIA has concluded that bin Salman "ordered" the killing. The Kingdom continues to deny the crown prince had any involvement in the effort.x
The White House refusal to meet the legal requirement by Friday's deadline is likely to heighten anger on both sides of the aisle in Congress, where Khashoggi's killing has galvanized lawmakers who are increasingly intent on pushing back against Trump's defense of the Kingdom.
Indeed, the immediate reaction from Congress was unequivocal.
"The law is clear," said Juan Pachon, spokesman for the Democratic side of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The President has no discretion here. He's either complying with the law or breaking it."
The Global Magnitsky Act gives the President 120 days to determine whether a foreign individual is responsible for extrajudicial killings and report the findings to Congress as well as whether the President intends to impose sanctions on that person.
A National Security Council source insisted that the administration is under "no legal obligation" to respond, but added that the State Department would send a letter to Congress today. The source did not disclose the contents of that letter.
And the senior administration official defended Trump's decision not to meet Friday's deadline, saying that the U.S. was "the first country to take significant measures, including visa actions and sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, against those responsible for this heinous act."
"Consistent with the previous Administration's position and the constitutional separation of powers, ... the US Government will continue to consult with Congress and work to hold accountable those responsible for Jamal Khashoggi's killing," the official said.
Later in the day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent Senate Foreign Relations chairman James Risch, an Idaho Republican, and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, letters that appeared to lay out administration talking points.
"I received a letter today from Secretary Pompeo which describes the actions taken by the administration to sanction individuals involved in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and expresses their ongoing efforts to seek justice," Risch said in a statement. "I anticipate a more detailed briefing from the administration on this issue and look forward to working with them and the members of my committee in our ongoing effort to address the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Legislation has been introduced on this issue in both the House and Senate, with more to come."
'A huge, huge mistake'
Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, told reporters in Washington Friday that Khashoggi's murder was a "horrific crime" and a "huge, huge mistake," but insinuated that there has been an unfair focus on this specific case driven, in part, by politics.
"You have had so many journalists murdered in the last year," Jubeir said, when asked about criticism from lawmakers. "Are they going to legislate sanctions against all countries where these journalists have been killed?"
"Mistakes happen," Jubeir told journalists, adding that an internal investigation into the killing is ongoing. "Those responsible will be held accountable."
The Saudi Foreign Ministry tweeted later on Friday quoting Jubeir and stating that "We will hold who are responsible for the death of Khashoggi to account."
That is unlikely to assuage Congress, where the President's decision looks set to draw even more scrutiny to links between Trump, his family and Saudi Arabia. The administration has stressed its reliance on Riyadh as a strategic partner for their Middle Eastern goals -- checking Iran, funding an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal and countering ISIS.
But questions remain about financial benefits Trump may have gained through Saudi Arabia's royal family and the relationship between bin Salman and Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law and senior adviser.
Both Democrats and Republicans supported the Global Magnitsky Act request on Khashoggi and bin Salman that Trump refused to answer Friday.
On Friday, lawmakers -- furious about the brazen murder and deeply concerned about the fallout from the devastating Saudi-led war in Yemen -- again worked in bipartisan fashion to introduce legislation that would require mandatory sanctions on those responsible for Khashoggi's death, prohibit certain weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and report on human rights within the Kingdom.
Concerns about the destabilizing impact of Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen have only deepened with the publication of a CNN report that shows Riyadh and its coalition partners have transferred weapons sent by the US to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline militias and that they've found their way into the hands of rebels backed by Iran.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and usually a staunch Trump supporter, is a co-sponsor of the legislation introduced Friday.
'Beyond toxic'
"I firmly believe there will be strong bipartisan support for serious sanctions against Saudi Arabia for this barbaric act which defied all civilized norms," Graham said in a statement. "While Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, the behavior of the Crown Prince -- in multiple ways -- has shown disrespect for the relationship and made him, in my view, beyond toxic."
"I fully realize we have to deal with bad actors and imperfect situations on the international stage," Graham said. "However, when we lose our moral voice, we lose our strongest asset."
New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, the most senior Democrat on the foreign relations committee, said it was time to re-evaluate the relationship with Saudi Arabia and the coalition it leads.
"Seeing as the Trump Administration has no intention of insisting on full accountability for Mr. Khashoggi's murderers, it is time for Congress to step in and impose real consequences to fundamentally reexamine our relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and with the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen," Menendez said.
The new bill builds on the first act of broad bipartisan pushback against Trump in December, when the Senate passed a resolution condemning the crown prince for Khashoggi's murder.
Just prior to passing the resolution by a voice vote, the Senate also overwhelmingly approved a resolution by a 56-41 vote that would require the U.S. to end its military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, a move that was also meant to express anger at the Trump administration's handling of relations with Saudi Arabia.
It was, up to that point, the most significant break within Congress toward Saudi Arabia in decades and the firmest response from Capitol Hill since the Khashoggi murder in October.
This story was first published on CNN.com, "White House refuses to meet Congress' deadline on Khashoggi killing."
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
Charleston, SC (29403)
Today
Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 82F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph..
Tonight
Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 69F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph.
BENEATH THE SEPTIMA P. CLARK PARKWAY Friday afternoon approached an unseasonably warm 80 degrees in Charleston, but 140 feet underground, it was cool and still.
Inside the city's massive drainage tunnels, a boring machine was just 12 feet from completing the final shaft, a giant step in a nearly $200 million project that's so far stretched for a decade.
The tunnel walls still needed to be sealed with concrete, but for now, clad in wood panels and steel ribs, they proved an impressive site for a visit from media, Gov. Henry McMaster and members of the S.C. Floodwater Commission. They all traveled to the work site across from Burke High School for an up-close look.
"This is something that has to be done," McMaster told the gathered media after he emerged from underground in a cage linked to a crane. "The cost of not doing it is astronomical."
When completed, the tunnels, outfall and pump into the Ashley River will be able to move 360,000 gallons of water a minute off a sizable portion of the Charleston peninsula, including the Septima P. Clark Parkway, a key traffic artery known more commonly as the Crosstown among locals.
The underground tunnel, which will be 12 feet tall when finished, followed the same curve as that road above.
Construction workers spent two weeks hand mining at its subterranean intersection with the slightly smaller channel drilled under President Street to fit the final structure that will support the crossing.
John DiPonio, vice president of mining company Jay Dee Contractors, handed around a small clump of gray sediment to a group of reporters and flood commissioners who descended into the network after McMaster and Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg had exited. It was an example of Cooper marl, the clay-like material that a cylindrical tunneling machine tore through at a rate of more than 50 feet a day.
"It's excellent mining ground," DiPonio said. "The more challenging the ground conditions, the more expensive the tunnel potentially becomes."
Marl dates back millions of years and was once the bed of a shallow estuary. It's such an ideal medium for the work because marl is both strong like sand and watertight like clay, said Michael Horton, the chief engineer with project administrator David & Floyd.
Actually, it was not unlike a block of firm cheese, said Stephen O'Connell, a geologist for contractor Black and Veatch relatively easy to dig a whole through but stiff enough to keep its shape.
It's also deep enough underground that the tunnels likely wouldn't be disturbed during an earthquake from Charleston's nearby fault line, O'Connell said.
The system must be durable, as it serves as a crucial piece of the city of Charleston's flood management in the coming years. Similar drainage projects are planned for other sections of the peninsula, and as city officials learned recently, they can easily get costly.
The Crosstown project alone was recently revealed to be on track to overrun its original budget by $43 million and its timeline by four years.
Much of that overrun will come due during the next phase of work, which will create the outfall that will actually release the water in the tunnels into the Ashley River. At the end of that phase, before the pumps are installed, gravity alone will be able to convey 200,000 gallons a minute into the Ashley at low tide.
City Council has not awarded the contract to a construction firm for that portion of the project, and it's expected to address the matter Tuesday.
But without it, all of the work so far more than 8,000 feet of new tunnels deep underground will be for naught.
Charleston, SC (29403)
Today
Sun and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 81F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph..
Tonight
Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph.
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On February 5, Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko said he would order the countrys border guards not to allow Russian election observers into Ukraine to monitor its presidential and parliamentary elections in 2019. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin later explained why his country is so opposed to Russian participation in the election monitoring mission:
Ukraine faces an uncomfortable situation with its upcoming presidential election, set for March 31, and parliamentary elections, set for later this year. It is de facto at war with Russia, which annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and controls part of Ukraines Donbas. On the other hand, two of the members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) election monitoring mission are citizens of Russia, which raised suspicion among many Ukrainians due to Russias ongoing information campaign against Kyiv.
On February 7, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraines parliament, passed a draft law banning Russian citizens from serving as election observers for presidential and parliamentary elections. This drew criticism from Russia.
Several days before the Rada approved the draft law, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin was quoted as saying that Ukraines decision to exclude Russian elections observers violated international law. In fact, it does not violate international law, which does not require countries have any election monitoring at all.
However, some non-Russians, including pro-Ukraine Westerners, criticized the ban on Russian observers. Peter Tejler, head of the ODIHR election monitoring mission, said the decision violated Ukraines commitments as an OSCE member state.
"Of course, we are aware that a relevant bill was proposed, Ukraines UNIAN news agency quoted him as saying. We are also quite aware of the position voiced by the Ukrainian authorities, and we have concerns because it does not comply with OSCE commitments as for participation of all OSCE participating countries in the observation mission.
Michael Savkiv is the director of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, which he says has been sending election observers to Ukraine since 1991, when the country achieved full independence. Savkiv himself was in Ukraine as an election observer several times. He told VOAs Russian service that he could understand Poroshenkos suspicion toward Russia because of its record on democracy.
From the generic aspect of freedom for all, it would be good to have as many observers as possible, but we also know there is a slight taint to that which the Russians may do and or say in Ukraine, he said.
VOA also spoke to Orest Deychakiwsky, an American member of the OSCEs election monitoring mission who has observed Ukrainian elections in the past. He disagreed with Poroshenkos statement, pointing out that Russians would provide minority of observers (2 out of over 850, in fact), and that Russia was a threat in other areas.
Brian Bonner, editor of the Kyiv Post, wrote in an op-ed that the damage of having Russian observers on the mission is far and away offset by the great value of the ODIHR election mission. He also called demands that the OSCE be kicked out of Ukraine altogether should Russians be among its observers an ignorant invitation to election fraud.
The director of the OSCEs ODIHR, Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir, said in a statement on February 7 that Ukraines decision to block representatives from a member state is without precedent, noting that observers with ODIHR do not represent their respective countries, but the OSCE as a whole. She also stressed that all observers must adhere to ODIHRs observation methodologies and abide by a strict code of conduct.
On Friday, February 8, the Interfax Ukraine news agency quoted ODIHR spokesman Thomas Rymer as saying the two Russians would be excluded from the list of long-term observers. He also said that without the Russian observers, the long-term part of the election monitoring mission would include 90 observers.
The ODIHR methodology includes not only a core of about 12 team members, but also several dozen who arrive early and stay late, considering not only election day monitoring of polling stations but also taking into account the pre-election, environment, looking out for violations such as administrative constraints and disregard for fundamental civil and political rights.
Related fact checks: Russian State Media Proclaims the Elections in Donetsk Democratic Based on Unqualified Observers
Russian Media Cite Fake Election Observers
A nuclear treaty involves many complicated issues. And we will get to those in the narrative lower in this article. We thought it would be helpful to break down the claims and counterclaims involving the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty before directly addressing the details that lead to the Polygraph.info verdict:
What the US Claims
U.S. Government: The U.S. has said since 2014 that Russia is in violation of the INF Treaty, though very few of the details have been made publicly available. In 2017, the State Department did reveal the missile in question -- the 9M729. In 2018, the U.S. ambassador to Russia said the U.S. had provided geographic coordinates and the dates of tests showing the violations.
Russian Response: The Russian government consistently denies violations.
Third Party: The director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, an independent academic research project, insists the U.S. could have only indirect evidence -- that the rocket had not been tested to distances that would verify a violation. The indirect evidence could include detailed blueprints of the missile and all its technical characteristics.
The Dutch government says it has verified, based on its own independent intelligence, that Russia is developing a cruise missile in violation of the treaty.
What Russia Claims
The Russian Government: The government says the U.S. the Aegis Ashore missile defense system and a vertical launcher deployed in Romania could be used for offensive missiles.
The U.S. Government: The Aegis was developed as a purely defensive system to protect U.S. Navy ships. The U.S. claims the newer, land-based Aegis also is defensive.
Third Party: The Arms Control Associations executive director says the Aegis system can be equipped with offensive weapons, though he adds these "are not equivalent problems."
The Verdict
We find President Putins words to be misleading. The 9M729 missile that is already deployed in European Russia is a threat to a number of European countries, whatever claims to its are accurate -- the Russian or the U.S.
The Details a Narrative
During a February 2 televised working meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, that days decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on February 2 was the chief topic.
Lavrov said Moscow had done everything to save the INF Treaty, given its importance in terms of sustaining strategic stability in Europe, as well as globally. Shoigu said the country would develop new types of weapons, including a ground-based long-range hypersonic missile system.
Despite placing all of the blame on the U.S., Putin said Moscow would not place short- or medium-ranged weapons in Europe or in other regions of the world if analogous U.S. weapons were not deployed in corresponding regions.
"For many years, we have repeatedly raised the issue of substantive negotiations on disarmament issues, in almost all its aspects. And in recent years, we see that our partners do not support our initiatives. On the contrary, all the time pretexts are sought out for dismantling the already established system of international security, Putin said.
Arms Control Association: 'The Start of a Conversation'
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told Polygraph.info that President Putins proposal is the start of a conversation, but ultimately Moscow would be required to remove those missiles that it has already deployed to locations further in the east so they cannot hit targets in Europe.
He added: That would calm the waters in the absence of the INF Treaty. Its not an ideal solution but its one way to avoid each side from rushing to develop and deploy prohibited missiles.
Kimballs assertion that Russia will ultimately need to move the missiles reflects the State Departments 2014 assessment that Russia was in violation, despite a later congressional assessment the U.S. did not offer any details.
The State Department Report
The U.S. Department of State Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Bureau, in an unclassified April 2018 report, determined that Russia continued to be in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with a range capability of 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers, or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles.
It identified the Russian missile as the SSC-8 (Novator 9M729), and added details that covert development began in the mid-2000s, testing soon afterward. An independent report indicated the Novator had not been tested beyond INF limits even as late as 2015.
The State Department report concluded:
The GLCM has a range capability between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, a treaty violation;
It is distinct from an earlier version; and,
The missile is distinct, with the Russian designation as the 9M729.
A January 2019 Congressional Research Service report noted that Russian diplomats had proposed that Russia display the 9M729 and demonstrate that it could not fly to INF range The U.S. rejected this proposal, arguing inspection was not enough to verify and demanding Russia destroy the missile.
After U.S. National Security Council official Christopher Ford revealed the the 9M729 in a November 29, 2017 speech, Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, an independent scientific analysis organization, said the designation, alone, did not mean much.
In December 5, 2017 blog post, Podvig said he had earlier suspected the missile in question had not been tested to the INF range from a mobile ground-based launcher, adding he was certain that suspicion was correct.
This means that the evidence of a violation is indirect, he said.
Podvig noted that under the INF Treaty, actual testing is not required if it can be proven a missiles capabilities exceed the range. He posited that either U.S. intelligence has detailed blueprints or, more likely, the missile is almost identical to another that was tested, the sea-launched Kalibr.
By February 4, 2019, the U.S. claimed it knew Russia had flight tested the 9M729 to distances well over 500 kilometers.
US: 'Geographic Coordinates' and Test Dates
The United States has provided Moscow with substantial information about this systems violations, including geographic coordinates and dates for the tests, but Russia continues to deny any wrongdoing, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Huntsman wrote.
Likewise, Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld wrote a letter last November stating that based on intelligence The Netherlands can independently confirm that Russia has developed and is currently introducing a ground-based cruise weapon.
But neither country provided specific details.
NATO foreign ministers released a statement supporting the U.S. position regarding the alleged Russian violation, following a meeting December 4.
Asked why the U.S. had not disclosed related information to publically bolster its case, Kimball said U.S. intelligence likely did not want to compromise its sources or methods.
Methods by which the U.S. has gathered the information are very sensitive and parts of the U.S. government, the intelligence community in particular, are reluctant to provide that information, he told Polygraph.info.
But Kimball added that if Russia is in the wrong, we need to show that Russia is in the wrong by providing information that third parties can see that undergirds the U.S. case.
Russian Claims on the Missle Are Inconsistent
Meanwhile, the CRS report quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Ministry Sergey Ryabkov calling the U.S. claims fabrications that are inconsistent with reality.
Ryabkov claimed the 9M729 is an upgraded version of the Iskander-M system missile whose maximum range was demonstrated at the Kapustin Yar testing ground in Astrakhan, southern Russia, as less than 480 kilometers, not an INF violation.
As Polygraph.info has reported recently, the Russian Defense Ministry displayed the 9M729 missile at an expo center in Moscow in January, and said more than 100 missile launches were conducted over the six years from 2008 to 2014 at the Kapustin Yar missile range in southern Russia.
But Zvezda, the Defense Ministrys official TV channel, quoted the commander of the Russian militarys missile and artillery forces, as indicating that some of these launches in fact exceeded the INF Treatys 500-kilometer range limit.
US Aegis Ashore
Rather than addressing U.S. concerns, Russia chose to claim that U.S. ballistic missile defense targets, Aegis Ashore missile defense systems in Poland and Romania, and armed UAVs violate the treaty, the U.S. ambassador, Huntsman wrote. In contrast, the United States has responded in detail to these false Russian claims, demonstrating that we diligently comply with our treaty obligations in full.
But Kimball said that while some of Russias claims are an attempt to create a counter-narrative, others should be responded to in a much more serious way.
He noted that Russia has a legitimate concern that the Aegis Ashore missile-defense systems and the Mk-41 Vertical Launching systems deployed in Romania can be used for offensive missiles.
Russia modifying the 9M729 or getting rid of it [in exchange for] the U.S. agreeing to measures that we wont use Aegis Ashore and that we wont launch missiles into their territory [are options on the table], Kimball told Polygraph.info. These are not equivalent problems they are not both violations but there is obvious trade space, he added, should the two countries chose to continue negotiating.
But he added neither the Trump administration nor Moscow are as interested in solving this problem as they should be.
A recent report by the Wall Street Journal that Russia has already deployed four battalions of the 9M729 further chips away at Putins claim of compliance.
With Russias recent admission of test violations, and reports the missile is deployed, Putins claim that Russia will not place short- and medium-range weapons in Europe is moot and Polygraph.info finds Putins statement is misleading at best.
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On HBOs Real Time, Atlantic investigative writer Natasha Bertrand revealed that Donald Trump Jr. will probably be indicted any day now and that he has already been telling his friends that an indictment is coming soon.
Bertrand was asked by Real Time host Bill Maher who would be the first member of Donald Trumps family to be indicted Don Jr. or Jared Kushner. She replied that in her opinion it isnt even close, because of problems with Don Jrs testimony before Congress.
I think the Don Jr. is in more immediate jeopardy, Bertrand said. He has been telling his friends and associates that he expects to be indicted, and hes been saying that for the last few weeks.
His accounts under oath about the Trump Tower meeting in 2016, and his accounts about the Trump Tower in Moscow and how involved he was in that could put him in some legal jeopardy there, she continued.
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What Bertrand knows is that Donald Trump Jr lied to Congress, and both Adam Schiff and Bob Mueller have the evidence to prove it.
As we saw with the arrest of Roger Stone, federal prosecutors including Mueller are able to act very quickly. Now that Mueller has copies of the official and formal testimony of Don Jr under oath he could move to indict the presidents oldest son at any time.
Natasha Bertrand is known for her insightful investigative reporting. She is based in New York and has confidential sources among the New York federal prosecutors. In the past her predictions have been right, and there is no reason to believe differently now.
In late January we reported that Donald Trump and his allies have been lying for two years to cover up Donald Trump Jr.s crimes related to Russia.
Last Wednesday PoliticusUSA publisher Jason Easley wrote that:
The House Intelligence Committee has voted to turn over the transcripts of witness testimony to Robert Mueller for a perjury investigation, which means that the clock is ticking on Donald Trump Jr. being indicted.
Trump blew a gasket and launched a personal attack against Adam Schiff because even he is worried that his son is going to be indicted. Rep. Schiff has been signaling for weeks that he has a great deal of suspicion that Donald Trump Jr. lied to Congress.
So get your popcorn ready folks. The long-awaited show of Donald Trump Jr. being indicted and arrested is coming soon.
CLICK HERE to watch the HBO video on YouTube
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Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren officially announced her candidacy for president on Saturday before a raucous crowd of supporters in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
In her remarks, Warren said Trump is just a symptom of a system that is broken and that it wont be enough to undo the terrible acts of his administration.
Instead, the Democratic senator called for big, structural changes to reverse the damage the current president has done.
Video:
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Warren said:
It wont be enough just to undo the terrible acts of this administration. We cant afford just to tinker around the edges a tax credit here, a regulation there. Our fight is for big, structural change. This is the five of our lives. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone. And that is why I stand here today to declare that I am a candidate for president of the United States of America.
Donald Trump immediately threw a tantrum
In an indication that Donald Trump sees Elizabeth Warren as a political threat, his re-election campaign quickly lashed out at the Massachusetts senator on Saturday, calling her a fraud and clinging to the worn out attack line about Warrens Native American background.
In a statement, according to The Hill, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said, Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected.
He added, The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and crush Americas middle-class. Only under President Trumps leadership will America continue to grow safer, secure and more prosperous.
Warrens official campaign declaration adds her name to the quickly growing list of potential 2020 Democratic nominees. As I noted earlier, each of them is well-positioned to defeat the president.
According to a late-January Public Policy Polling survey, Warren leads Trump 48 percent to 42 percent in a hypothetical matchup and thats before shes had a chance to fully introduce herself to the country at large.
Its no wonder Trump is starting to cast doubt over the legitimacy of the 2020 election results. So far, each Democratic candidate that has officially launched their presidential bid, including Sen. Warren on Saturday, has shown that they would be a formidable nominee to take on Trump.
Follow Sean Colarossi on Facebook and Twitter
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The bombshell revelation that National Enquirer boss David Pecker was trying to blackmail Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has cast a new spotlight on Donald Trumps relationship with Saudi Arabia. It may even implicate the president in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (a Saudi exile) last October. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has been accused of having Khashoggi killed.
The evidence in the blackmail case shows that Pecker was acting on behalf of Trump, his long-time personal friend. It also shows that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was involved in the blackmail scheme from the beginning.
In his stunning blog post on Thursday Bezos said that Peckers blackmail efforts were politically motivated and several times he mentioned the connection between Pecker and Saudi Arabia.
But why did David Pecker take the risky move of trying to blackmail Bezos when it could increase his own legal jeopardy?
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The answer to the question could lie in the fact that Khashoggi worked for Jeff Bezos.
Bezos, the richest man in the world, owns the Washington Post .
. Khashoggi was a columnist for the Post before he was brutally killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, by Saudi hit men.
The Post has been leading coverage of the killing of Khashoggi. This coverage has continually suggested that the Crown Prince personally ordered the murder of the Post journalist. The Post coverage has also accused the Trump administration of attempting to cover up the Saudi involvement in the murder.
So now we can see that at the same time that Saudi Arabia was having one of Bezos Post journalists murdered, they were also working with Trump and Pecker in a blackmail scheme against Bezos. This does not appear to be a coincidence.
In his blog post, Bezos set forth the reasons why both Trump and the Saudis would want to target him, and he mentions that they both have close relationships with David Pecker.
We know that the Saudi Crown Prince had a personal grudge against Khashoggi. Both Trump and the Crown Prince were upset that the journalist had been using his position at the Post to expose Saudi corruption. We also know that Donald Trump had a personal grudge against Jeff Bezos because the Post has been exposing so much of Trumps corruption.
But is it possible that Trump has been targeting Bezos all along because his puppet masters in Saudi Arabia told him to, as part of their vendetta against Bezos employee Khashoggi?
Certainly the Post is not the only newspaper that has been critical of Donald Trump, and its not the only member of the mainstream media that he has attacked on Twitter.
It is possible that Donald Trump was helping to facilitate Saudi Arabias vendetta against Jamal Khashoggi by going after Khashoggis boss, Jeff Bezos.
Heres the big question: what did Trump know about Khashoggis murder, and when did he know it?
It is at least a possibility that the president actually in some way helped Saudi Arabia have the Post journalist murdered. And we know that he certainly helped with the cover up.
The following passage appears in an article on CNN on this very topic:
The Post has doggedly covered Saudi Arabias premeditated murder of its own columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, reporting that the CIA has concluded the killing was ordered by [Crown Prince] bin Salman, a charge the Kingdom denies. The Post has also chronicled Trumps close ties with Saudi leaders as well as the Presidents ongoing refusal to condemn the prince or significantly sanction Saudi Arabia.
And Bezos wrote in his blog post that he believes there is a connection between the blackmail plot and the killing of Khashoggi:
The Posts coverage of Khashoggis murder is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.
Trump has done everything possible to cover up the Saudi governments involvement in having Khashoggi killed. Trump has also provided favors and helped Saudi Arabia in other areas, such as the war in Yemen.
Many people believe that Donald Trump is a puppet for Saudi Arabia due to the financial leverage the Kingdom holds over him. And if this is true, it is very possible that Trump assisted with not only the Bezos blackmail but also the Khashoggi assassination.
As the Bezos lawsuit against Pecker proceeds, the truth about Donald Trump is likely to come out. And when that happens we may find out that the president has Khashoggis blood on his hands.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) U.S. Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Friday said he never discussed Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation with President Donald Trump or his inner circle before he began working at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Asked if he has spoken with the president, any Trump associates or Trumps family members as a private citizen before joining the administration, Whitaker told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee: No, I did not. Whitaker served as a top aide to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions before Trump fired Sessions in November and tapped Whitaker to fill in temporarily.
(The story was corrected to say reference was to period before Whitaker joining department, not taking AG job)
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Andy Sullivan; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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The National Enquirer attack on Jeff Bezos is unraveling what looks like another failed Trump operation to strike back at one of his enemies.
The Washington Posts Manuel Roig-Franzia said that Bezos security team believes that his texts were intercepted by a government entity and turned over to the Enquirer, We havent spoken with Jeff Bezos, and he hasnt been involved at all in our reporting, but we have spoken extensively with his security consultant, and hes provided us with some very interesting insights into the backstages of this whole drama, including the investigation that has taken place in which they have begun to believe, the Bezos camp, that this publication by the National Enquirer might have been politically motivated. I would just add one other thing. You mentioned hacking at the top of the show. Gavin de Becker told us that he does not believe that Jeff Bezoss phone was hacked. He thinks its possible that a government entity might have gotten a hold of his texts.
Video:
Trump wanted a war with Jeff Bezos and now he's got another criminal problem. https://t.co/90NCWBwj2n pic.twitter.com/Vd5haOLFoi Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) February 8, 2019
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The former senior editor of the Enquirer claims that David Pecker pursued the Bezos story as a way of making up with Donald Trump. The president has been trying to hurt Bezos for years because his newspaper The Washington Post broken several bombshell stories while reporting on the administration. Trump wants Bezos to sell The Post to a new owner who will be friendly to him. Trump tried the same tactics to try to pressure CNN into a sale to Rupert Murdoch.
As Laurence Tribe tweeted, it looks like Trump, Pecker, and the Saudis, who have their own interests in getting rid of Bezos after the Kashoggi murder, were all working together:
Are Donald Trump and the murderous Saudi Prince bin Salman co-conspirators with David Pecker and AMI in a failed criminal plot to blackmail and extort Jeff Bezos as owner of the Washington Post? Asking for a friend in the Southern District of New York. Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) February 8, 2019
It might not be Mueller that brings Trump down, but his blackmailing of Jeff Bezos could reach a level of criminality that could be the end for Trump.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
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By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday stopped a Louisiana law imposing strict regulations on abortion clinics from going into effect in its first major test on abortion since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy last summer.
The court on a 5-4 vote granted an emergency application by Shreveport-based abortion provider Hope Medical Group for Women to block the Republican-backed law from going into effect while litigation continues.
The four liberal justices were joined by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority, suggesting that Roberts, as Kennedy used to be, is now the key vote on the issue.
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Kennedy backed abortion rights in two key cases. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who President Donald Trump appointed to replace Kennedy, joined the courts four other conservatives in dissent.
Hope Medical Group challenged the laws requirement that doctors who perform abortions must have an arrangement called admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of the clinic.
Kavanaugh, writing for himself, said it was not clear whether doctors would be unable to obtain the admitting privileges were the law to go into effect. He said that he would have favored allowing them to bring a later legal challenge if their efforts were unsuccessful.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion rights group that represents the challengers, said the law could lead to the closure of two of the three abortion clinics operating in Louisiana, a state of more than 4.6 million people.
The law was passed in 2014 but courts had prevented it from going into effect. The Supreme Court itself blocked the law in 2016, two days after hearing another major case involving a similar Texas law that the justices struck down months later.
Kennedy, a conservative who retired in July 2018, had voted to preserve abortion rights in 1992 and again in the 2016 Texas case.
Roberts was a dissenter in the 2016 case, but his vote on Thursday for now suggests the court is not retreating from that precedent.
Kavanaugh is one of two Trump appointees who are part of the courts 5-4 conservative majority, along with Neil Gorsuch.
The Supreme Court recognized a womans constitutional right to an abortion and legalized the procedure nationwide in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
The court on Feb. 1 temporarily blocked the Lousiana law, which was due to go into effect on Feb. 4, while the justices decided how to proceed.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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By Andrew Hay
(Reuters) When Sherrie Nixon saw the six strands of razor wire strung along the U.S.-Mexico border fence in her Arizona city, she said she wanted to cry.
Theyre turning our town into a military base. Its like the front lines of some kind of war zone, Nixon, 68, told the Nogales City Council on Wednesday night. Please take a stand and at least have them get rid of the razor wire. Its a public nuisance, its lethal.
Minutes later, the council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the use of the concertina wire as an indiscriminate use of lethal force normally reserved for battlefields and high-security prisons.
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The council called on the federal government to remove the wire and not use military force or military-type tactics in their city. Nogales, a city of more than 20,000 residents, borders on the Mexican city of the same name.
Were not going to allow this in Nogales, Mayor Arturo Garino, a Democrat, said at the meeting, which was recorded and streamed on the internet. We have children who live right next to it, 10 feet away from it.
Garino said his city was very safe, and he did not want the eyesore and safety hazard of the wire to ruin the communitys healthy economy. He planned to file a lawsuit over it.
The razor wire was installed by some of the more than 6,500 active-duty and National Guard troops deployed to the southern border.
President Donald Trump has said troops are needed because the border is in a lawless state and faces the tremendous onslaught of Central American migrant caravans.
CONCERTINA POSTER CITY
Is Nogales being used as their concertina poster city? the mayor asked at the meeting.
The U.S. military has put up over 70 miles (113 km) of the wire along the 2,000-mile (3,219-km) border and will add an extra 160 miles (258 km), a Defense Department spokesman said.
The U.S. Border Patrol asked for up to eight strands of wire in its Tucson sector for high risk urban areas commonly exploited by criminal smuggling organizations, Customs and Border Patrol said in a statement.
Adding extra strands of wire has stopped people climbing over the wall, the agency said.
Currently, there are no plans to remove the concertina wire, the statement said.
Nogales residents like Victor Fontes are unlikely to give up their struggle to have it removed. His two aunts, in their 90s, live near the wall and told him to tell the council what they thought of the wire.
In Spanish, they use the word asquerosidad (filth), said Fontes, 75.
Its just beyond disgusting, he said.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Peter Cooney)
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DUBAI (Reuters) Iranians will chant Death to America as long as Washington continues its hostile policies, but the slogan is directed at President Donald Trump and U.S. leaders, not the American nation, Irans supreme leader said on Friday.
As long as America continues its wickedness, the Iranian nation will not abandon Death to America, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a gathering of Iranian Air Force officers marking the 40th anniversary of Irans Islamic Revolution, according to his official website.
Trump pulled out of Irans 2015 nuclear deal with world powers last year and re-imposed sanctions on Tehran, dealing a blow to the countrys economy.
Death to America means death to Trump, (National Security Adviser) John Bolton, and (Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo. It means death to American rulers, Ayatollah Khamenei said.
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European signatories of the nuclear deal have been trying to save the accord, but Khamenei said they could not be trusted.
I recommend that one should not trust the Europeans just as the Americans, Khamenei said. We dont say, dont have contacts with them, but its an issue of trust.
The European Union has stepped up criticism of Irans ballistic missiles program while remaining committed to the 2015 nuclear deal.
(Reporting by Dubai newsroom, editing by Larry King)
Mackenzie Brown, one of the four Prix de Lausanne finalists from the U.S. Rodrigo Buas, Courtesy Prix de Lausanne.
The Prix de Lausanne Just Announced Its 2019 Finalists, and It Includes 4 From the U.S.
Where to Eat on the Las Vegas Strip
Where to Eat on the Las Vegas Strip we ate at 10 different places on the Las Vegas Strip. 9 were great 1 was not so great. Pizza, burgers, sushi, steak, Italian, cake you name it, we ate it! Save this post for your next Las Vegas Getaway! #travel #lasvegas #vegas #vegasstrip
Today I am sharing all about our most recent trip to Las Vegas. If you follow the blog, you know that Chicken Legs & I LOVE Las Vegas. We especially love Las Vegas during Thanksgiving. It is our holiday tradition to spend the week in Vegas. It isnt crowded and everything is open. It is a really fun and relaxing week.
As per our usual, we ate at a mix of favorites and new places on this trip. We found an amazing new steakhouse (the best steak Ive ever eaten), a new burger place (I ate the whole thing) and a fancy new Instagram worthy restaurant. I dont know how we are going to fit in new places on our next trip. We have found so many new favorites!!!
https://www.plainchicken.com/search/label/vegas Dont miss our previous Las Vegas posts:
Five-50 Pizza Bar
We arrived in Las Vegas around lunch time. We checked into the hotel and headed straight to Five-50 for lunch. We havent eaten here in years! It was delicious! We didnt get any appetizers, we just dove right into the pizza! Perfect!!! It is definitely one of the best pizzas on the strip.
Next time we will check out the whole menu.
They have salads, garlic knots (totally getting those), wings, a mozzarella bar (YUM) and pizza.
Five-50 Pizza Bar
Aria Hotel & Casino
3730 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89158
Mastros Ocean Club
We received a gift certificate to Mastros, so we decided to give it a try.
It has been in The Shops at Crystals forever, but we had never eaten here.
WHY?!?!?! It was AMAZING!!!
Look at that bread basket! It is reason enough to eat here!!
We started with a couple of crab cakes.
They were HUGE and delicious!
Chicken Legs also got a caesar salad. YUM!
For his entree, Chicken Legs got the salmon. He got it blackened.
He loved it.
I got a filet. It was cooked to perfection.
It was the best steak Ive eaten in a steakhouse.
I dont usually like steak out, but this one is worth getting!
My favorite thing of the whole meal was these au gratin potatoes.
I could have made a meal out of these yummy potatoes,
GET THEM!!!
We will definitely be eating here on our trip in May.
SO GOOD!
Mastros Ocean Club
The Shops at Crystals
3720 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89158
Carmines Italian Restaurant
Carmines in the Forum Shops is one of our favorite places.
They have a GREAT happy hour AND you can get small portions if you sit in the bar.
Carmines portions are HUGE to say the very least. They can serve 4 to 6 people.
If you sit in the bar, they offer half portions of a lot of the most popular dishes.
I started with an Aperol Champagne cocktail.
I loved it! Why havent I ordered this before? It is delicious!
Our favorite thing at Carmines is the Spicy Scarpariello Wings.
The wings have lemon, rosemary and garlic. SO good!!
I need to make these at home in my air fryer!!
Our other favorite dish is the Penne a la Vodka.
They offer a small portion of this in the bar.
It is still way too much for two people, but we like it!
I wish I had the leftovers now!!!
Carmines is delicious! Check it out.
Dont forget our tip to sit in the bar! Perfect for 2 or 3 people!
Carmines Italian Restaurant
3500 South Las Vegas Blvd.
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Carlos Bake Shop
I now know why Buddy V is known as the Cake Boss.
His cakes are DELICIOUS!
We always stop in at Carlos Bakery for an afternoon snack.
We love everything in the bakery.
This was our first time having a slice of cake, but it wont be the last!
YUM!
Carlos Bake Shop
The Grand Canal Shoppes
3327 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Cipriani
Cipriani had just opened in the Wynn when we were in town.
I was excited to eat here since we had just returned from a trip to Italy
Cipriani is designed to be like restaurants in Venice.
They had low table tops, served their drinks in short glasses.
This is the Bellini. It is the same recipe they use at Harrys in Venice.
(Where the Bellini was invented)
Their martinis are served in frozen shot glasses.
We started with the carpaccio.
We love carpaccio and this was delicious.
We also shared an order of the ham & cheese pasta Homemade Baked Tagliolini with Ham.
For entrees, I got the Braised Beef Short Ribs alla Cipriani.
VERY tender and full of flavor.
Chicken Legs got the duck special. He loved it.
We decided to finish the night with dessert.
Our meal at Cipriani was good, but it was REALLY expensive.
I didnt think it was worth how much we paid.
Cipriani
3131 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Bobbys Burger Palace
I have had Bobbys Burger Palace on my list of places to try for YEARS.
We finally gave it a try for lunch and it did not disappoint,
The burgers were crazy good!
They were even cooked to temperature. We ordered them medium and they came out medium. WOW!
We shared an order of fries. We got half sweet potato fries and half regular fries.
They were great!
I got the Bobbys Crunch Burger cheese, bacon and potato chips,
I might put chips on all my burgers now! YUM!
We couldnt leave without trying a shake.
We got the Cookies & Cream shake.
LOVED it!!!!
I wish there was a Bobbys Burger Palace closer to home!
Bobbys Burger Palace
Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas
3750 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Catch
Catch is another brand new restaurant.
It has only been open a very short time when we ate here.
It is hands-down the most BEAUTIFUL restaurant!!!
Instagram worthy at every turn!!!
I HAD to take a pretty cocktail photo in the flower walkway.
Catch has a little bit of everything on their menu sushi, chicken, steaks.
Chicken Legs loves sushi, so he went all in!
He had a roll.
And some sashimi. He loved it all!!
I am not a seafood person, so I got a couple of fun appetizers.
These are the tacos YUM!
I can never pass up Bao Buns I LOVE them!!!
These chicken bao buns did not disappoint!
I could not pass up dessert.
HIT ME Chocolate Cake
Liquid Klondike, Dulce de Leche Ice Cream, Brownie & Devils Food
SO the brownie is on the bottom, next is the Dulce de Leche ice cream, then the chocolate cake and finally the Liquid vanilla ice cream.
The waiter pours hot chocolate syrup on top and you hit the vanilla ice cream to break it open.
It was to-die-for.
We will most definitely be eating at Catch again in May!
I want to try one of their steaks next time.
I will also be getting the Hit Me dessert again. YUM!
Catch
Aria Resort & Casino
3730 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89158
Grimaldis Pizzeria
Grimaldis is a Thanksgiving tradition. We always eat lunch here for the holiday.
We got our usual sausage & pepperoni.
I have to admit, this year we are going to have Thanksgiving lunch at Five50.
It was better!
Grimaldis Pizzeria
The Venetian/Palazzo Resort & Casino
3355 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Carbone
Carbone is my favorite place in Vegas.
We dined here for Thanksgiving dinner. It was amazing.
We always start with the prosciutto and fresh mozzarella.
It is so delicious. There are three different types of prosciutto sweet, smoky and salty.
I look forward to this dish on every trip.
Another dish I look forward to on every trip is the Spicy Rigatoni Pasta.
I want to order two orders for myself. I dream about this pasta.
I LOVE IT!!!!
I went off the menu for my entree with Carbones meatballs.
You can order as many as you wish. I got three so I could share with Chicken Legs.
These are delicious!
Chicken Legs got the lamb. I barely got a picture of it before he devoured all of it.
He loves lamb and rarely orders it.
We ended the evening with a slice of limoncello cheesecake.
The whole experience was amazing.
I am counting down the days until we eat here again!
Carbone
Aria Resort & Casino
3730 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89158
Bardot Brasserie
We had a late flight home, so we had time to eat lunch at the hotel before heading to the airport.
Someone recommended the burger at Bardot Brasserie.
We LOVE the burger from the French place at home, so we decided to give it a try.
This was our least favorite place we ate in Vegas.
The portions were small and EXPENSIVE.
The service was seriously lacking. It was pulling teeth to get anyone to come to the table.
The burger tasted fine, but not what we hoped for.
Bobbys Burger Palace was 1000 times better.
I love a good French Dip, but this was REALLY skimpy on the roast beef.
I ended up cutting the sandwich in half and putting all the meat on one half of the bun.
It tasted fine, but I cant recommend it.
Overall, I would PASS on ever eating here.
They do make a good cocktail, so maybe just stop by for a drink.
Bardot Brasserie
Aria Resort & Casino
3730 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89158
Dont miss our previous Las Vegas posts: https://www.plainchicken.com/search/label/vegas
We already have our next trip to Vegas booked!
DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) On the day of his death, longtime Rep. John Dingell dictated a farewell message to America and used some of his final words to criticize President Donald Trump.
Dingell dictated the message to his wife and congressional successor Debbie Dingell Thursday in their suburban Detroit home. The Washington Post published the opinion piece on Friday.
"One of the advantages to knowing that your demise is imminent, and that reports of it will not be greatly exaggerated, is that you have a few moments to compose some parting thoughts," Dingell said Thursday. "In our modern political age, the presidential bully pulpit seems dedicated to sowing division and denigrating, often in the most irrelevant and infantile personal terms, the political opposition."
Dingell, who died Thursday at age 92, didn't mention Trump by name in the article.
Dingell represented parts of southeast Michigan for nearly 60 years before retiring in 2014 as the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history.
On Friday, Trump ordered flags at the White House and other federal facilities lowered to half-staff in Dingell's memory. The president also used Twitter to extend sympathies to Debbie Dingell and other family members.
"Longest serving Congressman in country's history which, if people understand politics, means he was very smart," Trump tweeted. "A great reputation and highly respected man."
Dingell's opinion article was similar to a letter penned by former Arizona Sen. John McCain before his death in August from brain cancer.
In McCain's letter, the late Arizona Republican appeared to repudiate Trump's politics one last time, saying, "We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe."
Much of Dingells letter to the Post focused on the country and improvements made over the decades to Medicare, the environment, the Great Lakes, and efforts to end racial discrimination.
"All of these challenges were addressed by Congress," Dingell said. "Maybe not as fast as we wanted, or as perfectly as hoped. The work is certainly not finished. But we've made progress and in every case, from the passage of Medicare through the passage of civil rights, we did it with the support of Democrats and Republicans who considered themselves first and foremost to be Americans."
He concluded by saying "as I prepare to leave this all behind, I now leave you in control of the greatest nation of mankind and pray God gives you the wisdom to understand the responsibility you hold in your hands. May God bless you all, and may God bless America."
Trump's proclamation applies to flags at the White House, other public buildings and grounds, U.S. military posts and naval stations, and on all federal naval vessels. They'll be lowered until sunset Saturday.
Flags at U.S. embassies and other facilities overseas also are ordered to half-staff. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also ordered flags on state property lowered.
A public visitation will be held Monday at Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn. A funeral will be held at a local church Tuesday.
Following those services, a casket carrying Dingell's body will be driven past the Capitol in Washington. The public is invited to watch from the east lawn of the Capitol.
A second Funeral Mass will be held Thursday at 10:30 a.m. at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington. The public is invited.
Dingell will be interred in Arlington National Cemetery, said his wife, Debbie Dingell, who succeeded him in the Michigan congressional seat.
Tributes poured in following Dingells death, including from former U.S. presidents, colleagues, and some of his more than 250,000 Twitter followers.
The eight new moms were all doing well with nursing their infants.
Still, they had come to the breastfeeding support meeting in West Philadelphia on this October morning, babies in tow, because it was a place to gain knowledge and a chance to be honest.
"You think breastfeeding is going to be this magical thing," said Lara Kalin of Manayunk, patting her 7-week-old daughter in a baby carrier on her chest. "But she's learning and I'm learning. It's a working relationship."
Lauren Hansen-Flaschen of West Philadelphia cradled 6-week-old Lucas and chimed in. "I remember people saying you'll have this euphoric experience. I'm like, 'When is that?' "
The confessions were familiar to nurse Patty Siegrist, a certified lactation specialist who leads the bi-weekly group at Studio 34, a yoga and healing arts center.
"Not to be a Debby Downer, but when I teach my breastfeeding classes, I say the first three months of breastfeeding are the hardest thing you will ever do," said Siegrist, who works for Lifecycle WomanCare (formerly the Birth Center) in Bryn Mawr. "It's the longest shortest period of your life. Some days will seem 55 hours long."
Breastfeeding is nature's way, and the well-documented benefits include building the baby's immune system, reducing maternal breast and ovarian cancer risks, and enhancing mother-infant bonding. A recent report suggests that as little as two months of breastfeeding can even reduce the risk of sudden infant death. But for many women, being a physical food dispenser is often an uncomfortable, stressful, embarrassing job that can be hampered by everything from sore, cracked nipples to the lack of places for working women to pump their breast milk.
Many experts now say the best way to encourage women to persist is to be realistic. Diane L. Spatz, a nurse researcher and lactation program director at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, even believes the World Health Organization and other authorities should stop using the word successful when promoting breastfeeding.
"The opposite of 'success' is failure," she wrote recently in the American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing. "For any new mother, breastfeeding may not come intuitively or naturally and it may require a lot of work. We need to help mothers set realistic goals and provide education, support and care to reach those goals."
Getting through the first days
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups recommend exclusive breastfeeding no commercial baby formula for about the first six months.
That's fine in best-case scenarios. The thick, immune-rich pre-milk, or colostrum, transitions to thinner, whiter, more abundant milk over the first three to five days. The full milk supply comes in by about day 10, as the baby's stomach and appetite grow.
In many cases, however, the early milk supply is skimpy, even when the breasts are normal, so formula supplementation becomes necessary. The critical early days also may be disrupted by illness.
Heath Williams of Bella Vista, for example, had a 42-hour labor and a forceps delivery. Her newborn son went to intensive care. Four days later, she developed postpartum high blood pressure and required intravenous medication.
Even though she "felt like crap," she managed to maintain her milk supply by using a breast pump, so Ivan got her nourishment, if not her breast, from the start.
"Now, he's great," Williams said of her 5-week-old son. "And breastfeeding has gone pretty well."
Siegrist, 67, whose four children are adults, was unable to produce enough milk to nurse them for reasons that weren't clear. Her deep frustration led her to train to be a lactation consultant. In 1996, she went through the profession's certification process, which requires continuing education and testing.
"All four of my kids were losing weight," she recalled of those difficult days. "I became a lactation specialist so I could help other women do what I couldn't do."
Overcoming obstacles
Delayed onset of lactation, defined as more than 72 hours after birth, is surprisingly common, with some studies finding it affects a quarter or more of women. Women who get pain medication during labor as about 80 percent do in this country are two to three times more likely to have a delay than those who tough out the delivery, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Obesity also increases the chance that milk production will lag, Spatz and other researchers have found. The biological reasons aren't clear but may have to do with insulin resistance or a decrease in prolactin, the main hormone needed for lactation.
"But just because a mom has a delay, that doesn't mean she can't establish a normal milk supply and be a long-term breastfeeder," Spatz said. "She may need a hospital-grade breast pump. And she needs skin-to-skin contact with the baby to increase prolactin."
About 4 percent of babies are born with another potential problem: a "tongue tie," or ankyloglossia, in which the membrane connecting the tongue to the floor of the mouth is too short or extends too far. This can interfere with sucking and swallowing, and sometimes needs surgical treatment.
"I check every baby I see for a tongue tie," Siegrist said.
Even when all goes smoothly, questions come up, especially as moms build a storehouse of milk so they can share feedings with partners or babysitters. Tess Zwizanski of South Philly said 5-week-old Zelda was thriving, "but I just started pumping and it's overwhelming." The group offered wisdom about the optimal time of day to pump, a gizmo called the Haakaa (used to collect milk on one side while feeding on the other), milk shelf life, and freezer storage.
As the meeting wound down, Siegrist shared an affirming anecdote.
"I remember one mom who I thought: 'She's not going to make it. She's going to quit trying to breastfeed.' I was wrong," Siegrist said. "She called me four months later and thanked me for being part of her breastfeeding journey. It took her 17 weeks to get to full milk production, but she did it."
When she was three months pregnant with twin girls, Eleonora Barbieri marched in Philadelphia, like millions of others across the world, surrounded by people carrying signs proclaiming that women's rights are human rights.
Now her girls are 14 months old and Barbieri, an Italian immigrant, has dressed them in outfits with messages like "Strong Woman" and "Miss Independent."
"I want them to learn their self-worth," said Barbieri, 31, of Brewerytown, whose husband is Dominican. "So if they ever encounter anyone who talks to them like the president talks to the world, they can hold themselves [firm] and know that's not right and they deserve better."
>> IMAGE GALLERY: From 'Thank You Rosa Parks' to 'Every Girl is a Super Hero,' female empowerment gets screen printed
As the female-empowerment message goes mainstream, retailers are increasingly stocking their shelves with shirts like "Girl boss," "Never underestimate the power of women and girls," and "She believed she could so she did"
"Culturally, we are in an accelerated time of women questioning the assumptions that others have about them," said Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "Retail is often a looking-glass sense of culture."
The amount of positive messaging apparel from the countrys top childrens wear retailers doubled compared with last year and the term girl power increased 67.4 percent, according to an analysis by Edited, a retail technology and data company. In the last three months, theres been a 100 percent increase in positive messaging apparel, Edited found.
For Barbieri, the merchandise she buys reflects her own form of activism. She worries about a president who, she said, has signaled that it is acceptable to disparage immigrants, the LGBTQ community, women, people of color, and those who are disabled.
To others, these empowering messages are no more than a straightforward way to reaffirm to their children that they should grow up to be confident, regardless of political leanings.
And while there are feminist scholars and activists who think "femvertising" or brands using feminism to sell products is disingenuous, this messaging surge comes at a time when some women feel compelled to reaffirm their values and take action.
That may mean attending a women's march. Or sharing a story of sexual assault and harassment with the hashtag #MeToo. Or joining the flood of women running for public office.
Or, it might mean simply buying their children a shirt that says "Smart girls will change the world."
From tiaras to capes
Robin Falco still remembers the day her 3-year-old daughter, Ada, informed her that girls can't be superheroes. Ada hadn't seen women among the superhero coloring-book and comic-book pages that featured men. That was 3 years ago before the Wonder Woman movie and before Ada decided she was going to become an engineer for NASA.
"There's been just a push back against the way things have always been done, and I think a lot of women were frustrated the way I was. They either were discouraged of liking things or for liking things that weren't traditionally feminine, or went into these fields and struggled," Falco, 39, of King of Prussia, said, adding that her daughter no longer remembers a time when she thought girls couldn't be superheroes. Now Ada loves wearing capes.
"Female empowerment" related searches and purchases on the website Etsy increased 440 percent in the last year, according to Dayna Isom Johnson, Etsy's trend expert. In June, "kids pride T-shirts" were among the platform's top-selling items and Johnson expects this messaging will continue to grow.
This trend is also a reflection of millennial shoppers who, as parents, care more about a brand's values than other generations and, in larger numbers, shop at stores they feel reflect their social or political views, according to a National Retail Federation report.
Some parents, like Sarah Theis, 45, of Malvern, said they aren't fans of gendered messaging. Instead, Theis, who has a 10-year-old son, would prefer to see fewer shirts proclaiming "girl power" and more positive messages that could work for any child.
Still, these tees are the first step toward activism for many of the high school students that Michelle Legaspi Sanchez has worked with in her role at the Chester County Fund for Women and Girls, where she is executive director. It may be hard for students to articulate their beliefs about female empowerment, she said, but wearing a shirt can bring the girls confidence and make them feel like part of a collective. Sanchez said that regardless of the girls' political stances, messages about young women believing in themselves and using their voices to take action has been "unifying."
"We feel like the apparel is really a part of a larger conversation. I think there is a connection to activism, but I think apparel is really a tool to activism. It helps give voice and spark dialogue." Sanchez said. "It crosses political lines. The focus is really on them and their growth and our programming. That's what we support. We want them to be able to explore this no matter their stances and their opinion."
Syreeta Scott and Shanti Mayers, co-owners of the Sable Collective in the Swampoodle neighborhood of North Philly, said their experience as black, working single mothers influenced how they raise their children and what they buy them. In their store, which Scott said features vendors who are mostly other black women, they sell shirts that say "love her," "protect us," and "trust black women."
"Particularly for black people or people of color who are often underrepresented," Mayers said it's important to see empowering messages on shirts in the retail space that are able to "reflect our culture and to reflect our mission."
The appropriate pendulum swing
Kesha Leets' daughter is only 3 months old, but Leets, who lives near Rittenhouse Square, proudly posted a photo on Instagram of her wearing a "Wild Feminist" onesie. To her, dressing her daughter like that says to the world that the word feminist should be normalized and has nothing to do with a political party.
"It was absolutely fantastic," she recalled upon seeing the onesie. "I just thought, what a cool way to raise your kid to be that open, I guess, about empowering girls and empowering females, without having to sit down and articulate to a 3-month-old something you can't articulate."
When used incorrectly by companies, said Jess Weiner, CEO of Talk to Jess, a brand strategy firm, and who advised Mattel on Barbie's inclusive redesign, commodifying feminism and the broad messages of empowerment could minimize serious inequities. She works with brands to make sure their practices are anchored in the messaging so they avoid the missteps of inauthenticity. Audi, for example, ran an ad during the 2017 Super Bowl about the gender pay gap, causing some consumers to criticize the company for employing few women on its executive team.
This opinion of "femvertising" is a "proper critique," she said, but one that is "too prescriptive and black-and-white."
"I would rather see some commercialization of feminism than a bunch of billboards of a bunch of body parts on it," Weiner said. "We've been seeing women pulled apart in pieces in advertising for decades." Brands emphasizing "girls' intelligence, their wits, their smarts, their power," she said, "feels like the appropriate pendulum swing to bring us back to an equilibrium."
Litty Paxton, the former director of the Penn Women's Center, said that although these shirts can be positive in that more people will see this messaging, she thinks their popularity is bittersweet. As she sees it, it proves how much more work is needed.
"If there is so much of this girl power, why do we need it on a T-shirt? Patriarchy never needed a T-shirt for it to become successful," said Paxton, the associate dean for undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication. The 2016 presidential election "suggests smart girls don't rule and there are a lot of problems when women try to rule the world," Paxton said. "The notion that girls can do anything crashed into the largest glass ceiling ever."
Melissa Bocage, 38, of Passyunk Square, isn't sure what she thinks of these shirts. Bocage could imagine her 5-year-old daughter, who is very literate for her age, seeing a shirt calling girls smart and wondering why that would need to be affirmed.
"It just means the conversation I have to open is 'Yes, honey, you're smart and some people think boys are smarter than girls,'" Bocage said, "but that's just not a conversation I'm going to have over a shirt the Children's Place sold me."
For her 5-year-old daughter, Bocage gravitates toward books with broader lessons or items that, when bought, also donate to a charity. One of their favorite books is "What Do You Do With an Idea?," which Bocage says starts a conversation about how her daughter's thoughts matter and can make a difference. They also enjoy the book "I Am Jazz," a story about a transgender child.
And if companies really believe girls can do anything, Bocage said, she would like to see them make girls pants with larger pockets. That way, Bocage said, her daughter can stuff them full of the rocks and twigs she collects on the playground just the way the boys do in their cargo shorts.
Two years after being seriously injured in a car accident, Sean Rodriguez will try to reboot his career with the Phillies.
Rodriguez agreed Friday to a minor-league contract with an invitation to major-league camp in spring training, the Phillies announced. The 33-year-old infielder's biggest asset is his versatility, having started at least one game at every position save pitcher and catcher in 11 big-league seasons.
The bulk of Rodriguez's career was spent with the Tampa Bay Rays. He's a .226 career hitter with a .680 on-base plus slugging percentage in 2,447 at-bats with the Los Angeles Angels, Rays, Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta Braves.
Rodriguez had just signed a two-year, 11.5 million contract with the Braves when his SUV was struck in a side collision by a stolen police cruiser on Jan. 28, 2017 in Miami. His children were in serious but stable condition, and he injured his left (non-throwing) shoulder and ultimately required surgery.
In two seasons since the accident, Rodriguez has batted .167 with a .582 OPS in 282 at-bats for the Braves and Pirates.
The Phillies also announced their minor-league staffs, including the promotion of infield instructor Chris Truby to minor-league field coordinator.
Gary Jones will reprise his role as manager at triple-A Lehigh Valley, while Shawn Williams will take over as manager at double-A Reading. Marty Malloy will manage high-A Clearwater, and newcomer Mike Micucci will manage low-A Lakewood after spending last season in the Seattle Mariners organization. Pat Borders and Roly DeArmas will return to manage short-season Williamsport and the rookie-level Gulf Coast League East team, respectively. Milver Reyes will manage the Gulf Coast League West club. Waner Santana and Orlando Munoz will lead the rookie-level Dominican Summer League teams.
The winds that determine the direction of criminal justice can be fickle and our approach to juvenile justice is just as changeable. A few decades ago, when the panic over drugs and crime led to zero tolerance policies that put so many Americans behind bars, children didnt fare much better. In the 1990s, a myth emerged of the superpredator a new generation of uncontrollable, violent young offenders that lead to harsher juvenile sentences and less tolerance for juvenile crimes. Increasing number of children were thrown in adult prisons, often subject to life without parole or long periods of solitary confinement.
Fortunately, those attitudes began to shift, driven in part on new research on brain development that suggested that childrens immature brains can make them incapable of judgment and reason and should not be held to the same standards of criminal punishment as adults.
District Attorney Larry Krasner moved that idea further forward this week when he announced new policies that are intended to modify how juveniles in the justice system are dealt with. These policies will alter some of the harsher penalties and treatment that young people have been subjected to, especially those who havent committed serious or violent crimes, or arent repeat offenders.
The new policies modify some disturbing practices in our treatment of juvenile offenders: locking them up for status offenses like breaking curfew or skipping school, subjecting them to long bouts of solitary confinement, sentencing them to subpar facilities, many of which do nothing to provide education or remediation and, in at least one case, resulted in the death of a young offender. The DA also is charging fewer kids as adults, and 85 percent of those who have been charged as adults have been decertified to juvenile court.
This action follows closely on the heels of a federal level update of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act passed last year by Congress and signed by President Trump that resets the standards for juvenile justice, including better research of minority representation in the justice system.
While there is some progress, such as declines in juvenile arrests, and court rulings, like the Supreme Court decision in 2015 that outlawed life without parole for juvenile offenders, it will take some time to entirely rewrite our brutal history of dealing with children in the justice system.
In addition to having the highest incarceration rate in the world, the U.S. also locks up more juveniles than any other country. Solidarity confinement has not been outlawed. The DAs new measures should be especially welcome for Philadelphia, which has more than 600 young people in detention and thats not counting the number charged and jailed as adults.
Advocates for juvenile justice, among them, the Juvenile Law Center, are right in claiming these policy changes as a victory. But the District Attorney and his office isnt the only one who has a role to play. Judges have enormous power over sentencing and outcomes for young offenders. Schools, communities, and the city as a whole, though, have the biggest stake in shaping the lives of troubled kids and making sure they still have a viable shot at a future.
An imprecise metaphor may sound like a trivial matter. But figurative language deployed by a flamboyant and controversial judge more than a decade ago is now the basis for legal challenges by a dozen or more Philadelphians convicted of murder.
Federal judges have already ordered new trials for two of them, and a third case is being negotiated to avert a similar outcome.
Now, its up to the Philadelphia District Attorneys Office to decide how vigorously to fight those and any other cases overturned on the same grounds: jury instructions given by then-Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes that even the D.A. now concedes were unconstitutional.
Following a strongly worded opinion from federal Judge Gerald McHugh calling her instruction deficient, the D.A.'s office said it would no longer defend the instruction putting itself in a tactically difficult position that may open the door for even more reversals. Now, the office is fighting to contain the fallout.
Wed have scores dozens, potentially you know, I mean, McHughs opinion is a recipe for relief in every one of these cases, the D.A.'s federal litigation supervisor, Max Cooper Kaufman, said during arguments in federal court in May 2018, according to transcripts.
It began with the case of Basil Brooks, who was convicted of the 2005 slaying of Derrick Jones, shot dead on the street in West Philadelphia. The evidence against Brooks was, by all accounts, thin: primarily, the testimony of a single eyewitness who could not pick Brooks out of a photo array, who was high on Xanax at the time the crime occurred, and who faced pending criminal charges that were dismissed for lack of prosecution shortly after he implicated Brooks.
As the trial concluded, Hughes charged the jury with assessing whether Brooks was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
To assist them, she conjured a metaphor: If you were told by your precious ones physician that they had a life-threatening condition and that the only known protocol or the best protocol for that condition was an experimental surgery, youre very likely going to ask for a second opinion. Anyone would ask questions, do research, she explained but at some point you have to decide: If you go forward, its not because you have moved beyond all doubt. There are no guarantees. If you go forward, it is because you have moved beyond all reasonable doubt.
Daniel Silverman, a lawyer hired by Brooks to comb through his case for errors, believed hed found one in that instruction and filed a habeas petition seeking relief in federal court.
The United States Supreme Court has unanimously held that upping the ante in that regard violates the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, he said recently.
In August 2017, McHugh, of the U.S. District Court for Pennsylvanias Eastern District, agreed. Considering that example of a terminally ill loved one, McHugh wrote, What level of doubt would need to exist before a juror would deny them a chance at life? Necessarily, one would need profound, if not overwhelming, doubt.
The District Attorneys Office filed notice it would appeal McHughs decision. But after Larry Krasner was elected, it withdrew the appeal, which, if denied, could have led to a precedent-setting ruling. Its position now appears to be that the instruction was improper but not to the point of voiding all relevant convictions.
Still, it is no mere technicality, said Shari Seidman Diamond, an expert on jury instruction and a professor at Northwestern Universitys Pritzker School of Law.
The whole system of criminal prosecution is based on the notion that we wont convict somebody of an offense unless it is beyond a reasonable doubt and, by that, we mean that the evidence has to be extremely strong.
She called the instruction Hughes gave objectionable.
By likening convicting the defendant to securing lifesaving treatment for a loved one, Diamond said, She kind of loaded the dice in favor of convicting. By this analogy, you sure are going to want to convict, and you should never create in the jurors the sense they want to convict.
While judges have discretion in how they advise juries, many jurisdictions, including Pennsylvania, publish suggested standard jury instructions. Diamond prefers the instruction that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg proposed in a 1994 opinion: Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you firmly convinced of the defendants guilt.
Hughes, a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, was known for her unrestrained speech from the bench.
In 2000, D.A Lynne Abraham unsuccessfully attempted to have her removed from the trial of a 13-year-old girl charged with murder, after Hughes made clear she thought the case belonged in juvenile court, telling the girl she had a gorgeous smile and promising to try to have pizza delivered to her in jail.
Hughes resigned her post in 2011 for a job leading the regional office of the Red Cross an announcement that came just one day after a searing opinion from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court removing her from a death-penalty case and chastising her for ordering a court reporter to strike from the transcript her comments about the defendant, whom she had called vile during a 2008 hearing. The high court called the redaction a reprehensible breach of conduct. At the time, Hughes explained, I told the [court reporter] to [remove] words that are less than judicial, because Im Southern and I say words like 'flipping or sucker.
Reached by phone, Hughes said that, when it came to the reasonable doubt instruction, she had selected her words carefully. In each case she added the hypothetical scenario to standard, approved language.
She did not recall when she first began using the analogy, but remembered it was developed in collaboration with lawyers in response to a question from a jury. She found the language so effective that she stuck with it in case after case.
The lawyers liked it, it withstood appeals, and the jury seemed to get greater clarity out of it, Hughes said.
She disagreed that likening convicting a defendant to procuring lifesaving treatment for a loved one loaded the dice.
She said, What the instruction says is, Be responsible. Think about it as seriously as you would think about a decision youre making for someone you care about.
Indeed, though lawyers have repeatedly challenged Hughes' jury instructions, which she gave in as many as 50 cases, according to one advocate judges have upheld it on at least seven occasions in state and federal courts, by the D.A.'s count.
One lawyer, Samuel Stretton, objected to it multiple times in the case of Roy Johnson, who shot and killed a man named James Lockett in West Philadelphia in 1997. Johnson claimed the shooting was in self-defense, but he was charged with first-degree murder. After two juries were unable to reach a verdict, a third, in Hughes' courtroom, convicted him of voluntary manslaughter.
Stretton said the instruction was clearly problematic. It goes fundamentally to the fairness of the trial, he said. But he was not surprised that the Superior Court rejected his appeal. Ive always felt that the Superior Court at times is so overwhelmed that they cant adequately address many of these cases.
Now, federal judges are, in some cases, rethinking the issue. Earlier last year, a magistrate judge recommended the court find that, in the case of Anthony Corbin, the jury instruction though perhaps not perfect was, on the whole, acceptable. Corbin, who was convicted of shooting a courier at a check-cashing place in West Philadelphia in 2003, objected to that recommendation based on the D.A.'s subsequent statements agreeing the instruction was flawed. The case is awaiting a final decision from a U.S. District Court judge.
Now, the Philadelphia District Attorneys Office is arguing that in many cases the instruction, problematic or not, is beside the point and that the guilty verdicts should stand.
In October, the office outlined its position in a letter agreeing to vacate the conviction of Kalif Gant, who is serving a 40- to 80-year sentence for the fatal shooting of Christopher Jones in North Philadelphia.
The D.A.O. is assessing each case on an individualized, case-by-case basis," the letter noted. "While the D.A.O. will not be arguing in any of these matters that the instruction is constitutionally proper, it may be raising other arguments in opposition to relief, depending on the particular circumstances.
Those determinations could be based on arguments that the jury instructions were not prejudicial for example, in a slam-dunk conviction where the judges words likely did not tip the scales. In other cases, where the instruction was not challenged at trial and during appeals, the D.A is arguing the issue cannot be raised now for procedural reasons. A D.A spokesperson declined to comment beyond what was said in the court filings.
For now, Gant and Brooks are back in Common Pleas Court and could stand trial again unless they can reach agreements with the D.A
Negotiations are also underway in the case of Armel Baxter, who was convicted of shooting Demond Brown in Nicetown in 2007. According to court filings, the evidence presented against him hinged on the conflicting testimony of two eyewitnesses, along with corroborating testimony from a woman who was using 45 Xanax a day, admitted to hallucinating the day of the shooting, was held for 30 hours by police before implicating Baxter, and received immunity to testify.
Meanwhile, the D.A is adamantly opposing other cases, such as those of Tyrique Jackson, convicted of killing Sterling Almond, a cameraman working on a rap video, over a beef about insulting lyrics, and Robert McDowell, who was convicted with another man of murdering Damien Holloway and then, in order to tie up loose ends," executing 15-year-old witness Timothy Clark.
In both cases, the D.A argues that the evidence to convict was overwhelming and that the petitions, therefore, are baseless.
In each, it concluded in filings, No relief is due.
This story has been corrected to reflect the status of Anthony Corbins case.
A New Jersey man who owned a janitorial supply company admitted cheating a customer by submitting phony bills in a nearly $2 million fraud and using the money to purchase luxury vehicles and Rolex watches, and pay his kids college tuition, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
Mitchell Bleicher, 52, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler in Camden to wire fraud, money laundering, and income tax evasion, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said in a statement.
Bleicher, the owner and operator of Allied Materials Inc., a janitorial supply company in Berlin, admitted submitting invoices to an unidentified Cherry Hill company between 2009 and 2018 that falsely listed products that Allied claimed it had supplied, Carpenito said. Allied sold janitorial and cleaning supplies, office and break room supplies, food service items, safety equipment, and business printing and imprinted items.
Prosecutors say Bleicher made about $1.9 million from the scheme and used Allieds business and American Express accounts to support his lifestyle and personal expenses. Prosecutors say he used the money to pay for two Rolls-Royces, several Rolex watches, jewelry, designer clothing, firearms, two Subaru vehicles, motorcycles, home renovations, and college tuition for his children.
Bleicher acknowledged failing to report the money he received from the fraud on his income tax returns from 2011 to 2017, Carpenito said. Bleicher admitted defrauding the IRS of $578,902 in income tax revenue, the prosecutor said.
The fraudulent invoices, authorities say, reflected a higher number of products than were actually delivered. To make the scheme work, Bleicher admitted paying a contractor in the facilities department of the Cherry Hill company, the government said.
When that contractor left the company, Bleicher enlisted the employee who replaced him, buying him expensive dinners and wines, and taking him to sporting events such as 76ers games, authorities said. Bleicher later recruited a third employee to submit the fraudulent invoices for payment.
The name of the company was not disclosed. Bleicher could not be reached for comment.
As part of the plea agreement, Bleicher agreed to forfeit 26 vehicles, including a Corvette, a Land Rover, and two Mercedes-Benzes, as well as the Rolex watches and seven other pieces of jewelry purchased from Bernie Robbins Jewelers.
The wire fraud count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the money laundering a maximum of 10 years and a $250,000 fine, and the tax evasion a five-year maximum and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing was scheduled for May 17.
President Donald Trump announced Friday that his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will take place in Hanoi, ending weeks of speculation over the venue for the two leaders' second meeting.
Trump revealed the decision in an evening tweet.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un," Trump said in the tweet. "It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!"
Trump announced in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night that he would meet with Kim on Feb. 27 and 28 in Vietnam. But the exact location remained uncertain.
U.S. officials had set their sights on the coastal resort city Danang, which Trump visited for a regional economic summit two years ago.
The North Koreans, meanwhile, had been pushing for Hanoi. The bustling capital could afford Kim an opportunity to hold a separate bilateral meeting with Vietnamese leadership, further bolstering his international standing.
In a second tweet Friday night, Trump predicted that North Korea "will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!"
Before their first summit in Singapore last year, Trump had long mocked Kim as "Little Rocket Man."
"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," Trump said in the tweet. "He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is."
Trump administration officials hope the meeting will make progress toward North Korean denuclearization efforts, though some experts remain skeptical.
Stephen E. Biegun, the State Department's special representative for North Korea, was in Pyongyang this week to finalize planning with his counterpart, Kim Hyok Chol.
Biegun departed Pyongyang on Friday after three days of talks. In a one-paragraph news release, the State Department said Biegun and his North Korean counterpart plan to meet again ahead of the Trump-Kim summit. Their negotiations will include the agenda for the talks and potential concessions both sides could agree to when the leaders get together.
On Saturday, Biegun briefed South Korea's Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and other officials in Seoul on the outcome of his discussions in Pyongyang. In brief statements to the media, Biegun said he had "productive" discussions in North Korea, but added: "We have some hard work to do" before the Hanoi summit.
"I would say it was a productive set of discussions over the last few days, and our team engaged on a number of areas of mutual interest, and we've agreed to meet again," Biegun said. "So I think this is a constructive place to be especially in advance of the president's second summit with Chairman Kim."
Biegun was also due to hold a trilateral meeting in Seoul with his South Korea counterpart Lee Do-hoon and Kenji Kanasugi, the Japanese foreign ministry's director general of Asia and Oceania affairs, who is visiting.
- - -
Denyer reported from Tokyo. The Washington Posts David Nakamura, John Hudson and Anne Gearan in Washington, and Min Joo Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (AP) The National Enquirer's alleged attempt to blackmail Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with intimate photos could get the tabloid's parent company and top editors in deep legal trouble and reopen them to prosecution for paying hush money to a Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Donald Trump.
Federal prosecutors are looking at whether the Enquirers feud with Bezos violated a cooperation and non-prosecution agreement that recently spared the gossip sheet from charges in the hush-money case, two people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Friday.
The clash between the world's richest man and America's most aggressive supermarket tabloid spilled into public view late Thursday when Bezos accused it of threatening to print photos of him and the woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
He said the Enquirer made two demands: Stop investigating how the publication recently obtained private messages that Bezos and his girlfriend had exchanged. And publicly declare that the Enquirer's coverage of Bezos was not politically motivated.
Enquirer owner American Media Inc. said Friday that its board of directors ordered a prompt and thorough investigation and will take "whatever appropriate action is necessary." Earlier in the day, the company said it "acted lawfully" while reporting the story and engaged in "good-faith negotiations" with Bezos.
In recent months, the Trump-friendly tabloid acknowledged secretly assisting Trump's White House campaign by paying $150,000 to Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump. The company then buried the story until after the 2016 election.
Trump's longtime personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty last year to charges that included helping to broker that transaction.
Federal prosecutors considered the payment an illegal corporate contribution to Trump's campaign. In September, though, AMI reached an agreement with federal authorities that spared it from prosecution.
It promised in the agreement not to break any laws. The deal also required the continuing cooperation of top AMI executives, including CEO David Pecker and Enquirer editor Dylan Howard.
Now, federal prosecutors in New York are looking at whether AMI violated those terms, the people familiar with the matter said. They were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.
A violation of the agreement could lead to criminal charges over the McDougal payments. And the resulting court proceedings could lay bare details of the gossip sheet's cozy relationship with the president.
The Enquirer and top executives could also be subject to state and federal extortion and coercion charges and prosecution under New York City's revenge porn law, passed last year, which bans even the threat of sharing intimate photographs, legal experts said.
The U.S. Attorneys Office in Manhattan declined to comment.
Carrie Goldberg, a Brooklyn lawyer representing revenge-porn and sex-crime victims, said Bezos' account laid out a clear case of criminal coercion.
The Enquirer has "weaponized journalism and made it into this bartering, brokering thing where its like, If I can blackmail you with the threat Ill expose this unless youve got something better, " Goldberg said.
It is a federal crime to threaten to injure someone's reputation in exchange for money or a "thing of value," though federal courts haven't made it clear whether a public statement, like the one demanded by AMI, could be considered something of value. Bezos said the Enquirer did not demand money.
Former New York federal prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers said prosecutors are probably weighing the pros and cons of keeping the cooperation agreement in place.
The agreement secures Pecker's testimony in any future cases stemming from the hush-money payments, while winning a criminal case over the Bezos matter would be far from clear-cut, Rodgers said. The company could say it was relying on the advice of its counsel or even cite First Amendment protections, she said.
The Bezos camp has suggested the Enquirers coverage of his affair was driven by dirty politics. Trump himself has criticized Bezos on Twitter over his ownership of the Washington Post and Amazon.
Bezos' extramarital affair became public when the Enquirer ran a Jan. 9 story about him and Lauren Sanchez, a former TV anchor who is also married. Bezos then hired private investigators to find out how the tabloid got texts and photos the two exchanged.
Bezos' personal investigators, led by his security consultant Gavin de Becker, have been focusing on Sanchez's brother, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Michael Sanchez is his sisters manager, a Trump supporter, and an acquaintance of Trump allies Roger Stone and Carter Page.
Sanchez did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. In a tweet, he said de Becker "spreads fake, unhinged conservative conspiracy theories."
Bezos detailed his blackmail allegations in an extraordinary blog post. The intimate photos at issue include a below the belt selfie of Bezos and several revealing photos of Sanchez, according to e-mails Bezos released of his exchanges with AMI.
"Of course I don't want personal photos published, but I also won't participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption," Bezos said in explaining his decision to go public. "I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out."
Associated Press writers Brian Melley, Rachel Lerman, and Zeke Miller contributed to this article.
One of the more intriguing episodes described in the federal indictment of labor leader John Dougherty and Democratic City Councilman Bobby Henon involved their behind-the-scenes push to build support for Mayor Jim Kenneys proposed soda tax in 2016.
According to the indictment, Henon told Dougherty another Council member might need a little, like, hug to get on board, and the labor leader responded: Let him know that once you get this stuff, theres gonna be a ton of major league jobs, that his wife [is] more than qualified for.
Prosecutors havent named the Council member, nor has Henon or Dougherty. Sources familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly identify him as Councilman Kenyatta Johnson.
Johnson hasnt been charged with a crime, and the indictment does not say that the unnamed Council member sought the payoff Henon and Dougherty allegedly spoke about. Nor does it say if they followed through on the offer. Moreover, Johnsons June 2016 vote in favor of the 1.5-cent-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages didnt make a difference the measure passed 13-4.
A statement released by his office disputed Johnson was the councilman cited in the indictment and included his own denial of wrongdoing: I never sought to obtain a benefit for any family member as a result of that support, either from Councilman Henon or anyone else, he said.
But the hug described in the 116-count indictment stood out for more than one reason. The allegation was typical of the kind of backroom horse-trading involving Henon and Dougherty that prosecutors say was routine, and that still could work in City Hall. It also signaled how the investigation and any looming trial could expose or entangle any number of heretofore unidentified players in the long-running probe.
The indictment says two dozen unnamed people benefited from embezzlement, theft, and other crimes allegedly committed by Dougherty and others. (The Inquirer has already identified Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty as one of the alleged recipients of the goods or services paid for with stolen funds from Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.) Any or all of them could potentially become witnesses.
READ MORE: Sources: Pa. Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty received union-paid benefits in Local 98 case
For Johnson, 45, it could just mean more heat. The two-term councilman from Point Breeze is already under FBI investigation for his role in the bargain-rate sale of city-owned land to one of his childhood friends. And, like most every Council member, hes up for reelection.
Wide-ranging connections
If Johnsons wife, Dawn Chavous, did want or need a major-league job, as Dougherty has allegedly described it, she already had a wide network to call on.
The 39-year-old has bona fides as a consultant in both the political and education worlds. She had been a longtime consultant and campaign manager for State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, an avowed critic of the soda tax who is considering challenging Kenney in the Democratic mayoral primary in May. (Williams has been a mentor for Johnson.) Chavous also worked last year on the congressional campaign of Dougherty ally Rich Lazer.
She serves as president of Sky Community Partners Inc., a nonprofit that says it provides scholarships to independent schools under the states Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Program.
Chavous declined an interview request from the Inquirer. A statement Friday from a spokesperson on her behalf said most of her clients fall into categories that are heavily regulated and that she signs confidentiality agreements that bar her from discussing her work without their consent. The statement also said: Chavous does not currently or previously have a business relationship with Local 98 or John Dougherty.
In the months before and after the 2016 soda tax vote referenced in the indictment, Chavous did work for at least three clients who sought or considered pursuing city contracts, records and interviews show. None had obvious ties to Dougherty, Henon, or Local 98.
In the statement, Chavous said none of her consulting work had anything to do with those companies pursuit of soda tax-funded contracts, an assertion confirmed by representatives from each.
One, a pre-K provider run by her mother, Barbara Chavous-Pennock, won preliminary approval from the Kenney administration in October 2016 to receive city funding to enroll more 3- and 4-year-olds.
Her school, Somerset Academy, appeared on a list of 61 pre-K providers vetted and cleared to receive a total of $10.2 million in city funding. Ultimately Somerset did not get a contract, after officials determined it did not have the proper state operating license. The school has since received a license and is eligible to contract with the city going forward, Kenney administration spokesperson Deana Gamble said.
In a statement, Chavous-Pennock said her school went through the same competitive bidding process as other applicants. "It did not guarantee that their site would ultimately be selected, the statement said. They were not selected.
Chavous-Pennock did not respond to written questions about what role her daughter played as a consultant for the company. In her own statement, Chavous said she worked for her mothers pre-K provider for a few months in 2015, before the soda tax was passed.
A tremendous help
Another Chavous client, Brightside Academy, a Pittsburgh-based early education provider, won a city contract that provides funding for 160 kids at Brightside sites in Philadelphia, at a rate of $8,500 per student, Gamble said. It came without Chavous help; She briefly consulted for the nonprofit months later, according to a nonprofit representative and Chavous.
A third client, the Big Sandbox Inc., hired her when it was seeking state grant money for schoolyard renovation projects in North Philadelphia. In 2017, Sandbox considered applying for a contract with the city for its Rebuild initiative a public-works project funded by the soda tax to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in parks, recreation centers, and libraries. But the nonprofit halted its plans after learning schoolyard projects were not eligible for Rebuild funds, according to the nonprofits executive director, Jake Gaffigan.
Big Sandbox ultimately won a $500,000 state grant for other schoolyard projects, with the potential for $2 million in future funding. It spent $22,000 on lobbying from October 2016 through June 2018, state records show. Gaffigan said those expenditures were for Chavous services.
He said Chavous was a tremendous help for one of our fund-raisers in Philly and helped lobby at the state Capitol as well. But Sandbox suspended its services with her last summer, Gaffigan said, when the nonprofit received a subpoena from federal law enforcement requesting all records and communications with Chavous.
It is unclear if that subpoena was related to the Local 98 probe; Gaffigan declined to discuss it.
As for the soda tax, prosecutors say Dougherty and Henon decided during the May 2015 Democratic primary that Henon would threaten to propose the tax as a means of exacting revenge on the Teamsters union, which he blamed for airing a TV commercial that had portrayed Dougherty in a negative light.
Theyre going to start to put a tax on soda again and that will cost the Teamsters 100 jobs in Philly, Dougherty told another Electricians union official in a phone conversation captured on the wiretap, according to the indictment.
Henon was reelected that November, and Kenney was inaugurated in January 2016. Shortly thereafter, the indictment says, Dougherty told the mayors office that Henon would support the tax. Acting at Doughertys direction, Henon began rounding up votes, prosecutors say, which is when the hug conversation was caught on tape.
Asked Thursday by reporters at City Hall if Johnson was the Council member who needed a hug, Henon said he would not speak to other members or anything regarding the indictment. His lawyer, Brian J. McMonagle, said: The idea that there was anything nefarious behind the soda-tax vote is pure insanity.
In his statement to the Inquirer, Johnson said his support for the soda tax was based entirely upon the concerns of my constituents.
Staff writers Mark Fazlollah and Claudia Vargas contributed to this report.
Freddie Nole was a teenager last time he walked free back in 1969, when Richard Nixon was president and City Hall was still the tallest building in Philadelphia.
In January 2019, at age 68, Nole was released on parole. Hes trying to catch up on nearly half a century of lost time: going to church with his wife of 34 years, Susan Beard-Nole, and sharing home-cooked meals for the first time in decades. But everything still seems strange and overwhelming: the expansive restaurant menus (he asks Beard-Nole, 72, to order for him); the complicated new iPhone (he kept hanging up midcall); the confusing power locks on his wifes car.
Nole is among the longest-serving of Pennsylvanias 522 juvenile lifers, the largest such population in the nation, whose fates were transformed by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that automatic life-without-parole terms for minors are unconstitutional. Under new sentences, at least 158 have been released on lifetime parole.
But Noles dreams of reuniting with his family, including granddaughters, grandnieces, and grandnephews, has been derailed. So has the vision hes held on to for decades, of speaking to school groups about the hard lessons that can be learned from his youth, spent in gangs and juvenile detention, then half a century in prison.
Thats because, in addition to the typical challenges faced by longtime prisoners in reentry often, securing housing with a felony record, and finding stable employment he now faces an additional layer of restrictions from the state parole board. Though Nole has never been convicted, or even charged, with a sex offense, he was accused in 1989 of fondling a 5-year-old girl visiting a parent-child center at the prison. He says he never got the chance to dispute the claim; instead, he was quickly moved to a different prison, and issued an institutional misconduct.
Based on that misconduct, the parole board is instituting special conditions that prevent Nole from remaining in touch with his grandchildren and that Nole fears could render him homeless and make him vulnerable to reincarceration.
Its treating me as if Im some kind of predator. This is tearing my family apart, Nole said. In the past, he said, "I was able to visit with my grandchildren, my great-nieces and -nephews. These new restrictions take away all that. Theyre being even more restrictive to me now [than when I was in prison].
What Noles facing is, in some ways, typical for those convicted of sexual offenses.
Two-thirds of sex offenders are never approved for parole, instead remaining in prison until they reach their maximum-sentence date, Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said at a recent public event. Often, thats because they cant get a home plan approved. The state parole board website lists being too close to a place children gather as a common reason for rejecting home plans for sex offenders. Litigation over access to state-run halfway houses for sex offenders, labeled hard to place, has dragged on for years.
As for Nole, he had planned to stay with Beard-Nole, who had moved to a new apartment complex because the old one barred parolees. But the new complex wont allow him either, because of his felony record. Instead, he moved in with a nephew in North Philadelphia. However, Nole worries that, because that house is across the street from a rec center, a parole officer could determine its not appropriate.
And the full effect of rules around contact with children is just sinking in. His nephew, who has partial custody of his two young children, had to remove all their photos, clothes, toys, and other possessions from his house. The kids may not visit the home even if Nole is away. And, under the rules of his parole, Nole cannot send them texts or gifts or birthday cards, or tell their parents to send his regards.
Noles son, Bobby Shockley, who was born two months after Nole was incarcerated, said he hasnt yet told his daughters, ages 11 and 18, that Nole is home from prison. His older daughter keeps asking if Nole will be out in time for her high school graduation. But the 49-year-old middle-school principal from Glen Allen, Va., said hes just not sure how to explain the situation to them.
Were hopeful that something happens, either legally or whatever, because he has always had access to the girls. I dont understand why he cant be around his family, Shockley said.
We feel we cant even go to the Franklin Institute
In February 1969, when Nole was 17, he and two other teens robbed an 81-year-old store owner at gunpoint. Prosecutors said Nole, during the robbery, hit the shopkeeper in the stomach with the butt of his gun, which Nole denies. Soon afterward, the man died of damage to his abdominal aorta. His codefendants were charged as juveniles, serving 11 and 18 months, but Nole was prosecuted as an adult and received a life sentence.
By the 80s, he was a leader in Graterford prison. He met Beard in church, where she was a volunteer, and married her in 1984. He received accolades for launching the first parent-child resource center in a state prison visiting room, inspired by his desire to create a welcoming environment for his stepsons.
In 1989, after the misconduct, he was transferred, but Beard-Nole continued to visit, often bringing her children, as Nole was bounced around the state to five different institutions.
Beard-Nole, a retired software engineer from Norristown, said the last few weeks have been nerve-racking. Nole is living in fear of doing something that might run afoul of the long list of prohibitions, like waving at a child, or acknowledging a child through facial expressions.
We feel we cant even go to the Franklin Institute, Beard-Nole said. Are we allowed to do that? We dont know what we can do. It makes you feel subhuman, thats for sure."
And the 7 p.m.-to-7 a.m. curfew, another condition of his lifetime parole, has made it difficult for Nole to accomplish the many tasks the state requires of him. Hes required to report between 6 and 8 a.m. to Philadelphia police headquarters to obtain a criminal registration card, but getting to the front of the line there, without breaking his curfew, has so far proved impossible. And hes been instructed to get an ID but hes had trouble getting his birth certificate in order first.
Aaron Marcus, of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, said that while his office has challenged parole conditions generally for example, antipornography rules so broad they appeared to include virtually any literature individual challenges are extremely difficult.
I dont know how often, if ever, they succeed, he said.
The Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole does not release information on individual cases beyond the official board decision, a spokesperson said.
Alexandra Morgan-Kurtz, of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, said people with such parole conditions often struggle to find approved housing. The rules are very arbitrary and it leads to people getting [reincarcerated] or having to change their housing based on the whim of their parole agent.
Even without such restrictions, securing stable housing remains a major hurdle for juvenile lifers returning home after decades in prison, said Joanna Visser Adjoian, a cofounder of the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, which is assisting about 40 such individuals. Some have been couch-surfing, while others have spent months in community correction centers trying to find long-term housing.
The Department of Corrections, in an effort to help this vulnerable population get on their feet, offers vouchers for six months' rent. But, Visser Adjoian said, Were seeing a scarcity of private housing providers being willing to accept the DOC subsidies that are available to them."
Nole is anxious to move past red tape, so he can use what years he has left to make a difference, if he can.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision that led to his release spoke of restoring some hope of a life after prison for young offenders.
Life potential, Nole summed it up. Right now I dont feel like I have that.
In a minor four-player swap announced Saturday, the Flyers acquired defenseman David Schlemko and forward Byron Froese and sent forward Dale Weise and defenseman Christian Folin to Montreal.
Both players were looking for a bigger role and a different opportunity, and we tried to accommodate them, general manager Chuck Fletcher said about Weise and Folin.
Schlemko, 31, appeared in 19 games for Montreal this season, collecting two assists and averaging 19:51 per contest. He also played in eight games for the Canadiens AHL affiliate, Laval.
The 6-foot-1, 196-pound Schlemko, who has a $2.1 million cap hit through the end of 2019-20 if he is in the NHL, has played in 415 games with the Canadiens, Arizona, Dallas, Calgary, New Jersey and San Jose, and he has 18 goals and 94 points in his career.
Fletcher said Schlemko provides experience and depth.
Froese, 27, has appeared in 46 games this season for Laval, collecting 14 goals and 30 points.
In 48 games last year for Montreal, the 6-1, 202-pound Froese had three goals and 11 points.
Schlemko and Froese were sent to the Phantoms.
Weise, 30, who previously had a three-year stint with Montreal including a 14-goal season in 2015-16 was recently demoted to the Phantoms. He had five goals and 11 points in 42 games with the Flyers this season.
When in the NHL, Weise has a $2.35 million cap hit through the end of 2019-20.
Folin, 28, played in 26 games for the Flyers this season and had two assists and a plus-5 rating.
As the only female executive at her cookie company, Megan Bruton didnt want her pregnancy to make her stick out even more. But as her bump grew, Bruton said, she struggled to find clothes at maternity retailers beyond stretchy pants, flowy T-shirts, or items she described as frumpy."
Bruton who worked until two or three days before she gave birth is part of a generation of women who are staying in the office later in their pregnancies. Many are seeking the hard-to-find apparel that fits professional standards and their personal style.
I wanted to make sure I didnt lose that professionalism, said Bruton, now 36, of Downingtown, whose daughter is 2. Anytime youre not feeling confident in your clothing, it kind of shows to the outside world.
Moorestown-based Destination Maternity, the largest retailer in this field, hopes to grab customers such as Bruton. As it seeks to recover from years of a tumbling stock price and the shuttering of hundreds of stores, its first permanent female CEO, Marla Ryan, who has been on the job for less than a year, has added more options in professional clothes and upgraded how they are showcased with a redesigned section and a poster declaring Work it, Mama.
A recent customer survey showed that upward of 65 percent of their customers are working moms or moms-to-be, Ryan said. She also found that certain wear-to-work styles were selling particularly well, even though they took up about 150 square feet a small corner in stores.
>>READ MORE: Shareholders vote in new (female) CEO at Destination Maternity: Marla Ryan
Destination has products featured on Rent the Runway and Le Tote, subscription services that seem well-suited for this transient time by allowing expecting mothers to rent clothes as their bodies change.
Well-known brands such as Target and Topshop, have also added or expanded maternity sections in recent years. However, overall maternity apparel was down by about 12 percent in fast-fashion private labels such as ASOSs Maternity brand and down 35 percent in the luxury market, according to Edited, a retail data company.
Newer direct-to-consumer retailers, such as Hatch, are courting the mothers-to-be who are looking for stylish clothes that can fit any lifestyle before, during, and after pregnancy.
I dont know why this trend didnt pick up sooner, said Ashlee Neuman, senior editor at pregnancy and motherhood blog The Bump. Just because youre pregnant doesnt mean you cant look good.
Women working
Every couple months, Alyssa Schatzs job as an health policy advocate for a healthcare nonprofit takes her to Washington to meet with policymakers on issues related to health care and access.
At 30 weeks pregnant, Schatz, 33, of Mount Airy, has trouble finding the business professional maternity clothes that she needs to make her feel ready to bring my A game.
Searching for business-professional clothes is not "the great trial of my life, really, I just find it mildly annoying and just a little bit offensive, said Schatz, who acknowledged there were some options she liked at Destination stores. It feels like the marketing should be a little bit more advanced in terms of how many women are in the workplace now.
The percent of women who are working while pregnant has increased dramatically since the early 1960s. By the early 2000s, almost 70 percent of women who were pregnant with their first child stayed in the workforce, a rise of more than 55 percent from the early 1960s, according to census data.
Women are also working later into the final days before delivery, census data show. By the early 2000s, more than 80 percent of women who worked during pregnancy continued working into their final month before birth, up from about a third in the early 1960s.
More highly educated women are having babies than was the case in the past, said Gretchen Livingston, a Pew Research Center senior researcher. We also know that highly educated women are the ones who are more likely to continue working during their pregnancy and return to work afterward.
These women, more so than in generations past, are demanding maternity clothes that look good and feel comfortable, said Barbara Kahn, a marketing professor at the Wharton School.
If youre not taken seriously in the workplace, can you imagine how you feel when youre nine months pregnant while working, if its exacerbated by ill-fitting clothes that dont look professional? Thats not helpful, Kahn said.
Millennial mothers-to-be are also redefining what it looks like to be pregnant. No longer are women expected to cover up their bumps, as if pregnancy is something to hide, said Nioka Wyatt, a fashion merchandising and management assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson University.
Women are increasingly celebrating their pregnancy by embracing their bump and expressing pride in being an expectant mother. Pregnant celebrities, public figures, influencers and everyday mothers-to-be are posting photos on Instagram and sharing stories about pregnancy. Destination Maternity has also embraced the trend with bump-focused Instagram posts.
Remember when we couldnt even breastfeed in public? It was against the law, Wyatt said. As the laws change and we become more comfortable with our womens movement, we see the changes trickle down through various industries and the way in which we do things.
Retail responding
When Rebecca Matthias struggled to find clothing to wear to the office, she founded Mothers Work in 1982. Decades later, her company is now Destination Maternity, which has about a quarter of the market share in an industry with $1.2 billion in revenue.
Destination Maternity, which operates the brands A Pea in the Pod and Motherhood Maternity, has 1,108 retail locations, its most recent quarterly report shows. As of this time last year, the company had about 1,100 full-time and 2,600 part-time employees.
Though the company expanded beyond its original mission and into other clothing categories such as athleisure, Ryan, the new CEO, is reemphasizing clothes for working mothers-to-be. The company also created an internal innovation committee to zero in on such solutions-based products as dresses with hidden zippers that make it easier to pump after a baby is born.
Its so appropriate that here we are all this time later, and we are now able to solve the problems for the mom who is pregnant and going to work or is going back to work, Ryan said, and allow her to feel beautiful and confident.
In the last five years, Destination Maternitys stock price has dropped to about $3 a share from almost $30, and the company is trying to turn around its business.
Meanwhile, other companies are appealing to mothers-to-be who are disappointed with the current maternity-wear selection.
Ariane Goldman founded the maternity brand Hatch in 2011 when she couldnt find clothes to fit her style while pregnant and working on Wall Street. The New York-based company has nearly doubled its revenue each year. Meghan Markle recently wore one of the brands items, a simple, short-sleeved black dress.
Items displayed on the site are equipped with a bump slider feature so a buyer can see how the apparel will fit before, during and after pregnancy. Dresses usually cost between $150 and $300.
The most searched term on Hatchs site is nursing, but workwear is soon after. Hatch is in talks with a well-known retailer to collaborate on a workwear maternity line to launch this summer, Goldman said.
Its very clear to us that women are asking for it, Goldman said. Maternity wear has never been fun or sexy or happy. ... I think women want to maintain not only their sense of style, but they want to shine.
Friends and colleagues of the late artist Willis Nomo Humphrey are organizing a benefit in his memory.
Humphrey, who died suddenly in late November at the age of 44, was a beloved and respected muralist, known for his masterful portraits of black legends. His colleagues from Amber Art and Design, the North Philadelphia firm that Humphrey cofounded, will mount an exhibit and silent auction to raise funds for Humphreys three teens.
He was such a talented and humble man, said Keir Johnston, of Amber Art and Design. The deceased painters murals, like the Octavius Catto mural that he worked on with Johnston, showed Humphreys dedication to black history, but also his meticulous approach. At the time of Humphreys death, Johnston said, Humphrey was still challenging himself, still growing as an artist. We want to continue to honor him and his legacy, Johnston said.
Humphrey was a single parent. Organizers will be sending all proceeds from the event to his childrens college fund. (A GoFundMe campaign for that same purpose was launched shortly after Humphreys passing and is still ongoing and has raised over $17,000.)
The exhibition and auction will run from Fri., March 1 to Sat., March 2 at Crane Arts in Kensington. Organizers are still accepting donations, but Johnston said roughly 25 artists have signed on so far. Prices will range from $50 to $1000, Johnston said, with hopes of giving visitors the chance to score art at reasonable rates.
Johnston expects that some 100 pieces, all the work of local artists, will be on display and up for auction. The event will include live art, music, poetry, and should count contributions from the different artist communities where Humphrey had an influence.
I think its going to be a reflection of his impact, said Johnston.
A popular, Bethlehem-based Internet video artist has joined an online movement to cancel a F- Jerry, a viral Instagram account with more than 14 million followers, over allegations that it uses content from celebrities, comedians, and regular folks on the internet without attribution or compensation.
Vic Berger, who rose to prominence thanks to viral Vines and satirical political video compilations for the now-defunct site Super Deluxe, is encouraging Instagram users to unfollow @F-Jerry as part of the ongoing #F-F-Jerry movement.
Founded in 2011 by Elliot Tebele, the account initially started as a comedy-focused page on Tumblr that aggregated funny content from various sources online. That same year, Tebele moved the comedy aggregation formula to the @F-Jerry Instagram account. In 2016, Tebele and partner Elie Ballas expanded their reach by founding social media marketing company Jerry Media, which is currently making headlines for working with the disastrous Fyre Festival, as well as co-producing Netflixs documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, about the debacle.
Now, thanks in part to Berger, the company is back in the news for allegedly stealing its popular content.
Launched recently by Vulture reporter Megh Wright, the #F-F-Jerry movement has since grown to include high-profile supporters like comedians John Mulaney and Patton Oswalt, as well as Philly-bred comics like Paul F. Tompkins and Tim Heidecker (who wrote the movements theme song), plus dozens of other entertainers. Various comedians and creators, however, have been accusing @F-Jerry of stealing content since at least 2015, according to a report from the AV Club.
Berger became involved last month, when he posted an image to Instagram detailing a conversation from 2016 with Ryan Ohliger, chief content officer of @F-Jerry, who is known online as @KrispyShorts, about a piece of content Berger claims the site stole from him and re-posted. According to the image, Ohliger responded by telling Berger to shut up, and Berger claims he was later blocked.
Since then, the Bethlehem-born video artist has gone on the offensive, posting several more messages online encouraging others to unfollow the @F-Jerry account, and an op-ed for Rolling Stone detailing the companys plagiarism. Berger also edited and uploaded a video detailing the situation, but it was taken off YouTube after Ohliger filed a copyright takedown request, according to a tweet from the artist. The clip has since been re-uploaded to various sites online.
We are not shutting up any longer. Like in most situations of rampant corporate greed, people so often feel powerless to create change. But change has to start somewhere, Berger wrote in Rolling Stone. He declined to comment further when reached by the Inquirer, but encouraged people to seek out and support the actually funny comedians and artists who do incredible work daily.
Founder Tebele, meanwhile, responded to the #F-F-Jerry movement last week in a post on Medium in which he admitted the company needs to do better, and will no longer post content where the creator is not clear effective immediately.
In his Rolling Stone writeup, however, Berger wrote that Tebeles statement left something to be desired, as it made no mention of whether or not theyll be paying comedians or creators in the future. He added that the brand regularly earns between $25,000 and $75,000 for posting sponsored content, and often allegedly uses stolen content for advertisements.
So far, it appears the #F-F-Jerry movements approach is working. Since its start, according to Vulture, the account has dropped from 14.3 million followers to 14 million followers, slowed its rate of posting, and archived hundreds of posts. Comedy Central has also dropped advertising with the account, saying in a statement that it has no plans to advertise with Jerry Media in the future.
This is what they do, Berger wrote. No matter how much they gaslight us with poor me press releases Tebele writes, why should we ever believe hes changing his ways?
A 24-year-old South Jersey woman has been charged with murder after child remains were discovered early Saturday morning in her yard, a day after she reported her son missing, according to the Cumberland County Prosecutors Office.
Nakira Griner, of Bridgeton, has been charged with first-degree murder, endangering the welfare of a child, desecration of human remains, and tampering with evidence, the prosecutors office announced Saturday.
Around 6:30 p.m. Friday, Griner told police that her 23-month-old son, Daniel Griner Jr., had been abducted, launching a search effort. Child remains were found in her yard about 3 a.m. Saturday, according to the prosecutors office.
Griner is being held in Cumberland County Jail pending a detention hearing. An investigation is ongoing, and no other details have been released.
Does it really matter to anyone outside of classical music that members of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra played so beautifully side by side Tuesday night in the Kimmel Centers Verizon Hall?
And, is it possible that having the Philadelphia Orchestra go to China for the 12th time, as it announced Tuesday it would do in May, will do anything to alleviate tensions between China and the United States?
The vague promise of cultural diplomacy was back in the air as the Philadelphians hosted their Shanghai counterparts to form a hybrid, 100-plus-member ensemble composed of musicians from each orchestra.
But what exactly is that promise?
At a time when there are some tensions, there is also room for some cooperation, Walter Douglas, deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs and public diplomacy for the U.S. State Deptartment Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said at a reception before the concert. Douglas said he hoped this sense of cooperation would extend to other fields.
The reception at the Kimmel Center, which attracted an impressive corps of Chinese media, was a chance for the orchestra to reveal details of its next China tour.
Billed as a celebration of the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China, the tour begins with three concerts in Beijing (May 17, 18, and 20), and then moves on to Tianjin (May 22), Hangzhou (May 24), and Nanjing (May 25), before culminating with what is billed as a special anniversary concert in Shanghai (May 26).
Even amid current tensions over trade and other issues, the trip has no official government function, said orchestra president and CEO Matias Tarnopolsky in an interview earlier in the day. However, he added: It is our fervent hope that only good things can come from the presence of the Philadelphia Orchestra in concert halls and conservatories and schools during our trip, where we deeply connect with people, he said, and hope that these acts build bridges.
Chinese officials are expected at two of the concerts, although exactly which ones was not known, he said.
Still, outside of any official diplomatic function, the tour has ambitions on other levels. Sponsors like the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, Temple University, and others will use the orchestra as a calling card there.
The Philadelphia Orchestra says it has visited China more times than any other American orchestra, and its leadership aims to attract new philanthropic support in China, where classical music is popular. In December, Beethoven in Beijing, a film by the Philadelphia company History Making Productions that recounts the orchestras 1973 China trip, was runner-up in the Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festivals pitch contest.
I am very hopeful that the relationship that we have been building in China over many years will provide some support for the orchestra, not only on tour but also at home, said Tarnopolsky. We are also hopeful that we can recruit one or two to our board of directors from China, so that is part of our longer-term strategy.
Repertoire is to include Beethovens Symphony No. 6 (thePastoral), a reprise from the 1973 visit, as well as the world premiere of a Tan Dun vocal concerto titled The Deer of Nine Colors. Music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin will conduct all seven concerts.
The orchestra and Nezet-Seguin will also be offered up as a kind of prize in a new competition founded by the China Conservatory of Music, with the Philadelphians accompanying each of the three finalists (all pianists) in the last round of the competition, the May 20 concert. First prize includes $150,000 and an award of professional representation.
In addition to its performances in China, the orchestra will engage in education and outreach activities much like the side-by-side performance it hosted Tuesday night with the Shanghai orchestra, which is an arm of the vast media conglomerate Shanghai Media Group.
The free Chinese New Year concert crossed international borders: Philadelphia players sat in principal chairs for the first half led by Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Zhang Liang of Rimsky-Korsakovs Capriccio espagnol, Tchaikovskys Capriccio italien, and the cheerful Spring Festival Overture by the Huanzhi Li.
Shanghai players took principal chairs for the world premiere of the revised version of the Symphony No. 10 by New York composer Peng-Peng Gong, with the hybrid orchestra led by Philadelphia Orchestra assistant conductor Kensho Watanabe.
The symphony, subtitled Peking Fantasy, is in a sweet, direct musical language often sentimental in a pleasant way, other times in a long-winded way. An offstage trumpet solo by David Bilger made for a gorgeous, floating presence. Its a work of highly original sounds presented in a series of vivid episodes.
Particularly striking in the Tchaikovsky were moments of Philadelphia and Shanghai instrumentalists playing solo passages together: oboists Jonathan Blumenfeld and Cheng Yue, and horn players Jeffrey Lang and Ma Chuchen.
After the Gong premiere, the composer brought up on stage Peking Opera master Shang Changrong, whose arias in part were inspiration for the piece. The opera artist took the microphone and with great enthusiasm told the audience in Chinese (as translated by Gong) that music reminds us how much we love each other, and that music is ever without boundaries or borders.
May the people of China and the U.S. treat each other as brothers and friends forever, he said.
Whether this concert and the Philadelphia Orchestras cumulative presence in China can fulfill the ambition implied in the phrase cultural diplomacy is an open question, but classical music these days is clearly placing itself in proximity to power and influence well outside its normal sphere.
A string quartet from the Sphinx Organization recently played Dvorak in Davos at the meeting of the World Economic Forum. When Sen. Lindsey Graham met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara a few weeks ago, Erdogan invited him along to a concert by pianist Fazil Say, which Graham described as one of the best evenings of his life, the New York Times reported.
These kinds of cultural encounters may not have a direct impact on the course of events, but we do it because sometimes music provides the only harmony in earshot. We do it, happily and hopefully, because the alternative dissonance can be just too awful to contemplate.
An accidental mating? A shotgun wedding that worked?
With three-and-a-half centuries separating the literal extravagance of William Shakespeare and compositional elegance of Benjamin Britten, the unlikely fusion of the two in the 1960 operatic adaptation of A Midsummer Nights Dream created something wondrous strange (to quote the play). But if Britten and the Bard kept a toe in reality, the Robert Carsen production presented by Opera Philadelphia on Friday at the Academy of Music created something else: a unique netherworld that, with such good vocal casting, made you want to live there.
Forests had no trees in the expansive, intensely colored greens and blues of Planet Carsen, which moved ever closer to the midsummer crescent moon that lorded over Shakespeares classic plot about colliding forest fairies, romantic mortals on the run, and amateur actors whose egos are far greater than their talents. Dapper children had mustaches. Beds levitated. Seen for the first time in the U.S., the production and cast created one of the most alluring packages Opera Philadelphia has presented in recent seasons -- and was a rather different experience from the 2005 commercial video of Carsens vision.
The opera itself presents challenges. Written quickly for the composers Aldeburgh Festival, Britten wasnt interested in all of Shakespeares characters, and gives himself away in the atmospheric effects. Fairies get serpentine string wiring as delicate as cobwebs. The mortal lovers only get compositional professionalism. In much of Act I, character entrances receive no bolstering from the orchestra. This isnt such a problem in smaller theaters in what is essentially a chamber opera. But in the second two acts, the opera penetrated well into the Academy of Music, thanks partly to music director Corrado Rovaris Italian opera expertise, which was filtered into concise, elegant, but well-inflected shaping of whatever the score gave him. And when the score gave him enough to work with, the whole enterprise lighted up. Also key was stage director Emmanuelle Bastet, who maintained a keen balance of physical comedy and nonphysical wit. When the audience laughs both at a characters bad jokes -- and then at their delight in them -- smart staging has made that possible.
Game of Thrones actor Miltos Yerolemou (also a seasoned classical stage actor) inhabited the key role of Puck, which doesnt require singing but pretty much everything else. The central concept was that of an overgrown kid, and Yerolemou spent most of the role in theatrical overdrive, sometimes a tad too taken with his own cuteness. But he created a highly effective pathway between the opera and the audience. Even for those who know the piece, its a world that initially requires some gentle indoctrination.
Other cast members have worked in the early-music community, in which small musical gestures must be translated into meaningful ones. But could anybody have hoped for the rich tone quality delivered by countertenor Tim Mead in the role of the fairy king? The vocal precision demanded by the early-music world also served Anna Christy particularly well as Tytania. One cast-wide observation -- and this was true of the lovers sung by Georgia Jarman, Siena Licht Miller, Brenton Ryan, and Johnathan McCullough -- is that Brittens musical setting of Shakespeares language never felt contrived or cerebral.
The Act III play within the play -- it always brings down the house in theatrical productions -- is treated mockingly by Britten. To me, its much funnier when the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe is acted as a matter of life and death. The fact that Matthew Rose (Bottom) not only revealed his humanity in Brittens less-humane circumstances was a major reason why he was the productions star. Also, this Curtis Institute graduate has one of the most lustrous, unforced bass-baritone voices in the business. And that didnt hurt one bit.
A Midsummer Nights Dream
Additional performances of the Opera Philadelphia production: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10; 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 15; and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 17. Tickets: $25-$299. Information: 215-732-8400, operaphila.org.
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (AP) -- Phil Mickelson survived a wild finish without having to deal with the rain. Jordan Spieth endured a wet finish to his day with three tough pars, followed by some unwitting help by a spooked fan.
Both were atop the leaderboard Friday in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, joined by Lucas Glover, Paul Casey and Scott Langley, when the second round was suspended because the rain had formed large puddles on the greens.
They played more golf than expected by moving up the start by an hour, and it was entertaining as ever.
One day after Mickelson didn't miss a single fairway for the first time in 1,664 rounds on the PGA TOUR, he couldn't seem to find one at Spyglass Hill. He still managed to surge into the lead, including one 3-wood from 256 yards out of the trees on the par-5 14th to 6 feet.
It caught up with him at the end. After banging in a birdie on the par-3 fifth, Mickelson missed three straight fairways that led to three straight bogeys until he closed with a 4-iron to 18 feet for birdie and a 4-under 68.
"I hate not finishing the round off, making three bogeys after having a pretty good round going in," Mickelson said. "I'm also lucky to get done now and get the round over with and have ... guys unfortunately are still out there playing in some tough stuff."
Mickelson was the first to finish at 10-under 133. Glover started strong in tame weather at Pebble Beach and shot a 6-under 66 to get to 10-under 134, while Langley (69 at Spyglass Hill) and Casey (7-under 64 at Monterey Peninsula) narrowly finished at 10-under 133 ahead of the horn that ultimately stopped play for the rest of the day.
Three short blasts signaled the stoppage, but because it wasn't a dangerous situation, such as lightning, players could complete the hole. Casey was on his final hole at Monterey when he heard the horn, followed by two more.
"I went from upset to happy in an instant," he said.
Spieth was among 44 players who had to return Saturday morning -- weather permitting -- to finish the last two holes of his round. Part of him was happy to be off the course considering the fight he had on his hand in cold, raw rain with increasing wind.
Spieth shot 31 on the back nine at Spyglass Hill to get in the mix, and missed two good birdie chances to start the front nine.
"I got off to a really nice start, which helped, knowing that the conditions were blowing in, trying to take advantage of the front nine," he said. "And then once they started to come in, it was just try and hold on for dear life."
He went just long of the green on the par-3 fifth hole, his ball in the sandy dune above the green about 3 inches from the collar of rough with not much green between him and the hole. Spieth blasted out to 4 feet and saved par. After coming up short on the uphill sixth into the wind, his 40-yard pitch checked and stopped a foot from the cup.
And then he had another struggle on the par-5 seventh, hitting out from under a tree, over another one and threw the fairway. His third shot was just right of the green, and Spieth immediately called for a ruling when he saw a fan's hand swat the ball onto the green.
The rules official talked to the fan, who said he through his hands up when the ball landed in front of him, and that he did not intentionally hit the ball. That meant Spieth played it from the green, instead of chipping from that spot.
By the time they got that sorted out, the rain was coming down harder and workers had to use a squeegee -- twice -- to clear off the standing water. Spieth two-putted for par. A minute later, the rain kept falling and Johnson had to have the green cleared for his putt.
Johnson, who had hit his second shot into the water, missed from 10 feet for bogey. He missed from inside 3 feet for par on the previous hole, and missed another 3-footer on No. 3. He was 2 over for his round, seven shots to par behind.
"Not a good day on the greens," Johnson said as he walked away, sounding like someone who had one of those days before.
Two of the fairways Mickelson missed on the front nine were on par 5s, one leading to par, the other a bogey. He needed to avoid the water left of the seventh green and pulled it too much into the trees, came up short of the green and hit a poor chip, missing the putt.
"I didn't miss a fairway yesterday. Here you've got to be in the fairway, and I was fractionally off on a couple of the holes, both par-5s on the front, and that ended up costing me probably three shots," he said.
Jason Day was at 9 under with three holes remaining at Spyglass, while Ernie Els had a 68 at Spyglass and was at 6 under. It was the first time Els had posted consecutive rounds of 60s in the same tournament on the PGA TOUR since June 2017.
A New Bloomfield man has been charged with homicide by vehicle in a Dec. 23 pedestrian hit-and-run incident on West Main Street in New Bloomfield. Scott Gustave Thebes, 49, was taken into custody Feb. 1 at his residence and is awaiting arraignment.
In addition to homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, Newport State Police have charged Thebes with aggravated assault by vehicle while driving under the influence, accidents involving death or personal injury, driving under the influence of alcohol or controlled substance, careless driving, reckless driving, duty to give information and render aid, and immediate notice of accident to police department.
Thebes was driving a blue 2009 Jeep Wrangler the night of Dec. 23. He is accused of striking Nickolas Watson, 29, of New Bloomfield at approximately 2:04 a.m. Watson was found deceased along the street.
Thebes reportedly fled the scene of the accident. His vehicle later was discovered by state police.
Thebes was charged through Magisterial District Judge Michael Schechterly's office in Newport. Bail was set at $50,000. Thebes posted bail Feb. 1 and was released.
Gary Thomas can be reached via e-mail at editor@perrycountytimes.com
As the Patriot-News reports, Sunday hunting clears first hurdle. I began hunting more than 65 years ago in Cameron County and continue to hunt. In those days there were two weeks of buck hunting, a couple days for doe hunting, a one-week bear season, fall turkey season and small game season.
Since that time, many additional weeks of bear, dear, elk and turkey seasons have been added to the hunting seasons, which now begin in September and ends with spring gobbler season at the end of May. That should allow us enough hunting time without adding 27% of the Sundays each year to the schedule. Shouldnt non hunters have one day during each week to enjoy our great outdoors without dressing like pumpkins?
Like many landowners, I could support Sunday hunting but not at our cost. Our school and property taxes are already too high because of state-owned land. Why should we have to pay in time and costs to post our land against Sunday hunting in order to enjoy one day of the week to walk our dogs and use our land without upsetting a hunter because we walked by their hunting stand?
If the Pennsylvania Game Commission and others desire Sunday hunting, it should be at their expense. All land allowing Sunday hunting should be so posted. Let the state post all of the land where they would allow Sunday hunting. They could seek posting support from those desiring Sunday hunting or raise the fee for hunting licenses to cover posting.
When tax collectors mail out school and property tax notices, they could include an information piece to mail back asking the Pennsylvania Game Commission to post its land for hunting, including Sunday hunting. Under this plan, if private land isnt posted for hunting, hunting isnt allowed.
DICK JOHNSON, Mechanicsburg
The Supreme Court has just handed down a pair of decisions that illustrate an important truth: Chief Justice John Roberts is not, as many conservatives believe, some kind of traitor to their cause, an unreliable ally who will stab them in the back whenever he gets the chance. In his own way, he's as devoted to the fortunes of the Republican Party as any of the other conservative justices. But unlike Samuel Alito (generally recognized as the most partisan judge on the court) or Brett Kavanaugh (who will almost certainly challenge Alito for that distinction), Roberts is playing a longer game. He's trying to save the GOP from itself.
Let's begin with the decision on abortion, where Roberts sided with the four liberal justices to prevent a Louisiana "TRAP" (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) law from taking effect before the court hears a challenge to it. The Louisiana law was almost identical to a Texas law the court struck down before Anthony Kennedy retired. Thus, the four justices who dissented in the Louisiana case were saying not just that the previous decision should be overturned, but that the precedent itself is utterly meaningless and can be ignored even before they overturn it, if the law in question has the salutary effect of making it impossible for women to exercise their reproductive rights (that's not how they put it, of course, but that's the essence of their position).
Pro-lifers were naturally outraged. But their anger at Roberts is completely misplaced. Roberts is no less committed than ever to seeing abortion rights eliminated. But he seems to want to do it carefully, in a way that minimizes the inevitable backlash against the Republican Party.
Roberts, one must understand, voted to uphold the Texas TRAP law in the original case. Which means he will almost certainly vote to uphold the Louisiana law once the court hears it in full. But he doesnt want to just jump into it, as the other four justices on the right did, without making it seem like theyve considered the issue carefully. Had Roberts sided with the other conservatives, it would have been a signal to Republican judges throughout the country that the Supreme Court may not enforce decisions that the GOP disagrees with, as Ian Millhiser put it. If theyre going to eventually uphold the Louisiana law anyway, its much better not to be so obvious that theyre just out to destroy abortion rights wherever they can.
And when they do uphold the Louisiana law after a full hearing, that's what Roberts will accomplish. Rather than repealing Roe v. Wade outright, it's probably the best way for conservatives to achieve their goal of getting something identical to a repeal while avoiding at least some of the ensuing controversy.
That's because as it stands now, state laws are not allowed to place an "undue burden" on a woman's right to choose, putting so many obstacles in her path that it becomes difficult or impossible for her to exercise her rights. Increasing that burden is what conservative states have been doing for years, requiring things like waiting periods and forced ultrasounds, or imposing so many unnecessary regulations on providers that almost no one can meet them, leaving states with only a tiny number of providers. As a result of TRAP laws, there are now multiple states with only a single abortion provider.
But if the Supreme Court were to overturn its ruling on the Texas law and validate the Louisiana law, it would have effectively overturned Roe v. Wade, yet in a way that wont produce screaming headlines reading Roe Overturned! The ruling would instead be a green light to Republican-run states that the court will judge virtually no burden to be undue. The conservative states that would outlaw abortion if Roe fell will then simply pass TRAP laws so onerous that nearly every abortion provider in those states will be forced out of business. The effect - abortion legal in Democratic-run states and essentially illegal in Republican-run states - will be the same.
If your goal was to destroy Roe and to minimize the backlash Republicans will suffer at the polls, thats how youd do it. And Roberts is smart enough to know that with polls showing around two-thirds of Americans against Roe being overturned, that backlash could be enormous.
So on issues like that one, Roberts will tread carefully trying to accomplish conservative goals while protecting the Republican Party from the consequences of its worst instincts. The same is true of the Affordable Care Act, where Roberts declined to join the conservatives in striking down the entire law, instead crafting a compromise that upheld most of it while allowing states to opt out of the Medicaid expansion (thereby denying health coverage to millions of poor Americans). Had the whole law been struck down, the consequences could have been cataclysmic, among other things making the arrival of universal government-guaranteed health care much more likely.
As a comparison, let's look at the other case the Supreme Court handed down yesterday, concerning a Muslim death row inmate in Alabama who requested to have an imam present at his execution. The state denied his request, telling him that he could have a Christian chaplain or nothing. This is not even a close call; you could look far and wide and not find a clearer and more egregious violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution. But John Roberts, along with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, ruled that the inmate had waited too long (five whole days) to file his claim, and therefore he can be executed without a representative of his faith in attendance.
These two cases are about very different subjects, but there's something else important that distinguishes them: The religious freedom case is unlikely to get much attention. That's in part because the plaintiff is unsympathetic, but also because the only people criticizing the decision will be legal scholars and the occasional liberal pundit. There will be no organized outcry from those on the right who claim to believe deeply in religious freedom, because what those people actually believe in is a sectarian version of religious "freedom" that actually means little more than that special privileges should be granted to conservative Christians.
John Roberts has been there for them in that quest, in cases like Hobby Lobby that carved out areas where Christians need not follow laws they find displeasing. And lets not forget all the other times Roberts has joined with his conservative colleagues to accomplish right-wing goals. He eviscerated campaign finance law in Citizens United. He created for the first time an individual right to own guns in District of Columbia v. Heller. He gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder.
In short, you could argue that John Roberts is actually the most loyal Republican on the Supreme Court; its just that unlike, say, Alito, he knows when the GOP has gone too far out on a limb and needs t be carefully reined back in for its own good. And thats what hell keep doing.
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Paul Waldman is an opinion writer for the Plum Line blog of the Washington Post.
Prosecutors want to charge five juveniles as adults in connection with the robbery and fatal shooting of a 24-year-old man from Carlisle in Nashville, Tenn.
Under Tennessee law, three of the five juveniles involved can be identified because they are charged with homicide and are over the age of 13, police said.
The three are Roniyah McKnight, 14, Diamond Lewis, 15 and Decorrius Wright, 16, police said. A 12-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy were also charged.
The 12-year-olds attorney argued the girl cooperated with police after she was arrested, and that her case shouldnt be in adult court, Tennesseean reports.
Assistant District Attorney Stacey Miller, however, disagreed.
She didnt run from there, and she didnt call the police," Miller said during a juvenile court hearing Friday, Tennessean reports. Shes as guilty as they are."
Tennessean notes that preteens appearing in adult court is exceedingly rare - there are 185 inmates in Tennessee prisons service life sentences for crimes they committed when they were teens. Seven of those inmates were 14 when their crimes were committed.
The group of juveniles was trying to steal Carlisle native Kyle Yorletss car when they shot and killed him, said Nashville Metro Police.
Police said the juveniles were in a Chevrolet Colorado pickup truck that had been reported stolen from Kentucky, and were in an alley behind Yorlets home when they first saw him.
The group interacted with Yorlets, took his wallet and at one point demanded that he give them the keys to his vehicle, police said.
Police said they believe Yorlets was shot after he refused to surrender the keys. He was able to get inside his home, and his housemates found him when they returned home around 3 p.m. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
The steady stream of shoppers looking for deals on wedding gowns and formal dresses has not yet subsided at the Ollies Bargain Outlets location in Mechanicsburg.
The Mechanicsburg store, as well as the location in Harrisburg, are carrying a stock of what was originally 29,000 wedding gowns and formal dresses. The two stores will have the dresses on sale for massive discounts through Feb. 17.
We actually opened a few minutes early [this morning], because we had a line building up, said Scott Osborne, Director of Stores with Ollies. We decided it was cold outside, so we let these ladies in and let them shop.
Over 40 people were lined up outside of the stores doors, Osborne said, in below-freezing temperatures. But once inside, the bargain-hunters were busy at work, looking through the hundreds of available dresses, many costing as little as ten percent of the price for which they would have originally sold.
The last two and a half days have been really sensational, beyond what we expected, Osborne said. We expect this to continue on for another seven to eight days until the event closes this Sunday.
According to Osborne, between the two locations, there have been hundreds and hundreds of dresses sold, and that a new shipment arrived Friday night.
If you were here Thursday and didnt find the dress you wanted, weve got new dresses out today in both Harrisburg and Mechanicsburg, he said. Right now our goal is to sell as many dresses between Mechanicsburg and Harrisburg between now and next Sunday.
After Feb. 17, the remaining dresses will be shipped off to other stores somewhere in the Ollies Nation." The retail chain operates in 23 states, with several locations in Pennsylvania.
On Saturday morning, some customers had driven from some distance to peruse the steeply-discounted options.
Im finding some pretty good choices, said Lindsey Proctor of Shippensburg, who is planning for her wedding in October. Ive found two that are maybes, at least.
Her 40 minute drive paled in comparison to some shoppers Proctor had spoken with, who had driven roughly 90 minutes from West Virginia to look for a wedding gown.
We love Ollies we shop at Ollies, Proctor said, but when asked if she had ever expected shed be shopping for a wedding gown at the bargain outlet, she gave what has been a typical response: Not at all!
The UNF government will form a National Government before the end of February with the help of nine SLFP members who have pledged their support to the UNF, House Leader Lakshman Kiriella said yesterday.
He said the motion to form the National Government would be presented at the next session of Parliament that would start on February 20.
We have no doubt that we can pass the motion with ease with the support of the nine SLFP members who have already pledged their support. I expect to move the motion in Parliament on February 20, the minister said.
He dismissed the claim that the UNF was attempting to form a National Government with the single SLMC member State Minister of Social Empowerment, Seyed Ali Sahir Moulana.
We have more than enough numbers to pass the motion for the National Government in Parliament with a minimum of nine members crossing over to our side from the SLFP, with the assurance of several members from other parties that they would also join the UNF government after the National Government was formed, most probably in the last week of this month, the minister said.
He said the National Government would be formed with the approval of Parliament.
"The then president Mahinda Rajapaksa had a 63-member Cabinet arbitrarily increased the number of ministers without the approval of Parliament. When we attempt to do it in a democratic way, the joint opposition cries foul. We are doing it under the provisions of the 19rh Amendment, which permits the political party with the most number of seats in Parliament to join other parties to form a National Government," the minister said.
He invited all political parties and parliamentarians who desired to contribute to the accelerated development drive of the National Government to join and added that he was not going to reveal the names and political parties expected to join the National Government because the Black Media assisted by the JO would disrupt the move (Sandun A. Jayasekera)
Payson, AZ (85541)
Today
Thunderstorms during the morning hours, then skies turning partly cloudy during the afternoon. High near 80F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..
Tonight
A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy. Low 64F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
Milton Pearce Blake was born in Pauls Valley, Okla., on June 1, 1938, the second child of Ragna Elizabeth and Roger Blake. He passed away at 83 years of age on June 11, 2021 in the Pauls Valley home in which he had been born.
Patna: The Supreme Court of India dealt a setback to senior Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejaswi Yadav on Friday as it rejected his plea to allow him to retain his government bungalow on 5 Deshratna Marg despite not being the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar any longer.
Directing Yadav, the younger son of party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi, to vacate the bungalow that was allotted to him when he was the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar immediately, the court also ordered him to move into the bungalow that has been designated for the leader of the opposition in Bihar.
The court comprised of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjeev Khanna also ordered him to pay Rs. 50,000 in fine for wasting the precious time of the court.
It may be recalled that the Nitish government had asked Tejaswi Yadav to vacate the bungalow to make room for the new Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi but the RJD leader had chosen to defy the order and instead seek Supreme Courts intervention in the case to allow him to stay in the bungalow that, he said, had been remodeled to suit his needs.
Earlier the Patna High Court had refused to listen to Yadavs plea that led him to knock the door of the Supreme Court.
Reacting to the Supreme Court ruling, Yadav said he respected the highest courts order and will start making arrangement to move into the bungalow allocated for the leader of the opposition in Bihar.
Patna: The body of the CRPF jawan Mujahid Khan who gave his life fighting Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists in Jammu last Saturday arrived at the Patna Airport on Tuesday where it was received by military officials, family members, and members of the Nitish administration amid many teary eyes.
Khan, a constable in the CRPF 49th Battalion and a native of Piro in Bhojpur district, was one of the five Indian army jawans who died in the surprise attack by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terrorist group with the backing of Pakistan, on Sunjiwan Army camp in Jammu at the wee hours on February 10.
Expressing his grief, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said he was saddened by Khan's death and pledged to provide all support to the family of the slain soldier. He also announced a funeral for the martyr with full state honors.
"The nation will never forget the sacrifice of Khan who died to protect his country. The entire state of Bihar is with his family," Kumar said.
Patna: Traffic police in Patna on Tuesday, during its ongoing 'Operation Safe' campaign in the state capital to crackdown on road law breakers and dangerous drivers, issued a ticket, or challan, to Building Construction Minister Maheshwar Hazari and an Additional SP of Jharkhand for riding in vehicles with dark, tinted glasses.
Hazari's vehicle was stopped by the traffic police near Patna High Court on Bailey Road. Police fined him Rs. 600 for riding in a tinted glass car.
Tinted windows were banned in Bihar nearly a decade ago in an attempt to crackdown on criminals who used to roam freely behind the dark glasses in order to hide their identities. Many of the criminals were wanted by the police in cases involving murder, robbery, rape, and other criminal activities.
Police also ticketed Hazaribagh Special Branch Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) A K Singh who was found riding in a tinted window vehicle.
During the five-hour long roadblocks at more than 60 places in the state capital, police also arrested two men for transporting liquor bottles in their vehicles.
The first alcohol-related arrested came from near Maurya Lok Shopping Complex when police recovered six bottles of liquor from an auto-rickshaw. A second person was arrested under Digha police station near JP Setu when the police found 20 bottles of liquor hidden in a compartment of his scooter.
Patna: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Joint General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale, at a function in Patna on Tuesday said that just as Mahatma Gandhi had inspired millions of Indians to join the fight against the British Raj, the RSS had helped raise awareness about nationalism and what it means to be an Indian.
"The Sangh (short for RSS) is not an outfit, it is an ideology. It has given rise to appreciation for our culture and our way of thinking which is also known as Hindutva," he said at the Planetarium Convention Hall where he and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi released five books written on the life and philosophy of Sangh's former five chiefs.
Continuing to highlight the history of the RSS, Hosabale said that the establishment was an object of ridicule when it was first set up in 1925. "However, from the very beginning, the organization stressed on building character and selfless service to the nation. In its 92 years of existence, it has become stronger but its ideals remain the same, that is to build individual character and develop a sense of responsibility towards our beloved nation," he said.
The RSS leader also mentioned the time when RSS was banned by the British and later by the Indian government.
"People used to say that Hindus were not organized enough to go in the same direction unless they were carrying a dead body on their shoulders. Not only the British banned the outfit once but our own governments also put a ban on RSS for political reasons. Today, it is stronger than ever before with more than 50,000 'shakhas' being held daily across the nation," he said.
Modi, in his speech, invited all RSS detractors to come to any 'shakha' and see what goes on in there.
"It will be an eye-opener for those who are constantly criticizing a noble organization like RSS. I invite them to come to any 'shakha' and see what goes inside it. The door of the Sangh is open not just for the Hindus but people of any religion," the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said.
These replies are more in-depth than what was eventually compiled in my book, Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin. I literally responded line-by-line to almost all of Book IV of John Calvins Institutes of the Christian Religion, which runs about 500 pages. The original series (#1-55) was completed in 2009, for Calvins 500th birthday. I have slightly revised and abridged them, and added or updated links. I have since added some others as well.
John Calvin is just about the best debater that Protestants have, in their entire history.
Ill be utilizing for my purposes, the edition translated by Henry Beveridge for the Calvin Translation Society in 1846, from the 1559 edition in Latin; reprinted by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (Grand Rapids, Michigan), 1995, and available online.
My biggest interest lies in Book IV: Of the Holy Catholic Church. This is where the real contrast between Calvinism and Catholicism is most evident. I like to go right to the heart of any given issue, and thats located here, in my opinion.
A few (minority anti-Catholic type) Reformed Protestants, familiar with my apologetic work and highly critical of it, have questioned whether I am qualified at all to undertake such a project as this.
My response has been twofold. I stated, first of all, that if I were as profoundly ignorant and underinformed and unqualified as they made out, then Calvinists had nothing whatever to fear from this book, or the larger set of online replies, as they would be their own refutation, and self-evidently absurd.
Their very protest, then, seemed to suggest that they feared such a reply far more than their words were letting on. Why worry about it? I can do no harm to their cause if they are correct about my alleged utter lack of qualifications.
The second defense I made was to appeal to Calvins own claims for his work, and its intended audience. It was not supposed to be for scholars and theologians only, but rather, primarily for students and laymen (just as St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica was intended as introductory instruction). He expresses this in several introductory comments to the Institutes. For example:
My intention was only to furnish a kind of rudiments, by which those who feel some interest in religion might be trained to true godliness. . . . in a simple and elementary form adapted for instruction. . . . what I have here given may be regarded as a summary . . .(Prefatory Address, Basle, 1536)
Now, if we are dealing with an introductory work written to the masses (not scholars and academics): for folks just starting to get acquainted with Scripture, then certainly it is not out of bounds for a non-scholar apologist like myself, with over thirty years of experience of intense study of theology and Scripture, to undertake a popular-level critique of the popular-level introductory work.
The Institutes is widely used to this day. Since it is so critical of Catholicism, it needs to be answered from a Catholic perspective. I have tried to keep polemics to a bare minimum. That was assuredly somewhat difficult, because Calvin is often highly provocative and polemical: plain insulting; but my goal was to stick to rational arguments from Scripture and history.
I hope my reply is helpful for readers who seek to understand the difference between the two theological systems and competing claims. May God the Holy Spirit, our Helper, guide us all into all truth, and grant us the will, by His grace, to want to always seek truth.
MASTER LIST
#1: The Elect [4-27-09 / rev. 3-3-17]
#2: Infallible Church Authority [4-28-09 / rev. 3-3-17]
#3: Synergism, Grace Alone, & the Elect [4-29-09 / rev. 4-3-17]
#4: Primary & Secondary Doctrines [4-29-09 / rev. 4-3-17]
#5: Christian Sinners & Puritanical Fanaticism [4-29-09 / rev. 12-17-18]
#6: Sectarianism & Denominationalism [5-15-09 / rev. 12-19-18]
#7: Absolution, Sanctification, & Forgiveness [5-15-09 / rev. 12-19-18]
#8: Sinners in the Church & Gods Mercy [5-15-09 / rev. 12-31-18]
#9: Indefectibility of the One True Church [5-16-09 / rev. 12-31-18]
#10: Indefectibility & Apostolic Succession [5-18-09 / rev. 1-2-19]
#11: Sacrifice of the Mass / Cyprians Ecclesiology [5-10-09 / rev. 1-3-19]
#12: Bishops, Church Offices, & Pauls Call [5-20-09 / rev. 1-3-19]
#13: Biblical & Patristic Basis for the Papacy [5-21-09 / rev. 1-4-19]
#14: Petrine & Roman Primacy & Papal Succession [6-13-09 / rev. 1-8-19]
#15: Peter & the Papacy & the Early Church [6-14-09 / rev. 1-8-19]
#16: Popes & Early Ecumenical Councils [6-15-09 / rev. 1-9-19]
#17: Fathers (Esp. Jerome, Gregory) & the Papacy [6-15-09 / rev. 1-9-19]
#18: Roman Primacy / Popes & Collegiality [6-15-09 / rev. 1-10-19]
#19: Constantine / Universal Papal Jurisdiction [6-25-09 / rev. 1-10-19]
#20: Gregory the Great & Papal Supremacy [6-25-09 / rev. 1-12-19]
#21: St. Bernard & the Papacy / Pope as Head [6-27-09 / rev. 1-12-19]
#22: Some Bad Popes = Ditch the Papacy? [6-29-09 / rev. 1-15-19]
#23: Popes Claimed to be God? / Pope as Antichrist [6-30-09 / rev. 1-15-19]
#24: Bad Popes / Indefectibility / John XXII [6-30-09 / rev. 1-16-19]
#25: Tradition, Succession, Apostolic Deposit [7-1-09 / rev. 1-16-19]
#26: Authority and Infallibility of Councils [8-25-09 / rev. 1-18-19]
#27: Tradition, Church, & the Rule of Faith [7-6-09 / rev. 1-23-19]
#28: Catholic Authority and Conscience [7-16-09 / rev. 1-23-19]
#29: Unbiblical Antipathy to Holy Water [8-25-09 / rev. 1-24-19]
#30: Lent: Unbiblical & Irrational Antipathy [9-15-09 / rev. 1-24-19]
#31: Unbiblical Rejection of Priestly Celibacy [9-15-09 / rev. 1-25-19]
#32: Unbiblical Opposition to Priests Vows [9-21-09 / rev. 1-25-19]
#33: Evangelical Counsels & Monasticism [9-22-09 / rev. 1-26-19]
#34: Sacraments: Bible & Church Fathers [9-25-09 / rev. 1-28-19]
#35: Merit & Human Cooperation with God [10-19-09 / rev. 1-29-19]
#36: Sacraments & the Church Fathers [10-19-09 / rev. 1-29-19]
#37: Sacramentalism & Ex Opere Operato [10-21-09 / rev. 1-30-19]
#38: Radically Anti-Traditional Sacramentalism [10-27-09 / rev. 1-30-19]
#39: Baptism, Regeneration, Assurance? of Salvation [11-16-09 / rev. 1-31-19]
#40: Original Sin, Imputation, & Baptism [11-17-09 / rev. 1-31-19]
#41: Eucharist: Physical, Symbolic, or Mystical? [11-24-09 / rev. 1-31-19]
#42: Transubstantiation: Bible & the Fathers [11-25-09 / rev. 2-1-19]
#43: Eucharist: Ubiquity, Signs, Lutheranism, Etc. [11-27-09 / rev. 2-2-19]
#44: Eucharist: Rationalism, Nestorianism, & Docetism [11-30-09 / rev. 2-2-19]
#45: Bizarre Eucharistic Christology vs. Tertullian [12-1-09 / rev. 2-3-19]
#46: Eucharist: Incoherent Spiritual Presence [12-2-09 / rev. 2-3-19]
#47: Eucharistic Adoration: Idolatry or Biblical? [12-2-09 / rev. 2-4-19]
#48: Eucharist: Radical Symbolism & Docetism [12-3-09 / rev. 2-4-19]
#49: Sacrifice of the Mass and NT Altars [12-9-09 / rev. 2-5-19]
#50: Confirmation in the Bible & the Fathers [12-17-09 / rev. 2-5-19]
#51: Sacrament of Penance: Man-Made Tradition? [12-21-09 / rev. 2-6-19]
#52: Sacrament of Anointing: Yay or Nay? [12-21-09 / rev. 2-7-19]
#53: Unbiblical Antipathy to Miracles & Exorcism [12-22-09 / rev. 2-7-19]
#54: Tonsure, Holy Oil, and Judaizing? [12-22-09 / rev. 2-8-19]
#55: Sacrament of Matrimony: Bible & Fathers [12-23-09 / rev. 2-8-19]
#56: Mortal and Venial Sin [2012; posted on 8-20-20]
#57: Prayer for the Dead [2012; posted on 8-20-20]
#58: Indulgences & Distribution of Grace [2012; posted on 8-25-20]
#59: Church Authority & the Canon [2012; posted on 9-2-20]
#60: Purgatory in the Bible [1-15-21]
#61: Predestination to Hell? [1-20-21]
***
Photo credit: Title page of 1541 edition of French Institution de la religion chrestienne (Institutes of the Christian Religion) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]
***
Patently Apple is now learning that Apple's legal team has filed a "Complaint for Declaratory Judgement of Non-Infringement" against patent trolls by the name of Fundamental Innovation Systems International and Fundamental Innovation Systems International Holdings LLC (Fundamental Innovation Systems).
Apple knows that Fundamental Innovation Systems has sued LG Electronics, Huawei and ZTE and so Apple is going on offense to head off a patent infringement suit they feel is in the making.
This kind of lawsuit is filed when a party is threatened with a patent infringement lawsuit. It may preemptively sue the patent owner(s) in a declaratory judgment action and seek to have the patent declared invalid or not infringed.
Apple makes the point clear that "Apple is a leading designer and manufacturer of mobile communication devices, personal computers and portable digital media players. On the other hand the defendants "are patent assertion entities formed for the sole purpose of generating revenue by asserting patents against other companies products."
Apple refers to the 12 granted patents from BlackBerry and Research in Motion as the "Patents in Suit" that they're being accused of infringing by Fundamental Innovation Systems and declares that "Apples products do not infringe the Patents-in-Suit."
Further into the filing Apple states that "This Court should not allow the threat of a future lawsuit to harm and cause uncertainty to Apples business. Therefore, there is and remains a substantial controversy between Apple and Defendants of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment of non-infringement. Therefore, Apple brings this action to obtain a declaratory judgment that Apples Adapter Products (including the Apple 2.4A Adapter), Lightning Products (including the Apple iPhone 7 Plus and 8 Plus, iPad Pro 4, iPod touch, AirPods, and Beats Pill+ Portable Speaker) and Apple Watch Products (including Apple Watch Series 2 and 3) (collectively the Accused Products) do not infringe at least the claims of the Patents-in-Suit identified below, directly or indirectly, literally or under the doctrine of equivalents."
Apple has filed 12 Counts of "Non-Infringement" to counter the known patents used against other industry players as noted at the top of our report. For all of the details of this case, review the full Apple filing made in the Northern District of California earlier this week as presented in the Scribd document below courtesy of Patently Apple.
Apple vs Fundamental Innova... by Jack Purcher on Scribd
On Thursday, the Supreme Court approved a request from Alabama to execute a Muslim death row inmate without the presence of his imam in the room. Under Alabama policy, Christian prisoners may have a minister of their own faith accompany them to the execution chamber.
The case, known as Dunn V. Ray, undoubtedly calls into question the extent of religious freedom protections here in the United States.
Court Justices voted five to four, with the more liberal members voting in favor of allowing the presence of an Imam. The majority provided little reasoning to back their decision, but said that the inmate, Domineque Ray, had waited too long to object.
One religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another, wrote Justice Kagan, citing the First Amendments Establishment Clause in her statement of dissent. But the States policy does just that. Under that policy, a Christian prisoner may have minister of his own faith accompany him into the execution chamber to say his last rites. But if an inmate practices a different religionwhether Islam, Judaism, or any otherhe may not die with a minister of his own faith by his side. That treatment goes against the Establishment Clauses core principle of denominational neutrality.
100 years ago
Feb. 9, 1919: Capt. L.E. Ijams, 78, has died. He was a 65-year resident of Bloomington and fought in the Civil War. He was wounded and left for dead in battle, but survived to find the exact spot where he was shot 50 years later. Ijams served 12 years as county treasurer.
75 years ago
Feb. 9, 1944: George Zillers new trial will be held in Peoria. Ziller, of Weston, was convicted of selling government jobs in war plants, but the conviction was thrown out. The court papers have now been sent to Peoria. They comprise an express package of 23 pounds.
50 years ago
Feb. 9, 1969: Bloomington insurance man Charles Tedford had a kidney transplant in Denver and is back home to tell about it. The operation took seven and a half hours, and the kidney began working right away. Its like a miracle, he said. Tedfords sister donated the kidney.
25 years ago
Feb. 9, 1994: Livingston County Chief Deputy Keith Mills has been named interim sheriff. He will fill in for Sheriff Don Wall, who died recently. The sheriffs job is up for election, and Mills was the only applicant who isnt running for the Republican nomination.
Compiled by Jack Keefe; jkeefe@coldwellhomes.com.
Two "dark money" groups are stepping up to separately promote and attack the new governor's agenda.
"Think Big Illinois," a brand new 501(c)(4) organization which doesn't have to disclose its donors, will support Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whose 2018 campaign slogans included "Think big." The organization will be headed by Quentin Fulks, who served as Pritzker's deputy campaign manager.
"A $15 minimum wage is the first in a series of progressive policies Think Big Illinois will advocate for in the coming months," a press release says.
The group appears to be the likely conduit for Pritzker and others to fund a public push for the progressive income tax if it makes it onto the 2020 ballot. Both legislative chambers first have to approve the proposal with three-fifths majorities, and then voters get a crack at it. Neither step is guaranteed.
Defeating that progressive income tax proposal at the ballot box is now the main goal of another dark money not-for-profit group which has been around for years. The Coalition for Jobs, Growth and Prosperity launched a new website last week called "Ideas for Illinois." The website is fairly innocuous so far, but the people who run it say their ultimate goal is to become the prime conduit for opposition to the governor's progressive income tax if and/or when it reaches the ballot.
The coalition was founded by Chicago businessman Ron Gidwitz and former Illinois Manufacturers' Association honcho Greg Baise in 2004, and has since raised $30 million for various projects. Gidwitz is now an ambassador, so he's been replaced by his brother Jim. Day-to-day operations will be handled by Jason Heffley, who ran Republican Erika Harold's attorney general race last year. Mike Zolnierowicz, who was Gov. Bruce Rauner's first chief of staff and left during the first round of staff purges to work with Baise, will oversee the operation.
It's expected that if Pritzker can get a "fair tax" on the ballot next year, he'll put his money where his mouth is to pass it. And as we saw last year, the man can spend money faster than anyone outside the Pentagon.
Baise will try to tap into the resulting reaction of fear and loathing by upper income types to try and counter Pritzker's spending. It's a pretty good bet that the money will be there. The top task of wealthy Illinoisans for the past decade, including Rauner's election, was stopping a graduated income tax from being imposed here.
Pritzker ran on a promise of taxing the wealthy, so he likely interprets his 16-point win over Rauner as a mandate to get that done.
Baise's group, however, ran some election day polling which asked voters: "Do you support a progressive income tax - that is, a tax system that imposes a lower tax rate on low-income earners, while those with higher incomes pay a higher tax rate?" According to the We Ask America poll, 53 percent of Illinois voters supported the tax.
Now, you may or may not agree with the poll's wording. A slight change here and there and maybe the idea would've received more support (or less). The Pritzker campaign tested dozens of ideas before settling on the billionaire candidate saying he only wanted to raise taxes on people like him.
A state constitutional amendment requires the support of three-fifths of those voting on the question or a majority of those voting in the election, so 53 percent likely wouldn't be enough. And Colorado voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment just last year to increase taxes on people with incomes over $150,000 by a 53.5 to 46.4 margin.
The opponents' attack will include the easy layup of exploiting Illinoisans' distrust of their state government, particularly its inability to balance its budget over the years despite tax hikes. A hefty dose of messaging against the unpopular House Speaker Michael Madigan will undoubtedly be part of their play.
Baise and his associates do not want to get involved in Republican Party-type issues and just focus on beating back the progressive tax.
If President Trump is on the ticket next year, not a whole lot of money will be funneled into Republican state legislative races here because it would be so fruitless. And there are no statewide races except for U.S. Senate. But a progressive income tax ballot question could very well open up a whole lot of wealthy wallets, so, if nothing else, they have a decent business plan.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.
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In 1983, just before winning a third term as Louisiana's governor, Edwin Edwards famously said the only way he could lose the race was "if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."
Presumably, no one checked his yearbook.
Given mounting pressure on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam to resign due to a photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook and last year's inquisition of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, which included Senate questioning about his high school yearbook we clearly have a new exception to certain electability (or, as the case may be, confirmation): "if a yearbook reveals that I was once young and foolish." Implicit in this new category is that personal evolution isn't possible and redemption is dead.
Which raises several questions we must ask ourselves: What is the statute of limitations for being an inconsiderate, thoughtless, jerk-goofball-hellraiser? Can a person who misbehaved or acted offensively in high school, college or graduate school ever change? Does having lived an exemplary life as an adult mean anything?
The verdicts in both of these cases were swift and unyielding in the public square, where all accusations seem to be adjudicated these days. Kavanaugh, based largely on a single person's uncorroborated recollection, was virtually condemned as a would-be rapist. Although, ultimately confirmed, he is forevermore besmirched in certain quarters.
Much of what was treated by some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as the closest thing to evidence against Kavanaugh came from his high school yearbook page. "Did he or didn't he drink a lot of beer?" became an essential question of his character among Democrats on the committee. And, in some twist of logic, his answer some 40 years later was supposed to be correlative to his guilt or innocence of sexual assault. Obviously sexual assault is a horrific crime, but without conclusive evidence or corroborating testimony, there's no basis for a prosecution.
In Northam's case, a photo on his personal page in his yearbook featured two individuals one wearing blackface and the other dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The image isn't just offensive; it's appalling. Even way back in 1984, most would have found it so.
Did the young individuals think they were just goofing around? Most likely, but again, the image is too hurtful in the glare of history. Klansmen were and are terrorists who murdered, raped and lynched African-Americans and burned communities during a reign of terror that affected multiple generations. Horror, not humor, is the only appropriate response both to this history and to those who would mock it.
Northam apologized when the photo first surfaced which, in light of his life since medical school, would suffice in a normal world. But, not in today's arena. Yes, it was horrible and stupid, but might nearly 35 years of healing children and public and military service since then make up for a 20-something's poor choice? Does this isolated photo capture the essence and spirit of the now-59-year-old Northam?
The governor surely has made things worse for himself by changing his tune, now saying he doesn't think he's in the picture, combined with confessing to another experiment in blackface, also in 1984, when he performed Michael Jackson's moonwalk in a dance contest. It's nearly always true that it's best to apologize, full stop.
Interestingly, both Northam and Kavanaugh were faced with similar decisions whether to drop out and put an end to the public torture and protect their families or stay the course because surrender would seem an admission of guilt. We know by Northam's own words that he once played around with blackface which, again, is disappointing, but does it rise to the level of a firing offense these many years later?
For Kavanaugh, dropping out most likely would have meant an end to his judicial career, even at the lower court level. And then where would he go? What would he do with a ruined reputation and the forever suspicion that he was guilty?
Kavanaugh's story ended as it should have. By any measure of fairness, Northam deserves a chance to further redeem himself as governor.
Contact Parker at kathleenparker@washpost.com.
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NAPERVILLE A man shot and injured by suburban Chicago police after pointing what authorities initially thought was a real gun at them has been charged with aggravated assault.
DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin said in a release Friday that 27-year-old Zachary Kelley of Naperville was released last Friday from the hospital and taken to jail. He appeared in Bond Court the following day.
The release says Naperville police officers responded Jan. 23 to a report of man who had allegedly harassed a woman at a gas station. It adds the officers tried to talk with him and he pointed the weapon, later determined to be a pellet gun, at them.
Authorities say an officer fired his service weapon and struck Kelley.
It wasn't clear Friday afternoon whether Kelley has an attorney.
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The Green New Deal, which has so far been a campaign catchphrase about solving climate change and inequality in one fell swoop, just got real.
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts are introducing a joint resolution Thursday laying out the main elements of a legislative plan. It describes a 10-year "economic mobilization" that would phase out fossil fuel use and overhaul the nation's infrastructure while building whole new layers into the existing social safety net.
The 14-page resolution envisions a shift to 100% renewable and zero-emission energy sources, and calls for the creation of millions of new high-wage jobs to help wipe out poverty.
While calling for the elimination of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture, transportation, manufacturing and construction, the resolution contains no mention of bans or regulation, as other plans have described.
The closest it comes is a provision for existing and new laws to take into account the negative impacts of climate change an approach that the Obama administration had taken through incorporating the "social cost of carbon" into rulemaking, which the Trump administration has pulled back on.
Instead, the document emphasizes massive public investment in wind and solar production, zero-emission vehicles and high-speed rail, energy-efficient buildings, and smart power grids, as well as "working collaboratively" with farmers and ranchers to move towards sustainable agriculture techniques.
The resolution also fleshes out something that's been core to the idea of the Green New Deal from the beginning: Remedying historic injustices visited upon the poor and people of color.
Public investments should prioritize what the resolution calls "frontline and vulnerable communities," which include people in rural and de-industrialized areas as well as those that depend on carbon-intensive industries like oil and gas extraction.
And in a move that may draw support from a broad range of advocacy groups, the resolution sweeps in the full range of progressive policy priorities: Providing universal healthcare and affordable housing, ensuring that all jobs have union protections and family-sustaining wages, and keeping the business environment free of monopolistic competition.
The cost of all this, and where the money to pay for it will come from, remains unclear.
Ocasio-Cortez and the groups supporting her push for the Green New Deal have declined to put a price tag on the plan, and it still lacks enough specifics to estimate with any kind of precision.
An analysis of another, similar plan by the conservative American Action Forum found pegged the regulatory burden at about $1 trillion, before any new investments.
Still, the New Dealers argue that a federally-funded energy transition would stimulate growth by providing jobs, improving public health, and reducing waste. In addition, they argue that the government could capture more return on investment by retaining equity stakes in the projects they build. More generally, however, they brush off cost concerns by pointing to unquestioned government spending on wars and tax cuts, which have ballooned deficits in the past.
"The question isn't how will we pay for it, but what is the cost of inaction, and what will we do with our new shared prosperity created by the investments in the Green New Deal," reads a fact sheet distributed along with the resolution.
In recent weeks, people ranging from Beto O'Rourke to Mike Bloomberg have professed support for the general idea. But the sheer scale of the resolution, which would entail a much larger role for the federal government than has been seen since the Great Depression, may make it difficult for more moderate politicians to claim they support the Green New Deal as now defined.
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BLOOMINGTON Police said Friday an apparently drunken driver avoided an officer trying to make a traffic stop and ended up running into a utility pole, a shed and other property early Thursday in the 1600 block of Oakland Avenue in Bloomington.
Around 1:30 a.m., a McLean County sheriffs deputy attempted to make a traffic stop for a moving violation, but the driver did not pull over and the officer did not pursue the motorist, according to the sheriffs office.
Shortly after that, the driver went off the road, struck a utility pole, ran into the shed and damaged a couple of residences, according to Bloomington police, which was dispatched to the scene to assist with the crash.
The adult driver was arrested on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, driving with a suspended license, fleeing/attempting to elude and other traffic violations, according to the sheriff's office.
Paramedics were called to the scene, but the condition of the driver and passengers was not available on Friday.
No further information was available Friday afternoon, including the driver's identity.
Contact Kelsey Watznauer at (309) 820-3254. Follow her on Twitter: @kwatznauer.
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BLOOMINGTON A Normal man admitted his connection to a package containing 24 pounds of marijuana, a prosecutor said Friday at the suspect's bond hearing on felony drug charges.
Jeffory Lahr, 46, is charged with marijuana trafficking and unlawful possession of marijuana with intent to deliver the drug.
Lahr told agents with the Illinois State Police Task Force 6 drug unit that the package delivered to his residence in the 100 block of Liberty Road had no ties to other people at the address, according to Assistant State's Attorney Jeff Horve.
"It's all mine," Lahr told officers as they seized a package containing marijuana worth $100,000 on the street, the prosecutor told Associate Judge Sarah Duffy.
The prosecutor said the package originated in Colorado and the 21 packages of marijuana inside were intended to be sold in Illinois and Michigan.
The drug investigation by the multicounty drug enforcement unit focused on drug activity between Colorado and the Midwest, according to the prosecutor.
Lahr was jailed in lieu of posting $100,035.
Photos: 2018-19 McLean County jail mugshots
Contact Edith Brady-Lunny at (309) 820-3276. Follow her on Twitter: @pg_blunny
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BLOOMINGTON The state can use evidence collected in a police search of the home of a former Bloomington piano teacher accused of sexually assaulting three of his students, a judge ruled Friday.
A total of 38 counts have been filed against Aaron Parlier, accusing him of predatory criminal sexual assault, child pornography and sexual abuse involving three students and two other minors. The charges span a time frame of 2009 to 2016.
The 37-year-old defendant sat motionless, his eyes downcast, throughout the two-hour hearing.
Defense lawyer Gal Pissetzky argued the information used by police to request the search warrants came from minors allegedly assaulted several years earlier, making the information stale.
Authorities also failed to show a nexus existed between the alleged crime, the information and the suspect, said Pissetzky.
He said an initial search of an apartment in Bloomington where alleged victims claim Parlier molested them turned up no evidence because he had vacated the residence by the time police searched it. That showed the information was out of date, he said.
A second home in Mackinaw where police believed Parlier lived with his wife also was searched with a warrant based on the same information that formed the basis for the search of the apartment.
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The defense also argued the search warrant application sought computers and other devices not mentioned by the minors in their statements.
The circumstances of the Parlier case represent "the rare, exceptional case" because of the question of whether the information was current enough to warrant a search, said the defense lawyer.
Conclusions by the defense that police lacked potential evidence of a crime when they searched the suspect's home "defies logic," said Assistant State's Attorney Erika Reynolds.
The prosecutor listed specifics from the multiple interviews police conducted with the alleged victims, including descriptions of an ongoing sexual relationship allegedly lasting several years between the music teacher and a minor.
Reynolds also noted that Parlier admitted to police he engaged in the relationship and sent a sexually explicit photo to a girl to solicit her opinion before he sent it to his girlfriend. He did not deny having a student practice in the nude, the prosecutor added.
In his ruling, Costigan cited a distinction between potential evidence that may become stale, such as drugs, and computers that could contain evidence. He also found that a nexus could be drawn between Parlier and the items police sought as possible evidence.
It was not unreasonable for authorities to believe video and photos could be transferred from a video camera and stored on electronic devices not mentioned by the alleged victims, he said.
An April 5 hearing is set to review the status of the case.
Contact Edith Brady-Lunny at (309) 820-3276. Follow her on Twitter: @pg_blunny
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There will be many opportunities to celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 210th birthday Tuesday.
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Lincoln Land Community College, The Lincoln Home National Historic Site and Lincoln's Tomb will all host events. Here's a list:
Free admission at presidential museum
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, 212 N. Sixth St., will offer free admission, music, children's activities and reveal the winners in a statewide student art contest.
Museum admission usually costs $15 for adults and $6 for children. It is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
The Lincolns (portrayed by Randy Duncan and Pam Brown) will be at the museum from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Actors portraying a Civil War soldier and Lincoln's stepmother, Sarah, also will be on hand to chat with visitors.
Throughout the day, children can take part in arts and crafts activities. The museum also will demonstrate a 3D printer by creating a bust of President Lincoln.
The winners of an art contest on the theme "Art Connects History with the Future" will be announced and their work will go on display for the coming year.
The Navy Band Great Lakes Woodwind & Brass Quintet performs at 1 p.m.
Visitors can join the presidential library's foundation for half price on Lincoln's birthday. Membership includes free visits, special previews of new exhibits and other benefits. And anyone who spends more than $20 in the museum store that day will be entered in a drawing for a Lincoln gift basket.
Four authors at Lincoln symposium
Four renowned Lincoln authors and historians will highlight the Abraham Lincoln Symposium on Monday and Tuesday. The event will feature discussions on Lincoln as a political party leader, his time in the Illinois legislature, his thoughts about death and the race to photograph events following Lincoln's assassination.
The symposium begins at 6 p.m. Monday in the Old State Capitol Hall of Representatives with a free presentation by Brian Dirck, history professor at Anderson University and author of the forthcoming "The Black Heavens: Abraham Lincoln and Death."
The symposium resumes at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Old State Capitol, where Ron Keller, professor of history and political science and the managing director of the Abraham Lincoln Center for Character Development at Lincoln College, will discuss his forthcoming book, "Lincoln in the Illinois Legislature." He will be joined by Dickinson College history professor Matthew Pinsker, author of "Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home," who will discuss his next book in a talk entitled, "Boss Lincoln: New Insights on a Party Leader." The Tuesday morning session is free and open to the public.
The Thomas F. Schwartz Symposium luncheon, which begins at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, 112 N. Sixth St., features journalist and author Nicholas J.C. Pistor, who will discuss his recent book, "Shooting Lincoln: Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and the Race to Photograph the Story of the Century." The luncheon is $30 per person and reservations can be made at www.abrahamlincolnassociation.org or by calling (217) 546-2656.
A roundtable discussion featuring all four symposium speakers will begin at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at the presidential library followed by book signing that begins at 4 p.m.
ABC's Dan Abrams appears at banquet
Dan Abrams, ABC News' chief legal affairs anchor, the host of the A&E Network show "Live P.D." and the author of a best-selling book on Abraham Lincoln's last murder case as a lawyer, will be the featured speaker at the annual Abraham Lincoln Association Symposium Banquet on Tuesday at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel in downtown Springfield.
Abrams will discuss his New York Times best-selling book "Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency." The book examines the 1859 trial of Peachy Quinn Harrison, the son of a close Lincoln friend and political supporter, who was accused of murdering Greek Crafton, whom Lincoln had mentored and trained for a law career in his Springfield office. Lincoln won an acquittal for Harrison, and one year later would be elected President of the United States.
Dan Abrams' father, renowned First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, will receive the Lincoln the Lawyer Award during Tuesday's banquet. Floyd Abrams has argued numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, primarily on freedom of expression issues.
A banquet reception starts at 6 p.m. followed by dinner at 7 p.m. Tickets are $55 each and can be obtained online at www.abrahamlincolnassociation.org or by calling (217) 546-2656.
At the Lincoln Home
The Lincoln Home National Historic Site will host the invites the public to attend the George L. Painter Looking for Lincoln Lectures at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at the visitor center, 426 S. Seventh St.
The visitor center will open at 8 a.m. Monday, 30 minutes earlier than normal.
Author Erika Holst, curator of decorative arts at the Illinois State Museum, will return to discuss more of her book "Looking for Lincoln in Illinois: Historic Houses of Lincoln's Illinois," and musician Chris Vallillo will talk about and perform music that influenced the Civil War and modern Civil Rights eras.
Holst and other authors of Lincoln-related books will be at the visitor center's bookstore for a book signing.
Call the Lincoln Home 391-3221 for more information.
At LLCC
Lincoln Land Community College will host its 11th annual Lincoln Lecture at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the R.H. Stephens Room of Menard Hall on the Springfield campus, 5250 Shepherd Road.
Dr. Christian McWhirter, Lincoln historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, will speak on "Music in the Life of Mr. Lincoln." McWhirter will explore Lincoln's musical tastes and share stories about how the president used music to help with the Civil War and heal the nation's wounds. The presentation will feature music of the era performed by Benjamin Holbrook and Hannah Jellen.
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Rudy Flores (left) and Jeffery Rackliff, of Texas Forensics Associates, showcase a new camera developed by Fuji, expressly for law enforcement use. The X-T1 IR, a full-spectrum camera, can photograph evidence in every light spectrum, including ultraviolet and infrared, providing police with an invaluable forensic tool. (William Patrick)
Graveside services for William Parks Daniels, Jr., age 73, of Palestine is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday, June 20, 2021 at Bradford Cemetery in Troup under the direction of Herrington/Land of Memory Funeral Home. Mr. Parks passed away on Wednesday, June 16, 2021. View online at www.herringtonf
Kay Burney (LEFT) received the 2019 Best Neighbor of the Year award, presented by Rev. Lynn Willhite (RIGHT), founder of WE CARE Palestine, at Thursdays banquet. John Burney was not able to attend.
To the editor:
I am somewhat mystified by all of the hatred that I see shown to President Donald Trump. Trump may be a little rough around the edges. But this simply doesn't explain the high levels of hatred and venom sent to him every day by the media and opposition government leaders. It gets a bit discouraging after a while to see my beloved country behaving like this. We are better than this.
So what is going on? How is it that my beloved country has become so intolerant? So hateful? Of a democratically elected president?
Well, I went back to my history books, seeking answers.
I found another period in our country's past when a similar period of hatred and intolerance existed. I am speaking of the period of President Andrew Jackson. Yes, Jackson was just as vilified by the powerful institutions of the media and opposition political parties. Jackson was, as we remember, also very beloved by the people.
Jackson was an enemy of the group of powerful international bankers who had gained control of the banks of England and France. Their next logical target was the new United States of America. Their only big foe was a man named Andrew Jackson. Jackson was immensely popular, having just saved the nation by defeating the British at the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson realized that these European bankers would wrest financial control of our country if they ever gained control of our central bank. So he successfully single-handedly vetoed their efforts to set up their bank as our central bank.
But these immensely wealthy and powerful European bankers were not about to accept defeat. So they launched a huge campaign to destroy Jackson. Scandalous rumors, widespread lies and deceit were used to attempt to discredit Jackson. The full power of the media, bought politicians, and dishonest power brokers was thrown at Jackson.
After many years, Jackson eventually prevailed.
Trump's economic programs, including his stated goals of reigning in the power of the Federal Reserve, are a direct threat to this same power group of European bankers. So we see the full power of Hollywood, the media, and Washington power groups launched against Trump.
MIKE MILLER
Midland
We make little mistakes every day. It's why all the baristas at Starbucks call you "Dorba." But sometimes a little mistake can escalate into terrible mayhem -- the kind that doesn't just get you fired from a coffee shop, but sets you, the shop, and its adjoining buildings on fire. For example ...
5 A Mechanic Accidentally Blows Up Several Planes
Anyone who's ever mistakenly deleted a file knows that particular feeling of dread. Now multiply it by about a million, and you'll still be nowhere near what one mechanic felt when he unintentionally armed a fighter jet and caused $40 million worth of damage in a few seconds.
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In a chain of events straight out of a bad comedy, two mechanics were servicing an F-16 at Florennes Air Base in Belgium when one of them brushed the button activating the plane's Vulcan cannon. Instantly, the 20mm gun exploded in a hail of bullets, obliterating another F-16 parked in front of it. And right when the tech was figuring out how to spackle a million bullet-sized holes before his supervisor noticed, the plane exploded, damaging yet another fighter jet in the process.
At this point, it should probably be mentioned that the price tag per F-16 is around $19.6 million, so if you add up the two busted planes, the full tank of jet fuel, and about infinity rounds of 20mm ammo, it amounts to a big "You break it, you buy it." The canons and explosions were so loud that the two mechanics had to be rushed to the hospital with severe damage to their eardrums. Which might actually have been a kindness, given how many in the chain of command were lining up to yell at them.
Three Michigan State Police troopers from the Tri-City Post have been announced as this year's recipients of the Cpl. Samuel A. Mapes Criminal Patrol and Investigation Award.
Troopers Stephen Dehmel, Justin Kemerer and Alicia Sonderegger were recognized this week at a ceremony in Lansing.
The annual award is given to the top 5 percent of troopers within each district who look "past the traffic stop" by being proactive in their patrol and criminal investigations, said Lt. Jim Lang of the Michigan State Police. The number of investigations closed by felony arrests for each trooper is also taken into consideration.
"They track each officer's activity throughout the year to compile those numbers that meet that felony threshold," Lang said.
The award is named in honor Cpl. Samuel Mapes, a MSP trooper who was killed in the line of duty on May 1, 1927, after refusing to take a bribe. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, Mapes had stopped two vehicles suspected of hauling bootleg liquor when one of the drivers offered him a bribe of $300 to let them go. Mapes refused and was in the process of stopping a third motorist to ask them to call for assistance when the suspect came up behind him, grabbed his weapon and shot him.
Each recipient received a special service ribbon to wear with their uniform. The ribbons bear seven blue stars in honor of Cpl. Mapes, the seventh MSP officer to ever be killed in the line of duty.
Carter Harcek, of Midland, is getting his chance to make it in the movies. The 9-year-old will make his acting debut in the film "Asgaya Part 1 - The Shuet," scheduled to premiere this summer.
Harcek was introduced to acting through his aunt who is a casting director in Florida. She asked if he would like to audition for another movie, "Waves." Although Harcek landed a small part, he enjoyed his time meeting actors, improving his skills and learning about making movies. He went on to audition for other films, including the Asgaya series.
"I started liking acting because I got to be on camera," he said.
Asgaya director and writer Toni Morgan Haye along with producer and actress Vandana Singh chose Harcek mid-production after filming in Jamaica. They had selected Harcek for another upcoming project, but due to script changes and production challenges, they decided to include him in the Asgaya films. Within two weeks of the call, Harcek was filming in the California desert in November.
"I thought it was Michigan," Harcek said about the cold weather.
Asgaya is a five-part sci-fi movie series set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are nearly extinct to androids. Harcek's character of Xar is searching for his sister and comes across the main character, Max, portrayed by Singh.
"It's one of those films that you have to watch all the parts to understand what's happening," Haye explained.
Harcek, Haye and Singh quickly bonded during filming and post-production. Harcek will continue to appear in the following Asgaya films along with a B-list actor in the second installment. Haye and Singh made a trip to Michigan in January to visit Harcek and ended up shooting a short film at the Harcek cottage.
"It was a good education. It think it's a good example for kids at school too, to learn that we made a 10-minute movie and it took over 20 hours," said Harcek's mom, Angela.
"If you want it to be good, you definitely want to take your time," Haye added.
Back home, Harcek maintains a steady balance between his work as an actor, student and athlete. Angela credits Midland's supportive community as well as the understanding nature of Harcek's teachers.
"Woodcrest has been really good about working with us. He gets good grades, he's a smart kid, and as long as that keeps up, they continue to work with us."
"Asgaya Part 1 -The Shuet" is planned for a summer release on new media platforms including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Fandango. Haye and Singh expressed a hope to premiere the first movie in Midland.
As for Harcek, he is looking forward to growing up with the Asgaya films and pursuing options of directing and writing himself. When asked if he wanted to continue acting after Asgaya runs its course, he was adamant.
"Yes, badly. I love it."
Goose Creek, SC (29445)
Today
A mix of clouds and sun. High 83F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph..
Tonight
Partly cloudy skies. Low near 65F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
A fight between at least two men in Portland on a TriMet bus Friday led to one of them stabbed and another being sought for arrest, police say.
The injured man has since been taken to a hospital for treatment for an apparent non-life-threatening wound, according to Portland police. His assailant was gone by the time officers arrived.
Someone called 911 around 8:15 p.m. in the 8800 block of East Burnside Street to report the stabbing. The fight occurred on the bus and the people involved got off at some point on Burnside Street between 86th and 87th Avenue, police said. The injured man was later found outside by officers.
Portland police said its not immediately clear if the stabbing occurred on or off the bus. A TriMet spokesman said he had no record of a stabbing occurring on a bus in that area. No further information on the stabbing has been released by authorities.
Portland police ask anyone with more information on the stabbing to call the bureaus non-emergency line at 503-823-3333.
-- Everton Bailey Jr.
ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 |@EvertonBailey
Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.
A new federal tax incentive intended to help low-income areas could put Oregon taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in incentives to downtown Portland developers and investors from across the nation.
Though the opportunity zone program is national, Oregon will feel the tax impact thanks to the states own tax code. It automatically mirrors the federal one, so Oregon is effectively offering the same discount a second time on Oregon tax bills.
And it will be felt all the stronger because Gov. Kate Brown, working with Business Oregon, picked some of the states hottest real estate markets to be among the zones eligible for the tax incentive.
Critics are now calling on the Legislature to end Oregons part of the tax break, which they say will reward investors in projects that would have happened anyway.
A spokeswoman for Brown said she supports the idea of disconnecting from the federal tax code, but she hasnt publicly pushed for it. In a year when Democrats are focused on passing significant tax increases to pay for K-12 education and public pension costs, such a change might lack momentum.
State officials defended their choices of opportunity zone locations, saying that offering the tax incentives in areas already popular with developers gives Oregon a better chance at triggering an influx of out-of-state cash.
Looking forward, state leaders say they cant predict how much the opportunity zones will stimulate investment or affect state revenue, questions the Brown administration first raised a year ago but never answered.
***
The opportunity zone program, passed by Congress in the waning days of 2017 as part of President Trumps tax overhaul, allows an investor to sell something that has increased in value, such as stock or real estate, but delay paying taxes on their profits, known as capital gains, if they immediately reinvest in a building or business located in one of the zones.
When those investors sell their stake in the new investment after at least five years, the taxes on their reinvested capital gains are discounted by 10 to 15 percent.
But if they keep the new investment for at least 10 years, taxes on any capital gains reaped from the project are completely wiped away.
Nick Batz, policy and government affairs director for Business Oregon, the state economic development agency, explained the benefit in an email a year ago to agency Director Chris Harder:
It creates domestic tax havens. If Im an investor, I park my capital gains in the safest company I can find in one of these zones and wait ten years to withdraw ... tax free.
But economic development officials view Oregon as competing with other states for opportunity zone dollars.
Weve had a growing economy, Business Oregon spokesman Nathan Buehler said. But we dont want to take our foot off the gas.
The Oregonian/OregonLives review of 1,000 pages of public records revealed that Oregon leaders made the decision to go all-in on the opportunity zone program despite lacking answers to two key questions: How much tax revenue the state stands to give up and what economic payoff the investments might yield for Oregonians.
I suggest we start with staff from an economic development perspective and then we can follow up on the revenue impact side at a later date, Browns chief of staff Nik Blosser wrote in a Feb. 3, 2018, email. The biggest question I have is how much investment is this likely to incite -- Im assuming Business Oregon is doing this analysis.
In an interview a year later, Buehler of Business Oregon said, The answer is we dont know.
In the near term, the states tax agency estimates opportunity zones will cost Oregon $10.5 million in lost revenue in the current budget and $15.9 million in the next budget cycle.
Thats just state capital gains taxes that investors will defer on their previous gains that Oregon could otherwise tax by plowing the money into the new opportunity zones in Oregon or any other state. A bigger hit will almost certainly come a decade from now, when investors sell their stake in Portland opportunity zone investments.
Although Oregon doesnt have a handle on that future impact, state economist Mark McMullen said he expects opportunity zones will generate a relatively small portion of future capital gains in Oregon. The magnitude of the impact is not expected to be large relative to the huge size of total capital gains, McMullen wrote in an email.
Overall, capital gains are a significant chunk of the states $20.5 billion in general fund revenue this biennium. From 2017 through 2018, the state could receive roughly $1.4 billion in capital gains tax revenue, given taxable gains and average tax rate information provided by the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.
Still, the progressive tax advocacy group Tax Fairness Oregon and others are pushing lawmakers to end Oregons part of the tax break during the legislative session underway in Salem. House Bill 2144, introduced by the House Revenue Committee, would uncouple Oregons tax conformity for opportunity zones.
The double tax break is "clearly going to benefit the owners of projects that were going to happen anyway, said Jody Wiser of Tax Fairness Oregon. There will be some projects that will happen earlier than they might otherwise have gone in, but theres nothing in there that Oregons going to do to create additional public benefit."
Some developers, such as Vanessa Sturgeon of Sturgeon Development Partners, say the incentives are stimulating new investment.
Daniel Hauser, a policy analyst and registered lobbyist with the left-leaning Oregon Center for Public Policy, said the organization supports efforts to end the state tax incentive. Keeping it would mean less money for the states coffers and subsidizing investments that would already be happening, Hauser said.
However, Hauser said that killing the opportunity zone break ranks low on the policy centers priorities this session. Thats because its unclear how much the double tax break would lower state revenues, whereas the bipartisan momentum to raise business taxes by $1 billion a biennium or more this session would have a huge impact the states ability to fund education and other public services.
Sen. Mark Hass, a Beaverton Democrat and chairman of the Senate Finance and Revenue committee, said there are a couple proposals in the Legislature for Oregon to broadly stop copying federal tax code, a practice intended to simplify tax returns.
This points to a larger issue, Hass said. Should the state be connected to federal tax policy that nobody in the state had any role in creating? I think the answer is no.
As for why he isnt working to end the opportunity zone incentive specifically this year, Hass said the lack of information makes it unclear what lawmakers should do.
I dont have any intel on the extent theyre being used and whether theyre detrimental or good, he said. Business groups havent come and said they love it. Consumer groups havent come and said they hate it.
***
The program could, in fact, prove a timely shot in the arm for a regional construction market in a slump.
New development proposals have slowed thanks to the rising costs of construction materials and labor paired with flattening rents.
I think were actually going to see some projects come out of the ground now that would not have before, said Sturgeon, whose Sturgeon Development Partners has proposed building in opportunity zones in Portland and Salem. "I can tell already that money that was just sitting on the books is now going to be used out in the market and invested in projects that are going to create jobs."
Opportunity zone projects would have benefits to Oregon that would offset the loss of state taxes on capital gains, said Buehler, the Business Oregon spokesman. The investments bring an infusion of cash into the economy, generating income taxes on resulting jobs. New construction results in more property tax revenue for cities and schools.
Sturgeon, whose other company, TMT Development, most recently completed the downtown Park Avenue West Tower, is recruiting opportunity zone investors for a $285 million mixed-use tower on one of three sites in central Portland, as well as the renovation of a $43 million downtown Salem hotel.
Sturgeon said the materials sent to prospective investors dont factor in the matching state tax incentives. Nonetheless, she said, its always disappointing when Oregon decides to break from the federal government in a tax matter.
***
Opportunity zones are scattered throughout nearly every county in the state and throughout the country. But Portland in particular is poised to see an outsized influx of out-of-state investment.
The citys zones are an outlier nationally because theyre such hot construction zones already. They include downtown Portland, the Pearl District, the South Waterfront and much of the Lloyd District.
Real Capital Analytics, a New York company that analyzed opportunity zones for prospective investors, found Portland opportunity zones saw more than 40 percent of the citys commercial development by dollar volume over the last four years even though they contain just 13 percent of the citys land area and 9 percent of its population.
The opportunity zone program could further concentrate development in those areas, said Jim Costello, a senior vice president for the company. And investors will like that theres little ambiguity in Portlands downtown core over which sites are in opportunity zones and which arent.
The pain of traveling around the state and finding deals is negated when its very concentrated in the citys core, Costello said.
Another report, from the national developers coalition Locus, found that Portlands opportunity zones stood out as some of the most appealing for investors, given their already strong market demand.
But Portlands opportunity zones also rank high among areas with access to mass transit, a supply of affordable housing and vulnerable populations such as minority, low-income or disabled residents.
If communities dont act to protect those assets, Locus director Christopher Coes said, redevelopment in opportunity zones could kick displacement into overdrive.
Our hope is to make sure they have do-no-harm policies in place, Coes said. That could include policies that encourage the construction of housing over other uses, as well as affordable housing mandates and tenant protections, he said.
Portland has in place a zoning policy that requires developers to include affordable units in large housing developments, as well as a suite of new tenant protections passed as rents climbed in recent years. Some developers, however, have pointed to these policies as a contributing factor in the construction slowdown.
***
City economic development officials are watching with some apprehension to see what the flow of opportunity zone capital could bring.
I dont really believe this is structured as an economic development program, said Justin Douglas, a policy manager at Prosper Portland, the citys economic development agency. Its structured as a way for individuals to shield capital gains taxes, and it just happens to be through investments and businesses in low-income communities.
Portland took no position on the states opportunity zone selections, though one neighborhood Cully, which has seen some of the citys fastest-rising home prices in recent years opted out for fear it would advance gentrification. In a letter to the governors economic adviser Jason Lewis-Berry and a long list of state lawmakers and local officials, community groups asked to be left off Browns list.
Its not clear what cities like Portland can do to make sure the tax-advantaged development meets any kind of community need nor even to monitor what kinds of development its attracting.
Instead, they hope to harness it by joining in by using opportunity zone incentives to develop city-owned sites or selling sites to developers with strict community benefit agreements in place.
The most control that cities have over something like this is in a case where a municipal agency like Prosper Portland owns real estate, Douglas said. Otherwise its not clear how a local municipality, through the current structure of the program, could layer on any sort of local rules or notifications.
Elliot Njus | enjus@oregonian.com; 503-294-5034; @enjus
Hillary Borrud | hborrud@oregonian.com | 503-294-4034 | @hborrud
Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.
Victor Salazar and his wife are supposed to have Saturdays off.
But their family restaurant in Molalla was hosting a fundraiser last Saturday, and the couple picked up an extra shift to help out.
Little did they know, their extra effort would result in a major windfall.
Salazar and his wife, Lizeth Salazar Garcia, filled out a single Keno ticket. And, as the Oregon Lottery announced Friday, the Silverton couple won more than $45,000 much of which they plan to put toward medical bills for a loved ones liver transplant.
Whatever my dad needs we are going to cover it, Salazar told the Lottery. This came at a very good time.
Salazar told The Oregonian/OregonLive that his father and fathers brothers own the Molalla eatery, San Blas Family Mexican Restaurant.
But his fathers liver failed, and hes been in and out of the hospital as a result. He needs a full transplant.
Salazar doesnt know how much of the procedure his fathers insurance will cover, but he plans to help him with whatever he needs.
Hes going to finish paying off a few small bills, as well.
And he hopes that one day, hell be able to take his father fishing with his young family: his wife, 9- and 3-year-old boys, and a 1-year-old girl.
The family loves to fish, Salazar said, but his father has yet to be able to join them.
-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015
Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.
A southern Oregon woman was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder Friday after authorities say she tried to kill herself and a child by poisoning them both with carbon monoxide.
Someone called 911 around 10 a.m. in Rogue River and reported seeing Kyla Duncan, 49, in a car and appearing to try to kill herself, according to the Jackson County Sheriffs Office. Deputies arrived, saw a child also in the car, and then Duncan drove away.
Duncans car was later found and she was arrested, the sheriffs office said. The child wasnt seriously hurt and was released to relatives.
The sheriffs office hasnt said what the relationship between Duncan and the child is and hasnt released any more information in the case.
-- Everton Bailey Jr.
ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 |@EvertonBailey
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By Kevin Starrett
Kevin Starrett is director of the Oregon Firearms Federation.
The tsunami of anti-gun bills by Oregons Democratic legislative majority demonstrates that their real agenda is to eliminate as many rights as possible while achieving nothing productive. Some of it is surreal.
Democrats want to strip away Second Amendment rights from Oregonians old enough to fight and die in far-away lands, serve as Emergency Medical Technicians in fire departments and vote. Yet the same Democrats who think 18-to-20 year olds should have their gun rights taken from them have introduced a measure to allow them to serve as House representatives and senators. Presumably so they could then vote to attack their own rights.
A bill that sponsors say was drafted by Lake Oswego high school students would ban virtually all modern firearms, require background checks to purchase ammunition and limit those purchases to 20 rounds per month. Under Senate Bill 501, you would be required to get your sheriffs permission to simply buy a gun and a gun dealer would have to wait at least two weeks before you could take possession of one of the very few firearms you would be allowed to have. You would only be allowed to purchase one handgun and one long gun a month. If you did not lock up a gun and it was stolen, you could possibly get more jail time than the person who stole it.
Under this bill, a six-shot revolver would be contraband and it would be a crime to possess it. If you handed a friend a box of ammo (which typically come in boxes larger than the 20 rounds allowed) you would be required by law to maintain a record of that transfer.
In House Bill 2251, Gov. Kate Brown wants to define assault rifle as any long gun you can hold with two hands and forbid voting-age Oregonians from owning them. The new age restrictions are presumably a reaction to the Parkland, Florida, murders which had nothing to do with the age of the killer and everything to do with the perfect storm of government incompetence and police cowardice. The Las Vegas killer was in his 60s. Should we increase the minimum age for firearms owners to 70?
Ironically, former Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, whose job was to punish people he believed were discriminating, has requested his own bill, Senate Bill 87 mandating discrimination against young Oregonians who have done nothing wrong. Under these kinds of bills a 20-year-old mom whose husband was deployed overseas would be forbidden from having the means to defend her babies. His bill would shut down every youth shotgun league in the state.
Senate President Peter Courtney has a bill, Senate Bill 5, that could shut down every outdoor shooting range in the state.
Several bills require gun owners to either keep their firearms in a safe or secure them with a trigger lock (a dangerous practice) or a cable lock that can be defeated with a wire cutter.
Even if the owner did lose their firearm to a thief with a wire cutter (available in any hardware store), the gun owner would still be liable for anything the thief did with that gun.
Not a single bill increased penalties for theft of a firearm but they do make the victim of that theft a criminal.
It is ridiculous that the Democrats in control of the Oregon Legislature are wasting so much time trying to deny Oregonians their rights and property while the state faces such staggering problems they prefer to ignore. Our abysmal graduation rates, exploding public employee pension debt and crumbling mental health care systems put Oregon at the bottom of nearly every metric. Democrats should work on these problems instead of trying to destroy the rights of the law abiding.
EUGENE A former Springfield Christian school teacher has been sentenced to less than two years in prison for third-degree rape of a student.
The Register-Guard reports 30-year-old Andrea Baber pleaded guilty with the Douglas County District attorney to six counts of contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor and three counts of third-degree rape.
Through her plea deal, 20 additional charges, including sodomy and providing marijuana to a minor, were dismissed.
Babers 20-month prison sentenced will be followed by two years of supervision.
Court documents say Baber was arrested in December 2017 after the teenage victim's father received an anonymous email about their son and Barber.
Baber worked as a teacher at Logos Christian Academy in Springfield until just before her arrest.
A Wasco County judge ruled Friday that two immigration enforcement practices at the Northern Oregon Regional Corrections Center violate the states sanctuary law but upheld the jails contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The jail in The Dalles houses inmates for Wasco, Hood River, Sherman and Gilliam counties. But under an interagency agreement reached in 1999, it also has housed people detained by ICE on illegal immigration allegations.
Wasco County Circuit Judge John Wolf found that the regional jails past policy of notifying ICE agents of scheduled releases of inmates in state or local criminal cases violated Oregon law that prohibits using state resources to solely detain someone based on an alleged immigration violation.
The judge also ruled the jail cant hold inmates for ICE beyond the time that they would face for their criminal charge.
Yet the judge didnt nullify the regional jails contract with the federal immigration enforcement agency.
The jails contract to accept and provide for secure custody of federal detainees didnt violate state law, Wolf ruled. The judge considered the ordinary meaning of the word apprehending from the state sanctuary law to mean arresting or seizing someone, not holding someone in jail.
Wolfs ruling means ICE will still be able to house at the regional jail people it detains for alleged immigration violations who are awaiting transportation to prison or a hearing on their immigration status or deportation.
DOCUMENT: Judges ruling
The plaintiffs -- Wasco County taxpayers who filed the lawsuit in 2017 -- and the regional jail each declared a win.
We are pleased with the courts decision that NORCOR is violating Oregon law in some respects, but disappointed by the courts decision with respect to the ICE contract, said attorney Erin M. Pettigrew of Innovation Law Lab. It was a mixed bag for both parties.
Attorney Derek Ashton, who represents the regional jail, said he was pleased with the decision upholding the jails contract with ICE.
The contract at issue is critical to NORCORs budget and operations and eases a tax burden on the people of Wasco, Hood River, Sherman and Gilliam counties, he said in a statement. Todays decision ensures that critical funding source will remain in place.
The plaintiffs had alleged misuse of tax revenues for immigration enforcement. They established it costs $97 a day to house an inmate at the jail, and ICE reimburses the jail $80 an inmate.
As the suit was pending, the regional jail changed its policy in April.
Before then, NORCOR would notify ICE when a state or local inmate was scheduled for release on bail, on their own recognizance or after completing a sentence. ICE would then ask the jail through a paper form to detain the inmate longer on a federal hold. ICE would pay NORCOR to house the inmates once the paper transfer was done.
But the judge said that the form wasnt an arrest warrant, didnt show any show probable cause and wasnt signed by a judge.
When a state or local inmate is no longer subject to custody on those charges, NORCOR does not have authority to maintain custody and must release the inmate, Wolf ruled.
Since April, the jail has informed ICE of an inmates date of release, and if federal agents are present at the jail they may arrest the person in the lobby or the person is free to leave. A released inmate arrested by ICE in the lobby may be turned back to NORCOR to be held under the interagency agreement.
The judges ruled Friday, however, that any release notification by the jail to the federal agency violated the states sanctuary law.
The jail, though, can verify the immigration status of a person arrested for any criminal offense during the booking process. The jail notifies ICE when a foreign-born person is booked into the jail on state or local charges, either through the Law Enforcement Data System or the National Crime Information Center data system, or through an email or fax.
State lawmakers who adopted Oregons sanctuary law were clear that they intended to allow law enforcement officials to notify ICE about arrests so ICE to could follow up on their own, the judge found.
The lawyers for the jail argued that the plaintiffs concerns about its release notifications were moot after its April policy change.
But the judge noted there were no assurances the jail wouldnt reinstate the past practice, and at least one inmate had been held beyond his release date for ICE after April.
The Wasco County judges ruling likely wont be the last on this issue, as both sides may appeal.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
Hard times continue for Oregons colleges, particularly its small private institutions.
The Oregon College of Art and Craft called it quits Thursday after 112 years. After attempts at a last-ditch merger with Portland State University didnt work out, it notified students and faculty that it will close permanently as of May 19.
The Portland-area institution, in operation for more than 110 years, had been losing money for several years.
Meanwhile, Concordia University-Portland is also making changes. Students and faculty learned Thursday that Concordia will fold its English, history, chemistry, global studies and community psychology programs.
The consolidation comes a day after Concordia announced a $5 million gift from real estate developer Robert Randall and his wife, Marcia, to expand the universitys programs in business and technology.
Cost-cutting has become endemic at academic institutions all over Oregon as well as many nationwide. Many are struggling due to fewer paying customers. Enrollment has flattened and even declined at some schools, due to the strong economy.
Marylhurst, a small, private liberal arts college in Lake Oswego, closed for good in 2018.
Elsewhere, as at Concordia, the cuts have been more surgical.
McMinnville-based Linfield College is considering cutting faculty after earlier cuts to non-academic staff to deal with a budget shortfall in the neighborhood of $3 million. The Linfield board is expected to make a decision on the faculty cuts by May.
Willamette University in Salem has endured two years of budget cuts to deal with its own financial issues. It reduced its faculty headcount by about two-dozen after offering an early retirement program.
Even the big boys are feeling the pinch, given their dependence on state funding. The states seven public universities would be flat-funded under Gov. Kate Browns proposed biennial budget. Given ever-rising costs for retirement and benefits, a flat budget is effectively a budget cut.
Browns decision to say universities will have to hike student tuition unless lawmakers come up with new tax revenues is a political calculation. She wants the many fans of affordable higher education, including employers, college students and their parents, to chime in to let lawmakers know they support a tax increase for education.
Ed Ray, president of Oregon State University, warned against more tuition hikes saying too many young Oregonians are already priced out of college. In a speech Thursday to 700 OSU boosters, Ray urged the states leaders to listen to students. They will say that Oregons public universities no longer can be funded on their backs and the backs of their families.
The closure of the Oregon College of Art and Craft, which has operated from its scenic campus just west of Portland for 40 years, is no surprise. Plagued by financial losses and executive turnover, the schools board of trustees had been scrambling to find a path to solvency. Most recently, it explored a merger with Portland State, which backed off upon getting a closer look at the art schools financials.
Some prominent Portlanders were not convinced the school had to close. On Friday, Portland architect Stuart Emmons and Gallery owner Elizabeth Leach both called on the directors and community leaders to save the institution.
Lets bring in experts and work together to figure this out. I am sure we have people in this city who can figure out this challenge, Emmons said in an email obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive. No I am not going to the funeral (Honoring OCAC and its Legacy blah blah blah) tonight for this wonderful institution. Even though I dont usually make scenes, in this case, I would probably make a scene and start screaming. I am furious about this.
The school has 137 students enrolled, 50 of whom will graduate in May.
Concordia informed students on Friday of the looming restructuring. Just 40 students out of Concordias 6,000 total, will be impacted, spokeswoman Madeline Turnock said. The impacted programs are postponing enrollment of students next year. Students who were majoring in the discontinued programs will still be able to graduate from Concordia because required classes will be folded into other programs.
Turnock said its too early to know for sure how many faculty and staff could lose their jobs. The school will be offering an early retirement package to employees.
Some students are unhappy with the changes and vow to transfer. This is where I saw my future and obviously thats over, said August Alvarez, a 20-year-old junior from Baltimore. Everyones been telling me to get out, my Moms telling me to get out.
Brooke Nelson, a junior from Portland, said students feel blindsided. She fears that grad schools would look skeptically at an English degree from a school that no longer has an English department.
This is like a culling of the financial herd, Nelson said. These departments are rather small. Weve lost teachers every year.
(CNN) Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told a top aide in 2017 that he would use "a bullet" on Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a New York Times report citing U.S. and foreign officials with direct knowledge of intelligence reports.
The conversation -- with aide Turki Aldakhil -- occurred in September 2017, just over a year before Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was killed and dismembered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Times reported Thursday.
In the conversation, bin Salman reportedly said that if Khashoggi -- a Saudi royal court insider turned government critic -- could not be tempted back to the kingdom, then he should be returned forcibly. If that did not work, the Crown Prince said he would go after Khashoggi "with a bullet," the Times reported officials familiar with one of the intelligence reports as saying.
The recording was intercepted at the time by U.S. intelligence, the Times said. However, its significance was only understood when it was listened to by intelligence officers after Khashoggi's death.
The article also claimed that days before the conversation with Aldakhil, according to the same intelligence report, bin Salman complained to another aide, Saud al-Qahtani, that Khashoggi had grown too influential and was reportedly tarnishing his image as a reformer.
CNN has not seen or heard the intelligence reports and cannot independently verify the Times' claims. The Saudi government and Aldakhil didn't immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.
Riyadh has maintained that neither bin Salman nor King Salman knew of the operation to target Khashoggi last October. U.S. officials, however, have said such a mission -- including 15 men sent from Riyadh -- could not have been carried out without the authorization of bin Salman.
Saudi prosecutors have put 11 people on trial accused of Khashoggi's murder, demanding the death penalty for five of them. However, UN officials say the trial falls short of their call for an independent and international investigation, and U.S. officials say it has not reached the "threshold of credibility and accountability" they expect.
U.S. President Donald Trump has come under pressure from Congress and others to hold Saudi Arabia accountable over the Khashoggi case.
The White House faces a deadline Friday to respond to a Senate request for the President to determine whether bin Salman is responsible for a violation of human rights "against an individual exercising freedom of expression" under the Magnitsky Act.
Press freedom advocates urge action
Representatives from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch and other groups gathered near the White House on Thursday to draw attention to the looming deadline.
Courtney Radsch, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said a "strong response" from the U.S. administration and Trump himself "would send a message to the Saudi authorities that acts, such as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, will not be tolerated."
However, a source familiar with the administration's plans told CNN that the administration was expected to "double down on defending MBS. They think the pressure is fading." The source added that the expectation was that the White House would reiterate there is not a "smoking gun" directly tying the Crown Prince to the murder.
The CIA concluded that bin Salman ordered Khashoggi's murder, but Trump and some of his allies have cast doubt on the intelligence assessment.
The Trump administration has been reluctant to punish Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi's murder, citing economic benefits to the U.S.
UN rapporteur: Saudi Arabia 'curtailed' Turkey inquiry
Meanwhile, the UN Special Rapporteur leading an international human rights inquiry into Khashoggi's murder on Thursday accused the Saudis of having "seriously curtailed and undermined" Turkey's efforts to comply with the investigation by denying access to the consulate for almost two weeks after his October 2 killing.
"Inadequate time and access was granted to Turkish investigators to conduct a professional and effective crime-scene examination and search required by international standards for investigation," Agnes Callamard said in a preliminary report following a visit to Turkey last week.
Her team had, however, been given access to evidence "including to parts of the chilling and gruesome audio material obtained and retained by Turkish intelligence agency," Callamard said. She added that they were not able to undertake a deep technical examination of this material, and had not had the opportunity to independently authenticate the audio material.
Callamard called the journalist's murder "the gravest violation of the most fundamental of all rights, the right to life" and said it was "unconscionable" that the Saudi authorities continued to fail to disclose the whereabouts of his remains.
"Evidence collected during my mission to Turkey shows prime facie case that Mr. Khashoggi was the victim of a brutal and premeditated killing, planned and perpetrated by officials of the State of Saudi Arabia," she said.
"The mission could not firmly establish whether the original intention was to abduct Mr. Khashoggi, with his murder planned only in the eventuality of this abduction failing. What is abundantly clear is that much planning and preparation took place following Mr. Khashoggi's initial visit to the consulate on 28 September."
Callamard said she had requested an official country visit to Saudi Arabia in order for officials there to provide relevant evidence, shed light on the prosecution process and explain why the kingdom was denying Turkey's demand for the suspects' extradition.
The Saudis have presented shifting stories about Khashoggi's fate, initially denying any knowledge before arguing that a group of rogue operators, many of whom belong to bin Salman's inner circle, were responsible for the journalist's death.
This story was first published on CNN.com, "NYT: Saudi Crown Prince said he would use 'a bullet' on Khashoggi."
Sea snakes that can't drink seawater
Surrounded by salty water, sea snakes sometimes live a thirsty existence. Previously, scientists thought that they were able to drink seawater, but recent research has shown that they need to access freshwater. A new study published in PLOS ONE on Feb. 7 and led by Harvey Lillywhite, professor of biology of the University of Florida, shows that sea snakes living where there is drought relieve their dehydration as soon as the wet season hits, and do so by obtaining freshwater from "lenses" that form on the surface of the ocean during heavy rain--events in which the salinity at the surface decreases enough for the water to be drinkable.
The yellow-bellied sea snake (Hydrophis platurus) is the only reptile in the order Squamata that lives on the open sea. It has one of the largest geographic ranges of any vertebrate species. Given its broad range and seafaring existence, during the dry season (6-7 months at the study site in Costa Rica) it has no access to freshwater. How they survive in regions of drought seems to hinge upon access to freshwater lenses, but little is known about how marine vertebrates react to or consume rainfall. "This study contributes to a fuller understanding of how pelagic sea snakes, and possibly other marine animals, avoid desiccation following seasonal drought at sea," said Lillywhite.
The researchers captured 99 sea snakes off the coast of Costa Rica (interestingly, the snakes have never been observed in estuaries) and offered them freshwater in a laboratory environment. The team happened to be there just as six months of drought broke and the rainy season began. They found that only 13 percent of snakes captured after the rainfall began accepted the offer, compared to 80 percent of those captured before. The rainfall must have quenched their thirst.
The study continues many years of work by Lillywhite. The present paper was coauthored by Mark Sandfoss, Lillywhite's current PhD student, Coleman Sheehy, his former student who is now the Collections Manager in Herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, and then-Fulbright visiting scholar Jenna Crowe-Riddell.
"How these animals locate and harvest precipitation is important in view of the recent declines and extinctions of some species of sea snakes," said Lillywhite. The question remains: How will climate change and its effects on precipitation impact the sea snakes?
###
This story has been published on: 2019-02-09. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Watch out why Accountable Care Solutions Market 2019 is grow with huge demand by major companies Cerner Corporation (U.S.), IBM, United Health Group, Aetna, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions.
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Accountable Care Solutions Market is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of +15%. The base year considered for the study is 2018 and the forecast period considered is 2019 To 2025.(ACO) represents an amendment to the compensation from the procedure-based fees for the fees for quality, disease and condition-based reimbursement paid for payments to the health care provider in accordance with the case-based and per-person standards. As a responsible medical organization, in order to be commercially viable, you must decide whether it offers advanced levels of health care and upgraded proficiency. Responsible health solutions allow providers to use current systems and workflows, but they help integrate heterogeneous health record (EHR) data.The accountable care solutions market is expected to grow at a lucrative CAGR of 15% from 2017 to 2022, to reach USD 18.86 billion by 2022 from USD 8.76 billion in 2017. Market growth can be attributed to the growing need to adhere to regulatory guidelines, government initiatives for eHealth, high return on investment (ROI), and rising needs to curtail escalating healthcare costs. On the other hand, lack of in-house IT domain knowledge and reluctance among end users to adopt new methods are expected to restrain the overall market growth to a certain extent during the forecast period.For Sample Copy of this report:The accountable care solutions market is fragmented in nature with the presence of many small and big firms. The major players in the accountable care solutions market include Cerner Corporation (U.S.), IBM Corporation (U.S.), UnitedHealth Group (U.S.), Aetna, Inc. (U.S.), Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (U.S.), Epic Systems Corporation (U.S.), Mckesson Corporation (U.S.), Verisk Health (U.S.), Zeomega, Inc. (U.S.), e-Clinical Works, Inc. (U.S.) and NextGen Healthcare (U.S.).Market driversQuick and easy access to creditFor a full, detailed list, view the full reportMarket challengesHigh risk of credit defaultFor a full, detailed list, view the full reportAvail discount on this report:Geographically, North America is the major market for accountable care solutions, accounting for ~70% the global market share, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. However, Asia-Pacific and Latin America possess lucrative growth potential for the accountable care solutions market during the forecast period. This is mainly attributed to the extensive customer base in these regions due to large base of aging population, rising prevalence of various disorders increasing government initiatives for eHealth, rising medical tourism, and growing demand for quality healthcare in this region. Most of the accountable care solutions products and services in these regions will be driven by developing countries such as India, China, South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, and Mexico.For more enquiry:The report provides insights on the following pointers:Product Development/Innovation: Detailed insights on upcoming technologies, research & development activities, and new product launches in the accountable care solutions marketMarket Development: Comprehensive information about lucrative emerging markets the report analyzes the markets for accountable care solutions across regionsMarket Diversification: Exhaustive information about new products, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments in the global accountable care solutions marketTable of Contents:Global Accountable Care Solutions Market Research Report 2019-2025Chapter 1 Global Accountable Care Solutions Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Global Accountable Care Solutions Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Global Accountable Care Solutions Market ForecastAbout QYReports:We at, QYReports, a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers includes prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SMEs and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Global Vehicle Night Vision Systems (NVS) Market Report 2019-2025| Autoliv, Bendix Commercial Vehicles Systems, Robert Bosch, Continental, Delphi Automotive, FLIR Systems, HELLA KGaA Hueck & Co.
Vehicle Night Vision Systems (NVS) Market
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The statistics are represented in graphical format for a clear understanding on facts and figures.For more information on this report, please visit@The generated report is firmly based on primary research, interviews with top executives, news sources and information insiders. Secondary research techniques are implemented for better understanding and clarity for data analysis.The report for Vehicle Night Vision Systems (NVS) market industry analysis & forecast 2019-2025 is segmented into Product Segment, Application Segment & Major players.Region-wise Analysis Global Vehicle Night Vision Systems (NVS) Market covers: North America Europe China Japan India Southeast Asia Other regions (Central & South America, Middle East & Africa)The key players covered in this study Autoliv Bendix Commercial Vehicles Systems Robert Bosch Continental Delphi Automotive FLIR Systems HELLA KGaA Hueck & Co. 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Prepared Mixes Market Research Exclusive Report 2019-2025 | Top Key Players AngelYeast, Zeelandia (Wuxi), Puratos (Guangzhou), CSM (Shanghai)
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UpMarketResearch offers a latest published report on Global Prepared Mixes Market Analysis and Forecast 2018-2025 delivering key insights and providing a competitive advantage to clients through a detailed report. The report contains 124 pages which highly exhibit on current market analysis scenario, upcoming as well as future opportunities, revenue growth, pricing and profitability.Get Exclusive FREE Sample Copy Of this Report @Prepared Mixes Market research report delivers a close watch on leading competitors with strategic analysis, micro and macro market trend and scenarios, pricing analysis and a holistic overview of the market situations in the forecast period. It is a professional and a detailed report focusing on primary and secondary drivers, market share, leading segments and geographical analysis. Further, key players, major collaborations, merger & acquisitions along with trending innovation and business policies are reviewed in the report. The report contains basic, secondary and advanced information pertaining to the Prepared Mixes Market global status and trend, market size, share, growth, trends analysis, segment and forecasts from 2018-2025.The scope of the report extends from market scenarios to comparative pricing between major players, cost and profit of the specified market regions. The numerical data is backed up by statistical tools such as SWOT analysis, BCG matrix, SCOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and so on. The statistics are represented in graphical format for a clear understanding on facts and figures.The generated report is firmly based on primary research, interviews with top executives, news sources and information insiders. Secondary research techniques are implemented for better understanding and clarity for data analysis.The report for Prepared Mixes Market analysis & forecast 2018-2025 is segmented into Product Segment, Application Segment & Major players.Region- wise Analysis Global Prepared Mixes Market covers: North America Europe China Japan India Southeast Asia Other regions (Central & South America, Middle East & Africa)For More Information On This Report, Please VisitThe Major players reported in the market include: AngelYeast Zeelandia (Wuxi) Puratos (Guangzhou) CSM (Shanghai) Taichuang Food Orangerie (Shanghai) Griffith (Shanghai) McCormick (Guangzhou) Nisshin Saifun (Qingdao) Lam Soon (Hongkong) Shanghai Songjiang Bolex Food Yihai Kerry Bakerking International Xiamen Green Food Research AB Mauri (Guangdong) Rikevita Food (Tianjin) Newly Weds Foods (Beijing) Dacheng-Showa Food Bakel (Shanghai) Tianjin QuanshunGlobal Prepared Mixes Market: Product Segment Analysis: Bread Mixes Pastry Mixes Batter MixesGlobal Prepared Mixes Market: Application Segment Analysis: Household Bakery Shop Food ProcessingAvail Discount On this Report @Prepared Mixes Market Analysis and Forecast 2018-2025 report helps the clients to take business decisions and to understand strategies of major players in the industry. The report also calls for market- driven results deriving feasibility studies for client needs. UpMarketResearch ensures qualified and verifiable aspects of market data operating in the real- time scenario. The analytical studies are conducted ensuring client needs with a thorough understanding of market capacities in the real- time scenario.Global Prepared Mixes Market: Key Stakeholders: Prepared Mixes Manufacturers Prepared Mixes Distributors/Traders/Wholesalers Prepared Mixes Subcomponent Manufacturers Industry Association Downstream VendorsIn this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Prepared Mixes are as follows: History Year: 2013-2017 Base Year: 2017 Estimated Year: 2018 Forecast Year 2018 to 2025Key Reasons to Purchase: To gain insightful analyses of the market and have a comprehensive understanding of the Global Prepared Mixes Market Analysis and Forecast 2018- 2025 and its commercial landscape. Learn about the market strategies that are being adopted by your competitors and leading organizations. To understand the future outlook and prospects for Prepared Mixes market analysis and forecast 2018- 2025.Customization of the Report:UpMarketResearch provides free customization of reports as per your need. This report can be personalized to meet your requirements. Get in touch with our sales team, who will guarantee you to get a report that suits your necessities.About UpMarketResearch:The UpMarketResearch () is a leading distributor of market research report with more than 800+ global clients. As a market research company, we take pride in equipping our clients with insights and data that holds the power to truly make a difference to their business. Our mission is singular and well- defined we want to help our clients envisage their business environment so that they are able to make informed, strategic and therefore successful decisions for themselves.Contact Info:Name: Alex MathewsEmail: Alex@upmarketresearch.comOrganization: UpMarketResearchAddress: 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United States
Digital Transformation In Manufacturing Market: Comprehensive study explores Huge Growth in Future| Accenture, Google, Capgemini, Siemens, Cognex, IBM
Digital Transformation In Manufacturing Market
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Digital transformation in manufacturing seizes the modern world and is expected to change the whole process of value creation in industries. This transformation affects the operational value creation process, enables new ways of doing business and leads to fundamental changes in organizations. For instance, Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT (IIoT) is a term coined for the mixing of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices with the technological world. In addition to this, IT modernization will fuel digital transformation. This growth is primarily driven by The evolution of Industry 4.0 manufacturing in developed economies, Increasing Penetration of IoT and Adoption of the Cloud Platform and IT modernization will fuel digital transformation.Major Companies Profiled in This Report Include,Accenture PLC. (Republic of Ireland), Google (United States), Capgemini (France), Siemens AG (Germany), Cognex Corporation (United States), IBM Corporation (United States), Microsoft Corporation (United States), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd (United ,Kingdom), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) (United Kingdom), The Hewlett-Packard Company (United States), SAP SE (Germany), Dell EMC (United States), Oracle Corporation (United States), Adobe Systems Inc (United States)Get Sample Copy of This Report:AdvanceMarketAnalytics follow a focused and realistic research framework that provides the ability to study the crucial market dynamics in several regions across the world. Moreover, an in-depth assessment is mostly conducted by our analysts on geographical regions to provide clients and businesses the opportunity to dominate in niche markets and expand in emerging markets across the globe. This market research study also showcase the spontaneously changing Manufacturers landscape impacting the growth of the market. Furthermore, our market researchers extensively analyse the products and services offered by multiple players competing to increase their market share and presence.Globally, a noticeable market trend is evident Adoption of IIoT and Industry 4.0. Major Manufacturers, such as Accenture PLC. (Republic of Ireland) , Google (United States) , Capgemini (France) , Siemens AG (Germany) , Cognex Corporation (United States) , IBM Corporation (United States) , Microsoft Corporation (United States) , Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd (United Kingdom) , PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) (United Kingdom) , The Hewlett-Packard Company (United States) , SAP SE (Germany) , Dell EMC (United States) , Oracle Corporation (United States) and Adobe Systems Inc (United States) etc have either set up their manufacturing facilities or are planning to start new provision in the dominated region in the upcoming years.Get Reasonable Discount on This Premium Report:Table of Content1. Market Overview1.1. Introduction1.2. Scope/Objective of the Study1.2.1. Research Objective2. Executive Summary2.1. Introduction3. Market Dynamics3.1. Introduction3.2. Market Drivers3.2.1. The evolution of Industry 4.0 manufacturing in developed economies3.2.2. Increasing Penetration of IoT and Adoption of the Cloud Platform3.2.3. IT modernization will fuel digital transformation3.3. Market Challenges3.3.1. Lack of digital skills and resources in emerging economies3.3.2. Cyber threats might challenge for the very market3.4. Market Trends3.4.1. Adoption of IIoT and Industry 4.04. Market Factor Analysis4.1. Porters Five Forces4.2. Supply/Value Chain4.3. PESTEL analysis4.4. Market Entropy4.5. Patent/Trademark Analysis5. Global Digital Transformation In Manufacturing, by Application, Deployment Type, Solution Type and Region (value and price ) (2013-2018)Get More Information:Advance Market Analytics is Global leaders of Market Research Industry provides the quantified B2B research to Fortune 500 companies on high growth emerging opportunities which will impact more than 80% of worldwide companies' revenues.Our Analyst is tracking high growth study with detailed statistical and in-depth analysis of market trends & dynamics that provide a complete overview of the industry. We follow an extensive research methodology coupled with critical insights related industry factors and market forces to generate the best value for our clients. We Provides reliable primary and secondary data sources, our analysts and consultants derive informative and usable data suited for our clients business needs. The research study enable clients to meet varied market objectives a from global footprint expansion to supply chain optimization and from competitor profiling to M&As.Analyst : +1 (206) 317 1218 (US)Sales : +1 (206) 317 1218 (US)info@advancemarketanalytics.comHead Office (IN): 107, 1st Floor, Town Square, Viman Nagar, Pune India - 411014
Generic Drugs Market Emerging Trends,Forecasts 2018-2026 And Major Key Companies - TEVA PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES, MYLAN N.V., NOVARTIS INTERNATIONAL AG,
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Generic drugs market growth is buoyed by increasing number of patented expiries for drugs each year. According to the IMS data small-molecule products worth US$ 121 Bn are expected to lose patents in developed markets, such as U.S and Europe between 2014 and 2018. The IMS also forecasts that biologic products valued at US$ 48 Bn are expected to lose patent protection over the next three years i.e from 2017 and 2020, which is expected to drive growth of the generic drugs market.Global generics market is highly competitive with many Asia Pacific companies entering the developed markets such as the U.S., Germany, France, and UK. Recent past has witnessed spurt in mergers and acquisitions between generic drug manufacturers, with major players focusing on enhancing their product portfolio through such inorganic strategies. For instance, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Pvt. Ltd., Pfizer, Inc., Mylan, Sun Pharmaceutical, and Fresenius Kabi entered into acquisitions to increase their revenue share in the generic drugs market.Request Sample Copy Of This Business Report:Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries strengthened its position in the generic drugs market through acquisition of the generic segment of Allergan, plc for US$ 40.5 billion in August 2016. This resulted in significant growth in revenue contribution of its generic drug segment, pegged at US$ 9.5 billion in 2016.Mylan ranks second in the list of generic drug manufacturers, and this is due to the acquisition valued at US$ 7.2 Bn of Swedens Meda by Mylan, in year 2016. This also aided Mylan to increase its sales of over-the-counter drugs and expand its presence in new emerging markets such as China, Southeast Asia, Russia, and the Middle East.SandozNovartis Groups business segment dealing in generic medicinesreported rampant growth of 9% Y-o-Y in 2016, in sales volume, with revenue pegged at US$ 9 Bn. However, it was partially offset by a 6% erosion in price. Pfizer is at the fourth position (US$ 4.6 Bn revenue in 2016). Pfizer acquired Hospira in 2015, in order to increase its product portfolio of both generic and branded products. Pfizer offers over 220 injectable medications, plus other off-brand products, which is expected to aid in gaining high revenue in near future. Patent loss of Viagra in 2017, will lead to significant generic competition from Teva and Mylan.Fresunius Kabi, a generic arm of the Fresenius German Healthcare Group, reported a 4% growth in revenue from the U.S. in 2016 driven by strong sales of sterile injectable drugs. In 2017, the company entered into agreement to buy Akorna generic drugs manufacturerfor US$ 4.5 Bn, further strengthening its position in the market. For Endo Pharmaceuticals, till 2014, the generic segment did not generate significant revenue. However, following its acquisition of Par Pharmaceutical in 2015, revenue of Endo Pharmaceutical increased by 12.2% from 2012-2014. Following the acquisition, Endo enhanced its product portfolio with the addition of around 100 products, which also included profitable generic products.Increase in number of competitors for generic drugs market put the pressure on manufacturers of pricing. Moreover, price celling actions by respective governments is further aggravating the profit margins of generic drug manufacturers. Considering the challenges of pricing pressure as generics outfits feel the pinch with thin margins, the market is expected to exhibit steady growth in the future.Being a very lucrative market with a number of patent expires in the near future, it is essential for competitive analysis for market players. This could aid one in devising a unique strategy and process to sustain in this highly competitive generic drugs market.Download the PDF brochure:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Danlaw, Azuga, Bosch profiled in OBD Aftermarket to grow at 17% CAGR to 2024| Key players are CalAmp, Metromile, Mojio, Continental, Intel Corporation, Verizon Communications
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North America is estimated to account for the largest share of over 40% in the global OBD aftermarket by 2024. The market growth in this region is attributed to technological advancements in the transportation infrastructure and the high penetration of the smartphones and cloud technology in the region. The extensive presence of some of the leading global auto manufacturers and suppliers is also contributing to the growing automobile industry in the region. These players have made significant investments in their manufacturing facilities and R&D departments to develop new and advanced vehicle models. For instance, in January 2018, Ford Motor Company announced that it is planning to increase investments in electric vehicles to USD 11 billion by 2022 with 40 electric and fully-hybrid vehicles in its portfolio.Request for a sample of this research report @Onboard Diagnostics (OBD) aftermarket is projected to surpass USD 1.5 billion by 2024. Onboard diagnostics refers to a vehicle?s self-diagnostics and reporting capabilities. The technology facilitates the monitoring and evaluation of the vehicle?s engine and its sub-components to ensure that all components are functioning properly. Vehicle owners and the car technicians use OBD devices to gain access to a real-time status of the vehicle subsystems. A simple OBD system consists of various sensors that collect the data from various vehicle components, refine, and process this data to gain valuable insights, that further aid in the diagnosis and repair of faulty components. These systems are currently being used with telematics that enables vehicle owners to detect issues such as low performance, and heavy emissions along with the real-time driver behavior.Company profiled in this report based on Business overview, Financial data, Product landscape, Strategic outlook & SWOT analysis: Autel Intelligent Technology Corp.,Ltd. Automatic Labs AVL Ditest Azuga Bosch Diagnostics CalAmp Continental AG Danlaw, Inc. ERM Electronic Systems LTD Geotab Inc. Innova Intel Corporation Magneti Marelli S.p.A. Metromile Mojio TomTom International BV. Vector Informatik Verizon Communications Xirgo Technologies, Inc.The automotive industry uses two types of OBD hardware devices, viz., OBD scanners and OBD dongles. The scanners are more like code readers or scan tools that read codes from any vehicle equipped with OBD II. The OBD dongles are gaining more popularity among fleet managers. The dongle is a visible accessory that can be connected to the driver?s smartphone, plugged directly into the OBD II port, and can also be connected in an effortless way to a network. As these devices can be independently used and do not require any wired connection, the demand for dongles is projected to grow swiftly over the forecast timeline.Browse Full Report @The OBD aftermarket is projected to register a lucrative growth at a CAGR of over 17% between 2018 and 2024. The growth can be attributed to the factors such as an increase in vehicle production and the growing need to implement emission control norms and regulations to tackle air pollution. The significant investments made by the automotive manufacturers and the aftermarket service providers around the globe are contributing to an increasing demand for the development of connected vehicles. The rapid growth of the automobile industry has forced the manufacturers to offer more robust OBD devices, particularly for light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles.Another factor driving the growth of the OBD aftermarket is the increasing shift toward Usage-Based Insurance (UBI) to promote safer driving practices among the drivers. OBD devices help auto companies and insurance providers to set the premium amount depending on the driver?s driving habits, distance traveled, and the status of the vehicle. Based on these considerations, the insurance companies can decide whether to reward or penalize the customer.Asia Pacific OBD aftermarket is estimated to register the fastest growth at a CAGR of over 20% from 2018 to 2024 due to the rapid growth in the automobile industry, particularly in China, India, and Japan. With huge investments by domestic and global auto players in the region, the market is projected to grow swiftly during the forecast timeline. For instance, in April 2018, the Hinduja Group flagship Ashok Leyland (ALL) in India made an announcement to invest Rs 1,000 crore to revamp its capacity and launch 20 new vehicles by the end of 2018. Similarly, in July 2018, Tesla planned to open a new electric car production plant in Shanghai to produce 500,000 cars a year. Due to a speedy growth in the automobile sector, the demand for OBD devices to tackle and diagnose the faulty emission-control systems is projected to increase during the forecast period.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @The government agencies in the region have also implemented several emission standards to minimize the pollution levels and associated health hazards. For instance, in July 2018, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry announced that car manufacturers have to comply with Euro 4 Emission Standards for all petrol-powered vehicles by September 2018 while diesel-powered vehicles will follow the standards from 2020. Also, in July 2018, the Chinese government released the China VI emission standard for heavy vehicles, which mandates Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF) on all heavy-duty vehicle models introduced after 2021. Such initiatives are expected to further facilitate the growing demand for OBD solutions in the region.Browse Related Report:Video Conferencing Market Size ByPR Component (Hardware [Multipoint Control Unit (MCU), Codecs, Peripheral Devices], Software [On-premise, Cloud], Service [Professional, Managed]), By Type (Room-Based, Telepresence, Desktop), By Application (Corporate Enterprise, Education, Government, Healthcare), Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia & New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Africa), Growth Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 2024About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
Virtual Private Network (VPN) Market to grow at 15% CAGR by 2024| By Key Vendors: Anchorfree Gmbh, IBM Corporation, Microsoft, Google, Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Opera Software, Avast Software s.r.o, Blackberry Limited
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The North America region is leading the VPN market with over 35% share in 2017. The growing number of cyber-attacks on enterprises across various business verticals drives the growth of the market. This encourages the organizations to implement VPN solutions to shield their company resources from unsanctioned access. The European region is predicted to grow at a CAGR of over 13% during the forecast timeframe. This can be credited to the presence of a favorable regulatory scenario mandating various commercial establishments to adopt advanced cybersecurity mechanisms to protect the data. The Asia Pacific region is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20% over the forecast timeframe. The extensive digitalization across various business verticals and increasing proliferation of smartphones are further adding to the growth of the market.Request for a sample of this research report @VPN Market is anticipated to exceed 54 billion by 2024. The market is driven by the growing adoption of VPN services across numerous industry verticals. The organizations are using VPN technology to enhance their network security and provide remote access to company resources. It is used to encrypt data transferred over public networks to safeguard the company?s sensitive information. In addition, the increasing frequency of advanced and sophisticated cyber-attacks are also adding to the growth of the market. The companies are looking for solutions to protect their transactions conducted over untrusted networks.Company profiled in this report based on Business overview, Financial data, Product landscape, Strategic outlook & SWOT analysis: Airvpn Di Paolo Brini Anchorfree Gmbh Anthasoft, S.A. De C.V. Array Networks, Inc. Avast Software s.r.o Blackberry Limited. Bufferd Inc. Checkpoint Cisco Systems, Inc. Citrix Systems, Inc. Columbitech Ab Cryptzone Cyber Ghost Express VPN, LLC Golden Frog, GmbH Google, Inc. IBM Corporation Juniper Networks, Inc. Microsoft Corporation Mudhook Marketing, Inc. NCP engineering GmbH NetMotion Software, Inc. Nord VPN OPENVPN, Inc. Opera Software Safer Social Ltd. Smith Micro Software, Inc. TunnelBear, Inc. WatchGuard Technologies, Inc. Windscribe LimitedThe widespread adoption of trends, such as BYODs, is driving the growth of the VPN market. Permitting employees to link their devices to the company?s network exposes the company to various security issues. This makes the organizations susceptible to data thefts & frauds. The VPN technology allows companies to encrypt any information on the employee devices and scans for malware & trojans to secure company?s data from unauthorized access. The explosion in mobile and wireless devices is also adding to the growth of the VPN market. The declining prices and improvements in the internet speeds are nurturing the adoption of mobile devices across consumers and businesses.Browse Full Report:The hardware market holds over 45% stake in the VPN market. The growth is attributed to the growing demand for VPN routers among various business verticals and network service providers. The VPN router protects various devices and ensures security against WebRTC & DNS leaks. The software market is predicted to attain a growth rate of over 18% during the forecast timeline. The market is led by the rising adoption of trends, such as digital mobility, across multiple business sectors.The Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) market accounted for over 40% of the revenue in 2017. The deteriorating ATM/Frame-relay market is anticipated to drive the growth of the MPLS market. The enterprises are using the MPLS VPN solutions to prioritize applications by class of service. The cloud VPN market is expected to growth at a CAGR of 21% over the projected time period. The snowballing shift toward virtual applications and increasing demand for cloud services are propelling the growth of the cloud market. The mobile VPN market is anticipated to attain a growth rate of 17% over the forecast timeline. This growth is attributed to the growing incidence of cybercrime activities, which led the companies to adopt mobile VPN solutions to safeguard company resources.The site-to-site market is dominating the VPN market with a market share of over 40%. The inexpensive nature of the site-to-site topology is driving the adoption across various business sectors and service providers. It eradicates the need for distinct VPNs in individual systems, thus providing cost-effective solutions to reduce security vulnerabilities. The remote access market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 17% over the forecast timeframe. This growth is credited to the rising need for affordable means of sending secure data over untrusted networks. The extranet market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 15% over the forecast timeline. The companies are embracing the extranet framework to gain a competitive edge over their competitors by maintaining good relations with their customers.The commercial market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of over 15% during the projected timeline. The commercial segment consists of BFSI, healthcare, IT, manufacturing, and government verticals. The healthcare organizations are incorporating VPN solutions to protect their patient?s sensitive information and for digital recordkeeping. The consumer market is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 20% over the projected time period. The rising internet penetration and widespread adoption of mobile-enabled devices are propelling the growth of the consumer market. Moreover, customers are also using VPN products & services to gain access to restricted content and secure their devices from unauthorized access.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @The players operating in the VPN Market are AirVPN, Anthasoft, NCP Engineering GmbH, TunnelBear, Inc., WatchGuard Technologies, Inc., Safer Social Ltd., Smith Micro Software, Inc., NetMotion Software, Inc., OpenVPN, Inc., Opera Software, Avast Software s.r.o, Buffered, Ltd., Microsoft Corporation, Mudhook Marketing, Inc., IBM Corporation, Juniper Networks, Inc., Golden Frog GmbH, Google, Inc., Columbitech AB, CyberGhost VPN, ExpressVPN LLC, Cryptzone, Cisco Systems, Inc., Citrix Systems, Inc., Checkpoint Software Technologies, Blackberry Limited., Array Networks, Inc., AnchorFree GmbH, and Windsribe Limited. The VPN market is dominated by prominent companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, Google, and IBM. The vendors are offering discounts to increase their market penetration and solidify their position in the market. They are also forming alliances with other regional players to increase their distribution. For instance, in March 2018, Jupiter Networks formed a strategic alliance with NCP Engendering to provide VPN remote access features for its SRX series firewalls. This partnership is expected to strengthen its VPN capabilities and increase its compatibility with various third-party solutions.Browse Related Report:Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, China, India, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, GCC, South Africa), Growth Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 2024About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. 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Digital Banking Market will be valued USD 9000 billion by 2024|By Key Vendors: Oracle, SAP SE, Intellect Design Arena, Kony, BNY Mellon, Finastra Fiserv, Temenos, Backbase
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Asia Pacific is dominating the digital banking market with over 60% stake in 2017. The growing penetration of internet services and the adoption of smartphones are supporting market growth. Moreover, the digitalization initiatives launched by the government of emerging economies including India and China will also foster the demand for digital banking.Request for a sample of this research report @Digital Banking Market is anticipated to surpass USD 9 trillion mark by 2024 due to the rising investments in the Fintech market. Fintech has emerged as the most disruptive technology and venture capitalists and angel investors are investing billions to take advantage of the lucrative market. The banking institutes are also collaborating and investing in Fintech companies to develop their own digital solutions for customers to meet the consumer requirements.Company profiled in this report based on Business overview, Financial data, Product landscape, Strategic outlook & SWOT analysis: Appway Backbase BNY Mellon CREALOGIX ebanklT ETRONIKA Fidor Solutions Finastra Fiserv Halcom D.D. ieDigital Intellect Design Arena Kony NETinfo NF Innova Oracle SAB SAP SE Sopra TCS Technisys Temenos WorldlineThe increasing adoption of mobile & online banking platforms is also propelling the market growth. As the adoption of smartphone and internet services across the countries is increasing, consumers prefer mobile applications and websites to access their banking accounts. Furthermore, the integration of the advanced technologies, such as AI and blockchain, into the banking is also fostering market growth.Browse Full Report:The supportive government initiatives and policies across the countries are also promoting the adoption of digital banking solutions. The governments are constantly working on delivering banking services via the internet to reach remote areas. The digitalization & demonetization policies launched by the government will also encourage the adoption of digital banking solutions.Retail banking holds over 75% share in the digital banking market. The market is driven by the rising adoption of the internet and smartphones across the countries. As the adoption of the internet services and smartphones is increasing, and the information is easily available to customers, the buying of consumers is increasing. This is forcing banking institutes to provide a better customer experience and reach customers on their choice of the channel. Moreover, the increasing adoption of mobile and electronic payment solutions and the attractive offers and incentives offered by the payment solution providers are also the major forces accelerating the adoption of digital banking.The corporate sector is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of over 6% over the timeline. The increasing competition among Fintech players is the primary factor driving the adoption of digital banking in the corporate banking sector. Moreover, the integration of advanced analytics technologies such as Big Data to manage the assets, will reduce the risks and extract consumer insights, encouraging the adoption of digital solutions.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Transactional services account for more than 90% share in the digital banking market. The market growth is credited to the growing adoption of electronic & mobile payment solutions. As the younger population across the countries is increasing, the demand for faster, convenient, and safer payment solutions is also rising. This is encouraging banking institutes to develop their own mobile & online platforms and provide services on the digital channel to gain customer loyalty and reduce the churn rate.The key vendors operating in the digital banking market are Backbase, BNY Mellon, Appway Crealogix, EdgeVerve Systems, ebanklT ETRONIKA, Finastra, Fiserv, Fidor, IE Digital, Halcom Intellect Design Arena, NETinfo, NF Innova, Kony, SAB, SAP, Oracle, Sopra, TCS, Technisys, Tagit, Worldline, and Temenos.Browse Related Report:Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, China, India, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, GCC, South Africa), Growth Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 2024About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. 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Patient Simulator Market Research Report 2019-2025 Estimated with Trends, Forecast Analysis and Strategies of Top Key Players
Patient Simulator Market Research Report 2019-2025
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UpMarketResearch offers a latest published report on Global Patient Simulator Market Analysis and Forecast 2019-2025 delivering key insights and providing a competitive advantage to clients through a detailed report. The report contains 115 which highly exhibit on current market analysis scenario, upcoming as well as future opportunities, revenue growth, pricing and profitability.Get Exclusive FREE Sample Copy Of this Report @Patient Simulator Market research report delivers a close watch on leading competitors with strategic analysis, micro and macro market trend and scenarios, pricing analysis and a holistic overview of the market situations in the forecast period. It is a professional and a detailed report focusing on primary and secondary drivers, market share, leading segments and geographical analysis. Further, key players, major collaborations, merger & acquisitions along with trending innovation and business policies are reviewed in the report. The report contains basic, secondary and advanced information pertaining to the Patient Simulator Market global status and trend, market size, share, growth, trends analysis, segment and forecasts from 2019-2025.The scope of the report extends from market scenarios to comparative pricing between major players, cost and profit of the specified market regions. The numerical data is backed up by statistical tools such as SWOT analysis, BCG matrix, SCOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and so on. The statistics are represented in graphical format for a clear understanding on facts and figures.The generated report is firmly based on primary research, interviews with top executives, news sources and information insiders. Secondary research techniques are implemented for better understanding and clarity for data analysis.The report for Patient Simulator Market analysis & forecast 2019-2025 is segmented into Product Segment, Application Segment & Major players.Region- wise Analysis Global Patient Simulator Market covers: North America Europe China Japan India Southeast Asia Other regions (Central & South America, Middle East & Africa)For More Information On This Report, Please VisitThe Major players reported in the market include: Laerdal Medical CAE Healthcare Gaumard Scientific 3B Scientific SimulaidsGlobal Patient Simulator Market: Product Segment Analysis: Childbirth Simulator Adult Patient Simulator Infant Simulator OtherGlobal Patient Simulator Market: Application Segment Analysis: Training EducationThe Report covers in- depth analysis as follows: Chapter 1 Overview of Patient Simulator Chapter 2 Global Market Status and Forecast by Regions Chapter 3 Global Market Status and Forecast by Types Chapter 4 Global Market Status and Forecast by Downstream Industry Chapter 5 Market Driving Factor Analysis of Patient Simulator Chapter 6 Patient Simulator Market Competition Status by Major Manufacturers Chapter 7 Patient Simulator Major Manufacturers Introduction and Market Data Chapter 8 Upstream and Downstream Market Analysis of Patient Simulator Chapter 9 Cost and Gross Margin Analysis of Patient Simulator Chapter 10 Marketing Status Analysis of Patient Simulator Chapter 11 Report Conclusion Chapter 12 Research Methodology and ReferencePatient Simulator Market Analysis and Forecast 2019-2025 report helps the clients to take business decisions and to understand strategies of major players in the industry. The report also calls for market- driven results deriving feasibility studies for client needs. UpMarketResearch ensures qualified and verifiable aspects of market data operating in the real- time scenario. The analytical studies are conducted ensuring client needs with a thorough understanding of market capacities in the real- time scenario.Global Patient Simulator Market: Key Stakeholders: Patient Simulator Manufacturers Patient Simulator Distributors/Traders/Wholesalers Patient Simulator Subcomponent Manufacturers Industry Association Downstream VendorsIn this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Patient Simulator are as follows: History Year: 2014-2018 Base Year: 2018 Estimated Year: 2019 Forecast Year 2019 to 2025Key Reasons to Purchase: To gain insightful analyses of the market and have a comprehensive understanding of the Global Patient Simulator Market Analysis and Forecast 2019-2025 and its commercial landscape. Learn about the market strategies that are being adopted by your competitors and leading organizations. To understand the future outlook and prospects for Patient Simulator market analysis and forecast 2019-2025.Avail Discount On this Report @Customization of the Report:UpMarketResearch provides free customization of reports as per your need. This report can be personalized to meet your requirements. Get in touch with our sales team, who will guarantee you to get a report that suits your necessities.You can also ask for region wise market research report, as below: Patient Simulator - Global Market Status & Trend Report 2019-2025 Top 20 Countries Data Patient Simulator - North America Market Status and Trend Report 2019-2025 Patient Simulator - South America Market Status and Trend Report 2019-2025 Patient Simulator - Europe Market Status and Trend Report 2019-2025 Patient Simulator - EMEA Market Status and Trend Report 2019-2025 Patient Simulator - Asia Pacific Market Status and Trend Report 2019-2025 Patient Simulator - China Market Status and Trend Report 2019-2025 Patient Simulator - India Market Status and Trend Report 2019-2025 Patient Simulator - United States Market Status and Trend Report 2019-2025About UpMarketResearch:The UpMarketResearch () is a leading distributor of market research report with more than 800+ global clients. As a market research company, we take pride in equipping our clients with insights and data that holds the power to truly make a difference to their business. Our mission is singular and well- defined we want to help our clients envisage their business environment so that they are able to make informed, strategic and therefore successful decisions for themselves.Contact Info:Name: Alex MathewsEmail: Alex@upmarketresearch.comOrganization: UpMarketResearchAddress: 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United States
Covid-19 origin: Was right about China virus coming from Wuhan lab, says Donald Trump
Trump says India has just been devastated by COVID-19
Second Trump-Kim summit to take place in Hanoi
International
oi-Deepika S
Washington, Feb 09: President Donald Trump has announced that his summit later this month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be held in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump said on Twitter.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said.
Kim and Trump met in Singapore last year, marking the first bilateral meeting between leaders of the two countries.
South Korea ecstatic over Trump-Kim meeting in Vietnam later this month
While North Korea since then has refrained from overtly provocative actions like testing nuclear warheads or ballistic missiles, it has yet to agree to actually give up any piece of its atomic arsenal.
Addressing Congress, Trump said progress has been made in his administration's efforts to achieve peace on the Korean peninsula.
"We continue our historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula. Our hostages have come home, nuclear testing has stopped and there has not been a missile launch in more than 15 months," Trump said during the address that lasted for more than 80 minutes.
"Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong-un is a good one," Trump said.
"Chairman Kim and I will meet again on February 27 and 28 in Vietnam," he said.
Trump-Kim Jong to meet again in February: White House
Trump, however, also gave an ominous warning about the risks of heightened tensions with Pyongyang.
"If I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea," Trump said.
Trump and Kim signed a vaguely worded agreement at their first summit in Singapore pledging to work toward full denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Members of Trump's administration, meanwhile, acknowledge North Korea is still developing a nuclear weapons programme and US sanctions on the country remain in place.
Some actions by Indian government inconsistent with democratic values: Top US official
Who is Lina Khan, the new US antitrust watchdog?
US: Connecticut becomes the 19th state to legalise recreational marijuana law, with sales aimed for May 2022
Proposed US law to end Green Card country-cap to benefit Indians on H-1B
International
oi-PTI
Washington, Feb 09: Powerful lawmakers in the US House of Representatives and the Senate have introduced identical legislations, which if passed would end per-country green card limit and benefit hundreds and thousands of Indian professionals waiting to gain permanent legal residency in the country.
Top companies from the Silicon Valley like Google and corporate bodies such as US Chambers of Commerce are backing the legislations.
If passed by Congress and signed into law, the legislations would benefit hundreds and thousands of Indian professionals on H-1B visas whose current wait time for permanent legal residency is more than a decade.
The H-1B visa, most sought-after among Indian IT professionals, is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
Trump promises changes to H1-B visas, including potential citizenship
Having a Green Card, officially known as a Permanent Resident Card, allows a person to live and work permanently in the United States.
According to some recent studies, some categories of those Indian professionals face a wait of 151 years under the current system which imposes a country cap on people who get green card.
The United States makes currently 140,000 green cards available every year to employment-based immigrants, including many who first arrive in US on temporary H-1B or L visas.
The existing law, however, provides that not more than seven per cent of these green cards can go to nationals of any one country - even though some countries are more populous than others.
Because of this seven per cent limit, for example, a Chinese or Indian post-graduate may have to wait half a decade or more for a green card, much longer than a student from a less-populated country.
In the Senate, Republican Mike Lee and Democratic presidential aspirant Kamala Harris introduced the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act Wednesday, a bill that would remove per-country caps for employment-based green cards.
"Ours is a nation of immigrants, and our strength has always come from our diversity and our unity," Harris said.
"We must do more to eliminate discriminatory backlogs and facilitate family unity so that high-skilled immigrants are not vulnerable to exploitation and can stay in the US and continue to contribute to the economy," said the Indian-American Senator.
Co-sponsored by 13 more Senators, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act increases the per-country caps for family-sponsored green cards from seven per cent to 15 per cent.
Without adding any new green cards, it creates a "first-come, first-served" system that alleviates the backlogs and allows green cards to be awarded more efficiently.
"Immigrants should not be penalised due to their country of origin," Lee said.
"Treating people fairly and equally is part of our founding creed and the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act reflects that belief. Immigration is often a contentious issue, but we should not delay progress in areas where there is bipartisan consensus just because we have differences in other areas," Lee said.
The bill has also been endorsed by Immigration Voice, Compete America Coalition, the Information Technology Industry Council, Google, Walmart, the US Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, The Heritage Foundation, La Raza, and many others.
An identical bill -- Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act (HR 1044) -- was tabled in the US House of Representatives by Congressman Zoe Lofgren and Ken Buck, Chair and Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, with co-sponsorship of a bipartisan group of 112 Congressmen.
Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act alters the per-country limits for employment-based immigrants so that all are treated equally regardless of their country of birth.
Noting that the immigration system is severely broken, and it has been broken for decades, said Lofgren said at the heart of this broken system are the outdated employment- and family-based immigration systems, which suffer under decades-long backlogs.
"In combination with the per country limits, these backlogs keep nuclear families apart for decades, while preventing US employers from accessing and retaining the employees they need to stay competitive. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act begins to address these problems and makes the immigration system somewhat more rational. It is a small, but good step forward," Lofgren said.
Buck said year after year, he has met with constituents who come here legally on work visas from India or China and face decades-long wait times for obtaining permanent residence.
"We want to ensure America remains globally competitive, we need to ease the backlogs and leverage the talent and expertise of our high-skilled immigrants who help strengthen the US economy and fill knowledge gaps in certain fields," he said.
These are people who have helped America grow and thrive as a nation of immigrants and the US needs to make sure the system continues to value those who are following American laws and doing the right thing, Buck argued.
Aman Kapoor, co-founder and president of Immigration Voice, welcomed the move.
"It would help to grow our economy by allowing highly skilled immigrants to start their own companies and hire American workers. And, it will finally remove the last vestiges of discrimination from our high-skilled immigration system," Kapoor said.
PTI
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 9:13 [IST]
Pakistan says India should avail its offer for consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav
Pak says will present all evidence before ICJ on Kulbhushan Jadhav
International
oi-Oneindia Staff
By Anuj Cariappa
Islamabad, Feb 09: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Pakistan would provide all the evidence of "sabotage activities" by former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on February 19.
Jadhav, 48, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on spying charges in April 2017. India moved the ICJ in May the same year against the verdict.
The world court has halted Jadhav's execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it.
ICJ to start final hearings on Kulbhushan Jadhav's case from Feb 18
Both India and Pakistan have already submitted their detailed pleas and responses in the world court and it has decided to hold hearings in the Jadhav case from February 18-21, 2019.
India denies all the charges and maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Navy and that he has no links with the government.
In its written pleadings, India had accused Pakistan of violating the Vienna Convention by not giving consular access to Jadhav.
In response, Pakistan through its counter-memorial told the ICJ that the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations 1963 applied only to legitimate visitors and did not cover clandestine operations.
India has been maintaining that the trial of Jadhav by a military court in Pakistan was "farcical". Qureshi, who is on a visit to the UK, said that Pakistan has all the evidence against Jadhav.
"Pakistan has all the evidence against Jadhav of sabotage activities inside Pakistan. Jadhav has admitted to being involved in such activities. Pakistan's legal team will present its stance in the case at The Hague on the 19th of this month," the Geo News quoted Qureshi as saying at a reception in Manchester.
Here is the evidence Pakistan claims it has against Kulbhushan Jadhav
"Pakistan's legal team will present its stance in the case that the Indian spy has already confessed of being involved in terrorist activities carried out in Pakistan," another paper, the Express Tribune quoted him as saying.
Pakistan says its security forces arrested Jadhav from Balochistan province in March 2016 after he reportedly entered the country from Iran.
In its submission to the ICJ, Pakistan had stated that Jadhav is not an ordinary person as he had entered the country with the intent of spying and carrying out sabotage activities.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 6:07 [IST]
Nawaz Sharif, daughter, son-in-law's names to remain in Exit Control List
International
pti-PTI
Islamabad, Feb 9: The Pakistan government on Saturday rejected prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter and son-in-law's requests seeking removal of their names from the Exit Control List (ECL), which is preventing them from flying abroad.
In October last year, Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Mohammad Safdar had separately applied to the Interior Ministry seeking removal of their names from the ECL, the Geo News reported. In their petitions, the trio argued that the Exit From Pakistan Rules 2010 did not apply to them as they were not involved in corruption, misuse of authority, terrorism or any conspiracy and thus their names should be removed from ECL.
[Nawaz Sharif uses Ghalib's poetry to explain his condition in jail]
The Ministry of Interior rejected the petitions of Nawaz, Maryam and Capt (retd) Safdar, the report said quoting sources. The decision to place the names of the Sharif family on ECL was taken on August 20 last year during a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan. In July 2018, an accountability court in Islamabad convicted Sharif, Maryam and Safdar in the Avenfield properties case and sentenced them to prison terms of 11 years, eight years and one year, respectively.
[Sharif showing "vague symptoms", not completely well: Special medical board]
On September 19, Sharif, Maryam and Safdar were released from jail after the Islamabad High Court suspended their sentences in the Avenfield case. In December last year, the Accountability Court in Islamabad sentenced 69-year-old Sharif to seven years of rigorous imprisonment in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills graft case, but acquitted him in the Flagship Investments case. The former premier is serving the jail term in Kot Lakhpat prison since then.
PTI
Woman in whose abdomen a scissor was left after surgery stable now
India
oi-Vikas SV
Hyderabad, Feb 9: In a shocking case of medical negligence, a pair of forceps was left inside a woman's abdomen after a surgery which was conducted at Hyderabad's Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) in November last year.
The surgical forceps remained inside her stomach for over three months and she had to endure excruciating pain for close to a hundred days. It was only recently that an X-Ray scan revealed that a forceps was inside her.
A surgery to remove the forceps was done today and she is now said to be stable.
"The patient complained of pain in her abdomen. She had undergone a hernia surgery on Nov 2. Today, an artery forceps was found in her abdomen after tests. The medical team removed it after operation. She is stable now. An internal committee will investigate it," ANI quoted Director of NIMS Dr K Manohar as saying today.
[Shocking medical botch up: Baby's head left inside womb during delivery in Ramgarh]
Accusing the doctors of their criminal negligence in conducting surgeries, relatives of the patient had on Saturday staged a dharna in front of the hospital and demanded action against the surgeons who botched up the surgery.
An internal committee has been constituted to probe the matter. Three doctors - Beerappa, Venu and Varma participated in the surgery, as per an HT report.
Hyderabad police have registered a case in this matter.
"Case has been registered against the team of doctors who performed the surgery. The probe is on," Vijay Kumar, ACP Panjagutta, told ANI.
[Twin baby case: No medical negligence on part of Max Hospital, says DMC]
In another case of medical negligence which came to fore in January this year, the nurses at a health centre in Rajasthan's Ramgarh allegedly pulled a premature baby so hard that its head was left inside the womb. Two male nurses were said to be at the centre of this major medical botch up in which the foetus broke into two parts. The nurse allegedly pulled the baby's legs with excessive force during delivery.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 19:49 [IST]
Shiv Sena says BJP's focus is UP polls instead of tackling COVID-19
Shiv Sena MP slams UGC for asking varsities to put up banners thanking PM for free vaccination drive
Was Rafale deal meant to strengthen IAF of industrialist: Shiv Senas poser
India
oi-Oneindia Staff
By Anuj Cariappa
Mumbai, Feb 09: The Shiv Sena Saturday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should answer whether the Rafale deal was meant to strengthen the Air Force or a financially-troubled industrialist.
The party's remarks came after a report in The Hindu newspaper Friday claimed that the Defence Ministry had raised strong objections to "parallel discussions" conducted by the PMO during the negotiations over the Rs 59,000 crore Rafale deal between India and France.
Lie 1 to 10: The BJP's ten point rebuttal to Rahul Gandhi's Rafale claim
The Sena, in an editorial in its mouthpiece 'Saamana' said Modi gave a speech on "patriotism" in Parliament on Thursday and defended the deal. "But the very next day, the 'black page' (document) came out, which silenced those raising patriotic slogans and thumping benches in the House," it said.
Without naming anyone, the Shiv Sena said that Modi was expected to answer if the deal was finalised to strengthen the Air Force or a financially-troubled industrialist.
Referring to Congress president Rahul Gandhi's constant criticism of the government on the Rafale issue, the Uddhav Thackeray-led party also asked why the opposition should be blamed for it.
"The opponents may perish (politically), but truth will stay alive," it said.
"The prime minister made the oft-repeated allegation (in Parliament) that the Congress does not want strengthening of the defence services. And the next day, documents surface, showing how extreme Modi's personal interest in the deal was. What to make out of it?" the Sena asked.
"Modi was directly 'dealing' in the Rafale transactions. Key people like defence minister, defence secretary were kept away from it. Modi himself took decisions on issues like prices of Rafale (planes) and who would get its contract. Hence, he will have to face allegations and criticism," it claimed.
"How does seeking explanations on issues of national security become criticism of the country," the party asked.
Modi had Thursday said in Parliament that the opposition could criticise him and the BJP, but not the nation over the issue.
'Over-reaction': Manohar Parrikar reply to MoD dissent note on Rafale
The Sena on Saturday further alleged that the definitions of nationalism and patriotism stood "changed" under the current BJP-led regime.
"Those who sing paeans of Rafale deal are patriots, while those raising questions about its pricing are being labelled as traitors now," it claimed.
The BJP's warring ally added that people of the country would keep asking questions till they get a satisfactory answer on why a plane costing Rs 500 crore was bought at Rs 1,600 crore.
It also said that Modi had ruled the country single-handedly for the past four-and-half years. "Yet, blaming the Congress for issues such as price rise and corruption is akin to shrouding own (the government's) failures," it said.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 13:37 [IST]
From Yakub Memon to Afzal Guru: Here is what their last wish was before they were hanged
Valley remains tense on 6th death anniversary of Afzal Guru
India
oi-Vicky Nanjappa
Srinagar, Feb 09: With several in the state of Jammu and Kashmir observing the 6th death anniversary of Afzal Guru, the situation is tense. Security has been stepped up and a high alert declared.
The Intelligence Bureau has advised the state remains in a state of high alert until February 11th on which day the death anniversary of Maqbool Bhat falls.
Intelligence reports state that several elements would try and create trouble ahead of the death anniversaries of Guru and Butt, which fall on February 9 and 11 respectively. Both separatists and terror groups would look to create trouble, the IB note states.
Why the ghost of Afzal Guru is set to return to the Valley
Meanwhile the Hurriyat has called for a complete shut down of the Valley on February 9 and 11. A statement read, " the struggle and sacrifices rendered by the great leader of Kashmiri freedom struggle Muhammad Maqbool Butt and son of Kashmir Muhammad Afzal Guru are glorious chapter of our resistance history. Indian not only hanged these Kashmiris at gallows but also has kept their mortal remains under its custody till now. The struggle, passion for freedom and sacrifices of these great Kashmiris will always remain a beacon light for Kashmiri Nation."
Further a demand to return the mortal remains of Afzal Guru and Butt would be made. The Hurriyat says that the mortal remains be returned to their mother land for proper burial. A memorandum to this effect would also be sent to the UN.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 11:55 [IST]
This tiny coastal Kerala village is set to disappear because of mining; govt unmoved
India
oi-Shubham Ghosh
Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 9: Kerala is in the headlines for a number of reasons and one of them being the dissent of the residents of Alappad, a tiny coastal village in the district of Kollam in South Kerala.
The reason for their anger is that the village is slowly disappearing because of allegedly illegal mining activities and the residents have launched a 'Save Alappad' campaign which has crossed over 100 days now, the Quint reported.
North Indian students not allowed to conduct 'Saraswati Puja' in Kerala College
Maps from 1955 show that Alappad once had covered an area of 89 square kilometres and six decades later, that area has shrunk to just seven square kilometres. According to the local residents, reckless mining activities have caused brisk land erosion, posing danger to the settlement's existence.
The coastal village is sandwiched between the Arabian Sea on one side and an inland lake on the other and if the land erosion is not arrested, the two water bodies that are only 30 metres apart now would soon merge, leaving the village alive only in the pages of history.
Spearheading the fight to save the settlement is a septuagenarian named K Chandra Das who was quoted by the Quint as saying: "Our experiences have made us understand that our land has shrunk due to mining activities alone, no matter what others say."
The state government, however, is in no mood to budge. As per the report, there are two PSUs - Indian Rare Earth Ltd owned by the Centre and the Kerala State Metals and Minerals Ltd of the state - that are permitted to mine in the area.
According to the protesters, the Kerala government has strongly said that it has secured environmental clearances and will continue mining in the area.
The activists counter by saying that the mining firms do not have any permission from the Pollution Control Board and the activities they have undertaken are illegal.
Kerala bizman pays Rs 31 lakh only to get fancy number for his car
On February 5, the New Indian Express cited Kerala's Industries Minister EP Jayarajan as saying that the state government has no plan to suspend mining activities in the area.
He also told the daily that mineral sand is as precious to Alappad as petroleum is to the Gulf countries and the state has potential to earn crores of rupees from it and termed any effort to oppose the mining can be seen as an act sabotaging the state's industrial growth.
On Thursday, February 7, Jayarajan also said a committee comprising MLAs and the district collection has been set up to study the issue related to mining in Alappad, the NIE reported.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 10:03 [IST]
Reforms by conviction and incentives says PM Modi in blog post
Mehbooba Mufti arrives in Delhi to participate in all-party meeting to be chaired by PM Modi tomorrow
PM Modi in Northeast Updates: 'I'll ensure implementation of Assam Accord, says PM Modi
India
oi-Chennabasaveshwar P
New Delhi, Feb 9: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's blitzkrieg campaign in three Northeastern states marked by inauguration of several development projects ahead of the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha elections. PM Modi's visit to the three northeastern states is part of his ten-state visit in just five days.
PM started his campaign with visit to Arunachal Pradesh; he laid foundation for projects worth Rs 4,000 crore. He said that additional projects worth Rs 13,000 crore is in progress in the state.
The Sela Tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh will provide all-weather connectivity to Tawang Valley for civilians as well as security forces throughout the year. The tunnel will reduce travel time to Tawang by an hour and boost tourism and related economic activities in the region.
Also, PM Modi dedicated a new TV Channel DD Arun Prabha at Itanagar. The channel will be the 24th channel operated by Doordarshan.
First time a CM sat on Dharna to protect looters, says PM Modi; Mamata hits back
PM Modi assured the people of Assam and the Northeast that the citizenship bill will in no way cause harm to their interests. Addressing a public rally in this assembly constituency of Assam Health Minister and BJP-led NEDA convener Himanta Biswa Sarma, he said the NDA government is committed to protecting the language, culture, resources, hopes and aspirations of the people of Assam and the Northeast.
In Agartala, PM Modi dedicated Garjee - Belonia Railway Line to the nation at Swami Vivekananda Stadium.
Citizenship Bill: PM Modi welcomed with black flags, protests in Guwahati
This line will boost Tripura as the gateway to South and Southeast Asia. Mr Modi will also inaugurate New Complex of Tripura Institute of Technology at Narsingarh.
PM Modi arrived in Guwahati on Friday evening on a two-day visit to North East. Prime Minister will reach Itanagar from Guwahati this morning and unveil a series of development projects at IG Park.
(With Agency inputs)
PETA India urges Pak minister to stop exporting donkeys to China for cruel killing: report
India
oi-Shubham Ghosh
Mumbai, Feb 9: After the news that Pakistan has plans to export donkeys to China for killing for the procurement of 'ejiao', a gelatine used in traditional Chinese medicine, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India has written to Pakistan's Federal Minister for National Food Security and Reserach Shahibzada Muhammad Mahboob Sultan to stop execution of the plan, Times of India reported.
The letter has referred the Pakistani minister to PETA Asia's probe into brutal killing of donkeys in China.
It said that China had no laws to protect donkeys unlike Pakistan and urged Sultan to try ways to boost the Pakistani economy by bettering efficiency through industry programmes to replace the animals with machines, like it is done in India.
It said Pakistan should try other means to improve its economy instead of sending donkeys to China for commercial purposes that only expose them to painful deaths.
The demand for ejiao has gone up so fast that not only donkeys but other animals like horses, pigs and cows are also being slaughtered for fake eijao.
PETA India CEO Dr Manilal Valliyate was quoted by ToI as saying: "PETA India is calling on Pakistan to spare donkeys tremendous suffering and stop supporting a cruel slaughter industry by implementing mechanisation programmes. We also urge everyone to choose only foods and medicines that don't contain donkey gelatine and to encourage their friends and family members to do the same."
The donkeys, even the young ones, are hit in their head with sledgehammer following which their throats are slit and left to die an agonising death.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 15:18 [IST]
Pak gets a new NSA: He is Imran Khans special assistant on national security
Once Kashmir issue is resolved, no need for nuclear arsenal says Imran Khan
Pak PM has yet again demonstrated lack of understanding about India's secular polity: MEA
India
oi-Vikas SV
New Delhi, Feb 9: Hitting back at Imran Khan for his remarks on minorities in India, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has said that India has leaders of all faiths who occupy highest Constitutional and official positions. The MEA said that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan lacks understanding about India's secular polity.
"Pakistan Prime Minister's remarks are egregious insult to all citizens of India. Pakistan's PM has yet again demonstrated his lack of understanding about India's secular polity and ethos," ANI quoted an MEA statement as stating.
"India has leaders of all faiths who occupy its highest Constitutional and official positions. Pakistani citizens of non-Islamic faith are barred from occupying high Constitutional offices. Minorities are often turned away from govt bodies like their PMEAC, even in 'naya Pakistan," it further said.
[India rejected Pakistan's offer for talks several times: Imran Khan]
MEA statement comes on the backdrop of recent comments by Imran Khan, who had said that Pakistan treats minorities 'as equal citizens, unlike what is happening in India'.
Recently, Khan had even said that it would continue to support the 'struggle of Kashmiris'.
In January, accusing India of rejecting Islamabad's offer for talks several times, Imran Khan had said two nuclear armed countries should not even think of a war. Khan also said that India would never be able to suppress the rights of the Kashmiri people.
['Take care of own country': Naseeruddin Shah slams Imran Khan on minorities remark]
The Indo-Pak ties strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists in 2016 and India's surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The ties further nose-dived in 2017 with no bilateral talks talking place between them.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 20:55 [IST]
Three more Rafale jets to land in India from France in non-stop flight
Over-reaction: Manohar Parrikar reply to MoD dissent note on Rafale
India
oi-Deepika S
New Delhi, Feb 09: Former defence minister Manohar Parrikar had in a note termed his own ministry's apprehension to the Prime Minister's Office intervening in Rafale negotiation as an "over-reaction."
The paper had cited an internal note of the ministry, which said "parallel discussions by the PMO has weakened the negotiating positions by the MoD and the negotiating team".
Rafale deal: Defence Ministry's dissent note had nothing to do with pricing, clarifies ex-secy
"We may advise PMO that any Officers who are not part of the Indian Negotiating Team may refrain from having parallel parlays with the officers of the French Government," the note read.
News agency ANI published the complete note which included then defence minister Manohar Parrikar's noting asking his to remain calm and that there was nothing to worry.
The concerns expressed in paragraph 5 of the note of then defence secretary, G Mohan Kumar, "appears to be an over-reaction", Parikkar wrote, adding "Defence Secretary may resolve the matter in consultation with Principal Secretary to PM".
Referring to the report, which claimed that the then Defence Secretary had objected to the PMO allegedly conducting price negotiations with the French company, Sitharaman said the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had replied to the letter asking the official to remain "calm" as everything was "alright".
As the Congress claimed the note supports its contention about the interference of the PM's Office in the deal, Sitharaman called it "slanderous" and "irresponsible".
National Conference chief Omar Abdullah pointed out that Parrikar's choice of words implied "imperfect knowledge" about the PMO's exchanges with the French government.
Lie 1 to 10: The BJP's ten point rebuttal to Rahul Gandhi's Rafale claim
"The then Defence Minister @manoharparrikar was clueless about the progress of negotiations. All he could say was ''IT APPEARS that @PMOIndia & French President''s office are monitoring the progress''. He had no direct knowledge of progress & passed the buck back to the PMO," Abdullah tweeted.
"How can he claim that "para 5 is an over-reaction" when he had no direct knowledge of the status or content of the negotiations? His act of passing the matter for the Def Sec to resolve with PMO clearly shows he had no grounds on which to base his "over-reaction" assessment?" the NC leader said in another tweet.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 12:38 [IST]
NSA use in MP was wrong, mistake has been pointed out: Chidambaram
India
oi-Deepika S
New Delhi, Feb 09: Former Union Minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram has admitted that the use of National Security Act (NSA) in the Madhya Pradesh cow slaughter case was wrong.
Speaking at the launch of his book "Undaunted: Saving the Idea of India", Chidambaram said "The government has been told that was wrong. I think the Congress president has told the people concerned that was wrong... Use of NSA in Madhya Pradesh was wrong. That has been pointed out to the government in Madhya Pradesh. So if a mistake has been committed, that mistake has been pointed out by the leadership."
Apart from Chidambaram, senior Congress leader and former state CM Digvijaya Singh had also said that invoking NSA was unnecessary in that case.
Madhya Pradesh: National Security Act invoked against 3 men accused of cow slaughter
Earlier this week, the Kamal Nath-led government had slapped NSA against three men accused of killing a cow at Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh.
Sabarimala a matter of custom, Ram Mandir faith
The Ram temple issue is about "faith" and Sabarimala is about "customs" and the two should not be mixed, Chidambaram said.
His comments came during the launch of his new book "Undaunted: Saving the Idea of India", a collection of his essays published last year, at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi.
"Ram temple is not an issue of customs, it is an issue of faith. While Sabarimala is a matter of customs which are opposed to modern constitutional values," the former Union minister of finance and home said in response to a question on the two issues.
In Ayodhya, and not to trivialise the faith of those who believe in Lord Ram and his birthplace, it is a matter of faith, he said.
"And, it is because of that, a group of people are claiming the land. Others are saying a mosque existed several hundred years ago. The question is whether the Supreme Court would resolve issues raised by the Allahabad High Court," the Rajya Sabha member said.
Many issues are amenable to judicial resolution "but I don't think we can mix up customs and faith", he said.
As far as Sabarimala is concerned, it is an issue on which one can't take a categorical view, he added.
'Clarify stand on Ram Temple': Amit Shah dares Congress, SP, BSP
"I as an individual accept the SC judgement, but how can I stop ordinary men, women and party workers to express those views," Chidambaram said.
The Congress took a view, saying "we accept the SC judgement, but we can't tell our party workers, you can't have other views".
"Our president (Rahul Gandhi) did not say he has changed his stand (on Sabarimala)," the former minister added.
On the Ram temple issue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party BJP, have been alleging that Congress was trying to impede the judicial process for resolution of the matter.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 11:31 [IST]
PM Modi is working for 18-19 hours, spoke at 1 am to review pandemic situation: Piyush Goyal
Not poll oriented says Piyush Goyal on budget
India
oi-Oneindia Staff
By Anuj Cariappa
Mumbai, Feb 09: Finance minister Piyush Goyal said the measures announced in the interim budget 2019 were not taken keeping in mind the upcoming Lok Sabha election.
"The budget was not election oriented, there were 100 things on the table... Issues of need and urgency could not wait," Goyal said at a CII event.
To address the distress in the farm sector, the government in the budget announced to provide Rs 6,000 per year to farmers in three instalments under a scheme to be fully funded by the Central government.
Goyal hits back at Chidambaram, says most of the schemes were conceived way before elections
Defending the move, Goyal said the support for small farmers announced in the budget were not a dole but was the government's duty towards them.
The finance minister said Gujarat and Maharashtra are the two states to furnish details of the farmers who would be benefited by the proposed scheme.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 6:14 [IST]
NGO demands rules on election ads on social media
India
oi-Chennabasaveshwar P
New Delhi, Feb 9: Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change, Delhi-based NGO, has sent a notice to Election Commission demanding to form certain rules for WhatsApp, Facebook and social media companies ahead of upcoming General Elections.
The notice served by the NGO asked why should election ads on social media be not verified by Election Commission. Also, the legal notice states the matter will be taken to Court if the Election Commission does not act.
Akhilesh launches a Twitter tirade against the BJP
It may be recalled that the Supreme Court had allowed the NGO to make the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) a party in a plea seeking direction to messaging application WhatsApp for complying with data localisation norms with regard to its payment services. The plea filed by Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change said Whatsapp has not fully complied with the circular of the RBI which prescribed data localisation norms. The NGO has also sought direction to restrain the messaging platform from proceeding with its payment service unless it fully complied with the provisions of the RBI.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 13:19 [IST]
Naidu to hold protest in Delhi on Feb 11, two trains hired at Rs 1.12 cr
India
oi-Deepika S
Hyderabad, Feb 09: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu will hold a protest on Monday in New Delhi for which two trains have been hired at a cost of Rs 1.12 crore to the state exchequer. TDP government intends to transport protesters in two special trains from Andhra to New Delhi.
Naidu has planned to go on a day-long fast to protest against the alleged non-cooperation of the Centre in fulfilling Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act and Special Status to the state.
Mamata architect of federal front, main pillar of Opposition: Chandrababu Naidu
The General Administration Department has released Rs 1.12 crore to hire the trains with 20 compartments each from the South Central Railway, IANS reported.
The Andhra Pradesh government has hired two special trains to ferry people to New Delhi for Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu's protest against the Centre on February 11, officials said in Amravati on Saturday.
Government of Andhra Pradesh has decided to hire two special trains with 20 compartments each from South Central Railways, Secunderabad, i.e., starting one (1) train from Ananthapuramu and another from Srikakulam to reach New Delhi by 10.02.2019 to transport interested Political parties, organizations, NGOs associations, etc.. to participate in one day Deeksha (Protest) at New Delhi on 11.02.2019 to be led by The Chief Minister," stated the government release.
"Government after careful examination hereby accord administrative sanction for an amount of Rs.1,12,16,465 (Rupees One Crore Twelve Lakhs Sixteen Thousand Four Hundred and Sixty Five only)," the statement further revealed.
Meanwhile on Friday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding an independent investigation into the Rafale deal.
Naidu keeps switching loyalties, Doors of NDA permanently closed for TDP: Amit Shah
"PM Narendra Modi's silence on Rs. 59,000 Cr Rafale deal and reports on the possibility of India's Biggest Defence scam directly involving the PMO, speaks volumes of BJP govt's destructive decisions. Modi ji, truth cannot be hidden for long when you cheat the nation," he tweeted.
"PMO's interference in the name of "parallel negotiations", bypassing the Ministry of Defense in finalising Rafale deal, undermined the negotiating position of the Indian Negotiating Team. These revelations are shocking. They indicate a lack of integrity and regard within BJP government," he added.
Robert Vadra grilled by ED for third time in money laundering case
India
oi-Deepika S
New Delhi, Feb 9: Robert Vadra, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law, on Saturday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for the third time in connection with a probe into allegations of money laundering in purchase of assets abroad.
Vadra arrived at the central probe agency's office at Jamnagar House in central Delhi at about 10.45 am in his private vehicle.
Robert Vadra was questioned for 6 hours by ED on day 1. On day 2, he was questioned for 9 hours. It remains to be seen how much time Vadra spends in ED office today.
On ED questioning Robert Vadra, Mamata Banerjee talks of opposition unity
Vadra's wife Priyanka Gandhi stood by him to the ED office to pick before and after his questioning. This was her first appearance as a politician after being appointed the Congress general secretary for UP east.
Vadra was directed by a Delhi court on February 2, to cooperate with the probe being carried out by ED after he knocked at its door seeking anticipatory bail in the money laundering case.
The court directed him to appear before ED on Wednesday on his return from London.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seized on the questioning of Vadra to attack the Congress and alleged he got kickbacks from a petroleum and defence deals which took place during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra alleged at a news conference that Vadra bought eight to nine properties in London from the money he got as kickbacks from a petroleum and a defence deal, which took place in 2008-09. Patra did not provide any evidence to back his claim.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi claimed the charges against Vadra are "fickle, superficial, non-existent, non-substantive".
The BJP had full four and a half years to investigate but could not find anything, he claimed at a news conference.
The attempt is to mislead, confuse and to create an ambience before the election, but people see through this, he said.
The ED case against Vadra relates to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property located at 12, Bryanston Square worth 1.9 million GBP (British pounds), which is allegedly owned by him.
'Stand by my family': Priyanka after dropping off Robert Vadra at ED office
The agency had also told the court that it has received information about various ew properties in London which belongs to Vadra, including two houses of five and four million each, six other flats and more properties.
The ED had carried out raids in the case in December last year and grilled his aide Manoj Arora, an employee of a firm linked to Vadra, Skylight Hospitality LLP.
The agency had told the court that it filed a PMLA case against Arora, after his role cropped up during the probe of another case by the Income Tax Department under the 2015 anti-black money legislation against absconding Bhandari.
It had alleged that the London-based property was bought by Bhandari for GBP 1.9 million and sold in 2010 for the same amount despite incurring additional expenses of approximately GBP 65,900 on its renovation.
The auspicious holy dip
The festival of Basant Panchami heralds the arrival of spring and is dedicated to Goddess Saraswati. Allahabad Mayor Abhilasha Gupta Nandi told PTI, "Basant Panchami is the third and last shaahi snaan of the Kumbh. By taking three dips on this day, a devotee gets the blessings of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers.
[Hues of Kumbh Mela 2019 in pictures]
Hence, it holds tremendous significance for people." Kumbh Mela Adhikari Vijay Kiran Anand told PTI on Saturday that more than two crore people from different walks of life are likely to arrive here to take a dip on the occasion of Basant Panchami.
Juna Akhara Sadhus arrive for holy dip on the auspicious Makar Sankranti day
Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP) president Narendra Giri said there were three shahi snan or royal baths and three 'parv snaans' during the Kumbh Mela. The Mela commenced on January 15 on Makar Sankranti, the first bathing day, and the Mahashivratri on March 4 will mark its last bathing day.
"Shahi snan is the central highlight of the Kumbh Mela and the most important part of the celebration. It is only after the completion of 'shahi snan' that people are allowed to take the holy dip, he said. Prior to Basant Panchami, shaahi snaans were held on Makar Sankranti on January 15 and Mauni Amawasya on February 4.
Devotees take a holy dip at Sangam during Makar Sankranti
Lucknow-based astrologer, Trilokinath Singh highlighted the significance of the festival. "It marks the onset of spring (Basant), and also marks the start of preparation for Holi, the festival of colours, which occurs around 40 days later," he said.
Ashutosh Varshney of Ram Sewa Trust, who set up his camp in Sector 6 in the Mela, said, "It is said that by making a donation, of one's choice, to river Ganga on Basant Panchami, a person stands to gain knowledge."
Dhrubo Bhattacharya, a priest, said that many families, especially Bengalis, mark this day by sitting with their babies and young children, encouraging them to write their first words with their fingers, while some others study or create music together. "In temples and educational institutions, statues of Saraswati are dressed in yellow and worshipped," he said, adding poetic and musical gatherings are also held in some communities for Goddess Saraswati.
A Sadhvi of Juna Akhara takes a holy dip holding a trident
Security personnel have been deployed at different crossings and parts of the city for Kumbh Mela. The Uttar Pradesh police too has geared up for a seamless and incident-free Kumbh, spread over 3,200 hectare land in the Sangam City. Security arrangements would be three-tier -- in the Kumbh mela region, in Allahabad and in the adjacent districts.
[Kumbh Mela 2019: The Shahi Snan and the Akharas]
"The whole region has been demarcated into nine zones and 20 sectors with the deployment of over 20,000 police personnel, 6,000 homeguards, 40 police stations, 58 outposts, 40 fire stations, 80 companies of central force and 20 companies of PAC," UP's Director General of Police (DGP) OP Singh had earlier told PTI.
Besides, there would be three police lines, one traffic police line, three women police stations and 317 police response vehicles to tackle an emergency situation with a response time of less than 10 minutes, he said, adding that mounted police would also be there. With a view to counter any terrorist activity, Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) commandoes, anti-sabotage commandoes with snipers, bomb disposal units, sniffer dog squads and intelligence units have also been pressed into service, Singh said.
Kolkata Police chiefs questioning to continue on Sunday
India
oi-Oneindia Staff
By Anuj Cariappa
New Delhi, Feb 09: The CBI will question Kolkata, police Commisioner, Rajeev Kumar in connection with the chit fund cases on Sunday as well.
The CBI will question former TMC MP Kunal Ghosh as well.
He had reached Shillong, Meghalaya's capital city, Friday to face questioning by the CBI for his alleged role in destroying evidence in the Saradha chit fund scam, an official said here.
CBI forms five member team to grill Kolkata top cop in chit fund cases
Kumar will be interrogated by CBI sleuths at two locations -- in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) office here and at an undisclosed location, he said.
He is accompanied by three IPS officers of the Kolkata Police."Kumar has been lodged in a top hotel in the city. The state police is giving security cover to him," the senior Home Department official told PTI. A group of CBI sleuths are coming from Delhi to question him and they are scheduled to reach here Friday night.
The Supreme Court Tuesday directed the Kolkata Police commissioner to appear before the CBI and "faithfully" cooperate into the investigation of cases arising out of the Saradha chit fund scam, while making it clear that he will not be arrested.The CBI had alleged in the Supreme Court that Kumar, who was leading the SIT probe into Saradha chit fund scam, tampered with the electronic evidence and handed over documents to the agency some of which were "doctored".
CBI vs Bengal: Did Rajeev Kumar, withhold or destroy evidence?
The court directed him to appear before the investigating agency at a neutral place in Shillong "to avoid all unnecessary controversy".The CBI officials had gone to Kumar's residence to question him on Sunday but their attempt was resisted by the Kolkata Police, following which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee staged a dharna for three days "to save the Constitution".
Karnataka 'Operation Kamala': Congress steps up attack against Yeddyurappa
India
oi-Chennabasaveshwar P
New Delhi, Feb 9: Indian National Congress stepped up attack against the BJP and former Karnataka CM BS Yeddyurappa after an audio clip was released by Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy exposing his alleged role in 'Operation Kamala'.
Karnataka Congress in-charge, KC Venugopal, said, "Entire country is shocked by hearing the news from Karnataka yesterday. Karnataka CM released audio clippings of deliberation of Yeddyurappa with one of the brother of JD(S) MLA revealing dirty politics of Modi ji and Amit Shah to destabilise the Karnataka government."
"It (audio clips) states that BS Yeddyurappa is offering Rs 10 Cr per MLA and in his deliberation, it's clear there are 18 MLAs. Therefore it comes at the rate of around Rs 200 Cr. He's offering 12 MLAs minister post, 6 were offered chairman posts in different boards, " said Venugopal.
After no show by 4 MLA, Karnataka Congress takes the anti-defection route
He further said that Yeddyurappa is also offering election expenses to MLAs after they resign. "They offered Rs 50 Crore to the speaker for not disqualifying his MLAs. Clippings are referring to the names of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi ji for managing here and there through Yeddyurappa himself, " added Venugopal.
Randeep Surjewala took up the issue to target BJP high command, saying, "In what capacity is BJP Karnataka President and former CM discussing approaching SC judges to get the case right? Have Narendra Modi and Amit Shah given them such assurances? Has the SC become a 'jebi dukaan' of BJP?."
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 11:20 [IST]
Before the ceasefire on Feb 24, Pakistan resorted to over 4,000 border violations
J&K: Jawan injured in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Nowshera sector
India
oi-Vikas SV
Srinagar, Feb 9: One jawan was reportedly injured on Saturday after the Pakistani troops to ceasefire violation along the border in Jammu and Kashmir's Nowshera sector.
Even on Tuesday, Pakistani troops resorted to ceasefire violation yet again along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch region. The ceasefire violation took place around 10.30 am on Tuesday morning at Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch.
The year 2018 had witnessed 2,936 ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the India-Pakistan border, the highest in the last 15 years.
On January 9, Pakistani troops indulged in ceasefire violation in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch sector which was said to be fourth in 2019. Even on January 2, Pakistan violated the ceasefire along the Line of Control in Poonch sector.
[J&K: Gunbattle breaks out between security forces, terrorists in Pulwama]
On Janaury 11, Pakistan troops had resorted to firing and shelling along the LoC in forward areas of the Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir in which an army porter was killed. Army porter, Hemraj, was critically injured when Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked firing in Sunderbani Sector of Rajouri district. He was provided immediate resuscitation and medical aid, but he succumbed to the gunshot wounds, an Army PRO had said.
[Valley remains tense on 6th death anniversary of Afzal Guru]
On December 21, 2018, two Army officers were killed as Pakistani troops violated ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had on January 16 had summoned Pakistan High Commission official to register a strong protest over the death of Army porter Hemraj in unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan forces on January 11 in Sunderbani Sector.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 22:13 [IST]
Gujjars quota agitation: Protesters block tracks, 5 trains cancelled, 15 diverted
India
oi-Deepika S
Jaipur, Feb 09: Protests by the Gujjar community demanding reservation in Rajasthan, which erupted on Friday, have continued on Saturday. At least seven trains in Kota Division of Western Central Railway have been diverted, one cancelled, three short originated and one short terminated.
The agitation by the Gujjars was called by community leader Kirori Singh Bainsla, who had demanded five per cent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions for Gujjar, Raika-Rebari, Gadia Luhar, Banjara and Gadaria communities.
"We have good Chief Minister and Prime Minister. We want that they listen to the demands of Gujjar community. It is not an uphill task for them to provide reservation," a protesting Gujjar leader told ANI.
Gujjars in Rajasthan to go on rasta roko strike
In January, Bainsla had given a 20-day ultimatum to the state government to clear its stance on the quota demand; the deadline ended on Friday. Bainsla declared, "People cannot be fooled all the time. It is a fight to do or die. The state government should stand on its promise. It will be a peaceful protest."
Bainsla has led previous agitations by the Gujjar community, which have erupted sporadically over two decades.
The protestors are demanding five per cent separate reservation to Gujjars, Raika-Rebari, Gadia Luhar, Banjara and Gadaria for government jobs and admission in educational institutions.
Currently, these communities are getting one per cent separate reservation under the legal limit of 50 percent under the most-backward category in addition to OBC reservation.
From Eureka to Unicorn: E-Cell NIT Trichy to host Entrepreneurship Summit 2019
India
oi-Oneindia Staff
By Anuj Cariappa
The Entrepreneurship Summit is the flagship event of E-Cell NIT Trichy, jointly organized by General Electric and Ernst & Young. The 2019 edition, with the theme of "From Eureka to Unicorn", boasts of a plethora of workshops, informal events and formal competitions, discussion panels, business modelling competitions and guest lecture series, all dedicated to represent the journey that the theme speaks of, and to create a sense of excitement and allure through this journey and entrepreneurship in general.
E-Summit '19 is organized with a vision to help students get exposure to entrepreneurship and alternative careers, provide opportunities to gain knowledge and acquire skills necessary to build their own ventures from the ground up with the help of a growing student and alumni start-up ecosystem in NIT Trichy.
With cash prizes worth 3 Lakhs and a footfall of about 3000+, it is one of the largest Entrepreneurial Summit in South India.
The guest lecture for the inaugural event of E-Summit '19 on 15th February is presented by Mr. Harishankaran Karunanidhi, Co-founder, and CTO of HackerRank and also an Alumni of NIT Trichy.
The valedictory speech is presented by Dr. N. Kamakodi - MD and CEO of City Union Bank.
Investing Workshop: E-Summit '19, in association with the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE), presents "The Art of Investing", a workshop which will teach students and soon-to-be graduates alike the basics in dealing with funds, working with stocks and how to capture and grow your monetary potential.
Case Study workshop: E-Summit'19 presents the Case Study workshop in association with Ernst & Young (EY), designed to give an introduction to the concept of case studies and see problems from a consulting firm's point of view.
Quora Meetup: A meet 'n' greet, Q&A session and lecture series all rolled into one, this first-of-its-kind meetup in Trichy promises to be exciting and educational, with some of the biggest names in Quora, such as Rana Ashish, Programmer and Alcatraz Dey, Author and Veteran among others in attendance.
Pitch Fest is, as always, one of the events at E-Summit'19, where all you have to do is think of a good idea to pitch so that you can beat out the competition to get rich!
Leadership Conclave: With esteemed guests from different walks of life, including but not limited to Rajan Singh, Ex-IPS & CEO of ConceptOwl, Garima Avtar, Extreme Rally racing driver, Lt. Col Suresh Patil, Veteran, Ravi Kumar Narra, Padma Shri Awardee talking about their journey to their current positions and voicing their opinions on various topics.
Alumni Night is an event where students can engage in a networking session with the most successful and experienced alumni entrepreneurs.
Informal events such as Startup Tycoon and Stock Market challenge to challenge students with the problems that entrepreneurs face and what kind of attitude you need to face and conquer them in a fun and engaging manner.
Ventura is an international business model competition organized by E-Cell NIT Trichy. Being one of the largest Business-Model competitions in South India, it provides an ideal platform for emerging entrepreneurs to ideate, network, learn and grow. At E-Summit '19, the finalists from different tracks will pitch their idea/product to a panel of CEOs, Venture Capitalists and industry experts who will choose the most promising nascent startup among them. With a cash prize worth up to 2 Lakhs, it is guaranteed to be an intense showdown for the ages!
Startup Expo is for students actively looking to engage in internships in Startups. With a wide range of profiles over a diverse array of startups in multiple locations, it promises to be a one-of-a-kind event.
We at E-Cell NIT Trichy strive to uphold and disperse the spirit of entrepreneurship among students and professionals alike and contribute to the growing startup boom in India.
Whether you are a professional with a fledgling startup or a student with a promising idea or just a curious soul, all you have to do is show up.
For further details, Visit: ecell-nitt.org
Entrepreneurship Summit '19, Feb 15th to 17th at NIT Trichy.
Be there.
FIR against 2 IPS Officers for illegal phone tapping in Chhattisgarh
India
oi-PTI
Raipur, Feb 9: An FIR has been lodged against two IPS officers including a special Director General of police in Chhattisgarh for alleged criminal conspiracy and illegal phone tapping.
The FIR was lodged by the state Economic Offences Wing (EOW) based on findings during investigation into a Civil Supply Corporation scam unearthed in 2015.
The newly-formed Congress government in the state on January 8 had set up a 12-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by Inspector General of Police, Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) and EOW, SRP Kalluri to probe the alleged multi-crore Civil Supply scam.
"The case was registered against then Additional Director General (ADG), ACB/EOW Mukesh Gupta and then Superintendent of Police (SP) ACB Rajnesh Singh Thursday late
night, based on the complaint of Deputy Superintendent of Police (EOW) Anil Bakshi, who is a member of the SIT," a senior EOW official told PTI Friday.
Gupta is presently posted as Special DG at the Police Headquarters, while Singh as SP Narayanpur district.
Karnataka 'Operation Kamala': Congress steps up attack against Yeddyurappa
As per the complaint, Bakshi during the investigation into the scam found that some important documents had been tampered with, the official said.
Head Constable (EOW) Johit Ram Sahu allegedly told Bakshi that he had committed the tampering on the direction of then inspector R K Dubey, he said. Dubey allegedly admitted to have committed the tampering, saying he was pressurised by Gupta and Singh,the official said quoting the complaint.
Dubey also revealed that the two senior officials wanted to show certain unlawful phone interceptions as legal, and therefore documents were tampered with and fabricated.
The two officers were booked under IPC sections 193 (false evidence), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 466 (forgery) and other relevant offences. Further probe is underway, the official said.
Denying the charges against him, Gupta said all telephone interception were done lawfully and "with the approval of home department in every case".
"The SIT has deliberately ignored the records and FIR has been hurriedly registered on the basis of oral statements of subordinate officers taken under duress," Gupta said in a statement.
Meanwhile, R K Dubey, now DSP (EOW), on Friday approached the Chhattisgarh High Court, claiming that he was pressurised by the ACB chief to give a certain statement and sought protection citing threat to his life.
Additional Advocate General Satish Chandra Verma told the high court that the state government had not exerted any pressure on him, and there will be a fair investigation.
The high court observed that the state shall "proceed with the investigation in a fair manner and the petitioner is also directed to cooperate in the investigation, if any contemplated" while rejecting the petitioner's request for protection, Verma said
The alleged scam was exposed in February 2015 when ACB and Economic Offences Wing (EOW) conducted simultaneous raids at 25 premises of Civil Supplies Corporation.
PTI
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 12:32 [IST]
Ladakh standoff: No de-escalation without complete disengagement at all friction points, says Army Chief
Amidst IT rules row, old video of Twitter geo-tagging Ladakh as part of China surfaces
Division' politics intensifies in Jammu and Kashmir
India
oi-Hardeep Singh Bedi
New Delhi, Feb 9: Jammu and Kashmir's state-level political parties and leaders have intensified politics over 'division' after Governor Satya Pal Malik on Friday ordered the creation of a separate administrative division for Ladakh region, which will be headquartered in Leh.
Ladakh, which was part of the Kashmir division till now, will now have a separate divisional commissioner and an inspector general of Police (IG) with a full administrative and revenue division at par with Kashmir and Jammu divisions. With the Friday's orders, the state is now divided into three divisions: Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh.
While the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and National Conference (NC) have started batting for separate division status for Pir Panjal and Chenab Valley regions, the political leaders of Kargil region have opposed the order of making Leh headquarters of Ladakh division.
Soon after Governor's orders, NC leader Omar Abdullah tweeted: "After the elections of 2019, should the people of J&K repose faith in @JKNC_ [National Conference] , our government will grant division status to Chenab valley [and] Pir Panchal regions as already laid out in our regional autonomy promise."
"We will take care of regional and sub-regional aspirations," he added. "We won't adopt the pick [and] choose approach of the Governor but will instead take a holistic view [and] address the wider problems. Our regional autonomy document will be our template."
[Face of current terrorism in Kashmir actually portents Pakistan's defeat]
PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti also welcomed separate division status to Ladakh, but said when the division has been granted to Ladakh despite both Leh and Kargil already having Hill Development Councils, what is the intention behind ignoring remote Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal regions.
After getting signal from party leadership, the leaders of both the parties on Saturday demanded separate division for Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal regions.
While addressing a press conference in Rajouri, PDP leader and former minister Choudhary Zulfiqar Ali threatened a stir for the demand of divisional status for the Pir Panjal region.
He said the Pir Panjal region has suffered the worst kind of discrimination since many years.
Addressing a public meeting at Mandi in Poonch Assembly Constituency, Youth National Conference Ajaz Jan highlighted the importance of divisional status to Pir Panchal and the Chenab Valley regions.
However, the resentment has also erupted in Kargil region after Governor's Friday orders, which has made headquarters of Ladakh division at Leh.
[J&K administration creates separate division for Ladakh]
Main political leaders of Kargil region held a meeting in Jammu on Saturday and said that the separate division has been a demand of Kargil region and not of Leh region.
They requested Governor Satya Pal Malik to review the decision and demanded to make the Headquarter on a rotational basis: six months of summer in Kargil and six months of winter in Leh.
They threatened that if the demand is not met then all the democratically elected representatives of the Kargil region will give mass resignation.
The meeting was called by Froz Ahmad Khan, Chief Executive Councillor, Ladakh Area Hill Development Council, Kargil. Chairman J&K Legislative Council Haji Anayat Ali, Executive Councillor Zakir Hussain Former Minister Qamar Ali Akhone, Former MLA and CEC Haji Asgar Ali Karbalia, Former MLA Haji Nissar Ali , Former CEC Kacho Ahmad Ali Khan, Former MP Ghulam Hassan Khan, President NC and Former CEC Haji Hanifa Jan, and other councillors, and political leaders attended the meeting.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 20:14 [IST]
Arun Jaitley framed bill on Art 370 nullification that can withstand legal challenge, says his wife
After Arun Jaitley, none in BJP understands psyche of Punjab: Naresh Gujral
Jaitley statue at Kotla: Angry Bedi asks DDCA to remove his name from stands, quits membership
"Delighted to be back home" tweets Jaitley after returning from US
India
oi-Vikas SV
New Delhi, Feb 9: Union Minister Arun Jaitley, who had gone to the United States for medical treatment in January, has returned to India. He was in the US for almost a month.
Jaitley had reportedly gone to a hospital in New York for treatment of soft tissue cancer in his thigh.
"Delighted to be back home," the Finance Minister tweeted this afternoon.
Jaitley was admitted to AIIMS last year in early April following which he underwent dialysis. He had renal transplant surgery on May 14, 2018.
[India 'Economic absurdity' to say no creation of jobs with high GDP growth: Jaitley]
In Jaitley's absence, Union Minister Piyush Goyal was given the charge of interim Finance Minister and it was who presented the Budget in Parliament on February 1.
Jaitley was, however, active on social media and even gave an interview to an agency after the Budget was presented.
[Arun Jaitley in New York for cancer treatment, may miss budget]
News agency PTI, in a recent report, had quoted sources saying Jaitley was recovering well and may also attend Parliament next week, depending on doctor's advice.
Jaitley had last month flown to New York for the treatment after being reportedly diagnosed with soft tissue cancer which required surgery. This was his first overseas visit after he underwent renal transplant surgery on May 14, 2018, at AIIMS.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 17:08 [IST]
Delhi likely to get either 'Jay' or 'Vijay' from Lucknow
India
oi-Deepika S
New Delhi, Feb 01: The National Zoological Park in Delhi is set to welcome a white tiger, which will arrive from the Lucknow Zoo under an animal exchange programme.
"One of the male two offsprings Jay and Vijay born to a white tigress at Lucknow zoo will be sent to Delhi zoo, "Director of Lucknow Zoo, Rajendra Kumar Singh was quoted saying by ANI.
The CZA, which is the apex body for all zoos in India, has a set of guidelines which all zoos in India have to follow while undertaking exchange programmes. Usually, the track record of the zoo is checked before granting such permissions.
Rare male tiger kills prospective mate in first meeting at London Zoo
"We have a white tigress and her two male offspring in Lucknow Zoo. Since they can't mate, a tiger will be sent to Delhi in exchange of a tigress which will become a mate to the remaining male tiger here," Singh said.
One of the two white tiger siblings in Lucknow zoo will be shifted to Delhi zoo in exchange of a white tigress. RK Singh, Director Lucknow zoo says, "We have a white tigress & her 2 male offspring. Since they can't mate, a tiger will be sent to Delhi in exchange of a tigress." pic.twitter.com/d9hB45giMu ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) February 9, 2019
It may be recalled that 12 new inmates were welcomed by Delhi zoo from Lucknow, Patna, Jammu, Raipur, Mysore, Goa and Tripurainfuse fresh blood last year.
Under a new animal exchange programme with zoos across the country, the Delhi zoo had proposed to give 16 animals in return of 12 different species of animals.
Delhi CM Kejriwal sends file of doorstep delivery of ration scheme to Lt Gov once again
Delhi EC issues advisory over anonymous calls of voters' names being deleted from electoral rolls
India
oi-Chennabasaveshwar P
New Delhi, Feb 9: Office of Chief Electoral Officer, Delhi, has issued advisory to voters of Delhi to beware of misleading calls coming from unknown persons/entities/sources saying their names have already been deleted in the electoral roll.
The advisory said, "Citizens are hereby advised to beware of such misleading calls coming from unknown persons/entities/sources. The only authority to add or delete a name in the electoral is Electoral Registration Officer."
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was quick to react to the issue. He invoked the issue of deletion of names of voters in Telangana. Subsequently, he asked why the Election Commission not allowing the Delhi Government to conduct inquiry into the issue of deletions of voters' name.
Robert Vadra grilled by ED for third time in money laundering case
"EC shud answer-
1. 22 lakh names wrongly deleted in Telengana- Didn't EC aplogise?
2. Why were Jwala Gutta n her family names missing at polling centre tho they existed on EC website?" (1/2)
EC shud answer-
1. 22 lakh names wrongly deleted in Telengana- Didnt EC aplogise?
2. Why were Jwala Gutta n her family names missing at polling centre tho they existed on EC website? (1/2) https://t.co/ILN165x3By Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) February 9, 2019
"EC gave AAP list of 24 lakh names deleted in Delhi
1. Del govt enqries in some deletions found them wrong?Why EC protecting those officers?
2. Why EC not allowing Del govt to do enquiries in all deletions? EC itself didn't conduct enquiries
AAP won't allow telengana it in Delhi" 2/2
EC gave AAP list of 24 lakh names deleted in Del
1. Del govt enqries in some deletions found them wrong?Why EC protecting those officers?
2. Why EC not allowing Del govt to do enquiries in all deletions? EC itself didnt conduct enquiries
AAP wont allow telengana it in Del 2/2 https://t.co/ILN165x3By Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) February 9, 2019
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 16:06 [IST]
Reforms by conviction and incentives says PM Modi in blog post
Mehbooba Mufti arrives in Delhi to participate in all-party meeting to be chaired by PM Modi tomorrow
China has this warning after Modi visits Arunachal Pradesh
India
oi-Oneindia Staff
By Anuj Cariappa
New Delhi, Feb 09: Hours within Prime Minister, Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, China has said that it opposes activities of Indian leaders in the region.
"China urges the Indian side to proceed from the overall situation of bilateral relations, respect China's interests and concerns, cherish the momentum of improving relations between the two countries, and refrain from any actions that intensify disputes and complicate the border issue," a statement by China's foreign ministry said.
On Saturday, Modi inaugurated several projects and laid foundation stone of many vital schemes worth over Rs 4,000 crore for Arunachal Pradesh.
PM Modi laid the foundation stone for construction of greenfield Airport at Hollongi and inaugurated a retrofitted airport at Tezu in Lohit district through a remote.
PM Modi in Northeast Updates: We want to free the country from infiltrators, says PM Modi
He inaugurated the new Doordarshan channel for Arunachal Pradesh, DD Arun Prabha.
The prime minister also dedicated to the nation the 110 MW Pare Hydroelectric Plant and laid the foundation stone for a permanent campus of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) at Jote.
The prime minister inaugurated 50 health and wellness centers in the state also through remote at the function at IG Park here.
Meanwhile the Ministry for External Affairs said in a statement, 'the State of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral & inalienable part of India. Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India.'
Bishop Franco Mulakkal rape case: Protesting Kerala nuns won't be transferred
India
oi-Vikas SV
Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 9: Jalandhar diocese has written that the nuns, who are also key witnesses in the rape case against Bishop Franco Mulakkal, will not be transferred out of the Kuravilangad convent where they are staying now.
The nuns had earlier reportedly approached the National Commission for Women (NCW) alleging that the transfer orders issued last year were to pressurise and threaten them as they were prominent witnesses in the case.
Bishop Agnelo, Apostolic administrator in charge of the congregation, has written a letter to 5 sisters protesting against Franco Mulakkal, reported ANI.
"There will be no move from Diocese of Jalandhar to oust you from Kuravilangad Church as long as you are needed for the court case," the letter read.
The nuns stay at the Kuravilangadu convent along with the survivor, who was not transferred.
The four nuns had been transferred by the Missionaries of Jesus congregation to various locations in March, 2018, months after they had complained at several forums within the church against the Bishop.
However, the church cancelled their transfer orders on Friday, a day before they were to take to the streets for round two of their protest.
The nuns announced the development at the protest venue in Kottayam as they demanded justice for the nun. The nuns had earlier protested near Kerala High Court in September last year.
[NCW requests Kerala CM Pinaryi Vijayan in Bishop Mulakkal case]
National Commission for Women (NCW) had earlier this month written a letter to Kerala CM Pinaryi Vijayan requesting a transparent probe into allegations against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal.
The NCW had accused the Catholic Church of not protecting the interest of a nun, who has alleged that Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal raped her in 2014. The church was in the process of "glorifying" the Bishop arrested for raping her, NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma had alleged.
[Kerala nun rape case: Four nuns who protested against Bishop Franco punished]
Mulakkal, who was Bishop of Jalandhar diocese, was arrested in September 2018 for allegedly raping the nun at Kuravilangadu in Kottayam district. In her complaint to the Kottayam police in June, the nun had alleged that Mulakkal raped her at a guest house in Kuravilangad in May 2014 and later sexually exploited her on several occasions. However, Mulakkal has denied the charges. He was later granted conditional bail in the case.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 18:09 [IST]
AP DSC Result 2018 date, time, websites to check
India
oi-Deepika S
Hyderabad, Feb 09: The department of School Education, Andhra Pradesh, (APDSC) is expected to release AP DSC Result 2018 on February 15, 2019. Candidates who have appeared in the written examination can check the official site of APDSC. The examination was conducted for over a month from December 24 to January 30, 2019.
According to the reports, AP HRD Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao said that there is a chance to release the DSC results on 15 February.
A total of 7,900 vacant teacher posts have been filled and regarding the tribal teachers' vacant post, very soon the government is going to release a notification, Ganta said.
In order to fill up the vacant posts of teachers, DSC 2018 test was conducted and the key of the test was released on Monday.
APDSC Result 2018: Steps to check
Go to the official site of APDSC at apdsc.apcfss.in .
. On the home page, click on the result link available.
Enter your roll number and date of birth.
Click on submit and get results.
Take a print out for further need.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 12:50 [IST]
Allahabad HC prohibits media from publishing photos of women bathing at Kumbh Mela
India
oi-Chennabasaveshwar P
Allahabad, Feb 9: Allahabad High Court has directed that no photographs of women taking a bath/dip in the 'Mela' area to be published by the print or visual media. If any publication is done, an action shall be taken against the publisher by the Court.
According to reports, the petition was filed by advocate Asim Kumar seeking ban on photographs in bathing spots. The Bench of Justice PKS Baghel and Justice Pankaj Bhatia have expressed displeasure over photography and videography on bathing ghats in Kumbh Mela premises.
The Court has directed the Fair Officer that any videography and photography in bathing ghats have to be banned.
Gujjars quota agitation: Protesters block tracks, 5 trains cancelled, 15 diverted
The Kumbh Mela comprises of many rituals including bathing ritual, which by far is the most significant ritual performed at Kumbh. Millions of pilgrims take part in the Kumbh bathing ritual at the Triveni Sangam. Performing this sacred ceremony is in accordance with the belief that by submerging oneself in the holy waters, one is purged of all their sins, release themselves and their ancestors from the cycle of rebirth and ultimate attainment of Moksha.
Along with the bathing ritual, the pilgrims also worship on the banks of the holy river and participate in discourses from various sadhus and saints.
7th Pay Commission: No hike in basic minimum pay, but DA could be increased
India
oi-Vicky Nanjappa
New Delhi, Feb 09: There has been wide speculation with regard to the 7th Pay Commission.
It has been reported that the Central Government employees are likely to get a pay hike and an announcement is likely by the end of this month. The reports regarding the pay hike emerged after the Chief of the National Joint Council of Action, Shiv Gopal Mishra said that the government is serious about offering a hike in the basic minimum pay.
However sources tell OneIndia that there is a likelihood that the Dearness Allowance may be increased and not the basic minimum pay. This is expected to be announced by the end of this month following a Cabinet meeting, the source also said.
7th Pay Commission: What is delaying the pay hike and what CG employees can expect
Government sources say that while there is an intention of increasing the basic minimum pay, the problem is that it would put too much burden on the exchequer. While there is good news round the corner, there could be a major let down as well.
The CG employees are expecting a hike in the basic minimum pay. That is unlikely to happen due to the burden on the exchequer. There is a better chance of the DA being enhanced. The other question is even if there were to be an announcement, will it come into effect immediately. There is no clarity on this and by the end of this month, one would get a better picture of the same.
The CG employees on the other hand are not ready to settle for anything less. They feel that doling out small time sops would not help them in the long run. The 7th Pay Commission had recommended Rs 18,000 as the basic minimum pay, but the CG employees have been demanding that the amount be raised Rs 26,000.
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Story first published: Saturday, February 9, 2019, 6:52 [IST]
While organizing my home office a few weeks ago, I came across a letter my grandfather wrote back in 1924.
He wrote that eloquent letter to his best friends wife, consoling her on the loss of her mother. His cursive handwriting was artful perfect penmanship.
He wrote the letter when he was 21. Since he died at 34, when my father was only 3, it is among the most cherished items I have from a grandfather I never got to meet.
Such is the power of the handwritten letter, which is dying along with the art of cursive handwriting. Many schools have phased out lessons in cursive. There is a waning need for it in the modern era, some argue, and the classes take too much time.
Cursive originated centuries ago. Its the result of technological innovations such as inkwells and quill pens made from goose feathers. Because ink dripped when the quill was lifted from the paper, it made sense to connect letters in words together in one flowing line and the art of cursive writing began.
Cursive became less necessary with the invention of the ballpoint pen, which does not leak and, technically, does not require cursive writing. Changing technology, which led to electronic documents completed on computers, has also contributed to less need for handwritten signatures.
A graduate of Omaha North High School, she was the first black woman to graduate from the Creighton University School of Law, in 1948. She was inspired by the example of her father, Charles Davis, an Omaha attorney who opened one of the first black-owned savings and loan associations in the country. In 1950, Pittman was one of only 39 African-American women lawyers in the U.S. Creighton awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1973, and in 1998, the university dedicated the Elizabeth Davis Pittman Building on its campus to mark the 50th anniversary of her receiving her law degree there.
McGee, James Lewis Age 88 James Lewis McGee, born January 24, 1931 in Omaha, NE, spent his early years living as a "good ol' South O boy." He enlisted in the Coast Guard, stationed in Boston, MA, where he married his sweetheart of many years, Anna Lee "Candy" Harden McGee in the summer of 1951. He and Anna Lee were quick to start a family, which was fitting, as James always adored kids. He adored them so much they had six by the time the youngest came along in 1960. James Jr. is the eldest, followed by Mary McGee Forster, Susan McGee Perkins, Michelle McGee (deceased), Lisa McGee Liss and Paula McGee. He instilled the treasure of family in his kids and guided them to have a strong work ethic and backbones made of Irish steel. After his stint in the Coast Guard, he moved his family to the quiet small town of Manitou Springs, CO. While in Colorado he attended Colorado College before deciding to return to his roots in Nebraska. Upon returning to Omaha, he graduated from Omaha University, at the age of 33 with six kids in tow. He worked for Champion Spark Plugs which paved the way for him owning his own business in Blair, NE, 16th Street Auto Parts. After his clan had all graduated from high school, the mountains began to call Jim and Anna Lee again. They returned to Colorado taking residence in another small town, Woodland Park, CO. Jim quickly found himself at home working in the tire department of Sears. After years of hard work, he finally retired in 1991. By that time, his children had slowly moved to Colorado as well, and the grandkids had overtaken his heart. He spent his retired years spoiling his grandkids rotten. His shoulders endured many hours of little legs perched on them, as well as countless loving smacks to his head. Riding on his shoulders was a sacred place to the grandkids and will forever be cherished. It taught them to never settle and reach for the stars. His stomach would turn from the hours he would spend riding the twisting and jolting amusement park rides or tire swings at the park. But it never slowed him down or stopped him there wasn't anything he wouldn't do to make his grandkids smile. In 2008, the first great grandkid came along and in the dusk of his life he was adored by three more. James passed February 5, 2019 in Colorado Springs, CO. He leaves behind a large loving family that will miss him dearly every day. He was more than just a husband, dad, grandpa or great-grandpa he was the McGee family's North Star. He'll forever guide the way home for the ones he loved. Services are pending.
A fire destroyed a home in the Millard area Wednesday, despite the hour that Omaha firefighters spent fighting it.
The fire was reported at 5528 S. 152nd St., which is near 152nd and U Streets, about 12:23 p.m., a Douglas County dispatcher said. It was declared under control at 1:34 p.m.
No one was home at the time of the fire, Omaha Fire Battalion Chief Sean Dean said. Five people lived in the house. Two dogs died, the department said.
During the fire, a transformer near the house blew, knocking out power to houses on that side of the block, an Omaha Public Power District worker said.
A neighbor, Dave White, said he was inside his house when he heard four or five explosions more like gunshots, he said. I looked out and there were flames shooting out everywhere out of the house. Then all of a sudden, the smoke turned black and I mean black. The smoke kept pouring out for five or 10 minutes.
The house was engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived, Dean said.
Our primary concern was actually the two houses, one on either side, he said.
Fire investigators didnt yet know where the fire started.
LINCOLN Fighting back tears, Lindsay Brinson told a group of state lawmakers on Friday that she may lose her $108,000 home because she couldnt afford to pay her $2,500 property tax bill in 2013.
A private company, which paid the tax bill and her unpaid taxes in subsequent years, acquired the title to her home in Eagle, Nebraska, under a legal process designed to get people to pay their delinquent taxes.
At a legislative hearing Friday, Brinson said the process was a nightmare for her and doesnt give homeowners like her proper notice that a company could soon take away their home.
To keep a home that was already paid for, she is now paying $507 a month for 15 years to an Omaha management company that paid her tax debts. She said that, including an $8,000 down payment, she will eventually have to pay more than $99,000 to keep her home because of $16,600 in delinquent taxes.
These investment companies are taking advantage of people who are already in severe financial crisis and making their situation dramatically worse, she told a panel of state lawmakers. Now Im paying twice for my home.
LINCOLN More struggling Nebraska parents could get help with child care costs under a proposal heard Friday by a legislative panel.
State Sen. Kate Bolz of Lincoln said Legislative Bill 329 would increase the amount of money families could make and still qualify for child care subsidies. The bill also would give families more time to ease their way off subsidies as their incomes increase.
LB 329 would allow people to qualify for subsidies while making up to 165 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, or $27,159 for a single parent and child. Once they qualify, parents could keep the subsidy until they reach 200 percent of poverty.
Bolz argued that her measure would give low-income families a boost toward self-sufficiency by partially reversing budget cuts made to the program in 2002. That year, then-Gov. Mike Johanns dropped the eligibility level for child care subsidies to 120 percent of federal poverty guidelines, down from 185 percent of poverty.
In 2013, lawmakers increased eligibility to the current 130 percent of poverty, or $21,398 for a single parent and child, while allowing transitional subsidies for parents making up to 185 percent of poverty. Nebraska has among the lowest eligibility levels in the country.
However, prosecutors say that order was faulty because Zastera didnt hold an evidentiary hearing on the purported new evidence entitling Harris to a new trial. Harris had pointed to a police report that wasnt turned over and to an inmates account that an accomplice had recanted his testimony against Harris and had confessed to the killing. (Such recantations arent rare, especially when they come from informants who subsequently become concerned about their safety in prison.)
Two questions the high court may be asked: Was the judges order for a new trial faulty? And if it was, should Harris speedy-trial clock have started ticking?
Court officials: No court administrator assigned Harris case to a different judge after Zastera retired. Logistics may have had something to do with that. The states high court had reassigned the Douglas County case to a Sarpy County judge after all of Douglas Countys judges recused themselves. They stepped aside because one of their colleagues, Leigh Ann Retelsdorf, was the original prosecutor on the case.
When Zastera readied for retirement, Douglas County court administrators say it doesnt appear he or his staff alerted them that they needed a new judge for the case, perhaps assuming the case immediately would be assigned to Zasteras successor. It wasnt.
Under the law, prosecutors have six months not including any time it takes to address a defendants motion to bring a defendant to trial.
More than 10 months had passed since Zastera issued his order for a new trial.
Now prosecutors are scrambling to hit rewind on the case. The predicament has brought up all sorts of questions, including this: Was it prosecutors responsibility to remind officials to assign the case to another judge after Zasteras retirement? And this: Were Harris speedy trial rights truly violated?
Judge Nelson wrote that the states motion to reconsider could have been resolved well within the six-month speedy trial clock. Instead, it is still pending.
The judge noted that the state did not ask for another judge until March 30, 2018. Nelson also faulted the Attorney Generals Office for not responding to the Nebraska Supreme Courts request to explain why there was no ruling on their motion to reconsider.
The state could have done several things, Nelson wrote. It could have asked for another district judge to be appointed, it could have begun preparing to retry Harris ... it could have done all of the above.
Instead the state apparently did nothing.
The congregation used to do its own links with crank stuffers, but they were never uniform and the casings were hard to tie.
Everything is the same size, Ross said. It works perfect.
After its returned from Stoysich, the meat is smoked and then cooked on Saturday. Ross is happy to share some details, but not the mix of spices that makes the mettwurst one of a kind.
Only the Schoening family of Mineola knows the ingredients. Its a holdover from those days when families each winter made their own unique sausage.
We always know theyll be there, Ross said.
Everyone from age 8 to 80 makes something, too.
Biermann grinds the rye seed and members of the congregation both men and women take it home and turn it into bread.
The cabbage is bought at Russs and cooked overnight with feather bones for the kraut.
On the day of the feast, more than 60 people arrive to cook meat and potatoes, cut up the pies and bread and serve as waiters and waitresses.
Thats the best part, Ross said.
All of us have two sides: the private and the public. But if the private self is more a reflection of the truest self, then maybe one lesson from Email-Gate is to keep your racism and conspiracy theories to yourself. Or maybe there will be no lesson as, thanks to the digital lives we live, our attention quickly turns to something else.
As for Joe Ricketts, it will be hard to see his future actions without considering the views he expressed in those emails. Do his views on Islam cast a shadow on that beautiful place of reflection he built south of Gretna, the Cloisters on the Platte? Is he susceptible to chain emails with dubious claims when he takes a political stand?
Even though Ricketts disavowed the views those emails express, as political scientist Paul Landow said: It is hard to put toothpaste back in the tube.
And for the rest of us, there are undoubtedly more digital closets yet to open.
Jennifer Arangio
Jennifer Arangio, former senior director of the White House National Security Council,, is joining D.C. lobbying firm Federal Advocates as vice president.
Arangio first started worked for the president during the 2016 campaign, serving as its director of women engagement. She then served on the presidential transition team and joined the administration as a senior director on the NSC staff. Her responsibilities included multilateral affairs, womens economic empowerment and entrepreneurship and strategic communications.
Before working for Trump, Arangio was a principal at security and intelligence consulting firm Command Group. She also served as senior counsel for the House Committee on Homeland Security from 2006 to 2014.
Federal Advocates president Michael Esposito said that "pairing Jennifer's experience with my position on the RNC Chairman's Advisory Board, Vice President (and former Member of Congress) Chris Carney's advisory role at the DCCC, and our access into the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus, our reach into the D.C. political apparatus continues to be exceptionally strong."
Howard Schultz
Where's Howard?
For a guy considering a run for the president of the US, billionaire and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has gained little traction.
His splashy Jan. 27 "60 Minutes" announcement that he would run as an independent candidate may very well turn out to the high water mark of the Schultz for President campaign.
It has been downhill since for the life-long Democrat Schultz.
His independent presidential ambitions have been roundly criticized as Trump's ticket to re-election. It's telling that Schultz's biggest media supporters are the gang on "Fox and Friends," the president's favorite TV program.
A fellow "person of means," which is Howard's preferred term for a billionaire, Mike Bloomberg, wrote that an independent run "would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President."
The ex-NYC mayor, who had considered a third-party run for the White House, knows what he's talking about.
He blogged on Jan. 28: "Now I have never been a partisan guy and its no secret that I looked at an independent bid in the past.
"In fact, I faced exactly the same decision now facing others who are considering it. The data was very clear and very consistent.
"Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win. That is truer today than ever before."
Bloomberg is now considering a run as a Democrat.
A CNN poll released Feb. 7 shows that voters are not exactly jumping on the Schultz bandwagon.
He ranks last on the 11 candidates or potential candidates considered by CNN.
A mere one-in-five of respondents say they are either "very likely" (four percent) or "somewhat likely" (16 percent) to support Schultz.
That trails second-tier politicos Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (21%), New York Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (22%), Bloomberg (27%), ex-Rep. Beto O'Rourke (29%) and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (29%).
Former VP Joe Biden (50%) tops the list, followed by Trump (41%) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (41%).
Schultz may see the writing on the wall. During a Feb. 7 speech at Purdue University, where he received an underwhelming reception, Schultz promised once again that he would not play the spoiler role in the presidential race. "No one wants to see Donald Trump fired more than me," he said.
The Starbucks chief should take time to smell the coffee and drop the independent run.
That would allow him to focus on promoting his new book, "From the Ground Up," which may have been the reason why he threatened to toss his hat into the ring in the first place.
Because the victim is deceased, we dont have a statement from her saying exactly, you know, what she knew or what she was doing, Saucer said. But we had to tie it up circumstantially to show that she was, in fact, looking into his background and he found out about it, which was his motive for killing her.
The incident
Sandra Revels was found Monday, Feb. 22, 2016, lying in a pool of blood, unresponsive, on the floor next to her bed.
She had multiple cuts and stab wounds which were concentrated to her face, neck and chest area but only one was considered fatal, Berardi said during closing statements on Friday.
Revels shared a mobile home with her ex-husband, daughter and her daughters boyfriend, Davis, on Lee Road 622 just outside Opelika.
Davis, who was not at the residence when Sandra Revel was found, was soon developed as a person of interest. He was located by police in an abandoned mobile home near Lee Road 622 within the days following.
He was not immediately charged with murder. He was indicted by a Lee County grand jury in 2017 and was later arrested on the murder charge early 2018 while in Jacksonville, Fla.
Quick verdict
Luiz de Castro was installing lamps at a mining complex in Brazil late last month when a loud blast split the air. He figured it was just a truck tire popping, but a friend knew better.
No, its not that! the friend said. Run!
Dashing up a staircase, caked in mud and pelted by flying rocks, Mr. Castro clambered to safety. But as he watched, a wall of mud unleashed by the collapse of a mining dam swallowed his co-workers, he said. Tiago, George, Icaro they and at least 154 others, all buried alive.
The deluge of toxic mud stretched for five miles, crushing homes, offices and people a tragedy, but hardly a surprise, experts say.
There are 87 mining dams in Brazil built like the one that failed enormous reservoirs of mining waste held back by little more than walls of sand and silt. And all but four of the dams have been rated by the government as equally vulnerable, or worse.
Even more alarming, at least 27 sit directly uphill from cities or towns, with more than 100,000 people living in especially risky areas if the dams failed, an estimate by The New York Times found.
In the disaster last month, all the elements for catastrophe were there: A bare-bones reservoir of mining waste built on the cheap, sitting above a large town nestled underneath. Overlooked warnings of structural problems that could lead to a collapse. Monitoring equipment that had stopped working.
And perhaps above all, a country where a powerful mining industry has been free to act more or less unchecked.
The threat of poorly constructed mining dams in Brazil goes far beyond one company. The latest deadly failure the second in Brazil in three years has made it clear that neither the mining industry nor regulators have the situation under control.
Collapsed dam Flow of mud Mine headquarters Farmland Hotel Residential area Approx. 5 miles from dam Paraopeba River Collapsed dam Flow of mud Mine headquarters Hotel Farmland Residential area Approx. 5 miles from dam Paraopeba River
Vale S.A., the worlds largest iron ore producer, says it will close all 10 of its dams in Brazil with a design similar to the one it ran in the town, Brumadinho. Still, the company, which bought the mining complex in 2001, defended its management of the dam, which had been sitting there, inactive, since 2016.
The dam had a safety factor in accordance with the worlds best practices, Vale said in a statement. The structure, it said, had been inspected regularly, and the reports attest to the physical and hydraulic safety of the dam.
But questions about the safety of the dam had been brushed aside for years. Despite them, the company had managed to get its plan to expand the mining complex in Brumadinho fast-tracked for approval by local officials.
When you have this sort of structure upstream of a population center, that sends up all sorts of red flags, said William F. Marcuson III, a former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
TEXT Corrego do Feijao Mine N 2,000 feet Collapsed dam Dam 6 Ore treatment plant Railroad ring Damaged or destroyed structures Rescue center Mine headquarters Cafeteria Nova Estancia bed and breakfast Farmland Collapsed rail bridge Parque da Cachoeira neighborhood Paraopeba River
The New York Times | Satellite imagery via DigitalGlobe
The Solidity of Mud
It is one of the oddest structures known to engineering and, unless it is designed, constructed and monitored with great attention to detail, one of the most terrifying.
Dams like the one that collapsed in Brumadinho are, in essence, lakes of thick, semi-hardened mud consisting of water and the solid byproducts of ore mining, which are known as tailings.
Antonio Lacerda/EPA, via Shutterstock
Like any dam, they can fail in a number of unsurprising ways. They can overtop if filled too quickly. They can spring a leak, or sustain damage in an earthquake. Or they can fall victim to sloppy construction or maintenance.
But they are not like any dam.
Indeed, the structure at Brumadinho strained the very definition of dam. It had no separate concrete or metal wall to hold back its contents. Instead, the structure, known as an upstream tailings dam, relied on the lake of mud to remain solid enough to contain itself.
1 The Brumadinho dam was born, its plans show, as a relatively modest mound of compacted material that acted like a dike. Starter dike is made of compacted dirt. Tailings 2 When the dam was opened for business, waste from the mine was piped in behind the starter dike and subsequent dikes. The tailings are mixed with water and piped into the dam area. New dikes are built on top of solidified mud tailings as the dam grows. 3 As the mud lake grew, new dikes were built upstream to hold it. Several dikes are made of compacted tailings. Water table Engineers added a setback to address problems with seepage in the lower parts of the dam. High water pressure could potentially breach the dam and help produce liquefaction. SECTIONS OF THE DAM 1 The Brumadinho dam was born, its plans show, as a relatively modest mound of compacted material that acted like a dike. Starter dike is made of compacted dirt. Tailings 2 When the dam was opened for business, waste from the mine was piped in behind the starter dike and subsequent dikes. The tailings are mixed with water and piped into the dam area. New dikes are built on top of solidified mud tailings as the dam grows. 3 As the mud lake grew, new dikes were built upstream to hold it. Several dikes are made of compacted tailings. A setback was added to address problems with seepage in the lower parts of the dam. Water table High water pressure could potentially breach the dam and help produce liquefaction. SECTIONS OF THE DAM 1 The Brumadinho dam was born, its plans show, as a relatively modest mound of compacted material that acted like a dike. Starter dike is made of compacted dirt. Tailings 2 When the dam was opened for business, waste from the mine was piped in behind the starter dike and subsequent dikes. The tailings are mixed with water and piped into the dam area. New dikes are built on top of solidified mud tailings as the dam grows. 3 As the mud lake grew, new dikes were built upstream to hold it. A setback was added to address seepage problems in the dam. Water table Several dikes are made of compacted tailings. SECTIONS OF THE DAM The New York Times | Note: Diagram is based on a 2010 masters thesis by Washington Pirete and a 2018 report by Tuv Sud.
Basically they are like landfills, but wet landfills, said Gregory B. Baecher, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a professor at the University of Maryland.
The dams unique construction makes them vulnerable to a bizarre and potentially devastating process called liquefaction. When that happens, a solid material seemingly resting safely in place can abruptly become a murky liquid, flowing downhill and destroying nearly everything in its path.
Even a subtle change, like an increase in water content because of especially heavy rains, say, or poor management, can create enough internal pressure to push apart the solid tailings and liquefy the mud.
The people of Brumadinho know all too well what can happen next.
The forces are absolutely phenomenal, said Dirk Van Zyl, a professor of mining engineering at the University of British Columbia, who investigated a 2014 collapse of a tailings dam in Canada. You really have to see it to understand.
A video of the Brumadinho collapse makes clear that the mud behind the dam did liquefy, experts who have seen it said. What is not clear is whether liquefaction caused the collapse, or followed it.
The video appears to show where the dam failure began.
B A C Areas where the dam appears to have collapsed first It started as a pinpoint, said Mr. Marcuson, the former engineering society president, and maybe in one second it looked like a whole patch down there. Very rapidly, he said, the dam fails and the tailings pour out and the dam goes to hell in a matter of seconds. And the dam just crumbles up. N TOP VIEW OF THE DAM The mud tailings started to liquefy and flow down the valley. 3 Extent of the mudflow B Dam face Entire face of the dam started to collapse 2 C A Dam started to collapse in these areas at the lower and top dikes 1 B A C Areas where the dam appears to have collapsed first It started as a pinpoint, said Mr. Marcuson, the former engineering society president, and maybe in one second it looked like a whole patch down there. Very rapidly, he said, the dam fails and the tailings pour out and the dam goes to hell in a matter of seconds. And the dam just crumbles up. N TOP VIEW OF THE DAM The mud tailings started to liquefy and flow down the valley. 3 Extent of the mudflow B Dam face Entire face of the dam started to collapse 2 C A Dam started to collapse in these areas at the lower and top dikes 1 B A C Areas where the dam appears to have collapsed first It started as a pinpoint, said Mr. Marcuson, the former engineering society president, and maybe in one second it looked like a whole patch down there. Very rapidly, he said, the dam fails and the tailings pour out and the dam goes to hell in a matter of seconds. And the dam just crumbles up. N TOP VIEW OF THE DAM Extent of the mudflow 3 The mud tailings started to liquefy and flow down the valley. B Dam face Entire face of the dam started to collapse. 2 C A Dam started to collapse in these areas. 1 The New York Times | Note: Diagram is based on a 2010 masters thesis by Washington Pirete and a 2018 report by Tuv Sud.
Mr. Van Zyl said: Ultimately everything liquefies and its gone. Its pretty darn bad.
Many engineers cautioned that it was too soon to draw firm conclusions about what precisely went wrong with the structure in Brumadinho, called Dam I of the Corrego do Feijao Mine. And they said it was possible to build upstream tailings dams safely.
Theres nothing blatantly wrong with this method of construction, said W. Allen Marr, founder and chief executive of Geocomp, based in Boston, and a member of the national academy. When the structures fail, Mr. Marr said, its usually a combination of several things that should have been done but dont get done.
In 2010, Washington Pirete, whose LinkedIn profile and a professional publication list him as a longtime Vale employee, wrote a masters thesis focused on the dam at Brumadinho. Mr. Pirete concluded that the risks of liquefaction were low to moderate, but several engineers say now that his analysis, if anything, cast doubt on the safety of the dam.
Douglas Magno/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images
Mr. Marr said that Mr. Piretes safety calculations raise questions about the stability of the dam. Mr. Van Zyl said that if he had calculated the safety margins Mr. Pirete found for the dam, I wouldnt sleep well. He said his first reaction on seeing the thin margins was that the dam should have failed earlier, almost.
Mr. Pirete did not respond to several requests for comment.
The thesis describes a method of construction, which began in 1976, that is in many ways routine for upstream dams.
A so-called starter dike was built across the valley above Brumadinho, and the mining company piped waste behind it. When the waste neared the top of the dike, the company built another slightly uphill hence the name upstream construction. The second dike sat directly on the hardened mud.
Over the decades, a towering structure rose over the mining complex, its integrity dependent entirely on the solidity of the mud.
A closer look at Mr. Piretes figures, some of which were scarcely above the collapse threshold, left some engineers questioning how Mr. Pirete could have considered the dam safe.
Thats way too close to the margin, Mr. Baecher said.
Last year, a German company hired by Vale took its own look at the dam and calculated higher stability factors than Mr. Pirete did but it did raise safety concerns.
The company Tuv Sud found blocked drainage pipes and cracks, and made note of a small wooden structure that had been erected to stop part of the dam from slumping. The company also found water visibly seeping from at least one area, and said there was a risk of liquefaction.
To reduce the risk of triggering a collapse through vibrations, they advised Vale to avoid letting heavy equipment onto the dam or allowing detonations nearby. They also advised work to keep the water level from rising.
A Looming Threat
Two weeks after the Brumadinho tragedy, sirens went off in the middle of the night 76 miles away, in the town of Barao de Cocais. Attention! This is a real dam break emergency, loudspeakers blasted. Abandon your homes immediately.
The alarms wreaked havoc as nearly 500 people were ordered to evacuate. Vale, which owns the mining complex in Barao de Cocais, called it a preventive measure, explaining it had initiated its emergency plan after the consulting firm Walm refused to attest to the dams stability.
We hope it doesnt burst, but unlike many cities we had time to act, said Decio dos Santos, the town mayor. We didnt know the dam was dangerous.
The true risk of dams in Brazil and elsewhere is largely unknown.
Just as in Brumadinho, the dams above the now evacuated areas of Barao de Cocais and another town, Itatiaiucu, are upstream dams. There are a total of 87 upstream dams throughout Brazil, and all but four have the same safety rating as the collapsed structure or worse according to government records.
Atlantic Ocean BRAZIL Site of dam collapse Rio de Janeiro Sao Paulo Upstream mining dams near populated areas Upstream mining dams Atlantic Ocean BRAZIL Upstream dams near populated areas Site of dam collapse Upstream dam Atlantic Ocean BRAZIL Site of dam collapse Upstream mining dams near populated areas Upstream mining dams By Scott Reinhard | Source: Agencia Nacional de Mineracao
Some of these poorly rated dams lie directly upstream from populated areas, an analysis by The Times found. At least 27 sit directly uphill from cities or towns, and could threaten them if they failed.
Upstream mining dams near populated places Dam Conselheiro Lafaiete Dam Conselheiro Lafaiete Crixas Dam Crixas Dam Igarape Dam Igarape Dam Dam Itaquaquecetuba Dam Itaquaquecetuba Dam Joao Monlevade Dam Joao Monlevade Dam Nova Lima Dam Nova Lima The New York Times | Satellite imagery via Google Earth
In Itatiaiucu, just 20 miles west of Brumadinho, residents were also awoken in the pre-dawn hours on Friday. Authorities and representatives of the ArcelorMittal mining company went door to door in one neighborhood, ordering some 200 people to evacuate.
Here, too, the company said it had initiated its emergency plan after auditors adopted a more conservative methodology and refused to attest to the stability of a nearby dam although the conditions themselves were unchanged.
A Company Town Says Enough
When the dam collapsed at the Corrego de Feijao mine shortly after noon, 11.7 million cubic meters of mining waste enough to fill almost 5,000 Olympic swimming pools descended toward the town below. As it did, it slammed into a company cafeteria, where there were a couple of hundred employees.
It took rescue workers days to reach them.
Antonio Lacerda/EPA, via Shutterstock
Vale is the main source of income for the 37,000 people living in Brumadinho, but as the death toll rose, public anger boiled over at the company.
Even run-of-the-mill activities became daunting, with a mass of thick brown sludge now cutting through the town.
Two days after the dam collapse, Mayor Avimar Barcelos described Vale as incompetent and reckless. Vale workers, once proud, felt subdued. One said he no longer felt comfortable wearing his uniform on the street.
Id be lynched, he said.
At the entrance to town, a monument bore a scribbled accusation: Murderous Vale!!!
AP
The company says it is still investigating what caused the rupture and insists there were no warning signs.
The dam had been inactive for almost three years, according to Vale, and had been certified as stable in September, despite warnings in a 2015 environmental impact study that some of the monitoring instruments were faulty.
Three years ago, a similar dam burst in the city of Mariana, 75 miles away, killing 19 people and unleashing one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazilian history. That dam was jointly owned by Vale and the Anglo-Australian mining company BHP.
After the Mariana collapse, officials vowed to adopt rigorous safety protocols. That never happened.
In Brazil, given the dearth of government inspectors, companies are allowed to self-regulate, hiring independent auditors to verify dam safety through regular inspections and an analysis of written records all provided by the company.
Experts say that creates a conflict of interest.
You cant have the person doing the inspection getting paid by the company he is inspecting, said Evandro Moraes da Gama, a professor of engineering at the Federal University of Minas Gerais who specializes in mining waste.
Four days after the Brumadinho dam burst, the police arrested the outside inspectors who had attested to its stability, along with three Vale employees responsible for safety and environmental licensing. A judge later ordered them released.
Theyre taking it out on the inspectors, arresting them, but its the system thats flawed, Mr. Gama said.
Many residents of Brumadinho believe that the failure of the companys warning system cost many lives. In a statement, Vale said the speed at which the event occurred made it impossible to trigger the sirens.
Mr. Castro, the Vale employee who escaped the deluge, said, If the alarm had sounded, the environmental tragedy would still happen, but no one would have died.
Jefferson Ferreira dos Passos, whose sister worked at an inn downhill from the dam, said that when he heard it had burst, he immediately called her. When she didnt answer, Mr. Passos ran four miles to the site only to find an expanse of mud.
He and another man started carrying survivors out of the sludge. When they found a woman clinging to a tree trunk with her legs broken, they waited by her side until a helicopter airlifted her out.
TV Record, via AP
He never found his sister.
Hooked on Mining
The first Portuguese explorers came searching for gold and diamonds in the state of Minas Gerais, whose name means general mines. It remains the hub of Brazils mining industry, producing 53 percent of the countrys output, with more mines and tailings dams than any other Brazilian state. Here, critics say, the laws are written by the mining companies, not for them.
Last December, an extraordinary meeting of the state council on mining regulations was called to vote on a proposal by Vale to expand operations at Corrego de Feijao and another mine. The proposal had been declared a priority by the state.
Vale bought the mining complex in 2001. Antonio Lacerda/EPA, via Shutterstock
Maria Teresa Corujo, an activist who represents the community vote on the council, angrily pointed out that council members had been given just four business days to pore over thousands of documents.
The environmental management of our state continues to be focused on the G.D.P. index, on mining interests, she said, according to minutes of the meeting that were sent to The Times. This is destroying Minas Gerais.
Julio Cesar Dutra Grillo, the state representative from the federal environmental protection agency, warned the council that the dams were not risk free. Any negligence on the part of those conducting risk management, and they rupture, he said.
The proposal passed with one dissenting vote, from Ms. Corujo, and an abstention by Mr. Grillo.
The board's decision came despite growing concern about accidents after the Mariana dam collapse. In public hearings, activists in Brumadinho would try to convince residents that tourism, not mining, was the citys path forward.
But tourism is not what keeps the city spinning. Mining started here in the 1950s and many communities in the city were created by its workers.
Fernando Coelho, 35, was born in a small community inside the Corrego do Feijao mining compound. My umbilical cord is buried there, he said.
Mr. Coelho started working there alongside his father, Olavo Coelho, when he was 19, but was at home after a night shift on the day the dam broke. He knew his father would be having lunch at the cafeteria and rushed to his car. When he got there, all he found was mud.
Mr. Coelho said he was desperately sad but angry, too. Months before the collapse, his father had been called in to fix a leak. Ever since then, according to his son, he had been saying the dam was not safe.
He warned the dam could burst, he said. But he isnt the one making decisions.
Mr. Coelho said he told the prosecutors in charge of the investigation what his father had told him. Three other workers also told The Times they were aware of leaks.
But Mr. Coelho said that despite his fathers warnings, he had never worried the dam would break. His whole life, after all, revolved around the mining complex. He feels differently now.
I wont ever go back, he said. It killed my father.
Before the dam collapsed After the collapse Mud flow Before the dam collapsed After the collapse Mud flow Before After Flow Before the dam collapsed After the collapse Mud flow The New York Times | Satellite imagery via DigitalGlobe
In the days after the rupture, Vale said it would give the families of each victim 100,000 reais, or $27,000, independent of any legal settlements.
State and national governments quickly called for stricter regulations, but, as experts point out, the outrage after the Mariana dam collapse did little to improve the regulatory framework.
After Mariana, the system just got more flexible, facilitating the traffic of influence inside the licensing system, said Klemens Laschefski, a Federal University of Minas Gerais professor who participates in the council meetings.
Douglas Magno/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images
Ive been to 40 meetings on priority projects not one was rejected, he said.
Ademir Caricati, a community leader in a neighborhood where roughly 40 houses were destroyed, said that Vale officials told residents last year that the dam posed little danger.
The officials even offered an odd sort of reassurance, pointing out that the mines administrative offices were right below the dam.
In 2015, the Obama White House put out a call to amateur historians to search their attics and archives for a relic of womens history: the original, signed copy of the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention1 in New York, one of the nations first organized events for womens rights.
Back then, about 300 people gathered for the two day convention in upstate New York and more than 100 women and men signed the manifesto, declaring it time for women to claim their rights in society. One, albeit low down on the list, was the right to vote.
1 Located in a hamlet in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, this event launched the womens rights movement and spawned subsequent conventions.
But unlike the Declaration of Independence2 on which the Declaration of Sentiments was modeled the original manuscript may no longer exist.
2 Enough, King George III! After the famous preamble, the Declaration lists grievances suffered by the Colonists and their desire to be independent of Great Britain.
The search yielded a few clues, but no manuscript with either notes in the margin or signatures at the end.
We found nothing except a couple of bread crumbs, David Ferriero, the national archivist of the United States said.
An illustration of the Seneca Falls Convention, published in 1859. Getty Images
The Trump White House abandoned the project, which was started by Megan Smith, then the United States chief technological officer under President Obama. But Ms. Smith, who is now the chief executive of a digital technology company, Shift7, plans to continue the search, using the hashtag #FindTheSentiments.
We'd like to find the original, she said, and give it the correct position of prominence it deserves with the Charters of Freedom3 in the rotunda of the National Archives.
3 The founding documents of the United States: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Absent an actual manuscript, the hunt has kicked up the dust of memory, resurrecting a document that laid the groundwork for the womens suffrage movement4.
4 A suffragist is a person who advocates for enfranchisement. Dont call her a suffragette, since it was a pejorative term used (first by a British man) to diminish women fighting for their right to vote.
Next year marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment5. In this #MeToo era, with women lawmakers appearing at the State of the Union wearing white in solidarity with suffrage and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi battling with President Trump, the defiant declarations of long ago have never seemed so relevant.
5 Congress passed the amendment giving women the right to vote on June 4, 1919. After Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify, it officially became law on Aug. 26, 1920. New York had already given women the right to vote in 1917.
A campaign to find the original Declaration of Sentiments, to my mind, is not just a campaign to get the document, Donna Lieberman, the director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said. Its a campaign to raise public awareness of what those documents said and their place in history.
She added: Our national history of inequality is something that we have yet to succeed in getting rid of. Were still living with the long term effects of inequality; thats true for women, for black people. You go back and read this, it just hits you over the head once again.
A declaration for women
Excerpt from a letter written by Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams in 1776. Massachusetts Historical Society
The Founding Fathers had been warned. Remember the Ladies, Abigail Adams6 wrote to her husband, and future president, John, during the Revolutionary War before the men went on to pen their Declaration of Independence. And left out the ladies.
6 In her March 1776 letter to her husband, John Adams, she implored him to put women into the new laws he would be making: Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion.
The Declaration of Sentiments writes them back into history, mimicking the preamble with one addition:
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.
It went on to accuse men of repeated injuries and usurpations against women, including depriving them of having the right to vote, of equal wages, of access to professions like law and medicine; denying them marital property rights or the ease to divorce; and of restricting womens ability to attend the same universities as men.
The last sentiment in the declaration accuses men of destroying womens confidence.
The final sentiment is an especially significant find, especially for me reflecting on the deep systemic race, gender and class bias of Silicon Valley, where I spent much of my career, Ms. Smith said.
Woman is mans equal. And the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.
Womens rights, let alone womens suffrage, was not exactly in vogue in 1848. Elizabeth Cady Stanton7, frustrated in part by her domestic situation and inspired by her association with other female activists, had the idea for the convention; she and a handful of women drafted their ideas days before hosting a two-day gathering at a local church in Seneca Falls.
7 Stanton steered the agenda for womens rights. The origins of her activism trace back to her honeymoon: While in London in 1840, she was at the World Anti-Slavery convention, where she met Lucretia Mott, who would become a mentor. They both were denied seats because of their gender.
A sketch of Elizabeth Cady Stanton speaking in Seneca Falls. Getty Images
At the time, it was a revolutionary idea without much immediate impact, said Martha Saxton, a professor emeritus of womens history at Amherst College.
There were only about seven people interested in womens suffrage at the time, she said. It was not a popular issue.
After a debate among the women, the right to vote ended up No. 9 on a list of 11 resolutions, the only resolution that was not unanimous.
Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.
If you read Lucretia Mott8, who said something about trembling at the idea they thought they would be ridiculed, Ms. Saxton said.
8 A Quaker minister, Mott was a founder of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. She was also one of the key organizers of the Seneca Falls rights convention, drawing on her frustration upon learning that female teachers were paid less than male teachers.
They were right.
Newspaper columns and sermons responded with venom and disdain that foreshadowed the social media age. Editorials screamed headlines like The Reign of the Petticoats, and Insurrection Among the Women. The Mechanics Advocate called the convention unwomanly, the reforms unnecessary. The Worcester Telegram referred to women as Amazons, who were bolting with a vengeance.
In her book, Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815-1897, Stanton wrote that she and her colleagues were shocked by the blowback:
No words could express what seemed to us so timely, so rational, and so sacred, should be a subject for sarcasm and ridicule to the entire press of the nation.
Selections from Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815-1897
But Seneca Falls did propel subsequent conventions for womens rights, and three years later, Susan B. Anthony9 would join the growing suffrage movement.
9 She died in 1906, before seeing suffrage for women, but Anthony was the adept political organizer who galvanized the reform movement. The U.S. mint put her on the $1 coin in 1979.
In September 1848, following the Rochester Convention, Stanton forcefully reflected on the ridiculousness of being excluded:
To have the rights of drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rum selling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, whilst we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens it is too grossly insulting to the dignity of woman to be longer quietly submitted to. The right is ours, have it we must use it we will.
A suffrage split
While the Declaration was meant to be inclusive, no African-American women were believed to have attended the convention in Seneca Falls.
Scholars point to feminisms earlier influences like the Antislavery Convention of American Women of 183710 in New York City, where black, white and Native American women attended. The role of black women in the feminist movement is a controversy still unfolding.
10 An inclusive convention of social reform that focused on the abolition of slavery. Angelina Grimke and her older sister, Sarah, of Philadelphia, are two of the prominent leaders, helping establish a national anti-slavery petition.
The leaders of abolition and womens suffrage split into two rival womens groups11, in part over who should have voting rights. Stanton and Anthony did not campaign for the 15th Amendment because it gave the right to vote first to African-American men before all women.
11 The National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Stanton and Anthony, advocated for national legal action in granting women the right to vote, and did not support the 15th amendment. The American Woman Suffrage Movement, which founded by Lucy Stone in 1869, supported it, and made gaining womens right to vote in the states its primary issue.
The hunt for a sacred object
A scholar of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ann D. Gordon, wrote a blog post in 2015 criticizing the search for the declaration as Megan Smiths romantic quest for something truer or more authentic.
In fact, other historians see Ms. Smiths public search as a Quixotic quest because the content of the Declaration of Sentiments is widely available.
Historian and Research Professor Emerita, Ann D. Gordon Desiree Rios for The New York Times
Ms. Gordon, a research professor emerita at Rutgers University, where she edited the papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, said Ms. Smith in her search had treated the manuscript, itself, as a prize.
I dont know that the sacred object matters more than what it said, Ms. Gordon said. That somehow, if we dont have it handwritten, with the signatures, that theres something less revealing about it.
She believes that the sought-after document never existed. Instead, the manuscript was more likely to be a collection of notes on several pages that were brought to printing press of Frederick Douglass12s North Star newspaper13 in Rochester, N.Y. The abolitionist, who also attended the convention and signed the document, had the declaration published as a pamphlet.
12 The foremost black, male leader in the abolitionist movement, Douglass was a former escaped slave who become an orator, author, publisher and feminist.
13 Douglass established this anti-slavery newspaper in 1847, and printed it in Rochester, N.Y. Its motto was: Right is of no sex; truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all and all are brethren.
In those days, Ms. Gordon said, it was rare that originals came out of the print shop.
But even if they did, Ms. Gordon said, they most likely burned in the fire that destroyed Mr. Douglasss house14 in 1872.
14 FIRE IN ROCHESTER. The New York Times reported on the fire in Douglasss home, and his familys narrow escape, on June 6, 1872.
Lisa Tetrault, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University credited Ms. Gordon for her 40-year exhaustive search for all documents by Stanton and Anthony. If it were to be found, shed have found it, Ms. Tetrault said in an email.
Archivists like Thomas Ruller, from New York State, defended the search for the manuscript.
There is something special and unique about original documents, handled by their creators, showing their edits and corrections, Mr. Ruller said.
The clues that came in to the website ranged from intriguing to not very helpful. A descendant of Mary Ann MClintock15, the secretary of the convention, fruitlessly searched the familys possessions. Another person mentioned that the parlor table on which MClintock possibly wrote the text is on display in the Smithsonian, but an unmarked document in the catalog might contain the original.
15 A Quaker, MClintock and her husband, Thomas, became fervent abolitionists and feminists. The Declaration of Sentiments was drafted on her kitchen table days before the nearby Seneca Falls convention.
For Ms. Gordon, the renewed attention on a document that is lesser known in American history has served as a reminder of the never-ending fight for womens rights.
Maybe what we learn is that this generation of women could think a whole lot of it through and lay down some rules, she said, and then we only later discovered how hard it would be to implement that.
(CNN) U.S. authorities have confiscated almost a billion dollars' worth of methamphetamine bound for Australia in the largest-ever seizure of the drug on American soil, Australian police announced Friday after a joint operation.
Around 1.7 tons of meth was seized in California on January 9 by U.S. authorities, along with smaller amounts of cocaine and heroin, police said. The estimated street value of the meth was 1.29 billion AUD, or $911 million and was also the largest-ever shipment intended for Australia.
On Thursday, police in Australia arrested six people in the states of Victoria and New South Wales allegedly involved with the U.S.-based crime syndicate believed behind the record-breaking shipment.
"Hundreds of thousands of dollars of proceeds of crime was located during the search warrant in Woodstock, and about 6.5kg of (meth) was found at a property in Keilor Downs," police said in a statement.
Three of those arrested in Australia will appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court later on Friday.
Authorities in Canada also conducted searches in Burnaby, British Columbia, as they attempted to crack down on the international crime syndicate believed behind the smuggling.
Photos released by police showed the drugs hidden inside electronic equipment and loaded onto wooden pallets.
"By stopping this, we have ensured criminals will not profit from the immense pain these drugs would have caused our community," said Bruce Hill, a spokesman for the Australian Federal Police organized crime unit.
James Carouso, the U.S. acting ambassador to Australia, said in a statement that "this historic seizure highlights just how important the U.S.-Australian partnership is in protecting Americans and Australians alike. Every day, U.S. and Australian law enforcement officers work together to keep us all safe."
According to authorities in the Australian state of Victoria, around 2 tons of meth is consumed in the state every year.
"Removing 1.7 tons of (meth) before it reaches our streets will have a huge effect on the illicit drug market," said Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission spokesman Jason Halls.
Last month, police in Australia arrested cabin crew for Malaysia-based carrier Malindo Air on accusations they helped smuggle heroin and meth worth millions of dollars from Asia to Australian cities, as part of a multinational syndicate.
.This story was first published on CNN.com, "Australia and US seize largest ever meth shipment."
No one was charged at the time, though the police in Norfolk said on Saturday that the results of their investigation were pending. The investigation file for the collision has been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for their consideration, the police said in a statement.
Both drivers tested negative for alcohol use at the time, the police said.
The Norfolk police confirmed that Philip had handed over his license to their office and, following standard protocol, they had forwarded it to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.
Days after the crash, Philip sent a letter of apology to the driver of the other vehicle, a copy of which was published by The Sunday Mirror.
I would like you to know how very sorry I am for my part in the accident at the Babingley crossroads, Philip wrote. He explained what had happened from his perspective, saying that bright sunlight shining on the main road had impeded his view.
In normal conditions I would have no difficulty in seeing traffic coming from the Dersingham direction, he wrote. But I can only imagine that I failed to see the car coming, and I am very contrite about the consequences.
LONDON A veteran British Conservative lawmaker has blocked a bill that would offer greater protection to girls at risk of genital cutting, drawing criticism across the political spectrum, with some calling it an appalling move.
And it wasnt the first time.
The bill would allow children to be placed in temporary care if they were deemed at risk of genital cutting, as is the case for other child abuse.
But because the bill was not introduced by the government, a simple objection in a sparsely attended session was enough for Christopher Chope to block it on Friday on procedural grounds with one word Object the second time he has done so since November.
Mr. Chopes latest move came a week after a woman in London became the first in the country to be convicted by a jury over the genital cutting of her daughter, at a time of heightened awareness about the issue, prompting reaction from campaigners and senior colleagues.
LONDON The courtship went on for 10 whole days. They were kept apart, but tantalizingly close, so that each could see, hear and smell the other.
When the matchmakers believed that the time and the place were right Friday at London Zoo the rare Sumatran tiger called Asim and a female named Melati were put in the same enclosure to be potential mates.
He promptly killed her moments after they were introduced for the first time.
[Read: Could a Tiger Tragedy Have Been Avoided?]
The animals handlers scrambled in vain to intervene, the zoo said, using loud noises, flares and alarms to try and distract the pair, but Asim had already overpowered Melati.
In the services first years, many other low-ranking officers were former Nazis or Wehrmacht officers, too. In some cases, the service used their connections to track wanted Nazis after the war. Last year, it was revealed that Heinrich Himmlers daughter had worked for the service as a secretary.
The headquarters move away from the outskirts of Munich is the final step in its decade-long push to modernize, and it offers a chance to make a symbolic move back to a unified modern Germany, away from old Nazi ties.
The gleaming beige and gray complex now sits just over a mile northeast of Ms. Merkels airy chancellery. Although construction started in 2008, it wasnt finished until late in 2017, and was not fully staffed until January this year, several years behind its initial schedule.
The move from the old Munich headquarters took more than a year and included some 100,000 moving boxes and 58,000 pieces of furniture and equipment. Although it is not known exactly how many of the services roughly 6,500 employees work in the new Berlin headquarters, the building has space for about 4,000 workers, according to a media statement.
By way of comparison, the Russian intelligence services have no single headquarters but occupy several buildings in different parts of Moscow. The Foreign Intelligence Service, known by its Russian initials, the F.S.B., is in the Lubyanka, a big but not gigantic building in the center of the city, while the S.V.R. the foreign intelligence arm of the old K.G.B. has its headquarters in a wooded area in the Yasenevo District.
The new Federal Intelligence Service building has 14,000 windows and 12,000 doors, the agency says, and its construction involved 135,000 cubic meters of concrete and 20,000 tons of steel. According to The Guardian, the building was originally scheduled to be finished in 2011, but its opening was delayed by construction woes and other problems. Thieves damaged toilets in the building in 2015, the news site said, causing flooding an incident Germans described as Watergate.
HELSINKI, Finland A basic income made recipients happier than they were on unemployment benefits, a two-year government experiment in Finland has found. But it did not, as proponents had hoped, make them more likely to work.
[Update: Sanna Marin of Finland to become worlds youngest prime minister.]
Finland the worlds happiest country last year, according to the United Nations is exploring alternatives to its social security model. About 2,000 Finns, chosen randomly from among the unemployed, became the first Europeans to be paid a regular monthly income by the state that was not reduced if they found work.
The government announced initial findings on Friday, a month after the trial ended.
The trial was being watched closely by other governments who see a basic income as a way of encouraging the unemployed to take up often low-paid or temporary work without fear of losing their benefits. That could help reduce dependence on the state and cut welfare costs, especially as new forms of automation eliminate some jobs.
Finlands minister of health and social affairs, Pirkko Mattila, said the impact on employment of the monthly pay check of 560 euros ($635) seems to have been minor on the grounds of the first trial year. But participants in the trial were happier and healthier than the control group.
KOCHI, India When Bishop Franco Mulakkal agreed to personally celebrate the First Communion for Darlys son, a rare honor in their Catholic Church in India, the family was overcome with pride.
During the ceremony, Darly looked over at her sister, a nun who worked with the bishop, to see her eyes spilling over with tears tears of joy, she figured. But only later would she learn of her sisters allegation that the night before, the bishop had summoned the nun to his quarters and raped her. The family says that was the first assault in a two-year ordeal in which the prelate raped her 13 times.
The bishop, who has maintained his innocence, will be charged and face trial by a special prosecutor on accusations of rape and intimidation, the police investigating the case said. But the church acknowledged the nuns accusations only after five of her fellow nuns mutinied and publicly rallied to her side to draw attention to her yearlong quest for justice, despite what they described as heavy pressure to remain silent.
We used to see the fathers of the church as equivalent to God, but not anymore, said Darly, her voice shaking with emotion. How can I tell my son about this, that the person teaching us the difference between right and wrong gave him his First Communion after committing such a terrible sin?
KABUL, Afghanistan Afghanistans intelligence agency said Saturday that the countrys special forces had arrested a Taliban operative responsible for two major attacks in Kabul. And in a separate operation, agents apprehended a university professor whom they described as a top recruiter for the Islamic State.
In a statement, the Afghan National Directorate of Security said the Taliban operative, Mohammad Sharif, was the mastermind behind a horrific truck bombing that killed 150 people in Kabuls diplomatic area in May 2017. He was also accused of planning a suicide bombing last November that killed five employees of a multinational security company.
Officials said Mr. Sharif had studied at a madrasa in Quetta, Pakistan, where the Afghan Taliban leadership is based. He was arrested along with two Taliban members accused of helping in the two attacks, intelligence officials said.
There have been relatively few terrorist attacks in Kabul in recent months, due in part to a major security sweep of the capital by the intelligence agency and the Afghan security forces, backed by American military advisers.
What happened?
On Jan. 25, a mining dam that sat above Brumadinho, a large town in southeastern Brazil, collapsed and unleashed a tidal wave of waste and mud that engulfed homes, businesses and residents in its path. It killed at least 157 people; 182 are still missing.
It was one of the deadliest mining accidents in Brazilian history a tragedy, but not a surprise, experts told The Times in an investigation into the dams collapse. All the elements of a potential catastrophe had been present, and warning signs overlooked, for years.
Why did the dam burst?
The structure, owned by the giant Brazilian mining company Vale S.A., strained the very definition of dam it was an enormous, bare-bones reservoir of mining waste held back by little more than walls of sand and silt. It had no separate concrete or metal to hold back its contents. Instead, the dam relied on the lake of mud to remain solid enough to contain itself.
DAKAR, Senegal When terrorists in Africa delivered two devastating attacks last month, they invoked a battle cry seldom heard in recent militant activity on the continent: the Palestinian cause.
The gunmen in a hotel complex in Kenya and a military installation in Mali were lauded by Al Qaedas central leadership, which praised its branches in Somalia and Mali for the deadly attacks.
We emphasize and appreciate the high efforts and beautiful words of all the vibrant jihadist work to prevent the Judaization of Palestine, a statement from the groups leaders said, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online extremist content.
The rallying cry, thousands of miles away from where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is playing out, was ordered up by Ayman al-Zawahri, the head of Al Qaeda who late last year reiterated calls for the groups franchises to target Zionists.
Coalescing scandals have engulfed Virginias leaders, plunging the state into political free fall.
First, Gov. Ralph Northam came under fire for a racist yearbook photo, which he acknowledged and then denied appearing in. He also admitted to wearing blackface to dress up as Michael Jackson in the 1980s.
Then Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax was accused of sexual assault by two women, allegations he has strongly denied. And the states third-ranking elected official in Virginia, Attorney General Mark R. Herring, has acknowledged that he, too, wore blackface as a younger man.
Only a week ago, it seemed that Mr. Fairfax, who is African-American, was poised to ascend to the governorship and lead Virginia through a reckoning with its painful history on race. But now he is facing the threat of impeachment proceedings, while the states other two top leaders, both white, are resisting calls to quit over past racist conduct.
Here is what the law says about removing Virginia politicians from office, why Mr. Fairfaxs case could throw gasoline on this political fire and what could happen next if Mr. Fairfax were to be forced out of office.
To some Democrats, Mr. Fairfaxs alleged conduct is the most serious because he is the only one of the three accused of a crime. But that does not make the political quandary any less torturous at a moment when the partys 2020 presidential primary is getting underway with more black and female candidates than have ever run for the White House.
To show a firm grasp of the obvious, the optics would be difficult and the substance would be difficult, said State Senator J. Chapman Petersen, who is white, about how it would look if Mr. Northam and Mr. Herring remained in office while Mr. Fairfax was exiled.
Women and African-Americans have never been more politically powerful: The Democrats 40-seat win in the House midterm elections in November, as well as their 2017 triumph in the top Virginia races, was powered in no small part by those voters. And with Republicans barely hanging on to their legislative majority in the Virginia Capitol, Democrats were counting on the same two blocs to propel them to victory in this falls election of all 140 delegates and state senators.
Ultimately, some Democrats here said, they must begin the process of emerging from the wreckage that is the executive branch of Virginia state government by turning to what is perhaps their most loyal constituency: black women.
And barely hours after Ms. Watson came forward on Friday saying she was raped by Mr. Fairfax in 2000 when they were students at Duke University, several senior Virginia Democrats began making the case that should Mr. Northam continue his refusal to resign, he ought to appoint State Senator Jennifer McClellan to replace Mr. Fairfax if he quits or is impeached. (It is not certain that Mr. Northam could appoint any successor to Mr. Fairfax, scholars said, because of conflicting provisions and interpretations of the Virginia Constitution and state law.)
Ms. McClellan, who is black, is a longtime Richmond legislator who was already thought to have statewide ambitions and has a close relationship with Senator Tim Kaine.
Jennifer would make an exceptionally good lieutenant governor, said C. Richard Cranwell, a former state Democratic chairman and legislator, when asked about the senator.
Hell be addressing a lot of key issues, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and a committee member, said, expressing confidence in Mr. Risch. Besides, Mr. Portman added, members are independent actors, and were all going to speak up and let our views be known.
Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and another committee member, hit on the same point: I understand that Chairman Risch has a different style and approach perhaps than Chairman Corker did, but I am determined that the committee will be no less effective.
Some foreign policy experts say even Mr. Corker was derelict in his duty to turn acerbic comments into real oversight or legislation. Under Mr. Risch, even the words might go silent. And that will have real consequences.
Leveraging the committees oversight power is a critical element of getting to the right place, said Wendy R. Sherman, an under secretary of state and acting deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama.
Im not saying that Senator Risch should be combative with the president, but where there is disagreement, we rely on the U.S. Senate, Ms. Sherman said. They can take the long view, and for them to defer to the president on everything really undermines the strength of that committee and the historic role that its played.
Stewart M. Patrick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former policy staffer at the State Department under President George W. Bush, said, Its not enough simply to make, as Bob Corker did pretty frequently, made-for-TV sound bites expressing alarm or discomfort about U.S. policy unless theres going to be substantive hearings about the wisdom of those choices. He added, The danger with Mr. Risch is that we are going to get neither expressions of alarm when the administration is off track, nor effective oversight.
Allies of the new chairman describe him as a workhorse, not a showhorse. But on policy, Mr. Trump has a friend at the helm of the Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Risch has broken with the president on occasion, joining his colleagues to protest Mr. Trumps appetite for leaving the Atlantic alliance, and taking an aggressive stance on Russia.
LAWRENCE, Mass. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts formally announced her 2020 presidential bid Saturday, calling for fundamental change on behalf of working people and arguing that President Trump is just the latest and most extreme symptom of whats gone wrong in America.
Speaking on a clear, chilly day against a backdrop of old red brick mill buildings at the site of one of the nations most famous labor strikes, she said workers now, like workers then, had had enough. She said that replacing Mr. Trump, whose administration she called the most corrupt in living memory, was only the first step in fighting back against a system tilted in favor of the wealthy.
It wont be enough to just undo the terrible acts of this administration, Ms. Warren said. We cant afford to just tinker around the edges a tax credit here, a regulation there. Our fight is for big, structural change.
The selection of Lawrence was symbolic: In 1912, a historic labor strike was started by a group of women at Everett Mill, where Ms. Warren made her announcement. The senator drew on the strike as a story of women, many of them immigrants, taking on a stacked system and triumphing by gaining raises, overtime and other benefits.
WASHINGTON When it became clear that Representative Nita M. Lowey, Democrat of New York, would lead the House Appropriations Committee, she received a cherrywood gavel, her name and new title engraved in silver.
It was a gift from Representative Kay Granger, Republican of Texas, a longtime committee colleague.
Its a ladys gavel, Ms. Granger said this past week, her own engraved red gavel by her side. Powerful.
And when Ms. Granger secured her position as ranking member, Ms. Lowey was the first to call to congratulate her.
Because of their committee ranks, both women represent House party leaders on the bipartisan panel of lawmakers negotiating a compromise on border security, and their unlikely partnership Ms. Lowey, 81, is an ardent liberal, and Ms. Granger, 76, is a fierce conservative is one reason their colleagues believe they can reach an agreement before government funding again lapses on Friday.
Of course, in a race likely to stretch over the next 18 months, early advantages can dissipate quickly. A strong poll or viral moment can prompt donors to give to new candidates, thereby growing their lists by huge numbers so long as they are positioned to capitalize. Ms. Harriss launch-day haul, for instance, rivaled that of Mr. Sanders in 2015.
Ms. Dunn said she saw the initial rankings less as a predictor for the coming primarys outcome and more as a revealing indicator of who was able to use their 2017 and 2018 effectively to prepare for a presidential race.
Both Ms. Harris and Ms. Gillibrand landed on the leader board despite having not faced a competitive election in recent years. The two senators spent heavily to bulk up their small donor lists, investing in multimillion-dollar campaigns on Facebook in 2017 and 2018 to add email addresses to their supporter list and lure in new contributors.
Its almost like growing vegetables, said Tim Lim, a veteran Democratic digital strategist. You have to be mindful. You have to be aware of major events. You have to be patient. But then, within six months or so, your investment will pay back.
While it is no surprise that Mr. Sanders is ahead with small digital donors he is the only potential candidate to have a previous run for president included in the analysis the sheer magnitude of his opening advantage is striking.
Mr. Sanders had 369 days during his 2016 presidential campaign where he processed more online donations than Ms. Gillibrand did on her single best day in the Senate the day after President Trump tweeted about her begging him for money through the end of 2018, according to the data. (Ms. Gillibrands biggest days were notably smaller than those of her rivals with large bases of support.)
The advantage that Mr. Sanders and Mr. ORourke enjoy is not just the size of their lists but the exclusivity of their donors the vast majority of whom (an estimated 87 percent for Mr. Sanders, 72 percent for Mr. ORourke) have not contributed to any other potential 2020 candidate. In contrast, less than half of Ms. Warrens donors have given only to her among the potential 2020 field.
CALEXICO, Calif. For generations, residents of the Southern California border town of Calexico watched with trepidation as their river turned into a cesspool, contaminated by the booming human and industrial development on the other side of the border in Mexico.
Noxious sewage filled with feces, industrial chemicals and other raw waste regularly comes in through the New River, which flows from Mexicos Mexicali Valley and through Calexico, leaving neighborhoods along the waterway engulfed in pungent fumes. And its not just the river: From above, smoke billows from Mexican factories, illicit medical burn sites and tire pits, fueling widespread asthma in the region.
As Washington debates spending billions to shore up barriers along the 2,000-mile southwest border, many residents in Californias Imperial Valley feel at least some of that money could be spent to address the regions public health threats. Just feet away from Calexico, Mexicos lax environmental rules and enforcement pose a regular menace.
Its a pit of infection, said Arturo Santiago, 50, who lives in a neighborhood adjacent to the river in west Calexico, atop a steep overlook. It smells like farts if you open your window.
SAN FRANCISCO The cattle ranchers and farm bureaus of America are not going to give up their hold on the word meat without a fight.
In recent weeks, beef and farming industry groups have persuaded legislators in more than a dozen states to introduce laws that would make it illegal to use the word meat to describe burgers and sausages that are created from plant-based ingredients or are grown in labs. Just this week, new meat-labeling bills were introduced in Arizona and Arkansas.
These meat alternatives may look and taste and even bleed like meat, but cattle ranchers want to make sure that the new competition cant use the meat label.
The word meat, to me, should mean a product from a live animal, said Jim Dinklage, a rancher and the president of the Independent Cattlemen of Nebraska, who has testified in support of meat-labeling legislation in his state.
Romantic obsession is my first language. I live in a world of fantasies, infatuations and love poems. Sometimes I wonder if the yearning Ive felt for others was more of a yearning for yearning itself. Ive pined insatiably and repeatedly: for strangers, new lovers, unrequited flames. While the subjects changed, that feeling always remained. Perhaps, then, I have not been so infatuated with the people themselves, but with the act of longing.
Even when the longing was excruciating, it fulfilled a purpose for me: namely, the purpose of making meaning in this life. Crushes are like little treadmills of hope in the abyss. We may actually be going nowhere, but there is the sensation of forward motion something to anticipate, a reason for being, a distraction from death and larger existential questions like What is everything? and What am I doing here?
Four years ago, an underwater volcano erupted in the South Pacific, creating a new island. And NASA took notice.
The islands evolution could hold clues to how water might have shaped similar features on Mars billions of years ago, NASA officials believed, so the space agency began collecting satellite photos to track how the elements were carving and clawing away at the land .
The images yielded insights into how the island was eroding, but the story they told was limited. NASA could wring more information from those photographs with measurements taken from the ground, but James Garvin, the chief scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., could not justify the cost of sending a team. Then an opportunity presented itself.
A bird hopping outside the window lately is the strangest that Shirley and Jeffrey Caldwell have ever seen.
Its left side is the taupe shade of female cardinals; its right, the signature scarlet of males.
Researchers believe that the cardinal frequenting the Caldwells bird feeder in Erie, Pa., is a rare bilateral gynandromorph, half male and half female. Not much is known about the unusual phenomenon, but this sexual split has been reported among birds, reptiles, butterflies and crustaceans.
No one can be sure the bird is a gynandromorph without analyzing its genes with a blood test or necroscopy, but the split in plumage down the middle is characteristic of the rare event, according to Daniel Hooper, an evolutionary biologist at the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology.
He said that gynandromorphs could theoretically be created through the fusion of two developing embryos that were separately fertilized.
Reporters at The New York Times get a lot of email. Much of it is spam, unsolicited press releases, questions or complaints about our coverage. Occasionally, there is a solid news tip. But even then, it rarely feels as urgent as this one did.
I thanked the sender, asked for details and offered my phone number. No one called or replied.
I searched Google, Twitter. There was no mention of a power outage at the M.D.C. other than a tweet from a lawyer who had said two weeks earlier that she had recently been turned away from the jail: The staff said it had to shut down power because the jail was testing a generator.
I asked the lawyer, Betsy Ginsberg, who runs the civil rights clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, if she had heard anything more since then. Yes, she replied, there had been a fire at the jail on Jan. 27, four days before.
They have had no power since then and are on lockdowns with no lights, no corrlinks, the email system used by inmates, she wrote. No social calls, some units have heat and some dont.
When the Supreme Court turned a blind eye to President Trumps hostility toward Muslims last summer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned, in dissent, that the majority was undermining the Constitutions foundational principles of religious tolerance.
In so doing, she said, the court was sending a message to members of minority religions in our country that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.
Late on Thursday, the Supreme Court again sent that message, this time to a Muslim death-row prisoner, Domineque Hakim Marcelle Ray, who was awaiting execution in Alabama for the 1995 rape and killing of a 15-year-old girl from Selma.
A day earlier, an appeals court had put Mr. Rays execution on hold because judges wanted more time to assess whether a policy at Holman Correctional Facility, where Mr. Ray was set to be executed, violated the Constitutions prohibition against religious favoritism by the government.
Whereas me? Im a Cyclops. I tend to see one thing at a time. Before Trump, I could go days without looking at the newspaper. Im partial to 19th-century novels, and I envy their heroines, who spend their days reading and needlepointing and playing piano. I find it far easier to tolerate the whistling emptiness of boredom than the casino rattle of too much stimulation.
But to opt out of this clanging multiverse is to live in mild estrangement. Its to feel ones self become a permanent spectator; to live with the persistent sense that something is always happening elsewhere; to feel old, outlasted, outmatched by the bizarre physics of your own lifetime: The great spinning world has toppled off its axis and rolled away.
It cannot be an accident that the lions of Silicon Valley, who live and die by the information whorl, are bullish on meditation. Bill Gates wrote a blog post a couple of months ago about it, praising the practice for focusing his busy mind. Twitters Jack Dorsey meditates, as we all learned from a string of insensitive tweets he recently unleashed from Myanmar. (Its a fine line between mindfulness and mindlessness, apparently.) When the worlds coming at you in great clouds of 280-character Frisbees, naturally its tempting to vanish into the forest dark of your own mind.
Of course, complaints about the unmanageable velocity of the world have been with us since industrialization, if not before. I once joked to my husband that I feared napping because I might miss an indictment. Turns out Henry David Thoreau made a similar complaint in the age of the telegraph. Hardly a man takes a half-hours nap after dinner, he wrote, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, Whats the news? as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels.
Im not convinced, as some people are, that the Twitter fusillades from the White House are part of a larger strategy of distraction, specifically intended to divert us from this particular administrations malfeasance and failures. I think our presidents attention span is genuinely scattershot. (Post-literate, Michael Wolff called him in Fire and Fury. Seems about right.) When I imagine his brain, I imagine a bug zapper in a drizzle. Bzzzzzzzzzzt. Fzzzz. Bzzz fzzz bzzzzzzzzzzt.
But Trump chaos, both intentional and otherwise, has proved a great de facto political strategy, precisely because we are neurologically incapable of handling it. The one thing we know about any interrupted activity is that it takes an awful lot of energy to return to whatever last had our attention.
For what its worth, Gloria Mark says that women, in her research, tend to self-interrupt less frequently than men. Daniel Levitin says the same, and that we seem to have more glucose available to replenish our battered neurons than men do. Its an argument for having an all-female White House press corps. (Maggie Haberman and Ashley Parker: Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.)
Would that I were able to task-switch as they do. Would that we all could. Would that we all could return to the rhythms of a more civilized time, when we werent scanning the savanna for mortal threats every 30 seconds. It seems such an unfathomable luxury almost as unfathomable as the Russians manipulating our elections, as a child billionaire selling our privacy down the river, as the Trump presidency itself.
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All the American mothers I interviewed said they felt enormous guilt and tension between their work and family commitments. So did the Italians. But Italian women tended to blame the government for their problems: Social benefits? Zero. Less than zero. Nobody helps me, laughed one woman I met, a single mother working at a hospital in Rome. Does the government help me? No, she said, but they should think about helping you a little bit.
In Sweden, working mothers I spoke with wanted full gender equality and expected to seamlessly combine paid work and child rearing. Mothers there also anticipated that the government would support them in these endeavors and thats exactly what the Swedish state, its work-family policy, and the countrys cultural ideals about work and motherhood do. When Swedish mothers feel stressed, they tend to blame the countrys lofty expectations of what parenting should be. German mothers ascribed their work-family juggling act, with its emphasis on traditional home life, to outdated cultural ideals.
American women who worked for companies that provided flexible schedules and paid maternity leave described themselves as being very lucky or feeling privileged. This privatized approach taken by the United States government and employers exacerbates inequalities among workers. Some elite employers elect to offer helpful work-family policies, meaning only certain workers typically highly educated, salaried employees receive these supports. The employees most in need of support, however vulnerable hourly-wage workers are the ones least likely to enjoy any work-family benefits. The highest-income earners in the United States are 3.5 times as likely to have access to paid family leave as those at the bottom of the pay scale.
After three months of interviews with mothers in Sweden, I was heartened to discover that the country in many ways lives up to its image as the place where women come closest to having successful careers and fulfilling family lives. But consider the national policy focus responsible for that lifestyle: Sweden prizes gender equality, universal child care and a dual earner-carer model that features women and men sharing breadwinning and child-rearing roles.
Women in Stockholm seemed confused or laughed out loud when I used the term working mother. I dont think that expression exists in Swedish, an urban planner and mother of two told me. Its not like theres a nonworking mother, she said. I mean, what else would she do?
But we cant simply import social policies and hope theyll have the same effect in a different context. For instance, American parents tend to marvel at Germanys comparatively luxurious-sounding three-year parental leave, which was available to new parents for decades. So I was taken aback when many working mothers in Germany told me they despised the policy because of the cultural stigma it heaped on their shoulders to not return to work until they absolutely had to. A teacher who went back to work before the end of the allowable parental leave described people telling her: You cannot do this. You are selfish, youre a career whore.
Balance is a term that came up relentlessly in my conversations with women in the United States. But framing work-family conflict as a problem of imbalance is merely an individualized way to justify a nation of mothers engulfed in stress. It fails to recognize how institutions contribute to this anxiety.
By working to reduce prescribing, government regulators, insurers, law enforcement officials, legislators and other policymakers have ignored the genuine dangers of leaving people in agony, including suicide and increased risk for heart attacks and strokes. And with the Trump administration having pledged to cut the manufacturing of opioids by pharmaceutical companies by an additional 10 percent, even more patients are at risk.
To be sure, opioids have been overprescribed. A Johns Hopkins review of six studies found that over two-thirds of patients reported having unused pills. And for many people, the pain killers either arent effective or do more harm than good. But while medical opioid use has fallen by nearly one-third since peaking around 2011 and deaths associated with prescription opioids have stabilized overall opioid overdose fatalities have recently hit a high as more potent, illegally manufactured opioids hit the streets.
Indeed, as prescribing fell, deaths connected to illicit opioids skyrocketed. From 2010 to 2016, heroin overdose mortality rose by nearly 500 percent and mortality associated with illegally manufactured fentanyl jumped 600 percent from 2013 to 2016 alone .
Officials with the Centers for Disease Control admit that they do not specifically track suicides by patients who have lost medical access to pain relievers, so we dont really know how many people are killing themselves because they cant live with their pain.
But there is much anecdotal evidence that chronic pain drives patients to suicidal thoughts. Karen King, for example, says she has had four hospitalizations because of suicidal thoughts or attempts in the past year alone. She suffers chronic pain from a broken neck. When her doctor cut her medication, she had to close the quilt store she owned in Massachusetts. Without medication, she couldnt stand or carry bolts of fabric. It broke my heart, she said.
Jeff Geurin is another example. He was a cryptologic linguist in the Air Force when he was wounded in a parachute jump accident . He retrained as a surgical technician after a medical discharge from the military in 2008 . Last year, his doctor ceased his medication, leaving him with such intense back pain that he had plans made for suicide, before he found a new doctor.
In the rush to reduce opioid misuse, it is easy to forget that millions of people have safely taken these drugs for years. Data show that less than 8 percent of chronic pain patients become addicted , according to a study that has the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse as a co-writer. And overwhelmingly, prescription opioid addiction doesnt begin with a doctors prescription: About 80 percent of people who start misusing these drugs are getting them from family, friends and other peoples medicine cabinets not from legitimate pain treatment.
None of this prepared me for what a boy would do to me when I was 14 and he was 17. This was the moment of my own metamorphosis one moment I was someone, the next, someone else. Like Persephone, like Daphne , I was changed utterly by a desire that in no way reflected my own. The coldness that followed was more Pygmalion than Apollonian, more marble than wood. I told myself I felt nothing because nothing had happened. It didnt even occur to me to call it rape. Im still unwilling to say it aloud, as if it gives him power over me, when I want rather to put my foot to his throat and tell him, Give it back.
Ive been revisiting the dAulaires text, still a staple of school libraries, sharing it with my children. They, too, have their favorites. My daughter loves Athena and Arachne; my son, the Minotaur and Medusa. One evening I found myself reading aloud, Daphne would rather be an unmoving tree than the bride of the great god Apollo, but all the other nymphs loved to sit at his feet and listen to his enchanting music, and were very honored when he or any of the other great Olympian gods chose one of them as a bride.
In other words: Trust us, plenty of babes are jonesing for these fine dudes.
You know what, I told my son, age 9, and my daughter, age 6. I dont agree with this at all.
We talked, as we have before, about consent, about their ownership over their own bodies. I didnt go in depth with them about the euphemism of bride for sexual partner, but its irritating. No wonder I felt so little for Daphne until I was old enough to recognize the familiarity of her desperation. No wonder I thought Hera was a jerk, Persephone a ditz. The book that told their stories also derided them.
Artemis was a cold and pitiless goddess.
Even Medusa, who was my gateway into mythology and monstrousness, is dumbed-down by the dAulaires. Ovids Metamorphoses recounts the birth of Medusas hideousness: She is raped by Poseidon in Athenas temple. Like many abusers, Poseidon faces no personal consequence. Athena cant reach him with her wrath he is too powerful, even for a goddess and so she ruins Medusa instead. Snakes for hair, reptile skin, a repulsiveness that renders her not only undesirable but dangerous. In the dAulaires recounting, Medusas back story is ignored; Perseus cuts off her ugly head while she sleeps. He uses a mirror to guide his stroke a mirror that reflects the victim and not the perpetrator.
WASHINGTON Jeff Bezos understands survival instincts.
As a hedge fund refugee, he conjured Amazon, the worlds biggest store, by tapping into our hunter-gatherer instincts, the compulsion to collect more stuff with less effort.
Amazon became the Prince of Darkness for retail, Scott Galloway writes in The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, by exploiting our serious mojo for stuff, as survival went to the cave man who had the most twigs, had the right rocks to crack stuff open with, and got the most colorful mud to draw images on walls so his descendants knew when to plant crops, or what dangerous animals to avoid.
So, of course, Bezos has finely honed survival instincts himself. This is a season when socialism is chic and billionaires are reviled as lame, immoral, greedy, lying and an Orange Menace (if hes actually a billionaire). Yet the richest dude on earth has managed to come through a traumatic week inspiring admiration.
He survived a spectacular attempt by David Pecker to ruin him in January with a National Enquirer story revealing his affair with his married neighbor, Lauren Sanchez, a TV personality. It was humiliating for him and his wife, MacKenzie, but Bezos was able to bring his marriage to an end with a modicum of dignity and little apparent damage to shareholder value.
To me, its no mystery. Having grown up surrounded by racism, I had learned to hate myself. I had little hope for the future, which, in turn, made me unlikely to excel. Once I got to college, the diversity of the environment allowed me to discover my talents. Last year, I became the first female Asian-American playwright to have a play produced on Broadway.
I was fortunate to begin my playwriting career in New Yorks downtown theater community, which was full of organizations that cared about challenging and diversifying the predominantly white theater world. I was also lucky to follow in the path of trailblazers like David Henry Hwang, the Tony-winning playwright of M. Butterfly.
David got his big break at the Public Theater in New York after it faced protests over the casting of a white actor in an Asian role. Joseph Papp, the Publics founder, hired one of the protesters to seek out plays by Asian-Americans. That led to the production of Davids play FOB.
I really consider my career to be the beneficiary of affirmative action, David told me recently, because thats what affirmative action does: It recognizes a social need and creates a program in order to address that.
Ive seen how increasing diversity can cause a field to flourish. The theater world is in the midst of a golden age of playwriting, and this has coincided with a concerted effort by theaters to diversify their programming. The next step is for theaters to produce more work by playwrights who come from low-income backgrounds, as our field is still dominated by the voices of the middle-to-upper classes. To achieve real diversity, I believe that affirmative action should be a holistic process, as it is at Harvard, encompassing class as well as race.
Affirmative action exists because people of color predominantly black and brown people have fought for it in the face of centuries of discrimination. The Harvard admissions lawsuit is a cynical manipulation that urges Asian-Americans to sell out other people of color. As an Asian-American, I know too well that we face discrimination. But, in the end, this lawsuit will benefit well-off white people the most.
The plaintiffs sole proposed solution, eliminating affirmative action, would be incredibly harmful to all people of color, including Asian-Americans like me. We cant let this happen. We must protect diversity.
When Bernie Sanders ran for president, he promised to fight for free public college, universal health insurance and a $15 minimum wage. He drew huge crowds, but many Democrats declared his proposals impractical and naive. We are not Denmark, Hillary Clinton tartly observed, even as she tweaked her platform to acknowledge the popularity of these ideas. A few years later, these supposedly pie-in-the-sky proposals are wildly popular among Democrats and have entered the political mainstream as important topics of discussion.
Free public college, health care for all, a living wage: These are all important causes that will improve life for millions. But theres another proposal that belongs on the progressive to-do list: universal affordable high-quality child care. In fact, I would put it ahead of free public college: It would help more people and do more to change society for the better. Only about a third of Americans age 25 and older have a bachelors degree or higher, after all (although more would surely try if they could afford it). But by the time American women are 40 to 44, 86 percent of them are mothers, and unless they are affluent or have a retired but still energetic grandma whos willing to pitch in full time when the kids are little the child care crisis hits families hard.
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How hard? As any parent can tell you, child care is one of the biggest costs a family faces. According to the Economic Policy Institutes state-by-state tables, in Alabama its $5,637 a year for an infant and an only slightly less daunting $4,871 for a 4-year-old. Thats 69 percent of the average rent and 33.7 percent less than the cost of in-state tuition at a four-year college. At the other end of the alphabet, West Virginia parents are worse off: For them, infant care, at $7,926, is 32 percent more than the cost of college. Pick a state at random and the results are no better. New York: $14,144, or double the cost of a year of college. Illinois: $12,964. California: $11,817. No wonder child care is affordable for only a small minority of families, meaning they pay 10 percent or less of their income for it: 17.8 percent of families in Minnesota, 18.7 percent in Massachusetts, 37.7 percent in Georgia. And thats for just one child. Most families have more.
Black History Month is the shortest month of the year. Its usually only 28 days long! This gives stubborn people 337 days to pretend black history doesnt exist, thanks to whats commonly known as the one-twelfths compromise.
Black History Month always felt like an obligatory celebration. But this year people are really leaning in.
Take Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, who recently revisited one of the darker parts of black history: blackface. Invented in the 1830s by stage performers who didnt like black people, blackface, Mr. Northam taught us, was reinvented in the 1980s by Virginia medical students who also didnt like black people.
Usually people dress up as Michael Jackson by putting on a glove, jacket or wig. But Mr. Northam method-acted his way into the role of a white person doing a bad imitation of a black person by painting his face with shoe polish, when he could have waited three years and used bronzer.
The fear is that introducing all these stories into the discourse will create narrative chaos, a land of false equivalencies, disinformation and conspiracy theory where we all get to choose our own boutique truths one that closely resembles our current moment.
To make sense of all this conflicting anecdotal data, youd have to turn to statistics dull, fusty, dramatically inert statistics which tell us, without embellishment, that the planet is warming up fast, that the percentage of demonstrably false rape allegations is in the low single digits, and that if you have a gun in your home youre a lot less likely to repel an intruder than kill yourself.
Unfortunately, stories are far more compelling than statistics: Most people dont think or, more important, feel in numbers. But they do have an inborn hunger for stories. Good politicians (meaning savvy, not virtuous) understand this instinctively: Ronald Reagans welfare mother buying vodka with food stamps and Donald Trumps Muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey as the towers fell told people something they wanted to believe, that they felt was true, and so were impervious to the feeble, dweeby rebuttals of fact.
But the big one, the Great War for the narrative, is being fought over the story of America. Most foreigners would probably be appalled, or maybe envious, if they were to grasp the extent to which even their saner American friends are living a mythic narrative. Whether you were born here or became a citizen or somehow just sneaked in, you are a part of it the great experiment, Arsenal of Democracy, the City on the Hill.
I suspect one reason American life spans are plummeting is a deficiency of meaning: Weve lost the thread of our story. We need someone to tell us a new one, a new Gettysburg Address or I Have a Dream speech but is there one we could all agree on anymore? Is it going to be the one about a divinely ordained white mans paradise, a bulwark of Christendom, uniquely blessed among nations; or the one about how we whupped the Axis and then the Commies and became the Greatest Country on Earth; or how we forced this nation to grudgingly become what it claimed to be, truly free and equal, gradually admitting more and more people into full citizenship and humanity?
In the introduction to his novel The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann cautions, Not every story happens to everyone. Not every story needs to be a referendum on your worldview, either validating or refuting it. Looked at closely enough, any story becomes a world in itself, too big to be encompassed by any ideology, defying any slogans or morals.
In principle, Im for every story being told, irrespective of its implications, because erring the other way threatens to lead to the sort of censorship-for-the-greater-good you see in totalitarian states. And I have some dumb idealistic conviction that every awkward, heterodox, contradictory truth adds up to create a larger, truer picture of the world.
I love reading and have many strongly held beliefs about current events and politics, but I have never considered that someone outside my immediate social circle would want to know what I think and why. I think I am underqualified to comment on such a public forum with such a wide audience. Im not sure if this is because Im a woman, or because Im brown or because Im young, but I often defer to others to speak. I cant speak for other women, but maybe it isnt just me who feels this way.
Chloe Perez
Washington
To the Editor:
A major reason that letters to The Times skew male is probably that traditional definitions of news skew male.
Readership studies over the decades have consistently shown that women have a greater interest than men in topics such as personal relationships (work, family, friends), child development, educational and social activities for children, ethics and values, the environment, personal safety, health and nutrition, consumer information and balancing multiple roles.
The topics of particular interest to women were defined as soft news and were therefore of lesser prestige to cover unless they had a news hook.
When I was director of editorial development and vice president/editorial for E.W. Scripps newspapers, I challenged our newspapers to rethink their coverage: Tally the amount of news space, staff time and budget devoted to topics of particular interest to men (traditional coverage of politics, business, sports) versus topics of particular interest to women. I believe that news can just as validly be defined as activities and events that affect large numbers of people.
Women have known for decades about sexual harassment in the workplace because they experienced it firsthand. It should not have taken lawsuits and the arrest of Harvey Weinstein to push sexual harassment into the news spotlight. Similarly, working mothers difficulties with balancing multiple roles did not need the attention of Japans prime minister to be news to millions of working moms .
Susan Miller
Carmel, Calif.
To the Editor:
I think this is such an important discussion, but I dont think it can be had without consideration of the role harassment and intimidation play when women speak their mind. Several years ago, I submitted a piece to my local paper on an instance of casual racism that my husband had recently endured (I am white, he is not).
In a 1988 hearing, Congress took the cosmetics industry to task for a rash of health and safety problems. Cosmetologists were reporting serious respiratory and nervous system damage. At least one woman had been permanently disfigured by flammable hair spray. And according to government data, nearly 1,000 toxic chemicals were lurking in countless other personal care products. Cosmetics companies were not doing enough to ensure that these products were safe, and the Food and Drug Administration did not have enough power to adequately police them.
When Edward Kavanaugh, president of the industrys leading trade group, disputed those claims, Ron Wyden, then an Oregon congressman, stood firm. The industrys safety apparatus was a piecemeal patchwork system in dire need of repair, Mr. Wyden said. Legislative reform was clearly needed.
That was 30 years ago. To date, no such reforms have been passed.
The American cosmetics industry is a $ 70 billion-a-year behemoth . The Food and Drug Administrations Office of Cosmetics and Colors has an annual budget of just $8 million and 27 staff members. The laws governing the offices authority run just two pages long and have not been updated since 1938, when they were first enacted. Such meager tools leave federal officials nearly powerless to regulate the makeup, lotions, toothpastes, deodorants and other elixirs that often are applied to the most intimate parts of the human body.
Industry leaders are right to note that, on the whole, cosmetic products have a good safety record. But in recent years, a fresh round of health and safety risks have left people wary.
Walter H. Munk, one of the foremost oceanographers of the 20th century, who sent pulses of sound through the vast oceans probably startling a few whales to measure changes in water temperatures, forecast waves and seek signs of global warming, died on Friday at his seaside home in the La Jolla section of San Diego. He was 101.
The University of California, San Diego, reported his death on its website. His home, named Seiche, is near the university campus, where he spent his career at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography after joining its faculty in 1947.
We thought he would live forever, his wife, Mary Munk, told The San Diego Union-Tribune. She said the cause of death was pneumonia.
Dr. Munk, a scientist-explorer who would expound on his discoveries with exuberance, was sometimes called the Einstein of the oceans for his pioneering work in the study of waves, ocean circulation, tides and irregularities in the Earths rotation. (He was also a geophysicist.)
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For the last five years, a bill that would create a so-called pied-a-terre tax in New York has languished in the State Legislature, where proposals for new taxes often go to die.
But after Kenneth C. Griffin, a hedge fund billionaire with an estimated net worth of $10 billion, added to his personal real estate portfolio last month by closing on a $238 million apartment on Central Park South, things may soon be different.
The record purchase surpassing the cost of the next most expensive home in the United States by more than $100 million was a stark reminder that when wealthy buyers like Mr. Griffin purchase expensive apartments as second homes or investments, New York City and the state get less financial benefits. If the buyers live out of state, they are not subject to state or city income taxes, and do not pay New York sales tax while outside the state.
A pied-a-terre tax would institute a yearly tax on homes worth $5 million or more, and would apply to homes that do not serve as the buyers primary residence.
But dozens of interviews with inmates and their families, defense lawyers, jail staff, union officials and lawmakers briefed on the response of officials at the Bureau of Prisons painted another picture, revealing an account of the crisis that not only contradicted what the bureau said, but suggested it was even worse than it had initially appeared.
The blackout, which lasted for a week, ended Feb. 3, when power was restored amid public outcry. A few days later, the Justice Department, which oversees the federal Bureau of Prisons, said that it was committed to the safe and humane living and working conditions of all inmates and employees, and that its internal watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, would investigate the facilitys infrastructure and emergency response.
Mr. Quay did not respond to requests for comment.
The blackout crisis was just the latest episode in a long history of neglect and brutality at the jail, one that has been documented in previous Justice Department reports. Investigators over the years have issued findings that suggest the jail is among the worst in the federal system, determining at different times that prisoners have been beaten, raped or held in inhumane conditions.
Its my opinion, a former warden at the jail, Cameron Lindsay, said in an interview, that over the last decade the M.D.C. was one of the most troubled, if not the most troubled facility in the Bureau of Prisons.
The M.D.C., one of the largest federal lockups in the country, houses more than 1,600 inmates, some of them linked to high-profile drug trafficking and terrorism cases, most charged with lesser crimes. It is largely a way station, where inmates spend relatively short periods awaiting trial or sentencing.
David Kirp and Niko Laine were married Feb. 2 at their San Francisco home. Steven Sugarman, a Universal Life minister and friend of the couple, officiated.
Mr. Kirp (right), 74, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a freelance writer and an author of 15 books, including The College Dropout Crisis (Oxford), which is to be published this fall. He was a member of Barack Obamas 2008 presidential transition team. He graduated from Amherst College.
He is the son of the late Ruth Clair Kirp and the late Murray Kirp, who lived in Bay Shore, N.Y.
Mr. Kirps first marriage ended in divorce.
Mr. Laine, 38, is a freelance financial consultant based in Helsinki, Finland. He graduated from Mercuria Business College in Helsinki, and is a candidate for a masters degree in business law at Aalto University, Finland, also in Helsinki.
There are always some real logic stumpers in a cryptic, and it helps to not be afraid to leap once in a while. For example, look at 9A, Stop bug going around North America, a clue that did not yield on the first pass of this grid. I surmised that NA, for North America, would be in there somewhere (because of going around, you see). I also figured that we would need a word meaning bug, to surround that NA, and create another word that meant stop. Nothing came to me, and I also wasnt sure what meaning of bug we were using irritate, rankle, chafe? Or beetle, locust, housefly?
At this point, I was also drawing a blank on 1D, Perform better than Trump finally cutting expense, which runs through the first letter of 9A, and which I knew began with O (the first letter of 1A, referred to above). Something about Perform better than made me think that this entry would begin with OUT as in, outperform so I risked it and popped in those two letters (U and T). The second that happened, I saw 9A for what it had to be, TERMINATE: TERMITE around NA.
A similar tactic, coincidently, will solve 1D: Trump finally, or P (the final letter in the word Trump), cutting or being inserted in a word meaning expense, outlay, gets you Perform better than: OUTPLAY.
Mr. Forbes included some lovely obfuscation in a few cases, playing with cryptic lingo to misdirect the solver. For example, 8D, Tells story about Starbucks products not true has that telltale about in the clue, the one that I said is a good indication that youre going to be wrapping an element inside another element to get a definition for your entry. Right? Well, sometimes an about means simply about, or regarding, or in memo- (and crossword-) speak RE. The true, here, stands for T not true instructs the solver to remove a T from Starbucks products, or lattes, and there we get our answer: RE + LATTES T = RELATES.
Another clue that makes me a liar is 17A; 007 is BOND, but left doesnt mean backward, it means L, and directions here are E(ast) and S(outh) the Scandinavian women youre looking for are BLONDES.
I often find the final two or three letters on one or two last entries completely elusive; when that happens, as it did today with 17D, I walk away for a while. I hope to get struck with inspiration; in this case, I think an inkling did come to my subconscious. The clue, N.B.A. and N.F.L. characters combined, doesnt actually mingle the letters in the two abbreviations: It wants you to come up with a team from each league, to get material for a book. Whats more, the material you need to come up with is completely obscure and oddball, in my opinion, to the point that it has not been clued in the straight crossword, as bookbinding stuff at least, since 1967. Its BUCKRAM an N.B.A. Milwaukee BUCK and an N.F.L. L.A. RAM, combining to make a stiff cloth used in hats and crinolines, as well as books.
Dear Fellow Travelers,
As an editor, there are times when you see a photograph and know its the perfect visual expression for an article. Thats the case with the cover photo for this weeks Travel section: Photographer Susan Wright captured guests at the Hotel Miramonti spa, 4,000 feet up in the Italian Alps, soaking in an infinity pool overlooking the mountains. Its serene, beautiful and beckoning. Laura Rysman, the writer, provides a baedeker to the new alpine spa movement, part of the modern-day search for wellness. While the Italian Alps may be better known for their ski slopes, she makes a persuasive case for visiting them to soak in the warm waters instead.
Our report on the Galapagos is less soothing. It has never been as cheap and easy as it is today to visit this fascinating archipelago 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, and tourism has exploded: In 2017, 241,800 people visited the islands, up from 173,419 a decade earlier. The biggest change is the advent of land-based tourism, in which visitors fly in and take a la carte tours that are considerably cheaper than the traditional Galapagos cruises. The islands are no longer just for upscale travelers. Democratizing travel is, of course, a good thing, but it has come with unforeseen consequences in the Galapagos, including increased environmental pressures on this fragile piece of the world, as our writer, Adam Popescu, reports.
Weve also got a guide to 1970s New York, courtesy of the Oscar-nominated movie If Beale Street Could Talk, which was largely filmed on location on the citys streets, and a report on a gin boom on the Australian island of Tasmania. Our 36 Hours is from San Juan, Puerto Rico look out for more from there as our 52 Places Traveler, Sebastian Modak, begins his dispatches from a years worth of travel at our #1 destination for 2019.
You can email us at travelmail@nytimes.com. I'm on Twitter, @amyvirshup, so please follow me and let me know what you think of our stories. The Travel desks Twitter handle is @nytimestravel. We're also on Instagram, @nytimestravel.
Under the previous law, people who did receive life sentences in fact served life sentences, he said.
But even if it brought little in the way of practical changes, Professor Penney said that the law was a significant shift for Canada, where sentences were historically intended to show the publics disapproval of crimes without slipping into vengeance, or violating the constitutions ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Judges are still figuring out how it should work, he said.
Friday provided two examples. The judge in Toronto decided that Mr. McArthur will serve his sentences at the same time, citing his age and poor health. If he is still alive, Mr. McArthur will be 91 when he attends a parole hearing.
In Quebec City, prosecutors had suggested that Mr. Bissonnette get consecutive sentences that would have put off his parole hearing for 150 years. The judge compromised and postponed his potential parole for 40 years after concluding that 50 years or more would be cruel and unusual punishment.
That decision only underscored the confusion around the law.
A year ago, Justice Michael Code of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice complained that the law limited him to either extending the parole waiting period to 50 years or keeping it at 25 in a case involving two men he had convicted of a carrying out a second murder.
These are stark alternatives, he wrote before encouraging lawmakers to change the law to make it possible for judges to extend the wait for parole as they saw fit.
WASHINGTON The Pentagon has stepped up airstrikes and special operations raids in Afghanistan to the highest levels since 2014 in what Defense Department officials described as a coordinated series of attacks on Taliban leaders and fighters.
The surge, which began during the fall, is intended to give American negotiators leverage in peace talks with the Taliban after President Trump said he would begin withdrawing troops and wind down the nearly 18-year war.
The campaign appears to have registered with the militants: During negotiations, the Taliban complained bitterly about the torrent of airstrikes, according to two senior Afghan officials who have spoken to Zalmay Khalilzad, the American special envoy who is leading the talks.
They say they have learned from their mistakes of the past, Mr. Khalilzad said in a speech on Friday in Washington. He said the Taliban did not want to be a pariah state and had told him that they did not see a military solution to the conflict.
The Pacific Northwest has begun getting hit by an unusual series of winter storms that started on Friday and was expected to stretch into next week, while parts of California began to get pummeled with snow.
Areas around Seattle received four to six inches of snow during the citys second bout of winter weather in the past week, a storm that is likely to stretch until late afternoon on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service. Meteorologists predict even more snow throughout the next week.
The storm that hit the area earlier this week dumped two and a half inches on Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and up to 12 inches on smaller cities outside Seattle.
This pattern of winter storms is rare for Seattle, said Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. Heavy snow in Seattle requires an unlikely mixture of moisture and cold air, Professor Mass said, but the moisture from the Pacific Ocean tends to be relatively warm.
WASHINGTON President Trump will get together with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, this month in Hanoi, choosing the capital of a communist nation for a high-stakes summit meeting intended to eliminate a potential nuclear threat, the White House said on Friday.
My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un, Mr. Trump said on Twitter. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!
Mr. Trump revealed in his State of the Union address this week that the meeting would be in Vietnam but did not disclose the city. The United States had explored Danang, a coastal city where American troops arrived in 1965 for a war that would scar a generation, but the North Koreans were reported to prefer Hanoi.
Mr. Trump and his aides have cited Vietnam as an example of a communist nation that emerged from international isolation to develop a dynamic economy. Mr. Trump has sought to persuade Mr. Kim that giving up his nuclear weapons would enable him to transform his impoverished land into a thriving country.
WASHINGTON President Trump refused to provide Congress a report on Friday determining who killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, defying a demand by lawmakers intent on establishing whether the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was behind the grisly assassination.
Mr. Trump effectively bypassed a deadline set by law as his administration argued that Congress could not impose its will on the president. Critics charged that he was seeking to cover up Saudi complicity in the death of Mr. Khashoggi, an American resident and a columnist for The Washington Post.
Consistent with the previous administrations position and the constitutional separation of powers, the president maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate, the Trump administration said in a statement. The statement said the administration had taken action against the killers and would consult with Congress.
But Democrats said Mr. Trump was violating a law known as the Magnitsky Act. It required him to respond 120 days after a request submitted in the fall by committee leaders including Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a period that expired Friday.
A second woman came forward Friday with claims that she had been sexually assaulted by Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax of Virginia, intensifying the weeklong political crisis in the state and leading top fellow Democrats to call for Mr. Fairfax to resign.
The woman, Meredith Watson, accused Mr. Fairfax of raping her in 2000 while they were students at Duke University, saying in a statement that his actions were premeditated and aggressive and demanding that he step down immediately.
Ms. Watson spoke out two days after Vanessa C. Tyson, a political science professor from California, said she was assaulted by Mr. Fairfax during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
By Friday night, Mr. Fairfax was facing a wave of calls for his resignation. Democrats in the Virginia House and Senate urged him to step down, saying he could no longer fulfill his duties to the commonwealth, as did the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, a powerful bloc within the General Assembly. Patrick Hope, a Democrat in the Virginia House, said he would introduce articles of impeachment on Monday if the lieutenant governor had not resigned.
WASHINGTON At Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.s confirmation hearings 14 years ago, the first dozen questions were about whether he would respect the Supreme Courts abortion precedents. He was still answering those questions Thursday night.
In a surprise move, the chief justice joined the Supreme Courts liberal wing in a 5-to-4 decision blocking a Louisiana law that could have severely restricted abortion in the state. Although he offered no reason for his vote, there is little doubt that he wanted to avoid sending the message that the court was ready to discard a 2016 decision, a precedent, in which it struck down a similar Texas law.
But the courts order was just three sentences long, and the stay it imposed was temporary. The case is likely to reach the court on its merits next term. And when that happens, it is hardly certain that Chief Justice Roberts will vote to strike down the Louisiana law.
The seeming inconsistency is the result of competing impulses. Chief Justice Roberts is a product of the conservative legal movement, and his general approach is to lean right. But he is also an institutionalist and a guardian of his courts legitimacy, meaning he wants to make modest and deliberate moves.
On Thursday, operators of a health care center in Phoenix where an incapacitated woman was raped and gave birth last year announced that they would close it down.
But on Friday, the operator, Hacienda HealthCare, backtracked. It said it now planned to stay open, under increased state oversight, after regulators balked, saying in a letter that they were concerned about the health and safety impacts of moving the centers patients elsewhere if it was shuttered.
Hacienda said in a letter to state regulators that it would provide the safest possible care for our clients and chart a path forward that meets all of our interests. The operators board also voted in favor of being regulated by the Arizona Department of Health Services.
This is good news and the best immediate outcome as it means Hacienda patients and families would be allowed to stay in the home theyve known for years while ensuring new and enhanced protections and oversight are put in place, Patrick Ptak, a spokesman for Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, said in a statement Friday. Due to the medically fragile condition of this community, keeping patients where they reside was always our preferred choice and the safest option for patients.
Or, as Richard Nixon put it in 1973, People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who has spent much time of late giving Mr. Trump lessons in governing and adulting, moved to clarify the concept: Its not investigation; its oversight, she noted on Wednesday. Its our congressional responsibility, and if we didnt do it, we would be delinquent in our duties.
Exposing corruption and malfeasance in the Trump administration promises to be a heavy lift. But Pelosi & Co. have long been preparing to dig into questions about such things as: the separation of migrant families at the southern border; the use of military personnel at the border; relief efforts in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria; the rollback of environmental regulations; the financial and legal undermining of Obamacare. On Thursday, the Ways and Means Committee opened hearings aimed at paving the way for the demand of Mr. Trumps tax returns, which, if made public, could open a dozen new lines of inquiry, including whether the president is using his office for personal gain. That is neither ridiculous nor partisan.
Not that presidential harassment isnt a real concern. One need only look back at the Obama era to see how oversight can be hijacked by partisan zeal. Remember Operation Fast and Furious? Solyndra? Politics at the I.R.S.? Whatever legitimate concerns arose from these probes got lost in the mad-dog antics of Darrell Issa, then the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Mr. Issa went so overboard in his crusade to destroy Barack Obama that he rendered his committee a partisan joke, alienating even fellow Republicans.
And who can forget the multiyear investigation of the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya? The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, now loudly bemoaning Democratic oversight as partisan pettiness, had a far different take in 2015, when he boasted that the Benghazi circus was part of a strategy to fight and win: Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? he told Sean Hannity of Fox News. But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.
EL PASO This tranquil city of bilingual trans-border commerce is where lurid fantasy meets humdrum reality. President Trump will come here Monday, risking life and limb at our very dangerous southern border, that lawless frontier facing a tremendous onslaught. I can reassure the president: He will be able to gaze at Mexico without breaking a sweat or putting his hairdo at risk.
Trump will attribute the calm to fencing completed a decade ago and recently extended with what looks like junkyard metal. In his State of the Union address, he claimed the barrier transformed El Paso from one of our nations most dangerous cities into one of our safest cities. This was a lie.
It incensed the mayor, Dee Margo, who tweeted: El Paso was never one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. It incensed Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat, who accused the president in a tweet of spreading falsehoods. For a city of its size, El Paso has eased from pretty safe to super safe as its violent crime rate has dropped since the mid-1990s. The citys story is not a fence story.
Margo, in an interview, said: I hope we have some adult behavior. Egos are overriding common sense and I think its ridiculous. Escobar told me: Trumps wall obsession is his way of keeping a campaign promise to the core of his base, many of whom are xenophobic and some outright racist.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is right: A traffic congestion pricing plan in which drivers have to pay to get into the busiest parts of Manhattan is the best way to pay for the bulk of urgently needed fixes for New York Citys decrepit subway system.
Unfortunately, the preliminary plan he laid out in his budget address provides no guarantee that revenue from charging these drivers will go to the subways, where it is needed most, and not used as a piggy bank for politicians favored transit projects across the region.
Mr. Cuomo has expressed a refreshing interest in taking overall responsibility for the subway system he has controlled since he took office eight years ago. To show he is serious about the effort, his congestion pricing plan needs to guarantee that legislation would explicitly dedicate an overwhelming majority of the revenue to the subway system.
To be sure, it makes sense that some of the funds which would be used to leverage bonds go toward expanded service in so-called public transportation deserts in boroughs outside Manhattan. Some should go to the Metropolitan Transportation Authoritys commuter rails, to help build support for congestion pricing among lawmakers who represent the railroad passengers, and because some of the drivers who would be paying the new tolls would be from the suburbs. (Governor Cuomo told Long Island residents on Friday that congestion pricing could help not only the subways but the Long Island Rail Road, too.)
Anyone remember blogs?
Years before Facebook, Instagram and Twitter took over as the prime spots for oversharing, people had to go to websites like Open Diary, Blogger and LiveJournal to publish their thoughts for the world to read.
But over time, social media became the way that people shared articles that reflected their politics, posted images of loved ones and sent out messages of frustration or exultation.
Medium, the online open platform and publisher, is one bloglike platform that has persisted and innovated in the social media era. With 90 million unique monthly visitors, it has maintained relevance as a destination for open letters, petitions and personal essays. But it scarcely sparks such frenetic reactions as it did Thursday night.
That was when Jeff Bezos, Amazons billionaire chief executive, took to the website to accuse American Media Inc., the parent company of The National Enquirer, of extortion and blackmail. The headline of the post was No thank you, Mr. Pecker, a reference to David J. Pecker, the chairman of American Media.
Symptoms usually last a week to about 10 days for children and adults who are otherwise healthy, Walker said.
But the infection can become severe.
Walker said bronchiolitis, an inflammation of small airways in the lung, can develop from RSV, as can pneumonia.
The CDC says RSV results in an average of more than 57,000 hospitalizations each year for children younger than 5.
Premature infants, kids younger than 6 months old, children with weakened immune systems or chronic lung or heart disease are among those at greatest risk to develop severe illnesses from RSV.
There is no vaccine for RSV, but there is ongoing work to create one, according to the CDC.
An injection (Synagis) can protect infants at risk of severe RSV, Walker said. The shots also can help reduce the severity of symptoms in a baby with RSV.
Walker said the medication is available to babies meeting certain criteria, including those born prematurely.
RSV is easily spread by coughing and sneezing. People also can catch RSV through direct contact with someone who's infected.
HIGHLAND A blaze ravaged a Highland apartment building as frost-covered firefighters worked to contain flames that burned into the night, damaging 24 units.
There were no injuries to residents or firefighters, Highland Fire Chief William Timmer said, as residents were swiftly evacuated from the building. The 18 other apartment buildings in the Hampton in Highland Apartments complex were not damaged by the fire.
Smoke poured into the air around 3 p.m. Friday as a fire broke out on a third-story apartment in Highland at the 9500 block of Hampton Drive, spreading to other units in the building. All 24 apartments in the building were damaged in the fire, Timmer said.
Firefighters went inside to battle the flames but had to evacuate because of dangerous conditions.
Due to high heat and high fire conditions inside, we evacuated our guys from the second and third floor, and we went into a defensive attack, Timmer said at 6:30 p.m. Friday. As you can see we're outside putting water out from the outside down, and we will continue that until the fire is out.
The apartment building roof collapse exposed the interior of third-floor and second-floor units, in which flames could be seen consuming the apartments within.
While all residents made it out safely, some pets perished in the fire including two cats and a bird, Timmer said.
The ice and the cold is a hard part of our work, he said. This is a hard part of our jobs, too. I've got dogs in my house so I'm sensitive to furry creatures.
Before Marlow-Kelleman could even begin making calls to organize the response Friday, dedicated volunteers were reaching out to her because they had just seen news reports of the fire, she said.
They were out the door before I could even call them, Marlow-Kellemen said.
American Red Cross workers were on the job until 1 a.m. and were back at it later Saturday morning into the evening.
The phone has been ringing off the hook with people wanting to donate food, clothing, shoes, furniture, household items and personal care items, said Chicago-based Blake Smith, who oversees nine churches for the Community of Christ, including the one in Highland.
Smith has been working for the church 25 years and says this is about the fifth time he has seen a response of this magnitude in the wake of a disaster.
It is a large number of people who have experienced complete devastation, he said.
He is going up against the city's first black mayor, who is seeking his third term in office on the strength of an administration that has balanced the city's budget.
Lake Station Mayor Christopher Anderson, who has served as mayor since 2016, told The Times late Friday morning it was time for him to move on to a new career.
Anderson previously served as Lake Station's city judge for seven years before shaking up Lake Station's political scene by challenging former Lake Station Mayor Keith Soderquist.
Anderson fired the mayor's stepdaughter, Miranda Brakley, for embezzling public funds from city court and alerted state and federal authorities to investigate Soderquist and Soderquist's wife, Deborah.
The U.S. attorney's office charged and won convictions of the Soderquists for gambling at local casinos with money diverted from Keith Soderquist's campaign donations and the city's food pantry. Brakley also pleaded guilty to theft of public funds.
Anderson ran for mayor and defeated Soderquist four years ago.
"During my years of public service, I have given my all to my duties and obligations as a public servant," Anderson said Friday.
One of the other men with Briscoe, White and Dixon was Tarence M. Smith, 22, who was charged along with Briscoe and Dixon in a robbery of a 17-year-old boy the same day Austin was shot, records show.
Briscoe and White each named a fourth suspect, whom they alleged remained outside Austin's residence, but that man has not been charged in connection with the case.
White and Dixon have been in custody since August, according to police and court records.
Lake Criminal Court Judge Clarence Murray sentenced Dixon on Aug. 17 to six months in jail for "extremely disruptive and combative behavior" in a holding cell. Dixon remained in custody Saturday, Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez said.
Smith, who has been wanted on a warrant since Jan. 15, failed to appear for a court hearing Friday before Murray.
White appeared in custody with his attorney, John Cantrell, for a hearing before Murray Friday.
Cantrell told the judge he had anticipated having a plea agreement ready, but Briscoe's homicide and other factors caused a delay.
"There are just some things going on that prevented us from getting it done," Cantrell said.
CROWN POINT A judge refused to reduce bond for a man accused of robbing a Hobart store of more than $1 million in jewelry and spitting on an officer during a foot chase.
Altonio Benson, 40, of Detroit, is being held at the Lake County Jail on $75,000 bond on charges alleging he and at least two other men shattered glass cases at Jared The Galleria of Jewelry with hammers Jan. 25 and ran off with bags of jewelry.
Benson and co-defendant Darren S. Bell, 29, of Detroit, ran north across U.S. 30 from the store near Southlake Mall and were caught by police, Lake Criminal Court records say.
Benson's attorney, John Cantrell, said Benson has no ties to the area but "is going to come back here and defend himself."
Benson's family has about $800 for his bail, Cantrell said.
Lake County Deputy Prosecutor Timothy Brown said Benson is a flight risk and danger to the community, because of a criminal history that includes six weapons and drugs cases.
Benson was wanted on a warrant for violating probation at the time of his arrest in Hobart, Brown said.
Cantrell said, "There was a lot of chaos out there, and everyone was running," before Lake Criminal Court Judge Clarence Murray cut him off.
MICHIGAN CITY Police say a quick response resulted in an equally quick arrest of a 27-year-old man on allegations of snatching a purse and injuring a woman outside the Save-A-Lot gas station at 1811 Franklin St.
Quayshuan Kelly faces a felony count of robbery causing bodily injury, police said.
A 49-year-old woman said she had just returned to her vehicle from the gas station around 10:45 p.m. Wednesday when a man approached and grabbed her purse, police said.
She was injured during the struggle. The man ran off with the purse to a vehicle parked a few blocks away, police said.
Police said the woman gave them a good description of the attacker and his vehicle. Police located the vehicle within minutes in the 5700 block of Franklin Street, and evidence of the robbery was collected during the traffic stop. Kelly was also identified by the woman.
Michigan City Police Chief Mark Swistek "lauded the quick response and investigative efforts of the Patrol Division and Investigative Division in bringing this matter to a swift conclusion," he said.
The arrest occurred within 32 minutes of the original police call, Swistek said.
Serpe said heat loss in the nearly 90-year-old building is nothing new to the Roosevelt community. Heating issues have plagued the school since before EdisonLearning took over the school six years ago. Last year, Serpe said, students spent about a week out of school.
"It's crazy," said LaTasha Mason, who sends her two sons to Roosevelt. "Last winter it was the same thing. The bus company just dropped kids back at home."
EdisonLearning is a tenant in the building still owned by the Gary Community School Corp. EdisonLearning claims high expenses needed to replace the boiler system have kept the Gary district, taken over by the state in 2017, from providing the necessary upgrades.
"It's an old building and the cost to make repairs is quite extensive," Serpe said. "Unfortunately, students, teachers, staff and parents have become all too accustomed to this situation."
In their week away from school, students have access to some assignments online, Serpe said, but makeup days will likely be added to the end of the year. Serpe said that it's always difficult for students to transition back to school after extended periods away, but he hopes students will be back up to speed before standardized testing begins this spring.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. "This Is Us" actor Milo Ventimiglia is being honored as Man of the Year by Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals.
America's oldest theatrical organization says Ventimiglia was selected because he has made "significant impressions on television and film." He stars as Jack Pearson in the award-winning hit TV drama.
The Emmy-nominated actor will receive his pudding pot Friday night at a celebratory roast at Harvard.
Ventimiglia will then attend the opening night of Hasty Pudding's latest production, "France France Revolution," its first to feature women in the cast.
Hasty Pudding has honored a Man of the Year since 1967, and previous winners include Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks and Christopher Walken. Paul Rudd was honored last year.
Bryce Dallas Howard was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year.
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Bharat Book Bureau Provides the Trending Market Research Report on "Global Electric Motorcycle Market 2019 by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2024 under Heavy Industry Category. The report offers a collection of superior market research, market analysis, and competitive intelligence and industry reports.
Electric two-wheelers, as indicates itself, is electricity-powered two-wheelers. A battery pack and a motor are installed to store and transform the electricity. A user control is usually attached to the handle bar to brake and adjust the speed.
Scope of the Report:
Electric Motorcycles & Scooters can be classified as a combination of electric scooter, electric motorcycle, and so on. The power-assisted electric scooter with pedals is also called electric bicycle in China, and China is the largest producer of the Electric Motorcycles & Scooters products, about 90% of the global total production is from China in the past years. In the past several years, the global Electric Motorcycles & Scooters market is relatively stable with CAGR of 4.6% from 2013 to 2018. In 2017, the global actual consumption amount of Electric Motorcycles & Scooters was around 17368.3 K Units.
The global average price of Electric Motorcycles & Scooters is in fluctuation in 2013-2018, from about 260 $/Unit in 2013 to 277 $/Unit in 2017 The price will be in increase trend while demand is going to be saturated and the price of the raw material (e.g. Steel) will increase. The sales volume of Electric Motorcycles & Scooters will reach to around 23052.3 K Unit in 2024 from 18045.0 K Units in 2018 all around the world, with the CAGR of 4%.
China is the largest sales market of Electric Motorcycles & Scooters in the world in the past few years and it will keep the same position in the next years. China sales volume took up about 80% the global market in 2017, but it has changed a lot in 2018 due to the saturated demand (means that the demand is relatively rated, but the production increased too fast and began to be oversupply). China sales share dropped to 79% in 2018. At the same time, the export to Europe and USA increased dramatically. Apparently, many Chinese producers of Electric Motorcycles & Scooters are trying their best to look for new growing-market, while Chinese market is in fierce competition and some small players have quitted this business especially in recent years.
Request a free sample copy of Electric Motorcycle Market Report @ https://www.bharatbook.com/marketreports/Sample/Reports/1361825
Currently, AIMA, Yadea, Sunra, BYVIN, TAILG, Lvyuan, Incalcu, Lvjia, Lima and Supaq are the top ten players in the global Electric Motorcycles & Scooters market. The Hero Electric (from India), Accell Group (From EU) Terra Motor (from Japan), ZEV (From USA), Giant EV (brand from Taiwan, but produced in China), and Yamaha (brand from Japan, but produced in China) are other key brands outside China.
The worldwide market for Electric Motorcycle is expected to grow at a CAGR of roughly 4.6% over the next five years, will reach 6980 million US$ in 2024, from 5330 million US$ in 2019, according to a new study.
This report focuses on the Electric Motorcycle in global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.
Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers
* Yadea
* AIMA
* Lvyuan
* Sunra
* TAILG
* Lima
* BYVIN
* Zongshen Electric Motorcycle
* Wuyang Honda
* HONG ER DA
* Lvjia
* Slane
* Opai Electric
* Supaq
* Xiaodao Ebike
* Sykee
* Aucma EV
* Terra Motor
* Govecs
* ZEV
* Zero Motorcycles
Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers
* North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)
* Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)
* Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)
* South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia etc.)
* Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)
Market Segment by Type, covers
* Electric Motorcycle
* Electric Scooter
Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into
<14 yrs
14-35 yrs
36-60 yrs
>60 yrs
The content of the study subjects, includes a total of 15 chapters:
Chapter 1, to describe Electric Motorcycle product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market driving force and market risks.
Chapter 2, to profile the top manufacturers of Electric Motorcycle, with price, sales, revenue and global market share of Electric Motorcycle in 2017 and 2018.
Chapter 3, the Electric Motorcycle competitive situation, sales, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers are analyzed emphatically by landscape contrast.
Chapter 4, the Electric Motorcycle breakdown data are shown at the regional level, to show the sales, revenue and growth by regions, from 2014 to 2019.
Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to break the sales data at the country level, with sales, revenue and market share for key countries in the world, from 2014 to 2019.
Chapter 10 and 11, to segment the sales by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2014 to 2019.
Chapter 12, Electric Motorcycle market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2019 to 2024.
Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Electric Motorcycle sales channel, distributors, customers, research findings and conclusion, appendix and data source.
Browse our full report with Table of Contents: https://www.bharatbook.com/marketreports/global-electric-motorcycle-market-2019-by-manufacturers-regions-type-and-application-forecast-to-2024/1361825
About Bharat Book Bureau:
Bharat Book is Your One-Stop-Shop with an exhaustive coverage of 4,80,000 reports and insights that includes latest Market Study, Industry Trends & Analysis, Forecasts & Customized Intelligence, Newsletters and Online Databases. Overall a comprehensive coverage of major industries with a further segmentation of 100+ subsectors.
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A retired professional eater and some of the world's best lumberjacks are going to battle over who can wolf down the most pizza Thursday at Au
Evan spent time working out the rest of the stand in the weeks up to Friday. He said he is not in any industrial arts classes in school, and has no history of woodworking. He credited Garett Luenenborg, a playhouse volunteer who helps construct sets and other projects, for mentorship and help with the concession stand.
He helped me with this whole thing, Evan said. He said other friends with a history of woodworking skills also helped.
While Evan isnt sure if his future holds any woodworking endeavors, I had to lead people in building this, he said, adding that the project took planning the logistics and directing his helpers.
The final touch on the concession stand is a wooden plaque, with Evans name and troop information engraved. For Evan, the concession stand is a lasting fixture in the playhouse hes grown up coming to for plays and, in recent years, movies.
Ill get to see it every time I come back and see a play, he said.
Rajean Shepherd, an administrative assistant at the playhouse, called the concession stand state of the art, and said that those involved with the North Platte Community Playhouse were as impressed with Evans project as he was. They were also impressed with Evan.
A bill in the Nebraska Legislature could change the way smaller counties elect their officials.
If it becomes law in its current form, any county with population under 15,000 will have the option to list their candidates for county offices on a nonpartisan ballot in the primary election. Currently, by state law, they are partisan offices.
LB 144, introduced by District 44 Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango, would apply to 74 of Nebraskas 93 counties. Those include every county in the western two-thirds of the state except Buffalo, Dawson, Lincoln and Scotts Bluff.
The bill is in the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee. As of Friday, a hearing had not been scheduled.
Hughes said what prompted him to consider suggesting a change was the Red Willow County sheriffs race in 2014. The contest was decided in the primary election because the candidates were all Republicans. The partisan system did not necessarily serve the best interests of county residents in that situation, Hughes said. Anyone registered as Democrat, independent, Green or Libertarian had no say in the matter.
Another concern, said Hughes, is that in the smaller counties there is often a shortage of candidates for county offices; if the races were nonpartisan, more people might decide to run.
Google might be working on building its own brand of wearables. A job posting looking for a VP of Hardware Engineering for Wearables was recently announced that could mean that the Mountain View is looking to expand its hardware offerings into next generation wearables. A posting for a Wearables Design Manager is also in the offing.
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Google has the Android-based Wear OS for smartwatches, but it looks like the Mountain View-giant is looking to take things up a notch further. A couple of job listings were found (now taken down) on Google Careers for the post of a VP Hardware Engineering for Wearables and a Wearables Design Manager. The job description for the VP Hardware Engineering for Wearables reads,
As the VP of Hardware Engineering for Wearables, you'll work collaboratively with the Senior Leadership team for Google Hardware and will be responsible for the design, development, and shipment of all Google's Wearable products. You will lead and enable the effectiveness of a large engineering organization primarily based in Mountain View to develop multiple next-generation wearable products simultaneously."
It may be recalled that Google recently acquired some of Fossil's smartwatch tech for US$40 million. It wasn't clear back then whether Google was planning to develop their own smartwatch tech. The Pixel Buds are the only wearables from Google so this could be an opportune moment for the company to invest in some next generation smartwatch or fitness hardware.
A major problem is in the wearables market is the absence of a viable alternative to Samsung's and Apple's smartwatch SoCs, which have helped in good adoption of their respective devices. Sure, we do have the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 but little has changed since the first Snapdragon 400 or even the previous Snapdragon Wear 2100. Apart from a few battery life improvements, the SoC has been relatively unchanged from 2013 and is still based on the now archaic 28 nm process. Google will have to arrange for alternative SoC suppliers if it is indeed serious about making inroads into the wearables market.
The New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam, located near Augusta Regional Airport at Bush Field, may undergo major changes in the near future, in the wake of recently passed federal legislation.
Beverly McGuire, (79) of Noble died June 20th at her home with family by her side. Graveside Services 1:30pm Wednesday, June 23rd at Sunset Memorial Gardens in Stillwater, Ok., 6500 S. Perkins Rd., Stillwater, Ok. Directed By McMahans Funeral Home.
CLARINDA Following the announcement that Shopko will be closing its Clarinda store on April 15, the City of Clarinda is facing a loss of tax revenue for the upcoming fiscal year.
Clarinda City Manager Gary McClarnon discussed the matter with the Clarinda City Council as part of a second workshop to develop the fiscal year 2020 city budget. The fiscal year starts July 1.
Clarinda included $500,000 in revenue from the local option sales tax in its current fiscal year budget. However, during the initial budget workshop, McClarnon said Clarinda is only projected to receive $460,000 in revenue.
We end up losing the $40,000 because of the water excise tax they implemented for cities, McClarnon said during the Jan. 9 workshop. That was something the legislature threw in at the last minute last year, so nobody was prepared for that. If we did the water excise tax, and implemented that, it took the local option sales tax away from us.
Now, with the closing of Shopko, McClarnon said the city is facing a further reduction of revenue from the local option sales tax. He estimated the loss to be between $12,000 and $13,000 per year.
However, while McClarnon did not believe the lost revenue from Shopko would have a significant impact on the overall budget.
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Have you taken in the monuments at Bayliss Park? This historic park in the city center is home to many wonderful statues and squirrels. Just dont let your dog get one of the black ones they are protected by a city ordinance.
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A trip to Lake Manawa will let you and your dog explore acres of lakefront property. Can you imagine the smells your pup can dive into here? If you visit while there is still ice atop the water, you will probably witness majestic eagles perched overhead or devouring fish, just ripe for the picking, stuck in the frozen layers.
Dont forget Fairmount Park, which is a deceivingly large parcel of land, covering acres of hilly terrain.
Last but not least, keep our own Kevin Bills Memorial Dog Park in mind. This fenced-in area, on the grounds of the Midlands Humane Society, allows for dogs to run, off leash, in a safe area. A yearly membership can be purchased at MHS for access to this park. As for the other trails and parks, remember to keep your dog on leash, pick up after your pet and be respectful of others you might encounter. Now get out and enjoy the outdoors. Just remember to bring your mittens! And camera!
Gregg Fortner, the executive director of the Housing Authority of New Orleans for the past five years, will step down from his post July 7 after his contract expires. HANO said Friday (Feb. 8) that its board will begin a search for his replacement in the coming months.
Fortner was hired in 2014 to lead the once severely troubled agency through a full transition back to local control, after more than a decade of management by U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu called Fornter an excellent choice for the post, and Fortners contract was extended by the HANO board in 2017 and again in 2018 under Mayor LaToya Cantrells administration.
New Orleans mayor removes key affordable housing advocate from HANO board
During Fortners tenure, he weathered the murder of a HANO police officer at a Central City construction site, ordered HANOs police force to take over security at the troubled Fischer housing development in Algiers and toured a Superfund neighborhood from which residents are still seeking relocation and financial relief in a lawsuit against the city.
HANO touted Fortners restructuring of the Housing Choice Voucher Program that administers 18,000 Section 8 vouchers and the re-opening of the waiting lists for the that program and the public housing programs after a seven-year closure. HUD gave HANO a standard rating of 76 for its management of public housing in 2017, according to public records. In 2018, he produced the agencys first clean financial audit since federal takeover.
Signs of disapproval with Fortner surfaced in July, however, when three members of HANOs board, including HousingNOLA executive director Andreanecia Morris, voted against renewing his contract. A month later, Cantrell ousted Morris from the board.
Before joining HANO, Fortner led the Miami-Dade Public Housing and Community Development Department and the San Francisco Housing Authority. He also held several management positions with the Oakland Housing Authority, Sacramento Housing Authority and Redevelopment Agency, the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles and the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.
The poisoned promises of Agriculture Street
Gov. John Bel Edwards urged the Supreme Court on Friday (Feb. 8) to act quickly on a ruling that has temporarily prevented a Louisiana abortion access law from going into effect.
The divided court voted 5-4 Thursday (Feb. 7) blocking Louisiana from putting into effect a law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges in local hospitals in order to provide abortion services.
In a statement issued Friday, Edwards said he voted for Act 620 in 2014 and added, as a pro-life Catholic, I will always advocate for laws that protect the dignity and sanctity of life.
The Supreme Courts decision was in response to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision not to rehear a case brought by the Centers for Reproductive Rights that argued that the law was similar to a Texas law that was ruled unconstitutional in 2016 because it severely restricted womens access to abortion clinics. The Texas law halved the number of abortion clinics from 41 to 21.
Pro-choice advocates have argued that Louisianas law would have a similar effect and if enacted could potentially close Louisianas remaining three clinics. When Act 620 was signed in 2014 by former Gov. Bobby Jindal, there were five abortion clinics in the state.
This has been a multi-year, legislative assault which has created the most severe threat to abortion access we have ever seen. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will hold to recent precedent and not allow a lower court to ignore its ruling to advance an anti-abortion agenda, Michelle Erenberg, the executive director of Lift Louisiana, an advocacy organization for womens healthcare access, said in a statement.
Supporters of Louisianas law argue that it improves the standard of care for patients by making sure the abortion provider can accompany their patient to local hospitals in case of any complications during the procedure.
In a statement issued Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Landry said his office will review the next steps in their defense of the law.
We will not waver in defense of our states pro-woman and pro-life laws; and we will continue to do all that we legally can to protect Louisiana women and the unborn, Landry said in his statement.
The Supreme Courts decision only delays the law from taking effect immediately. The law was scheduled to take effect Friday.
Jesuit High Schools proposal to build a pedestrian bridge over Banks Streets is meeting with resistance from its New Orleans neighbors. They fear the bridge will destroy oak trees and see it as unnecessary, the Mid-City Messenger reports.
The all-boys Roman Catholic school that faces Carrollton Avenue wants to erect a bridge connecting two of its buildings. School officials think it will enhance student safety and alleviate traffic caused by pedestrian crossings on the street.
But during a community meeting Monday (Feb. 4), almost 60 people expressed concerns. Opponents calling themselves Bridge Over Banks: No Thanks! had canvassed the neighborhood with flyers highlighting objections.
Jesuit High School wants to build a pedestrian bridge over Banks Street
I learned a lot from the last meeting, and one of the biggest things Ive learned is I need to listen more to whats going on in the neighborhood, said the Rev. Christopher Fronk, Jesuits president.
Washington resident Angenae Walker traveled to New Orleans and celebrated her 22nd birthday in the Big Easy on Wednesday (Feb. 6).
But just one day after turning 22, Walker was found dead inside a Harvey townhouse, one of the victims in a double homicide Thursday night, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office.
Man killed in Harvey homicide was wanted fugitive from Seattle
Cheston Isom, 27, a Seattle man with ties to the New Orleans area, died shortly after deputies arrived at the residence located in the 1500 block of Kings Road. The Jefferson Parish coroners office has not released their causes of death, though Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said Walker suffered a gunshot wound.
Its been a roller coaster, said Walkers sister, Gabriella Webb, 29, of California.
Walker published a post on her Facebook page Monday announcing a trip to New Orleans for her birthday, said her aunt, Chereda Peters, 37.
Neither Peters nor Webb knew Isom or his relationship to Walker. They also didnt know that Isom was a convicted felon and fugitive who was wanted by Washington law enforcement for a Seattle home invasion in December that left one man wounded by gunfire, according to authorities.
Its not clear when Walker and Isom arrived in the New Orleans area. But by Thursday night, the two were at the Kings Road townhouse in the former Pebblewalk neighborhood on the West Bank. Isom may be related to a resident of the home, according to court records.
The Sheriffs Office is still trying to determine what happened at the house. The 911 center received a request for medical help at the residence just after 9 p.m., Lopinto said.
Deputies arrived to find Isom lying unconscious on the first floor. He could not be revived, and was pronounced dead at the scene. Walkers body was discovered on the second floor while deputies were conducting a security sweep, according to the Sheriffs Office.
Victims identified, possible witness sought in Harvey double homicide
Authorities have no suspects or a motive for the killings. But detectives on Friday afternoon released photographs of a woman they said may be a possible witness in the case and asked for the public's help in locating her.
The department cancelled the request just before 10 p.m. Friday, saying information has been developed that has assisted the investigation and the alert is no longer needed.
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As word of Walkers death began to spread Friday amongst her relatives and friends on the West Coast, they found themselves trying to process the shock, the questions and the sadness surrounding her loss.
She was a very bright, smart young lady, said Webb. She worked multiple jobs to make ends meet.
Walker always wanted to be self-sufficient, according to her aunt.
She was a very independent spirit, Peters said.
Walkers home life had not always been easy and she took a few wrong turns, according to Webb.
She was going through some things and didnt want to reach out, Webb said.
But Walker had goals, ideas of what and who she wanted to be, Peters said. The third of six siblings, Walker was determined to make her own way.
Peters fondly recalled the day Walker was born.
When I went into that room, and I was handed the most beautiful thing Id ever seen in my entire life, she said.
When Peters later gave birth to her firstborn, she remembered Walker holding the baby.
She said, Auntie, shes so beautiful. I cant wait until I get married and have a baby, too, Peters said through tears.
Anyone with information about the deaths of Cheston Isom and Angenae Walker is asked to call Det. Scott Bradley at the Sheriffs Office investigations bureau at 504.364.5300. The public can also call Crimestoppers at 504.822.1111 or toll-free at 877.903.7867. Callers do not have to give their names or testify and can earn a $5,000 reward for information that leads to an indictment.
Members of Arizonas congressional delegation are asking the federal government to reconsider its February decision to withdraw from an agreem
Xiomara Jovels job was to pay employees that her staffing firm hired to work for clients.
One of the ways an employee could get their paycheck was on a debit card, or cash card, which did not require a bank account - only an ATM.
Jovel, from 2014 through 2016, used those cards to steal $190,000 from her company by fabricating wages for six people who were no longer employed. She then withdrew the cash and kept it for personal use.
On Friday, a judge in Union County sentenced Jovel, 47, of Roselle Park, to three years in state prison, the state Attorney Generals Office announced. She also must repay her company, who state authorities did not name. Jovel pleaded guilty in December to second-degree theft by deception
Jovel was an onsite manager at a warehouse for one of the staffing agencys major clients, which used the agency to hire temporary employees.
The state Division of Criminal Justices Financial & Computer Crimes Bureau and Clark police investigated and charged Jovel. State detectives Mark Byrnes, Katelyn Sake Prata, Deputy Attorney General Derek Miller and Clark Detective Alejandro Yanes worked the case.
Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 9) President Rodrigo Duterte calls for reforms in the Catholic Church, saying no less than Pope Francis acknowledged the problem of priests sexually abusing nuns.
"The Pope is in Dubai. He admitted yesterday na 'yung mga madre, 'yun ang konsumo ng mga pari," Duterte said in a speech in Legazpi City, Albay Friday night. "Sinasabi ko na sa inyo eh (I told you so). The Church has to reform."
In a flight to Rome from the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, the Pope said, "There have been priests and also bishops who have done that," when asked about abuse of nuns. He added, "We've been working on this for a long time."
Duterte reiterated that he himself was molested by a priest when he was young. He said priests, during confession, would abuse him and his classmates, including Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez who earlier confirmed Duterte's allegations.
READ: Dominguez backs Duterte's sexual abuse accusations vs. priest
The President again urged people to read the books, "The Popes" and "Altar of Secrets," saying he would step down if anyone could belie the allegations he has hurled against the Church.
"I will ask you to go to Malacanan. State your case in front of the camera and if you are correct, I will resign," he said.
The President has frequently attacked the Catholic Church, accusing it of corruption and abuse and mocking its practices and beliefs. Malacanang has said that since the Church throws criticisms against the President, it should be ready to accept some harsh words in return. Duterte also previously called for bishops who criticize his administration to be killed.
The Church has been one of the institutions critical of Duterte's controversial polices, including the bloody war on drugs, which has seen over 5,000 deaths in police operations.
If you are thinking of selling or renting your home, smoke detectors with disposable batteries arent going to cut it anymore.
A change in the states uniform construction code, which took effect on Jan. 1, requires residences (one and two-story homes, motel rooms and rooming houses) built before 1977 to have a 10-year sealed battery smoke alarm installed. Homes built after 1977 are not subject to the new regulations because requirements already existed for the residences to have a hardwired alarm. A similar measure also started in New York.
New Jersey Department of Community Affairs (DCA) spokeswoman Lisa Ryan says the change came with safety as its primary goal.
The importance of working smoke alarms cannot be overstated, Ryan said. The material that common household items are made of today gives off toxic smoke and gases even in the beginning stage of a fire. It is extremely important to quickly detect a fire and provide early warning to occupants to enable them to safely escape. The key to early detection is having a working smoke alarm.
Ryan says the DCAs Division of Fire Safety proposed and adopted the regulations for the sealed battery smoke alarms because it stops people from removing the battery, allowing the device to be ready to work if a fire were to occur and to reduce the number of injuries and deaths.
After responding to a fire, firefighters are often frustrated to find the smoke alarm that is present was not functioning and, therefore, didnt provide the necessary warning to prevent injury or death, Ryan added. The most common cause of a smoke alarm not functioning is the lack of a working battery. Often, the battery is removed so it can be used somewhere else or the battery no longer has the necessary charge. Batteries are also removed to prevent nuisance alarms from cooking.
Municipalities across the state have begun notifying residents of the new fire regulations and while conducting inspections for the upcoming busy shore rental season. Ryan said property owners would start to receive violation notices where the 10-year sealed battery smoke alarms are not installed.
Local fire officials and property owners are encouraged to work together to establish a reasonable timetable for compliance.
Chris Franklin can be reached at cfranklin@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @cfranklinnews or on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips
Veteran state Sen. Anthony R. Bucco is being treated for throat cancer, a spokesman announced Friday.
Bucco, an 80-year-old Morris County Republican who has served more than two decades in the New Jersey Legislature, has been diagnosed with a treatable and curable form of throat cancer called squamous carcinoma, said Mike DuHaime, a spokesman for the Bucco family.
DuHaime said the cancer is localized and has not spread to other parts of Buccos body. The senator will undergo seven weeks of radiation and chemotherapy at Morristown Medical Center, DuHaime said. He does not require surgery, the spokesman added.
According to his doctors, the long-term prognosis is quite good, DuHaime said.
The senator will approach his treatments with tenacity, faith, energy and good spirits, the same way he has faced every challenge in his life of public service," the spokesman continued. "He looks forward to returning to Trenton this spring after his treatments conclude to resume debate with his colleagues and friends from both sides of the aisle.
Bucco has represented North Jerseys 25th legislative district which includes parts of Morris and Somerset counties since 1995. He first served three years in the state Assembly, the Legislatures lower house, and moved up to the Senate in 1998.
Bucco has spent the last decade serving alongside his son, Anthony M. Bucco, a fellow Republican who is one of the districts two Assembly members.
State Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., R-Union, said Bucco wont be alone in his upcoming fight against cancer.
He has the prayers and full support of his Senate Republican family, and Im sure of the entire Legislature, Kean added. "Knowing Tony, I have no doubt his battle against cancer will be successful.
State Republican Party Chairman Doug Steinhardt said Bucco is a leader in the GOP and will be in all of our thoughts and prayers as he undergoes treatment.
Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, took to Twitter to offer support:
Our thoughts and prayers are with Senator @TonyBucco and his family during this difficult time. As Tonys colleagues would attest, he is a fighter and cancer doesnt stand a chance. Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) February 8, 2019
Bucco is a Boonton resident and previously served as the townships mayor. He is also a former Morris County freeholder.
Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01.
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An employee at the New Jersey Schools Development Authority a state agency that has already faced scrutiny for the hiring of an ex-Gov. Phil Murphy aide accused of rape resigned Friday after it came to light she faced sexual harassment allegations at her past job.
Kenia Nunez-Acuna a relative of the authoritys chief executive officer stepped down after a media outlet, The Record, contacted the SDA about the two-year-old accusations, agency officials confirmed in a statement.
The Record was the first to report the story Friday.
The SDA which oversees construction projects in numerous New Jersey schools is the same agency where Albert J. Alvarez, the former Murphy aide accused of raping state official Katie Brennan in 2017, was chief of staff.
Alvarez, who denies the allegations and has not been charged with a crime, was hired for the taxpayer-funded, $140,000 job even though top Murphy aides knew of the allegations. He didnt resign until October when Brennan went public with her story, despite being told to leave state government twice.
The scandal has been the subject of multiple investigations, including one commissioned by Murphys office and another by the state Legislature.
Nunez-Acuna was hired in October to work in the SDAs grants department, agency officials said. She is the second cousin of Lizette Delgado Polanco, the authoritys CEO.
The sexual harassment allegations against Nunez-Acuna stem from her time as the township administrator of Buena Vista. She was accused of making unwanted advances on Richard Calareso, who was the townships public works director, according to a complaint filed with the state Attorney Generals Office in February 2017.
Buena Vista settled with Calareso a week later for $25,000.
Delgado Polanco said she did not know of the allegations against Nunez-Acuna until Thursday, when The Record reached out for comment.
I can unequivocally tell you that I had NO knowledge whatsoever to these allegations against Ms. Nunez-Acuna or the Buena Vista settlement from two years ago, Delgago Polanco said in a statement.
The Buena Vista complaint, from December 2016, alleges that Nunez-Acuna asked Calareso for a hug at least seven times and then chased after him and pushed her arm under his arm to make it appear as though the two were walking arm and arm."
Nunez-Acuna told Calareso that she wanted a hug now that I bought you all your equipment and forcibly pushed her breast against him three times when she attempted to hug him, according to the complaint.
The settlement with Calareso said it was part of a restructuring of the towns public works department. It did not mention the allegations against Nunez-Acuna and voided any complaints Calareso made, according to a post last April from an open-government blog.
S. Patricia Cabrera, an SDA spokeswoman, said it appears that this matter was reviewed and resolved between all parties two years ago, Cabrera said.
Cabrera added that the townships counsel dismissed the allegations as having absolutely no merit and Buena Vista decided Nunez-Acuna should continue in her job.
But Cabrera said the SDA has a zero-tolerance policy against any prohibited discrimination and/or harassment in our workplace.
Every worker in New Jersey whether they are woman or a man deserves to work in an environment where they are safe from harassment, the spokeswoman said.
Cabrera said Delgado Polanco has been recused from any decision related to Nunez-Acunas employment.
It is unclear how much money Nunez-Acuna made at the SDA. Neither the state Treasury Department nor the SDA had that information.
Dan Bryan, a spokesman for Murphy, declined to comment.
NJ Advance Media staff writer Samantha Marcus contributed to this report.
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Before Thursday night, if your company worked for the borough of Roselle Park, you couldnt donate much money to the politicians who would vote on your contracts. Not anymore.
By a 4-3 vote, the towns mayor and fellow Democrats on the borough council voted to repeal political contribution limits of $200 by lawyers, planners, engineers and other professionals with no-bid public contracts (or professionals with the hopes of scoring contracts). The move effectively raised contribution limits to state-imposed levels of $2,600 to individual candidates, $7,200 to municipal party organizations, and $37,000 to county parties.
Thursday nights vote at borough hall repeals a 2013 ordinance that had imposed the strict $200 limit, which was intended to curb the influence that campaign gifts can have on the awarding of professional service by elected officials who rely on fundraising for their own campaigns or those of political allies -- a practice commonly known as pay to play.
Public contracts of up to $17,500 do not require public bidding, so elected officials can award them without going out for bids.
Opponents of the repeal criticized the move as having a potentially corrupting effect on local government.
(The 2013 law) was a keystone in introducing transparency into Roselle Park politics and government, resident David Robertson told borough officials during the meeting. Repealing the ordinance is a clear money grab made available to mayor and council along with their respective political parties. There is absolutely no benefit to the community at large.
Ridiculing the potential for escalating local campaign spending, Robertson added, I mean, just how many yard signs and false and misleading mailers do you guys need to keep yourselves in office?
Robertson was the only one of about 30 members of the public attending Thursdays meeting to address the contribution issue.
The repeal ordinance says the differences between the local $200 donation limits in Roselle Park and the much higher state limits, have caused confusion among those seeking or performing business within the Borough of Roselle Park.
Mayor Joseph Signorello III became the principal proponent of the move just after his swearing in last month, and cast the tie-breaking vote after the councils three Democrats and three Republicans were deadlocked. The mayor and council cast an identical vote last month to introduce the measure.
Signorello is a 31-year-old financial analyst and political newcomer whose father, Joseph Signorello Jr., is the Roselle Park fire chief. The mayor said the repeal eliminated any confusion among professionals about whether they would be barred from seeking contracts or making certain contributions in Roselle Park and Union County. That uncertainty, he said, could cause those professionals to avoid borough work, thus reducing the applicant pool and potentially depriving residents of the highest quality service.
Roselle Park Mayor Joseph Signorello III led the repeal of the borough's strict pay-to-play ordinance on Feb. 7, 2019, a month after being sworn into office.
Addressing the transparency issue, Signorello pointed out that state law requires disclosure of contributions of $300 or more, meaning any larger contribution than that would be made public by the state Election Law Enforcement Commission. In contrast, Signorello said, any contribution under the boroughs old limits would not have to be reported.
So, if transparency is what youre after, and were limiting donations to under $200, you would actually never see those donations, Signorello said.
Councilman Joseph DeIorio, a Republican former mayor and the most vocal member of the councils GOP faction, said the mayors rationale for the repeal strained credibility. He challenged council colleagues to identify a professional hired by the borough who was doing a poor job. Scrapping the $200 contribution limit, DeIoriao said, was simply an invitation to buy contracts.
I wouldnt want to put out a policy that says, If you donate more, you can do business with Roselle Park, said DeIorio.
DeIorio noted that the biggest difference between contributions under the old limit and what the state allows is for county political organizations, which can now receive up to $37,000 from donors doing business with Roselle Park for each election cycle, up from just $200.
The most money you can donate is to the county, DeIorio said, adding that the amounts now at stake make will make it all too tempting for county party officials who can make or break the careers of local politicians to influence municipal contract decisions.
That notion was dismissed by both Signorello and Union Countys Democratic chairman, state Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-22nd Dist. Both said the issue had never been discussed, and while Scutari acknowledged that lifting Roselle Parks contribution limit could indeed boost the county partys fundraising, he said it would not lead him or his organization to pressure municipal officials to award contracts to certain donors.
Do I influence municipal decisions? No, Scutari said in a phone interview Thursday night, adding that he wasnt even aware of the councils move. This is the first Im hearing about it.
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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By Kevin J. OToole and Rick Cotton
Got it done. Three little words that say so much. When we came to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2017, those words had not been spoken often enough. Too frequently in the past half-dozen years, attention about the Port Authority has focused on scandals, delays and other negatives. We wanted to try to turn the page.
We wanted to get things done to improve our facilities.
We wanted to get things done that would improve this agency.
We have to restore the Port Authority as a national leader in building and expanding the regions infrastructure. With demand increasing across the region, it was imperative that the Port Authority get things done.
As we look back at 2018, our first full calendar year leading the agency, we see real progress made, while acknowledging the vast amount of work that lies ahead. With the vision of the agencys Board and dedication of its more than 7,600 workers, the Port Authority in 2018 got lots of things done.
Got it done at the ports. When the final numbers are in, we expect 2018 to have set another new record for cargo volume for the second consecutive year, fruits of having raised the roadbed of the Bayonne Bridge in 2017 so ultra-large container vessels could come to our ports. This increase in cargo equals more goods, more jobs and a stronger regional economy. The Port brought online 3 weeks ago a major expansion of rail capacity to rapidly ship inbound cargo onward to destinations in the mid-West and will shortly complete a second tranche of new capacity. The completion of this $600 million project to increase freight rail connections at its docks, will drive future growth at the port and is a part of a five-year strategic goal to take 1.5 million truckloads of cargo off local roads.
Got it done at the Goethals Bridge. This past June, the Port Authority completed the $1.8 billion Goethals Bridge, the first new bridge the agency built in more than 80 years. In 2018, the bridge set a record for eastbound crossings 16,577,588 a 4.8 percent increase over 2017.
Got it done at PATH on multiple fronts.
Got it done at Newark Liberty International Airport. It is sometimes forgotten that Newark was the first major airport in the nation. Today, Newark Liberty is seeing transformative change. Surrounded by political leaders from across New Jersey, the agency broke ground in September 2018 on the largest-ever Port Authority investment in New Jersey, the brand new $2.7 billion Terminal 1. Ultimately the airport redevelopment is expected to generate more than $4.6 billion in regional activity and provide more than $1.9 billion in wages.
Got it done at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International airports. In December, the Port Authority completed and opened the first brand new 250,000 square-foot concourse at LGA with 18 new gates, the first milestone in transforming what Vice President Joe Biden called Third World into a 21st century airport. In October, the Board approved the JFK redevelopment plan, which is more than 90 percent privately funded. It will transform JFK into a world-class 21st century airport.
Getting it done at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. During 2018, the planning process for a new Port Authority Bus Terminal came together to create a cooperative framework of New York and New Jersey elected officials and stakeholders. The agency held more than 25 meetings with local stakeholders seeking input on the building of the new terminal. We are confident this intense consultation will result in the formal initiation by the Federal Transit Administration of the environmental review process for the new PABT in the very near future now that the federal government shutdown is over.
While the planning goes forward on the new bus terminal, much got done in 2018 to make the existing bus terminal cleaner, more efficient and more user friendly, despite its age. The PABT Quality of Commute completed a wide range of projects new and improved lighting, ceilings, doors, signage, new restrooms, elevators, escalators, new retail offerings, and a new Project Clean targeting the quality and cleanliness of bus terminal restrooms, and finally the Bus Terminal completed installation of free, fast Wi-Fi inside the terminal.
Getting it done with 21st century technology. In addition to free Wi-Fi at the bus terminal and cell service at PATH stations, the Port Authority launched three new apps in 2018 RidePATH, MyTerminal, Crossing Time. We brought free, fast Wi-Fi to our airports and launched mobile-friendly websites for JFK, LaGuardia, Newark Liberty and Stewart International airports.
Got it done when it came to negotiating collective bargaining agreements. At the beginning of 2018, every single represented worker at the Port Authority had gone from between six to 12 years without contracts. That also meant they had gone without raises for that same period of time This was unacceptable. So we could not be prouder that by years end, we had negotiated contracts with 100 percent of the Port Authoritys civilian and police workforce. Now, we are vigorously engaged in negotiations with PATH unions.
Got it done when it came to setting a new bar for a higher minimum wage for airport workers. The Board voted to raise the minimum wage to $19 an hour by 2023 for workers at all three major airports.
Good intentions without results will not bring the Port Authority fully into the 21st century. In 2018, the Port Authority saw results. At the beginning of this new year, we are proud of the Port Authority and its workforce that helped push the agency forward in 2018. Without them, we could not be saying these three little words over and over again Got it done.
And in 2019, we look forward to saying it many times more.
Kevin J. OToole is the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Rick Cotton is the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
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A day after a public defender working for Hamilton Township was asked to resign after sharing an insensitive post on Facebook, three other members of township staff are accused of similar behavior.
Three township employees, including one who worked on Mayor Kelly Yaedes campaign staff, all shared insensitive memes on their personal Facebook pages, according to screenshots seen by NJ Advance Media.
One of the employees, an engineer with the township, shared the same meme referencing the KKK that Edward Gore, a public defender that had worked with the township, had shared. The shared image compared Democrats wearing white at this weeks State of the Union to Ku Klux Klan. Gore, who is a former Republican town councilman, was asked to resign on Wednesday, hours after the post was brought to the attention of the administration.
The other two employees shared an image mocking Muslims. The photo depicts a Muslim man sitting on a toilet saying Muslims, dont use toilet paper. They use their hand.
The three employees, all members of the towns Republican club, did not respond to requests for comments on the screenshots. Yaede, also a Republican, said she had received multiple examples of employees sharing offensive content.
Over the last year, particularly in the past few days, I have been inundated with examples of inexcusable posts made by Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Yaede said.
Such posts display borderline stalking, defamation and violence by public employees, party leaders and others. Ive been disappointed by this continued level of dialogue in our society.
In a statement on Facebook, Gore blasted the mayor, said she used the Facebook post as an excuse to act out against him, and said he was retiring from his post, not resigning.
(Dont) believe for one second that this has anything to do with a Facebook post, he wrote in the Thursday evening post. The Yaede mob has struck again," he said, adding that he was the target of Yaedes wrath, the taxpayers be damned.
When asked whether or not the three other employees would be asked to resign, the mayor said she was reviewing the matter with the personnel and the law departments.
Jeff Martin, a Democrat on the town council, said all employees should be treated the same way.
Council always hopes theres equal application of the townships rules and regulations," he said.
Olivia Rizzo may be reached at orizzo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter@LivRizz. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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A West Milford High School gym teacher was arrested Friday and was facing several charges for asking a 17-year-old student for sexual videos in exchange for money, officials said.
Christopher Shenise, 32, of Vernon, was charged with second degree endangering the welfare of a child, second degree official misconduct and fourth degree cruelty/neglect of a child, according to a release from the West Milford Police Department.
Shenise was arrested after an investigation by the West Milford Police Department and the Passaic County Prosecutors Office that was started after officials received information from a high school faculty member that was forwarded to administrators, police said.
Chief Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Freid said the sexual conversations between Shenise and the student took place at the school and on social media in November, 2018.
Freid said there was implied behavior with a second student, but he said he could elaborate further on Friday.
There are no allegations of any type of sexual contact with any students, Freid said
Shenise has a salary of $56,120, according to public records.
Shenise was taken to the Passaic County Jail to where he was awaiting his first appearance in Passaic County Superior Court which was scheduled for Saturday.
West Milford Police Juvenile Detective Donald Fantasia is the lead investigator in the case and asked anybody with information to contact him at 973-728-2808 or d.fantasia@wmtpd.org.
Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrsheldon Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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After providing more than seven decades of bus service, the Kutztown-based Bieber Transportation Group canceled all service Friday to Philadelphia and New York and announced the company is closing.
A note to riders in its Reading bus terminal said all service is canceled until further notice, effective at 4:30 p.m. Friday, WFMZ-TV 69 reports.
Carl R. Bieber Inc. operated for 72 years, serving the Lehigh Valley and Berks County region, the company said in a statement on the travel alerts page of its website.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to our loyal customers who have supported us over the years, the statement says. "We also want to thank our employees whose hard work and dedication contributed to the many successful years of operations.
"While we are disappointed in announcing the closure of the company, we are heartened by the countless number of community, civic, religious, recreational and military activities in which the company participated and the magnitude of the people to whom we provided services."
A call Saturday morning to the company's office generated an automated message confirming all service to New York City and Philadelphia is canceled effective immediately. Any inquiries can be directed to the office Monday morning, the message said: "We apologize for any inconvenience during this time." An email seeking comment did not immediately generate a response.
The company says to check its website and social media for future updates.
Last July, Bieber abruptly stopped operating out of the Port Authority station in Manhattan. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said at the time Bieber owed $214,000 after years of non-payment.
The company relocated its New York City pickup and drop-off location last fall to Eighth Avenue and 39th Street and last week announced a permit from the city to use that spot until February 2020, WFMZ reports.
Bieber listed its bus station in Reading for sale in June 2018. Also in June, Bieber and competitor Trans-Bridge Lines relocated their Bethlehem stop from South Side to the Bethlehem Transportation Center near West Broad and Guetter streets.
Bethlehem-based Trans-Bridge said Saturday it was working to provide extra buses on its New York City service, in anticipation of an increase in passengers going forward.
We are genuinely disheartened by the news that the 72-year-old company has ceased operations, Trans-Bridge said in a statement.
Trans-Bridge said it learned of Biebers closure when calls began coming in late Friday afternoon from schools that had chartered buses with Bieber and were inquiring about return transportation.
Another transportation provider, TransportAzumah, also announced Saturday it would be adding service between Reading and New York City and Reading and Philadelphia. The company said schedules would be posted Sunday at transportazumah.com.
TransportAzumah says it is working on its schedule with with OurBus. That is a New York City-based data-driven bus transportation service, according to Klein Transportation, which is working with OurBus to pick up some of Biebers routes to New York City beginning Monday.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Union City man who sexually assaulted a woman while she was unconscious was sentenced to 15 years in prison Friday, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez announced.
Victor Alvarez, who was sentenced by Hudson County Superior Court Judge Sheila Venable, was convicted of aggravated sexual assault in September after a four-day trial.
The 27-year-old will have to serve 85 percent of his sentence under the No Early Release Act and is expected to be eligible for parole in 2031, HCPO spokesman Ray Worrall said.
The victim and Alvarez had been in an on-again, off-again dating relationship; and the sex assault occurred on Sept. 11, 2017, in West New York, according to information at the trial.
Alvarez is subject to parole supervision for life and Megans Law registration after his prison term is completed.
The crime was investigated by the HCPOs Special Victims Unit and the case was tried successfully by Assistant Prosecutor Barbara Drasheff.
Ask most people from New Jersey about their property taxes and youre likely to get a sigh or glare or just a string of furious expletives.
But ask Tom Samuels about property taxes, and he starts to smile.
Samuels actually likes talking about stupid expletive property taxes. Yours are high and his are low and thats the kind of thing you just cant hide behind a straight face.
"Back then, we paid less than $1,000 a year," Samuels said, sitting outside of the house he bought 30 years ago. "Now, we are up around $1,600, which is still phenomenal."
No, Samuels doesnt live in an outhouse. And, yes, he resides in a real New Jersey town, albeit one with just 1,800 people.
I dont think youll really get any negative feedback from anyone around here, Samuels, 75, said.
At least not yet.
Samuels lives in Lower Alloways Creek, a dream of a town in a tax nightmare of a state, in rural Salem County. The towns low taxes have long been the stuff of local legend: By agreeing to host nuclear power plants in the late 1960s, Lower Alloways Creek was able to reap millions and build one of the most-envied schools in the state, all at the cost of virtually nothing to residents.
But in recent years the lack of local taxes has gone from a perk to hindrance for township officials. A school once considered extravagant has faded to ordinary, the communitys lavish recreational facilities have been sold off and doing less with more is now the common refrain.
There might even come a day when a tax is needed, elected officials caution. But theyre adamant that today is not that day and they will never ever be the ones to vote for it.
Listen, I have thought about the tax money plenty of times, said Ellen Pompper, the mayor and longtime member of the township committee. But the residents dont want to hear it.
And why would they? The average homeowner here pays just $2,086 a year in property taxes, less than a quarter of the $8,690 statewide average.
People north of here, when they come down here, they are like, This is a diamond in the rough. I didnt know a place like this existed said Lewis Fogg, born and raised in Lower Alloways Creek.
Hope Creek nuclear generating station is seen from Alloways Creek in Lower Alloways Creek Township, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Joe Warner | For NJ Advance MediaJoe Warner | For NJ Advance Medi
With three small villages surrounded by 47 square miles of farmland, meadow and Delaware River marsh, LAC, as locals call it, was a poor farming and trapping community with no commercial tax base and high residential taxes until a couple generations ago.
Then came the transformation that would change the township forever. In the 1960s and 70s Lower Alloways Creek signed on to host two nuclear power plants, accepting any potential hazards in exchange for annual payments in lieu of taxes that would quickly reverse the towns financial fortune.
Lower Alloways Creek began raking in millions in nuclear money each year. Officials eliminated local taxes and went on a spending spree that would make MC Hammer blush.
"I don't think they could have spent it fast enough," Pompper said.
They put in an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, bought a 91-acre ski resort, built a free housing community for senior citizens, purchased a commercial bus for community trips and built a new township building and new fire station.
They doubled the size of the K-8 school, including new home economics labs and technical education shops. And they slashed class sizes, carpeted the classrooms and gave each and every kid free lunch.
All of it was paid for in cash, and at least $20 million was set aside to invest.
A bit of Utopia on the Delaware, declared the New York Times headline for a profile of the town published in 1986.
It wasnt too good to be true, but it was too good to last.
Other towns complained Lower Alloways Creek was spending in excess while they were suffering. So, in the 1980s, the state changed the way energy tax dollars are collected. It spread the wealth to other communities, and Lower Alloways Creek was left with just a slice of the pie (about $6.8 million in 2018) and not nearly enough to sustain its lifestyle.
Those free spending days? Long gone.
The pool and ski resort have seen since been sold. The carpet in the classrooms has been ripped up and replaced with cheap vinyl.
The perk that remains is ridiculously low tax bills. Residents dont pay any school or municipal property taxes just county taxes and still have their own school district, police force and all the other basic services you would get anywhere else.
And while the school grades out below average in the states rating system, it falls in the middle of the pack among Salem County schools. (Its rating is comparable to neighboring Quinton Elementary School, where the average resident pays more than twice the average bill in Lower Alloways Creek.)
If the worst tradeoff for low property taxes is living with the shrill emergency sirens regularly tested at the power plant, residents are happy to take it. There is no greater health risk living next to a nuclear plant than there is anywhere else, according to experts.
Lower Alloways Creek is hard to get," said Stephanie Davis, a local real estate agent. "When it comes up, it usually flies off the market."
Lower Alloways Creek School, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Joe Warner | For NJ Advance MediaJoe Warner | For NJ Advance Medi
And yet a little more revenue sure would be nice, said Walter Sheets, president of the school board.
Sheets has been on the board since before any of the current students were born. Hes one of the few residents willing to acknowledge the pitfalls of no taxes, revealing a crack in the facade of this low-tax idyll.
Any other school board can raise taxes to keep up with the rising cost of salaries and benefits. But Lower Alloways Creeks board has to accept whatever the local township committee gives it, which has often been flat funding or even a slight dip, Sheets said.
Hes seen class sizes increase and the schools savings dwindle as the building ages and need costly repairs. He wishes there was more money to give kids the perks the township used to offer.
We will survive. Its just things cant remain the same, he said. We are running out of things to cut.
Would he vote for a tax increase?
Heck no. Like Pompper, he knows that would be political suicide.
Nobody on the board would, Sheets said, seeming agitated at there mere suggestion of a tax hike. We are all LAC residents.
Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
A New Jersey mother is being held in the Cumberland County jail following the discovery of the remains of her 23-month-old child in her yard early Saturday morning, about nine hours after she reported him missing, authorities said.
According to the Cumberland County Prosecutors Office, Nakira M. Griner is charged with first-degree murder, second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, second-degree desecration of human remains, and fourth-degree tampering with evidence.
On Friday at 6:36 p.m., the 24-year-old mother reported to the Bridgeton City Police Department that her child, Daniel Griner Jr., was abducted, authorities said.
Law enforcement officials and State Police bloodhounds began looking for the child, but at about 3 a.m. Saturday the boys remains were located outside Griners home on Woodland Drive, authorities said.
Griner is currently being held at the Cumberland County Jail pending a detention hearing for her bail.
No further information will be released at this time as the case remains under investigation, the county prosecutors office said in a statement released Saturday morning. No additional arrests are expected at this time.
This post will be updated as additional details become available.
Daniel Griner Jr. was reported missing and was later found dead outside his home in Bridgeton, authorities said.
Taylor Tiamoyo Harris may be reached at tharris@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ladytiamoyo Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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Recently, I had the utmost pleasure in sharing some time with Josh Balter, candidate for the vacant seat of James Albis, representing the 99th District in the Connecticut House of Representatives. I accompanied Josh on a door-knocking effort to both advise his potential constituents of the special election taking place on the 26th of February. Having endorsed Josh with his previous unsuccessful bid for the 34th District state Senate seat I further opted to support him again. I have taken a fond liking of Josh due to his utmost concern for all the voters of East Haven. During our walk, he demonstrated to me his sincere desire to fulfill that desire. At each doorstep he displayed a true and sincere concern and some of the areas he would pursue given the opportunity to represent them. He went on to briefly mention his experience as a retired combat Navy corpsman. And, then, fulfilled his education in the field of law.
I honestly feel Josh is proud of all the many accomplishments of Rep. Albis and has pledged to further not only those feats but his many new ambitions which will ultimately benefit all East Haven residents. His profound and genuine drive to achieve are endless.
The name New Haven is a perfect way to describe a place for refugees to find a new home, away from a homeland that has become a war zone or where they fear persecution: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan.
The city of New Haven also would not be the place it is without its biggest, most obvious resident, Yale University.
When the two join forces, the results are delicious.
Those who arrive with almost nothing to their name, sponsored by Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, may not seem to have much in common with the wealth and privilege that Yale represents although that perception is not as accurate as it once was. Yales students do come from a wide range of ethnic, national and economic backgrounds.
But if you find yourself indulging in a piece of baklava at The Juice Box, Willoughbys Coffee & Tea, or several other places around the city, youll be enjoying the fruits of a mutually beneficial relationship between refugee chefs, sponsored by Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, and the Yale students of Havenly Treats, one of the many student-run organizations at Dwight Hall, Yales student-run social justice and service organization.
The fellows are Hala Ghali and Faten Natfaji, both from Homs, Syria, who arrived in the United States on the same plane on July 20, 2016. Ghali and her husband have three children, ranging from 4 to 11 years old, and Natfaji and her husband have a 10- and an 11-year-old. Natfaji has worked in a school cafeteria and tried to work as a hairdresser, but said it was too expensive to get a license.
Now they are earning money through their cooking talents, with Yale and New Haven reaping the benefits.
Nour Hussari, a junior biochemistry major who comes from a Syrian family on Staten Island and speaks Arabic, leads Havenlys chef-development team and assists the two chefs. They chose to focus on baklava and people really liked it best of all, he said. Also, it stored the easiest and could be made easily.
Hussari spent last summer as a fellow at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale and his mentors really recommended to hone in on that one thing, he said. The chefs are also adept at many Middle Eastern dishes, such as chicken shawarma, kabobs, hummus and stuffed grape leaves.
The students, who launched Havenly out of the Yale Refugee Project at Dwight Hall, have connected chefs to two bakeries, G Cafe Bakery on Hamilton Street and Katalinas cupcakes on Whitney Avenue, as well as to outlets including Willoughbys locations, the Book Trader Cafe and The Juice Box on Chapel Street and the newly opened Cafe X on Whalley Avenue, as well as BYO Cafe in Kroon Hall, home of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Evans Hall Cafe in the Yale School of Management.
Baklava also can be ordered online at havenlytreats.com at $2 a piece or in quantities such as $72 for 40 pieces up to $485 for 500. Delivery is free.
But where the chefs baklava really took off was in one of Yales lesser-known locations: the butteries in Yales residential colleges.
The butteries are the places for hungry students who are starving from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., said Ben Weiss, a junior studying mechanical engineering and a co-founder of Havenly. They have names like The Dive (Davenport) or The Morsel (Morse) and specialties such as The Dives RJR, which combines buffalo chicken, cheese, bacon, hot sauce and ranch dressing, or the concoctions known as Jaded Christian, Davids Tuxedo and the Jim Stanley at The Morsel (at least according to spoonuniversity.com).
The name buttery comes from either a storeroom for liquors (Merriam-Webster) or a large cellar room under a monastery, in which food and drink were stored for the provisioning of strangers and passing guests (Wikipedia).
Whatever they were, they are now a perfect location for the two Syrian women to offer their wares.
Working as a Havenly fellow is very nice, said Natfaji. Were enjoying the work a lot and once we finish this program wed like to continue working.
Wed like to work in something similar to food preparation, said Ghali. Ive found this work to be much better than other things Ive done. I worked in housekeeping and I found it to be very, very difficult work.
I love it, Hussari said of working in Havenly. I get to hang out with amazing Iraqi and Syrian women. They remind me of home in a way and theyre dedicated and joyful people. Its good to be around that kind of energy.
He said that seeking the chefs voice and their input in this project and this fellowship was really important.
Weiss said Hussari is one of the most fantastic leaders that Ive encountered. All the coordinators have a team of students that theyre working with as well. Other teams include marketing and media, legal, finance and business development.
One of the team members is Mourad Frishkopf, a first-year student from Edmonton, Alberta, whose mother is Egyptian and whose father is American. Its a mutually beneficial relationship, he said. The fellows are getting experience. Im getting Arabic-speaking experience.
Weiss co-founders were Caterina Passoni, now executive director, who graduated in May 2018 and who is a cultural companion at IRIS, and Alessandro Luciano, who has also graduated. Passoni, who couldnt be reached because she is in Italy on personal business, is the only paid employee beyond the chefs, Weiss said.
Passoni had wanted to help her cultural companion, an Iraqi refugee named Nieda Abbas, to find work through her cooking. Nieda is an incredible chef, just mind-blowing, Weiss said.
Weiss was originally drawn to food and cooking in middle school and is interested in creating connections through food and communities, he said.
In New Haven, there was a particular relevance to the refugee crisis, given all the fantastic work thats being done by IRIS, Sanctuary Kitchen [a program of CitySeed] and others, Weiss said. He joined the Yale Refugee Project last spring mostly out of curiosity and it basically just snowballed from there and I became super-involved in the implementation and execution of Havenly.
Starting this organization meant getting to know not only Nieda but her family, visiting her home, eating with the family, Weiss said. He called Abbas an incredible individual; she is now head chef and trainer and listed on the website as a one-woman board of stakeholders.
Havenly assists the women because taking their skills from the home kitchen to the commercial food industry is a challenge that can be sort of worked through through training and education, Weiss said.
Havenly takes in about $4,000 a month and all of the profits from the bakery go directly back to the refugees, Weiss said. There is a fundraising team that helps support the programs expenses.
Both G Cafe Bakery and Katalinas have donated their baking space. Most of the orders are made on Sunday at G Cafe; late orders and any that need to be finished are baked on Wednesday evenings at Katalinas.
Kathy Reigelmann, owner of Katalinas, said she was happy to offer her kitchen. My parents were immigrants. They came from Hungary in 1956, so it just came naturally to do it, she said.
I just kind of feel I have that in me, she said. My father was very generous in helping Hungarian immigrants and others who wanted to start a new life.
In addition to their business, the fellows also attend classes in financial literacy, taxes, computer skills, English as a Second Language, taught by Yale students who are researching those topics, Weiss said.
Weiss said Havenlys goal is to establish ourselves in New Haven in such a way that a strong collaboration and connection is created between Yale, New Haven and the refugee population that meaningfully breaks down barriers to employment for female refugees.
Weiss said he hopes that in the future, the program can grow to support more refugee chefs. We see a huge opportunity with Yale as a purchasing institution, he said. Should we secure some form of contract with Yale that would allow us to really, really expand what we do.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, at a rally outside a mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts, has officially announced she is running for the Democratic nomination for president.
Warren told the crowd on Saturday, "It won't be enough to just undo the terrible acts of this administration. We can't afford to just tinker around the edges -- a tax credit here, a regulation there. Our fight is for big, structural change. This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone. I am in that fight all the way. And that is why I stand here today: to declare that I am a candidate for President of the United States of America."
NEW HAVEN An Employment Drug Policy illegally discussed behind closed doors and withheld from public view for more than a year outlines a list of acceptable and disqualifying categories for the citys police department to follow when hiring new officers, according to the New Haven Independent.
The state Freedom of Information Act Commission ordered the police department to release the policy this week to the New Haven Independent.
J. Arthur (Joe) Lenzi was just another local guy helping to build the big bridge over the Quinnipiac River in 1957 when some of the older construction workers who had noted his good looks kept telling him: What are you doing here, kid? You should go to Hollywood and become a movie star!
Recalling his life-changing decision to heed that advice, Lenzi said: I was seeing those guys with two or three kids and theyd married their childhood sweethearts and they could barely make ends meet. It scared the hell out of me. I said to myself: This is not going to happen to me.
And so on an October morning, Lenzi and his buddy, Red Nazario, headed off to California in a new Chrysler 300. They were paid to drive it across the country and deliver it to an address in Los Angeles.
This odyssey landed Lenzi, just 19, in La La Land, a fantasy landscape where he spent years partying with movie stars and plunging into romantic adventures with gorgeous women. He has told his story in a self-published book entitled Easy Access: From Boudoirs to Movie Stars. He subtitled it A Memoir of Good Looks.
Lenzi hung on in Hollywood until 1992, when he returned to New Haven to keep a promise to his elderly parents. I had told my father: Dad, I will never put you or mom in a (nursing) home. My sister and I took care of them in their own home.
Lenzi and I met last Monday afternoon at his condo on Townsend Avenue. He lives there with his wife, the woman he says saved him from continuing his pursuit of femmes fatales. His memoirs dedication reads: To my darling wife Esmahan, my Turkish delight.
While Lenzi and I sipped the delicious Turkish tea she had brewed for us, I asked her what she thought about her husbands memoir, which is loaded with tales of one-night stands and affairs with glamorous young women.
Oh, I love it! she said. I really do. Its beautiful. Im really impressed.
As for all those former lovers, she said, I dont mind. I never get jealous. Thats what he did before, not now. Hes a wonderful person.
Lenzi settled in to tell me the story of his life. He began by recalling something that happened when he was about 12. A good buddy of mine on Wooster Street, where I grew up, had boils that would erupt on his face and make him look very unattractive. He told me, When you go into a store, the cashier smiles and says hello. When I go in, she locks the register. I really felt bad for him. I realized: the homely are ignored and the beautiful are adored. Its the number one discrimination in the world but nobody talks about it.
I want to cry sometimes, its such an injustice, he added. Were not all created equal.
Lenzi said he wrote his memoir in part to make people aware of this discrimination. He noted, Tony Curtis and Robert Wagner in their bios never once mentioned that they were good-looking and had that advantage.
As I say in my book, I had wonderful opportunities. But I really believe it was only because I happened to be nice looking. I had lots of female friends, lot of male friends, because I was nice looking. If I hadnt had good looks, Id probably never have left New Haven.
In another book Lenzi wrote, Joes Street Smarts: From Soup to Sex, Knowledge Not Taught in College, he said his natural good looks were the effortless universal door opener that provided easy access to the good life of sun, sex and spaghetti.
Lenzi told me his timing also was lucky: No other place on the planet offered more opportunities of every kind than Beverly Hills from 1957-1992, the years I was there.
But like any aspiring youth arriving in L.A., he had to pay some dues. We were there for only five days when Red got homesick and said, Ive got to go home. I told him, Red, Im not going back. So he left and I got a tiny room in a hotel for $14 a week. It had bullet holes in the ceiling.
Soon afterward, Lenzi said, I got a job parking cars from Billy the bull at a new restaurant, the Villa Capri. I was mesmerized by the people coming in. Frank Sinatra was going out at the time with Lauren Bacall; they had battles royale in the parking lot. Shes swearing at Sinatra; hes saying: Dont give her the car! Im taking the car! He had a beautiful new Cadillac. One night, he told me to go get some gas for it. So Im driving around Hollywood in Frank Sinatras Cadillac!
Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin were constantly playing around. Sinatra would come into the place with a whole group of people at 2 oclock in the morning. Theyd sit at a booth and make a lot of noise.
Sinatra intimidated everybody, Lenzi said. Even Kirk Douglas was intimidated by him. The only person who intimidated Sinatra was Dean Martin. Dean was just naturally cool.
Lenzi said he grew to love Sinatra because of his generosity. Nobody on the planet was more generous. If you had a problem, hed go looking for you. He was the biggest tipper of all, nobody came close. Hed give me $10, $20: Here, kid.
Lenzi said he spent three days in Las Vegas with Sinatra, Mia Farrow (his wife at that time) and Lenzis girlfriend, Pamela Mason, who was divorced from the actor James Mason. Wed drink til 3 in the morning. Lenzi quoted Farrow saying: Joe looks like a young Frank Sinatra.
In 1959, Lenzi enrolled in an acting school, impressed a talent scout with 20th Century Fox and signed a contract to attend acting classes at the studio for six months. If he impressed the board of directors at a screen test, he would be signed to a seven-year contract. Lenzi seemed to be on the verge of fulfilling his dream of becoming a movie star.
It was an incredible opportunity, he noted.
But he got heavily involved with a gal named Dusty Miller, whom Lenzi described as more beautiful than Elizabeth Taylor. After several months of a wild romance, I learned she was being kept by a baron from Switzerland. I called my father, crying on the phone: Shes not who she said she was.
The next morning I was going to do my big scene for 20th Century Fox. I was a good actor. But I was so distracted, I hadnt slept. I did one scene and I was a mess. I blew one of the biggest opportunities of my life.
I had all the potential to be a movie star, Lenzi said, but I struck out. I didnt live up to my full potential. But if I had, I couldnt have handled it. Id probably be dead by now if Id been a star.
But he holds onto those Hollywood memories. Lenzi pulled out a loose leaf scrapbook filled with photos of him alongside Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kirk Douglas, Phyllis Diller and others. Theyre included in his paperback book (available via Amazon), which he admits is filled with typos. Im a grammatical nitwit.
After his acting dream died, Lenzi got into real estate sales. In 1991, he pulled off a big deal, selling a Beverly Hills mansion to the Sultan of Brunei for $12.5 million. This was his path to early retirement.
These days, at 81, Lenzi reads philosophy in bed at night, does laps at IKEA on Sargent Drive and enjoys cozy days with his Turkish delight, whom he met in 2004 when she answered a personal ad he had placed.
In spite of all the Hollywood starlets he had flings with, Lenzi told me, With Esmahan, Im blessed. These have been the best years of my life.
Contact Randall Beach at 203-680-9345 or randall.beach@hearstmediact.com
NEW HAVEN Westvilles newest gift shop carries scented candles, custom totes, wooden signs with sweet sayings and hand-woven scarves, but what sets it apart from other artsy storefronts in the neighborhood is the love put into every piece by students in Chapel Haven Schleifer Centers UARTS program.
The ribbon was cut Friday the quaint storefront at 12 Fountain St. and it was welcomed warmly to the neighborhood by city officials, including Mayor Toni Harp, a supporter of the award-winning school that teachers independent living to adults on the autism spectrum and with other special needs.
While the many hand-crafted items now available in this new outlet make beautiful, meaningful gifts, Im mindful of the gift built into the creation of each item, Harp said. Each is the byproduct of the imagination, creativity and diligent effort of its creator.
She said, The creation of each item represents Chapel Havens commitment to its residents, to their potential and to their productivity.
Chapel Havens UARTS program has been in place for a few years, with a location on the campus where student artisans create all week.
The new store, for now open only Fridays from noon to 4 p.m., includes a maker space and will feature artisan-made scarves, mens ties, home decor and other seasonal products. The plan is to increase hours in the spring.
Artisans of the program, will have the opportunity to hone their entrepreneurial interests, and also learn customer service and retail skills, a release states.
Harp said all people want most in their lives is a sense of belonging and an opportunity to be productive and useful.
All of that is built into this new story and each item available here, Harp said.
Chapel Haven Schleifer Centers new Employment Services and Opportunities program, led by Danielle Chiaraluce, will also be headquartered in the space because the entrepreneurial component ties in with its mission of finding employment and internship opportunities for those with different abilities.
The stock in the store is unique, will change regularly and the place has the feel of an artsy boutique. The UARTS program is run by studio manager Heather McDonald and program manager Stephanie Berberich.
The wooden signs for home decor are painted with positive, soothing words: Do your best, never give up, Believe there is good in the world and Be kind.
NORTH HAVEN Edward F. Zigler, who developed the nationwide Head Start early-learning and child-development program in 1965, died Thursday at the age of 88.
At the time, Zigler was director of the Yale Child Study Center. He became known as the Father of Head Start after helping develop a pilot program as part of President Lyndon B. Johnsons War on Poverty.
The programs goals were to give young children the skills they needed to succeed in elementary school, as well as social, psychological and emotional support to them and their families. Head Start since has helped more than 35 million children succeed in school and in life.
He was one of the first people in academia who felt that we should take the science we have and give it away and make a better world for children and families, said Walter Gilliam, director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy in New Haven, which Zigler founded in 1978 to bring child development and public policy experts together to the benefit of both.
Zigler was born March 1, 1930, in Kansas City, Missouri, to parents who had immigrated from Poland and spoke only Hebrew and Yiddish. He earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1958 and taught at the University of Missouri for one year before joining the psychology faculty at Yale University in 1959. He served as a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.
Before then he was also a child whose family was receiving services through the immigrant settlement homes, including health and dental care, meals and social supports, Gilliam said, and he sold fruit out of the back of a horse-drawn wagon. When he was named to the Project Head Start committee he wanted to give poor children in the United States the type of support that he received, Gilliam said.
Gilliam said Zigler was the last surviving member of the Head Start planning committee. The reason he was the last one is that he was so young, he said. He was 35 at the time.
Zigler went on to start Early Head Start for infants and toddlers and a program for migrants and ended up advocating for lots of programs that weve had for a long time, Gilliam said. He served as an adviser to every president from Johnson to Barack Obama.
Yale President Peter Salovey, whose academic field also is psychology, issued a statement saying, Ed Zigler was my mentor, teacher, and friend. His work has been inspirational to me and many others in my field, and his influence well beyond our field has been profound. He was a fine example of how science and policy can join hands for the benefit of many.
Peg Oliveira, executive director of the Gesell Institute of Child Development, said that what really struck you when you met Ed was that he not only had a deep understanding for child development but that he had a passion for helping children in need and that passion came through in an urgency to do this work better than we were doing it.
Oliveira said Zigler was a staunch advocate for high-needs children who came from poverty or who were undergoing trauma and toxic stress. He knew that the environment mattered long before we had studies that proved that it mattered. She said he wanted to give children the best chance possible to learn and, more importantly, to thrive.
Zigler served in the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, where he created the U.S. Office of Child Care and started Healthy Start and Home Start programs that would support the full development of children, understanding that that would impact their ability to learn once they reached school, Oliveira said.
During that time, Zigler championed the 1971 Comprehensive Child Development Bill, which would have offered child care to all families on a sliding fee scale. However, Nixon vetoed the bill.
Zigler was the first director of the U.S. Office of Child Development, now the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, and former head of the U.S. Childrens Bureau. He developed the Education for Parenthood project, a national parenting-education program for high school students.
He also oversaw the resettlement of children of Operation Babylift, the mass evacuation of more than 3,000 infants and children, many of them children of U.S. troops, after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Ziglers expertise included applied developmental psychology, social and emotional development, developmental psychopathology, intellectual disabilities and public policy. He published more than 800 scholarly articles and 43 books and monographs, according to a press release from Yale.
The prolific scientific and public service contributions of Dr. Zigler are the pillars upon which so many current early childhood development programs are built, and his work at the Yale Child Study Center helped New Haven educators and their counterparts nationwide understand the need for wraparound services for children who have experienced trauma in their young lives, Mayor Toni Harp said in a statement. Similarly, Dr. Zigler set standards and helped win widespread acceptance for early learning and preschool programs as precursors for student success later on.
Last night, New Haven lost a legendary figure and the world lost a force for good, said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, in a statement. Ed was a dear friend whose counsel I relied on over the years to inform my work in Congress. He was a giant in the field of social policy for children a teacher, researcher, and mentor to the people who will carry on his work.
DeLauro said Zigler also had an influence on the Family and Medical Leave Act. At every step, he strived and succeeded in making the lives of countless children better because he understood children could not be separated from the context of family and community, DeLauro said. Through boundless wisdom, Ed charted a vision for how to best help children and families that shaped child nutrition, health, injury prevention, and so much more. His impact spanned decades, and will last well into the future.
Zigler was predeceased by his wife, Bernice Zigler, in 2017. He is survived by his son, Perrin Scott Zigler, dean of the School of Drama at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, a sister, Maurine Agron of Kansas City, Missouri, and two granddaughters.
Services will be private. The family asked that donations be made to a local Head Start program or other program that supports childrens health and well-being. Events to honor the life and contributions of Zigler are being planned for the spring, with additional information to follow.
edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382.
NORTH HAVEN A juvenile was arrested after making threats to shoot up North Haven High School on social media, police said Friday.
A school resource officer was working with the school districts IT manager recently to investigate a report of harassment.
Eversource Energy, New Englands largest electric and natural gas utility, has entered into a $225 million joint venture for projects with a Danish company that specializes in off-shore wind power projects, officials with the companies said Friday.
Eversources deal with Orsted calls for a 50-50 partnership between the two companies covering several key wind power projects. The deal calls for an equal ownership stake in Orsteds Revolution and South Fork wind projects as well as a 257-square-mile tract off the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The money for the deal came from an unregulated division of Eversource, which also operates as a regulated utility in the three states it does business in: Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. rsted acquired all three assets in November 2018 as part of its $510 million acquisition of Providence-based Deepwater Wind.
Deepwater Wind launched the United States first off-shore wind farm off the coast of Block Island in December 2016.
The deal announced Friday is the latest in a series of partnerships between the two companies. They were already partners on the Bay State Wind project, a joint venture covering a separate 300-square-mile ocean tract adjacent to one owned by Deepwater Wind. The Bay State Wind and the Deepwater Wind lease sites jointly owned by Eversource and rsted could eventually host turbines that could one day produce at least 4,000 megawatts of electricity.
Officials with two companies said Eversource and Orested will jointly manage permitting requirements for upcoming projects and will honor all planned local investments and agreements entered prior to this partnership.
Thomas Brostrm, chief executive of Orsteds U.S. offshore wind division and president of the companys North American operations, said Eversources expansive knowledge of the energy market throughout the region will guarantee that the Northeast will be the North American hub for off-shore wind power.
Lee Olivier, Eversources executive vice president for enterprise energy strategy and business development, said off-shore wind will play a very important role in New Englands energy mix because states in the region have set aggressive carbon reduction and renewable energy goals.
This transaction solidifies our partnership as the strongest developer of offshore wind in the Northeast and is consistent with Eversources efforts to be a key catalyst for clean energy development in our region, Olivier said in a statement.
Though the transaction involves an unregulated part of Eversource, the sale of the electricity produced from the projects covered by the joint venture would be done through a carefully scrutinized, regulated auction process, said Caroline Pretyman, an Eversource spokeswoman.
We believe that there are economies of scale the two companies can achieve that will ultimately save money for utility customers, Pretyman said. We think there is a big need for wind power out there.
The Revolution Wind project is located approximately 15 miles south of the Rhode Island coast and will deliver 400 megawatts / of power power to that state and another 300 megawatts to Connecticut. The project is expected to generate enough energy to power more than 400,000 homes and should go into operation in 2023.
The South Fork Wind Farm is located 35 miles east of Long Island and will deliver about 130 megwatts of power to the Long Island Power Authority. The project will generate enough energy to power more than 70,000 homes.
The South Fork project is expected to be ready to begin operating by the end of 2022.
luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
The 2019 Missile Defense Review (MDR) has been expanded to offensive missile threats includes non-ballistic systems. The US will defend against advanced cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons.
There is a 24-page 2019 Missile Defense Review Summary.
There will be a comprehensive approach to prevent and defeat adversary missile attacks through a combination of deterrence; active and passive missile defense; and attack operations.
The US missile defense strategy will include:
Comprehensive missile defense capabilities, including attack operations to defeat missile threats prior to launch, should deterrence fail and conflict ensue;
Flexible and adaptable missile defense systems;
Enhanced ballistic and cruise missile defense integration and interoperability;
Leveraging the space domain for missile defense sensors; and
Emphasizing capabilities that can be surged in a crisis or conflict.
In 2018, CSIS had a detailed review the procurement and deployment plans for missile defenses. At the time it appeared that new radar and missile facilities would get deployed by around 2023. It appears the new 2019 Missile Defense Review will result in some increased funding and additional deployment of new defenses.
20 More Ground-Based Interceptors, new GBI missile, and Some Future Space-Based Weapon(s)
Today, the United States is protected by the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system against the threat of an ICBM attack from rogue states such as North Korea and potentially Iran. The US is taking steps to improve the performance and effectiveness of the current GMD.
Expanding the GMD system with 20 additional Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs) in Alaska, bringing the total to 64;
Developing a new kill vehicle for the GBI;
Deploying new missile tracking and discrimination sensors in Alaska, Hawaii, and the Pacific region; and
Fielding a Space-based Kill Assessment capability.
Congress provided funding in FY17 and FY18 to procure additional Patriot, THAAD, and SM3 interceptors. These are for increasing regional missile defenses.
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) will test the SM-3 Blk IIA against an ICBM-class target in 2020.
The Multi-Object Kill Vehicle (MOKV) is a next-generation kinetic kill vehicle for the GBI designed to improve the ability to engage ICBM warheads, decoys, and countermeasures using a single defensive interceptor. While the number of GBIs is limited, MOKV could improve the performance of the GMD system by increasing the probability of successfully intercepting the warhead.
In the future, additional missile defense capabilities, such as the [missiles mounted on the] F-35 and boost-phase defenses could also contribute to U.S. mobile capabilities to be surged as necessary in crisis or conflict.
The United States may decide to increase further the capacity of the GMD force beyond the currently planned force size of 64 GBIs. The missile base in Ft. Greely, Alaska, has the potential for up to an additional 40 interceptors. In addition, building a new GBI interceptor site in the continental United States would add interceptor capability against the potential expansion of missile threats to the homeland, including a future Iranian ICBM capability.
Anti-missile Lasers in the Future and Funded Low-Power Laser Demonstrator
Developing scalable, efficient, and compact high energy laser technology holds the potential to provide a future cost-effective capability to destroy boosting missiles in the early part of the trajectory. Doing so would leverage earlier technological advances, including for example advances in beam propagation and beam control. DoD is developing a Low-Power Laser Demonstrator to evaluate the technologies necessary for mounting a laser on an unmanned airborne platform to track and destroy missiles in their boost-phase.
Best Defense is a Good Offense
DoD will invest in the capabilities necessary for attack operations, such as improved attack warning intelligence, ISR, time-sensitive targeting, as well as the long-range precision and air-, land-, and sea-strike capabilities necessary for destroying mobile missiles prior to their launch.
SOURCES- 2019 Missile Defense Review, CSIS
Written By Brian Wang
IBM will invest $2 billion to develop artificial intelligence hardware and boost AI performance by 1000 times over the next ten years. IBM is partnering with State University of New York to develop an AI Hardware Center at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany. New York will also provide a subsidy of $300 million.
The IBM Research AI Hardware Center will enable IBM and their partner ecosystem to achieve 1,000x AI performance efficiency improvement over the next decade. They will overcome current machine-learning limitations by using approximate computing with Digital AI Cores and in-memory computing with Analog AI Cores.
Approximate Computing with Digital AI Cores
The best hardware platforms for training deep neural networks (DNNs) has just moved from traditional single precision (32-bit) computations towards 16-bit precision. This is more energy efficient and uses less memory. IBM researchers have successfully trained DNNs using 8-bit floating point numbers (FP8) while fully maintaining the accuracy of deep learning models and datasets.
Approximate computing trades numerical precision for computational throughput enhancements but requires the development of algorithmic improvements to preserve model accuracy. This approach also complements other approximate computing techniques and can lead to 40-200x speedup over existing compression methods.
IBM Research AI Hardware Center is developing a roadmap for 1,000x improvement in AI compute performance efficiency over the next decade, with a pipeline of Digital AI Cores and Analog AI Cores.
Our analog AI cores are part of an in-memory computing approach in performance efficiency which improves by suppressing the so-called Von Neuman bottleneck by eliminating data transfer to and from memory. Deep neural networks are mapped to analog cross point arrays and new non-volatile material characteristics are toggled to store network parameters in the cross points.
In-memory Computing with Analog AI Cores
Initial IBM estimates for the potential of such NVM-based (analog non-volatile memories) chips for training fully-connected layers exceed the specifications of todays GPUs by two orders of magnitude. They have calculated the expected computational energy efficiency (28,065 GOP/sec/W) and throughput-per-area (3.6 TOP/sec/mm2).
IBM has combined long-term storage in phase-change memory (PCM) devices, near-linear update of conventional Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) capacitors and novel techniques for cancelling out device-to-device variability.
Nature Equivalent-accuracy accelerated neural-network training using analogue memory
Google Tensor Chips and Pods
Googles third generation Tensor (TPU) chips produce about 90 trillion operations per second and use about 200 watts. This is about 450 GOP/sec/W.
Written Christina Wong of Nextbigfuture.com
Washington :
US officials will be in Beijing February 14-15 for the third round of talks aimed at heading off an escalation of the ongoing trade war with China, the White House announced Friday.
Negotiators are working towards an agreement before the 90-day tariff truce expires March 1, after which the US is set to more than double punitive duties on $200 billion in Chinese goods.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will lead the delegation, which also includes David Malpass, who President Donald Trump has nominated to be president of the World Bank, according to the statement.
However, strident White House China critic Peter Navarro was not listed as part of the US team.
While officials seemed optimistic after talks last week in Washington, more recent comments have jarred financial markets, amplifying concerns about how the dispute will impact global growth.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he did not expect to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping before a March 1 deadline for the two economic superpowers to reach a deal.
Trump had said final resolution of the trade dispute would depend on the meeting with Xi "in the near future," but told reporters it had not yet been arranged.
And top White House economist Larry Kudlow said Thursday that while Trump was "optimistic" about prospects for a deal, there remained a "sizeable distance" separating the two sides.
Washington is demanding far-reaching changes from China to address unfair practices it says are deeply unfair, including theft of American intellectual property and the massive Chinese trade surplus.
The White House said there will be a preparatory meeting of senior officials beginning February 11, and the talks will include officials from the Agriculture, Energy and Commerce Departments.
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Washington:
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for a second much-anticipated summit in Hanoi, as preparations kick into high gear for the peace talks. Trump announced the exact location on Twitter -- only the country, Vietnam, was previously known -- for the follow-on to the leaders' summit in Singapore last year as he hailed "very productive" preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries. "My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un," Trump said.
"It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" The US State Department said the special US envoy for North Korea will meet again with Pyongyang officials ahead of the Trump-Kim talks -- hours after he returned to Seoul from talks in the North on the summit's agenda.
In a statement, the State Department said talks during Stephen Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula." Biegun landed at Osan US Air Base late Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Noh Kyu-duk told AFP.
The State Department confirmed Biegun agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the leaders' talks.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with the top brass of the Korean People's Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernize the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
Biegun is expected to share details of his Pyongyang meetings with his South Korean counterpart Lee Do-hoon and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on Saturday.
Attention will focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward denuclearization.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war." The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South.
The US envoy was also likely to have discussed with his counterpart protocol and security matters for the upcoming Trump-Kim summit.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula." But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV."
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Pune:
The Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM), a centre of the Indian Air Force, is in talks with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to provide medical support to crew members of Gaganyaan, Indias maiden manned space mission. ISRO plans to send a three-member crew to space for seven days by 2022 under the Gaganyaan programme.
ISRO has contacted us to collaborate with IAM which conducts research in aerospace medicine and trains airmen and pilots, said Bipin Puri, Director General, Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS).
Bengaluru-based IAM is affiliated to the AFMS. Since the infrastructure such as simulators at IAM is one of the best in the country, ISRO wants to join hands with IAM to train the crew members of Gaganyaan mission, he said.
Puri was talking to reporters on the sidelines of 67th Annual Armed Forces Medical Conference here. Air Marshal Rajvir Singh, Director General, Medical Services (AIR) said the challenge of providing life support in space is very complex.
Also Read | Hubble discovers mysterious dark storm on Neptune: NASA
The complexities of life support in space are enormous....and IAM is the only centre in the country to contribute in this direction. We are currently in discussion with ISRO to provide full spectrum of medical support to the crew members of the space mission, he said.
IAM, which conducts MD programs in aerospace medicine, is the only institute in India and South East Asia which conducts research in aerospace medicine, he said.
We also conduct programs for pilots and airmen to improve their effectiveness in the cockpit, he added. As per the IAM website, the institute, earlier called Institute of Aviation Medicine, had provided medical support to the Indo-Soviet Manned Space Flight programme in 1980s.
Puri, meanwhile, also informed that the AFMS is going to start a three-year MD program in marine medicine for doctors deployed on ships and submarines.
The reason is that Indian Navy is spreading its footprints by going everywhere, and since maritime rules are different, the challenges faced by the members related to health on ships and submarines are also different, he said.
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Paris:
Billions of tonnes of meltwater flowing into the world's oceans from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could boost extreme weather and destabilise regional climate within a matter of decades, researchers said Wednesday. These melting giants, especially the one atop Greenland, are poised to further weaken the ocean currents that move cold water south along the Atlantic Ocean floor while pushing tropical waters northward closer to the surface, they reported in the journal Nature.
Known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), this liquid conveyor belt plays a crucial role in Earth's climate system and helps ensures the relative warmth of the Northern Hemisphere.
"According to our models, this meltwater will cause significant disruptions to ocean currents and change levels of warming around the world," said lead author Nicholas Golledge, an associate professor at the Antarctic Research Centre of New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington.
The Antarctic ice sheet's loss of mass, meanwhile, traps warmer water below the surface, eroding glaciers from underneath in a vicious circle of accelerated melting that contributes to sea level rise. Most studies on ice sheets have focused on how quickly they might shrink due to global warming, and how much global temperatures can rise before their disintegration -- whether over centuries or millenia -- becomes inevitable, a threshold known as a "tipping point".
But far less research has been done on how the meltwater might affect the climate system itself. "The large-scale changes we see in our simulations are conducive to a more chaotic climate with more extreme weather events and more intense and frequent heatwaves," co-author Natalya Gomez, a researcher in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at McGill University in Canada, told AFP.
"By mid-century," the researchers concluded, "meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet noticeably disrupts the AMOC," which has already shown signs of slowing down. This is a "much shorter timescale than expected," commented Helene Seroussi, a researcher in the Sea Level and Ice Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, who was not involved in the study.
The findings were based on highly detailed simulations combined with satellite observations of changes to the ice sheets since 2010. One likely result of weakened current in the Atlantic will be warmer air temperatures in the high Arctic, eastern Canada and central America, and cooler temperatures over northwestern Europe.
The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, up to three kilometres (1.8 miles) thick, contain more than two-thirds of the planet's fresh water, enough to raise global oceans 58 and seven metres (190 and 22 feet), respectively, were they to melt completely.
Besides Greenland, the regions most vulnerable to global warming are West Antarctica and several huge glaciers in East Antarctica, which is far larger and more stable. In a second study published in Nature, some of the same scientists offered new projections of how much Antarctica will contribute to sea level rise by 2100 -- a hotly debated topic.
A controversial 2016 study suggested the continent's ice cliffs -- exposed by the disintegration of ice shelves that jut out from glaciers over ocean water -- were highly vulnerable to collapse, and could lead to sea level rise of a metre by century's end.
That would be enough to displace up to 187 million people around the world, especially in populous low-lying river deltas in Asia and Africa, research has shown. But the new study challenges those findings.
"Unstable ice-cliffs were proposed as a cause of unstoppable collapse of large parts of the ice sheet," said lead author Tamsin Edwards, a lecturer in geography at King's College London. "But we've re-analysed the data and found this isn't the case." Both of the news studies, Edwards told AFP, "predict a most likely Antarctic contribution of 15 centimetres" by 2100, with an upward limit of about 40 cm.
A special report on oceans by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due out in September, will offer a much anticipated estimate of sea level rise. The IPCC's last major assessment in 2013 did not take ice sheets -- today seen as the major contributor, ahead of thermal expansion and glaciers -- into account for lack of data.
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Posted Friday, February 8, 2019 6:52 pm
I dont think anything Ive read since the passage of the gun control initiative I-1639 has been much of a surprise. A good many people think it is unconstitutional and many agencies arent going to enforce it. Some of the responses were measured like waiting until that is decided by the courts and others arent going to at all, relying on the plain protections in the state and U.S. Constitution.
I also wasnt surprised to see additional gun legislation being proposed in this legislature, which will go even further. Perhaps the most alarming is allowing jurisdictions to make up their own rules, instead of one for the whole state, which will only serve to trap law-abiding folks who wont know what those rules are. Ive said this before, trapping those of us who are not criminals, making us criminals, and then taking our guns is a brilliant strategy.
But I expect theyll pass some new and more restrictive laws and the criminals will submit immediately to them because thats what criminals do, right?
A couple of things struck me this past week as the number of resisting agencies grows. First, I was always under the impression, because of the kind of government we are, a popular vote could not take away a constitutional right? There seems to be plenty of evidence to support this because our state Supreme Court overturns popular votes on occasion and uses the violates the constitutional rights excuse doing so.
In some cases, the perceived constitutional right isnt clearly spelled out but finds its way into the constitution because judges say so.
In the case of guns, there is specific language granting us the right to keep and bear arms and not infringed on yet this argument seems to come up endlessly.
The First Amendment is often used to subject us to all manner of newly found rights not mentioned in the constitution like serving coffee half naked in a coffee stand in Everett. Apparently that expression is arguably protected by that amendment while first amendment protections for firmly held religious beliefs, also clearly spelled out, arent.
The point is, the plain language in both the state and U.S. Constitution doesnt really matter anymore to those who dont care what it says. Judges have been corrupting its meaning for years and I have little confidence in our state Supreme Courts ability to read the plainly written constitutional protections, and overturn I-1639.
So then what? I suspect well see more initiatives making gun ownership even more difficult and doing nothing to actually reduce the crime they claim to.
The other question is the notion that law enforcement or local government for that matter-would be bound to do anything at all? In one story, an academic commented and seemed to suggest they are but he didnt address other areas where they dont enforce laws or why this might be different.
How many jurisdictions in this country have declared themselves a sanctuary for illegal aliens? Even criminal aliens like the man who killed Kate Steinly in San Francisco. These jurisdictions and in many cases their law enforcement executives have defied federal law and went so far as to deliberately undermine federal law enforcement in the process. And legal citizens have been harmed in the process.
Apparently, ignoring some laws, like illegal immigration, (and marijuana before it was legal) are OK if they are politically acceptable to their officials, like say in Seattle. They are a sanctuary city and are ignoring laws they dont like, but Ill bet theyll be jumping at the opportunity to restrict law abiding gun owners rights.
As reported in The Chronicle recently during a county meeting over becoming a sanctuary for gun rights, the county attorney gave an argument that suggests the county has no choice but to follow the law. While I suspect thats generally true, I also have to wonder how Seattle and places like them, get away with ignoring the laws? I presume they have attorneys too?
I-1639 has created a conundrum for law enforcement and sheriffs in particular who are sworn to uphold the constitution and enforce the laws of the state. Actually violating someones constitutional right carries very serious punishments including prison.
Not enforcing an unfunded law, which on its face seems at odds with Section 1 Article 24 of our states declaration of rights?
Not so much.
John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis, and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@yahoo.com.
New Delhi:
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and top officials of the social media giant has reportedly declined to appear before the Parliamentary Committee on IT. The House panel had summoned Dorsey and his senior colleagues to explain the allegations of bias against it. The Twitter officials were supposed to present their case on February 11. The committee had also summoned Twitter India officials on the issue of safeguarding citizens' rights on social media, panel head Anurag Thakur said. On February 3, members of Youth for Social Media Democracy had protested outside the office of Twitter India. The protesters alleged that Twitter has acquired an anti-right-wing attitude. "They block our accounts and impressions of the tweets. We won't tolerate this." The protesters had insisted Twitter to change its policy.
Earlier on Friday, Twitter India had issued a statement regarding the allegations of bias.
There has been a lot of discussion about Twitter and political partisanship in India in recent weeks and we'd like to take this opportunity to set the record straight. In 2017, we asked our most passionate users what they love most about Twitter and what they shared was powerful. They said that Twitter lets them see whats happening from every point of view, all perspectives, every side. This ability to see every side of a topic makes Twitter unlike any other service in the world -- and its something we work hard to cultivate and protect, the statement said.
Twitter is a platform where voices from across the spectrum can be seen and heard. We are committed to the principles of openness, transparency, and impartiality. Our product and policies are never developed nor evolved on the basis of political ideology. It added.
Prior to this, WhatsApp, which has over 200 million monthly active users in India, said that some of the proposed government regulations for social media companies are threatening the very existence of WhatsApp in its current form.
With 2019 Lok Sabha Elections just months away, the government had warned social media platforms of strong action if any attempt was made to influence the country's electoral process through undesirable means.
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highlights Rajeev Kumar reached Meghalayas capital Shillong on Friday.
Rajeev Kumar is accompanied by three IPS officers of the Kolkata Police.
CBI wants to question him as he was heading the SIT to probe Saradha scam.
New Delhi:
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is questioning Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in Shillong today. Kumar - who reached Meghalayas capital Shillong yesterday evening from Kolkata via Guwahati by road is being questioned in connection with Saradha chit fund scam. He was accompanied by three West Bengal cadre IPS officers and his younger brother.
"Kumar will be questioned in CBI office, Shillong branch by a team of interrogators in connection with the chit fund case on Saturday," a senior official had said on condition of anonymity.
Kumar is staying in a private guest house and is not allowed to meet anyone. He has been provided adequate security by the Meghalaya Police during his stay in Shillong.
The CBI wants to question Kumar, a 1989-batch IPS officer, as he was heading the SIT formed by West Bengal government to probe Saradha and other ponzi scheme cases.
Earlier, the CBI had failed to quiz Kumar after its officials were allegedly roughed up and detained for some time when they went to question him at his residence in Kolkata on Sunday in connection with its probe into the Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund cases.
The incident had triggered an unprecedented tussle between the West Bengal government and the Centre following which the top investigating agency had moved to the Supreme Court. A day later, the Supreme Court directed Kumar to appear before the CBI and "faithfully" cooperate into the investigation but made it clear that he should not be arrested.
The court said "to avoid all unnecessary controversy", it was directing Kumar to appear before the agency at a neutral place in Shillong, Meghalaya.
The agency has also called former Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Kunal Ghosh to Shillong on February 10. The CBI is relying on a 91-page letter from Ghosh, who was expelled by TMC, to the Enforcement Directorate, detailing the role of Kumar in handling the ponzi scam probe after the main accused Sudipta Sen and Debjani Mukherjee, both promoters of Saradha group of companies, had fled to Kashmir, officials said in Kolkata.
Sen and Mukherjee were arrested in 2013 from Kashmir.
"State police were first to enter the premises of Saradha Group post-collapse and there are allegations that important documents which could have provided important leads were removed to cause the disappearance of evidence," a senior CBI official had said on the condition of anonymity.
The agency may confront Ghosh and Kumar to cross-check their claims, CBI sources said.
"I got a telephone from the CBI asking me to be in Shillong on Sunday. I will be there and cooperate in every possible manner," Ghosh told PTI.
With Agency Inputs
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New Delhi:
Robert Vadra, who has been grilled for two consecutive days, will be back at the Enforcement Directorate office again for questioning in the money laundering case. The central probe agency had questioned him for over 8 hours on Thursday and for almost six hours on Wednesday in connection with alleged criminal charges of dubious financial dealings. The son-in-law of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi has been refusing any links with arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari and his relative Sumit Chadha, the ED officials think otherwise. According to the probe agency, a mail reveals the extent of dealings between all three in the money laundering case.
20:34 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Robert Vadras questioning over, leaves ED office after 8 hours of grilling.
Robert Vadra was questioned for around 24 hours in the last three days by Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case. https://t.co/Bxc2k2sec9
ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019
14:27 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In News Nation Exclusive: ED questions Robert Vadra over his links with arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. Bhandari had revealed to Income Tax dept that he had booked Vadra's ticket from France's Nice to New Delhi in August 2012.
12:22 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Vadra is being quizzed on number of properties in the country.
12:20 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Vadra has been asked to provide income tax returns from 2001 to 2014.
12:20 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In ED demands records of income tax returns from Vadra to ascertain money trail
10:53 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In News Nation has learnt that Robert Vadra has reached the ED office. the officials will soon start questioning him in the case.
10:19 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In In the mail with Brynston Sq written in subject line, Chadha rues over delay in payment. Hi Robert, Hope all is well. Any update on when some funds will be sent, have not heard back from anyone and & would appreciate if you can let me know so I can plan my cash flows (sic).
10:19 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In News Nation has the very mail on which the ED is basing its probe. The mail is written by Chadha complaining about not receiving any funds for the London house renovation.
10:18 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In On Friday, Vadras brother-in-law Rahul Gandhi attacked PM Modi and said that the government can probe the allegations but it must also come clean on the Rafale deal.
10:17 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In This will be third time in a week that Vadra will be at the ED office.
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New Delhi:
For the third consecutive day, Robert Vadra, Congress president Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law, was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for hours in connection with a probe into allegations of money laundering to purchase assets abroad as he appeared before the agency. Vadra was grilled for about eight hours by ED officials on Saturday. Even on Friday, he was interrogated for about nine hours. On Thursday, the questioning continued for more than five hours.
On Saturday, Vadra arrived at the central probe agency's office at Jamnagar House in central Delhi at about 10:45 AM in his private vehicle and left around 8:15 PM. He was given an hour-long break for lunch. It was not immediately clear if he has been asked to depose again. After two sessions of questioning on February 6 and 7, officials said the investigating officer (IO) of the case wanted to put across more questions to Vadra in connection with the case and hence he was asked to depose again on Saturday. Sources said Vadra was questioned on various aspects of his personal and business finances during the latest session.
It is understood that the last time Vadra was "confronted with" documents that the agency has obtained or seized as part of its probe in the case, including those linked to absconding defence dealer Sanjay Bhandari.
Vadra has also shared documents with the investigating officer of the case and has assured some more will be provided as and when he gets them, official sources had said. The ED case against Vadra relates to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property located at 12, Bryanston Square worth 1.9 million GBP (British pounds), which is allegedly owned by him.
The agency has told a Delhi court that it has received information about various new properties in London which belong to Vadra. These include two houses, one worth 5 million GBP and the other valued at 4 million GBP, six other flats and more properties. Vadra has denied the allegations of possessing illegal foreign assets and termed them a political witch hunt against him. He said he was being "hounded and harassed" to subserve political ends.
Sources said Vadra's statement was recorded under Section 50 (powers of authorities regarding summons, production of documents and to give evidence) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), as was done on the last two occasions.
News Nation has the list of questions that ED officials asked during the questioning. The main questions that were asked are:
1: How many properties you own in India?
2: Where are these properties located?
3: Around what time did you purchase these properties?
4: In which Indian and foreign companies have you invested?
5: From whom did you buy the properties?
Apart from these, the morning grilling also focussed on a piece of information in which Sanjay Bhandari had allegedly booked ticket for Vadra. According to the document seen by News Nation, the Enforcement Directorate questioned Vadra over his links with Bhandari. It is learnt that Bhandari had earlier revealed to Income Tax department that he had booked Vadra's ticket from France's Nice to New Delhi in August 2012.
The ED has also asked Vadra to furnish income tax returns from 2001 to 2014. News Nation also has the mail on which the ED is basing its probe. The mail is written by Chadha complaining about not receiving any funds for the London house renovation. In the mail with Brynston Sq written in subject line, Chadha rues over the delay in payment. Hi Robert, Hope all is well. Any update on when some funds will be sent, have not heard back from anyone and & would appreciate if you can let me know so I can plan my cash flows (sic).
Chadha goes on to say that he was doing the job as a favour. As you are aware that I am not doing this project for any commercial gain only to complete a task taken on a favour & my ability to complete without unnecessary stress will be greatly assisted if I can be given some clear assurances & timelines on when I will be reimbursed, Chadha wrote.
Contrary to what Vadra has been claiming the mail shows that Chadha renovated the London property on his order. I have commenced completion of all the remaining structural works at the property in relation to the floors, bathrooms & heating systems. All materials have been procured & installation has begun of the wooden floors, hope to have full team on site to install bathrooms from middle of next week as good news is that I have been able to arrange express delivery of the majority of core bathroom fittings, Chadha wrote.
To this, Vadra has replied from his Yahoo account. Was not aware that nothing had reached you. Will look into it in the morning and let Manoj sort it out. Will be in London soon. You take care, Vadra wrote.
Here are some of the questions ED officials asked Robert Vadra on February 6:
1. Is London's 12 Brighton Squire property yours?
2. Whats your connection with the London property, why mails were sent to you regarding its renovation?
3. Is it right that the floor plan of this property was sent to you? In 2010, when these mails were coming to you, this property was with the arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. Then why did the emails come to you? Is this property linked to you?
4. A fund was also sought to build a property from you, and in response, you also responded to Sumit Chadda who had sent the mail. You had assured him for the fund, why were you arranging for the fund?
5. Why was the copy of every email sent to you was given to Sanjay Bhandari?
6. How do you know Sanjay Bhandari and Sumit Chadda?
7. Do you know the Indian national CC Thampi, who lives in Dubai, and who bought this property from Sanjay Bhandari?
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New Delhi:
Robert Vadra, who was grilled for two consecutive days, is back at the Enforcement Directorate office again for questioning in the money laundering case. The central probe agency had questioned him for over 8 hours on Thursday and for almost six hours on Wednesday in connection with alleged criminal charges of dubious financial dealings. The son-in-law of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi has been refusing any links with arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari and his relative Sumit Chadha, the ED officials think otherwise. According to the probe agency, a mail reveals the extent of dealings between all three in the money laundering case.
On Saturday, the ED officials grilled him for over four hours beginning at around 11 am. News Nation has the list of questions that ED officials asked during the questioning. The main questions that were asked are:
1: How many properties you own in India?
2: Where are these properties located?
3: Around what time did you purchase these properties?
4: In which Indian and foreign companies have you invested?
5: From whom did you buy the properties?
Apart from these, the morning grilling also focussed on a piece of information in which Sanjay Bhandari had allegedly booked ticket for Vadra. According to the document seen by News Nation, the Enforcement Directorate questioned Vadra over his links with arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. It is learnt that Bhandari had earlier revealed to Income Tax department that he had booked Vadra's ticket from France's Nice to New Delhi in August 2012.
The ED has also asked Vadra to furnish income tax returnes from 2001 to 2014. News Nation also has the mail on which the ED is basing its probe. The mail is written by Chadha complaining about not receiving any funds for the London house renovation. In the mail with Brynston Sq written in subject line, Chadha rues over delay in payment. Hi Robert, Hope all is well. Any update on when some funds will be sent, have not heard back from anyone and & would appreciate if you can let me know so I can plan my cash flows (sic).
#NewsNationExclusive: ED questions #RobertVadra over his links with arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. Bhandari had earlier revealed to Income Tax dept that he had booked Vadra's ticket from France's Nice to New Delhi in August 2012.
Follow LIVE updates: https://t.co/0DzhkcxQOS pic.twitter.com/RilqobKun6 News Nation (@NewsNationTV) February 9, 2019
Chadha goes on to say that he was doing the job as a favour. As you are aware I am not doing this project for any commercial gain only to complete a task taken on a favour & my ability to complete without unnecessary stress will be greatly assisted if I can be given some clear assurances & timelines on when I will be reimbursed, Chadha wrote.
Contrary to what Vadra has been claiming the mail shows that Chadha renovated the London property on his order. I have commenced completion of all the remaining structural works at the property in relation to the floors, bathrooms & heating systems. All materials have been procured & installation has begun of the wooden floors, hope to have full team on site to install bathrooms from middle of next week as good news is that I have been able to arrange express delivery of the majority of core bathroom fittings, Chadha wrote.
To this, Vadra has replied from his Yahoo account. Was not aware that nothing had reached you. Will look into it in the morning and let Manoj sort it out. Will be in London soon. You take care, Vadra wrote.
Here are some of the questions ED officials asked Robert Vadra on February 6:
1. Is London's 12 Brighton Squire property yours?
2. Whats your connection with the London property, why mails were sent to you regarding its renovation?
3. Is it right that the floor plan of this property was sent to you? In 2010, when these mails were coming to you, this property was with the arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. Then why did the email come to you? Is this property linked to you?
4. A fund was also sought to build a property from you, and in response, you also responded to Sumit Chadda who had sent the mail. You had assured him for the fund, why were you arranging for the fund?
5. Why was the copy of every email sent to you was given to Sanjay Bhandari?
6. How do you know Sanjay Bhandari and Sumit Chadda?
7. Do you know the Indian national CC Thampi, who lives in Dubai, and who bought this property from Sanjay Bhandari?
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highlights Kumar's counsel and the two IPS officers were asked to leave the CBI office within 30 minutes, they said.
Kumar is being interrogated at the highly secured CBI office at Oakland area in the Meghalaya capital where three senior CBI sleuths from Delhi reached on Friday.
The CBI had alleged in the Supreme Court that Kumar, who was leading the SIT probe into Saradha chit fund scam, tampered with the electronic evidence and handed over documents to the agency, some of which were "doctored".
New Delhi:
Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar will be questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at the CBI office in Shillong on Sunday as well in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam, according to news agency ANI. Suspended Trinamool Congress leader Kunal Ghosh could also be questioned along with Kumar in front of the CBI team on Sunday. Interestingly, during the interrogation, Rajeev Kumars lawyer told the CBI that the top cop cant be in the Meghalaya capital for too long since Saraswati Puja falls on Saturday and Sunday in West Bengal followed by Valentine's Day in a few days, hence Kumar has to look after the law and order situation in the state during that period, according to sources. The CBI, however, seems to have rejected the request.
"I have been asked by the CBI to attend the Shillong Office on February 10 at 10 am. So, I am here. I shall attend the CBI office tomorrow as directed by them," Ghosh, who is in Shillong, told news agency ANI.
Former TMC MP Kunal Ghosh in Shillong: I have been asked by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to attend the Shillong Office on 10th (Feb) at 10 am. So, I am here. I shall attend the CBI office tomorrow as directed by them. #Meghalaya pic.twitter.com/ZevBu5Y5ec ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019
Earlier on Saturday, the CBI began questioning the Kolkata Police chief at highly secured agency's office in Shillong, Kumar, his counsel Biswajit Deb and senior IPS officers Javed Shamim and Murlidhar Sharma arrived at the probe agency's office at 11 am.
Kumar's counsel and the two IPS officers were asked to leave the CBI office within 30 minutes, they said. Kumar is being interrogated at the highly secured CBI office at Oakland area in the Meghalaya capital where three senior CBI sleuths from Delhi reached on Friday.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday had directed the Kolkata Police chief to appear before the CBI and "faithfully" cooperate in the investigation of cases arising out of the Saradha chit fund scam while making it clear that he will not be arrested.
The CBI had alleged in the Supreme Court that Kumar, who was leading the SIT probe into Saradha chit fund scam, tampered with the electronic evidence and handed over documents to the agency, some of which were "doctored".
The apex court directed him to appear before the investigating agency at a neutral place in Shillong "to avoid all unnecessary controversy". CBI officials had gone to Kumar's residence in Kolkata to question him on February 3 but their attempt was thwarted by the police, following which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee staged a three-day dharna.
(With PTI inputs)
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New Delhi:
The death count in hooch tragedy rose to over 50 in the districts of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. According to media reports, 34 people died in two adjoining district. 16 people died in Uttarakhands Balupur and 18 deaths are reported in Uttar Pradeshs Saharanpur district.
However, the exact figure of the death count is unclear as many victims are yet reportedly in serious conditions and undergoing treatment. About four persons are said to be in a serious condition and several others are admitted to the hospital.
Saharanpur District Magistrate Alok Pandey on deaths after consuming illicit liquor: The death toll has risen to 18 so far. 42 people are still under treatment at the hospital. (08.02.2019) pic.twitter.com/GjubCavarb ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) February 9, 2019
Ashok Kumar, director general (DG) law and order told TOI, People from three to four villages on the border of Haridwar and Saharanpur gathered on Thursday for a terahvi (ceremony conducted to mark the final day of mourning after a death). It seems they had country-made liquor after the ceremony, which led to their death.
The police are yet to ascertain the exact cause of the deaths and awaiting post-mortem examination reports. It is said that the men were returning to their respective villages in Haridwar and Saharanpur after the function. The administration has announced Rs 2 lakh relief for the kin of the victims. An inquiry has also been ordered.
Several cases have been also been reported from Roorkee. The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has also sought a report on the matter from the district administration.
Meanwhile, in a Facebook post Congress president Rahul Gandhi has expressed his condolence over the deaths in the incidents.
The authorities have suspended the excise inspector, two head constables and two constables of the department. Besides, SP Kushinagar has sent four cops including SHO Tarya Sujan police station to the police line. Ramvriksha, 32, Bedupar village under Tarya Sujan police station died on Wednesday around 12.30 in the night and Ramnath, 45, of the same village died Thursday morning.
On Tuesday night Chanchal Chauhan, 45, died after consuming the intoxicant, while Deba Nishad (55), Heera Lal Nishad (33) and Awadh Kishore Nishad had died immediately after consuming the drink on Monday.
"In the post-mortem report, the cause behind the death of two people was not clear so the viscera sample has been sent to Varanasi for a chemical test to ascertain the cause of death. The post-mortem report of other bodies is awaited. SHO Tarya Sujan, Vinay Pathak along with inspector and two constables of the area have been called at police lines, SP Kushinagar Rajiv Narayan Mishra said.
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New Delhi:
Gurjar leader Colonel Kirori Singh Bainsla and his supporters have blocked railway tracks in Maksudanpura of Sawai Madhopur in protest as part of reservation movement. The protesters are demanding five per cent reservation to Gurjars, Raika-Rebari, Gadia Luhar, Banjara and Gadaria communities in government jobs and educational institutions. Before starting their agitation, members of the Gujjar Sangharsh Samiti (GSS) had called a Mahapanchayat on Friday.
"We want five per cent reservation for our community, the way the Centre has given 10 per cent to the economically backward classes. The government did not respond to our demand, neither did anyone come to talk to us, so we were forced to take this step," Kirori Singh Bainsla had said.
Here are the latest updated regarding the quota stir:
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot appealed to the Gurjar Community that they should not sit on rail tracks, adding that their demands can only be met after amendments in the Constitution, so they should submit a memo to the PM.
Women have joined the quota stir as a crucial meeting is underway to chalk out a strategy to intensify the protest. The meeting is being held under the leadership of Manphool Singh in Sikandra.
Five trains were cancelled and around a dozen have been diverted in Kota division of West Central Railway zone due to the ongoing reservation movement by the Gujjar community in Rajasthan.
Additional police forces have been deployed in Bharatpur police range - under which Sawai Madhopur falls - to tackle any law-and-order situation. According to Bhupendra Sahu, inspector general of Bharatpur Range, 17 RAC (Rajasthan Armed Constabulary) companies, including a special task force, have been deployed in the range.
Members of Gujjar community sitting on railway track in Maksudanpura of Sawai Madhopur in protest as part of reservation movement say "We have good CM&a good PM. We want that they listen to the demands of Gujjar community. It isn't an uphill task for them to provide reservation." pic.twitter.com/lM4TDF7WRh ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019 Congress sources said a committee, comprising Health Minister Raghu Sharma, Tourism Minister Vishvendra Singh, Social Justice Minister Master Bhanwar Lal and senior government officials, had been constituted to hold talks with the agitators. Kirori Singh Bainsla had last month gave a 20-day ultimatum to the state government to clear its stand on over the reservation demand, failing which he threatened of reviving the quota agitation.
Five trains cancelled and one diverted in Kota division of West Central Railway zone due to the ongoing reservation movement by the Gujjar community in Rajasthan. pic.twitter.com/jCf1y9g8LD ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019 " People cannot be fooled all the time. It is a fight to do or die. The state government should stand on its promise. It will be a peaceful protest. I will lead the protest and the youths will support," Bainsla said. Currently, the five communities are getting one-per cent separate reservation under the most-backward category in addition to the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota.
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New Delhi:
Satyajit Biswas, Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA from Krishnaganj area of Nadia district in West Bengal, was shot dead by unidentified men when he was attending a cultural programme on Saturday. He was rushed to the nearby Shaktinagar district hospital, where he was declared dead, the police said. Reacting to the murder, the Trinamool Congress, blamed the BJP, which is trying to gain a foothold in the state, tweeted: "Satyajit Biswas our MLA was a dear colleague. Words fail me. Recently BJP leaders tried to stoke tension in the area. This was an orchestrated plan to eliminate him, designed to try and benefit BJP. People will give a befitting reply to perpetrators of this dastardly act.
Satyajit Biswas our MLA was a dear colleague. Words fail me. Recently BJP leaders tried to stoke tension in the area. This was an orchestrated plan to eliminate him, designed to try and benefit BJP. People will give a befitting reply to perpetrators of this dastardly act 1/2 All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) February 9, 2019
It added: "Those who have killed him will not be spared. Those responsible for his death will be brought to book. BJP is responsible for this shocking death. There are some traitors who have killed him: Partha Chatterjee."
Those who have killed him will not be spared. Those responsible for his death will be brought to book. BJP is responsible for this shocking death. There are some traitors who have killed him: Partha Chatterjee 2/2 All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) February 9, 2019
TMC's Birbhum district president Anubrata Mandal also alleged that the BJP is behind the killing. However, the BJP rubbished the allegation, saying Biswas was killed because of TMC's internal tussle. Biswas was a two-term member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly.
Bengal TMC leader Partha Chattopadhya said it's BJP who killed the young leader, adding that the culprits will be punished.
Watch Video | Satyajit Biswas inaugurates a Saraswati Puja in Nadia district where he was shot dead
Satyajit Biswas was involved with the Matua community, which has remained politically sensitive both for the TMC and the BJP. District TMC president Gourishankar Dutta blamed the BJP and followers of Mukul Roy for this murder.
Satyajit Biswas had got married in 2016.
Satyajit Biswas was shot dead by miscreants. We are investigating, said The Indian Express quoted a police official as saying. It reported that a huge police force has been deployed in the area.
It is planned murder by BJP. Minister Ratna Ghosh, Satyajit and I were invited as a guest for the programme. On a personal level, he was like a son to me, he had recently got married. He was also a part of Matua Sangha and BJP were not able to attract Matua voters because of him. We will not let his death go in vain, said TMC district president Gouri Sankar Dutta told the newspaper.
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New Delhi:
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Saturday hit back at China after it "firmly opposed" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, saying "the state of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India". Responding to a media query on Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' statement on the PM's visit, the MEA said: "This consistent position has been conveyed to Chinese side on several occasions."
Earlier in the day, China asserted that it has never recognised the sensitive border state and the Indian leadership should refrain from any action that may "complicate the boundary question". Prime Minister Modi inaugurated and laid foundation stones of projects in Arunachal Pradesh worth over Rs 4,000 crore and said his government was giving a lot of importance to improve connectivity in the border state.
Modi said his government was giving importance to improve the highway, railway, airway and power situation in Arunachal Pradesh, which was neglected by the previous governments. In New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs reacted sharply to China's remarks, saying the state of Arunachal Pradesh is an "integral and inalienable part" of India.
"Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions," the MEA spokesperson said in a statement. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in response to a question on Modi's visit said: "China's position on the China-India boundary question is consistent and clear-cut. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh' and is firmly opposed to the Indian leader's visit to the East Section of the China-India boundary."
"China urges the Indian side to bear in mind the common interests of the two countries, respect the interests and concerns of the Chinese side, cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral relations, and refrain from any action that may lead to the escalation of disputes or complicate the boundary question," she said in her reaction posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website. China claims the north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet. India and China have so far held 21 rounds of talks to resolve the border dispute.
The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC). China routinely objects to Indian leaders visiting Arunachal Pradesh to highlight its stand.
(With PTI inputs)
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Posted Friday, February 8, 2019 7:00 pm
Bruce Maier had to help.
When he saw the shocking pictures and heard the heartbreaking stories from the deadly Camp Fire in his old stomping grounds of Butte County, California, he knew he had no choice but to help the people who had lost everything.
Ill tell you honestly, there was a tapping on my shoulder and there was a calling, Maier said. There were no two ways about it. I knew I had to do something.
Maier, 65, is a lifelong musician and entertainer. While very comfortable behind the microphone, he decided to attempt something hed never done organize a massive music festival, a daylong charity event to raise money for fire survivors.
His vision has come together into an event this coming Saturday at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds: the Paradise Fire Aid Super Jam NW.
From noon until 10 p.m., bands and musicians from around the Pacific Northwest and as far away as British Columbia and Sacramento will perform on two stages. (Full disclosure: I will be playing for 15 minutes during the noon hour of the show.)
There will also be a silent auction and raffle for a new acoustic guitar to also raise funds to donate. No alcohol will be served, and it will be a family-friendly event.
Maier has secured donations, sponsorships and volunteers to cover the costs of the concert. For instance, the when he asked for help covering the $1,000 rental of the fairgrounds space and associated costs, he had someone step up to pay for it all within 24 hours.
They didnt want a tax receipt or anything, they just wanted to help, Maier said. If that isnt divine intervention, I dont know what this is.
Other volunteers: professional sound engineers, an experienced stage manager, experienced cash handlers from the banking industry to keep an eye on the money, and a full crew from Lewis County ABATE to help out with logistics.
The support came quickly when Maier went online last fall, shortly after the fire, to share his dream for a fundraiser musical showcase.
Within 48 hours, he had three times the number of musicians volunteer than he had space on the roster. All are giving their time and talents for free.
Every penny will go to the North Valley Community Foundation in Chico, Calif. This decades-old community group has set up a process to direct donations to fire victims, and only takes 1 percent for administration costs a remarkably low number.
Maier said he is haunted by the stories of families fleeing the flames, leaving pets behind. Hes shed many tears for the 85 people killed by the fire.
Thousands are still without permanent homes living in rentals, or hotel rooms or travel trailers. Many are without jobs, as their place of business also burned to the ground. Having lost nearly everything, they are equally uncertain about what the future holds.
Maier hopes to raise $20,000 or more through next Saturdays music festival. He knows it wont be nearly enough to solve all the problems, but he knows it will make a difference to those in need and he hopes it leaves a legacy for those who might have a similar vision to help after future disasters.
I hope our movement will inspire other musicians, other counties and states, who will see what were doing, Maier said. Maybe it wont be this event. Itll be a twister, a flood. Its the idea of helping and paying it forward to others.
In that sense, the venue of the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds, and the Twin Cities as a whole, is perfect.
It was only a dozen years ago, after the devastating flood of 2007 (which deluged the fairgrounds and so much more), that people came from around the nation to help us during our time of greatest need. Many sent money. Others came and rolled up their sleeves to provide short-term disaster relief. Others dug in for a year or more, helping us dig out and rebuild.
When we were in despair, our fellow Americans came to help. And thanks to this weekends Super Jam in Chehalis, we are giving back.
Keep on rockin in the free world, my friends.
Brian Mittge can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com. What songs would you like him to play during his 15 minutes on stage next Saturday? Drop him a line with requests.
London :
Albert Finney, the charismatic Academy Award-nominated British actor who starred in films from Tom Jones to Skyfall, has died. He was 82. Finneys family said Friday that he passed away peacefully after a short illness with those closest to him by his side. He died Thursday from a chest infection at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
Finney was a rare star who managed to avoid the Hollywood limelight for more than five decades after bursting to international fame in 1963 in the title role of Tom Jones.
The film gained him the first of five Oscar nominations. Others followed for Murder on the Orient Express, The Dresser, Under the Volcano and Erin Brockovich.
In later years he brought authority to action movies, including the James Bond thriller Skyfall and two of the Bourne films. Displaying the versatility of a virtuoso, Finney portrayed Winston Churchill, Pope John Paul II, a southern American lawyer, an Irish gangster and an 18th-century rogue, among dozens of other roles over the years.
There was no Albert Finney-type character that he returned to again and again. In one of his final roles, as the gruff Scotsman Kincade in Skyfall, he shared significant screen time with Daniel Craig as Bond and Judi Dench as M, turning the films final scenes into a master class of character acting.
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Although Finney rarely discussed his personal life, he told the Manchester Evening News in 2012 that he had been treated for kidney cancer for five years, undergoing surgery and chemotherapy.
He also explained why he had not attended the Academy Awards in Los Angeles even when he was nominated for the film worlds top prize.
It seems silly to go over there and beg for an award, he told the paper. The son of a bookmaker, Finney was born May 9, 1936, and grew up in northern England on the outskirts of Manchester.
He took to the stage at an early age, doing a number of school plays and ? despite his lack of connections and his working-class roots ? earning a place at Londons prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. He credited the headmaster of his local school, Eric Simms, for recommending that he attend the renowned drama school.
Hes the reason I am an actor, Finney said in 2012. Finney made his first professional turn at 19 and appeared in several TV movies, including She Stoops to Conquer in 1956 and The Claverdon Road Job the following year.
Soon some critics were hailing him as the next Laurence Olivier ? a commanding presence who would light up the British stage.
Britains pre-eminent theater critic, Kenneth Tynan, called the young Finney a smoldering young Spencer Tracy and warned established star Richard Burton about his prowess. In London, Finney excelled both in Shakespeares plays and in more contemporary offerings.
Still, the young man seemed determined not to pursue conventional Hollywood stardom.
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After an extensive screen test, he turned down the chance to play the title role in director David Leans epic Lawrence of Arabia, clearing the way for fellow RADA graduate Peter OToole to take what became a career-defining role.
But stardom came to Finney anyway in Tom Jones where he won over audiences worldwide with his good-natured, funny and sensual portrayal of an 18th-century English rogue. That was the role that introduced Finney to American audiences, and few would forget the lusty, blue-eyed leading man who helped the film win a Best Picture Oscar.
Finney also earned his first Best Actor nomination for his efforts and the smash hit turned him into a Hollywood leading man. Director Tony Richardson said his goal for Tom Jones was simply to produce an enjoyable romp. No social significance for once, he said. No contemporary problems to lay bare.
Just a lot of colorful, sexy fun. Finney had the good fortune to receive a healthy percentage of the profits from the surprise hit, giving him financial security while he was still in his 20s.
This is a man from very humble origins who became rich when he was very young, said Quentin Falk, author of an unauthorized biography of Finney. It brought him a lot of side benefits. Hes a man who likes to live as well as to act. He enjoys his fine wine and cigars. Hes his own man. I find that rather admirable.
Also Read | Oreo the Raccoon, model for GOTG character Rocket, has died at 10
The actor maintained a healthy skepticism about the British establishment and even turned down a knighthood when it was offered, declining to become Sir Albert. Finney once said he didnt believe in such honors.
Maybe people in America think being a Sir is a big deal, he said. But I think we should all be misters together. I think the Sir thing slightly perpetuates one of our diseases in England, which is snobbery. And it also helps keep us quaint, which Im not a great fan of.
Instead of cashing in by taking lucrative film roles after Tom Jones, Finney took a long sabbatical, travelling slowly through the United States, Mexico and the Pacific islands, then returned to the London stage to act in Shakespeare productions and other plays.
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Itanagar :
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today inaugurated several projects and laid the foundation of many vital schemes in Arunachal Pradesh his visit to the north-eastern state. PM Modi also laid the foundation stone of a green field Airport at Hollongi near here, they said. The ambitious airport project in the state has been pending for several years due to controversies over site selection. Arunachal Pradesh is the only state in the country without a full-fledged airport. Initially, Karsingsa was selected as the site for the airport but owing to technicalities, the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) had asked the state government to find some other site.
11:23 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In To benefit the farmers of the country, the BJP government proposed 'PM kisan samman nidhi' scheme in this years interim Budget. This scheme will benefit the farmers of the state. We are also working towards boosting organic farming in the state," PM Modi
11:21 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In We are emphasizing on power generation. Today 12 hydro electric projects of 110 MW were inaugurated which will not only help Arunachal Pradesh but also adjoining states : PM Modi
11:21 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In In the last two years, around 1000 villages have been connected through roads. The work of Trans Arunachal highway is also under progress. In an effort to connect all the capitals of North East states, Itanagar has also been connected with the Railways: PM Modi
11:21 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In We have launched Arunachals first dedicated TV channel, DD Arunprabha. It will give employment opportunities for the youth. The channel will give a boost to culture and custom of the state: PM Modi
11:19 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In The 50 health centers that were inaugurated today will provide health facility to residents of faraway places: PM
11:17 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In After connecting Itanagar to rail and road network, we are now connecting it with airways: PM
11:15 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In I would like to congratulate the state and the CM that every household here now has an electricity connection under 'Saubhagya' scheme. What Arunachal Pradesh achieved today will soon be achieved by the entire nation: PM Modi
11:14 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In "We are trying that through UDAAN scheme, the people of the state can avail cheap flight services, PM Modi in Itanagar
11:13 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Working on the lines of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas, the BJP tried to develop the state: PM Modi
11:12 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Tezu airport was built over 50 years but no govt envisioned to connect people of this state with other parts of the country. We expanded the airport by spending around Rs 125 crore : PM
11:11 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In The country can progress only when Northeast will progress, said PM Modi.
11:09 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In PM also laid foundation stone for greenfield Hollongi Airport and permanent campus of FTII in Jote, Itanagar.
11:09 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In PM Modi today inaugurated DD Arun Prabha Channel, upgraded Tezu airport, 110 MW Pare hydroelectric project, 50 health & wellness centres in Itanagar.
11:08 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Our govt allocated Rs 44,000 crore fund to Arunachal Pradesh which is double the amount provided by the previous govt : PM Modi
11:06 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Previous governments neglected this state for decades but we are here to change this. New India can only be built if North East can be developed well: PM Modi
11:05 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In "These gifts of Arunachal wasnt used by the previous government. They neglected Arunachal, alleged PM Modi.
11:05 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Arunachal has the gift of good water resources. It has the capability to generate electricity," says PM Modi.
11:01 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In "We are working on projects worth over Rs 13 crore for Arunachal. These will improve transportation, health care and benefit the state, said PM Modi.
11:01 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In In the last 55 months, NDA government and Pema Khandu government in Arunachal are taking every necessary step to make this state strong: PM Modi
Jammu:
As many as 179 GATE aspirants were flown to Jammu from Srinagar and 180 Kashmiri pilgrims stranded in Delhi have been airlifted to the Summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir as the current spell of snow, rain and inclement weather in the state disrupted road and air services. The Graduate Aptitude Test Exam (GATE) aspirants were not being able to travel to Jammu due to cancellation of fights and the national highway was also blocked due to heavy snowfall, an official spokesperson said.
Similarly, the Kashmiri pilgrims, who had reached Delhi after performing Umrah in Saudi Arabia, could not travel further because of cancellation of flights to Srinagar. Taking cognizance of the matter, Governor Satya Pal Malik directed the administration for making alternative travel arrangements for all such people stranded at Srinagar and Delhi.
"Due to heavy snowfall, the Valley was cut off from the rest of world due to closure of national highway and cancellation of flights. In view of above, state authorities in coordination with Indian Air Force arranged an aircraft to airlift the students appearing for GATE examination," one of the officials said.
The Civil Aviation Ministry's help was sought in taking the pilgrims stranded in Delhi to Srinagar. On the request made by the state government, 180 passengers have been flown to Srinagar by an Air India fight. The remaining passengers are scheduled to fly back to Srinagar on Saturday, the spokesperson said.
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A female Sumatran tiger has been viciously killed by it proposed mate during their first meeting at ZSL London Zoo on Friday (UK Time).
Ten days ago, Sumatran tiger Asim was moved to ZSL London Zoo as part of a European conservation breeding programme, to potentially mate with the zoo's "beloved Sumatran tigress Melati".
The tigers were then kept in adjourning enclosures, intended to allow the pair to see each other and slowly become used to each other's presence before they met.
After observing "positive signs" about the tigers' reaction to each other, zoo experts believed it was the right time to introduce each other.
However, in a statement on Friday, the Zoo declared the date had not gone as planned, with the pair engaging in an "aggressive interaction" prompting staff to implement a prepared response using loud noises, flares and alarms.
Posted Friday, February 8, 2019 2:11 pm
Some convicted of misdemeanor marijuana possession may be able to apply to have the crime vacated from their records.
Individuals would qualify to apply for the vacation if they were at least 21 years old at the time of offense, were convicted under Washington state law, and the misdemeanor is the only conviction on their criminal record.
Those convicted under federal law or local ordinances would not be eligible.
According to the House Bill 1500s analysis, there are roughly 3,500 individuals who would be eligible to apply to have their records cleared.
Theres no question that misdemeanor marijuana possession was illegal at that time, but the voters of our state stated very clearly that they no longer felt the possession of small amounts of marijuana should be a crime for people over 21, said the bills prime sponsor, Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, D-Burien. I think that thats a really logical and compassionate step that we can take.
In January, Governor Jay Inslee announced an initiative to grant clemency to individuals in the same situation.
A vacation goes a step further than clemency. According to the governors office, a pardon is noted on someones record, but doesnt wipe it completely. If vacated, the conviction would not need to be disclosed on employment or housing applications, and could not be used as part of a persons criminal history in sentencing in a later conviction.
In September Seattle municipal court judges ordered the convictions to be set aside. According to the court opinion, the courts possession of marijuana charges disproportionately impacted people of color. The court notified those who were eligible under the motion given its potential to impact the rights of the defendant.
HB 1500 has not been scheduled for an executive session. Its companion bill will have a public hearing in the Senate Law and Justice Committee on Feb. 12.
New Zealander Dan Poulton, who snapped the photos while working at the base, told Newshub the cheeky bird first ventured up almost a week ago.
"It started following us around and headed up to the base sign as well... He's been making a little home for himself," he said.
"It's the first penguin this season that's been on the land."
He even forced work to come to a halt one day.
A Chinese-Australian blogger and political commentator who disappeared after arriving in China a week ago has been detained by Chinese officials.
A statement released by Chinese authorities on Wednesday confirmed that Yang Hengjun was detained upon arrival.
Officials from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have not yet been able to contact Mr Yang, reports Reuters.
"The department is seeking to clarify the nature of this detention and to obtain consular access to him... as a matter of priority," the department said in a statement released Wednesday evening.
Mr Yang had travelled from New York to Guangzhou last week, and police grew concerned when his friends reported they had not heard from him in several days.
The former Chinese diplomat is an author, as well as an outspoken political commentator. He is also an Australian citizen.
He has been in the sight of Chinese authorities for criticising Chinese interference in Australia, reports Reuters.
Tensions between China and parts of the Western world have been high, after two Canadians were arrested in China due to suspicion they were endangering state security, reports Reuters.
The slew of arrests has been seen by the West as retaliation for the arrest of Huawei's executive, Meng Wanzhou, in Canada last year.
Newshub.
In a major step forward for kids' health, the Government has announced it will ban smoking in cars with children - and police could fine those who don't obey.
Under the law change, announced on Sunday, police will be able to require people to stop smoking in their cars if children (under 18) are present. Police will also be able to give warnings, refer people to stop-smoking support services, or issue an infringement fee of $50.
Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa says this change is "first and foremost" about protecting children.
"Too many New Zealand children, particularly Maori and Pacific children, are exposed to second-hand smoke in the vehicles they usually travel in. Children are especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of second-hand smoke due to their smaller lungs, higher respiratory rate and immature immune systems," she says.
"Public education and social marketing campaigns over many years have had some impact, but the rate of reduction in children exposed to smoking in vehicles is slowing. It is now time to do more by legislating."
The campaign to ban smoking in cars with kids has been led by The AM Show host Duncan Garner, who gathered more than 28,000 signatures on his petition for change.
Ms Salesa says there is strong support for legislating, with multiple surveys showing around 90 percent of the public support the ban.
The news has been welcomed by Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft, who says it will help 100,000 Kiwi kids every week.
"Many New Zealand children and young people are exposed to second-hand smoke in cars every day," Commissioner Becroft says.
"Once this legislation is passed they will no longer be forced to inhale this chemical poison."
Vaping will also be included in the prohibition and it will apply to all vehicles, whether they are parked or on the move.
"While some have questioned whether a ban can be enforced, there's really no issue. The police will be able to oversee it in the same way as they do the law on cell-phone use and seatbelts," the Children's Commissioner argues.
Ms Salesa says the legislation will be backed up with a public education effort.
"Ultimately, the focus of this change will be on education and changing social norms - not on issuing infringement notices," she says.
It is expected that this amendment will become law by the end of 2019.
Newshub.
A former refugee is concerned about the Government's decision to expand the country's resettlement options into the regions.
On Thursday, the Government announced Whanganui will be one of the five new resettlement locations for refugees around the country.
Ibriham Omer says refugees need access to support networks and career opportunities which he claims towns like Whanganui don't provide.
"It's hard enough to get jobs in the big cities and towns. We're talking about small towns where resources are very limited," said Mr Omer.
While Whanganui will take 110 refugees a year from March 2020, he said small towns can feel isolating.
"Red Cross only supports these people from six months to 12 months, what about after that, what's going to happen to these people? They need on-going support," said Mr Omer.
But the town's mayor, Hamish McDouall, is rubbishing those claims.
"We have capacity in our education sectors, our health sector; we have a lot of community groups looking forward to welcoming these refugees," he said.
Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said small communities know how to rally together for each other.
"When we made the announcement in Whanganui the other day, there were a large number of people from organisations ready and willing to build the capacity to support former refugees," he said.
But Mr Omer wishes there had been greater consultation with former refugees and says he doesn't want New Zealand to miss out on what they're capable of.
Newshub.
After the decision to scrap the usual Pride Parade following controversy about banning uniformed police, Auckland's Pride March took place on Saturday evening with its all-new format.
More than 3000 people turned out to the event, which began in Auckland Central's Albert Park before making its way up Queen St and to Myers Park.
The massive group wasn't expected by organisers, who said that only 750 people had registered to come along.
The march is a move away from the annual Ponsonby Pride Parade which was cancelled in January following the controversial move to ban police in uniforms.
That ban led corporates sponsors and supporters to start pulling out in support for the police, including BNZ Bank, SkyCity, Westpac, Vodafone, Fletcher, the New Zealand Defence Force and the Rainbow New Zealand Trust.
Auckland Pride Parade founder Gresham Bradley joined in the debacle, calling for the board to be sacked - however, the board eventually survived a no-confidence vote.
But others supported the board's decision, with Emilie Rakete from Prisons Against Aotearoa highlighting police brutality statistics.
The board maintained at the time that the "complaints about police consistently outnumbered feedback about any other institution or organisation".
New Zealand Police Senior District Liaison Officer Tracy Phillips said police officers were extremely disappointed by the board's decision, telling Newshub at the time if police are not welcome in uniform, then "we're not going to force ourselves on anybody".
Newshub.
IKEA has apologised after it was caught selling a world map - with one glaring error.
A large multi-coloured map available in the US shows a giant blank space where New Zealand should be.
Reddit user Jibbles666 spotted the mistake at an IKEA shop in Washington DC, and posted a picture to the internet.
"Ikea's map game is not on point," they wrote on Reddit.
In a statement to the BBC, IKEA said it was sorry for the mishap.
"Ikea is responsible for securing correct and compliant motifs on all our products," a spokesperson said.
"We can see that the process has failed regarding the product BJORKSTA world map - we regret this mistake and apologise. We will take the necessary actions and the product is now being phased out from our stores."
The mistake comes as the Swedish homeware giant prepares to move into the New Zealand market. A flagship store will be opened in Auckland, with people from across New Zealand able to have access.
No specific details have been revealed, but the classic big-box store will be coming in the "next few years" and there will be more than one store in the country to deliver the "full Ikea experience".
In the meantime, a pop-up store will be set up "to give consumers a taste of what's to come".
"Wonder if they're going to sell these maps in the new Auckland store?" one person posted on Reddit.
Newshub.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man celebrates his 10th anniversary with a new suit
WIth some of his creators - as well as people behind Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse taking part in a Marvel Comics celebration
Jeffersonville, IN (47130)
Today
Mostly sunny. High 81F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..
Tonight
Mainly clear. Low 61F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
Posted Saturday, February 9, 2019 11:25 am
A diverse group of outdoor enthusiasts, ranging from hunters to environmentalists, sent a message Tuesday to lawmakers in Olympia: fully fund the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
"In general, today was an opportunity to make key legislatures, mostly the budget writers and the natural resources chairs, familiar with the commonality of purpose," said Mitch Friedman, the executive director of Conservation Northwest. "We, the normally fighting cats and dogs of fish and wildlife stakeholders, have left our swords at the door and are making peace to work together on this."
The issue is urgent, Friedman said. When compared with other western states, Washington is the smallest geographically, with the least public land and the largest population.
Despite Gov. Jay Inslee's presidential ambitions being largely pegged to environmental issues like climate change, the governor's proposed 2019-21 budget does not fund the $12.9 million WDFW requested to enhance fish and wildlife conservation and $4.2 million for habitat improvements. At the same time, Inslee has requested $1.1 billion in funding for orca recovery.
"I have no problem supporting the orca plan," said David Cloe, the former president of the Northwest Wildlife Council and a member of the Budget and Policy Advisory Group. "But that's a big commitment. A billion dollars for one species. When the whole state suffers."
Cloe said WDFW's entire budget request was $60 million, much of which wouldn't come from the state's general fund.
"He (Inslee) was so passionate about funding the orcas but didn't say a dang thing about the rest of the animals in the state," Cloe said.
Friedman and Mike Petersen from the Spokane-based Lands Council spent Tuesday meeting with legislators, including Spokane's Rep. Timm Ormsby, who is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which is taking the lead on writing the 2019-21 operating budget.
Friedman hoped more representatives could have been present in Olympia, but a combination of bad weather and illness kept many home. A letter, signed by 13 individuals from groups including the Lands Council and the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council, was delivered to lawmakers Tuesday. The BPAG has worked with WDFW since 2017 to address its budget shortfall.
"Well, the goal was to go over there and lobby and help talk to legislators to make the WDFW whole again," Petersen said. "They've had a deficit for a bit, ever since the recession, that keeps getting temporarily filled."
WDFW is facing a $30 million budget shortfall stemming from three things: Funding via general-fund taxes and recreational license sales has not kept pace with costs; a one-time funding fix approved by the Legislature in 2017 expires in June; and the department is still recovering from budget cuts from the Great Recession.
The department submitted its proposed budget in October. Part of the funding fix would come from a 15-percent increase in hunter and angler fees, which groups like the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council supported.
Inslee released his budget in December.
His budget addresses the $30 million structural deficit and included substantial investments in orca and salmon recovery.
"I was really impressed with the governor's budget," said Morgan Stinson, WDFW's budget director.
That was especially true considering the numerous agencies asking for state money, said Nate Pamplin, WDFW's policy director.
"The fact that there was good investment in the Department of Fish and Wildlife was a pleasant surprise," Pamplin said.
The governor's budget is far from assured to pass unscathed through the Legislature. That was the impetus behind lobbying in Olympia, Friedman said.
"The department has a reputation with the Legislature for being a problem agency," he said. "Because all they ever hear from stakeholders is griping. There aren't enough deer. The other guys got the fish. You're not killing enough wolves. You're killing too many wolves. ... That's all they hear. And they blame the department naturally."
Some funding for WDFW's budget request would have to come from the state's general fund, which lawmakers told Petersen and Friedman could be a tough sell. One way to avoid that, Petersen said, would be to consider additional user fees outside of hunting and angling.
While the governor's budget addresses the underlying deficit and benefits of orcas and salmon, Friedman said it neglected key areas of WDFW's mission: habitat improvements and wildlife conservation for other, less-visible species.
Friedman believes that orcas, the flashy topic of the day, took all the attention of a governor with professed presidential ambitions.
"I think that the governor is like minded," Friedman said. "I've known him for a long time. I think I know his priorities. So when the Fish and Wildlife part of the budget got shafted, I took that a little personally."
Petersen said the orca money impacts habitat and fisheries, which will benefit the overall ecosystem. Still, he said, "It's unfortunate that the habitat kind of fell off the plate."
Cloe said it's an issue WDFW has battled for years. The agency's work is not visible and often passed over when tough budget decisions are made.
That, he said, comes at a cost.
"If you continue to allow things to deplete at the department, you're not going to have the animals to go out and see,' he said. "We believe that the department needs to be funded better so Washington can be better. Period."
Why natural gas is so important
Richard Ruff, writing in a Jan. 14 letter to the editor, is right that natural gas has allowed consumers to save a lot of money on their monthly energy bills last year. Those savings are incredibly welcome, but Ruff didnt mention natural gas other benefit: Its better for our air than coal. So much better. In fact, natural gas burns 50 percent cleaner than coal.
According to the Energy Information Administration, a federal government agency, total carbon dioxide emissions in Virginia declined by almost 16 percent between 2006 and 2016. That slide corresponded with a rise in natural gas use. In 2017, natural gas fueled half of Virginias net electricity generation while nuclear power provided one-third, coal provided 12 percent and renewable resources provided just 6 percent.
Reaching our clean air and water goals is impossible without natural gas because its one of the cleanest source of energy and, importantly, it is there when we need it. At just 6 percent of our total electricity generation, wind, solar and biomass arent plentiful enough to power our homes.
Thumbs up to Ashley Reynolds Marshall, the new executive director of the YWCA of Central Virginia, along with a hearty welcome to the Lynchburg community.
Marshall took over the top job at the 107-year-old nonprofit last year and has just completed six months leading the organization. She came to Lynchburg after working in the social service field in the Roanoke area, holding posts with the United Way of the Roanoke Valley and as head of Mental Health America of the Roanoke Valley.
The resume she brings to the job gives new meaning to the word impressive: a degree in psychology from Hollins University, the all-womens school in Roanoke; a law degree from the College of William & Mary School of Law; and a masters in public administration from Virginia Tech. And on top of that, shes pursuing her Ph.D. in public administration and policy from Virginia Tech, too.
But its her passion for the YWCAs mission that drew her to the post in Lynchburg. Empowering women and families and fighting to eliminate racism are the two pillars of what the YWCA, both in Lynchburg and in the United States, is all about.
Utah residents may have thought they were done fighting about Medicaid expansion last November. But when Utah lawmakers opened a new legislative session in late January, they began pushing through a bill to roll back the scope and impact of an expansion that voters approved in a ballot measure.
We voted for this on Nov. 6. We were very clear about what we wanted, said Andrew Roberts, a spokesman for Utah Decides, the group that organized the Medicaid expansion referendum, known as Proposition 3.
The voter-approved measure would extend coverage to 150,000 uninsured people in the state.
We are frustrated, and I think Utahns are frustrated, Roberts said.
That frustration led his group to hire a billboard truck to drive in circles around the Capitol building and through the snowy streets of Salt Lake City and its suburbs. Signs on the sides of the truck flash phrases in LED lights, including Support democracy. Support Utahs vote. A looping video advertisement urges residents to call lawmakers who dont respect the will of the people.
After six years of talking about Medicaid expansion, voters approved the ballot measure on Nov. 6, with 53 percent in favor. But the issue erupted again when the legislative session started Jan. 28.
Similar legislative efforts to curtail expansion are also happening in Idaho, where voters passed a Medicaid expansion initiative in November. Sixty-one percent of voters were in favor. Idaho lawmakers are considering ways to scale that program back.
In politically and fiscally conservative Utah, legislators argue the 0.15 percent non-food sales tax that voters approved wont be enough to pay for Medicaid expansion. So theyll pass an expansion, but only a very limited one.
Voters wanted Medicaid expansion, and thats what were doing, said Republican state Sen. Allen Christensen. But, he added, the voters didnt fill in the proper blanks. We are filling in those blanks for them. They are not obligated to balance the budget. We are.
Christensen is leading the rollback effort in Utah. His alternative proposal, SB 96, would cap the number of individuals who would qualify for Medicaid, add work requirements and lower the annual income limit. Proposition 3 supporters had wanted the coverage available for people who made up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or nearly $17,000 a year. But Christensens bill would offer Medicaid coverage only to people who made less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $12,000 for an individual.
Making those changes would require the state of Utah to get approval for two federal waivers from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Proposition 3 supporters point out that similar requests from other states have been denied.
From the perspective of voters, I think voters have a right to be furious right now, said Matt Slonaker, executive director of the Utah Health Policy Project, another group that has supported Medicaid expansion.
Slonaker said changing the scope of Proposition 3 would mean fewer people getting health coverage, and the state would receive less money from the federal government. He also fears it could make voters feel disillusioned.
Why would voters ever want to pursue ballot initiatives and direct democracy if the legislatures just going to repeal it anyway? Slonaker asked.
While some Utah lawmakers, such as Christensen, describe being philosophically opposed to Medicaid expansion, much of the political debate in Utah is about how much expansion will cost, and whether the new sales tax will pay for it. Supporters point to the fiscal experience of other states.
You should think of Medicaid expansion as no different than if you said, Oh, hey, somebodys going to go open up a factory,' said Bryce Ward, an economist at the University of Montana, in Missoula. And that factory is going to bring, in the case of Montana, $600 million of outside money into the state that were going to pay to workers here.
Ward recently published a report on the economic impacts of Medicaid expansion in Montana during the first two years of that program. He said it brought in about $600 million dollars in new funds to the state per year. That money supported about 6,000 jobs, he added, or about $350 million in additional income for residents.
Ward said states like his also can take advantage of savings, because Medicaid expansion makes providing health care to certain groups, like prisoners, more affordable. While states do have to pay 10 percent of the cost of expanded Medicaid (the federal government covers 90 percent a more generous match than traditional Medicaid), the combination of savings and economic growth meant that, in the case of Montana, the program basically pays for itself, Ward said.
The benefits that people in Utah have is that people like me in other states have done the work trying to figure this out, he said. Or at least get some ballpark estimates of it.
So far, Utah lawmakers remain unconvinced by studies like Wards. The bill to restrict Medicaid expansion is moving fast, and could reach the governors desk as soon as next week.
This story is part of a partnership that includes KUER, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
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Attendees work with Katie Sieb, transportation planner for NOACA, at a meeting hosted by NOACA and the City of Willowick to provide feedback on the bike friendliness of roads in Lake County.
Pat Perry
Is it time to shake things up at work?
Posted Friday, February 8, 2019 4:11 pm
A Centralia woman accused of stealing over $10,000 in Department of Social Health and Services benefits was sentenced this week to 60 days in the Lewis County Jail and six months on community custody.
Tammy L. Santiago, 40, pleaded guilty to counts of public assistance fraud and second-degree perjury a charge less severe than her initial counts of first-degree theft and second-degree perjury.
Santiago was accused of lying about where her three children lived saying that they lived with her when really the resided out of the state on an application for benefits back in 2016.
A DSHS investigator uncovered the deception and that Santiago had obtained $10,660 in overpayments in DSHS benefits.
Santiago was initially placed on an unsecured bond at a preliminary hearing, meaning she stayed out of custody during the duration of the case.
She was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $10,660, according to a sentencing order.
She pleaded guilty to the two counts and was sentenced on Wednesday.
Jail records indicate she was booked 4 p.m. that same day.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 9) A Chinese national was arrested and faces possible deportation for throwing her cup of "taho," a soft tofu snack, at a police officer who refused her entry in line with the ban on liquids in the Metro Rail Transit line 3 (MRT-3).
Police said the incident transpired at around 8:30 a.m. at Boni Station when PO1 William Cristobal prohibited Jiale Zhang, 23, from entering the MRT-3 platform.
In a press release, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) said the suspect "entered the baggage inspection area where two security personnel have asked her to consume first her 'taho' before entering the station, but the former insisted not to do so."
It earlier said the Chinese national "apologized and was later released by the authorities," but the Mandaluyong police said she is still under investigation. Photos showed she went through booking procedures for "direct assault and disobedience to agent of person in authority."
In a message to CNN Philippines, Metro Manila Police Chief Guillermo Eleazar said they will file a deportation case with the Bureau of Immigration (BI) against Zhang next week.
For its part, the BI said it will study possible actions against the foreign suspect. "We will be coordinating with the DOTr and the NCRPO (National Capital Region Police Office) for details about the case," Spokesperson Dana Krizia Sandoval said in a statement.
Meanwhile, DOTr Assistant Secretary Goddes Libiran said the MRT-3 management is considering banning the foreigner from all stations "given the extremely rude behavior she exhibited."
On the other hand, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddyboy Locsin, on twitter called the event a non-issue.
Let's not be trivial. This can happen anywhere to anyone in any country. Aggression by taho? Defense by the same? Boy we really need arms deals to flesh out our sense of nationhood and sovereignty, Locsin said in a reply to a netizen who tagged him on twitter to ask if Zhang would be deported.
Foreign Affairs Secretary @teddyboylocsin on a request to deport the Chinese student who threw 'taho' at a police officer: Let's not be trivial https://t.co/RKqwiU7Teo pic.twitter.com/kEGMVygPwn CNN Philippines (@cnnphilippines) February 9, 2019
A post circulating on social media showed "taho" all over Cristobal's arms and upper body. It has been shared over 40,000 times in a span of three hours, as netizens expressed anger over the woman's behavior.
The DOTr appealed for the public's full cooperation and understanding, as it tightens security measures following the deadly twin blasts in Jolo, Sulu which killed at least 23 people and wounded about 100 others last January 27. MRT-3 officials on Friday cited a bomb threat received on January 3 as reason for strictly enforcing a liquids ban.
LOOK: Photos of Jiale Zhang under police custody.
Zhang is a Chinese passenger who threw 'taho' at a police officer enforcing MRT-3 liquid ban https://t.co/RKqwiU7Teo
: Mandaluyong PNP-PIO pic.twitter.com/dxYed9Gj7z CNN Philippines (@cnnphilippines) February 9, 2019
"The DOTr MRT-3 would like to stress that tighter security measures being implemented inside our trains and stations means no harm to our passengers. We are being cautious since we put in our topmost priorities the safety and security of our passengers and personnel following attacks in Mindanao," the department said. It added that eating and drinking have long been prohibited inside trains and stations, "as this can cause inconvenience, accident and delay to our operations."
DANBURY Police are investigating a vague, threatening message made on social media about a potential threat at a Danbury school.
All students are safe and in classes and no schools are lockdown, but the district has referred the matter to Danbury Police to investigate, Superintendent Sal Pascarella said just after noon on Friday.
The threat was not specific about what kind of threat or at what school, but Danbury High School has asked the police who are usually on campus to stay put while it is being investigated, Pascarella said.
The message apparently was sent on Snapchat and some students reported it to high school administrators. A robocall went out to parents Friday morning to warn of the situation.
There's been some unfounded Snapchats and some stuff went out about today, but it wasn't specific, Pascarella said. That led to a number of rumors and (DHS Principal) Dan Donovan sent something out to parents. Everything is safe and good.
zach.murdock@hearstmediact.com
WESTPORT Hoping to demonstrate a united front, a group of state legislators, local officials and environmental activists held a beach news conference Saturday afternoon focused on banning single-use plastic bags in Connecticut.
Westport was the first municipality in the state to do so, 10 years ago, and several involved with that fight, including state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, spoke Saturday of its importance.
People said it couldnt be done, (but) the state can do it, too, Steinberg said, noting the first bill aiming to do so was introduced eight years ago in Hartford.
Steinberg and state Sen. Will Haskell, D-Westport, along with state Rep. Kim Rose, D-Milford, have each introduced bills into the Legislature that, respectively, prohibit use and distribution of single-use plastic bags, promote the use of reusable bags, and establish fees on paper bags.
Paper bags also have an adverse impact, said Louis Burch, program director for Citizens Campaign for the Environment, noting the goal was to encourage people to bring their own reusable bags.
Its time now for our state government to follow Westports lead, Haskell said, addressing around 60 people who endured icy winds to take part in the rally adjacent to the historic cannons at Compo Beach.
He said 18 billion pounds of plastic waste ends up in the worlds oceans every year, with only 5 percent ultimately recycled. Its time to reverse that trend, he said.
The next generation of voters has spoken loudly and clearly, Haskell said.
I cant tell you how proud I am that Westport is actually the home of the plastic bag ordinance, First Selectman Jim Marpe, a Republican, said.
This is not a Republican or Democratic issue, he said. Its a bipartisan issue.
Liz Milwe, a District 1 member of Westports Representative Town Meeting, and who took part in the original plastic bag ban, said Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stamford, and Weston have all recently passed local bans similar to Westports.
We hope the whole state of Connecticut will join us, she said.
Wayne Pesce, president of the Connecticut Food Association, which represents retail organizations, said his group was in agreement with the ban.
Connecticuts growing retail community fully supports this effort, he said. We want to be part of the solution.
I do believe it is important to bring all the shareholders into this dialogue, noted State Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, noting the manufacturing of the single-use bags was poor business.
Im fully supportive of (a statewide ban) ... for the environment, but for good business as well, he said.
We use these things for a minute or a second, and then they go in the seas, and they can be there for centuries, state Rep. Gail Lavielle, R-Wilton, said. That should tell us everything we need to know.
But while she expressed her support for a ban, she said that, given the extreme state of the planet, it wasnt enough.
We have a major problem with lots of single-use plastic bottles, she said, noting the market for plastic waste was diminishing.
Were going to have to learn to, A: limit it, and B: treat it in a more methodical way than we do, Lavielle said.
I think this is a good first step, but its not enough, she said.
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Editors note: This is the second of an ongoing series about the transition to middle school in New Canaan.
NEW CANAAN Instead of going to the movies or having a sleepover on a Friday night, 105 Saxe Middle School fifth-graders were at school. Wearing red and black New Canaan gear, they gave tours to over 1,000 fourth-grade students and their families from across the district, showing them the school that only one year ago, they werent attending.
The biggest benefit is the pride I see the kids take in the school, said Steven Clapp, fifth grade administrator at Saxe. Its great for fifth-graders but settles parents and fourth-graders, too. It allows them to have a positive, vicarious experience.
The tours, which start off with free pizza donated by Pinocchios and end with a dance party, are part of several events planned to help fourth-graders ease the transition to Saxe in the fall.
This is the third year the school has hosted the fifth-grade-led tours. According to Clapp, this was due to suggestions from students.
Its kids talking to other kids on how easy the transition really is, he said. The idea is to flip the power dynamic.
Families register for tour time slots in advance of the event. When they arrive, theyre greeted by tables filled with Saxe gear for sale so they can embrace their new school. A counselor pairs them with a student tour guide with whom theyll eat pizza before starting the tour. There are icebreaker questions at each table to ease the group into the process. Then the tours begin, assisted by a dozen teachers stationed around the school.
Around 7 p.m., fifth- graders MacKenzie Hart and Kelsey DeVito paired up to lead the Burke family around the school. The two told soon-to-be fifth-grader Meara Burke about the ins and outs of fifth grade, from the policy on cellphones to the school bus that takes students downtown to tips on how not to handle your new locker. They showed the Burkes a fifth-grade classroom, their lockers, the gym and other places the South School student will have to go during her first year at Saxe.
Theres nothing to be worried about, Kelsey said of the transition. I have more freedom. We didnt have as much freedom last year.
The two girls became fast friends when they were assigned lockers near each other at the beginning of the school year.
You meet a lot of friends in fifth grade, MacKenzie said.
When asked why the two decided to give up their Friday nights to spend at school, the two expressed enthusiasm for the building they hardly knew less than a year earlier.
I like it, Kelsey said of her touring experience. I like being a leader, and I want to give tours of Saxe so kids dont worry about it. I like being a role model.
ekayata@hearstmediact.com; @erin_kayata
Posted Thursday, February 7, 2019 8:32 pm
The Twin Transit Advisory Board accepted the resignation of General Manager Derrick Wojcik-Damers on Thursday night following nearly three hours of closed-door deliberation by the board earlier that morning.
Board members voted unanimously to accept his letter of resignation and to approve a separation agreement negotiated earlier Thursday. Wojcik-Damers, who was not at either meeting Thursday, is set to receive six months of severance pay, six months of health insurance coverage and $5,000 in moving expenses should he leave the state.
Wojcik-Damers exact compensation was not immediately known, but The Chronicle reported an offer by Twin Transit of at least $101,000 in December 2017.
In exchange, Wojcik-Damers signed away his right to pursue legal action against Twin Transit and those associated with the agency for any reasons associated with his employment and separation from Twin Transit. Per the document, he has one week to nullify his signing of the separation agreement.
I have truly enjoyed my time here as your General Manager and wish you and the organization nothing but the best as you embark on a new chapter at Twin Transit, Wojcik-Damers wrote in his letter of resignation.
Wojcik-Damers, a native of Lewis County, came to Twin Transit after more than a decade spent working for transit agencies in Colorado. Board Chair Bobby Jackson accepted responsibility on behalf of himself and the other two board members Centralia City Councilor Rebecca Staebler and Chehalis City Councilor Chad Taylor for the trio not having done more to set Wojcik-Damers up for success in his first stint as a general manager.
When Wojcik-Damers took the helm of Twin Transit on Jan. 8, 2018, Lewis County was about to begin the process of putting a measure on the ballot that fall to expand the Lewis Public Transit Benefit Area and was in the midst of applying for grants to fund construction of a transit hub in downtown Centralia.
Before calling for the vote Thursday on the resignation, Jackson, a Lewis County Commissioner, spoke highly of Wojcik-Damers and said the board saddled him with unfair expectations for his first year on the job.
I think its important to note that Derrick Wojcik-Damers is as fine an individual as Ive ever met, Jackson said. I enjoyed working with him in the year I was able to work with him. I wish that the situation had been such that he could have come in his first year and used that time getting to know the drivers, understanding that system and working to establish those relationships. ...Hindsight is always 20-20 and I just wanted to be able to share with the community and the drivers that we are really sorry this has worked out the way it has, and we wish Derrick nothing but the absolute best, because he is a quality individual.
Taylor echoed Jacksons sentiments of no ill will toward Wojcik-Damers and said he agreed the board did not do enough to help him acclimate to his new role. Taylor committed to making himself more available to whomever the board hires as its next general manager.
This is the first type of board Ive been on where you have its kind of a different role than being on a city council, Taylor said. Its more of a hands-on role and you need more leadership, like a county commissioner would be giving to his staff, and I definitely wasnt used to that.
Wojcik-Damers officially held the job for a day less than one full year. He had been under investigation since Jan. 14 for complaints made against him by Twin Transit employees. He also faced scrutiny for the agencys role in a failed transit expansion ballot measure, ballooning costs for a proposed transit center and a long list of personal finance-related legal issues in two states, including a felony theft conviction in 1996 in Lewis County under a name he previously used, Derrick Perona.
Jackson said Thursday night that Katherine Weber of Seattle law firm Inslee Best had briefed the board on the preliminary findings of her investigation into the employee complaints.
Reading from a prepared statement, Jackson said Weber had found no evidence of unlawful behavior by Wojcik-Damers and that she would file a full report in the coming weeks.
There appeared to be, however, an escalating pattern of mistrust and miscommunication from the general manager and (Operations Manager Aaron Rollins) and (Maintenance Manager Steve Wark), which then impacted the staff as a whole, Jackson said. ...Considering this information as well as other factors that have come to light more recently, the board has determined it is in the best interest of Twin Transit, including its employees and partners, to accept the resignation of Mr. Wojcik-Damers, effective immediately. The board wants to clearly state this decision is not based on any real or perceived misconduct on the part of Mr. Wojcik-Damers, but rather on the necessity of ensuring the work of Twin Transit proceeds in the best manner possible.
Rollins and Wark submitted complaint letters to the advisory board last month accusing Wojcik-Damers of possessing an erratic management style that included going against company policy and not communicating effectively with subordinates.
Debbie Lytle, a non-voting member of the advisory board and one of 16 employees to sign a letter of no confidence in Wojcik-Damers, choked up when addressing those in attendance Thursday night.
Twin Transit is a family, not just a place to go to work, Lytle said. Ive been there 20 years and never been through something like this before. I will tell you, it was very hard at times, but I wanted you guys to hear our voices, because you are the ones we have to protect us. I want you guys to know, youre who we have to go to when we say we need help.
Jackson had been filling in for Wojcik-Damers when it came to some tasks such as signing paychecks. He will continue to do so until the board appoints an interim general manager. He and Human Resources Manager Melissa Shoemaker will escort Wojcik-Damers on Saturday to clean out his office.
The Prothman Company, a search firm with which Twin Transit contracted with during the process that led to Wojcik-Damers being hired, told Jackson they were willing to help find an interim manager. It is not clear whether Twin Transit will pay Prothman for that service, should it take the firm up on its offer. Taylor said he would take it upon himself to research additional search firms for consideration by the board.
All three board members agreed that while they do not intend to rush the hiring process, time is of the essence given the number of in-progress projects the agency has to contend with in the near future. Jackson said the plan is for no major changes or purchases to take place until a permanent manager has been hired.
The goal is for us to keep the buses rolling until we can at least get an interim person in there, Jackson said. ... This is all new to us, as well. Were trying to step into this thing respectfully, thoughtfully, and with a great sense of trepidation.
What to Know A woman told Ashland police she was sexually assaulted Friday by an Uber driver after she refused his offer of $100 in exchange for sex.
37-year-old Jose Arevalos-Avalos, of Holliston, was charged with indecent assault and battery and attempting to pay for sexual conduct.
Arevalos-Avalos is being detained at the Ashland Police Department and is expected to be arraigned in Framingham District Court on Monday.
An Uber driver in Massachusetts has been arrested after police allege he sexually assaulted a rider after she refused his offer of money in exchange for sex.
Thirty-seven-year-old Jose Arevalos-Avalos, of Holliston, was charged with indecent assault and battery on a person age 14 or over and attempting to pay for sexual conduct following the Friday afternoon incident.
Ashland police were called around 3:30 p.m. to take a report of a sexual assault that had just occurred.
Authorities say the woman told police she was getting an Uber ride from Southboro to her job in Ashland when the driver offered her $100 for sex. Police say Arevalos-Avalos sexually assaulted her with his hand after she refused and later put the victim's hand between his legs.
Uber employees helped police identify the driver through the woman's Uber app, which showed the victim had ordered a gray Toyota Corolla with a driver named Jose.
The suspect also reportedly gave the woman his phone number as she exited the car and asked her to call him.
The phone number and the license plate of the vehicle led police to Arevalos-Avalos, who was arrested at his apartment on North Mill Street in Holliston shortly before 11 p.m.
An Uber spokesperson said in a statement, "This is deeply upsetting and has no place on the Uber app. The drivers access to the app has been removed and we are working with police to support their investigation."
Arevalos-Avalos is being detained at the Ashland Police Department pending a court arraignment in Framingham District Court on Monday. It is not clear if he has a lawyer who could respond to the allegations.
Firefighters in Woburn, Massachusetts, say they have had enough with poor conditions in their stations.
Woburn has five different stations, but the one in the worst shape is Station 3, according to their union president, Brian McLaughlin.
They've taken dead rats out of the ceiling and under the sink, cleaned up serious leaks coming from their doors and light fixtures, and even spotted several instances of mold. There's also a large crack outside that they believe could compromise the structural integrity of the building.
"We'd like a little help. You wouldn't want it at your house why would you want it at your workplace?" said McLaughlin.
They just got some open concept lockers, but not all the stations have them installed yet.
"Cancer is a big thing in the fire department, so worrying about mold and other things in our station when we have to worry about it occupationally, as well," said McLaughlin.
McLaughlin said these things have gone on for way too long in a city that is growing immensely.
"There's mold issues which the city continues to address they take down the sheet rock and replace it but the problem still exists," said McLaughlin.
The union president opened the doors to the fire station so we could get a look for ourselves. When our tour was quickly interrupted by a surprise visit from Woburn Fire Chief Stephen Adgate, he didn't shy away from all the challenges the fire department is facing.
"We are worried about it and we are trying our best to keep up with the deficiencies, and maybe to some people's satisfaction, it's not fast enough," said Adgate.
As a leader for the fire department, he hears the concerns from his men, and then works with the mayor to find solutions. He said he can't change what's happened in the past, but he's excited for the future. He said the city is close to announcing an architecture firm they are going to work with to build a new fire station. The city has also allocated $600,000 to a feasibility study to get things started.
Woburn is like dozens of other cities and towns trying to prioritize all their needs with limited budgets. Woburn's mayor sent us an email highlighting the fact they just built a $31 million library, and a $32 million elementary school, and just appropriated $600,000 to start the process for a new fire station.
Despite the plans for a new station, the firefighters are concerned about the conditions in the meantime.
"That's still, in our opinions, two years away, so what are we going to do today?" asked McLaughlin. "These guys still have to live here for the next two years or more."
Police say they have located a 15-year-old girl who was missing from Falmouth, Massachusetts.
Authorities asked for the public's help in locating 15-year-old Lacey Martin, who they said was a runaway child.
Martin had last been seen on Davisville Road around 6 p.m. on Friday night.
No other information was immediately available.
Police arrested a Massachusetts man Friday and charged him with carjacking and his third OUI.
Norwood Police say a woman reported being carjacked when she was getting into her vehicle. A man allegedly screamed at her to get out. She did, and police say the man got in and drove off.
Police began searching for a black Subaru, which authorities say the town's deputy police chief, Peter Kelly, spotted on Neponset Street while on his way home.
Authorities say the driver, identified as 44-year-old Timothy Kennedy of Norwood, got onto Interstate 95, making his way to Route 24 southbound.
Kennedy, who police said was not driving at excessive speeds, was taken into custody after stopping at Turnpike Street in Stoughton.
State police say Kennedy was charged with carjacking, operating under the influence of liquor, failure to stop for police and operating to endanger. Norwood Police say it's Kennedy's third OUI offense.
It was not immediately clear if Kennedy had an attorney. He is being held and is expected to appear in court Monday.
What to Know 40-year-old Allison Donovan was struck and killed Friday night while walking in a Somerville crosswalk with another woman.
Donovan was a teacher for Watertown Public Schools and was "loved by students and staff."
Police are looking for the pickup truck involved in the fatal crash.
The woman killed Friday evening in a pedestrian hit-and-run crash in Somerville has been identified as a Massachusetts teacher.
Allison Donovan, 40, of Somerville, was struck and killed while walking in a crosswalk with another woman, according to the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office.
Police responded around 7:15 p.m. Friday to the intersection of Powderhouse Boulevard and Hardan Road where they say someone in a pickup truck hit two women who were using the crosswalk.
The victims were taken to Mount Auburn Hospital where Donovan was pronounced dead. The other woman was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and released from the hospital.
Donovan was a "long time educator and administrator in the Watertown Public Schools," according to a statement from the city's school department.
Two parents who knew Donovan tell NBC10 Boston that she was a wonderful teacher who brought joy to her students.
The school echoed that in their statement, saying, "It is with great sadness that we learned of the unexpected death of Allison Donovan...who was loved by students and staff. She brought invaluable knowledge, insights, compassion, and dedication to the district and was passionate about providing students with the best education possible. She will be greatly missed and our thoughts and prayers go out to her family and friends at this most difficult time."
The Watertown School Department says they have a well-developed protocol that will be followed to support staff and students in the wake of Donovan's death.
A memorial started growing Saturday afternoon at the scene of the fatal crash. Alise Gobron and her daughter Amber placed balloons and flowers, saying it's a really sad situation.
"There's stories about her cartwheeling down the halls when the kids won a prize by reaching a school goal," said Rebecca Fuentes, a coworker of Donovan's.
Meanwhile, Somerville police are looking for a newer model, full-size, black pickup truck with front-end damage to the driver's side. The vehicle has a black cover over the bed of the truck and is possibly a Ford F-150.
George Letorney, who lives just feet from the crosswalk where the crash happened, didn't see the driver but did see all of the emergency lights.
"To go ahead and drive away, I can't fathom that," he said.
Anyone with information is asked to call police at 617-625-1600, ext. 7250.
The crash is being investigated by the Middlesex District Attorney's Office and the Somerville Police Department.
Saturday marks 15 years since a University of Massachusetts Amherst student crashed her car in New Hampshire and was never seen or heard from again.
On the eve of the anniversary of Maura Murray's disappearance, her dad tells NBC10 Boston he's the closest he's ever been to finding his daughter's remains.
"Anybody that ever had a kid in the history of the planet knows how I feel," Fred Murray said in an interview Friday. "It can't go away."
On the night of Feb. 9, 2004, Maura Murray crashed her car into a snowbank along a country road in Woodsville, New Hampshire, and vanished without a trace.
"When you're with someone every day and then they're gone, it's unimaginable," said Maura's older sister, Julie Murray.
Maura Murray's family has been searching for answers ever since she disappeared, and now, her dad has news to share.
"I've finally got so close. I'm standing on my daughter's grave I believe," Fred Murray said.
In early December, he paid for two cadaver dogs and a radar specialist to search a private property near the crash.
"They both had positive findings for a cadaver, buried under where they sat down, in the same spot," he said.
Murray says he wasn't able to search this property until a new family moved in. He tells NBC10 Boston that the previous owner denied him access.
"He would just never answer the door," Murray said.
As part of the search agreement with the new owner, Murray promised he would not publicly disclose the exact location.
He believes his daughter is buried in that cellar.
"We're so close, to reach out, and if the cement wasn't there, I would start scratching with my hands and dig. I would, Murray said.
Maura Murray was a star athlete from Hanson, Massachusetts, studying nursing at UMass Amherst.
It was around 7 p.m. that February night when, according to her family, a bus driver saw her crashed car, and stopped to help, but Murray waved them along.
"He said, 'Do you need help?' and she said, 'No, I already called AAA,'" Julie Murray explained. She says that witness called police, but by the time officers arrived, Maura Murray had vanished.
The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office says it's aware of Fred Murray's recent alleged discovery in the nearby basement.
In an email to NBC10 Boston, Associate Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin said, "We are aware of the allegations regarding a home's basement in that area and have considered and are considering next steps. That area was searched by law enforcement in the past, including with dogs, and nothing of significance was discovered."
Murray says he doesn't believe them.
"I would've heard about it," he said.
Murray is calling on New Hampshire State Police to go back into that house.
But in his desperate quest for closure, he says, if necessary, he'll find a way to do it himself.
"I'll fund it, I'll do anything," Murray said. "It's my daughter, I want to bring her home and bury her, and then I want to find the dirtbag that put her there."
The Murray family is asking everyone, everywhere to join them in lighting a candle at 7:30 p.m. Saturday to show Maura that the search continues.
Posted Friday, February 8, 2019 4:09 pm
A male subject was found dead in a vehicle along Interstate 5 in the Toledo area Wednesday evening, according to the Lewis County Sheriffs Office.
The cause and manner of death, as well as the persons identity, are still to be determined, according to a sheriffs office press release.
Deputies and Washington State Patrol troopers, at 5:16 p.m., were dispatched to the area of milepost 60 on southbound I-5 after an employee with the Washington State Department of Transportation discovered the vehicle.
The vehicle was pulled over to the shoulder of the interstate and the sole passenger appeared to have head trauma, according to the press release.
Deputies were able to gain entry to the secured vehicle and determine the male was deceased, reads the press release.
The sheriffs office is not seeking any involved individuals, according to the release, which indicates no further information will be released at this time.
Anyone with relevant information is encouraged to contact the sheriffs office at 360-748-9286 or Lewis County Communications at 360-740-1105.
The new vice chairman of a Maryland legislative committee will deploy to Afghanistan 10 days before the legislative session closes.
The Daily Record reports that Sen. Will Smith announced Wednesday that he's been called up to active duty effective March 29. The Montgomery County Democrat is an intelligence officer and member of the U.S. Navy Reserve who will deploy as apart of Operation Resolute Support.
Smith holds a leadership role in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. His announcement came the day after Senate Republicans secured rule changes that prevent shuffling committee membership during the session and will prevent Smith from being temporarily replaced.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. has warned his chamber that a number of bills don't have a veto-proof majority of 29 votes.
The man who shot and almost killed a Virginia police officer in 2013 and was released from a mental hospital last year has been arrested on multiple charges including arson and possession of a firearm.
Kashif Bashir, 33, was arrested Friday in connection to two separate incidents on Wednesday, Prince William County Assistant Fire Chief Matt Smolsky told News4.
Smolsky said Bashir faces three felony charges, including burning or destroying a dwelling or house and two charges for trying to burn personal property. He also faces two misdemeanor charges of an acquitted insane person in possession of a gun.
In June 2018, Circuit Court Judge James Clark ruled Kashif Bashir could move from the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute into an apartment in Prince William County where he would have frequent visits from a mental health team.
Alexandria Police Officer Peter Laboy was on motorcycle patrol in Old Town Feb. 27, 2013, when he tried to pull over Bashir for suspicious activity. Bashir shot Laboy in the head, then led police on a chase before he crashed and was arrested in the Mt. Vernon area.
But Bashir, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, was found not guilty by reason of insanity after trial evidence showed a voice in his head commanded him to shoot Laboy.
Because of his injuries, Laboy had to retire from the job he loved.
Supporters in police uniforms or Laboy Strong shirts were with him in court in June, when Bashir was granted a conditional release.
Everybody says, How you doing? he said. I tell everybody, I'm still here.
Mental health professionals told Clark that Bashir had been symptom-free for at least three years and no longer heard the voices that once told him to rape a woman and shoot a police officer. He was gradually given more privileges.
"He responded so well to treatment, said Dr. Ashley Harron, the forensic evaluator at the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute. There would be no need to hospitalize him if there hadn't been this really horrific act.
Alexandria Commonwealths Attorney Bryan Porter asked the judge to reject the request.
He needs to be monitored on a daily basis by mental health professionals and not left to his own devices, Porter said.
Porter reminded the judge of Bashir's words to police after he was arrested, suggesting his actions were not fueled entirely by schizophrenia.
"He told officers he decided to have some fun, rape a girl, get a gun and shoot a police officer, Porter said.
He added, "Freedom is incompatible with public safety."
Bashirs release came with conditions. The mental health team was required to visit Bashir at least three times a week, including two times in his home. He couldn't travel 50 miles beyond his apartment. And he couldn't own or drive a car.
There are going to be a lot of eyes on you, the judge told Bashir last year, warning him that if he doesnt follow the plan he would lose his freedom.
Bashir was also ordered to spend at least 40 hours a week in programs set up through the Community Services Board.
"This is another small step, defense attorney Emily Beckman said. It's not a huge jump."
I feel good about that, the more restrictions, that feels better, Laboy said.
But he said he'll continue to worry about what could happen if Bashir's mental health declines again.
I'm concerned about my family, me, other officers, he said. I can't really forget about that.
Under questioning by Chief Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Molly Sullivan, doctors admitted Bashir had broken the rules at least once during an earlier phase. He'd been given permission to go to a mosque for services but instead was seen leaving a movie theater with a female friend. Bashir initially lied about what had happened. He lost privileges for a time, but they were later restored.
Correction (Feb. 9, 2019 at 8:58 a.m.): An earlier version of this story inaccurately stated the day that Laboy and his supporters were in court. This article has been updated.
A local federal whistleblower is raising questions about the welfare of K-9s deployed overseas through a State Department program intended to help other countries fight terrorism complaints that have caught the attention of multiple government oversight officials, News4 has learned.
Dr. Karen Iovino, a veterinarian who until 2017 worked for a private contractor that trains the explosive detection K-9s in Virginia, is calling for the U.S. government to impose tougher oversight of the dogs once deployed in the war on terror.
At issue is the State Departments Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program (ATA), which provides training and equipment to law enforcement agencies in more than 150 countries. As of September 2018, at least 100 explosive detection K-9s have been granted to six partner countries through the ATA program, according to a State Department official.
The U.S. provides training to the recipients of the explosive detection canines. But in a federal complaint filed with the State Departments Office of the Inspector General in August 2017, Iovino alleges that, once leaving U.S. control, some of the K-9s given to foreign governments are dying due to medical conditions and lack of veterinary care, as well as poor working conditions.
Unfortunately, we're sending dogs to an area of the world that has a lot of poverty and doesn't always see dogs or animals the way we do in the United States, she told News4. If we're going to gift a dog to these countries, we've gotta be sure they're taken care of.
Iovino provided the I-Team with an internal email from a former colleague indicating one dog sent to Jordan died of suspected heat stroke in July 2017. She also provided photos of underweight K-9s she alleges were taken by a former contractor visiting the K-9s overseas photos News4 could not independently verify.
Her allegations have sparked multiple federal inquiries. The State Departments inspector general has confirmed to News4 that its reviewing the health and welfare of explosive detection K-9s sent overseas.
The IG, as well as the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, are also reviewing Iovinos whistleblower complaint. In the filing, she alleges the private contractor, MSA Security, terminated her after she brought her concerns about the K-9s and other matters to the State Departments Office of Acquisitions Management.
MSA Security declined comment to News4, citing a confidentiality agreement with the Department of State, but court records show it vehemently rejects Iovinos accusations pertaining to the reason for her dismissal. The contractor is appealing a July 2018 decision by the State Department IG that found it committed retaliation against her after she made protected disclosures.
In an August 2018 letter made public in court records an attorney for the contractor blasted the IG investigation and said Iovinos position was eliminated because the Department of State had placed increased emphasis on monitoring the well-being of the overseas K-9s and created a position for a new veterinarian that would travel to provide care. Iovino, the attorney wrote, was not qualified for that position.
MSA and the government can readily rebut Iovinos retaliation charges, the attorney stated.
Last December, former House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy issued a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, requesting documents outlining the State Departments oversight of the Winchester-based Canine Validation Center, as well as governmental agreements between State and recipients of K-9s through the ATA program.
Staff for the committees new chairman, U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., have since reached out to Iovino, though its unclear whether the committee will pursue the issue.
The State Department confirmed its aware of Iovinos complaints but declined an interview about the ATA program, and the Embassy of Jordan in Washington, D.C., has not yet responded to multiple News4 requests.
Reported by Scott MacFarlane and Katie Leslie, produced by Katie Leslie, and shot by Steve Jones and Jeff Piper.
A second woman has accused Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault, saying the two were students at Duke University when Fairfax allegedly raped her.
Lawyers for the woman, Meredith Watson, said in a press release Friday that the alleged assault happened in 2000 and was "premeditated and aggressive."
Watson is now calling for Fairfax to resign, the release said.
Fairfax denied the accusation and gave the following response:
I deny this latest unsubstantiated allegation. It is demonstrably false. I have never forced myself on anyone ever. I demand a full investigation into these unsubstantiated and false allegations. Such an investigation will confirm my account because I am telling the truth," Fairfax wrote in a statement to News4.
"I will clear my good name and I have nothing to hide. I have passed two full field background checks by the FBI and run for office in two highly contested elections with nothing like this being raised before."
Virginia's attorney general is the latest of the top elected officials in the state to face a scandal. He said Wednesday that he once wore blackface. News4's Julie Carey has the latest details from Richmond on Gov. Ralph Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring.
Watson is the second woman to accuse Fairfax of sexual assault. Vanessa Tyson, a political science professor on leave from Scripps College in California, accused Fairfax earlier this week of sexually assaulting her in a hotel room at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Fairfax has denied that account, saying that when he was 25, he had a "100 percent consensual" encounter with a woman he met at the convention.
On Friday, lawyers for Watson said she shared her account with friends via email and Facebook messages and said they have statements from former classmates saying Watson told friends about the assault.
"The details of Ms. Watson's attack are similar to those described by Dr. Vanessa Tyson," Nancy Erika Smith, an attorney for Watson, wrote.
A second woman has come forward accusing Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault. Fairfax says the claim is "demonstrably false" and he has "nothing to hide." News4's Julie Carey reports.
Virginia Del. Patrick Hope, a Democrat who represents the 47th District in Arlington County, said he will move to impeach Fairfax on Monday if he has not resigned before then.
"I believe these women. He needs to resign immediately," Hope said in a news conference Friday night.
Hope cited Virginia's constitution, which states that the lieutenant governor can be impeached due to "malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty, or other high crime or misdemeanor."
"There's no question that violent sexual assault clearly qualifies as a high crime," Hope said.
Hope said the House of Delegates would have to grant him unanimous consent to move forward with legislation for impeachment.
Virginia House and Senate Democrats issued a joint statement saying Fairfax should step down.
"Due to the serious nature of these allegations, we believe Lieutenant Governor Fairfax can no longer fulfill his duties to the Commonwealth. He needs to address this as a private citizen. The time has come for him to step down."
The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus joined the call for his resignation later Friday.
"In light of the most recent sexual assault allegations against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus believe it is best for Lt. Governor Fairfax to step down from his position. We remain steadfast in our conviction that every allegation of sexual assault or misconduct be treated with the utmost seriousness," the VLBC said in a statement.
"While we believe that anyone accused of such a grievous and harmful act must receive the due process prescribed by the Constitution, we can't see it in the best interest of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the Lieutenant Governor to remain in his role."
By late Friday night, nearly every Democratic elected leader in the state had called for Fairfax to resign.
I believe Dr. Vanessa Tyson.
I believe Meredith Watson.
And I believe Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax must resign. Rep. Jennifer Wexton (@RepWexton) February 8, 2019
"The allegations against Justin Fairfax are serious and credible. It is clear to me that he can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia as Lieutenant Governor. I call for his immediate resignation," Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said.
Smith said Watson came forward because of a "strong sense of civic duty" and is not seeking any financial damages.
Tyson first publicly accused Fairfax Wednesday and Fairfax has previously referred to that allegation as a political smear.
Both allegations of sexual assault come as Virginia's top three Democratic leaders are embroiled in scandal. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam continues to face calls to resign after he first admitted Feb. 1 to being in a racist photo displayed on his 1984 medical school yearbook page. Northam later walked back that admission, saying he was not pictured in the photograph.
On Friday, Northam told his top staff that he is not going to resign, according to a top administration official.
And on Wednesday, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said he wore blackface in college.
Attorney General Mark Herring says he dressed in blackface in 1980, further shocking Virginians after pressing calls for Gov. Northam to resign and a sexual assault allegation came out against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax. Lawmakers reportedly cried as Herring detailed past actions. News4's Aaron Gilchrist reports live from Richmond.
Stay with News4 for updates to this developing story.
Renowned oceanographer and founder of the University of California, San Diego, Walter Munk has died at the age of 101, the university announced Friday.
Munk made ground-breaking discoveries in oceanography and gave Allied forces a strategic advantage in WWII, according to an obituary posted by Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO).
"Munks contributions to science throughout the latter half of the 20th Century and into the present century were measured not only in terms of the new knowledge his research yielded, but in the quality and diversity of the questions he considered. An ethos he expressed throughout his career was for scientists to take risks, pursue new directions, and embrace the educational value of failure," the obituary read.
The institution said Munk passed away at his home in La Jolla.
SIO said that Munk, Austrian by birth, moved to La Jolla in 1939 to pursue a romantic interest. He applied for a summer job at Scripps in 1939 and, despite the romance never materializing, stayed in La Jolla, served in the U.S. Army, and eventually earned his Master's degree.
Munk served with the 146th Field Artillery, 41st Division at Fort Lewis, Washington. He was recalled by Scripps' then-director Harald Sverdrup and returned to Point Loma to work at a U.S. Navy Sound and Radio Laboratory.
He and Sverdrup worked together to develop a way to predict wave conditions for Allied amphibious landings in the Pacific and Atlantic theaters of war.
"The meteorologists they trained correctly predicted that the waves troops would face taking the beach in Normandy would be high but manageable," his obituary said.
Munk received a PhD in Oceanography from UCLA after WWII.
Read Munk's entire obituary here.
Parents who turned to the San Diego community for help raising funds for their toddler's $45,000 surgery say they now have enough to pay for it.
NBC 7 and Telemundo 20 first introduced baby Malakai last Thursday.
His parents, Stephany and Marco, said their insurance didn't cover a fifth -- and possibly final -- surgery their son needed to correct problems caused by a condition called Mercedez Benz Syndrome. The condition affects the skull's ability to keep up with the growth of the brain.
The back of his head is flat. His head is growing [abnormally], Stephany explained. So this doctor, what he plans to do, is reshape his whole head, open up the skull bones in the back. He said that if everything goes well, this should be his last surgery."
Stephany and Marco set up a GoFundMe account and held a community fundraising event last Friday in Chula Vista. After the event, they told NBC 7 they had enough money to make what can be considered a down payment on Malakai's procedure.
Then on Tuesday their big break came. Someone who saw Malakai's story on NBC 7 made a $9,000 donation to put the family at their $45,000 goal.
According to his mother, Malakai suffered Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy at birth due to lack of oxygen. Doctors had to resuscitate him in the delivery room.
When he was in the NICU fighting for his life, I said OK, Stephany. You have to put whatever youre feeling aside, because you have to fight for your son, Stephany said behind teary eyes.
"He came back, you know. I can cry, I can let go of these emotions, I can feel the strength inside me that he is giving me, Marco said.
Together, Marco and Stephany have held Malakais hand through four surgeries, including three on his skull, and have had hands-on responsibilities in his care that are hard for most parents to imagine.
Baby Malakai was given a feeding tube during his first surgery. His second left him with two screws protruding from the back of his head which his parents had to manually turn once a day.
"It was scary when they told us, Stephany said. I cried because I was like, How am I going to turn screws coming out of my sons head once a day? That's crazy. But we got through it.
The two screws were removed individually during his third and fourth surgeries.
A San Diego County Sheriff's Department (SDSO) deputy was arrested by Oceanside police after a domestic violence incident, the sheriffs department confirmed.
The SDSO said Deputy Corey Petruzziello, 32, was arrested Friday afternoon and booked in the San Diego Central Jail on one count of felony corporal injury on a spouse.
The department said it will conduct an internal affairs investigation of the incident.
No other information was available.
Editor's Note: On Feb. 19, 2019, the San Diego County District Attorney's Office said no charges would be filed in this case. "We can only file charges when we believe we can prove them beyond a reasonable doubt," a statement from the DA's office read.
Dressed in uniform and accompanied by the most darling dates, U.S. service members filed into a ballroom at a San Diego hotel Friday for a father-daughter dance that means everything for families who cant always be together for the big or little things.
The Armed Services YMCA San Diego hosted its 13th annual Father-Daughter Dance at the Town and Country Resort in Mission Valley, an event designed to support family bonding among active-duty dads and their daughters.
The ballroom boasted tables covered in fancy linens, a dancefloor with colorful lights, and a photo station, but, most of all, the room was filled with smiles.
A couple of those smiles belonged to U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Sergio Torres and his 3-year-old daughter, Sophia Torres. This was their first time going to the Father-Daughter Dance.
We dont have a lot of time together just us so this is an opportunity to be with my daughter, Torres told NBC 7. I love this; you dont really get moments like this, so its the little things that matter. Going out with her like this is what keeps me going.
Torres is stationed in San Diego, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. The ships homeport is NAS North Island, and this is the first time Torres has been docked at the same time as the Father-Daughter Dance.
Thus, his Friday night plans were set in stone: take Sophia out for a night on the town.
His little one wore a fuchsia-colored dress perfect for twirling. She tested it out quite a few times as she showed her dad her dance moves. She finished with a ladylike curtsy.
Torres said being deployed and away from his wife and two young daughters takes a toll on his family emotionally. He often wishes he could be home to enjoy the day-to-day things that come with being a parent.
Its difficult. You have to miss birthdays and holidays and special occasions with them, he told NBC 7. It gets tough sometimes it gets a little depressing but you have to remember youre out there, doing something better for them.
For Torres, the dance was a chance to do just that.
Something thats close in bonding like this is beneficial for both of us it helps us build a father-daughter relationship, he added.
SERE West Officer in Charge U.S. Navy Commander Nate Anderson was one lucky man at the dance. He had two dates one on each arm daughters Caitlyn Anderson, 12, and Morgan Anderson, 9.
Anderson has been in the Navy for 22 years and said he brings his daughters to this dance whenever hes not deployed. This was their third time there.
Its an outstanding experience to spend time with my daughters, Anderson told NBC 7.
Caitlyn and Morgan agreed.
Its really great, this is a chance to come together and bond, said Caitlyn.
Morgan said the best part was getting to go out with both her big sister and her dad.
I love them so much, she said. We can just talk together and spend time with each other.
Caitlyn told NBC 7 the days at home without her dad can be tough but the second he returns, her family feels whole again.
Sometimes, it can get really sad, but when hes back, its like the best experience ever, she said. It makes me really happy.
Armed Services YMCA Executive Director Tim Ney said the Father-Daughter Dance is open to all branches of the service. He hopes the event is unforgettable for military families.
Its a way for fathers to create memories with their daughters, Ney explained.
The Armed Services YMCA said more than 200 fathers and daughters would attend this years dance.
The non-profit organization is dedicated to giving military members and their families support and resources to be resilient, connected and secure. The San Diego group serves more than 66,000 military and family members each year. Learn more about the organizations work here.
Okay, let's be honest here for a second. Did I know Shiners Club existed before I saw their flier for tonight's show at Tower Bar? No. I did not. But anyone who grew up in the '90s adjacent to the hardcore scenes in Southern California saw their share of shows with 411, Outspoken, Mean Season and the Vandals. Do I care who from Shiners Club came from which band? No. I do not. All I need to know is we're staring down three decades later, and these guys are still touring and sound as crushing as ever. Around town, don your finest mod duds for the Woggles at the Casbah , Tijuana Panthers play their second night at Soda Bar and Art Laboe -- who was just given the inaugural 92.5 Magic Lifetime Achievement Award -- hosts his annual super love jam with R&B favorites at Pechanga Arena.
Weather Alert
...VERY HOT TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED BY THE END OF THIS WEEK AND THROUGH THE WEEKEND INTO EARLY NEXT WEEK... A strong high pressure system will build over the Pacific Northwest by the end of this week and will continue through the weekend into early next week. Strong air subsidence and adiabatic heating of sinking air will result in record high temperatures from Friday through at least Tuesday in most areas. ...EXCESSIVE HEAT WATCH IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH TUESDAY EVENING... * WHAT...Dangerously hot conditions with temperatures up to 108 to 114 possible. * WHERE...In Washington, Lower Columbia Basin of Washington. In Oregon, Lower Columbia Basin of Oregon. * WHEN...From Friday afternoon through Tuesday evening. * IMPACTS...Extreme heat will significantly increase the potential for heat related illnesses, particularly for those working or participating in outdoor activities. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...There is some possibility that all time record high temperatures will be reached or exceeded during this heat wave. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Monitor the latest forecasts and warnings for updates on this situation. Be prepared to drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air- conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors. Young children and pets should never be left unattended in vehicles under any circumstances. This is especially true during warm or hot weather when car interiors can reach lethal temperatures in a matter of minutes. Plan any outdoor activities during the early morning or during the evening hours when it is cooler out. &&
Virginia's Democrats struggled to find their way out of three interlocking political crises Thursday that could bring down the party's top elected officials and put a Republican in the governor's chair.
With Gov. Ralph Northam's career in peril over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook, the state attorney general acknowledged on Wednesday that he put on blackface when he was in college, and a woman publicly accused the lieutenant governor of sexually assaulting her 15 years ago.
While nearly the entire Democratic establishment rose up against Northam over the past week to demand he resign, party members largely withheld judgment on the two latest developments, which threaten to cause a political chain reaction that could make a GOP legislative leader the governor.
President Donald Trump accused the Democrats of a double standard, tweeting: "If the three failing pols were Republicans, far stronger action would be taken."
In a statement Thursday night, Virginia's Legislative Black Caucus reiterated its call for Northam to resign, but stopped short of calling for Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax or Attorney General Mark Herring to step down. Fairfax would become Virginia's second black governor if Northam stepped down.
The black lawmakers said the sexual assault allegation against Fairfax must be "thoroughly investigated." They also said that while they appreciated Herring's "candor" in admitting to wearing blackface, they "await further action on his part to reassure the citizens of the Commonwealth of his fitness for leadership." Many Democrats are likely to follow the group's cues.
Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University, had initially predicted Northam would be unable to hang on to office for more than a week. Now, with all three top Democrats in trouble, the equation has changed, he said.
He said it is possible all three could survive just out of political necessity because conservative Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox would be next in line for governor if they all resigned.
The Democrats' "moral clarity" last week has given way to the realization they could "lose power completely at the executive level," Kidd said. He likened the situation to three sinking boats "that suddenly lash themselves together and find they can float."
Several top Democratic female lawmakers in Virginia declined to comment Thursday on an allegation of sexual assault that California college professor Vanessa Tyson made against Fairfax. Tyson said Fairfax forced her to perform oral sex at a hotel in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Fairfax has denied the allegations, casting them as a political smear.
State Sen. Barbara Favola said "it's still a he-said, she-said" and suggested an investigation should be done in Massachusetts.
In Washington, Virginia's Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said he, too, would prefer to know more before reaching a conclusion. He said that the accuser offered "a very compelling and detailed statement of a serious, serious charge," while Fairfax has given "a very unequivocal denial."
Asked whether Northam should stay in office, Kaine replied: "No. We've reached a conclusion and we've made a recommendation."
Meanwhile, the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a fiery speech at historically black Virginia Union University that Northam and Herring must step down over their blackface admissions, and the allegations against Fairfax should be investigated thoroughly.
The civil rights leader said he came to Richmond to deliver a message to the governor: "I'm not going to be your minstrel!"
Members of the crowd of 300 students, faculty, clergy and political leaders shouted in agreement and jumped to their feet several times during Sharpton's speech.
The governor is under fire over the discovery of a photo on his yearbook profile page of someone in blackface standing next to a person in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe. Northam initially said he was in the photo, then denied it, but acknowledged putting shoe polish on his face for a dance contest in Texas in 1984, when he was in the Army.
On Wednesday, Herring, who had been urging Northam to step down, admitted wearing blackface to look like a rapper during a party when he was a 19-year-old at the University of Virginia in 1980. He apologized for his "callous" behavior.
Another scandal unfolded Thursday after The Virginian Pilot reported that a top Virginia Republican served as an editor for a college yearbook that includes racial slurs and at least one image of a person in blackface.
Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment was managing editor of the 1968 yearbook for the Virginia Military Institute.
The yearbook includes a photo of a man in blackface standing with others in costumes, and uses racial slurs to describe a student from Bangkok, Thailand.
Up to now, the Democrats nationally have taken an aggressive stand against misconduct in their ranks, in part so that they can criticize Trump's behavior without being accused of hypocrisy.
Democrats in Virginia have expressed fear the crises could jeopardize their chances of taking control of the GOP-dominated legislature this year after big gains in 2017.
Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer, Elana Schor, Denise Lavoie and Matthew Barakat contributed to this report.
Virginia's embattled governor says he wants to spend the remaining three years of his term pursuing racial "equity."
Gov. Ralph Northam told The Washington Post on Saturday that there is a higher reason for the "horrific" reckoning over a racist photograph that appeared in his medical school yearbook.
The 59-year-old Democrat gave his first interview to the newspaper since the photograph surfaced. The image shows a man in blackface beside someone in a Ku Klux Klan robe.
Northam denies being in the photo. He has admitted to wearing blackface at a 1984 dance party.
He told the Post that he overreacted by apologizing for the photo.
Northam has ignored widespread calls to resign. He said his experience puts him in a good position to explore the issue of "white privilege" and to pursue an agenda of racial reconciliation.
Still, a local NAACP leader says that even if Northam stays in office, he should prioritize policy that advances racial equality.
Phillip Thompson, the former president of the Loudoun County NAACP chapter, said that he does not expect Northam to resign.
"At this point, we need to see something concrete out of Ralph Northam besides a bunch of lip service where he shows up to a couple churches and a couple events, Thompson told News4. "Let's see some policies."
The man who would replace him, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, is staring down his own career-threatening controversy after two women accused him of sexual assault. Many Democrats have called on him to resign.
An NYPD dog waded into controversial waters on Saturday by picking a side in an ongoing Twitter debate between New York and Chicago police over which city has the best pizza.
In a video posted by NYPD Chief of Counterterrorism James R. Waters on Twitter, an Explosives Detection Canine named Abe was offered two different boxes: one with Chicago-style pizza and one with New York-style pizza.
Maybe we can settle this #NationalPizzaDay challenge once and for all with an indogpendent judge? #K9 Abe is an Explosives Detection Canine, but we think he can utilize his skills to help us decide which is the best pizza? @Chicago_Police @NYPDnews pic.twitter.com/twamXVPGwI NYPDCounterterrorism (@NYPDCT) February 9, 2019
The police dog ignored the Chicago-style slice, but started sniffing the box and wagging his tail when offered the New York-style slice, the video shows.
The debate between the two departments began when Chicago police tweeted about National Pizza Day.
Saturday is #NationalPizzaDay. How will you celebrate, Chicago? Deep dish, or ol fashioned thin crust? Either choice beats New York-style slices. Like/RT if you agree. pic.twitter.com/WxLAxnMsCr Chicago Police (@Chicago_Police) February 6, 2019
How will you celebrate, Chicago? Deep Dish, or ol fashioned thin crust? Either choice beats New York-style slices, the department wrote.
It didnt take long for the NYPDs official Twitter account to respond to the insult.
We recognize the slice of pizza on the right, but whats the one on the left? Is there pasta in it? https://t.co/uHo9a7No2w NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) February 6, 2019
We recognize the slice of pizza on the right, but whats the one on the left? Is there pasta in it? the department tweeted.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot F. Shea also weighed in.
Trick question. If it's not from New York, it's not pizza. https://t.co/AQd29v9997 Chief Dermot F. Shea (@NYPDDetectives) February 6, 2019
Trick question. If its not from New York, its not pizza, he wrote.
Does this count as impersonation under NY state law? the NYPDs account added.
Does this count as impersonation under NY state law? NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) February 6, 2019
On Saturday, Chicagos police department decided to test out some New York-style slices.
A few of our brave police officers from @ChicagoCAPS01 took one for the team and subjected themselves to NY-style pizza. The verdict: not bad, @NYPDnews. Not bad. Still doesnt beat Chicago! Happy #NationalPizzaDay pic.twitter.com/y52GxPj4QT Chicago Police (@Chicago_Police) February 9, 2019
The verdict? Its all right, one officer said. But its not Chicago.
A group of NYPD officers returned the favor with predictable results.
"The bad news is, your pizza didnt cut it," the NYPD tweeted. "The good news is, youre invited to New York for a slice on us any time!"
Ok @Chicago_Police, the bad news is, your pizza didnt cut it. The good news is, youre invited to New York for a slice on us any time! Happy #NationalPizzaDay, stay safe and warm! pic.twitter.com/1RS6iF38GY NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) February 9, 2019
Mayor Bill de Blasio's office also weighed in with a tweet.
The greatest pizza in the world can only come from the greatest city in the world New York City! #NationalPizzaDay pic.twitter.com/ZGUGxDFSCd NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) February 9, 2019
"The greatest pizza in the world can only come from the greatest city in the world New York City!"
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that she's pushed back a congressional trip to Afghanistan she was attempting to organize after the Trump administration leaked that she was trying to make the trip on a commercial airline.
Pelosi called the move, which the White House denies, "very irresponsible."
Asked by reporters if she thought Trump was retaliating for her request that Trump reconsider giving his State of the Union address at the Capitol, given that many government workers responsible for security aren't being paid, Pelosi said, "I would hope not. I don't think the president would be that petty, do you?"
Trump hasn't responded to Pelosi's State of the Union request, but a day later, on Thursday, denied Pelosi and other members of Congress a military plane to make the trip, citing the shutdown. He suggested at the time that she could still fly commercially if she wanted to.
Trump tweeted Friday that he would be making a "major announcement" about the shutdown on Saturday afternoon.
Senior American delegations to war zones are usually planned and executed under strict secrecy, since reporting those plans ahead of time would tip-off the enemy on where to attack high-value targets. Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement that Trump's revelation of Pelosi's travel plans on Thursday increased the danger to all involved.
Hammill said that the delegation had been prepared to make the trip commercially, but Friday morning, "we learned that the Administration had leaked the commercial travel plans as well."
The trip was postponed given "the grave threats caused by the Presidents action," Hammill said.
The White House said it had leaked nothing that would cause a security risk.
Asked about the denial, Pelosi said, "I rest my case."
For security reasons, Pelosi would normally make such a trip on a military aircraft supplied by the Pentagon. According to a defense official, Pelosi did request Defense Department support for overseas travel and it was initially approved. The official wasn't authorized to speak by name about the matter, so spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said the president does have the authority to cancel the use of military aircraft.
Pelosi said that, "You never give advance notice of going into a battle area, you just never do. Perhaps the president's inexperience didn't have him understand that protocol. The people around him, though, should have known that, because that's very dangerous."
Trump's initial letter his first public comments to or about Pelosi after she suggested Trump push back the State of the Union from Jan. 29 until after the end of the shutdown was sent just before she and other lawmakers were set to depart on the previously undisclosed trip to Afghanistan and Brussels. Trump belittled the trip as a "public relations event" even though he had just made a similar warzone stop and said it would be best if Pelosi remained in Washington to negotiate to reopen the government.
"Obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative!" Trump wrote.
Denying military aircraft to a senior lawmaker let alone the speaker, who is second in line to the White House after the vice president, traveling to a combat region is very rare. Lawmakers were caught off guard. A bus to ferry the legislators to their departure idled outside the Capitol on Thursday afternoon.
The political tit-for-tat between Trump and Pelosi laid bare how the government-wide crisis has devolved into an intensely pointed clash between two leaders both determined to prevail. It took place as hundreds of thousands of federal workers go without pay and Washington's routine protocols a president's speech to Congress, a lawmaker's official trip became collateral damage.
Hammill said that Pelosi was planning to meet with commanders and troops on the front lines in Afghanistan as part of Congress' oversight responsibilities. Her trip was initially scheduled for Brussels as well.
Trump's move was the latest example of his extraordinary willingness to tether U.S. government resources to his political needs. He has publicly urged the Justice Department to investigate political opponents and threatened to cut disaster aid to Puerto Rico amid a spat with the island territory's leaders.
Here are some of the top stories of the past week for the NBC 6 Weekend Digest:
Coyote in Weston Causes Concern
A coyote lounging in a Weston backyard caused concern and now the city is reminding residents to remain cautious.
The best thing to do when encountering a coyote is to leave them alone, as they are likely looking for food, according to DiPaolo. If hungry, coyotes may become agitated.
The coyote in Weston was likely fully grown.
For more information, click here.
Residents in Weston are concerned after a coyote was spotted in a neighborhood. NBC 6s Erika Glover reports.
Girl Reunited With Yorkie Stolen From SW Miami-Dade Home
An 8-year-old girl was reunited with the puppy she got for Christmas after surveillance video caught it being taken from the front yard.
NBC 6's Arlene Borenstein was able to bring Natalie Gonzalez and her beloved dog back together Tuesday morning. The beautiful moment was caught on camera.
For more information, click here.
NBC 6s Arlene Borenstein tells the story of how Mateo was able to be brought back to his family one day after an all out search began.
Record Number of Guns in Carry-Ons; Ft. Lauderdale Airport in Top 10
The TSA says screeners seized a record number of firearms from carry-on bags in 2018, and passengers at one South Florida airport were among the worst offenders.
A total of 4,239 firearms were discovered in bags at checkpoints across the country in 2018, an average of 11.6 firearms a day, according to numbers released by the TSA on Thursday.
Among the top ten airports where firearms were discovered in 2018, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International came in at No. 7, with 96 firearms seized including 80 loaded.
For more information, click here.
Adult Son Mistakenly Declared Dead, Loses Medicaid Benefits
When one local man's son was declared dead by mistake, he lost all of his critical benefits. NBC 6 Responds stepped in to help.
"Within 48 hours I received a call from DCF saying that Adryan was gonna be reactivated right away," the father said. "I didn't think it was gonna happen but, yeah, I was pretty shocked."
For more information, click here.
When one local mans son was declared dead by mistake, he lost all of his critical benefits. NBC 6 Responds stepped in to help.
The decorative artistry and intricate carvings on this Revolutionary War powder horn arent the only things that make it special.
The horn was owned by African-American soldier Gershom Prince and could be the only surviving one of its kind.
The rare artifact helps shed light on the little-known stories of African-American soldiers in the war, both freed and enslaved.
This is probably the only surviving powder horn of a black soldier who was killed in action, said Dr. Philip Mead, chief historian and director of curatorial affairs for the Museum of the American Revolution.
Prince, a free black man, served in both the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. He died fighting in the Wyoming Massacre of 1778 in Pennsylvania.
In both wars, Prince carried his spectacular powder horn.
It is a moving testament to the contributions of African Americans to the freedom of this nation at its inception, said Mead.
The horn is a cows horn and was used to store gunpowder. In addition to having Princes name carved into it, the horn also displays carvings of trees, forts, and other scenes of his everyday life.
To have it down here in Philadelphia where I now live and to know that many thousands of people are going to have the opportunity to see it is just thrilling to me, said Denise Dennis, a descendant of Princes family.
Dennis grew up in the Wyoming Valley hearing family stories about the powder horn and about Gershom Prince. She believes people who see the powder horn on display will find its artistry as inspiring as she does.
The horn will be on display at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia until the end of the year.
First, it was a heart-wrenching tweet that he and his wife were getting a divorce after 25 years. Then a tabloid revealed that he'd been having an affair, releasing texts and photos of him and his mistress.
As if either of those weren't distracting enough, now Jeff Bezos the world's richest man and CEO of Amazon is accusing The National Enquirer in a blog post of trying to blackmail him by threatening to release more intimate photos of him unless he calls off an investigation into how that information was obtained in the first place.
But despite the all-consuming personal drama, analysts and experts don't expect it to make much difference to Amazon itself, the company Bezos has steered from an online bookstore two decades ago to a worldwide juggernaut.
Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, estimates the impact on the company to be "0.000 percent."
"I'm certain investors won't care," he said.
Others point out that Bezos has been able to balance his responsibilities at the helm of the world's largest online retailer while also juggling his other pursuits: running a space exploration company and owning the Washington Post, one of the nation's most influential newspapers.
"He's extraordinarily driven," says Chris McCabe, who used to work at Amazon and now runs ecommerceChris, a consultancy for Amazon sellers. "He knows how to delegate."
Amazon has a steady line of longtime executives who are running each of its businesses, likely keeping investors calm.
Jeffrey Wilke, oversees the retail business, and Andrew Jassy runs the company's fast-growing cloud computing business Amazon Web Services. Both of them have been at the company since the 1990s. And unlike other CEOs, Bezos doesn't speak at conference calls with analysts and investors after the company releases its financial reports, leaving that to Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky, who has been at the company since 2002.
Still, that hasn't stopped the Enquirer from casting doubts over whether Bezos can effectively oversee his company.
"All of these (text) messages raise serious questions about Bezos' judgment as the CEO of the most valuable company in the world," the tabloid said in a Jan. 24 article.
Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. declined to comment on Bezos. The company's stock did not take a big hit, slipping 1.6 percent at Friday's close.
Meanwhile, the Enquirer's publisher, American Media Inc., is disputing Bezos' claims that it used "extortion and blackmail" in reporting its story, saying that it "acted lawfully."
In his blog post Thursday, Bezos defended his ability to lead Amazon: "I founded Amazon in my garage 24 years ago, and drove all the packages to the post office myself. Today, Amazon employs more than 600,000 people, just finished its most profitable year ever, even while investing heavily in new initiatives, and it's usually somewhere between the #1 and #5 most valuable company in the world. I will let those results speak for themselves."
He also said he wants to focus on work, noting that the person he hired to handle the investigation into how his texts were leaked to the Enquirer will also be tasked with "protecting" his time.
"I have other things I prefer to work on," Bezos wrote.
Bezos' indiscretions are seen more as a personal matter rather than one to do with the company, unlike Tesla's CEO Elon Musk, for example, whose behavior has caused the electric automaker's stock to rise and fall. Musk was recently stripped of his chairman title and forced to pay a $20 million penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly duping investors with tweets about a plan to take the company private.
"This is very much a matter of Jeff Bezos," says Neil Saunders, the managing director at GlobalData Retail, of Bezos' affair. "It's not really anything to do with running with the company."
David Larcker, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says it's up to shareholders and the board of directors to decide just how engaged a CEO is in their work, and whether they should go. Bezos is both chairman of the board and the largest shareholder, owning a 16 percent stake in the company.
Amazon's shoppers, meanwhile, are not likely to take notice.
"I think as long as people can get their Nespresso pods within 48 hours, they don't care," says Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU Stern School of Business.
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An advocacy group charged Friday that Alabama officials have failed to address a rising suicide rate in state prisons despite a federal court order to improve conditions for mentally ill inmates.
Attorneys representing inmates in an ongoing lawsuit over mental health care argued state officials have done "precious little" to address inmate suicides.
"People are killing themselves in our prisons because conditions are horrendous," Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen said at a news conference with the families of inmates.
The organization said there have been 13 suicides in 14 months, the latest one on Wednesday.
The Alabama Department of Corrections in a statement Friday said that the "recent spike in suicides within ADOC is an on-going concern and will be addressed by the ADOC."
Alabama Department of Corrections monthly reports list that they were four inmate suicides in the fiscal year 2017 and six in 2018.
In late December and January, there were three suicides within four weeks in the state prisons.
With their 8-year-old granddaughter beside her, Jerri Ford wiped away tears as she described the loss of her husband, Paul Ford.
"He was our everything, everything and we don't have him anymore. And it's not right," Jerri Ford said.
Paul Ford, 49, was found hanging last month from a bed sheet in his cell at Kilby Correctional Facility. He was serving a sentence of life in prison without parole following a murder conviction. In court filings, the SPLC said, Ford had a prior suicide attempt and spent much of the past year in a restrictive setting or on some form of crisis watch.
Jerri Ford said in the months before his death, she began to worry about her husband's mental state.
"He was seeing things, hallucinating. ... He was scared to go to sleep," she said.
Betty Head wore a jacket decorated with photos of her son, Billy Thornton, Jr., who officials say killed himself in prison. He was 32 and left behind a daughter.
"He was supposed to come home in September," Head said.
Inmate lawyers have asked a federal judge to block the state from placing prisoners with serious mental illnesses into segregation units or similar settings, where they said the extreme isolation becomes an incubator for worsening mental health symptoms. The judge responded by asking for the state to provide information on how many inmates are in such settings.
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in 2017 ruled that mental health care in Alabama prisons was "horrendously inadequate" and ordered the state to improve conditions.
While the SPLC contended the prison system has failed to deliver on its promises to the court, the department said the recent spike "calls into question the long-term effectiveness of the suicide prevention measures proposed by the SPLC" during the litigation.
"Our department is committed to providing appropriate care for those with mental illness and we have plans to address the conditions inside our prisons that hinder our ability to meet that commitment," Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn said.
Ivey is expected to announce a proposal soon to replace state prisons, possibly leasing facilities built by private firms. Dunn said a prison revitalization plan includes a new facility for mental health and medical care
The SPLC criticized the push for prison construction, saying the plan will be costly when the state faces a staff shortage. The department is seeking a funding increase to hire 500 additional corrections officers, but has told the court it may need to add as many as 2,000.
"Jamming thousands of people into some shiny new building will not solve the constitutional violations," Maria Morris, an attorney with the SPLC, said.
A state lawmaker said he believes the department is trying to address the problem, but "the data speaks for itself."
"There is no question the suicide rate is higher than it should be," said state Sen. Cam Ward, who chairs a prison oversight committee.
If you are in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting 'Home' to 741741.
Two teen girls were arrested on Friday in connection to a shooting death in Yucaipa, according to the San Bernardino Sheriffs Department.
Officers from the Yucaipa Police Department found the body of 24 year-old Ruben Franco Jr. with an apparent gunshot wound while investigating the case of a runaway 14-year-old girl. Homicide detectives were soon brought to the scene, where they noticed a 15-year-old girl was missing from the residence, along with the victim's car, the sheriffs department said.
The two girls are friends who knew the victim, according to Jodi Miller of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
Hours later, detectives received a report that the girls crashed the vehicle into a gas pump at a station in Buckeye, Arizona. The girls were then detained and sent to Juvenile Hall in San Bernardino, according to the department.
What to Know Cal State Long Beach students will provide free tax preparation assistance to low-income families.
When: Saturday, Feb. 9, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Where:1250 Bellflower Blvd. Long Beach at College of Business Computer Lab.
Students certified by the Internal Revenue Service from Cal State Long Beach will provide free tax preparation assistance to low-income families.
Over 90 English and Spanish speaking students will be able to assist families who make less than $54,000, disabled people, elderly people, students, non-residents and Spanish speaking people with preparing their taxes.
The one-day event is on first come first serve basis.
Here's what to know about the one day free tax preparation assistance event:
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren made her bid for the presidency official on Saturday in the working-class city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, grounding her 2020 campaign in a populist call to fight economic inequality and build "an America that works for everyone."
This is the fight for our lives, she said. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone. I am in that fight all the way.
Warren delivered a sharp call for change at her presidential kickoff, decrying a "middle-class squeeze" that has left Americans crunched with "too little accountability for the rich, too little opportunity for everyone else."
The rich and powerful use fear to divide us, Warren said. Were done with that. Bigotry has no place in the Oval Office.
She and her backers hope that message can distinguish her in a crowded Democratic field and help her move past the controversy surrounding her past claims to Native American heritage.
Weaving specific policy prescriptions into her remarks, from Medicare for All to the elimination of Washington "lobbying as we know it," Warren avoided taking direct jabs at President Donald Trump. She aimed for a broader institutional shift instead, urging supporters to choose "a government that makes different choices, choices that reflect our values."
Trump "is not the cause of what's broken," Warren told an elated crowd without using the president's name. "He's just the latest - and most extreme - symptom of what's gone wrong in America."
One thing missing from Senator Warrens speech was any mention of the ongoing controvery surrounding her claims of Native American heritage, an issue that re-emerged this past week.
I just dont think its a big deal, said Denise OConnor of Billerica. I understand how many of the Native American tribes could take offense to it.
In a tweet, Trump referenced the controversy over her Native American identity, once again using the insulting nickname he's given her.
"Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President,'' Trump tweeted. "Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!''
Asked to explain the tweet's reference to "the campaign TRAIL,'' the White House didn't respond.
Warren announced her campaign in her home state of Massachusetts at a mill site where factory workers went on strike in the early 20th century, a fitting forum for the longtime consumer advocate to advance her platform.
Supporters turned out in below-freezing temperatures, many hoisting signs "Win With Warren," one read. A Massachusetts bakery created "Persist" cookies for the event to honor the candidate's slogan, "Nevertheless, She Persisted," words first spoken in the Senate to rebuke her.
Warren's rollout rally was a potent motivator for longtime supporters such as Mo Malekafzaly and Carlos Garcia, two longtime backers who attended her rally from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
The choice of Lawrence to start her campaign "shows who she's fighting for," Garcia said. Asked if fellow New Englander Sen. Bernie Sanders could pose a serious threat to Warren in New Hampshire's critical primary should he get into the race, Garcia said Warren is "such an effective communicator that I think that people will respond to that very well."
Warren went straight from her kickoff to New Hampshire, home to the nation's first primary, where her campaign projected that 350 people turned out for an event in the city of Dover.
She attended a town hall meeting with potential voters, giving a more informal version of her Lawrence speech and taking questions from those in the crowd.
I think that her chances are very good, said Deborah Cebulski of Boston. I think that shes one of the strongest candidates out there.
Warren plans to spend Sunday in Iowa, where the leadoff caucuses will be the first test of candidates' viability.
Warren was the first high-profile Democrat to signal interest in running for the White House, forming an exploratory committee on New Year's Eve.
She was endorsed and introduced Saturday by Massachusetts Democrats Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Joe Kennedy III. Kennedy's backing could prove valuable for Warren, given his status as a rising young Democratic star and his friendship with one of her potential 2020 rivals, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas.
Warren enters the race as one of the party's most recognizable figures. She has spent the past decade in the national spotlight, first emerging as a consumer activist during the financial crisis. She later led the congressional panel that oversaw the 2008 financial industry bailout. After Republicans blocked her from running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she helped create, she ran for the Senate in 2012 and unseated a GOP incumbent.
She has $11 million left over from her commanding 2018 Senate re-election victory that can be used on her presidential run.
Still, Warren must compete against other popular Democrats who will be able to raise substantial money. A recent CNN poll found that fewer Democrats said they'd be very likely to support Warren if she runs than said the same of former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Sanders. Still, about as many Democrats said they'd be at least somewhat likely to support Warren as said the same of Harris or Sanders.
That challenge is on display this weekend as Democratic presidential contenders or those considering a run fan out across the crucial early-voting states. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is in Iowa, while New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is visiting South Carolina. Another possible presidential rival, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, planned to be in New Hampshire on Saturday, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar is announcing her bid Sunday in her home state of Minnesota.
And Warren's launch comes at a challenging moment for the 69-year-old senator. She's apologized twice over the past two weeks for claiming Native American identity on multiple occasions early in her career. That claim has created fodder for Republicans and could overshadow her campaign.
On Saturday, Trump's re-election campaign manager was quick to respond to her candidacy and called her "a fraud."
"Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected," Campaign Manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. "The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and crush America's middle-class. Only under President Trump's leadership will America continue to grow safer, secure and more prosperous."
Warren got notable backup from Gillibrand, however, who called her Senate colleague "an extraordinary public servant." Speaking to reporters in South Carolina, Gillibrand said Trump's treatment of women, particularly women of color, was "outrageous."
The campaign launch will test whether the controversy is simply a Washington obsession or a substantive threat to her candidacy. Doug Rubin, a Boston-based strategist who advised Warren during her first Senate run in 2012, said in an interview that most voters will respond to "the powerful message she's been talking about," in terms of battling social and economic injustices, rather than the back-and-forth over her personal identity.
Another threat could come from a fellow senator who has yet to announce his own plans for 2020: Sanders. They're both leaders of the Democrats' liberal vanguard, but some Sanders supporters are still upset Warren didn't support him during his 2016 primary run against Hillary Clinton. And as a senator from Vermont who won the New Hampshire primary, he would likely go into the Granite State as an early favorite if he decided to run again.
Sheri Clark Nadell, a Maine resident who traveled to Warren's New Hampshire event, said that while she likes Sanders and voted for him in his previous campaign, she is less inclined to do so now.
"I'm not sure, at this point, that he could win,'' Nadell said. "And I feel sad saying that. But we need to win.''
Despite their similarities, Warren and Sanders have taken somewhat divergent paths in recent months as they prepare for the primary. After proposing an "ultra-millionaire tax" that would hit the wealthiest 75,000 households in America, Warren told Bloomberg News last week that she continues to "believe in capitalism" but wants to see stricter rules to prevent gaming the system a marked contrast with the self-described democratic socialism of Sanders.
Associated Press writers Meg Kinnard and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.
A would-be victim's quick thinking got him out of a potentially dangerous situation in Red Oak Saturday.
Red Oak police were sent to the 200 block of Pinewood Avenue at 5:12 a.m. Saturday where they met with a man who told responding officers that he was almost robbed at gunpoint.
The victim told police that he had just gotten into his car in front of his home and was about to leave for work when a black SUV pulled in front of his car and two men exited the SUV.
The two men then walked towards the victim's vehicle and both pointed handguns at him.
The victim then put his car into reverse and quickly backed away from the two men. He then called 911 to report the incident.
According to police, the two men got back into the black SUV and fled the scene towards Ovilla Road.
About two minutes after the incident, officers located a possible matching vehicle at a gas station located at 100 Ovilla Road. A felony stop was conducted and two adult males and one juvenile inside of the vehicle were taken into custody without incident.
Further investigation revealed that the SUV had been stolen in Fort Worth and two handguns were recovered, one of which was stolen from Arkansas.
Ahmad Rashad Williams, 17, of Duncanville and Kobi Michael Cason, 17, have been charged and are being held at the Red Oak City Jail for their alleged involvement in the attempted aggravated armed robbery.
One juvenile was taken to Ellis County Juvenile Detention Center for his alleged involvement as well.
A woman died in a crash that injured one child and another driver Friday night.
According to Dallas police, at 8:06 p.m., a woman driving a Toyota Corolla was traveling eastbound on the 8000 block of Great Trinity Forest Way when she crashed into the front driver's side of a Volkswagen Jetta that was traveling northbound on Oklaunion Drive.
The driver of the Toyota was taken to the hospital with a broken leg and other major injuries. The driver of the Jetta was also transported to the hospital where she later died.
A child who was also inside the Jetta suffered major injuries and was taken to Children's Hospital and is in the ICU.
Police said no charges would be filed at this time and this investigation is ongoing.
Elevators are something many of us use without a second thought.
For a Fort Worth woman, a single ride proved to be one she'll never forget.
Rogena Wright says an elevator plummeted three floors in a matter of seconds at Texas Health Alliance Hospital in Fort Worth, where she worked as a nurse.
It was horrible. I was terrified, Wright said.
Wright, a nurse, was working the overnight shift as administrative supervisor in January 2018, when she says she stepped on an elevator heading to a meeting.
As soon as the doors closed, the elevator started rocking forcefully back and forth, she recalled. The next thing I know, the elevator just was rapidly falling just very, very fast.
Wright says the elevator went dark, fell three floors and crashed when it hit the bottom.
I thought I was going to die. I really did think that I was going to go home to heaven, Wright said.
Because of her injuries, Wright uses a cane to get around.
The nurse of 18 years says she's been unable to work and was let go from her job in November.
I fear for the future. I want to go back to work but I cant, she said.
Wright is now suing two elevator companies claiming one "failed to properly detect a dangerous condition in the elevator, and the other failed to properly maintain the elevator."
"I just want to make sure the elevators are working properly, Wright said.
Wright says she'll never step on an elevator again.
She says she prays that with more treatment, she can return to playing with her eight grandchildren again.
Wright is asking for more than a $1 million in damages.
One of the elevators companies told NBC 5 they can't comment on pending litigation.
We never heard back from the other.
Texas Health is not named in the lawsuit.
One man is dead and another injured after a shooting Friday night.
According to Dallas police, at 9:13 p.m. Friday officers were called to the 4700 block of Stokes Street for a shooting call.
When they arrived, they found 28-year-old Thomas Rodriguez and a 22-year-old man, who has not been identified, suffering from gunshot wounds.
Police said that a black male suspect shot both victims after a disagreement over a parking spot.
Rodriguez later died at the hospital and the second victim was in critical condition as of 8 a.m. Saturday.
The suspect, identified as 56-year-old Michael Hudson, turned himself into police Saturday afternoon.
What to Know Mansfield ISD officials say the warning was sent mainly to inform parents of the health risks associated with e-cigarettes.
In Tarrant County, prosecutors have said even THC-free CBD products could lead to a misdemeanor charge.
CBD makers are pushing back, saying Texas law is unclear. Urging law enforcement to wait for guidance from the state legislature.
The Mansfield Independent School District has issued a notice to parents, warning them that their kids could face felony charges for bringing CBD oil to school.
Parts of Mansfield are in Tarrant County, where NBC 5 Investigates has reported that prosecutors pledged to prosecute people for possessing CBD.
The warning was part of a memo to parents expressing concern about a growing number of teens using e-cigarettes, and even vaping products that contain CBD oil.
Some law enforcement officials insist the oil is illegal in Texas, despite the fact that it's sold in stores throughout the state.
"It's an offense, obviously, per state law. But you're going to be charged with a felony, as a child?" asked Misty Flores, the mother of five students in Mansfield schools, the oldest at Lake Ridge High School.
The school district's warning definitely got Flores' attention, especially the part about CBD and the risk of students possibly being charged with a crime.
Mansfield ISD officials declined to speak on camera, but told NBC 5 Investigates the warning was sent mainly to inform parents of the health risks associated with e-cigarettes.
However, the only section of the letter in bold print is the part that says, "Any student caught on school grounds with an e-cigarette that has been positively tested for CBD will be charged with a Class A misdemeanor."
And if the e-cigarette contains any THC, the intoxicating substance in marijuana, "that student will be charged with a felony."
CBD oil sometimes contains small amount of THC, but not enough to get high.
Still, some Texas law enforcement officials believe all CBD oil is illegal in Texas. And in Tarrant County, the district attorney's office says it will prosecute.
Last month, Larry Moore, a senior prosecutor in the DA's office, said: "It's illegal. And until the legislature changes that, it's going to continue to be illegal."
More recently, District Attorney Sharen Wilson continued to say the oil is against the law, but that her office would not devote a lot of resources to prosecute CBD cases.
CBD makers are pushing back, saying Texas law is unclear. They urge law enforcement officials to not take action until the state legislature gives more guidance.
"That's why it's critical that our legislators respond and take care of this problem simply by passing the hemp law," said Sheila Hemphill, program director for the Texas Hemp Industries Association.
Such passage, Hemphill said, would "harmonize our state law with the federal farm bill that just passed."
A bill is pending in the state legislature that would make CBD legal.
Flores said the school warning has motivated her to talk to her children.
"I'm definitely going to be talking to my kids about vaping, all of that with CBD oil," she said.
A proposed bill in Connecticut would require insurance companies to cover the costs of motorized wheelchairs for those who need them.
The concept hits close to home for one Norwich business owner.
Phil Pavone, owner of AZ Pawn in Norwich, is the founder of AZ Pawn Gift of Mobility. He has collected, refurbished and given away around 580 motorized wheelchairs and scooters for about a decade, saving people in need an estimated $2 million.
He gets overwhelmed and frustrated easily because he wants to take an active role in raising our children Pavone read from a letter a woman sent him about her husband. While he tries to remain positive and do the best he can, he is just existing, not living.
Pavone read that note to the Committee on Insurance and Real Estate Thursday in favor of proposed Senate Bill 15 that would require health insurance coverage of motorized wheelchairs, including used motorized wheelchairs, repairs to such wheelchairs and the replacement of batteries for such wheelchairs.
These chairs are a Godsend for these people, Pavone said.
Many times insurance wont provide a motorized chair, including to veterans, according to Pavone. Hes even helped a Holocaust survivor.
The Nazis actually broke her legs to the point that she cant walk and she was given a regular wheelchairbecause of her age, shes 90-something years old, she didnt have the strength to go anywhere, Pavone said.
Democratic State Sen. Cathy Osten, of Sprague, introduced the bill along with Sen. Steve Cassano and Sen. Heather Somers.
Osten submitted information to the committee from the Office of Legislative Research that read, Neither state nor federal law explicitly requires health insurance policies to cover motorized wheelchairs.
In a statement, Osten said, These are brave, independent people who are really in very bad situations who are not getting a lot of consideration and who do not have the resources to fight the insurance companies. Once a decision is made, they live with that decision.
For the bill to move forward, the committee would need to make a favorable recommendation by March 21.
Putnam police said they made a third arrest in connection with murder of Alice Marie Figueroa of New Britain Friday night.
According to police, Sharod Pipkin, 29 of Putnam, was served with an an arrest warrant at his business on Kennedy Drive. The warrant was issued for Pipkin after he was alleged to have assisted New Britain homicide suspect Benjamin Morales.
Pipkin attempted to flee police during the time of his arrest, but was apprehended shortly after. Police said they found Pipkin in possesion of a small amount of marijuana and a loaded handgun. He was charged with hindering prosecution and criminal possession of ammunition.
Pipkin, a previously convicted felon, is being held on $200,000 bond and is due in Danielson Superior Court on Monday, February 11.
Benjamin Morales remains at large and police are requesting anyone with information to contact police. Morales is considered to be armed and dangerous.
Earlier Friday afternoon, New Britain police announced they had found the woman who was reported missing and was believed to be with the suspect in the shooting death of another woman. Although Morales is still missing, police did make two arrests in connection with the homicide case.
Family members reported 31-year-old Virgen Maria Figueroa missing on Tuesday and told authorities they had not heard from her since around 5 p.m. on Monday. On Friday, police said Virgen Maria Figueroa was found safe. According to police, she walked into the police station.
In a release, police said she was believed to be with 42-year-old Benjamin Morales, the suspect in the death of Alice Marie Figueroa. According to authorities, Morales and Alice Figueroa were dating and have children together.
Police said Alice and Virgen are not related.
According to New Britain PD, Virgen Figueroa and Morales were also dating. They do not believe she was involved in the homicide and said they were concerned for her safety given the allegations against Morales.
Morales, who is 5-feet-6 and has brown hair and brown eyes, is known to frequent New Britain and Hartford and police warn that he is considered to be armed and dangerous and should not be approached.
He might still be in the Hartford area and driving an early model red Subaru Forester that is not registered.
Police said they have a warrant charging him with murder.
Police have arrested two relatives of a New Britain murder suspect as a woman reported missing and was with the suspect has been found safe.
Two other people have been arrested in connection with the murder and police said both suspects are related to Benjamin Morales.
Arrest warrants were served Thursday on 18-year-old Odalys Morales and 48-year-old Ramon Morales, both of New Britain. Police said they believe both misled them and/or provided assistance to the suspect.
Odalys Morales was charged with interfering and Ramon Morales was charged with hindering prosecution in the second degree and interfering.
Odalys was held overnight on a $100,000 bond and Ramon was a held on a $250,000 bond. They were in court Friday and the warrants have been sealed, according to police.
Yesenia, who did not want to reveal her last name, tells us she met Alice Figueroa when they were kids and celebrated birthdays together. She says her focus is making sure Alice's three young children know that she was a happy person, a hard worker, and someone who loved being their mom.
"Alice was an awesome, awesome individual," said Yesenia. "I'm going to tell them all the good things. I don't want them to have any bad memories of their mommy."
The family of Alice Figueroa released a statement Friday night:
"I First Want to Start By Thanking The New Britain Police for all their hard work and dedication in Alice's Case I'm aware that there are some individuals under arrest who they believe know about Mr.Morales I am Not Happy that these individuals are in there and not the man we want but I know that is a process that we have to go thru to get to Morales all I want is justice to be served for Alice she didn't deserve what happened to her I also want to Thank everyone for all their donations and prayers and support in this time of sorrow the family is going thru . Our Family just want closure so that Alice can Rest In Peace we Are Asking The Public If they know something Or see him to please Contact the police immediately and Do not approach this man he is armed and Dangerous. Thank you again to all those who have tipped the authorities and sharing his picture."
Anyone with information is asked to call the New Britain Police Department at 860-826-3000 or leave an anonymous tip by calling 860-826-3199.
On Saturday, people against a new the sign on Interstate 91 in North Haven advertising a weed dispensary in Massachusetts rallied for it to be taken down immediately.
The billboard reads Weed is legal 60 miles away and is sponsored by a California-based app called Weedmaps. The app helps its users find pot dispensaries.
Ken Welch of the Coalition for a Better Wallingford and others involved in community drug prevention efforts gathered in front of Outfront Media, the outdoor media company that put up the billboard in North Haven.
I think putting a sign up is just wrong. You know, youre enticing people to go to a neighboring state and buy marijuana, which is illegal here, and bring it back, said Welch. We dont do it anywhere else. Why are we allowing it for marijuana?
Just a mile north of the Weedmaps billboard, another one reads Treatment is closer, a response from Turnbridge, a nationally-recognized drug treatment provider based out of New Haven.
But Seymour resident Cody Roberts says cannabis was his treatment. Roberts was at the rally making his case, with a big cannabis flag in hand.
Ive been clean off pharmaceutical drugs since May 13, 2009, thanks to cannabis. Cannabis has saved my life, said Roberts. Its a safer alternative to a healthier way of lifestyle. Its a gateway to a better way of life. Its not a gateway to drugs. Its a better way to get off opiates.
Samantha Welch from Wallingford isnt so sure about that. She says her 8-year-old sons health is the reason she is concerned about a billboard that could encourage drug use without enough research.
His health, his wellness and being able to make an educated decision knowing what hes putting himself at risk for, said Welch. For me its not something you experiment with without the knowledge. You need to know what its going to do and how its going to affect you and without that, youre putting yourself at risk, as well as others.
Police served a search warrant Tuesday to get DNA from all male employees at a long-term care facility in Phoenix where a patient who had been in a vegetative state for years gave birth, triggering reviews by state agencies and putting a spotlight on safety concerns for patients who are severely disabled or incapacitated.
Hacienda HealthCare said it welcomed the DNA testing of employees.
"We will continue to cooperate with Phoenix Police and all other investigative agencies to uncover the facts in this deeply disturbing, but unprecedented situation," the company said in a statement.
Local news website Azfamily.com first reported the woman, who had been in a vegetative state for more than 10 years after a near-drowning, delivered a baby on Dec. 29.
San Carlos Apache officials announced Tuesday night that the 29-year-old woman was an enrolled member of the tribe, whose reservation is in southeastern Arizona about 134 miles (215 kilometers) east of Phoenix.
In a statement, tribal officials said the woman was still in a vegetative state when she gave birth.
The woman's name was redacted from the tribal statement. It's also unclear if staff members at the facility were aware of her pregnancy until the birth.
"On behalf of the tribe, I am deeply shocked and horrified at the treatment of one of our members," tribal chairman Terry Rambler said. "When you have a loved one committed to palliative care, when they are most vulnerable and dependent upon others, you trust their caretakers. Sadly, one of her caretakers was not to be trusted and took advantage of her. It is my hope that justice will be served."
A lawyer for the woman's family released a statement Tuesday saying the family was outraged at the "neglect of their daughter" and they asked for privacy.
"The family would like me to convey that the baby boy has been born into a loving family and will be well cared for," Phoenix attorney John Micheaels said in a statement.
San Carlos Apache Police Chief Alejandro Benally said Phoenix police "will do all they can to find the perpetrator" and his department will assist "in any way possible."
A spokesman for Hacienda HealthCare said investigators served a search warrant Tuesday to obtain DNA samples from all male staffers.
In a statement, board member Gary Orman said the facility "will accept nothing less than a full accounting of this absolutely horrifying situation."
"We will do everything in our power to ensure the safety of every single one of our patients and our employees," Orman said.
Hacienda CEO Bill Timmons stepped down Monday, spokesman David Leibowitz said. The decision was unanimously accepted by the provider's board of directors.
Gov. Doug Ducey's office has called the situation "deeply troubling."
Phoenix police so far have declined comment.
The Hacienda facility serves infants, children and young adults who are "medically fragile" or have developmental disabilities, according to the website. In the wake of the reports, the Arizona Department of Health Services said new safety measures have been implemented. They include increased staff presence during any patient interaction, more monitoring of patient care areas and additional security measures involving visitors.
The state's online complaint database for care facilities shows multiple complaints about Hacienda de Los Angeles going back to 2013. Most of them involve fire drill and evacuation preparation or Medicaid eligibility. But one complaint from December 2013 outlines an allegation that a staff member made inappropriate sexual comments about four patients two months earlier. Nobody relayed the incidents to an administrator. That employee was later fired.
Martin Solomon, a personal injury attorney in Phoenix whose clients are mostly vulnerable adult victims of abuse and neglect, said a lawyer representing this woman should call for all pertinent medical records, a list of current and ex-employees and any past litigation involving Hacienda. It would be the police who would lead DNA testing to figure out who fathered the baby, Solomon said.
It would be hard for Hacienda to escape any kind of liability in court.
"There's a lot of information we do not have. But things like this don't happen without someone either knowing about it or should have known about it," Solomon said. "Whether it's an employee or someone from the outside, the facility has an obligation to protect residents."
Advocates for the disabled say Arizona needs to find a way to monitor allegations of sexual abuse and sexual violence in group settings. Doing background checks isn't enough, said Erica McFadden, executive director of the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council.
"I think when you've had somebody who's had multiple allegations from different parties, there has to be some way to track that," McFadden said. "If it's the same story from different people, then there's something wrong."
The council recently formed a task force to look at how to improve training for health care workers when it comes to identifying and reporting sexual abuse.
"We don't have a systematic way to train people what's a good touch or a bad touch. We also don't have required training for providers," McFadden said. "We really need a lot of work in this area."
Jon Meyers, executive director of The Arc of Arizona, an advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, called the allegations "disturbing, to put it mildly."
"I wasn't there. I clearly don't have firsthand knowledge of what happened," Meyers said. "But I can't believe someone receiving that level of constant care wasn't recognized as being pregnant prior to the time she delivered."
A 60-year-old Army veteran is fighting for his life after he was robbed and brutally beaten in suburban Hazel Crest, outside of Chicago.
According to police, Keith Chamble, a U.S. Army veteran and a former correctional officer, is on life support after he was brutally assaulted during a robbery in his own driveway on Wednesday night.
They couldnt tell if he was hit with a bat, kicked, or punched, Shanae Cross, Chambles goddaughter, said.
The robbery occurred in front of Chambles home in the 16000 block of Orchard Ridge between 8 and 9 p.m. Wednesday night. A group of individuals, whom police are working to identify, assaulted Chamble and stole his car, cell phone, and other personal items.
Chamble was then able to get back into his home and collapsed on his couch, where his 19-year-old daughter discovered him several hours later.
The victims car was discovered several blocks away, and other personal effects have also been found, but police have been unable to identify a suspect in the case.
This is someone who spent his whole life protecting other people, Cross said. Youve stolen some moments, and some memories, that we wont have.
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Police, and Chambles family, are asking anyone with information on the case, whether its video or an eyewitness account, to contact authorities.
If youre scared of the police or you dont want to talk, we just want to kill this whole no snitching thing, Cross said. We dont have to tell people who you are.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Hazel Crest Police Department at 708-335-9640.
A federal appeals court has thrown out a 1994 attempted murder conviction, finding that an Indiana prosecutor concealed evidence by not disclosing that the state's sole eyewitness underwent hypnosis to sharpen his memory before testifying at trial.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago announced the decision in Mack Sims' case on Feb. 1.
Sims was sentenced to 35 years after he was convicted in Elkhart County in the shooting of security guard Shane Carey. The prosecution's case relied on Carey identifying Sims as the shooter and had no physical evidence linking Sims to the attack.
Sims appealed the conviction after learning in 2012 that Carey had undergone hypnosis before the trial.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a person who undergoes hypnosis could potentially fill memory gaps with fantasy or experience increased confidence in both accurate and inaccurate recollections.
The Northern District of Indiana court in South Bend denied Sims' appeal, stating that Carey had described and identified Sims multiple times before undergoing hypnosis. The appeals court rejected that reasoning, ruling that the suppression of evidence violated pretrial discovery rules.
"Considering the overall weakness of the prosecution case without Carey, the importance of his testimony, the explosive strength of the concealed hypnosis evidence, and the relatively mild impeachment of Carey that the defense managed at trial, habeas relief is required," the written order said.
The prosecutor who failed to disclose the hypnosis, Charles Wicks, declined to comment on the case. Wicks now is an Elkhart Superior Court judge.
The appeals court's decision is the latest rebuke of Elkhart County's criminal justice system. A northern Indiana police chief recently came under scrutiny after downplaying the beating of a handcuffed suspect by two officers.
Bond was denied for three people accused of the first-degree murder of a Naperville man who went missing a year ago.
Ernest Collins, 22, and his girlfriend, Cassandra Green, 21, both of Rockford, and his mother, Candice Jones, 38, of Chicago appeared in bond court Saturday morning for the murder of Michael Armendariz, according to the DuPage County states attorneys office.
On Jan. 18, 2018, Naperville police responded to a call about a missing person, Armendariz, 21, who prosecutors said was last seen the night of Jan. 14, 2018.
Armendariz reportedly received an electronic communication from Green at 9:11 p.m. that night. Authorities believe upon receiving the communication, Armendariz left his apartment in the 100 block of South Whispering Hills Drive and got into an SUV driven by Green in the parking lot of the apartment complex before Green drove off.
Collins allegedly emerged from the back several minutes later and shot Armendariz twice in the back of the head before the duo drove to Jones house in the 6800 block of South Artesian Avenue in the Marquette Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side. She helped place the mans body in a garbage can that was in her garage.
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The garbage can was later moved to the garage of the vacant house next door, prosecutors said. It is also alleged that Collins and Green took Armendarizs apartment keys and burglarized his apartment the next day.
Armendarizs body was discovered May 31, and an investigation was started by Chicago police, prosecutors said. The investigation led to Collins and Green being taken into custody Monday in Rockford, while Jones was taken into custody Wednesday in Chicago.
The trio was charged with one count each of first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and armed robbery, and concealment of a homicidal death, prosecutors said. Collins and Green were also charged with one count of residential burglary.
The investigation into the execution of an unsuspecting man is an outstanding example of law enforcement agencies working together, DuPage County States Attorney Robert Berlin said. Thanks to the truly outstanding work and cooperation of several law enforcement agencies, these three defendants, Mr. Collins, Ms. Green and Ms. Jones, find themselves before a judge this morning with first-degree murder for the pre-meditated murder of Michael Armendariz.
This investigation required intense resilience and diligence on the part of our detectives and law enforcement partners, Naperville Police Chief Robert Marshall said.
The next court appearance for the trio of defendants is scheduled for March 4 for arraignment.
The nations focus on the opioid epidemic may be overshadowing another major behavioral health issue: alcoholism.
Police tell NBC 5 Investigates their alcohol-related calls are increasing and rehabilitation specialists said the majority of new clients seeking treatment have an alcohol-related problem.
Because alcohol is legal and more socially acceptable and part of our culture, it has been a substance that has been misused more than other illicit drugs, said Dr. Karen Wolwonik Albert, executive director of Gateway Foundation.
Officer Donna OBrien of the Round Lake Park Police Department said she is responding to a fair number of calls involving alcohol, including domestic disagreements, fights and public intoxication.
Its been a problem all along and it continues to be a problem, said OBrien said. It tears families apart and it doesnt set a good example for small children.
NBC 5 Investigates filed records requests with Chicago area sheriffs departments and found DUI arrests are increasing in DeKalb, LaSalle, Kane and McHenry Counties. Additionally, Cook County Sheriffs deputies have nearly doubled their DUI arrests from 192 in 2016 to 370 in 2018.
Haymarket Center director Dr. Dan Lustig said 3,000 to 4,000 people die from alcohol every year in Illinois. He also said most of money used for prevention programs in Illinois has been exhausted.
It is important to get prevention education back into schools so that people can learn about drugs and alcohol, Lustig said.
Daryl Giacomini of Springfield said he received his fourth DUI arrest in November.
The car that was in front of me slammed on their brakes for whatever reason and I rear-ended them and I would never want to hurt anybody or anything else, Giacomini said.
Giacomini eventually entered treatment at Haymarket Center and is now attending regular AA meetings.
It impacted me very hard, my family very hard, Giacomini said.
Lucy Smith of Aurora said she was arrested for theft and spent time in prison as a result of her addiction to alcohol.
I didnt have probably as many arrests or charges that I should have had because I wasnt caught, Smith said.
Smiths last arrest occurred in 2011. She entered Kane County Drug Court and received treatment from the Gateway Foundation.
Smith is now sober and manages a fast-food restaurant.
I have a life today. I have friends and family and a job. Im accountable, Smith said.
Still, police said getting people the help they need is proving to be a challenge.
They will openly state that theyre not looking to get help, that this is who they are and theyre gonna continue on like this, OBrien said.
Lustig said he supports an increase in the alcohol tax.
It is geared and should be geared for treatment, Lustig said. But this is something we want to have immediate impact in saving lives.
Lustig said alcoholism costs the Illinois economy $9.3 billion a year in the form of lost work, health care costs and crime.
This is a medical disorder and we need to treat it as a medical disorder, Lustig said. This is an issue that has stayed silent far too long.
A Thai political party swore loyalty to the king Saturday, a day after its stunning decision to nominate the monarch's sister as its candidate for prime minister backfired when the king called the move inappropriate and unconstitutional.
The statement of fealty comes as the country ponders a Friday whirlwind in which Princess Ubolratana Mahidol broke with tradition proscribing the monarchy's involvement with politics to become a candidate for the Thai Raksa Chart Party, only to have her brother, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, invalidate her action with a late night order.
Thai Raksa Chart's statement said the party loyally accepted the king's order and expressed deep gratitude to Ubolratana for her kindness toward the party.
Ubolratana, who is active on Instagram, did not directly mention the king's order in a Saturday message, merely thanking people for their support and encouragement and insisting on her sincere desire to see Thailand progress with rights and opportunities for all its people.
Thailand's March 24 election will be the country's first since a 2014 military coup put in place a junta determined to reshape the political system to eradicate the influence of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose allies have won every national election since 2001.
So it was not only a shock that Ubolratana was formally entering politics, but also that she was doing so in alliance with a Thaksin-backed party. Her candidacy would have pitted her against the junta leader and current Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the preferred choice for premier of the pro-royalist military.
Thaksin was ousted by the military in a 2006 coup, and the country's establishment has spent more than a decade trying to neuter his political machine through court rulings, constitutional rewrites and other changes to the electoral system. In addition to deepening political divisions that have flared into protests and street violence, the campaign has had little success.
Just eight years after ousting Thaksin, the military stepped in again to remove his sister's government.
Thaksin remains wildly popular with the country's rural majority, who were drawn to his populist policies such as universal health care and rice subsidies and were willing to overlook accusations that he was enriching himself while in office. But Thaksin's popularity made the country's Bangkok-based establishment uneasy and some saw his popularity as a threat to the monarchy itself.
Thaksin, who went into exile in 2008 to avoid serving prison time on a conflict of interest conviction he insists was political, was generally believed to have been involved in setting up Ubolratana's candidacy. That shook the country's royalists, who have long seen their campaign against Thaksin as way to protect the monarchy.
It was widely assumed that Ubolratana, thought to be close to her brother, had at least received his approval for her action. What actually had happened behind the scenes is unlikely to become public, because the royal family's private affairs are almost never leaked.
Vajiralongkorn's order stressed that Thailand's constitution insists that the king and those around him stay above politics, and the principles of democratic government also put politics off-limits.
It directly addressed the point that his sister was a member of the royal family even though her formal royal titles had been lifted decades ago when she married a foreigner.
"Even though she relinquished her title according to royal laws ... she still retains her status and position as a member of the Chakri dynasty," the king's order said. "Bringing high-ranking royal family members to be involved in the political system, in any way, is an act that is against the ancient royal protocol and national custom and culture, and is seen as a highly inappropriate act."
Her candidacy had caused great excitement, because it offered the possibility of a strong challenge to Prayuth winning his job back. Her association with the monarchy was seen as making it difficult for royalists in parliament, which picks the prime minister, to vote against her.
Prayuth had been considered the front-runner, because changes in constitutional law and election rules were implemented by his government to make it difficult for political parties without military backing to capture the premier's post.
The royal order from Vajiralongkorn, read on national television late Friday night, caught by surprise newspapers that had already started their press runs with stories focusing on ramifications of Ubolratana's candidacy.
An early edition of the English-language Bangkok Post with the banner headline 'Political earthquake,' failed to report the aftershock of the king's order.
There had been warning signs before the king's order that Ubolratana's candidacy was vulnerable.
Hours after she was registered as a candidate, a political party supporting Prayuth filed an objection with the Election Commission, arguing that the action broke rules banning the use of the royal institution as part of a political campaign. Several other complaints followed, mostly from conservative royalists.
The Trump administration will waive environmental reviews to replace up to 14 miles of border barrier in San Diego, shielding itself from potentially crippling delays.
The Department of Homeland Security said it would issue the sixth waiver of Donald Trump's presidency under a 2005 law that empowers the secretary to waive reviews required under environmental laws if the border barrier is deemed to be in national security interests.
Those laws include the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act.
The waiver, which will be published in the Federal Register as early as Friday, helps clear the way for work to begin this month on replacing a second layer of barrier in San Diego, a steel-mesh wall that worked like a fortress when it was built about a decade ago but is now often breached with powerful battery-operated saws sold in home improvement stores.
The waivers avoid time-consuming reviews and lawsuits challenging violation of environmental laws.
The government awarded a $101 million contract to SLSCO Ltd. of Galveston, Texas, to build a barrier of 30-feet-high steel bollards, with options for an additional $30 million. Work is scheduled to begin this month.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a public notice that the Border Patrol's San Diego sector is "an area of high illegal entry," with more than 38,000 arrests and seizures of more than four tons of marijuana and 1,800 pounds of cocaine in the 2018 fiscal year. San Diego was the third busiest corridor for illegal crossings among the Border Patrol's nine sectors along the Mexican border in 2018 after Texas' Rio Grande Valley and Tucson, Arizona.
Work on replacing the first layer of San Diego barrier is nearly complete, also 14 miles long and made of steel bollards up to 30 feet high.
Environmental groups criticized the latest waiver.
"Trump is ignoring laws that protect public health and endangered wildlife so he can fulfill a hateful campaign promise," said Laiken Jordahl, borderlands campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity. "Communities and ecosystems along the border are being upended by this militarization, but Border Patrol won't even give residents the decency of a public hearing. This is the definition of lawlessness."
The Trump administration has awarded $1 billion worth of wall contracts mostly to replace existing barriers including $716 million to SLSCO. Work on the first extension begins this month, 14 miles in Rio Grande Valley, by far the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.
President George W. Bush's administration issued five waivers, paving the way for barriers to blanket about one-third of the border with Mexico. Barack Obama's administration didn't issue any waivers.
Chief Justice John Roberts broke with the Supreme Court's other conservative justices and his own voting record on abortion to block a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.
Roberts didn't explain his decision late Thursday to join the court's four liberal justices. But it was the clearest sign yet of the role Roberts intends to play as he guides a more conservative court with two new members appointed by President Donald Trump.
Since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy last summer, Roberts has become the court's new swing vote. He is, by most measures, a very conservative justice, but he seems determined to keep the court from moving too far right too fast and being perceived as just another forum for partisan politics in Washington.
"People need to know that we're not doing politics. They need to know that we're doing something different, that we're applying the law," Roberts said during an appearance this week at Tennessee's Belmont University.
Roberts' vote in the Louisiana case was the fourth time in recent weeks that he has held the decisive vote on 5-4 outcomes that otherwise split the court's conservative and liberal justices.
In late December, Roberts joined the liberals to keep Trump's new asylum policy from taking effect. It would have prevented immigrants from making asylum claims if they didn't enter the United States at a border crossing. Then, in January, Roberts voted with the conservatives to allow restrictions on military service by transgender individuals to be put in place.
On Thursday, a half hour before the court acted on the Louisiana law, Roberts voted with the conservatives to deny a Muslim death row inmate's plea to have his imam with him for his execution in Alabama. The federal appeals court in Atlanta had ordered the execution halted, but the Supreme Court lifted the hold and allowed it to proceed.
The final vote was the order to keep Louisiana's admitting privileges law on hold while the court decides whether to add the case to its calendar for the term that begins in October. Louisiana's law is strikingly similar to a Texas measure the justices struck down in 2016.
A district court judge had struck down the Louisiana law because he found it would have resulted in the closure of at least one, and perhaps two, of the state's three abortion clinics, and left the state with no more than two doctors who could meet the law's requirements. But the federal appeals court in New Orleans upheld the law, concluding it was not certain that any clinic would have to close.
So much of what the court has done in recent weeks has been through emergency appeals, cases that call for temporary, yet often revealing, votes. Unlike in cases that are argued and decided, the votes come with little explanation. When there is an opinion, it usually is a dissent.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the only dissent in the Louisiana case, arguing that the court should have allowed the law to take effect because it is not clear that doctors would have been unable to obtain hospital privileges during a 45-day transition period.
After the ruling, some Democrats seized on Kavanaugh's vote as proof that he was not following through on his assurances at his confirmation hearing to respect past Supreme Court decisions on abortion. But in his dissent, he said otherwise. Kavanaugh acknowledged that the court's decision in the Texas case is the guiding precedent and seemed to suggest he might be willing to vote the other way if it turned out that hospitals were unwilling to afford the doctors admitting privileges.
The Louisiana clinics had argued that they would have been forced to stop performing abortions immediately and that clinics, once closed, are difficult to reopen.
Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump's two high-court appointees, are among six Trump-nominated judges who voted to let the law take effect, a sign that the president is carrying through on a campaign pledge to put abortion-rights opponents on the bench. The other four judges are members of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had refused to put the law on hold.
The execution aside, the recent votes are not likely to be the court's last word on asylum, military service by transgender people or the abortion clinic legislation. A decision on whether the high court will take on the abortion clinic legislation could come this spring. If it does, as seems likely, a ruling on the constitutionality of the Louisiana law would likely come next year. There's no guarantee that Roberts will be with his liberal colleagues then.
In 2007, Roberts voted to uphold a federal ban on an abortion method its opponents call partial-birth abortion. Three years ago, Roberts was in dissent when the court struck down a Texas law that is strikingly similar to the blocked Louisiana measure.
Justices often feel bound by a prior decision of the court, even one they disagree with, at least until the court formally takes on a case to consider overruling the earlier decision.
If he ends up voting to invalidate the Louisiana law, Roberts wouldn't be the first chief justice to put institutional concerns above his own views. Chief Justice William Rehnquist had been a fierce critic of the Supreme Court decision that requires police officers to advise arrestees of their Miranda rights to remain silent and have a lawyer represent them. Yet, in 2000, he was the author of a 7-2 decision that reaffirmed the Miranda case.
There are few high-profile cases on the court's docket this year, seemingly by design, after Kavanaugh's tumultuous confirmation hearings. In March, the justices will consider whether to impose limits on drawing electoral districts for partisan political gain. They also could hear arguments this spring on another controversial Trump administration initiative, to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census.
Already on the calendar for next term is the court's first examination of gun rights in nine years. That decision, as well as the Louisiana case, could come in the spring of 2020, fodder for a presidential campaign in which the court could play an outsized role.
Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma," a darling of the 2019 award season with 10 Academy Award nominations and two wins in the Golden Globes, is an intimate story of Cuaron's childhood told through the eyes of an indigenous woman who works as a nanny to a middle-class family in Mexico City. The family drama also provides a gripping glimpse of Mexican society at the cusp of great social change in the early 1970s, a time of migration, urbanization and cultural transformation.
"The movie is to a great extent a story about modernization," said Claudio Lomnitz, professor of anthropology at the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University. "We see two rural girls come from Oaxaca who have moved to the city. They are indigenous and they speak Mixtec, but they also speak Spanish, they go to the movies, they have sex."
Almost 50 years have passed from the time in which the movie is set. How does today's Mexico compare with the Mexico of Cuaron's childhood with regard to the more disturbing social issues it portrays, like violence and social inequality? NBC spoke to four researchers on Mexico from the fields of history, sociology and anthropology.
More Violence After the Drug War Begins
"Mexico is a country that hurts," said Maria Amalia Gracia, sociologist at the Department of Society and Culture of Colegio de la Frontera del Sur, a research center located on the southern border of Mexico. For Gracia, violence in Mexico today has reached unimaginable levels. "It is surprising that people can continue to live in those conditions," she said.
The Corpus Christi Massacre of 1971 is the backdrop to a frightening scene in "Roma," the moment when the film's pregnant protagonist, Cleo, discovers that the father of her child is part of a government paramilitary group.
The massacre and the paramilitaries in the film represented the dominant form of violence of the day: centrally directed repressive violence, known as "The Dirty War" that took place under the orders of the presidency and the Ministry of Interior. It was a war that the country's authoritarian one-party regime was fighting, indiscriminately, against two enemies: a growing urban middle class demanding democratization, and a left-wing student movement featuring guerrilla groups, Lomnitz said.
"Mexico is a much freer country today, but it is also a much more violent country," Lomnitz said. The new violence is "less heroic, less easy to romanticize."
It is no longer about struggles for justice or freedom, against a repressive society and regime. The now prevalent drug-related spike in violence has its roots in 2006, the year Mexico's Drug War formally began.
Between the early 1970s and the eve of the Drug War, violence in Mexico had decreased significantly, Lomnitz said. In 2007, homicide rates (9.3 per 100,000 people) were not much higher than in the United States (5.7 per 100,000). But by 2018, they reached 25 per 100,000. At the beginning of the Drug War, the government's official take was that the death toll was to a large extent, a result of organizations killing each other off in turf wars. But recent studies by Mexico's Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) suggest that Mexico's military and federal police have executed a substantial proportion of the 150,000 Drug War-related killings.
"Much of the violence today also comes from local governments, which are often in the control of criminal organizations," Lomnitz said. The Iguala Massacre of 2014, where 43 students from a rural teachers' college were taken and disappeared, is an example of this new type of violence, as is the fact that during the 2018 federal elections, more than 100 local candidates were assassinated.
"The closing of the U.S.-Mexican border is an untold part of this story," Lomnitz said. As moving across the border became more difficult in the 1990s, the firepower and discipline of organized crime trafficking with Colombian cocaine grew. It triggered an increase in the concentration of criminal money, wealth and violence. More recently, powerful Chinese criminal organizations have partnered with Mexican ones to produce methamphetamine in Mexico, destined for the North American market. This development is furthering the concentration of violent criminal power.
Tensions Over Land Dampened by Modernization
Conflicts over land come up various times in "Roma." The government takes away land belonging to Cleo's mother. A man sitting in a bar has lost a family member due to a land dispute. A family of landowners exhibits on its farmhouse wall, the stuffed head of a pet dog that had been poisoned during another land dispute. And the New Year's party being held by that same family is eerily interrupted by arson in the surrounding woods.
"Low-scale agrarian violence is very old in Mexico," Lomnitz said, adding that it goes back to colonial times. And after the land reforms of the 1920s and 1930s, when the countryside was made up of small scale farmers, conflicts sprung up between towns, between smallholders, and between smallholders and larger landowners.
Conflict over land began to recede in the 1980s due to an increasing migration to the city, which led to fewer land disputes in the countryside. "Roma" shows the beginning of this migration. Cleo visits, in search of her baby's father, a shantytown located just outside of Mexico City limits that was beginning to be occupied by squatters, migrants from the countryside. Today, this place, known as Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl with a population of 1.1 million, is the 10th largest city in Mexico.
A Continuing Racial Divide
Yalitza Aparicio, the first indigenous woman to be Oscar-nominated for best leading actress, plays Cleo, the servant of a white family. She is treated with affection and care, but the difference in social status is enforced at all times, in both explicit and subtle ways. For example, while cuddling with the family in front of the TV, she is abruptly ordered to fetch tea for "the doctor."
"She is very lucky," said Kevin Terraciano, professor of history and director of the Latin American Institute at UCLA. Indigenous servant women are not always treated well.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu has spoken of how vulnerable she felt living with a family as a young woman. Sexual advances and mistreatment is an underlying possibility.
"Since that decade, there has been increased awareness of the problems faced by domestic workers," Gracia said, "but racism and behaviors underscoring inequality continue to exist. Results of our most recent research on domestic workers are eloquent on the problems of discrimination and abuse."
Some progress has been made at the legislative level in recognizing the rights of the indigenous population. Laws protecting the right to their languages and culture, and to self-empowerment have been enacted since the turn of the century. A rebellion of indigenous people in the 1990s, known as the Zapatista rebellion, in which paramilitary death squads massacred indigenous people, marked the beginning of increased awareness. Since then, indigenous communities have also made progress in "the creation of autonomous communities, which give them more direct representation over their land and resources," Terraciano said. But it is still common to see indigenous women working as servants. And the indigenous populations remain extremely poor.
"Here in Mexico being indigenous gives you a particular social status. There is a marginalization, a social discrimination that we Mexicans know by the social norms and social codes with which we are educated," said Jesus Ruvalcaba, a researcher at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City. "There has been some progress, but not much."
Being "indio" in Mexico continues to be a stigma. And the indigenous people feel it and know it, Terraciano said. "After independence from Spain, the leaders of the new nation saw these traditional cultures as obstacles." Since then, governments have used laws and force to dissolve native communities and mainstream indigenous peoples. "Today, leaders continue to speak of the 'Indian problem.'"
What to Know San Francisco-based Qualia has developed technology to keep hackers out of real estate transactions
Cyber-thieves use spoofed emails and similar methods to intercept homebuyers' down payments
Not all real estate professionals use security software to protect their clients
It's a story we've shared many times on NBC Bay Area since last year: homebuyers losing down payments of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to crooks. Thieves hack into transactions, spoof agents' email addresses, and dupe the victims into sending their entire down payments overseas.
The power brokers in real estate say they're alerting the puiblic to this scam. But new victims fall for it every day. The NBC Bay Area Responds team wanted to start an open, national conversation. We were shut down so we flew 2,700 miles east to get insiders talking, and get answers for you.
It's remarkable our cameras were there, in Andover, Massachusetts just outside of Boston. It's true we were invited to a historic law office. But the very small, very private, and very blunt meeting is not an event that would ordinarly permit a TV news crew to attend.
Here, real estate insiders quietly discussed how hackers are stealing their clients' down payments.
Nate Baker, founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Qualia, also traveled from the Bay Area to Boston. He's here to help agents protect their customers.
"The industry is under attack," Baker said.
Baker travels around the U.S. and hosts confidential meetings like this wherever people will listen. His company, Qualia, helps process home sales, and aims to stop the scam. Qualia offers real estate agents software with a digital "safe room", of sorts. Baker says all homebuying communication goes through Qualia, with only trusted and verified participants allowed inside.
"That locks everything down, and makes it more difficult for any fraud or phishing attacks to happen," he said.
Other companies offer similar "safe room" technology. But Baker says FWE agents are using it.
Our investigation has show many agents still communicate with personal email, which the FBI has warned them hackers can easily infiltrate.
Closing agent Barry Finegold is the exception.
"We need to build a fortress," Finegold said. "Having software like Qualia definitely helps us."
We asked Finegold whether security software like this should be required of all real estate agents.
"I believe so," Finegold said. "If more and more people adopt software that's safe and secure, we'll have fewer incidents of things like this happening."
The large real estate groups could require agents to use secure software, and make it a condition of membership. But none do.
Participants at the Massachusetts meeting told us there's a bigger, more fundamental problem: gatherings like this are rare. The industry is reluctant to even talk about the scam.
"There needs to be a lot more conversation about this," Baker said. "I think people have this viwe: this won't happen to me."
However, homebuyers are losing money virtually every day. We found news reports from around the U.S. that indicate the scam is spreading. Our own reporting has found at least five victims right here in the Bay Area.
There was even a case close to the Boston-area office where we met with Baker and Finegold. Hackers took Ted Williams' $300,000 down payment.
"It's gone," Williams said. "There's no recovering that."
It's a nationwide problem, so NBC Bay Area arranged a first-of-its-kind national meeting. The National Association of Realtors, National Association of Mortgage Brokers, and American Land Title Association committed to an open brainstorming session in Washington, D.C. But the Realtors canceled, and instead hosted their own private meeting. We were not invited.
The National Association of Realtors told us it is addressing the scam, with agent training, warnings on its website, and this YouTube video. It's been viewed more than 28,000 times impressive, but nowhere close to reaching the association's 1.3 million members, or the more than 10 million people who bought a house since the video was posted.
"I think they need to do a lot more," Baker said.
Baker feels national tech and security standards are urgently needed to protect homebuyers.
"It's necessary to lock down communication," he said.
Baker also advocates more meetings like the Massachusetts event. Agents who attended the event, like Bob Bohlen, agree.
"The issue is not going to go away," Bohlen said.
Finegold agrees. "We have to do something about it," he said.
If you or someone you know has lost money in a real estate transaction to fraud, we want to hear from you. Please call us any time at 888-996-8477, or send us a message by clicking here.
An accused South Bay rapist who was set free last month, triggering community outrage, was tracked down and re-arrested Friday.
Sharwian Bobian , 43, was taken to jail after the end of a five-day search. He is being held at the Santa Clara County Main Jail.
Bobian was in custody early last month after being arrested in San Martin on suspicion of sexual assault, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. But he was later released after questioning and after prosecutors decided not to file charges.
The Santa Clara District Attorney's Office this week decided to re-examine the case after further complaints and pushback from the community and Sheriff's Office.
On Jan. 2, a woman reported to deputies she was raped by Bobian inside a makeshift shelter where he had been living, the sheriff's office said.
The unidentified victim and her family had been helping Bobian with food, toiletries and a heater to help him survive the colder weather, sheriff's officals said. She told deputies when she visited Bobian at the shelter on the evening of Jan. 2 to deliver food and supplies, Bobian raped her.
The case is still under investigation.
Police are asking for the public's help tracking down three or four men, one of whom they said fired shots at a Pleasanton Police Department officer.
Police said they were called to reports of a robbery at the Wells Fargo Bank near Hopyard Road and Stoneridge Drive in Pleasanton around 10:40 a.m.
"Its scary. And one of the customers came by and told us about it, there is a chase going on so be careful," said Douglas Chang, a Wells Fargo customer. "We kind of, oh, thats my bank."
An officer responding to the call saw the reported suspects' vehicle, a white GMC Yukon, traveling west on Inglewood Drive.
One of the suspects fired at least one shot through the Yukon's rear window, hitting the officer's patrol car.
Police said the rifle rounds struck the front windshield and hood of the patrol vehicle, disabling it.
The officer was not struck by the gunfire, but was taken to the hospital with cuts from the shattered windshield, according to police spokeswoman Shannon Whitaker. He was later released, she said.
The suspects escaped capture, and then 15 minutes later they abandoned the GMC at Muirwood Drive and Springdale Avenue and carjacked someone driving a brown Honda CRV.
The suspects again eluded police, and officers haven't yet tracked down the carjacked Honda. That vehicle's license plate number is 5USY995, and anyone who spots it is asked to call Pleasanton police at (925)-931-5100.
Police don't have a detailed description of the suspects. They are described as three to four men wearing dark masks and dark clothing.
Anyone with information about the men or their whereabouts is asked to call police. The suspects are considered armed and dangerous.
"What I really want to get out to the public is these are some dangerous suspects," Capt. Larry Cox said. "Theyre very dangerous, they are armed. They are not in custody at this point."
Bay City News contributed to this report.
On 31 January, Babcock announced that it had successfully completed a capability upgrade on the first of three Estonian Navy minehunter vessels at its Rosyth facilities in Fife, Scotland. This upgrade was finally completed after the Sandown-class EML Admiral Cowan minehunter vessel underwent a five month docking period at the shipyard between July and December 2018.
On 31 January, Babcock announced that it had successfully completed a capability upgrade on the first of three Estonian Navy minehunter vessels at its Rosyth facilities in Fife, Scotland. This upgrade was finally completed after the Sandown-class EML Admiral Cowan minehunter vessel underwent a five month docking period at the shipyard between July and December 2018.
Docking EML Admiral Cowan, one of the Estonian Navy Sandown-class minehunters (Picture source : Babcock)
Now that it has been upgraded, the Sandown-class EML Admiral Cowan minehunter vessel will return to Estonia before undergoing trials in the North Sea in May to demonstrate its full operational capability.
As part of the contract, the capability upgrade package includes fitting the Thales Sonar 2193 hull-mounted wideband minehunting sonar (replacing the Sonar 2093 variable depth sonar), the Thales M-CUBE command-and-control system, and an upgraded navigation system on the various Sandown-class minehunters of Estonia. Still as part of the contract, Thales is also delivering a new fleet mine warfare data centre to the Estonian Navy.
The second Estonian Navy minehunter vessel, EML Sakala, arrived at the Babcock Rosyth site in December 2018 to undergo the same package of work, which will then be followed by EML Ugandi in late spring 2019.
(Natural News) Heres a prescription for hypertension your doctor wont give: Go to church. New research is now suggesting that therapeutic lifestyle changes, which include going to church and enhancing ones faith, may have a profound impact on heart health. A randomized clinical trial among African-Americans found that hypertensive patients who regularly went to mass had significant reductions in their blood pressure readings. Researchers of the study noted that this effect proved true regardless of other factors such as educational background, gender, or age.
The study, published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, explained that having a more faith-based approach in treating hypertension may be a safer and cheaper alternative to conventional medicine.
For the purposes of the study, researchers collected data from 373 African-American participants within 32 New York City churches who suffered from uncontrolled hypertension. Participants were tasked to either attend church plus motivational interviewing for 11 weeks or go through the same amount of health education classes alone. It was found that hypertensive patients who went to mass regularly with motivational interviewing had greater systolic blood pressure reduction. While there was some decrease in blood pressure readings among participants who attended the health education classes, the disparity between readings before and after treatment was not significant.
Authors of the study hypothesize that their results could be explained by the importance and influence the Church plays in many African American communities.
Miserere mei, Deus
Anyone who has gone to mass in a Christian or Catholic church has probably heard of this famous quartet by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri. The choir song, which means Have mercy on me, O God was the setting of Psalm 51 and is sung especially for services held on Holy Wednesday and Good Friday of Holy Week. Those who hear the song, especially in the Sistine Chapel, where it first was performed, cannot help but feel a tugging of the heart.
We bring this up not to educate you on church music, but to explain the reason why improving your faith may be good for your health. Spiritual practices, whatever your creed, can have a profound impact on your health. We are not talking about the physical aspects of religion, but the way it is represented in your life. Studies have suggested that being more spiritual, defined as believing in an other and finding sincere and earnest meaning in life, can physically manifest itself in lowered blood pressure, decreased risk of heart complications, and a reduced likelihood of suffering from a mental illness.
Gives me a voice to say to the world, This is why I live
Data show that practicing a religion can encourage healthy lifestyle habits, especially those involved in socializing with other people. Your faith may not necessarily advocate eating organic, non-GMO, plant-based products, but it may make you feel less lonely. People who are active in their faith typically speak with other practitioners who may provide emotional support.
Climb every mountain
Stress directly affects your immune system. People who are chronically stressed are more vulnerable to disease due to the inflammatory response. Studies have shown that religion reduces stress in a number of ways. Prayers, in particular, have been observed to play a direct role in blood pressure readings. It is posited that worship and other spiritual activities enhance the bodys relaxation response. (Related: Prayer proven to improve health of test subjects.)
No more talk of darkness
Many communities have thrived because of faith, or, at least, the want to do good. Before Big Pharma existed, medicine was created by faith healers who wanted to help and heal as many people as they could. Ancient medical systems operated their missions to serve the poor. Faith may be helping you be healthier by being the cornerstone of the health industry today.
It doesnt matter what you believe in; the takeaway here is that there is a direct connection between the mind and body, and spiritual practices can make you healthier.
Sources include:
EverydayHealth.com
AHAJournals.org
RelevantMagazine.com
NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov
(Natural News) With the release of Green New Deal plan authored by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and endorsed by Kamala Harris, Corey Booker and other prominent Democrats), the real agenda of the Democrats has now become clear.
That agenda is best described as this: Murder the babies, demolish all buildings, block the sun, kill free speech, ban all airplanes and declare a new utopia.
The Green New Deal plan, covered in my podcast below, demands the following astonishing (insane) proposals now being pushed by Democrats:
Exterminate the air travel industry and end all air travel, crushing the entire tourism and hotel industry and making the militarys national defense impossible to achieve.
Demolishing ALL buildings in America (or refurbishing them) in order to rebuild them to be eco-friendly.
Constructing railroads across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to connect world cities on different continents by rail.
to connect world cities on different continents by rail. Granting government benefits to all people who are unwilling to work. Yes, the Green New Deal quite literally says the unwilling should be given free money and endless entitlements from the government.
Slaughtering all cattle, nationwide, over the next 10 years and outlawing cattle ranching.
Eliminating all jobs related to fossil fuels energy, including transportation, energy exploration, geological science, combustion engines and more.
This Green New Deal is being pushed with a straight face by lunatic Leftists who, if they got their wish, would economically obliterate the United States of America. (Hint: Thats their goal, actually.) They also believe they are morally justified in their demands because theyve all been brainwashed to believe that carbon dioxide is a poison an insane, quack science conspiracy theory against chemistry and that more liquid water in the oceans (instead of frozen ice) would somehow destroy the planet.
The Green New Deal would be economic suicide for America
It should be obvious to any thinking person at this point that outlawing fossil fuels in the next ten years would have apocalyptic effects on the United States, including (but not limited to) the following:
A near-total collapse of food production, since nearly all agriculture relies on diesel engines for farming, harvesting and transportation of food. Cue mass starvation, Venezuela style
A massive increase in the consumption of fossil fuels as diesel-burning construction equipment is needed to destroy and then rebuilt tens of millions of homes and commercial buildings across the United States. According to current estimates, 30,000 buildings would need to be destroyed and rebuilt each day across America over the next ten years in order to achieve the Ocasio-Cortez Green New Deal goal. This is government genius at work: Destroying and then rebuilding millions of buildings, burning diesel fuel the whole time, then calling it eco-friendly.
A collapse of the air travel industry, tourism industry and hotel industry, displacing millions of works and causing widespread, across-the-board investment losses. But dont worry, Ocasio-Cortez says the government will guarantee jobs for all people, including those who are unwilling to work.
A total collapse of nationwide pension funds as their investments in the stock market are wiped out by the economic implosion. With the energy industry wiped out, the food production industry flatlined, and air travel, tourism and hotels all but eliminated, the Ocasio-Cortez economy would mostly consist of the government paying people to destroy buildings and execute cows. This is the Green New Deal, in reality.
By the way, this insane agenda of total destruction and national suicide is bring protected and promoted by the evil tech giants like Twitter, Apple, Google and Facebook, all of which are now run by lunatic left-wing censors who silence any voice of reason while shielding Democrat lunacy from criticism or rational inquiry. In just the last few days, Twitter banned all Natural News accounts because I publicly criticized Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for promoting a pump-and-dump cryptocurrency scam. So now Twitter silences people for exposing investment fraud, too.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is insane but her insanity is shared by a shocking number of lunatic left-wing Democrats
Yes, Ocasio-Cortez is clinically insane. But her ideas which are almost all rooted in communism and fascism are shockingly popular among the drooling left-wing idiots who now run the tech giants, the media and the U.S. House of Representatives. If these people are allowed to gain power over the country, they will plunge America into an era of unprecedented human suffering, starvation and destitution.
I explain more in my detailed podcast, below, which also contains hilarious segments of humor, mocking the astonishing stupidity of Ocasio-Cortez and her lunatic left-wing followers. Listen and roar with laughter:
Brighteon.com/6000153337001
Stay tuned to CortezWatch.com for more news on the sheer insanity and stupidity of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
(Natural News) There are a wide variety of pesticides available on the market today, and its no secret that many of them come with serious risks. Pesticides have come under fire for their role in the decimation of honeybee populations and the harm they inflict on valuable pollinator insect species. In fact, over 50 different types of pesticides have been linked to massive declines in bee numbers.
New research has found that bees are not the only bugs that can be harmed by pesticide use. The beneficial bacteria that inhabit the human mouth are also subject to the harms of pesticide exposure. It may seem trivial, but these bacteria make up what is known as the oral microbiome, and it is every bit as important as the microbiome of the intestines.
There are hundreds of bacterial populations that can inhabit the mouth, with a delicate balance being struck between friendly and potentially pathogenic species.
Research shows pesticides decimate oral microbiome
The study, which was published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, found that there was a link between pesticide exposure and the ruination of a healthy oral microbiome. Many pesticides are thought to be harmful in some way, shape or form, but this study has put a spotlight on the oral microbiome, which is thought to play a valuable role in human health.
Researchers from Washington University led the study, which focused on examining the oral buccal microbiota or the bacterial populations found on the inner cheeks of 65 farm workers and 52 non-farm worker participants. The team wanted to see if pesticide exposure had any influence on their oral microbiota.
Blood and cheek samples were collected from the participants during the spring and summer of 2005, as well as the winter of 2006.
Two discoveries were made: Not only did the farmers have higher amounts of pesticides circulating in their bloodstreams, but they also exhibited greater changes to their oral bacteria populations. The researchers noted, We found a seasonally persistent association between the detected blood concentration of the insecticide Azinphos-methyl and the taxonomic composition of the buccal swab oral microbiome. This essentially means that the researchers found an association between the amount of pesticides in the blood and the composition of the oral microbiome, and this association persisted even into winter which suggests a fairly long-term effect.
The research team wrote, In this study we show in human subjects that organophosphate pesticide exposure is associated with large-scale significant alterations of the oral buccal microbiota composition with extinctions of whole genera suggested in some individuals.
While this study did not investigate the health effects of these changes in microbial composition, past research has indicated that changes in oral bacterial populations can be a precursor to oral health issues.
The importance of a healthy oral microbiome
While the scientists from Washington University may not have looked into what harmful effects the changes to the oral bacteria may have elicited, other research has shown that maintaining healthy, balanced flora is important for your mouth, and your health.
A paper published in 2016 by the British Dental Journal describes the importance of a healthy oral microbiome in depth, and notes that these bacteria do not just keep the mouth healthy, but also seem to promote overall well-being, much like our intestinal microbiome. The researchers also note that the loss of a healthy oral microbiome can be devastating to the health of an individual.
The study authors explain: It is now an accepted concept that the bacteria historically considered as oral pathogens can be found in low numbers at healthy sites, and oral disease occurs as a consequence of a deleterious change to the natural balance of the microbiota rather than as a result of exogenous infection.'
This dysbiosis or disruption of healthy, normal bacterial populations is thought to cause a number of ailments. Dental cavities and periodontitis are both thought to be related to dysbiosis, for example.
Populations of beneficial bacteria exist across the body, and they have co-evolved along with the human species to create a dynamic and symbiotic relationship between the body and bacteria. Many aspects of our modern lives may impact this relationship or have deleterious effects on the bacteria which can in turn yield a negative effect on human health.
Sources include:
NaturalBlaze.com
JB.ASM.org
NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov
Nature.com
(Natural News)
You may want to encourage your child to eat more blueberries. A new study finds that children who eat blueberries react faster by about 10 percent.
The researchers from the University of Reading in England focused on the relationship between blueberries and its effects on the brain. They examined 21 primary school children whose ages ranged from 7-10 years old for about three weeks.
To start the study, the researchers gave the subjects a drink containing either a high dose of wild blueberry (about 30 g or equal to about 1.75 cups), a low dose (about 15 g or about 3/4 cup), or a placebo. Prior to that, they tested the cognitive ability of the participants through a series of tests examining their memory and attention. The tests involved watching a range of arrows on a screen and pressing a key corresponding to the direction of the central arrow. The tests became harder as the speed of the arrows changed, where the additional arrows appeared, and whether the flanking arrows pointed in the same or different direction as the central arrow.
The study reveals that consuming wild blueberries enhances the reaction time of children by nine percent without compromising accuracy. The effect became more evident as the tests got more difficult.
Claire Williams, lead author of the study and professor at the University of Reading, explained that they used blueberries because they are rich in flavonoids. These compounds have been known to improve the brain functions of adults. This fully controlled, double-blinded study is the first to evaluate the effects of flavonoids on the cognitive ability in children, according to Williams. (Related: Blueberries and grape seed extract shown to rejuvenate the aging brain.)
They have been associated with a range of health benefits including antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, and our latest findings continue to show that there is a beneficial cognitive effect of consuming fruit and vegetables, tea, coffee, and even dark chocolate which all contain flavonoids, she said.
Moreover, Williams said in a press release that primary school is an essential stage in the education and social development of a child. She said that the results strongly reveal that the consumption of foods rich in flavonoids, such as wild blueberries, could help total learning in the classroom.
Fast facts on wild blueberries
Wild blueberries are one of the oldest native berries in North America. These berries have been growing under the harsh conditions of Northern New England, Eastern Canada, and Quebec for more than 10,000 years. They survived the harsh environments because they contain high levels of the antioxidant anthocyanin, which is a phytochemical found in fruits that are usually blue in color. Listed below are some of the health benefits of wild blueberries:
Supports brain health Studies show that blueberries may improve motor skills, reverse short-term memory loss, protect against Alzheimers disease and memory decline, hinder the loss of cognitive function, and reduce depression in old people.
Studies show that blueberries may improve motor skills, reverse short-term memory loss, protect against Alzheimers disease and memory decline, hinder the loss of cognitive function, and reduce depression in old people. Stops cancer growth A study suggested that blueberries can possibly stop the growth of Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), a form of breast cancer that is specifically aggressive and difficult to treat.
A study suggested that blueberries can possibly stop the growth of Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), a form of breast cancer that is specifically aggressive and difficult to treat. Improves heart health Wild blueberries have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties which may help in protecting the heart. Studies show that the berries decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, prevent stroke, and lessen oxidative stress.
Wild blueberries have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties which may help in protecting the heart. Studies show that the berries decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, prevent stroke, and lessen oxidative stress. Reduces risk of diabetes Eating blueberries every day aided in reducing the risk of type-2 diabetes, according to a study.
Eating blueberries every day aided in reducing the risk of type-2 diabetes, according to a study. Enhances gut health An animal study found that wild blueberries support digestive health by increasing beneficial gut bacteria.
An animal study found that wild blueberries support digestive health by increasing beneficial gut bacteria. Inhibits metabolic syndrome Metabolic syndrome includes high blood pressure, high cholesterol, abdominal obesity, and impaired glucose tolerance which may result to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. A study showed that phytochemicals in blueberries helped reduce hyperglycemia, a condition linked with metabolic syndrome.
Learn more about the health benefits of eating blueberries at Blueberries.news.
Sources include:
DailyMail.co.uk
Reading.ac.uk
WildBlueberries.com 1
WildBlueberries.com 2
(Natural News) Highways England is currently testing sunflower oil capsules as a means of preventing pothole formation by filling cracks in the road. A study carried out by a team of engineers at the University of Nottingham in the U.K. has revealed that the cooking oil does not make the road more slippery or any less durable as previously thought. Instead, the researchers have found that sunflower oil actually allows asphalt to heal itself. This reduces the need to close the road and fill the holes, the experts say.
Our preliminary results showed that the capsules can resist the mixing and compaction processes without significantly reducing the physical and mechanical properties of asphalt and they also increased its durability. More importantly, we found that the cracked asphalt samples were restored to their full strength, two days after the sunflower oil was released, lead researcher Dr. Alvaro Garcia stated.
The Highways England trial is slated to cost more than 88 million British Pounds per year in order fill in the potholes in Englands roads. The scientists have stressed that using the cooking oil, which is priced at around 1.15 British Pounds per liter, is a relatively cheap solution to remedy the traffic hazard. The trial will work by making bitumen less thick so that the sunflower oil can easily seep into the cracks in the road. Bitumen is the sticky black substance that is used in road surfacing, the research team explains.
We know road users want good quality road surfaces, with fewer potholes and not as many roadworks disrupting their journeys. This self-healing technology could give them that and offer real value for money. So far the Nottingham University research we have funded is showing real potential in how easy it is to mix and apply, as well as being sustainable and environmentally friendly, adds Robin Griffiths, senior pavements adviser for Highways England.
How dangerous are potholes?
Potholes are formed when direct sunlight causes the roads to swell, while temperature drops in the evening cause them to contract. These variations in temperature, combined with the weight of the traffic, cause cracks to appear. These cracks are then exacerbated by rainwater that freezes and expands overtime. Potholes are known to cause massive damage to vehicles and are found to put the pedestrians lives at risk. (Related: City infrastructure crumbling as NY subway trains now being held together with ZIP TIES.)
In fact, data from a Kwik Fit research have revealed that about four in 10 motorists in the U.K. have been forced to take evasive action in order to dodge a pothole. Likewise, the findings have shown that one in five drivers have had to swerve towards oncoming traffic to avoid hitting one. The results have also revealed that 7.6 million motorists suffered pothole damage to their vehicles despite their efforts to swerve and avoid the depressions. The researchers have found that these incidents have incurred more than 473 million British Pounds in repair bills.
The findings have also shown that aside from switching to the opposite lane, motorists tend to engage in other risky driving behaviors to avoid potholes such as excessive braking, hitting the curb, and mounting the sidewalk.
Potholes originally took their name from being the size and shape of pots. But as consecutive freezing winters take their toll on Britains roads, in many cases it would be more accurate to call them craters or chasms. The big worry, aside from the huge cost to motorists in the damage they cause, is that these craters can lead to drivers putting themselves and other road users at risk as they swerve to avoid them, Kwik Fit chief executive Ian Fraser has told The Daily Telegraph online.
Sources include:
DailyMail.co.uk
AutoExpress.co.uk
Telegraph.co.uk
Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller visited Tirana on Friday (14 December 2018), thanking Prime Minister Edi Rama for Albania's valuable contributions to NATO. In a press point with Defence Minister Olta Xhacka, Ms. Gottemoeller praised Albania's contributions in Kosovo and Afghanistan, as well as in NATO's multinational battlegroup in Latvia. She stressed that NATO is committed to Albania's security, including with plans for a fifty-million Euro investment at Kucove Air Base. While in Tirana, Ms. Gottemoeller also met with Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati and other senior officials.
Yves here. This article pre-supposes that readers understand that most leveraged lending is taking place as a result of private equity, via two routes. First, private equity funds use a great deal of borrowed money when buying companies. One of the biggest sources is so-called leveraged loans, which are normally originally made by banks, but are quickly syndicated to other players, mainly investors (in the old days, foreign banks were major syndicate loan buyers). Second, one of the biggest buyers of leveraged loans are credit fundswhich are managed by private equity firms. Mutual funds and life insurers are also significant buyers of leveraged loans.
Note that in the US, regulators have been reluctant to regulate investors like public pension funds, institutional investment funds, endowments and foundations. Maybe its time to re-examine that grownups can take care of themselves assumption when their excesses can blow back to the overall economy.
By Dirk Schoenmaker, Professor of Banking and Finance at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Originally published at VoxEU
Leveraged finance is booming, just as it was in the run-up to the Global Crisis. As before, central banks are bystanders, with only banking instruments for macroprudential policy. this column argues there are unused regulatory powers that can rein in investment funds. A cross-sectoral approach would help to rein in the current unsustainable levels of leveraged finance.
Some movies feel like a replay. Can we do anything to prevent a sad ending to the current boom-bust cycle, which resembles earlier financial crises? The deal-making engine driving M&As, fuelled by high valuations and cheap leveraged finance, is running at full power.
Central bankers and supervisors warn about overheating to no avail. Supervisors take some action on banking, but that drives business to alternative investment funds. After the Global Crisis, Brunnermeier et al. (2009) warned against this sectoral focus. They called for a system-wide approach to macro-prudential regulation. In earlier work (Schoenmaker and Wierts 2015), my co-author and I showed how supervisors could apply a minimum leverage ratio to alternative investment funds (hedge funds, for example) to slow the growth of their balance sheet. This instrument has not yet been activated.
Euphoria
Leveraged finance is made up of leveraged loans and high-yield bonds for non-investment-grade firms that are highly indebted. These firms are often owned by private equity. Figure 1 shows that leveraged finance has doubled since the global crisis.
Figure 1 Leveraged finance in Europe and the US (US$ trillion)
Source: BIS (2018).
Moreover, the share of leveraged loans is increasing, just as immediately before the global crisis (Figure 2). Debt financing with thin equity stakes is risky. When the economy turns, equity is quickly wiped out, leading to failure.
Figure 2 Leveraged loans as share of total leveraged finance (%)
Source: BIS (2018).
A final point of worry is the increasing share of covenant-lite leveraged loans, which is rising fast to about 60 to 70% (Figure 3). Increased amounts of financing, plus loosening of standards, are both signs of a boom with strong competition and overtrading. In the search for yield in the current low-interest environment, both banks and investment funds are driving the leveraged finance market.
Figure 3 Covenant-lite leveraged loans (% of leveraged loans)
Source: ECB (2018).
Minskys (1986) financial instability hypothesis distinguishes five stages, from boom to bust:
1. credit expansion, characterised by rising assets prices
2. euphoria, characterised by overtrading
3. distress, characterised by unexpected failures
4. discredit, characterised by liquidation
5. panic, characterised by the desire for cash
We are now well into the second stage of euphoria, close to the third stage, in which there is an accident waiting to happen that will cause a collapse of the leveraged finance market, and possibly the wider financial system.
Current Sectoral Approach
Central banks are warning that current loan volumes and loose standards are not sustainable (Bank of England 2018, ECB 2018, Goel 2018). But nobody is listening. Business continues as long as the music plays.
Supervisors give guidance to banks, for example, that a companys gross debt should not exceed six times its EBITDA. But they are not addressing non-bank financial intermediaries, such as insurers, pension funds, investment funds, hedge funds, and private equity. The Bank of England (2018) shows that about one-third of leveraged loans are held by banks, one-third by insurers, and pension funds and the remaining one-third by hedge funds and open-ended investment funds.
As we would expect in differing sectoral regulations (Cizel et al. 2019), there is anecdotal evidence that leveraged finance business is moving to non-banks in response to tightening banking requirements. There is therefore a need for a sector-wide approach.
System-Wide Approach
In earlier work (Schoenmaker and Wierts 2015), my co-author and I showed how a minimum leverage ratio could slow the growth of the balance sheet of financial intermediaries. With a fixed leverage ratio (i.e. equity/total assets), equity is the constraining factor for growth of total assets.
Banks (and insurers) face such a leverage ratio. The Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (2011/61/EU) enables supervisors, among other things, to maximise the leverage of investment funds, including hedge funds and private equity. A maximum leverage requirement (where leverage equals debt/equity) is equivalent to a minimum leverage ratio (Schoenmaker and Wierts 2015).[1]. A minimum leverage ratio of 5% is, for example, equivalent to a maximum leverage of 19.
So far, securities supervisors have not activated this leverage requirement for investment funds. A major problem for sectoral regulation is that different supervisors follow different approaches, each one using the language that sector, and so are not aware of similarities. Non-bank supervisors also tend to be more lenient than bank supervisors on the prudential front.
Macroprudential supervision needs to be applied system-wide to avoid regulatory leakages (Cizel et al. 2019). First, we propose to maximise leverage of investment funds that are involved in leveraged finance, through collateralised loan obligations or high-yield bonds. This forces securities supervisors to use the powers they have. Second, the guidance on leveraged finance for the borrowing companies (gross debt should not exceed six times EBITDA) should be given to all suppliers of finance. In the Netherlands, we have good experience with applying borrower-based requirements (such as maximum loan-to-value ratios for mortgages) to all financial intermediaries.
A cross-sectoral approach could help macroprudential authorities to rein in the current unsustainable levels of leveraged finance.
See original post for references
Dear patient readers,
We had a good meetup in Fort Lauderdale. We had over 10 people attend and the discussion included living in Europe, the Federalist Society, crisis reminisces (as in of telling incidents), and MMT. We met outside on a lovely day. But the flight back today was totally screwed up, four hour delay and then they moved everyone to another flight (this wasnt a scheme to cancel the flight; Delta needed to get the crew and equipment to New York, and they still had the flight as delayed after they got pretty much everyone off it). And someone on the plane had a mild heart attack.
Two other random data points: The cab driver on the ride to airport volunteered that his service had seen the last few recessions coming via a drop in their rides, which reflected a slowdown in tourism in Sort Lauderdale. He said things had been soft this fall and winter. See another indicator of sorts here:
Bling is no substitute.
One the ill-fated flight back, I would up seated next to an off-duty flight attendant, going back to her base in NYC, I infer after a break in Fort Lauderdale. We did not talk about what I did; I grilled her when the EMTs came on the plane about why they hadnt brought an aisle chair and immediately gotten her off the aircraft. Got a long story about the fact that the chairs belonged to Delta and Delta didnt want to be liable, the chairs would not be used until the EMTs had assessed the patient for liability reasons.
Unprompted, she brought up the Green New Deal: They want to get rid of airplanes. Never gonna happen. You cant tell people they cant go to a business meeting. And of course Id have no job. And what would happen if the US stopped all flights and also didnt allow international flights to land or depart? Wed become a third world country.
Sumatran tiger killed by potential mate on first meeting in London zoo Guardian (TYJ)
If Bees Can Prevent Bad Information From Going Viral, so Can We Undark (Dr. Kevin)
Isle Royale wolf takes advantage of rare ice bridge, leaves for mainland MPR (Chuck L)
Honeybees Can Add and Subtract, Study Finds Motherboard. Resilc: Bee bond traders next?
Deaths put e-scooters in spotlight BBC (David L)
Drinkable potato chips: the products keeping your phone grease-free Guardian (Dr. Kevin)
Worrisome nonstick chemicals are common in U.S. drinking water, federal study suggests Science (David L)
China?
U.S., South Korea Reach Initial Military Cost-Sharing Deal Atlantic (resilc)
A Profound Development in Japan-South Korea Relations The Diplomat (Chuck L)
Brexit
Gilet Jaunes
Venezuela
Syraqistan
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Trump Transition
The Economic Impact of the Green New Deal Bloomberg. Interview with Stephanie Kelton
Tonights injunction suggests that the Court is not poised to pivot hard in the direction of limiting abortion rights. Both the Chief Justice (in granting the injunction) and Kavanaugh (in saying he would deny it pending factfinding) seem inclined to hew to existing precedent. SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) February 8, 2019
SCOOP: @AOC & @SenMarkey's "Green New Deal" plan heads for watershed moment, w/ 5 Sens. running for pres. Harris; Booker; Gillibrand; Sanders; Warren cosponsoring resolution +20 House Ds also on board Critics say AOC cant build consensus, but this looks like a big rollout Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) February 7, 2019
AOC Masterfully Breaks Down How Money Affects Politics David Doel, YouTube
Pelosis solution to high drug prices is to create a board that would suggest pharma voluntarily reduce drug prices. Not kidding. https://t.co/liN7tXx4Ma Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 8, 2019
Attacking a Pay Wall That Hides Public Court Filings New York Times
A Water Crisis Is Growing In A Place Youd Least Expect It NPR
Rage Drove the Google Walkout. Can It Bring About Real Change at Tech Companies? New York Magazine (David L)
Google Warns News Sites May Lose 45 Percent of Traffic If EU Passes Its Copyright Reform The Next Web
Millions Could Lose Power Under PG&Es Plan To Prevent Wildfires NPR (David L)
Long, strange trip: How U.S. ethanol reaches China tariff-free Reuters (resilc)
The Only Green New Deals That Have Ever Worked Were Done With Nuclear, Not Renewables Forbes (UserFriendly)
Class Warfare
Antidote du jour. Tracie H:
These Mule Deer are probably a common sight in some states, but here is Southern California, not so much. My husband pointed these out to me as we were trudging up the hill to the Getty Center, having decided the tram line was way too longI took several pictures. They got closer together to nuzzle each other, but this is the only one you can see both of their faces.
And a bonus (martha r):
One a scale for 1 to 10 how beautiful is this photo pic.twitter.com/hpGPctzFWB Welcome To Nature (@welcomet0nature) January 20, 2019
See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Dutch Reformed Church has warned the opposition and rights groups against adopting a hostile stance towards President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his government, warning that doing so could inflame emotions and cause great damage to the country.
In a paper on the current political tensions in the country, two of the churchs senior officials also urged opposition leader Nelson Chamisa to abandon traditional politics which has seen opposition parties in the region sometimes threatening to send senior government officials to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The churchs Braam Hanekom and Llewellyn MacMaster of South Africa were recently in Zimbabwe on a fact-finding mission, where they met various interest groups, including lawyers, civil society leaders, academics, politicians and local clergymen.
Assurance that the International Criminal Court (ICC) will not strike out at senior government officials is important Otherwise a fight to the end scenario is definitely on the table. Traditional opposition politics will not function now.
Pressure alone, however, wont work, because you are dealing with a military situation that actually only knows one form of action.
What is urgently required is influence by people who do not necessarily want to overthrow a government, but are level-headed and looking to create a win-win situation, the duo warned.
Their warning follows threats by South Africas largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), which has said that it wants the ICC to probe Mnangagwa and securocrats over the recent savage crackdown on civilians by the countrys security forces.
The ICC is an international tribunal that sits in The Hague, in the Netherlands. It has powers to prosecute individuals fingered in serious crimes related to wanton killings, genocide, crimes against humanity and war transgressions.
The ICCs Office of the Prosecutor is empowered by the Rome Statute to determine whether there is sufficient evidence of crimes of sufficient gravity falling within the ICCs jurisdiction, whether there are genuine national proceedings, and whether opening an investigation would serve the interests of justice and of the victims.
The DA strongly believes that the human rights crisis currently obtaining in Zimbabwe is of sufficient gravity to warrant an ICC investigation. President (Cyril) Ramaphosa and his government seem intent on sitting on their hands over the Zimbabwe crisis in much the same manner as Thabo Mbekis failed diplomacy.
In 2008, people were attacked and murdered with impunity in another State-sanctioned military clampdown targeting innocent civilians after a disputed election, the DAs shadow minister for International Relations, Stevens Mokgalapa, warned Ramaphosa in a recent letter.
Last month, police and soldiers were engaged in running battles with protesters who flooded the streets of Harare, Bulawayo and other towns to demonstrate against the steep fuel price hikes which were announced by Mnangagwa ahead of his tour of Eastern Europe.
Property worth millions of dollars was also destroyed and looted in the mayhem which ensued, after thousands of workers heeded a three-day strike call by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).
At the same time, security forces unleashed a brutal crackdown against the protesters, the opposition and civil society leaders in a move which received wide condemnation in the country and around the world.
Rights groups continue reporting human rights abuses by security forces including galling allegations that soldiers had raped women and girls during their much-condemned crackdown against civilians.
After Zimbabwe attracted unwanted global interest in the wake of the trail of terror left by the countrys security forces, Mnangagwa has tasked the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) to spearhead national dialogue to resolve the deepening political and economic crises in the country.
Incidentally, the warning by the Dutch Reformed Church comes as local churches are complementing the NPRC in its endeavours to bring Mnangagwa and Chamisa to the negotiating table.
On Wednesday, they lashed the two leaders for dithering around the much-awaited national dialogue which is seen as the best way of resolving the countrys long-running political and economic crises.
The distinguished members of the clergy who gathered in Harare for a high profile meeting on the planned national talks said this was the more surprising as both men had played leading roles in discussions which led to the formation of the nation-saving government of national unity (GNU) in 2009.
Then, ousted former president Robert Mugabe and the late Morgan Tsvangirai agreed to bury their deep political differences before signing their historic global political agreement (GPA) following the hotly-disputed 2008 presidential election which the nonagenarian lost hands down to his then nemesis, before embarking on a murderous campaign against MDC supporters ahead of a sham run-off.
The GPA led to the formation of the short-lived, but stability-inducing GNU which ended controversially in July 2013, and to the detriment of the country.
Cleric Simba Mutandwa said both Mnangagwa and Chamisa needed to chose peace over hostilities, despite their serious differences.
Though not perfect, among Zimbabweans, we have in the past produced recognisable peace, unity, justice and prosperity dividends. The Lancaster House negotiations that gave us independence, the talks during the Gukurahundi gave us the Unity Accord in 1987, the dialogue led by churches gave us the national vision document, the Zimbabwe We Want in 2006.
The dialogue after the elections gave us the government of national unity in 2009 and the broad national unity among Zimbabweans culminated in the birth of a home-grown Constitution of 2013, Mutandwa said.
Renowned bishop and founder of Zaoga Ministries, Ezekiel Guti, also implored Mnangagwa and Chamisa to let go certain interests to find common ground for talks, which he said were important in rebuilding the country.
I pray that by grace God enters your hearts so that we forgive each other and move together, he said.
People must come together, humble themselves and repent from that culture that they must have imported from other places, Zion Christian Church (ZCC) leader Nehemiah Mutendi a key ally of Mnangagwa chipped in, while also giving as an example how the late Father Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo, and Mugabe had subordinated their anger to talk to each other.
We also have people like Tsvangirai he did not call it humiliation to meet his opposition for the sake of peace, he added, referring to the GPA and the subsequent consummation of the GNU.
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DEPUTY Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Development Advocate Fortune Chasi came to the rescue of Chimurenga musician Thomas Mapfumo after he was kicked out of his Glen Lorne rented lodgings over rental arrears.
It has been a horrific but humbling experience for Mukanya, who only two weeks ago boasted that only himself and the late Oliver Mtukudzi could be considered successful musicians known overseas.
By his own admission, Mapfumo was rescued by Advocate Chasi who offered him a place to stay until Monday when he leaves for the United States.
Reports said Mapfumo is in the red after accruing bills to the tune of US$10,000, but he insists he owes nobody a penny and that the rental arrears issue is between his show manager and the owner of the Glen Lorne property.
He fumed: I was shocked to read in the press that I had been chucked out for failure to pay rent which is not true. The rent issue was between Max (Mugaba) and the landlady who was owed US$1 600 by Max.
This accommodation was organised by Max and I was not involved. The police in Borrowdale convinced the landlady to unlock the door and we managed to take our clothes and moved to a new place that I was given by my younger brother Minister (Fortune) Chasi. We have been staying at his lodges and up to now, I am still there till I leave on Monday.
Max Mugaba is Mapfumos shows manager who Mukanya claims vanished into thin air with all the proceeds from the shows.
Known as Mukanya by his fans, Mapfumo has had a nightmarish tour of Zimbabwe after a promoter allegedly cheated him of all the money that he was supposed to receive from the takings of his many shows.
This not only led to Mukanya being evicted from his Glen Lorne rented home for rental arrears, but it also left him hugely embarrassed after having boastfully declared two weeks ago that only himself and the late Afro-Jazz icon Oliver Mtukudzi were the only successful musicians from Zimbabwe.
It was then that Advocate Chasi saved the day for Mapfumo by offering him a place to stay until he leaves for Oregon, US, on Monday.
But Mapfumo is not leaving without a fight. He wants to drag to court the journalist who broke the story.
Said Mapfumo: I am actually going to sue those people who are saying I am swimming in US$10 000 debt after my tour. I challenge the reporter to give me a list of the people I owe some money.
Today (yesterday), I actually called the writer of the story to tell me the people whom I owe money and they could not say anything. I even challenged the writer to accompany me to the lady who owns the Glen Lorne house to hear her side of the story, but he was not forthcoming.
As it stands, we are going to sue the paper because my image has been tarnished. It was nice for the writer to seek clarification with us before writing the story.
Revealing his ordeal in an interview with the local publication, H-Metro, Mukanya said: When we came back home for this tour, we thought everything was in place. Our manager Austin Sibanda and Max Mugaba entered into an agreement where we were supposed to get 70 percent of the proceeds after sharing the costs with Max getting the remainder.
I sensed that something was wrong when we arrived in Zimbabwe after we learnt that our return air tickets had been cancelled since Max owed the travel agent some money. When we asked him, he said everything would be rectified and we decided to continue with the tour.
Speaking on how he was swindled at various shows, Mukanya said: At the Large City Hall show in Bulawayo, the attendance wasnt that bad, but thats when Max began to act funny After the show, Max and our own publicist (Blessing) Vava did not give us a breakdown of what we realised and we did not get even a cent from that show
Mugaba pulled the same trick after the Beitbridge show and I suspected he connived with Vava. They did not give us a breakdown of the gate-takings and thats when I realised that something was fishy.
About a show held at Club Hide-Out in Lochinvar, Mapfumo said: As had become the norm, Max and Vava played the same trick and disappeared with the money. The show was well attended and we really made a killing on that day. Max started acting funny again as he could not give us a breakdown of the money. We even contacted the EcoCash people who advised that Max owed them a fortune.
Mapfumo said that as soon as he is settled back in the States he is going to take legal action against Mugaba.
He also said he had cut ties with Vava as he had shown his true colours.
Its unfair to be duped by one of your own and I will take legal action against him. I pray that the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe de-register such kind of promoters. Honestly, with people like Max, we are doomed and going nowhere. Its sad when one black man is exploiting another black man.
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The situation has moved to another level. Ndinyengeiwo Girl (Lorraine Guyo) is safe and sound. Chichemo chake chasvika kuvakuru, these are the words of social media influencer Acie Lumumba as he announced that the young Harare woman will feature on Mutumanjes The Lumumba Files Drive this Sunday at 9.00PM.
Lorraine earned herself instant fame and shame in equal measure when she posted a video entitled Ndinyengeiwo (Ask me out), as a joke with her friends.
The video was leaked, and she lost her job at a top 5-star hotel.
Guyo found herself jobless after her employer condemned her video which was trending on social media.
She has since apologized via her Facebook page where she agreed to be the one who recorded the video but denied to be the one who posted nude videos, alleging that it was someone else.
This incident comes during the same week when Zimbabwe was commemorating Safer Internet Day where the ZICT was raising awareness on the responsible ways of using the internet.
As furore over the Ndinyengeiwo video continued to ravage the streets of Zimbabwe social media, Five Star Hotel, Meikles has released a statement distancing themselves from the shenanigans.
In a statement, the hotel which preferred to refer to the Ndinyengeiwo video as an ongoing issue on various social media platforms claimed that the Business Centre located in the lobby of the hotel where the star of the Ndinyengeiwo video works is subcontracted to a private company and that they have nothing to do with the management of its affairs.
In an interview today, Lorraine disclosed that the incident had ruined her life and she had contemplated taking her own life, as her phone was blowing up with messages, calls-some even international- as suitors heeded her mating call as it were. She claimed she has had to dump the phone number, adding that she has a boyfriend who isnt at all amused by the developments.
She also subsequently denied being the lady in the birthday suit video now circulating especially on messaging platform Whatsapp, claiming the striking resemblance is just a case of mistaken identity, however some members of the public are not convinced these are earnest claims but a ruse to save face in the face of intense pressure.
Some are however empathetic and have started threads on social media defending her honour, calling for her privacy to be respected, saying there is nothing wrong with making funny and prank videos in ones spare time.
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New Innovative and Modernisation Fronts president Engineer Tendai Peter Munyanduri has commended President Mnangagwa for bringing together political parties that fielded presidential candidates in the July 30, 2018 harmonised elections.
The President inivited the candidates to State House where they committed themselves to the principle of dialogue and working together to resolve challenges facing the country.
Only two of the 23 parties that fielded presidential candidates in the elections the MDC-Alliance led by Mr Nelson Chamisa and the Republican Party from Bulawayo failed to show up.
Eng Munyanduri castigated Mr Chamisa for not turning up for the meeting.
As a party, we strongly condemn Chamisas failure to attend the political dialogue aimed at charting the way forward for the country, he said. He showed that he is a political novice who does not have the people at heart.
Eng Munyanduri said President Mnangagwa had shown the highest degree of maturity by engaging all the political parties despite having won the election convincingly.
The degree of maturity which President Mnangagwa showed by requesting dialogue with all political parties is quite commendable, he said. He invited us all, which shows that he treats us as equals.
He has shown that everyone in the country has a role in bringing economic renaissance to our beloved country Zimbabwe. We should give credit where it is due, President Mnangagwa deserves it.
Eng Munyanduri said the meeting provided all political leaders with a platform to air their views.
All political leaders had a chance to express their views on how to move the country forward, he said.
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THE Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) has corrected misrepresentations in some sections of the media that its armouries were raided by civilians during the recent violent demonstrations that rocked the nation.
The reports, and some politicians, wrongly interpreted a statement issued by Inspector-General, Major-General Douglas Nyikayaramba at a Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) press conference this week.
Some opposition politicians, armed with the wrong information, even debated the issue in Parliament stating as a fact that civilians had stolen arms.
Yesterday, ZNA said in a statement that the misinterpretation and misunderstandings were a result of failure by some journalists to check the facts before publishing.
They also blamed it on media polarisation which caused some writers to deliberately twist the facts.
At no point during the press conference did the Major-General make reference to ZDF armouries being run over or raided by civilians.
Major-General Nyikayaramba made no reference to army establishments, worst of all armouries, being run over. This discourse will suit accurately in the narrative of those Zimbabweans who are bent on creating despondency and insecurity in the country, read the statement.
ZNA indicated that the police stations and some officers were the ones that were attacked and the military came in with reinforcements.
During the unrests in the country that occurred from January 14 to 16, the protesters targeted police stations and members of that force on whom they vented their anger. This resulted in the ZRP calling for assistance from the ZDF to quell the rowdy elements in the streets.
It has been reported countless times that the protesters attacked and killed a police officer at ZRP Southlea Park in Harare. She was eventually stripped naked in broad daylight.
Similarly, these protesters also overran several ZRP establishments, in the process, raiding and burning down sensitive points of that organisation. These included armouries and records offices in Chitungwiza, Southlea Park and Dombotombo in Marondera, read the statement.
The incidents, the ZNA said, were the ones that were being referred to by the Major-General during the press conference.
These are the places and occurrences that Major-General Nyikayaramba made reference to. One would struggle to ascertain where and when the same press conference made reference to the army and ZDF armouries being raided, it reads.
The ZNA registered displeasure over the failure by MDC-Alliance Senator Tichinani Mavetere to understand the contents of the press statement to the extent of propagating falsehoods emanating from the misinterpretation.
MDC Alliance Masvingo Senator Tichinani Mavetere in the August house prompted this debate and suggested that the army had lost weapons to the protesters.
Given the above background, this kind of misinterpretation of events is very unfortunate coming from that high office of the land whose mandate is to represent the people.
Senators and other public office bearers should understand and interpret better statements made by public officials otherwise they would fail to report accurately to their constituencies, the army said.
The wrong interpretation, according to the ZNA, wrongly propagated the view that there were civilians who were armed thereby posing danger to others.
This view is wrong, it would be ideal if the Government had to struggle to make the ordinary citizens understand the trajectory of the nation rather than having senators on the list of those to be educated as well, read the statement.
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It occurred to me that all those who want to bring millions of people into the United States using the excuse that they are in desperate straits and in need of asylum and freedom from poverty and persecution, ad nauseum, in the name of human rights should consider something else.
Here, in America, within our borders and our large cities, are millions of people locked away in slums that function like a prison without bars. They need asylum and freedom to live a decent life.
In Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, St. Louis and other cities within our own borders these people are all watching what is going on and saying: What about us?
Who can give them a good answer? They are not waiting for an immigration policy, and funds, to go into effect. So, what about them?
William D. Montjoye
Illegal by any name
Re: They trespassed, too, Your Turn, Jan. 25:
Rogelio Saucedo uses an analogy that those landing at Plymouth Rock were trespassing, similar to those coming into the United States across our southern border.
While due to occupancy, Native Americans may have owned the land, in many cases settlers paid for it. By the way, there was no defined legal border as there is to our south, so the Pilgrim analogy doesnt fly.
Admittedly, $24 for Manhattan Island was a good deal, but both sides were happy with that deal and a deal is a deal is a deal. This was not always a turkey-and-pumpkin pie society. A lot of people on both sides were killed.
I would remind Saucedo that 100 years before Plymouth Rock, Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro and others ignored any No Trespassing signs and didnt exactly come ashore bearing gifts, tidings and affection from Spanish rulers, but went on missions of rape, murder and pillage that destroyed entire civilizations in Central and South America.
Doesnt the word conquistador translate to conqueror? My own ancestors the Vikings had their own ideas of fun and games at the expense of others.
Regarding our southern border, we no longer have illegal immigrants and no undocumented workers; instead, we have refugees and asylum-seekers being exploited and taking advantage of our weak laws. While these people certainly arent invaders in the sense of conquistadors or Vikings, they are uninvited. Illegal is illegal is illegal by any name.
Merl Sorensen
Look at the Alamo
You know, there were walls around the Alamo, too. How good a job did they do?
Douglas Moore
They owe U.S.
Unnerved by fears of a rushed American deal with Taliban insurgents, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan sent a letter on Tuesday to President Donald Trump offering him reduced costs for keeping U.S. troops in the country.
The above paragraph was copied from an editorial in The Indian Express.
My question is, why do we pay a government to stay in their country? Are we not helping them liberate their country from a would-be oppressor?
Granted we do not want that oppressor to succeed in destroying the host government, but us paying them to fight there is ridiculous!
Frank C. Quiroz
School for profit
In light of the discrepancies between Donald Trump and virtually all U.S. intelligence agencies on whether Russia and China present our greatest security threats, Sen. Schumers suggestion that the heads of these agencies school Trump on the finer and more detailed operations of these agencies is a direct threat to their operations.
As I recall, during the one meeting Trump had in the White House with top Russian diplomats one we were able to monitor he revealed classified information. Trump has no bounds when it comes to personal or political gain.
So, Trumps suggestion that Congress school themselves rings hollow but is telling.
It is indeed a sad state of affairs, but this is our reality. We can hope and pray these agencies treat this president with the mentality he demonstrates daily; his demeanor and behavior does not imply he should be privy to this sort of education.
We know Trumps own educational entity, Trump University, was a fraud that resulted in a multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuit that he settled for tens of millions of dollars just before being sworn into office. This is evidence of the only type of schooling Trump knows that which benefits only him and his cronies.
There should be ample evidence to our intelligence agencies and to Sen. Schumer that this would present a potential giant security breach if it hasnt done so already.
Jerry Kempe, New Braunfels
How smart, exactly?
It seems apparent that Donald Trump, once again, has proven he is not smarter than a fifth-grader. He lacks smarts in government, social studies and world history.
And all the promises he made during his 2016 campaign have proven to be just a lot of bull: Mexico is not paying for the wall, coal miners are not going back to work in huge numbers like he said they would, and his tax cuts didnt bring back jobs, but put the U.S. in deeper debt.
But Im sure all the people who voted for him feel good that North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat; Vladimir Putin said he didnt hack or interfere in the 2016 elections; ISIS is mostly defeated; Trump was proud to shut down the government; and he will stop all drugs coming across the border.
Fred M. Vasquez
Sen. Kamala Harris committed a most unusual gaffe at her CNN town hall the other night not by misspeaking about one of her central policy proposals but by describing it accurately.
Asked if the Medicare-for-all plan that shes co-sponsoring with Sen. Bernie Sanders eliminates private health insurance, she said that it most certainly does. Citing insurance company paperwork and delays, she waved her hand: Lets eliminate all of that. Lets move on.
She met with approbation from the friendly audience in Des Moines, Iowa, but the reaction elsewhere was swift and negative.
As the furor grew, CNN reported the next day, a Harris adviser on Tuesday signaled that the candidate would also be open to the more moderate health reform plans, which would preserve the industry, being floated by other congressional Democrats.
This was a leading Democrat wobbling on one of her top priorities 48 hours after the kickoff of her presidential campaign, which has been praised for its early acumen. It is sure to be the first of many unpleasant encounters between the new Democratic agenda and political reality.
Democrats are now moving from the hothouse phase of jockeying for the nomination, when all they had to do was get on board the partys orthodoxy as defined by Sanders, to defending these ideas in the context of possibly signing them into law as president of the United States.
The Harris flap shows that insufficient thought has been given to how these proposals will strike people not already favorably disposed to the new socialism. Its one thing for Sanders to favor eliminating private health insurance; no one has ever believed that he is likely to become president. Its another for Harris, deemed a possible front-runner, to say it.
Her position is jaw-droppingly radical. It flips the script of the (dishonest) Barack Obama pledge so essential to passing Obamacare: If you like your health care plan, youll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.
That was a very 2009 sentiment. Ten years later, Harris indeed wants to take away your health plan, not in a stealthy operation, not as an unfortunate byproduct of the rest of her plan but as a defining plank of her agenda.
This is a far more disruptive idea than Sen. Elizabeth Warrens wealth tax. The affected population isnt a limited group of highly affluent people. It is half the population, roughly 180 million people who arent eager for the government to swoop in and nullify their current health care arrangements.
They may not like the current system, but they like their own health care about three-quarters tell Gallup that their own health care is excellent or good. This is why the relatively minor interruption of private plans as part of the rollout of Obamacare was so radioactive.
How is a President Harris going to overcome this kind of resistance absent Depression-era Democratic supermajorities in Congress? Not to mention pay for a program that might well cost $30 trillion over 10 years and beat back fierce opposition from key players in the health care industry?
She obviously wont. Medicare-for-all is a wish and a talking point rather than a realistic policy. When her aides say she is willing to accept another path to Medicare-for-all, what they mean is that Harris is willing to accept something short of true Medicare-for-all.
There is always something to be said for shifting the Overton window on policy. But its better if that is done by think tanks and gadflies rather than plausible presidential candidates who arent even trying to hold down the left flank of the party.
If its uncomfortable for Harris to defend eliminating private health insurance now, imagine what it will be like when the entire apparatus of the Republican Party including the presidents Twitter feed is aimed at her in a general election.
comments.lowry@nationalreview.com
Thinking of buying your sweetheart that classic box of chocolates this Valentines Day? Well, think before you buy. That chocolate might not taste so sweet if you knew it was made from ingredients harvested through the sweat and toil of child slaves.
Sixty percent or more of the worlds cocoa is produced in the Ivory Coast and Ghana in West Africa. These countries are notorious for the worst forms of child slavery. An estimated 1.9 million children are engaged in forced labor on the Ivory Coast alone.
The use of child slave labor in the Ivory Coast is a humanitarian tragedy, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, citing studies by the International Labour Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Department of State and other organizations. Besides the obvious moral implications, this widespread use of child slavery contributes to poverty in the Ivory Coast, degrades its victims by treating them as commodities, and causes long-term mental and physical trauma.
Major U.S. chocolate manufacturers are aware of this. And yet you will find no mention of the potential use of child slave labor in their supply chain on their pretty packaging.
Hersheys, Nestle and Mars detail on their websites their efforts to try to reduce child slave labor in the supply chain. Hersheys said in a press release that it set a goal to source 100 percent certified cocoa by 2020 and to accelerate its programs to help eliminate child labor in the cocoa regions of West Africa. But it does not disclose how much their products may be tainted by child slave labor. This prompted some consumers to take action.
In 2016, consumers filed class-action lawsuits meaning they grouped together the claims of all consumers against Mars, Nestle and Hersheys. They argued that by failing to disclose the use of child labor in their supply chain, these companies were violating Californias consumer production laws. In other words, the consumers claimed that they and other consumers would not have bought the chocolate, or would not have paid as much for it, had they known that the cocoa was harvested on the backs of children.
The chocolate companies argued that they had no duty to disclose this fact under California law. They argued that disclosing the problems with child labor on their websites is enough and the court agreed. Not exactly comforting for the consumer, is it?
This problem is so widespread that three new consumer class actions were filed in Massachusetts in early 2018 against Hersheys, Nestle and Mars, again alleging the chocolate companies deceived consumers by not disclosing the presence of child labor in the sourcing of their cocoa.
Some of the bags were taller than me, said a former cocoa slave quoted in one of the class actions. It took two people to put the bag on my head. And when you didnt hurry, you were beaten. Holding a single large pod in one hand, each child has to strike the pod with a machete and pry it open with the tip of the blade to expose the cocoa beans. Every strike of the machete has the potential to slice a childs flesh. The majority of children have scars on their hands, arms, legs or shoulders from the machetes.
As in the California cases, the chocolate companies argued they have no obligation to disclose these facts on packaging. In January, a federal judge dismissed the cases, finding it not plausible that the companies failure to disclose child labor in its supply chain on the package would mislead consumers.
Is anyone else wondering what were not being told us about how our products are made?
These stories of child slave labor in sourcing one of our cheapest products are indicative of a larger problem. Forced labor, child labor and slave labor continue to be persistent domestically and abroad. American companies buy products from suppliers engaged in this morally corrupt practice, but they do not disclose it to the consumer. Most of us are unaware that the products we buy have been sourced using abusive labor practices or even slavery.
The U.S. Department of Labor maintains a list of goods produced by child labor or forced labor. Common goods include sugarcane, cotton, coffee, rice, fish, garments, textiles, footwear, gold, coal and diamonds. The department maintains this list to raise awareness about and promote efforts to combat forced labor and child labor.
The Bureau of International Labor Affairs has also developed an app called Sweat & Toil: Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking Around the World to help educate the public. It allows you to browse goods produced with child labor or forced labor, review laws, find child labor data, check countries efforts to eliminate child labor, and see what governments can do to end the practice.
Additionally, the United States, with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, or TVPRA, made it illegal to engage in forced labor or human trafficking, or to knowingly benefit financially from a venture involved in these activities, if the company knew or recklessly disregarded the fact that the venture (i.e., suppliers) were engaged in abusive labor practices.
The TVPRA imposes both criminal liability and the possibility of monetary damages. But many defendants continue to argue that U.S. courts should not have jurisdiction over these claims, or that they have no responsibility to monitor foreign businesses in the supply chain.
When the federal government is the buyer, things change. Federal regulations require government contractors that provide supplies acquired outside the United States (other than commercially available, off-the-shelf items) or services performed outside the United States with an estimated value exceeding $500,000 to monitor, detect and terminate any agents, subcontracts and subcontractor employees who have engaged in labor trafficking.
That is a pretty big step toward ferreting out forced labor and human trafficking. Now it is time for the consumer to demand the same type of diligence from private companies. Theres a new initiative underway from a group of lawyers in the American Bar Association designed to encourage companies to contractually require their suppliers to guarantee that forced labor will not be used. Consumers can continue to pressure for these types of changes.
Still have an urge for chocolate this Valentines day? No problem. While the companies claim the law doesnt require them to disclose child slave labor in the sourcing of cocoa yet, companies that do sustainably source their products have an incentive to advertise these facts.
You can look at labels to determine if it is slave-free or child labor-free. According to the website SlaveFreeChocolate.org, organic and fair-trade chocolate is almost always ethically grown, as is cocoa from outside West Africa. And you can look for these labels: Fairtrade Certified, Fair Trade Federation, Rainforest Alliance Certified, UTZ certified cocoa and Fair for Life.
This year, as you buy that special someone a box of chocolates, take a minute to think of children, wielding those machetes to harvest cheap cocoa, and give your business to the fair-trade label.
Ramona L. Lampley, J.D., is a professor at the St. Marys University School of Law and an expert in consumer and contract law.
Assimilation is a funny thing.
Recently, around the time that veteran journalist Tom Brokaw made some awkward remarks about the Hispanics and how they need to try harder to assimilate, I received a letter from a reader.
In response to a column about how varying perspectives on a border wall can spark either fear or compassion, Sharon D. says shes so sick of my (and other) columns insisting on telling people nothing to see, folks, move along where immigration is concerned.
Ive decided to share a part of this letter because Sharon isnt alone; Ive heard the same argument many, many times. The quotes and capitalization are preserved to convey exactly how passionate Sharon is about this topic.
None of you ever mention the FACT that per census numbers our country is on track to be a Hispanic majority by 2060 by 2040 per other estimates. Of course, you being Hispanic Im sure thats fine by you and your ilk. What you dont seem willing or able to realize, admit, much less print any concern over, is the absolute fact that every Hispanic majority country in the world is a hell hole. Nothing on Gods green earth indicates it will be any different here.
She went on: This country was founded and settled BY WHITE PEOPLE. Why should we just turn it over to Hispanics and other foreigners? My insurance company provides interpreters in SIXTY FIVE languages because our inept mostly anti average American Congress will not make English the official language. That is insanity.
Sharons angry letter reminded me of Brokaws remarks about assimilation because it seems very clear by the tone of the letter that there are people such as Sharon who arent up for anybody assimilating. They are more worried about acculturation, which is what happens when one group takes over another and changes the way things are done.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 2017, non-Hispanic/Latino white Americans make up 60.7 percent of the population, and Hispanic or Latinos make up 18.1 percent. What might have confused the issue a little is that there is a projection that Hispanics will become the largest minority group in the United States.
Heres the thing: If Sharon is American she didnt indicate she was, but Im going out on a limb she is my ilk. Im American and here we are, between Mexico and Canada, disagreeing on what to call the newcomers.
Thats OK. I dont agree with Sharon by a long shot, but she has the right to think what she wants. America, a nation founded and settled by immigrants on acreage that was already found and settled by American Indians, is an amalgamation of all of our cultures, our languages, our political inclinations and, most important, our human similarities.
A couple of weeks ago on Meet the Press, Brokaw spoke of how the Hispanics presumably immigrants who have recently arrived need to make an effort to not stay in their own communities. It made me wonder how many times Brokaw has been asked if his parents entered the country legally, if he can maintain an educated conversation about enchiladas or if hes fielded compliments on how clearly he speaks English, because thats the kind of welcome wagon Ive received on more than one occasion. And I am, after all, just as American as he.
All of this to say that, if assimilation is about one group mixing itself into another, maybe Brokaw is right.
Some Americans have some serious assimilating to do.
mariaanglinwrites@gmail.com
As the population in Katy continues to rise dramatically, it will require additional facilities dedicated to round-the-clock healthcare for people of all ages, said officials at Memorial Hermann Hospitals Katy branch.
Emergency medical situations occur at every hour of the day and how those are addressed can differ between adults and children. We are able to provide emergency care for all ages and all hours, said Heath Rushing, senior vice president at chief executive officer of Memorial Hermann Katy and Memorial Hermann Cypress hospitals.
The recently-opened Pediatric Emergency Center at Memorial Hermanns Katy campus is now open to receive patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Hospital officials said it complements the hospitals new pediatric inpatient unit and helps meet the new for specialized pediatric emergency care in Katy and the greater west Houston area.
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As Katy continues to grow, it needs more access points for round-the-clock care available for all ages closer to home, Rushing said.
Hospital officials said there is a difference between emergency care for adults and children. They range from the size and scope of the equipment to the expertise of physicians and nurses who receive special training for administering care and relating to both the patient and parent.
The goal of emergency care is the same regardless of age, said Linda Stephens, vice president and chief nursing officer at Memorial Hermann Katy. But the physiology of adults and children are different.
A pediatric patient could need emergency medical care for a host of problems, including trouble breathing, severe burns, uncontrollable bleeding and loss of consciousness, officials said.
Having physicians and nurses specially trained to treat a patient with those physiological differences increases the likelihood of a child receiving the most appropriate level of care in the most efficient manner possible, Stephens said.
Some pediatric ailments, such as high fevers, coughing and diarrhea may require emergency care but typically can be addressed by a pediatrician or urgent care facility, officials said.
Pediatric primary care is available on the Memorial Hermann Katy campus through Memorial Hermann Medical Group and Blue Fish Pediatrics Katy, and in the surrounding area through the Memorial Hermann Convenient Care Center in Katy and memorial Hermann Medical Group Firethorne.
In the latest Texas resurgence of a familiar infectious disease, seven cases of the mumps have been confirmed at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Houston.
City health officials said Saturday that there has been no spread of the disease in recent days and that they're hopeful the outbreak has been contained. The individuals infected, all adults, were detained at the facility during the infectious period.
"Since these individuals were isolated inside the facility, we don't anticipate these cases posing a threat to the public," said Dr. David Persse, Houston's local health authority and medical director of the city's EMS program. "This is nothing to be afraid of."
Persse said the some people likely became infected while at the facility, which is located near George Bush Intercontinental Airport. He said the original source or sources who entered the country at the border likely were already infected when apprehended.
Some have already recovered from their bouts with the disease, including one who had to be hospitalized. People who came into contact with them were quarantined. No employees were infected.
Mumps is a highly contagious virus, most transmissible from a few days before the onset of symptoms until 10 days after. It typically starts with fever, headache, muscle aches, tiredness and loss of appetite, followed a few days later by swollen salivary glands. Most people recover without serious complication, though in rare cases, it can cause meningitis, hearing loss, some heart issues and miscarriage if contracted early in a pregnancy.
The disease has been increasing in numbers in recent years. Nationally, there were more than 6,000 cases in both 2016 and 2017, compared to under 1,000 in most previous years. In Texas, there were 191, 470 and 198 cases in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively, compared to 25 or less in most previous years.
Houston had two cases in Houston in 2017 but no others in the previous five years, Persse said.
The mumps cases come just a few days after confirmation of five measles cases in the area three in Harris County, one in Montgomery County and one in Galveston County. Those cases were the latest in a number of clusters around the nation causing serious concern about a disease all but eradicated in the U.S. 20 years ago.
Beginning in the 1960s, vaccination made mumps much less common, but there have continued to be some outbreaks. The virus is not as contagious or dangerous as the measles.
The health department is working with the ICE facility on infection control methods and will conduct an on-site visit in coming days.
Persse attributed mumps' spread at the ICE detention facility to population density, not any conditions there. He said the transmission of viruses is always a significant concern in crowded spaces, such as emergency shelters for people displaced by hurricanes and floods. Mumps outbreaks involving dozens of patients shut down visitations at two Texas prisons for a period of time in late 2017.
ICE was nevertheless condemned by Pantsuit Republic, a liberal group, which noted mumps is preventable by vaccine. It stressed that such outbreaks are not new, citing an outbreak of 31 cases of measles at one of the federal agency's detention facility in Arizona two years ago.
Mumps usually can be prevented with two doses of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Children should receive the first dose at 12 to 15 months of age, and the second dose at 4 through 6 years of age. Two doses of the vaccine are 88 percent effective at preventing mumps, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Persse said the mumps outbreak at the ICE center transpired over a few weeks. He said health officials learned of the first case in early January.
todd.ackerman@chron.com
twitter.com/chronmed
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UPDATE 12:53, Sunday
According to Bexar County Sheriff's Department, Beatrice Sampayo has been released from the Bexar County Adult Detention Center after posting a $50,000 bond.
UPDATE: 9 a.m., Saturday
According to Bexar County Sheriff's Department, a bond of $50,000 has been posted for Beatrice Sampayo who is now in the process of being released from the Bexar County Adult Detention Center.
ORIGINAL STORY CONTINUES:
A judge lowered the bail Friday for the grandmother accused of helping stage a kidnapping to cover up the death of 8-month-old King Jay Davila.
According to her family, Beatrice Sampayo, 64, has ovarian cancer that has spread to her bones. Sampayos court-appointed lawyer, Melissa Lesniak, said Friday the $250,000 bail set by a judge in January was exhaustive and oppressive given her situation.
Magistrate Judge Andrew Carruthers agreed and lowered the bail to $50,000.
The hearing Friday was the first time Sampayo has appeared in court since she was arrested Jan. 10.
Police say Sampayo helped her son, Christopher Davila, 34, cover up King Jays death after he died in a purported accident while in Davilas care. Sampayo has been charged with tampering with evidence.
Police have charged Davila with injury to a child, child endangerment and tampering with evidence, along with two other charges.
On ExpressNews.com: Asked about missing child, grandfather says Only God knows
Davila remains in jail in lieu of a $1.25 million bond. He now says King Jay died after the car seat holding the boy fell off a bed. He says he did not call 911 because he panicked.
Police officials have hinted that they do not believe Davilas latest account. The Bexar County Medical Examiners Office concluded that King Jay died of a blunt force trauma injury. It ruled his death a homicide.
During Fridays hearing, Jorge Luna, a social worker from Trinity Hospice San Antonio, testified that Sampayo has been under hospice care since June.
Luna said he visited Sampayo at her West Side home about 20 times. During his visits, Sampayo reported having a lot of pain, he said.
I never saw her out of her bed, he said.
On ExpressNews.com: King Jays death is tearing family apart
During cross examination, prosecutor Samantha DiMaio asked Luna whether he would be surprised to learn that Sampayo was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and that she was capable of driving and grocery shopping.
That would be a surprise, Luna said.
DiMaio also asked Luna whether he was aware that members of Sampayos family were drug addicts who attempted to access Sampayos medication.
We took precautions because that was a suspicion, he said. For a time, that was a concern.
He said nurses with Hospice San Antonio kept Sampayos prescriptions including methadone and morphine in a secure location that only Sampayo could access.
Sampayo remained in a wheelchair throughout the hearing Friday, saying very little. At one point, she turned around to smile at members of her family who sat in the gallery.
Emilie Eaton is a criminal justice reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton
Some Pearland and Alvin area residents are taking matters into their own hands and killing the stray bobcats and coyotes that have started showing up in their neighborhoods.
Several bobcats and coyotes were spotted in a Pearland neighborhood near Dixie Farm Road and Westfield Lane earlier this week, KHOU reported. Early Wednesday morning, Pearland residents Stephen and Tanya Green spotted the wild animals in a neighbor's front yard near Clear Creek, just a few miles from the Dixie Farm Road sighting.
Pearland resident Gary Binnicker said the coyotes and bobcats that have many residents on guard are actually common for this time of year. The Chronicle previously reported local sheriff's office officials said it is mating season for the animals, which is why they have become so prevalent in some Houston area suburban neighborhoods like Sugar Land, Fulshear and the Woodlands.
Binnicker said he uses a device that issues distress calls to reel in coyotes looking for female companions during the mating seasons. While some nay-sayers may disagree with his hunting style, he thinks killing the wild animals will help keep them from roaming into nearby neighborhoods and will help protect livestock.
"They are all over the place," Binnicker said. "That area where Pearland, Friendswood and Alvin all kind of meet - there are so many coyotes in that area."
Stephen Green said he is used to spotting wildlife alongside Clear Creek in Pearland that backs up to his neighborhood, but the recent sightings have caused him to be more on edge.
PERCHED ON A FENCE: Bobcat spotted in Sugar Land neighborhood, residents reminded it's mating season for the critters
"I was concerned with how comfortable it was being near that amount of human activity. It was around 10 a.m. so that bothered me," Stephen Green said. "We have small children that play on the street and yards and people who walk their dogs in the morning and evenings. Hopefully, it doesn't consider our neighborhood a good food source."
For residents like Binnicker, who have livestock to protect, taking matters into his own hands is a necessity. Binnicker said he has killed several coyotes near his property and on the border of Pearland and Alvin, where he has spotted more of the animals.
"I got permission to hunt on one of the cattle owner's properties in that area and you can't even put a dent in their population," Binnicker said. " The bobcats, a lot of people do not think that they are common or that they are endangered. [But] there are bobcats everywhere, they are just very secretive animals."
Alvin resident Ryan Autrey has also tried protecting his livestock from the influx of coyotes on his property. He said he shot a 65-pound male coyote just last Saturday, in broad daylight.
"Biggest one I've ever killed," Autrey said. "If I go out and call, one will show up in less than 10 minutes normally."
GOOD BOY: Fulshear police captain's German Shepherd rescues 10-year-old mutt from coyotes
According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, bobcats and coyotes are considered non-game animals. Anyone with a hunting license is able to hunt nongame animals on private property. Killing a nongame animal on a public road or right of way is not legal, according to the website.
"There are no closed seasons, bag limits or possession limits; and, they may be hunted at any time by any lawful means or methods on private property," the website states.
Binnicker said other residents he knows that hunt the animals will sometimes hire licensed companies to place cyanide traps throughout their properties.
"When a coyote goes up there and sticks its nose on it, it will shoot a little bitty puff of cyanide in their nostrils and it kills them, almost instantaneously," Binnicker said. "But they are marked where humans won't touch them."
An experienced hunter, Binnicker said Pearland area residents that encounter the wild animals should stay away from them and keep their pets inside.
"They will get your pets....One of bobcats' favorite foods is house cats."
Rebecca Hennes covers community news. Read her on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | rebecca.hennes@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message
A 1997 Yukon similar to this one recently was stolen from along Hwy. 67 in the Festus area.
CARLINVILLE A Carlinville man has been sentenced to 17 years in federal prison for distributing about 45 kilograms nearly 100 pounds of ice methamphetamine.
Shawn Lee, 45, of Carlinville also possessed firearms, including an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, involved with the trafficking offense, according to authorities.
Lee was arrested in March on charges of trafficking in ice, in which methamphetamine hydrochloride is distilled into a crystal form, over 18 to 24 months.
These drugs, brought into our country, are destroying families, U.S. Attorney John Milhiser said. We will continue to identify and prosecute those who distribute these deadly substances in our communities.
Lee was sentenced Feb. 1 by District Judge Sue E. Myerscough. He was ordered to serve 12 years for the trafficking offense followed by mandatory five years in prison for possession of firearms related to the drug offense. Myerscough ordered Lee to pay a $20,000 fine and forfeit 12 guns and $20,170 in currency seized during the investigation.
Lees federal sentence will be served concurrent to any sentence ordered for several pending, unrelated cases in Macoupin County.
Lee pleaded guilty on July 30. According to court records, law enforcement officers became aware Lee was to receive a package of ice methamphetamine from a source in California on Jan. 23, 2018. Officers saw Lee pick up a FedEx package from a home in Chatham and stopped his vehicle. A search uncovered 7.15 pounds of ice methamphetamine and $20,170.
At Lees residence, officers found 12 firearms, 5 ounces of ice and paraphernalia used in selling drugs, such as scales and baggies.
Lee has remained in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service since he was indicted and arrested in March.
This case is a fantastic example of the excellent work being conducted by state and federal law enforcement partners, Ilinois State Police acting Director Brendan Kelly said. A significant source of supply was disrupted thanks to the tremendous work of the agencies involved.
The charges are the result of an investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Central Illinois Enforcement Group, South Central Illinois Drug Task Force, Carlinville Police Department, Illinois State Police, Jacksonville Police Department and the Macoupin County Sheriffs Department.
A proposal to automatically admit students to any public college or university in Illinois if they meet certain standards is running into opposition, primarily from the University of Illinois system.
Rep. Andre Thapedi, D-Chicago, who was unsuccessful in pushing through similar legislation in 2018, is sponsoring a revised proposal this year to guarantee that any student who graduates from an accredited high school in Illinois and who meets certain academic standards would be guaranteed admission to any of the states public higher education institutions.
Thapedi told a House committee that the primary aim of the bill is to keep our best and our brightest students here in Illinois, many of whom, he said, leave Illinois to attend college elsewhere.
But he also said its intended as a form of affirmative action for minority students and other under-represented groups on Illinois college campuses. He specifically pointed to U of Is Urbana-Champaign campus as a source of concern because of its small proportion of minority student enrollment 5.2 percent African-American and 9.3 percent Hispanic.
Thats pretty much the lowest in the entire state, so perhaps thats the reason why theres some hesitancy on their part to support this proposal, Thapedi said.
U of I officials said while they support Thapedis goal of keeping more Illinois students in the state, and of increasing minority enrollment in higher education, the lawmakers proposal could lead to the automatic admission of students who are not prepared to succeed at institutions like U of I.
As a tier-one research institution, we are not configured at Urbana-Champaign to provide a great deal of remedial education for students who are not ready for an advanced college curriculum, said Kevin Pitts, vice provost for Undergraduate Education at U of I. Fortunately, we have a community college and a regional university system in this state that can help in that respect, and as a consequence we take well over 1,000 transfer students a year.
Thapedi responded that under his plan schools wouldnt be forced to admit unqualified students. He said the bill provides a two-part test for automatic admission: the students must have graduated in the top 10 percent of their class and they must have ACT or SAT scores that meet the benchmark qualifications for admission to the school where they are applying.
So the question that the kids are going to be ill-equipped to be successful, potentially, it just doesnt really catch much muster, in my view, Thapedi said.
The bill also provides that, for schools that do not rank their students, officials from that school may instead send a letter or other form of certification explaining where the student would have ranked, if the school did use rankings, a provision that Thapedi said addresses concerns raised in last years bill.
And it provides that the U of I Urbana-Champaign campus would not be required to give automatic admissions to more than 75 percent of an incoming freshman class.
But some members of the committee, mainly Republicans, expressed skepticism at that. Rep. Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro), for example, noted high school students can boost their grade point averages by taking only easy classes. And some, she said, are good test-takers who can score high on standardized tests, even though they may not really understand the questions or the material.
I would just say that there could be students who would need some remedial education prior to going to school, Bryant said.
Rep. Norine Hammond, R-Macomb, said she was concerned that requiring schools to admit freshmen from the top 10 percent of their high school class could squeeze out otherwise qualified students from the lower 90 percent.
Meanwhile, Rep. Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore, suggested that it might be better to start with a pilot program, starting with what he called the directional schools Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Illinois universities.
I am fully open to doing that, Thapedi said. But you should know that as long as the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana is in opposition, its a tough call. They drive it. What they say kind of goes.
The committee took no action on the bill. Thapedi said he plans to continue working with the universities, lawmakers and other stakeholders in higher education to come up with a final bill that would address their concerns.
Reporter
Christian is Texas native who welcomes any chance to do a story in the marsh or on the beach. He's a dog park regular and enjoys spending time in the kitchen. He says his margarita recipes are better than anything you'll find in a restaurant.
What Are Fast Cash Loans?
You must have an experience of the urgent need for money in your life. if not, you will experience that in your future because the requirements and stresses of the daily life will obligate you to ask for extra money, so how you can overcome these daily life challenges?
Fast cash loan provides this service in Philippines in the fastest and the simplest way, you can now apply an online form to get your fast cash loans urgently and as soon as possible, many banks and organizations provide this service but Binixo loans offers you this service with the cheapest and the fastest way and without ordering you a work for this, which is an advantageous to the people in the Philippines.
What Is Security System Sn The Philippines (SSS)?
Its a fact that our life has never been and will not be constant in all of its fields, a lot of financial difficulties and challenges we are exposed to face throughout the whole life, so that the security system in the countries are present.
Social security is a social system in the Philippines that provides the people with sufficient protection against the threats that put them in financial danger and make them at risk of losing job and the regular monthly salary, this will ensure that the Filipino will be enjoy a peaceful life whatever the financial challenges he or she faces.
Who Is Eligible For An SSS Salary Loan?
Many employees apply to get the social security salary loan but they are not given the loan because they are not included in the eligible criteria. So before you intend to apply, you must be aware of the full requirements of this criteria, which include:
The person has to be a member in the security system in the Philippines and an available worker who is working currently in the institutions of the country.
The person has to be employed by himself or has to be previously worked as a volunteer for thirty-six months, but of those thirty-six months, there must be six months done within the previous year of loan application
The person has to be under sixty-five years old and doesnt have any previous benefits from the security system in the Philippines.
Your application has to be fully correct, valid and with the wanted legal documents without any cheating or forgery against the security system in the Philippines.
How can you Apply for Security System in the Philippines SSS Salary Loan?
Most of the employees in the world have a financial problem at the end of the month, this is a global problem, while the month is about to end, your monthly salary is also about to end or already ended. At this time, you will face a financial difficulty. For example, you will not be able to pay to your children needs such as school requirements and tuition fees. To solve this problem, you can get a salary loan that will help you to come up with this problem and to pass the month smoothly without any financial difficulties.
It's beautiful to say that from now, you dont have to take off day from your work and go to the bank then waiting hours to apply your loan request.
Its easy, there are many institutions and companies they provide you with this service, but if you want to get it smoothly, fast and cheaply, then Binixo is one of the best choices to get your salary loan. Its an online service that you can request without getting out from your room, all of you want to do is to open your lap top and to visit this online company, fill in the online application and send it, the workers there will reply to you in minutes and your request will be approved as soon as possible. Binixo.ph saves time and considered as one of the best choices for workers in the Philippines. So, dont hesitate to visit the online website of the company and to apply and contact them.
Does The Employee Who Get The Social Security Salary Loan Has Any Responsibilities?
In fact, yes. He or she must inform his or her worker with the updated of the account of social security salary, these updated may include any new interests or penalties, the worker must be updated as you about your account so that you can get the maximum benefit of your account in the future and your account will stay effective and beneficial.
What Will You Do If You Are Not Qualified To Get The Security Social Loan?
Dont worry, you will find an alternative, which is Binixo, this is an amazing choice for those who cannot apply for the social security salary loan because the they are not included in the eligible criteria.
What distinguishes that choice is that it doesnt require many conditions. For example, it just requires your identity number, your drivers license and a document that shows your income and monthly salaries.
Read more about what is SSS loan in blog Binixo Philippines.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post about everything you need to know about social security system loans in the Philippines.
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The deadly drug bust in Pecan Park last month that left two people dead and five officers injured netted only 18 grams of marijuana and 1.5 grams of white powder, according to the results of a search warrant released Friday.
One day after a narcotics officer was relieved of duty pending an internal investigation, officials remained tight-lipped about the botched raid, which was one of the most violent in the history of the Houston Police Department.
"We're not going to piecemeal the discussion," Police Chief Art Acevedo said Friday, after a promotion ceremony at the training academy in north Houston. "When we are done with our investigation, we will have uncovered every stone to get to the truth."
The chief declined to address continued questions that have swirled since the Jan. 28 raid, when police raided the home expecting to shut down a heroin-dealing operation. Instead, their no-knock raid kicked off a gun battle that ended with the deaths of Navy veteran Dennis Tuttle, his wife Rhogena Nicholas and their dog but failed to turn up any heroin.
Besides the small amount of drugs which officials later said included cocaine police recovered a 20-gauge Beretta shotgun, a Winchester rifle and a Remington shotgun and rifle, according to the search warrant return. The handgun that Acevedo said Tuttle used in the gun battle was not among the listed firearms.
The court filing released this week did not list any drug paraphernalia or scales, which were apparently not recovered from the scene.
'ONGOING QUESTIONS': Officer connected to deadly raid, shootout relieved of duty
The drug probe leading to the botched bust started on Jan. 8, when officials say an anonymous caller phoned police to complain that her daughter was "doing drugs" inside the home at 7815 Harding Street.
When officers showed up, they didn't see any suspicious activity, but stopped a passerby to ask if she'd called 911. She hadn't, but according to what Acevedo said days later the woman allegedly turned back to her phone call and said, "Hey, the police are at the dope house."
Afterwards, HPD's Squad 15 began investigating and eventually sent in a confidential informant for a pre-arranged drug buy, according to a sworn statement. Initially, officials said the purchase netted black tar heroin, though records later showed that it was brown powder form of the illegal narcotic.
The informant also warned police of a "large quantity" of drugs inside, packaged in plastic baggies, and a 9mm handgun, according to a court filing. The following day, on Jan. 28, a municipal court judge signed off on a warrant authorizing the no-knock raid.
Hours later, police broke down the door and shot the couple's pit bull after the animal lunged at them. Tuttle came out from around the back of the house, police said, and started shooting. Inside the home, a wounded officer fell down on the sofa, and Nicholas allegedly tried grabbing his weapon, police said.
Authorities have not yet clarified who fired which of the shots.
READ THE WARRANT: Search warrant from drug raid that left five officers injured
In the days after the deadly shoot-out, the couple's friends and family called into question the official narrative, saying Nicholas and Tuttle weren't drug dealers and questioning whether police raided the wrong house.
On the other side, the police union framed the officers' shootings as more evidence of a war on police, and president Joe Gamaldi sparked criticism with controversial comments blaming mainstream media and certain activists spreading anti-police rhetoric. Later, a coalition of justice groups and attorneys called for his resignation.
Then on Thursday, police said that one of the officers involved in the raid was relieved of duty in light of "ongoing questions" about the deadly encounter. The officer, who was not publicly identified, was not among those wounded.
His suspension, law enforcement sources said, comes amid a probe into questions over whether the sworn affidavit used to justify the no-knock warrant may have contained false information.
The investigation has been delayed while the case agent on the raid recovers after being shot in the neck. He is one of two officers who remain hospitalized.
Samantha Ketterer contributed to this report.
The sight was enough for the CHP officer to do a double take. In front of him, cruising down Highway 99 was a small box truck about to give birth to 5,000-pound bouncing baby Ram pickup.
CHP Modesto posted a photo of the ultra-tight squeeze on Facebook with the caption, "Where do we start?"
It showed the Ram sticking its massive grille out the back of a box truck of the size you might rent if you didn't have much furniture. Mere inches separated the sides of the full-size pickup from the box truck's walls. The mirrors must have been removed to fit its girth.
But what concerned the officer was that the Ram was lurching back and forth, CHP spokesman Officer Thomas Olsen told the Fresno Bee. The patrolman saw that there was only one tie-down strap holding the pickup at the mouth of the box truck and feared that the pickup could roll out. So he pulled over the driver.
Olsen said the 41-year-old driver, Zamora Dagoberto of Hialeah, Fla., explained that he'd driven the Ram from Texas to Stockton, where he bought the box truck, and was on his way back Tuesday.
But how on earth did he shoehorn the Ram inside the box truck? And how did he get out once it was inside?
Dagoberto said he had gingerly backed the pickup up a ramp into the back of the box truck and somehow squeezed through the driver-side window and out over the hood.
MORE: Honda Civic driver miraculously survives insane collision with truck in Central Valley
He was cited for not having a four-point tie-down and barred from driving farther until he got one.
As for packing the truck like a Russian doll, that's completely legal, CHP said. There was no weight violation and driving with the rear door up is permitted.
CHP-Modesto/Facebook
The Facebook post inspired a flurry of jokes and bad puns.
"I think I've seen enough Rams fails this week," one commenter quipped.
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Read Mike Moffitt's latest stories and send him news tips at mmoffitt@sfchronicle.com.
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Kristin Brown was abandoned at birth in the back of a pickup at a 7-Eleven on Andrews and University in August 1989. Sgt. Jordan Medrano was the responding officer to the scene and he went to visit her after she was transported to a local hospital. Thirty years later, Brown is now trying to help Medrano.
Brown was adopted and moved to Missouri by the age of 5 and came back to Odessa last year to find her biological family. She also was reunited with Medrano.
She found her biological family through DNA and came back to Odessa after her biological father died.
"(Medrano) saw me on the news returning to the Basin. ... He always wondered if I was OK or what had happened to me."
More Information To donate to Sgt. Jordan Medrano's GoFundMe account, go to
www.gofundme.com/help-sgt-medrano-like-he-helped-me. See More Collapse
After Medrano saw the news report, his wife found Brown on Facebook and Medrano reached out to her.
"From that, it's been a huge blessing," Brown said. "I did meet a lot of new family members but things didn't just go as well as I had hoped for. I connected more with Sgt. Medrano and his family more than some of my relatives."
She said that meeting Medrano after all these years was like meeting family.
On her birthday this year, she found out Medrano was terminally ill with liver cancer and had been battling cirrhosis of the liver, or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.
Brown started a GoFundMe campaign to help Medrano with medical expenses. The goal was to raise $5,000; as of Friday, the total was $1,200 short.
"He'll be making a lot of trips back and forth and have to pay for lodging," Brown said. "The fundraiser is to help ease his mind of any financial issues.
She said reuniting with Medrano would be very inspirational for others whose mothers abandoned them. Brown has been an advocate for the Nation Safe Haven Alliance.
"Yeah, my birth mother was pretty nasty to me but there was someone that cared after all these years," Kristin said. "That, that's a huge gift."
Brown said Medrano just wanted to help and protect people.
"He served his community for 28 years," Brown said. "His kindness goes farther than me. He has changed a lot of lives over the years. He just really cares about other people and that is something I have never seen before in my life."
Martha Holmes Brown, 80, of Moultrie, died Saturday, June 19, 2021 at her home. A Funeral Service will be held at 11:00 AM on Thursday, June 24, 2021 at Pineview Baptist Church. Mrs. Brown's grandsons will serve as pallbearers. Mrs. Brown was born on October 18, 1940, in Sylvester, Georgia,
Ben Franklin said "a penny saved is a penny earned." This simple but powerful adage underlies any savings and investment program, whether established by someone on their own or whether they participate in a private retirement plan such as a 401(k) plan. The lower the costs of investment options incurred when making contributions to a nest egg (a penny saved), the more money that becomes available to invest and grow that nest egg (a penny earned). In the context of a retirement plan portfolio, this adage ignores that crazy little thing called risk, but this month's column focuses generally on costs.
Franklin's adage also applies to, say, retirement plans in the public sphere, such as 403(b) plans made available to educators by public school districts. It's no secret that many educators participating in 403(b) plans are forced into suboptimal investment options, such as high-cost annuities and mutual funds. Why? Because in many states like California and Texas, school districts can offer educators just about any looney insurance company-issued financial product no matter how high their costs may be and how imprudent they are. In such states, the bad guys rule the roost and the good guys--low-cost providers--stay away because they refuse to sign school district hold harmless agreements, which legally shield districts from unforeseeable events that may negatively impact a provider.
When Wakeman resident Kathryn Holmes decided to have her diagnostic heart catheterization performed at the Fisher-Titus Heart and Vascular Cen
New Beginnings: A Church of Christ for All Pastor the Rev. Matt Raines, left, and UP-Lift program member Josh Pryor pose in front of the van they will be using as a part of a free transportation service to combat drunk driving
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LINCOLNTON A man was charged after a business owner held him at gunpoint when he tried to steal a load of tools Thursday afternoon.
Matthew Stone Hulett, 32, of Lincolnton, was charged with breaking and entering a building, larceny after breaking and entering and possession of stolen goods, according to a release from the Lincoln County Sheriffs Office.
Hulett was charged after Stan Cronland, owner of Cronland Lumber Yard, drove up on him trying to drive away from one of his businesses with a load of tools worth more than $3,000, the release said.
Cronland pulled his vehicle in front of the truck Hulett and held Hulett at gunpoint on the ground, the release said. Hulett reportedly begged Cronland not to call police because he had been in prison before.
The stolen tools were returned to Cronland, the release said.
Hulett has previous convictions of possession of a schedule I controlled substance, larceny and receiving stolen goods, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety website.
Huletts bond was set at $10,000 secured and was taken to the Harven A. Crouse Detention Center, the release said.
February 09, 2019
Racism And The Fight Over Venezuela
The U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela is not only about oil and general U.S. imperialism. It is attempt to bring a specific type of people back into power. The same type of people that rule in Washington DC.
The Nation describes how the U.S. has long funded and manipulated the opposition in Venezuela. The Random Guy Juan Guaido, who claims the presidency, was created through this process:
How Washington Funded the Counterrevolution in Venezuela
Self-declared president Juan Guaido comes from the right-wing, US-backed student movement that tried to subvert Hugo Chavezs government.
The piece includes this revealing sentence:
A former USAID/OTI member who helped devise US efforts in Venezuela said the objective was that you had thousands of youth, high school, and college kids that were horrified of this Indian-looking guy in power. They were idealistic.
Being "horrified" that the "Indian-looking" Hugo Chavez was in power does not seem "idealistic". One might call it racist though. A number of those white, well off, U.S. trained college kids joint politics in right wing parties. They wanted to take power. But to sell one of theirs as a leader of a country where the majority is mestizo was a problem.
To solve that problem the Random Guy, despite being known only by 20% of Venezuelans, was selected to lead the U.S. coup attempt:
A figure named Juan Andres Mejia would have been next in line but for reasons that are only now clear, Juan Guaido was selected. There is a class reasoning that explains Guaidos rise, Sequera, the Venezuelan analyst, observed. Mejia is high class, studied at one of the most expensive private universities in Venezuela, and could not be easily marketed to the public the way Guaido could. For one, Guaido has common mestizo features like most Venezuelans do, and seems like more like a man of the people.
Guaido is a stand in. He was selected because he somewhat looked like the majority of the people of the country.
The two pictures below further demonstrate the role race plays in the conflict in Venezuela.
Venezuela currently has two assemblies that claim the right to legislate. In 2015 the opposition won a majority in the National Assembly, the original parliament of Venezuela:
However, the Venezuelan Supreme Court barred four lawmakers from taking their seats while it probed allegations of electoral fraud. As a result, only 163 of the 167 lawmakers were sworn in on January 5. The next day, three opposition deputies were sworn in over protests by members from the legislatures minority who announced their intention to challenge the move.
The Supreme Court of Venezuela then held that the National Assembly was in contempt of the court. The move created a political stalemate. To solve it the president called for the election of a Constitutional Assembly. Its main task is to consider constitutional changes. But it can also overrule legislation that the National Assembly makes. The Supreme Court accepted the solution. The National Assembly, the rotational presidency of which Random Guy took at the beginning of this year, is since only a secondary parliament.
There is a visual difference between the two assemblies:
Opposition legislators of the National Assembly
Via VOA - bigger
Members of the Constitutional Assembly
Via BBC - bigger
National Assembly - Detail
Constitutional Assembly - Detail
The rich in Venezuela are overwhelming white people. They long ruled the country. The mestizo majority are the poor. Hugo Chavez brought them to power. The white people want the power back.
This obvious racist aspect of the conflict is missing from the general reporting of the issue. It only comes to light in the published visuals.
The race conflict is of course not unique to Venezuela. In the U.S., especially under Trump, racism is also prevalent. It is, I believe, the subliminal reason why the U.S. ruling class is joint in the effort to regime change Venezuela.
Posted by b on February 9, 2019 at 19:59 UTC | Permalink
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Representative Image: Reuters
US negotiators are preparing to press China next week on longstanding demands that it reform how it treats American companies' intellectual property in order to seal a trade deal that could prevent tariffs from rising on Chinese imports.
A new round of trade talks begins in Beijing on Monday, after the most recent set of negotiations concluded in Washington last week without a deal and with the top US negotiator declaring that a lot more work needed to be done.
A White House official said on February 8 that preparations were under way and the talks would continue to focus on pressing Beijing to make structural reforms.
The White House announced a timeframe for the Beijing talks in a statement. It said lower-level officials will kick off the meetings on Monday, led on the American side by Deputy US. Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish.
Higher principal-level talks will take place Thursday and Friday with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Lighthizer, named by Trump to spearhead the process after agreeing a 90-day truce in the trade war with Beijing, has been a strong proponent of pushing China to make such reforms and end what the United States views as unfair trade practices including stealing intellectual property and forcing US companies to share their technology with Chinese firms.
China has denied it engages in such practices.
"The United States is a great producer of technology, and innovation, and know-how, and trade secrets. And we have to operate in an environment where those things are protected," Lighthizer said last week after talks at the White House.
"I'm by no means predicting success; there is a lot of work that has to be done," he said.
The two sides are trying to hammer out a deal ahead of the March 1 deadline when US tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports are scheduled to increase to 25 percent from 10 percent.
China's ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, said in Michigan on Friday that a "zero-sum game" mindset was destructive to China-US ties, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
Chinese and US companies should compete as well as cooperate with each other, Cui said.
"The real story in business is not that black and white," the report quoted him as saying.
Trump said on February 7 he did not plan to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping before that deadline, dampening hopes that a trade pact could be reached quickly.
"We are hearing the list of issues the two presidents will ultimately have to make decisions on is being narrowed, so that's an indication that things are being addressed. But we're also hearing that there's a lot of work to be done," said Erin Ennis, senior vice president of the US-China Business Council, who says she has spoken with officials in both the United States and China. "I dont think either side is expecting a draft of something next week."
Another source who had been briefed on the talks said a lot of work also needed to be done on an enforcement mechanism for a potential deal.
"If there's some indication that they're making progress on subsidies, forced tech transfer and the constellation of issues there and an enforcement mechanism, that would be interesting. The word coming out of this last round was that there was very limited, measly progress on those issues," the source said.
Escalating tensions between the United States and China have cost both countries billions of dollars and roiled global financial markets.
If the negotiations do not progress sufficiently, the US officials said increased tariffs will take effect. Washington could agree to extend the deadline without a deal if talks are progressing. Trump said last week he did not think the deadline would need to be extended, though he said a deal might not be on paper by then.
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Tata Motors caught the market off guard reporting a loss that was more than the market cap of TVS Motors, Indias fourth biggest two-wheeler maker. This news dominated headlines from the auto sector this week. But quietly there was another development, on the way how automotive sales numbers should be reported. In todays wrap of the week, we look at why a section of the industry feels disenchanted by the way the industry has been at work.
Honda launches CB300R at Rs 2.41 lakh
Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI), the countrys second largest two-wheeler maker, has launched the CB 300R at Rs 2.41 lakh (ex-showroom, pan-India).
The CB300 R is powered by a 286cc liquid cooled engine that generates a peak power of nearly 31ps. The CB300R will feature full LED headlamps, LCD instrument display, runner mounted steel handlebar, 2-channel ABS. The bike weighs 147kg without fuel
Tata Motors reports one of India incs biggest quarterly loss
Tata Motors reported a net loss of Rs 26,961 crore for the quarter ended December 2018 impacted by an exceptional item of asset impairment of Rs 27,838 crore. The company had reported a profit of Rs 1,214.6 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.
Uncertainty over China and with the possibility of a hard Brexit looming large, Tata Motors on February 7 said it is revising its pre-tax margin guidance to 3-6 percent in FY20 from 4-7 percent announced six months back.
Tata Nano production comes to naught
Production of the worlds cheapest car Nano has come to a grinding halt, as Tata Motors has begun the process of bringing down the curtains on the troubled car. As indicated by the company, Nano, unlike its peers, will not get any regulatory upgrades essential to keep it going.
From 83 units in January 2018, the production of Nano hit zero in the same month this year. This is the first time since its launch in 2008 that not a single Nano was either produced or sold in any month
Govt slashes subsidy budget on electric vehicles
The Centre has slashed subsidy on electric vehicles for the next financial year by 25 percent to Rs 195 crore, according to Union Budget 2019 documents.
Subsidy for the current financial year stands at Rs 260 crore. This is the first such sequential drop in provision provided by the government since the scheme Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (FAME) was launched nearly four years ago. While the government had kept aside Rs 260 crore as subsidy for the current financial year (2018-19) it was revised downwards to Rs 145 crore.
Two-wheeler makers want two slabs in GST
Even as the chorus on reduction in Goods and Services Tax (GST) on two-wheelers grows, the industry is now in the favour of having twin slabs instead of one.
According to the country's second largest two-wheeler maker Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI), two-wheeler companies have supported a plea to reduce GST on some two-wheelers with engines of a certain size.
To report wholesale or retail?
A few months ago the automobile dealer association of India decided to source vehicle registration data directly from the government in an attempt to bring the real sales picture.
FADA, their apex lobby body, which was founded in 1964 but remained dormant until the late part of 2018, suddenly became hyper active in issuing retail sales data of all class of vehicles.
For long, the dealers have been complaining about dumping of vehicles by companies the result of which was high inventories, sometimes throughout the year.
Sudden regulatory changes, many times enforced by the highest judicial authority like the Supreme Court, made matters worse for the dealers when they were required to liquidate their stock literally overnight (BS-III to BS-IV transition).
At other times axle load norms of trucks and buses were altered that created confusion about existing inventory thereby creating a demand vacuum for ensuing months.
"When vehicle manufactures wish to inflate their numbers they will show even those invoices which dealers may have only placed an order for, which can be changed or even cancelled during the time of actual delivery. This classifies as wholesales," said a top executive of a two-wheeler manufacturer.
If stuck with high inventory, especially during an off-season, dealers are forced to offer unusually high discounts, which many times are from the dealer's own pockets, to clear the inventory. After all, there is only a limited space at the warehouses.
This is the primary reason why there exists a sizeable mismatch in wholesale (from company to dealer) and retail numbers (from dealer to customer). Many western countries report only retail numbers as it helps provide the best picture of the demand scenario.
FADA collects retail sales data from 75 percent of the countrys regional transport offices made available by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. The organisation also provides additional data such as inventory days of a particular vehicle segment. Higher the number of days, worse the situation. Some vehicles lying with dealers are more than one year old, according to a Mumbai-based manufacturer.
Nevertheless, the trend of reporting retail sales is now slowly gathering pace. Tata Motors has decided to issue retail sales of both passenger and commercial vehicles from now on. Others are expected to follow suit. The government is also in the favour of reporting retail numbers for which it floated VAHAN where all the RTOs are linked to.
Sri Lanka's former President Mahinda Rajapaksa smiles during a news conference after winning the local government election in Colombo, Sri Lanka February 12, 2018. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte - RC12B12677B0
Sri Lanka's opposition leader Mahinda Rajapaksa on February 9 said here there was a "major breakdown" in bilateral relationship between India and his country after a new government was formed in New Delhi in 2014, but the opposition coalition he is heading now has a "good understanding" with India's ruling party.
He emphasised that the rule of thumb with regard to India-Sri Lanka relations should be that if an outgoing government has an adequate working relationship with his country, the incoming one should give due recognition to this.
"Past experience has shown that the danger of disruption in our bilateral relationship arises in the immediate aftermath of changes of government. Such easily avoidable disruptions have had serious consequences for both countries," he said.
"In 2014, the second major breakdown of bilateral relationships took place. Unfortunately, the working relationship that existed between my government and the outgoing government (UPA) did not roll over to the new government of India (NDA)," he said at the third edition of The Huddle, The Hindu's two-day annual conclave here.
Rajapakasa said the misunderstandings of the 1980s and 2014 were aberrations that could easily have been avoided and it is key the two countries evolve a mechanism to prevent these misunderstandings from arising.
The traditional government-to-government dealings alone cannot give shape to the two countries' future relations because the world is becoming more complex by the day, Rajapaksa said.
Political leaders would continue to play the most coveted role as they determine the policies -- foreign, economic, security, and a host of other policies -- and that would have bearing on the relations, he said.
Tangibles like these are easier to monitor and even control, but intangibles pose grave threats, Rajapaksa said.
"Political leaders and other societal leaders must always keep a tab on the intangibles. For instance, a wrong word from a leader would sour the relations as we have witnessed in the past," he said.
"Despite the snag of 2014, the opposition coalition that I am leading now in Sri Lanka has a good understanding with the ruling party in India," he added.
He said since the two countries are geographically in very close proximity, they have mutual obligation to ensure each other's security.
"Often, we have heard the Indian leaders emphasizing the need for Sri Lanka to ensure that the Sri Lankan soil is not used by any third party that would pose a threat to India. Similarly, we too would want India to ensure that...any groups operating within Indian soil does not pose a threat to Sri Lanka," he said.
He also said in future bilateral relations, Indian Ocean maritime security too would be an important aspect in forging a well-founded strategy.
"In all these, I strongly believe that a vibrant, on-going dialogue between the two countries would ensure each other's national security. This dialogue as I have emphasized earlier should transcend the normal diplomatic boundaries and there are experiences such as the Troika that we could draw from," he said.
Forming such an entity is foremost in his party's plans for the future, he added.
"When addressing political stability, as we have seen in the recent past, this is one of the most crucial factors that would determine the character of our future relations. If any of our two countries has political turmoil and instability, foreign relations would be put on the back burner," he said.
He said both the States have always respected and stayed true to the Non-Aligned Movements' principles of sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, he said.
Rajapaksa was controversially appointed Sri Lanka prime minister by President Maithripala Sirisena in October last year, triggering an unprecedented constitutional crisis which lasted for over 50 days.
The Supreme Court in Sri Lanka later restored Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister.
A small section of people who try to foment communal violence in society should be isolated and the government will take stringent action against such elements, state Home Minister M B Patil said on February 8.
He was speaking after inaugurating a three-day Beary Mela organised by the Beary Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) here.
Patil said while 99 percent of the population wanted to live in peace and harmony, one percent was creating trouble on communal lines.
People who come forward to isolate such miscreants would get support from the government, he said.
The mela was aimed to create awareness on Beary culture and contribution to society and to promote business entrepreneurship.
Beary is an ethnic Muslim community in Dakshina Kannada district, who also speak beary, a language without script.
Priyanka Gandhi_Congress_.jpg
Newly appointed Congress general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will have her hands full during her four-day visit to Lucknow as she will meet senior leaders and office bearers of the party.
This will be Priyanka Gandhi's maiden visit to Uttar Pradesh after she formally entered politics last month.
She will arrive in the state capital, Lucknow, accompanied by her brother and Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Congress general secretary in-charge for western Uttar Pradesh on February 11.
The party in Uttar Pradesh is seeing the visit as the virtual launch of the Congress campaign in the state, ahead of the coming Lok Sabha elections.
In-charge of 42 of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka Gandhi will meet senior leaders and office bearers of the party constituency-wise during her visit till February 14, Congress spokesperson Anshu Awasthi told PTI.
Lists of leaders, including former MPs, MLAs and other people's representatives, have been sought from the district unit presidents. Each constituency is being allotted a different time to meet the senior leadership, during which all issues related to their areas will be discussed in detail, he said.
Besides, the district and city unit presidents, office bearers and other senior leaders will also be meeting Priyanka Gandhi and Scindia during their visit, Awasthi said.
Rahul Gandhi is likely to return the same day after a meeting with the state leaders, he added.
Preparations are underway to accord a grand welcome to the three leaders on their arrival, Awasthi said.
They will be welcomed by party workers and leaders at nearly 37 points on the 10 km-route from the airport to the Nehru Bhawan Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) headquarters, he said.
He added that Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Scindia are likely to garland statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi on their way to the party office. The route was finalised after a meeting with the district administration.
The UPCC office is being spruced up and new hoardings have come up all the way from the airport, welcoming Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Scindia.
A team of Special Protection Group (SPG) also visited the UPCC headquarters on Thursday and met senior Congress leaders to make necessary security arrangements ahead of the visit, party sources said.
"Congress workers are excited about the visit of party leaders and we are awaiting to give them a rousing welcome... we hope that with her (Priyanka Gandhi) joining active politics, the state will also get a new energy," chief state Congress spokesperson Rajiv Bakshi said.
"This is a very auspicious time for us and a good omen for the party," he said.
Mike Pompeo
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is hoping to stall inroads of Russian and Chinese influence as he visits two of the European Union's most quarrelsome members, Hungary and Poland.
The top US diplomat arrives Monday in Hungary and will also visit Slovakia and Poland, in each NATO ally highlighting Washington's role in the fall of communism 30 years ago.
Poland, eager for a strong US relationship amid a resurgent Russia, is teaming up with Pompeo to hold a two-day conference on the Middle East, which has drawn limited interest as Europeans balk at President Donald Trump's hawkish line on Iran.
Hungary has drawn especially deep concerns among Western powers as Prime Minister Viktor Orban shows growing authoritarianism, buddies up with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite Western worries over Ukraine and willfully exercises Hungary's veto within the 28-member EU.
A US official said Pompeo will raise concerns about Orban's support for the Russian-backed TurkStream gas pipeline, Moscow's financing of the Paks nuclear plant in Hungary - and especially the country's agreement to let Huawei develop its 5G mobile networks, as Washington accuses the Chinese telecom giant of undermining global security.
The right-wing leaders of Poland and Hungary have been among the few Europeans to praise Trump, sharing his hard line against refugees, his extolling of Christian values and his antipathy toward the power of multilateral bodies such as the EU.
The Trump administration initially welcomed engagement with Orban, who received the cold shoulder from former US president Barack Obama, but concerns have mounted in Washington that Hungary has moved no closer into the US orbit.
Last year, Hungary disappointed the United States by sending two suspected Russian arms dealers wanted by Washington back home.
And despite the US ambassador's intervention, Budapest's renowned Central European University last year said it was moving key programs to Vienna due to tough requirements imposed by Orban on institutions it considers foreign.
The university was founded by US-Hungarian billionaire philanthropist George Soros, an outspoken proponent of liberal values, who is vilified by the far-right in both countries with imagery that is at times anti-Semitic.
The State Department said that Pompeo would not shy away from raising concerns with Orban and would meet in Hungary with civil society groups.
Orban's chief of staff Gergely Gulyas scoffed at Pompeo's meeting with non-governmental groups, telling reporters: "If a US foreign minister meets organizations receiving support from America, then no one should be surprised about that."
The US official adamantly defended engagement with Hungary, saying the Obama administration paid too little attention to Central Europe while Putin visited Budapest twice last year alone.
"We have to show up or expect to lose," the official said.
"Those vacuums that were created by the US not being more strongly present in these places, they do get filled and they have gotten filled," he said.
But Joerg Forbrig, an expert on Central Europe at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said that Orban is a wily politician who knows that Washington has even less leverage over him than the EU, which he has defied for years despite the bloc's power of the purse over Hungary.
"This small country called Hungary, whether it's on Western values or traditional partnerships or existing integration schemes like NATO and the EU, they are completely spitting at this, and very consciously," Forbrig said.
He doubted that the United States and European Union could coordinate much on Hungary in light of Trump's poor relationships with major European allies such as Germany and France.
"I'm not sure Orban will be quite laughing Pompeo out the door, but I'm not sure he's taking his trip very seriously," Forbrig said.
A day after the Supreme Court said BSP chief Mayawati may have to reimburse the public money spent on erecting her statues, she asked BJP leaders and the media not to "distort" the observation of the court. The final hearing in the case against the former UP chief minister is on April 2.
"Humble request to the media please don't distort oral observation of the Honorable court. Sure to get justice in this matter also. Media and BJP leaders please stop kite flying," she said in a tweet.
Mayawati said marvellous memorials and parks built to honour "ignored" gurus and sants born in Dalit and OBC communities are a new grand identity and tourist attractions in the state.
The Bahujan Samaj Party supremo said the party's viewpoint will be placed before the court.
On Friday, the apex court had said, "We are of the tentative view that Mayawati has to deposit the public money spent on her statues and party symbol to the state exchequer."
The remarks were made by the court which was hearing a petition filed in 2009 by an advocate who had alleged that hundreds of crores of rupees were used from the state budget for 2008-09 and 2009-10, when Mayawati was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, for stalling her statues and BSP's symbol at different places.
It was contended that public money cannot be utilised for creating own statues and for propagating the political party.
Speaking on the issue, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, who in the past has lashed out at Mayawati for getting her statues erected with the state's money, Friday went soft on his alliance partner.
"I don't have full information about this. The court might have made some observations. BSP's lawyers will put their side in the court," he told reporters.
The SP and the BSP recently announced their alliance for Uttar Pradesh in the coming Lok Sabha elections, putting aside their once bitter rivalry.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala (Image: PTI Photo/Manvender Vashist)
The Congress said on February 9 that it will not "unwarrantedly interfere" in the functioning of the Madhya Pradesh government on the issue of imposition of the stringent NSA against five people on charges of cow slaughter and illegal transportation of cattle.
The party said law and order is the domain of the chief minister and police.
"Kamal Nathji has categorically said the law will take its own course. Nobody who is innocent will be persecuted or punished in any manner and nobody who is guilty will be spared," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told reporters.
"He is experienced and seasoned enough to see if any officer of the police has made any overreach at the instance of somebody who is previously embedded on behalf of the BJP regime," Surjewala said.
The senior leader said the Congress does not decide on these issues based on the prism of caste or religion.
"Kamal Nathji is also competent enough to see whether the particular offence provides what kind of punishment under the law and I think we should leave it to his seasoned wisdom," Surjewala said.
He said the party will not "unwarrantedly interfere" in the functioning of the state government because that is not the working style of the Congress or its president Rahul Gandhi.
"We will only ensure that no one is unjustifiably persecuted under a law it may not be applicable. We will also ensure that anyone who is guilty is not let off in any manner whatsoever and is given strictest punishment," he said.
On February 8, authorities in Agar Malwa district of Madhya Pradesh booked two men under the National Security Act (NSA) for alleged illegal transportation of cattle and disruption of public peace.
The Kamal Nath-led government in Madhya Pradesh had earlier slapped the NSA against three men accused of killing a cow at Khandwa district.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's second day in Assam saw nude protests, a bandh, raising of black flags and burning of effigies by agitators over the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
Six Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) activists were taken into police custody on Saturday when they stripped naked in front of Janata Bhawan -- the state secretariat here.
The KMSS activists had arrived in cars and stripped naked before holding the protests.
The Tai Ahom Yuba Parishad had called a 12-hour bandh in the state to protest against the prime minister's visit and its impact was felt in the upper Assam districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Lakhimpur and Jorhat with vehicles remaining off the road and shops and business establishments closed.
The bandh was supported by the KMSS along with 70 other organisations jointly protesting against the bill.
The All Assam Students' Union (AASU) claimed that police resorted to mild lathi-charge to disperse its activists who had assembled with black flags and black balloons at the Amingaon-Hajo Road, about 10 km from Modi's rally at Changsari.
The protesters burnt effigies of the prime minister and released black balloons into the air in different districts across the state.
Modi was shown black flags in at least two places here on Saturday for the second consecutive day while on his way to the airport from the Raj Bhawan here.
Protesters, belonging to the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP), showed black flags to Modi at Machkhowa area.
Minutes later, a group of students of the Gauhati University too waved black flags at Modi in the Jalukbari area.
Both the groups were detained as soon as they lodged their protest, police said.
A few students of the Gauhati University alleged that they were manhandled by police.
On February 8 evening, the prime minister was shown black flags in at least four different locations as soon as he landed in Guwahati and was travelling from the airport to the Raj Bhawan to spend the night.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill seeks to provide Indian citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after six years of residence in India even if they do not possess any document.
The bill was passed by the Lok Sabha during the Winter Session on January 8 and has been awaiting Rajya Sabha nod.
The Bahujan Samaj Party on February 9 called off its nearly nine-month-old alliance with Haryana's main opposition INLD and announced to forge ties with LSP, an outfit floated by rebel BJP MP Raj Kumar Saini.
The development comes days after Om Prakash Chautala-led Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) suffered a humiliating defeat in the Jind bypolls, with party candidate Umed Singh Redhu forfeiting his security deposit, amid the ongoing family feud in the Chautala family.
"On the directions of BSP national president and former UP chief minister Mayawati, the BSP today ends alliance with the INLD and ties up with the Loktantra Suraksha Party (LSP)," BSP Haryana incharge Meghraj told reporters here.
Under the new arrangement, the BSP and the LSP will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and Haryana Assembly polls.
In Haryana, the BSP will contest on eight and the LSP on two Lok Sabha seats, Meghraj said.
He further said his party would contest on 35 seats and LSP would on 55 seats during the Haryana Assembly polls.
The BSP had on February 8 hinted that it may soon call off its alliance with the INLD.
It had earlier also said that it would part ways with the INLD if it fails to get united.
Following family feud in the Chautala clan, Ajay Chautala and his two sons Dushyant Chautala and Digvijay Chautala had floated the Jannayak Janata Party last year.
Saini, a rebel BJP MP from Kurukshetra had last year floated his 'Loktantra Suraksha Party' and the candidate fielded by him in the Jind bypolls had put up a better performance than INLD's Redhu.
The ruling BJP had won the Jind bypolls while Digvijay Singh Chautala, the candidate of the Jannayak Janata Party, had finished runners up.
The INLD and the BSP had entered into an alliance in April last year, which both ruling BJP and opposition Congress had described as a "marriage of convenience" which they entered into just to "grab power" in the state.
After forging the alliance, the two parties had announced to jointly contest the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.
The British and Irish leaders are meeting to discuss the Irish border and mend fences amid a tense UK-EU standoff over Brexit.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May will dine with Irish premier Leo Varadkar in Dublin to press her case for changes to Britain's divorce deal with the EU.
Britain's Parliament rejected the agreement last month, largely over concerns about a provision designed to ensure an open border between the UK's Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland.
Britain is due to leave the bloc on March 29.
The bid for last-minute changes has exasperated EU leaders.
But the parties have at least agreed to keep talking.
The British and Irish attorneys general are holding talks Friday to see if there is any common ground on the border.
Arun jaitley_FM
Union Minister Arun Jaitley returned to India on February 9. The senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, who had gone to the United States for his medical treatment, said he was "delighted to be back home".
Jaitley (66), who had a kidney transplant operation and follow-up check-ups at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in 2018, left for the US on January 13 for treatment of an unstated illness.
He also missed presenting the sixth and final Budget of the Narendra Modi government's present term as he had to fly overseas for his medical treatment.
Delighted to be back home.
Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) February 9, 2019
In his absence, the charge of the Finance Ministry was given to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, who on February 1 presented the Interim Budget for 2019-20 financial year.
He had stated that he would be back in India soon but hinted that he may not return to India in time to reply to the debate on Interim Budget in Parliament.
Also read | Jaitley criticises Congress for promising to withdraw Triple Talaq Bill
During his treatment, Jaitley remained active on social media with tweeting and writing Facebook posts.
(With inputs from PTI)
New Delhi: Businessman Robert Vadra leaves after appearing before Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case, in New Delhi, Wednesday, Feb 6, 2019. (PTI Photo/Ravi Choudhary) (PTI2_6_2019_000209B)
Robert Vadra, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law, on February 9 appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for the third time in connection with a probe into allegations of money laundering in purchase of assets abroad.
Vadra arrived at the central probe agency's office at Jamnagar House in central Delhi at about 10.45 am in his private vehicle.
Officials said the investigating officer (IO) of the case required Vadra to answer more questions in connection with the case and hence was asked to depose on Saturday, after his two sessions of questioning on February 6 and 7.
While Vadra was grilled for the first time for about five-and-a-half hours, he was questioned the second time for about 9 hours.
It is understood that the last time Vadra was "confronted with" documents that the agency had obtained or seized as part of its probe in the case, including those linked to absconding defence dealer Sanjay Bhandari.
Vadra has also shared documents with the investigating officer of the case and has assured some more will be provided as and when he gets them, official sources had said.
The ED case against Vadra relates to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property located at 12, Bryanston Square worth 1.9 million GBP (British pounds), which is allegedly owned by him.
The agency has told a Delhi court that it has received information about various new properties in London which belong to Vadra. These include two houses, one worth 5 million GBP and the other valued at 4 million GBP, six other flats and more properties.
Vadra has denied the allegations of possessing illegal foreign assets and termed them a political witch hunt against him. He said he was being "hounded and harassed" to subserve political ends.
Sources said Vadra's statement is being recorded under Section 50 (powers of authorities regarding summons, production of documents and to give evidence) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, as was done the last two times.
His appearance before the ED acquired political overtones after his wife Priyanka Gandhi, recently appointed Congress general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, accompanied him to the investigating agency's office on Wednesday while she picked him up after questioning on Thursday.
Vadra is also expected to depose before the ED on February 12 in Jaipur in an another money-laundering case related to a land scam in Bikaner. The Rajasthan High Court has directed him to cooperate with the agency in the case.
Amid widespread protests across the Northeast over the contentious Citizenship Bill, National Peoples Party(NPP) president and Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma threatened that his party will quit the BJP-led NDA if the proposed legislation is passed in Rajya Sabha.
The party also demanded that the Centre should not go ahead with passing the bill.
The NPP adopted a resolution on its decisions at its general body convention in Shillong during the day in which its leaders from all the four northeastern states where it is holding power or backing the government were present.
"The party took a unanimous resolution to oppose the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016 and based on that decision, a resolution was passed. If the bill is passed, the NPP will break its ties with the NDA," Sangma told mediapersons here after the meeting.
"This decision was taken today at the general body meeting," he said, adding the NPP will submit the party's resolution to the Centre for information and its consideration.
He said the resolution was adopted after receiving reports from various states in the region on the opposition to the bill.
Besides being in power in Meghalaya, the NPP backs the BJP governments in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland.
The bill, being vehemently opposed in the Northeast, was passed in Lok Sabha on January 8 and the Centre has said it will try to get the Rajya Sabha nod in this budget session.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a public meeting at Changsari in Assam Saturday assured the people of the region that the bill will in no way cause harm to their interests.
"It is a national commitment to the people of the Northeast that they will not be harmed in any way and citizenship will be only granted after due investigation and recommendation of the state governments," he said.
The NPP-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government was the first to make public its stand on the bill and the state cabinet had adopted a resolution on it officially last year.
Sangma had convened a meeting of all regional parties of the Northeast in Guwahati in January where chief ministers of Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim agreed to unitedly oppose the controversial bill.
The regional parties are main allies of the BJP and constituents of the North East Democratic Alliance. They met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh over the bill in Delhi but were unable to meet the prime minister.
The bill seeks to provide citizenship to religious minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after six years of residence in India, instead of 12 years, which is the norm currently, even if they do not possess any document.
Arunachal Pradesh (Representative Image)
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu on February 9 claimed that foreign investments are eluding the sensitive border state owing to objections raised by a neighbour, a reference to China, and urged the central government to address the issue.
Khandu was speaking at a function where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also present.
"Arunachal Pradesh has a lot of potential but due to objection of the neighbouring country, foreign investment is not coming," Khandu said at the event at Indira Gandhi Park here.
Although Khandu did not take China's name, the reference was obvious as Arunachal Pradesh shares a 1,080-km long border with China which has refused to recognise India's claim on the region. New Delhi has consistently maintained that the state is an "integral and inalienable part" of India.
On Saturday too, China opposed the prime minister's visit to Arunachal Pradesh but India dismissed it saying its leaders visit the state like they travel to any other part of the country.
"I hope in coming days under your (Modi's) intervention, the issue will be resolved so that we can convert our potential into capital," Khandu added.
Khandu did not cite any specific instance of foreign investment getting blocked, but sources said that the chief minister was hinting at the objection raised by China in June 2009 after a mega Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded irrigation project got scrapped.
The ADB board of directors and member countries had endorsed a Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for 2009-12, which included the irrigation project.
Although the ADB member countries had backed a document which included a flood management project in Arunachal Pradesh, pressure from China "forced" the bank to withdraw the project in 2009.
In 2010, India dropped Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim from a World Bank loan proposal to avoid running into Chinese objections over multilateral financial aid to projects in the border areas, an official told PTI on condition of anonymity.
"The initial proposal for a Rs 11,000 crore loan to strengthen electricity transmission and distribution in the northeastern region covered Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim. After excluding the two states, the loan amount was around Rs 8,115 crore," the state government official said.
Khandu, however, said that Arunachal Pradesh was getting more attention from the Centre ever since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power in 2014.
"The region which remained neglected for years together got its due recognition after Modi became the prime minister of the country.
"The seriousness for the region has gained momentum which is evident from the fact that every month at least three ministers visit the states of the region," Khandu said.
Representative Image
In view of rising cases of swine flu and deaths due to the disease in Gujarat and Punjab, the Union Health Ministry has sent two teams to assess the situation and assist the states in strengthening their response mechanism to contain the ailment.
Fifty-four deaths and 1,187 cases were reported in Gujarat till February 7, while 30 deaths and 301 cases were reported from Punjab, according to data by the Health Ministry.
"Two central teams have been sent to Gujarat and Punjab as they have reported large number of fatalities due to the H1N1 infection," said an official from the ministry.
Both teams comprise a microbiologist, an epidemiologist and a clinician.
The ministry had earlier deputed a public health team to Rajasthan, which has recorded the highest number of cases and deaths due to swine flu this year.
Ninty-six deaths and 2,706 cases were reported in Rajasthan till February 7, the data stated.
The states have also been advised to involve district collectors in enhancing public awareness and outbreak response.
The death toll due to swine flu in the country has soared to 226 with the H1N1 virus claiming 31 more lives in a week till Monday, while the number of those affected crossed the 6,000 mark.
In a recently held high-powered meeting with senior officials of the ministry, Union health secretary Preeti Sudan reviewed the state of preparedness and action taken to deal with H1N1 influenza cases.
The guidelines for influenza vaccination were shared with all the states and the details of manufacturers of vaccine provided by the Drug Controller General of India was shared with all the states.
Communication material for preventive measures has also been shared with all the states.
"Majority of cases have been reported from 13 states (and majority of deaths have been reported from Rajasthan, Gujarat and Punjab. Deaths have been seen more in persons having comorbidities like diabetes, hypertension etc," the official said.
Regular video conferences are being held to monitor the situation, he said.
Advisory for preparedness to seasonal influenza A (H1N1) was issued and Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) and its state units have enhanced the surveillance for Influenza like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI), according to a statement issued here.
The Drug Controller General of India has been asked to coordinate with drug manufacturers and monitor the availability of Oseltamivir, the drug recommended by the WHO in various states, it said.
The ministry has recommended vaccination for health care workers and other priority groups.
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Indian market witnessed a selloff in the last two trading session of the week which pushed benchmark indices below crucial support levels largely on weak global cues.
The S&P BSE Sensex closed the week below 37,000 while Nifty50 failed to hold on to 11,000 for the week ended February 8.
On weekly basis, Sensex rose 0.2 percent while the Nifty50 recorded gains of about 0.46 percent but as many as 16 stocks in the BSE500 index plunged 10-60 percent in the same period.
Stocks which saw a double-digit cut include names like Reliance Power, Reliance Infrastructure, Reliance Communications, Reliance Capital, Suzlon Energy, Jaiprakash Associates, Adani Power, SREI Infra, IDBI Bank, Centrum Capital, Indiabulls Ventures, Indiabulls Integrated Services, Tata Chemicals, Indiabulls Real Estate, and Mahindra Logistics.
The big carnage was seen in the small & mid-cap space which fell over 2 percent respectively for the week ended February 8. More than 300 stocks on the BSE hit a fresh 52-week low while on the NSE the number was slightly over 200.
As many as 21 stocks on the BSE hit a fresh all-time low in the week gone by which include names like Reliance Power, Reliance Communication, Suzlon, Inox, ICICI Securities, Cochin Shipyard, Coal India, Shankara Building etc. among others.
ADAG stocks saw their worst decline as most of the stocks hit their lifetime low during the week gone by. Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group on February 8 accused L&T and Edelweiss entities of "illegal" and "motivated" actions in invoking the pledged shares and selling them in the open market causing a steep fall in its share value.
Both L&T Finance and Edelweiss Group refuted the allegations made by the Reliance Group in separate media statements.
"Post Rcom bankruptcy, ADAG group may face credibility crisis as no lender may come forward to lend money to this group. Hence, stocks may under pressure for some more time and investors should avoid them in their own interest atleast for a couple of months till dust gets settled," Mazhar Mohammad, Chief Strategist Technical Research & Trading Advisory, Chartviewindia.in.
The market direction in the coming week will be dominated by global cues as well as macro data, suggest experts.
"Volatility likely to continue amid growing concerns over the trade fight between the US and China, also Markets to closely track domestic macroeconomic data like IIP, CPI & WPI scheduled in the coming week," Hemang Jani, Head - Advisory, Sharekhan by BNP Paribas said.
"We continue to maintain a positive view on the consumption sector and expect the coming election to act as a positive catalyst for volume growth. Any major decline in the market should be used to buy into quality names such as (HUL, Reliance Industries and Titan) which remain some of our preferred picks," he said.
Technical View:
Following the Doji formation on February 7, the Nifty witnessed a sharp reversal on February 8. In terms of the candlestick patterns, the price action over the last three sessions has resulted in the Evening Star formation.
The pattern got formed post the completion of an Ending Diagonal pattern. This increases the bearish significance of the candlestick pattern, suggest experts.
"The Fibonacci retracements reveal that the benchmark index has reversed from the 61.8% retracement of the September October decline. Hence the Nifty seems to have topped out at the recent high of 11,118," Gaurav Ratnaparkhi, Senior Technical Analyst, Sharekhan by BNP Paribas.
On the way down, the Nifty has broken the key support zone of 10,980-11,000 on a closing basis. Thus the traders can add to the position on the short side. From short term perspective, 10,583-10,534 shall now be the key target area to watch out for with potential to head significantly lower, he added.
Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad has completed the Cluster 1 of its final placement for the postgraduate programmes on February 8. Accenture Strategy made the highest number of offers (including pre-placement offers) at 24, closely followed by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) that gave 20 offers in Cluster 1.
The business school does not give out salary figures.
The firms that participated in Cluster 1 comprised five cohorts
investment banking and markets, management consulting, advisory consulting private equity, venture capital and asset management.
The list of Cluster 1 recruiters included regular partners such as Accenture Strategy, AT Kearney, Avendus, Bain & Co, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, McKinsey & Company, Monitor Deloitte, Oliver Wyman & The Boston Consulting Group among others.
IIM-A, which is the considered one of the top management institutes in the country, has a cluster-based approach for the final placements wherein companies offering similar profiles are grouped into cohorts, and several cohorts are invited to the campus in a particular cluster.
This year there are three clusters on February 8, 11 and 14. The institute said that it will follow a rolling process post Cluster 3, if necessary.
Students were offered management consulting roles across geographies including Singapore and Malaysia.
Finance firms offered (including pre-placement offers) roles in investment banking, private equity, venture capital and capital markets across functions and geographies including Hong Kong and USA.
In this segment, Avendus made the highest number of offers (including pre-placement offers) of nine closely followed by JP Morgan Chase with eight offers.
The Delhi government is considering a nearly threefold-hike in the margin money for ration dealers from existing Rs 70 to Rs 200 per quintal, besides paying arrears to them.
Food and Civil Supplies Minister Imran Hussain on February 9 said the matter is under active consideration of the government.
"A proposal in this regard will be placed before the cabinet at the earliest for trebling the margin money," Hussain said in a statement.
The Minister also said the demand of ration dealers for payment of arrears of margin money from September 1, 2013 to August 31, 2014 has also been acceded to by the Delhi government. The matter is being forwarded to the Union government for payment of equal amount of arrears as central assistance, he said.
The announcement was made by Hussain after a meeting of office-bearers of the Delhi Sarkari Ration Dealers Sangh which was also attended by the Commissioner, Food and Supplies (CFS), and other officials of the department.
The Delhi government distributes specified food articles to the tune of 3.75 lakh quintals to 72.78 lakh beneficiaries per month under Targeted Public Distribution System as per National Food Security Act 2013.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 9) Authorities are on the lookout for a foreign suicide bomber being harbored by Abu Sayyaf fighters in their known lair in Patikul, Sulu.
Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano on Saturday told CNN Philippines the Arab-speaking terrorist is with the Sulu faction of the Abu Sayyaf led by Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, the supposed acting leader of the international terrorist network ISIS in the Philippines.
"He is described as an Arab because he spoke Arabic We're on the lookout for this Arab national," Ano said. "According to our sources he's also a suicide bomber."
When asked about the United States Department of Defense's report naming Sawadjaan as the ISIS emir replacing slain leader Isnilon Hapilon, Ano confirmed that among all Abu Sayyaf factions, it is "Sawadjaan and his followers who are really adhering and very active in supporting the call of ISIS."
READ: Jolo blast mastermind is ISIS PH's acting emir U.S. Defense
Sawadjaan is the alleged mastermind in the deadly twin blasts in a church in Jolo, Sulu, which left 23 people dead and about 100 wounded last January 27.
Ano on Saturday also confirmed that the government is working with Indonesian authorities who want to clarify if the couple who allegedly carried out the suicide attack in Jolo were indeed Indonesian citizens, as he earlier reported.
"We're working with them. We'll be asking their assistance for confirmation and identification during DNA testing."
He said the suicide bombers, who spoke Bahasa Indonesia, were survived by their 10-year-old daughter who are now with Abu Sayyaf fighters in Sulu.
READ: Indonesian suicide bombers behind Jolo blasts Ano
Ano estimates at least 10 other foreign terrorists are still in the country after they were able to "sneak out of" Marawi City during the five-month war between government forces and the ISIS-linked Maute group.
At least 30 foreign terrorists were among the 1,000 killed in the heavy fighting which lasted from May to October 2017 and prompted President Rodrigo Duterte to declare martial law in Mindanao. Military rule remains in effect in the island region as Congress granted the President's third request for an extension to quell the rebellion.
Australian middleweight champion Robert Whittaker has been ruled out of his title defense main event fight at UFC 234 in Melbourne against American contender Kelvin Gastelum after suffering a hernia injury.
Whittaker was due to take on Gastelum in an eagerly-awaited match-up at the top of the bill on home soil at Rod Laver Arena on Sunday local time.
But the bout is now off after Whittaker suffered a hernia problem overnight, just hours before he was due to step into the Octagon.
ESPNs Brett Okamoto reported the news, citing UFC chief Dana White.
He later said Whittaker would be undergoing surgery on Sunday for the problem.
It means the no less anticipated co-main event between Israel 'The Last Stylebender' Adesanya and Brazilian legend Anderson Silva will top proceedings Down Under.
Saudi Arabia appears to have been systematically helping its US-based citizens to evade American justice for serious crimes, possibly by providing fake passports and private planes.
Late last year, the Oregonian reported five cases of suspects successfully fleeing charges in the state of Oregon, which was temporarily home to about 1,000 students from Saudi Arabia. But the same news outlet has now discovered a total of 17 cases across eight states and even Canada, suggesting the ploy is an established practice.
Most of the cases involve a similar scenario: after an arrest, the Saudi consulate hires a legal team and eventually posts bail, which in two cases constituted $1 million and $500,000. Once the suspect is released, even if they had surrendered their international travel passport, they somehow manage to leave the country, before then appearing back in Saudi Arabia.
Sameer Noorah was speeding on a suspended license in 2016 when he hit and killed a 15-year-old girl. Two weeks before he was due to face trial in June 2017, a black SUV pulled up outside his house and took him to a secluded spot where his ankle monitor was cut off. At this point, US Homeland Security says he was likely issued with a false identity and left the country on a private plane.
Also on rt.com Crown Prince MBS must be dealt with before US-Saudi relations can move forward Sen. Graham
Other cases include a rape purportedly committed after a student offered a classmate drugs and alcohol, a hit-and-run involving illegal intoxicants, and a laptop containing a massive library of child pornography.
What seems most shocking is not just the scope of the crime, but that, in the current atmosphere of suspicion regarding foreign meddling, another country has been able to flagrantly and freely violate scores of American laws. This has humiliated the US justice system without reproach, and the same schemes could be used to transport a terrorist or other security threat in and out of the country.
In January, Oregons two senators proposed a bill that would sanction individuals found to have helped organize these escapes, and punish the Saudi regime collectively, which they said could be using its diplomatic privileges to execute the plans.
Also on rt.com US judge tosses Saudi Arabias motion to dismiss 9/11 complicity lawsuits
Saudi Arabias blatant disrespect for international norms cannot be allowed to stand. We should all be able to agree that any nation that helps their citizens escape from the law needs to be held fully accountable, said Senator Jeff Merkley.
But so far, the story has received only intermittent national attention, while journalists at the Oregonian believe that only a cursory search of similar cases has been conducted, and this could represent just the tip of the iceberg.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Russian Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, as locals face a massive invasion of polar bears, with over 50 predators seeking food and harassing residents in the urban landscape.
The move was announced Saturday after several weeks of close encounters between locals and the fearsome furry beasts.
People are fearful, they are afraid to go outside, daily life is in turmoil, parents are wary of letting children to go to schools and kindergartens, deputy head of the local administration, Aleksandr Minayev, said in a statement.
The town of Belushya Guba seems to be the most affected by the polar bear problem, with at least 52 specimen roaming around the vicinity. A bunch of videos have emerged online showing the bears strolling down the snowy streets, digging through food waste and even trying to invade homes.
The worrying migration of bears began late last year when the animals started to flock to the settlements of Novaya Zemlya en masse, some videos captured them rummaging through a local dump. This appears to be the worst one the remote Arctic region has endured over the past few decades.
I've been in Novaya Zemlya since 1983, yet I've never seen such a massive polar bear invasion, head of local administration, Zigansha Musin, said, adding that at least five predators seem to be staying at the village all day long.
While polar bears dont normally hunt humans, preying on various sea mammals instead, a close encounter with them can result in serious injuries or being mauled to death.
To fend off the beasts, Belushya Guba has already erected some fences and tried to scare the predators off by vehicles and warning shots. Some bears, however, seem to be eager to stay in the town despite all the efforts of humans.
The town ultimately decided to hunt down a few animals which proved to be easier said than done, since the polar bears are an endangered species protected in Russia. The administration has asked the national nature protection watchdog for permission to shoot and kill the most rowdy bears, yet the request has been denied. The watchdog, however, is set to dispatch a team of specialists to the troubled village to try and tackle the problem without unnecessary violence.
Also on rt.com Mission to save orphaned polar bear cub in Russias north (PHOTOS)
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The majority of Germans have negative views about the state of relations between Washington and Berlin, and many think China is a more reliable partner, a recent poll has shown. Only a fraction believe Russia is their problem.
As many as 85 percent of respondents in Germany saw US-German relations in a negative or even very negative light, according to a survey conducted by German polling company Civey and Atlantik-Bruecke (the Atlantic Bridge), an NGO promoting closer ties between the two countries. Just about ten percent of respondents had positive opinions about the relationship.
Also on rt.com Russia tops list of Germanys biggest fears but US is only 1 point behind
Worse still, more than 57 percent of Germans believe that Germany should also keep a greater distance from its ally across the pond, while only 13 percent advocate closer ties. More than 42 percent of German citizens also consider China to be a more reliable partner for Germany than the US almost twice as many as those who said they favor the US.
The Germans also seem to be not particularly supportive of the mainstream narrative pushed by the US and their western allies when it comes to external threats real or imagined. The supposedly expanding zone of influence of traditional boogeyman Russia was considered a concern by an underwhelming 1.9 percent of respondents, while just 2.2 percent thought Chinas influence was to be feared. In contrast, right-wing populism and protectionism was named as a top threat by 31.1 percent.
The polls results have apparently upset the pro-US experts at the Atlantik-Bruecke NGO, who rushed to call for more talks with and about America while lamenting the huge loss of confidence in the US.
Also on rt.com Nearly two-thirds of Germans say Trump is more dangerous than Putin poll
The Germans have indeed become less supportive of the US over recent years, with scandals exposing how Washington was spying on its allies and disregarding their interests until finally it came to a threat of an all-out sanctions war. Berlins closest strategic ally even took second place in the list of countries that people in Germany fear the most, trailing behind Russia by just one percent point, according to another survey published in early January.
An earlier poll conducted in summer 2018 also showed that Germans believe that the actions of US President Donald Trump put the world at a greater risk than those of the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.
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One of Frances foremost public intellectuals has posted a 4,000-word screed exposing collusion between the brute Emmanuel Macron and the mainstream media to put down the Gilets Jaunes, all while blaming them for the violence.
Emmanuel Macron has chosen not to maintain order, but to suppress public protest," writes Michel Onfray in his blog, in an attempt at a definitive account of the protests that have gripped France since November.
Intentionally, the president did not restrain the violence of protesters, and unleashed it on the part of the authorities. As the head of state, he carries responsibility for choosing repressive measures, so every single injury sustained is on him.
A household name in France, Onfray is the author of over 100 books on subjects ranging from philosophy to religion to politics, many of them non-fiction bestsellers. He is also the founder of a tuition-free private university in Caen, which is part-funded by his publications. He is one of the most respected figures to try to give an overview of the crisis that goes beyond headlines and political allegiances.
Onfray writes that the protest did not begin as a peasants revolt of disgruntled right-wingers refusing to pay an environmental fuel tax as it is being portrayed by newspapers but was simply a result of ordinary Frenchmen saying, We cannot pay!
Instead of listening, however, Macron decided to escalate the conflict using it for his own benefits, and the interests of the Maastricht camp [the pro-EU establishment].
Symbolic slaps
The philosopher, who has previously aligned with leftist movements, details six symbolic slaps the president dealt out to the protesters, in addition to the physical violence they suffered in their weekly clashes during the demonstrations.
These include accusations that the protesting crowd consists of homophobes, racists and anti-Semites, insinuations that not all French people know how to work hard, and that some of the low-paid workers take it easy. More substantively, there was the promise of the grand debate, while suggesting that no major changes of course would take place (Reform is not a free bar! Macron has warned) and a temporary moratorium on the fuel tax, rather than an outright promise to shelve it.
Also on rt.com Protester has hand RIPPED OFF during Yellow Vest march in Paris (GRAPHIC VIDEO)
At each step of the way, he has been supported by the establishment media, regardless of its nominal political affiliations.
The Yellow Vests are being presented as bestial, and the media skillfully uses all images and words to support those theses, replicating the descriptions used by the presidents palace, writes Onfray.
Mosaic of despotism
Onfray sees the roots of the problem in the liberal Maastricht state created in 1992 with the establishment of the European Union, to promoting which Macron has dedicated his entire short adult life.
This is an order that is strong against the week, as we can see on the streets, and weak against the strong, as is evident from the abolition of the wealth tax and the failure to root out tax havens, writes the 60-year-old Onfray.
Also on rt.com Yellow Vests are reaction to ultra-liberal policies Italys deputy PM
Macron is trying to explain that there is not enough liberalist Europe in our lives, while the Gilets Jaunes are saying back to him that there is too much not too much Europe, but too much liberalism.
The Maastricht state is cruel to those who carry the burdens of globalization and simply by declaring their poverty, these people have been ideologically criminalized.
What is happening now is the emerging mosaic of despotism as the ruling classes try to hold on to the advantages they have accrued over the past decades.
When the rich call the poor names, it is a variation of old themes, that the working classes are dangerous classes. This is the song all bourgeois establishments sing when they are scared, writes Onfray.
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The European Commission (EC) has slashed its growth forecast for the 19 countries that use the euro. It said even the lower estimate was vulnerable to large uncertainty from slowing growth in China and weakening global trade.
The EC is now expecting growth of 1.3 percent this year, down from 1.9 percent previously. It estimated that the eurozone could have grown by 1.9 percent last year, slowing from a 10-year high of 2.4 percent in 2017.
A high level of uncertainty surrounds the economic outlook, said the report. Trade tensions, which have been weighing on sentiment for some time, have alleviated somewhat but remain a concern.
Also on rt.com The EU bubble is doomed to burst in 2019, financial analyst warns
It added that Chinas economy may be slowing more sharply than anticipated and global financial markets and many emerging markets are vulnerable to abrupt changes in risk sentiment and growth expectations.
The possibility of a disruptive Brexit creates additional uncertainty, according to the commissions Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis.
The EC stressed that it simply couldnt predict how bad any of the problem areas including Brexit, the US-Chinese trade war, and financial markets could turn out to be.
Also on rt.com Sanctions? Russian economy to overtake Germanys by 2020 report
The health of the German economy is also among the major concerns, according to the report. The countrys 2019 forecast was cut to 1.1 percent from 1.8 percent as a result of weakening export growth and disappointing domestic consumption, Moscovici said.
For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
Brussels is flooded with hundreds of Russian and Chinese agents, the EU security services warned diplomats, saying they must watch where they go for meals and pastimes, German media reported.
There are around 250 Chinese and 200 Russian spies snooping around in the EUs unofficial capital, Brussels, diplomats told German paper Welt am Sonntag, citing a warning they got from the European External Action Service (EEAS).
The same notice was also sent out to EU military officials. In order to avoid being targeted by Moscow or Beijing, the diplomats were strongly advised to stay out of certain parts of Brussels' European Quarter where the majority of the key EU institutions are based, the paper wrote.
Also on rt.com Trump praises US intelligence a day after telling them to go back to school over Iran nukes
The 'no-go' places included a popular steakhouse and a cafe close to the Berlaymont building, which hosts the European Commission, and the EEAS HQ nearby.
According to the report, the Chinese and Russian 'spies' typically operate in their nations embassies and trade offices, but they arent the only problem as the US, and even Moroccan agents, are said to be active in the Belgian capital as well.
The only actual past spy row the paper cites is from more than a decade ago. In 2003, listening devices were found installed in the Justus Lipsius building, which back then hosted the European Council. The US and Israel were named as potential suspects but the subsequent probe failed to link the bugging with any particular country.
Interestingly enough, Welt am Sonntag omits the much more widely-covered spying controversy of recent years the allegations of NSA surveillance of European politicians. The revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden suggested that Americans had tapped the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others.
Also on rt.com Give us FIVE! UK security sources identify two more Skripal suspects
Merkel herself expressed public outrage over the case. Spying among friends that simply isnt done, she said at the time, adding that she told then-US president Barack Obama we're not in the Cold War anymore.
The German probe into the phone-tapping allegations was, however, dropped after the prosecutors said that they couldnt find evidence that would hold up in court.
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A parade of strong storm systems is going to continue in the next two weeks. Four moisture-laden storms should traverse the U.S. over the next 16 days.
Heres an animation of NOAAs main computer model, the Global Forecast System. It shows you how stormy its going to be across the middle U.S., including Michigan.
The surface weather forecast for the next 16 days shows three significant storms and a last weaker storm.
Across the Great Lakes region expect a storm system next Tuesday and Wednesday, next weekend and two storms the following week.
Storms will be spaced apart only three to four days. The animation above is a computer model forecast for the next 16 days. You can clearly see three strong storm systems and a final weaker storm in this next wave of storm systems. The storms are going to hit the West Coast strong, become unorganized over the Rockies, and then emerge into the Plains and become strong again.
Storm systems that move into the Great Lakes and East Coast from the southwestern U.S. are usually filled with lots of moisture. That means each of these storms can yield a swath of heavy snow, freezing rain and flooding rain.
So get ready for stormy winter weather for the next two weeks, and keep updated with each storm on the MLive weather blog.
Former Detroit Tigers reliever Alex Wilson has landed with the Cleveland Indians on a minor-league deal.
Wilson, 32, pitched for the Tigers from 2015-2018. He was non-tendered, or not offered a new contract, after the 2018 season.
Wilson will earn $1.25 million with a chance for $750,000 in incentives if he makes the Indians big-league roster, according to ESPNs Jeff Passan, who reported the signing.
The Indians frequently stockpile veteran relievers on low-cost, low-risk deals, and Wilsons signing fits that profile. Although not an overpowering strikeout pitcher, Wilson has been one of the leagues most consistent relievers over the last four seasons, inducing grounders and keeping batters in the park.
Wilson posted a 3.20 ERA over four seasons and 264 2/3 innings with Detroit.
He would have been slated to make roughly $2 million in arbitration if the Tigers had tendered him a contract for 2019. Instead, they opted to let him become a free agent.
The other player non-tendered by the Tigers in November, catcher James McCann, quickly signed a two-year deal with the Chicago White Sox.
ROBINSON TOWNSHIP, MI - Toxic PFAS chemicals in the drinking water at an Ottawa County elementary school likely originated near or on school property, officials suspect.
But the activity that caused the plume, which private well testing indicates is moving north from the school, is harder to pinpoint, said Paul Knoerr, environmental quality analyst and geologist with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, after a town hall meeting on Friday, Feb. 8.
State testing during fall 2018 found that the drinking water at Robinson Elementary in Ottawa County contained levels of PFAS above what is considered safe for human health.
Undocumented dumping, the school septic field or even demonstrations of firefighting foam on school property could be sources, Knoerr said. He estimates that the entire plume consists of about five gallons of PFAS, in other words: not much.
While the Robinson Township Fire Department does not and has never purchased the Class B foam that is known to contain PFAS chemicals, there is still a chance it could be to blame, said Nick Bonstell, Ottawa County emergency manager, during the meeting.
Its not out of the question, Bonstell said. There could have maybe been some residual product or something down the line.
The chances of that are slim, he added.
Its possible that a source will be never be identified, said Abigail Hendershott, Grand Rapids district supervisor for the DEQ. But upcoming work could identify the PFAS hot spot.
A hydrogeological study that will soon be underway could determine environmental risks, such as the breadth and depth of the PFAS plume, in which direction its moving, and how close it is to other aquifers and bodies of water.
Next steps in the study include vertical sampling in which the state will bore down 50 feet to the clay bottom of the aquifer and then take water samples every 5 feet. Seven vertical sample locations have been identified four encircle the school and three are near a residence that tested for high levels of PFAS. Monitoring wells will be placed in those same locations. There will also be surface water and soil testing in other locations.
The hydrogeological study is expected the conclude during spring 2019.
Officials suspect that the school is the hot spot and that groundwater and therefore PFAS flows north from the school.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set a PFAS lifetime health advisory of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for the individual PFAS chemicals PFOS and PFOA.
Robinson Elementary drinking water was found to have PFOS and PFOA, at a combined level of 119 ppt and total PFAS of 171 ppt in October 2018. The school, which is part of the Grand Haven Area Public Schools, is the only school of 461 tested by the state to have PFAS levels greater than the lifetime health advisory.
Since October, the state has tested 60 private wells near the school. Three, including the school, had PFAS levels above the lifetime health advisory. However, 28 wells had some level of PFAS detected.
Every home with any PFAS detected is eligible for a kitchen-sink water filter, said Bill Farrell, a toxicologist with Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Seven have been installed so far. One homeowner declined the filter. The other 20 will be contacted soon.
Robinson Elementary has been on bottled water since October. The school has used about 10,000 of the 33,000 bottles provided at that time, Grand Haven schools Superintendent Andrew Ingall said during the meeting.
The school is working toward a solution to restore on-site drinking water by the start of the 2019-20 school year, he said. Options being considered include a whole-building water filter or connecting the school to municipal water.
FRUITPORT, MI Everyone was royalty at the Night to Shine prom on Friday, Feb. 8.
The prom at Calvary Christian School was one of about 650 held simultaneously around the country to honor adults and teens with special needs.
About 150 guests, 230 volunteers and 140 parents and caregivers attended the event hosted by The Lakes Church and sponsored by Tim Tebow Foundation.
Night to Shine is an unforgettable prom night experience, centered on Gods love, for people with special needs, according to a news release.
Every Night to Shine guest entered the complimentary event on a red carpet complete with a warm welcome and paparazzi. Once inside, they received the royal treatment each one was crowned prom king or queen.
Guests were treated to hair and makeup stations, shoe shining, limousine rides, corsages and boutonnieres, catered dinner, karaoke, party favors and dancing.
I am blown away by how we are seeing God use the church to step into this space as an advocate for people with special needs, said Tim Tebow, in a written statement. Its not about my foundation or the churches themselves, but about communities coming together to love and celebrate people with differences. Every town, every village, every state, every country needs a Night to Shine for their special needs community a chance to be a part of something significant and life-changing, and to be blessed in the process.
The Tim Tebow Foundation provided The Lakes Church with a planning manual, prom kit with decorations and party favors, guidance and financial support.
Night to Shine launched in 2015 with 44 host churches, 15,000 volunteers and more than 7,000 attendees. In 2018, 537 host churches and 175,000 volunteers came together to celebrate 90,000 guests with special needs.
OSHTEMO TOWNSHIP, MI A new Olgas Kitchen restaurant is opening to the public at 10:30 a.m. today, Saturday, Feb. 9.
It is located at 5095 Century Avenue in Oshtemo Township, just outside of Kalamazoo, according to TEAM Schostak Family Restaurants, which owns Olgas Kitchen.
When TEAM Schostak Family Restaurants purchased Olgas Kitchen in 2016, we made a commitment to revitalize our brand," TEAM Schostak Family Restaurants Executive Chairman Mark Schostak said. "As part of that revitalization, this restaurant features our new design, which is more open to embrace that feeling of truly walking into Olgas Kitchenwhere fresh, high-quality food is prepared daily for you in our kitchen. This new layout, coupled with our dedicated team, has elevated the dining experience even further in a way that makes each guest feel as though they are being hosted rather than served.
Since announcing the location, the company has received positive feedback from the community, he said.
While celebrating the opening, Schostak said the company wants to also recognize their late founder, Olga Loizon, whose passion and tenacity paved the way for Olgas Kitchen to be the success that it is today.
We are thankful for her perseverance to make her dream a reality and are proud to continue to honor her both in our Kalamazoo restaurant and through our Olga, A Life Wrapped in Love Foundation," he said.
The foundation was established by Olgas Kitchen and TEAM Schostak Family Restaurants and is meant to provide financial assistance to Michigans aspiring women entrepreneurs in pursuit of developing the states next iconic business, he said.
The first Olgas Kitchen opened in 1970 after Loizon created her own bread recipe. The Olgas Kitchen menu now includes Olga wraps using the bread filled with a variety of ingredients, along with salads, soups and other items.
The Kalamazoo Olgas will be open Monday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and on Sundays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Another Olgas Kitchen operates at The Crossroads mall in Portage.
BRANCH COUNTY, MI -- Police have identified a suspect allegedly involved in a recent rash of vandalism complaints in Branch County.
Since November, the Coldwater Public Safety Department and Quincy Police Department have received at least 22 reports of windows being shot out by a BB gun, according to police.
Total damages are estimated to be at least $15,000, Coldwater Deputy Director of Public Safety Joe Scheid said.
After noticing a pattern of events, police reached out to the community to ask for help solving the case, Scheid said.
Ricky Cox II, 44, of Quincy, was identified as a suspect through a tip, he said. Cox was already in jail on unrelated charges, Scheid said, and admitted to being involved in some of the incidents police were investigating.
Police have requested the Branch County Prosecutor to authorize 22 charges of malicious destruction of property be brought against Cox. The man was arraigned on three charges of malicious destruction of property Wednesday, Feb. 6, Branch County District Court officials said.
Parts of the investigation are ongoing, Scheid said.
We want to thank the community for their support through the investigation, he said.
BROOKLYN, MI - A Wisconsin-based retailer is closing stores across the country, including 17 in Michigan.
Shopko, a general merchandise store, announced this week it plans to close 139 stores as it attempts to restructure and emerge from bankruptcy, according to a news release. Two of the stores are in Jackson and Lenawee counties.
Through our conversations with the potential buyers, it has become clear that it is in our best interest to operate with a significantly smaller store footprint, spokesperson Michelle Hansen said in an email. On Wednesday, we announced the closure of an additional 139 Shopko and Shopko Hometown stores. Further, we will relocate approximately 50 optical centers in closing stores to new freestanding locations.
The Jackson County store at 400 S. Main St. in Brooklyn and the Lenawee County store at 2655 W. Chicago Blvd. in Tecumseh will close on May 12. In Michigan, one Shopko, three Shopko Hometown stores and three optical centers will remain open, Hansen said.
The closing impacts 10 to 15 full and part-time employees at Hometown stores and 25 to 50 full and part time employees at Shopko stores, Hansen said. Shopko plans to help interested employees transfer to open positions at other locations.
View the full list here.
The company filed for financial restructuring under Chapter 11 of the United State Bankruptcy Code on Jan. 16 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Nebraska, according to a news release.
We remain hopeful that we will be able to emerge as a stronger company, and we believe that this is the best course of action to make ourselves more attractive to potential buyers and successfully emerge from Chapter 11, Hansen said.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- For more than 24 hours, Carmina Rivera has been wearing outdoor clothes while indoors.
She dons additional layers of clothing, coats and blankets ever since her house last had power at noon Thursday, Feb. 7.
Its so cold inside, Rivera said.
The worst of it, though, she fears is yet to come. She leaves for Chicago over the weekend and worries shell return home to a living space flooded with water from a burst pipe.
Thats going to be even a bigger problem, she said.
Rivera is one of thousands still without power in West Michigan after a series of ice storms and high winds wreaked havoc on the power grid.
The number of homes and businesses in West Michigan included in the power outage continues to decline Friday. Crews from Consumers Energy and out-of-state utility companies worked together in an effort to restore power to the customers.
At the start of day Friday, about 157,000 customers were without power. That number, as of 2:30 p.m. Friday, has diminished to about 126,000.
Consumers Energy officials said most customers should expect their power restored by Sunday. But some, they said, may not have power until late Monday.
Still, many left their homes and visited warming shelters. For some, their heat has been off for a two or three days. Temperatures in West Michigan also decreased well below the freezing mark.
Grand Rapids resident Sheryl Ingram said her power went out early Thursday. When the 68-year-old made the decision later that day to leave for an overnight shelter, the temperature in her apartment had dipped into the 40s.
I completely lost all power, heat, electric -- everything went out. The refrigerator, stove, nothing worked at all. It was like that for more than 24 hours, Ingram said. It was too cold.
Ingram fought back tears as she expressed her gratitude for the Red Cross and others who provided a warm place to stay.
Im really, really thankful and grateful of the Red Cross, Ingram said. Everybody here has been so nice. Its nice to have that kind of support through something like this.
Ingram said she was one of about a dozen people who sought overnight shelter at Union High School late Thursday. On Friday, that number swelled to more than 60 people after a nearby retirement home was evacuated after losing power, according to Red Cross officials.
I was very pleased to evacuate because I was so cold, said Vicki Switzer, an 80-year-old resident of Villa Maria Retirement Community. I worry about the people that havent had the opportunity or refuse to leave their homes.
Red Cross volunteer Penny Raap said the Union High School shelter, with its cots, food, coffee and heat, is ready to shelter people as long as the need remains.
Were preparing to shelter people as long as their electricity is off," she said. Ive been in similar situations, but this is just the beginning, so Im not quite sure how big its going to get.
Union High School is one of several overnight shelters available in Kent County. Residents requiring oxygen tanks should utilize Union High School. The others are:
GRAND RAPIDS, MI A developer wants to breath new life into property at the corner of Wealthy Street SE and Fuller Avenue thats been vacant since the late 1970s, but the concept converting shipping containers into a mixed-use building may face an uphill battle.
Initial plans submitted to the city of Grand Rapids for feedback show a series of structures, ranging from one- to three-stories tall, created by using stand-alone or stacked shipping containers. The shipping containers would be converted for residential and retail use.
I personally think it would be a fun and interesting project to do on that corner, said Steve Bratschie, a Grand Rapids area attorney who owns the property. He envisions a ground-floor restaurant or brewery, with open-air seating between the various shipping containers.
The site, 1201 Wealthy St. SE, is one of the few remaining vacant properties along a bustling stretch of Wealthy that has undergone significant redevelopment over the past decade and is now home to some of the citys most popular bars and restaurants.
Because it falls within the Wealthy Street Historic District, any proposed structure at the site must be approved by the Grand Rapids Historic Preservation Commission. The commission doesnt judge proposed buildings based on whether their design is modern or historical, but whether they match the overall scale of the neighborhood.
This week, an architect presented conceptual plans to the commission for informal feedback. Commissioners and city staff said the concept is exciting but would struggle to be compatible with the neighborhood.
The HPC (Historic Preservation Commission) was very supportive of the overall creativity of the general concept of such a project within our City, but most likely not within the historic district, said Rhonda Baker, the citys historic preservation specialist. Commission feedback noted that such an installation would struggle to be compatible with the surrounding historic district and as such struggle to meet the requirements of the guidelines.
One neighbor also submitted a letter in opposition to the shipping container concept. Carol Moore, a Grand Rapids resident whos active in historic preservation efforts in the Wealthy Street area, said putting blocks of massive metal shipping containers on this defining corner is most unwelcome," and would represent a radical change to the site.
The commissions informal feedback was aimed at providing the property owner with guidance before the project is brought to the commission for formal approval. It was not clear Friday when, or if, that will occur.
Property records show the 0.26-acre vacant lot is owned AEK Properties, a limited liability company thats registered to Bratschie. AEK purchased the lot for $165,000 in August 2016, records show.
In the 1960s, the property was home to a gas station, according to the city of Grand Rapids. It became vacant in the late 1970s and has remained unoccupied ever since. Several ideas have been pitched for the property in recent years, though none has materialized.
In 2012, the Urban Renaissance Group pitched plans to build a walk-up diner inside a converted shipping container. And last year, Bratschie sought informal feedback on plans to build a four-story building on the lot.
Bratschie said the commission did not support the four-story building.
A report from the citys planning staff noted that the surrounding buildings were one- and two-stories tall (the commissions goal is for new buildings to match the scale of the existing neighborhood). Plans for the four-story building were abandoned, because it wouldnt have been financially feasible to scale the building down to two- or three-stories, Bratschie said.
Moving forward, he said hes hopeful the shipping container proposal will materialize.
I think the development with the containers is kind of unique and kind of a new way to go, he said, noting similar projects have been created in cities such as Denver, Colorado.
Suzanne Schulz, the citys planning director, said its a question of when, not if, the Wealthy Street site will be developed.
Its a matter of getting the right fit, scale and context together, she said, noting other modern designs such as The Electric Cheetah restaurant have been approved for the area. Theres lot of unique and interesting designs that you can find on Wealthy Street and in the historic district.
Schulz said there are challenges to developing the 1201 Wealthy St. site. Its on the site of a former gas station, and there are residential homes on both sides of the property. The city wants to be mindful how the proposed structure fits into such a setting, she said.
While the Historic Preservation Commission had questions about the initial designs brought forward this week, it doesnt mean the developer couldnt come back with a different design or some modifications to it that maybe does meet what those requirements are, Schulz said.
We always try to work with developers to get to a really great result, she said.
OSCEOLA COUNTY, MI -- Police are looking for a teen who fell through Muskegon River ice on Thursday, Feb. 7.
The teen, believed to be 15, fell through ice in Sylvan Township near 50th Avenue Bridge south of River Road, according to UpNorthLIve.com.
Rescuers responded to the scene about 5 p.m. Thursday and learned that three teens, ages 14-16, had fallen through the ice. Two were able to get out of the river.
Searchers were using a small boat with sonar to look for the teen.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- As thousands of electric customers await power restoration in frigid temperatures, Consumers Energy is stepping up to offer free weekend movie tickets for those effected by the outages.
Consumers Energy on Saturday, Feb. 9 announced that 2,000 movie tickets per day -- both Saturday and Sunday -- would be available for Consumers Energy customers at Celebration! Cinema theaters in Grand Rapids and Muskegon.
The company is partnering with Celebration! Cinema to offer vouchers for a free movie, pop and popcorn at the following theaters:
-- Celebration! Cinema Grand Rapids North: 616-365-2051
-- Celebration! Cinema Grand Rapids South: 616-554-9966
-- Celebration! Cinema Rivertown: 616-532-8902
-- Celebration! Cinema Woodland: 616-285-6127
-- Muskegon Cinema Carousel: 231-798-2600
The tickets will be available anytime after 2 p.m. Saturday for Consumers Energy customers.
Consumers Energy employees suggested the idea as a way to help people, beyond the restoration efforts.
Mother Nature has been a challenge this past week and everyone at Consumers wants to thank our customers across West Michigan for their patience and cooperation as we work to restore power as safely and quickly as possible, said Roger Curtis, Vice President of Public Affairs, in a release. We invite them as a small token of our appreciation to enjoy a movie and refreshments on us.
For more information about the tickets, call the individual theaters.
A Consumers Energy outage map shows about 40,000 customers still without power in Kent County as of about 10:15 a.m. Saturday. Statewide, Consumers is reporting about 71,000 customers without electricity.
Two back-to-back ice storms brought down many power lines Wednesday and Thursday.
PORTLAND, MI -- Authorities have closed bridges in the City of Portland because of continuing problems with an ice jam that caused flooding to intensify in some areas Friday, Feb. 8.
Portland City Manager Tutt Gormon, in a 3 p.m. update, said some of the ice jam broke up at about 10:20 a.m. and caused flash flooding.
City engineers talked with emergency management officials and decided to close the Grand River Avenue Bridge, the Bridge Street Bridge and the River Trail Pedestrian Bridge.
During the flash flooding, authorities immediately evacuated several residents and no one was injured.
Gormon said the Grand River is continuing to flood upstream and some evacuations are happening there.
Electric service could be shut down in areas affected by the flooding, he said.
Because of the flooding, the citys wastewater treatment plant is operating above design levels and partially treated or untreated wastewater is being discharged into the Grand River.
Ionia County Health Department supervisors just before noon Friday, Feb. 8, issued a no-body-contact order for the Grand River downstream of the wastewater treatment plant.
Gormon said city leaders have talked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about ways to break up the ice jam, including explosives, but have been told they would not be effective and could cause further problems.
Portland City Hall is set up as a temporary shelter for evacuees and dispatchers.
A downtown business owner, posting on a community Facebook page, said he was moving furniture and inventory to the second floor of the opera house as a precaution.
FLINT, MI -- A Hurley Medical Center doctor says she asked state health officials for the information they had on blood lead levels in Flint children in September 2015 but was never given an internal report that showed what she was trying to prove -- that those levels were spiking.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician whose study on elevated blood lead levels helped end the citys use of the Flint River as its water source, told Genesee District Judge Jennifer Manley Friday, Feb. 8, that the state Department of Health and Human Services turned over some information she requested but never shared a state epidemiologists report showing a correlation between river water and elevated lead.
I would have loved to have seen this," Hanna-Attisha testified during preliminary examinations for Robert Scott and Nancy Peeler, two MDHHS officials charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy and willful neglect of duty for their alleged roles in the Flint water crisis.
The Hurley doctor said she started to seek blood lead data from MDHHS officials, including Scott, and copied emails of her requests to Peeler in September, a month before announcing her own conclusions.
Although Scott responded to her request and provided her with information, he did not include a report from state epidemiologist Cristin Larder, which had been completed months earlier and which showed an elevation of lead in Flint childrens blood that could not be attributed to simple chance.
Larder has claimed previously that her report was intentionally blocked from top officials in state government at a time when Flint residents were questioning the safety of their water and state officials were defending its quality and refusing to reconnect the city to pre-treated Lake Huron water.
Larder detailed her claims to a state task force just before it issued a final report on the Flint water crisis in March 2016. In a Feb. 29, 2016, email to a member of that panel, she said she was speaking out despite fears that she could lose her job for not corroborating the story that is being told by department leadership.
Larders supervisor at DHHS -- Patricia McKane -- also testified in Genesee District Court last year that she was told to lie about the same blood lead data by Dr. Eden Wells, former chief medical executive for the state.
Wells, who is facing criminal charges including involuntary manslaughter, has denied that claim through her attorney.
In an interview with MLive-The Flint Journal in 2018, Larder said she completed her study of blood lead data in summer 2015 and never realized until months later that her work wasnt reflected in an email written by Peeler, director of DHHS Program for Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting, and distributed to some of the states top health officials.
Peelers email concluded that increased rates of lead poisoning in Flint while the river was in use were not terribly different from what we saw the previous three years.
Larders work showed blood lead tests from summer 2014, immediately after the city switched its water source, were outside the control limit compared to prior years and wrote that the finding does warrant further investigation.
Hanna-Attishas study showed the percentage of Flint children with elevated blood lead levels nearly doubled in the city immediately after the city attempted to treat its own river water in a cost-saving move.
ANN ARBOR, MI Madeleine Albright says shes sounding the alarm.
You have to call them out. You have to call it what it is, she said in Ann Arbor discussion Friday on what she views as disturbing signs of budding fascism.
The nations first female secretary of state joined University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole in a talk on her new book Fascism: A Warning at the Michigan Theater.
Fascism is not an ideology. Its a process for gaining power and keeping it. Leaders identify with majority groups at the expense of minorities, said Albright, 82, who served as ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of state under former President Bill Clinton.
... People think the book is alarmist. Well, its supposed to be
Born in Czechoslovakia two years before the start of World War II, Albright grew up during a period when much of Europe was consumed by fascism.
She told the story of her journey as a refugee coming to the U.S. and becoming a naturalized citizen, saying the U.S. has a generous history of taking in people seeking safety from persecution in their home country.
"Every country has the right to make the rules, but what is going on right now is outrageous, Albright said, criticizing the Trump administrations immigration policies.
Albright and Cole lamented the current political climate in the U.S.
I believe in the United States, but there is a responsibility that comes with being the most powerful nation in the world, Albright said. We are living in a period where the system doesnt work and there is no organized decision-making process.
In the book, she describes President Donald Trump as "the first antidemocratic president in modern U.S. history. She writes that Trump convinced enough voters in the right states that he was a teller of blunt truths, a masterful negotiator, and an effective champion of American interests, and argues that he is none of those things.
I applaud Secretary Albright for calling it what it is, Cole said Friday.
This event was sponsored by Nicolas Books.
Albright took a moment during the talk to acknowledge the passing of former U.S. Rep. John Dingell.
I would like to take a moment to honor John Dingell, Albright said. I knew him, and he was a remarkable servant and understood what it meant to have the power to be in congress.
ANN ARBOR, MI - Whirs of chainsaws and harsh winds defined the fourth annual Ice Carving Festival in Ann Arbor on Saturday.
Per usual, County Farm Park hosted collegiate ice carving teams from around Southeast Michigan to showcase their ability with various carving machinery.
Families from around the area gathered at the park to admire the intricate works of art.
Gabriel and Natalia Duque, a married couple originally from Colombia, found the sculptures rather beautiful.
Its very exotic for us because were not from the US originally, Gabriel said.
The event, well-attended, lasted from 12 p.m. until 4 p.m.
Tampons, pads and other menstrual products would be exempt from Michigans sales and use tax under a pair of House bills introduced this week.
Most medically necessary items, like prescriptions, are exempt from Michigans 6 percent sales and use tax. But menstrual products are not looped into that definition. Democratic state Reps. Brian Elder, D-Bay City, and Tenisha Yancey, D-Harper Woods, the legislations sponsors, argue current policy is unfair to people who menstruate.
Women already face economic disparities in their paycheck every payday; there is no reason we should also be forced to pay this additional tax for taking care of our reproductive health, Yancey said. It is time for Michigan to remove this unnecessary financial burden once and for all.
Ending the so-called tampon tax has been tried before - last session, similar bills unanimously cleared the Senate Finance Committee but never made it to the Senate floor for a vote.
According to an estimate from the Senate Fiscal Agency on last sessions package, such an exemption would cost the states General Fund, State School Aid Fund and revenue sharing to local governments approximately $5 million per year.
In a statement announcing the legislation, Elder and Yancey said their bills to end the tampon tax would hold the School Aid Fund harmless from any loss of revenue.
Michigan already exempts other necessities like food, medicine, certain medical equipment and even newspapers from the sales tax," Elder said. "There is no reason we cannot provide this economic relief, as well.
If the bills become law, Michigan would join 10 other states in exempting tampons and pads from sales tax. New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, Florida and Nevada already have tax exemptions for menstrual products.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said today at the owners meetings that the league is not interested in considering certain union-proposed changes in advance of the 2019 season, as Ronald Blum of the AP reports. In particular, Manfred indicated he is not open to the introduction of the designated hitter to the National League.
It emerged recently that MLB and the MLB Players Association were exchanging proposals on a variety of significant potential rules changes. Some of those, including the introduction of a twenty-second pitch clock and a rule requiring any pitcher that enters a game to face at least three hitters, were set forth by the league.
Manfred indicated that he was pleased the union responded to the leagues proposals, a fact which some observers have pointed to as a positive step given the chilly (if not altogether frozen) negotiation atmosphere between the sides of late. Despite the less-testy signals, though, it seems the league isnt inclined to budge on any substantive matters.
Its not at all surprising to hear that MLB doesnt wish to pursue an immediate implementation of the DH in the NL. With a good bit of the offseason movement already in the books, itd be an odd time to make such a move. Thats all the more true of some of the other union-backed proposals involving draft incentives and service time, which surely would require extensive analysis and negotiation.
It is notable, though, that Manfred suggested the league is also generally not receptive to considering the expansion of the DH until the conclusion of the present Collective Bargaining Agreement, at the end of the 2021 campaign. An unnamed official told Bob Nightengale of USA Today that such a change is not happening during this CBA.
If that is indeed MLBs committed stance, it seems to represent an intention to take a hard line on reopening the current rules regime before the deal is up. The issue of the universal DH seemed at least to offer a potential path to mutual benefit, as the league could market a bump in offense while veteran sluggers would find easier paths to roster spots and extra earnings.
Manfred, though, characterized that proposal (and others from the union) as presenting significant economic issues that are different than the type of playing rule changes that we have out there. Thats certainly true to an extent, but its also a bit of a partisan characterization of the leagues own suggestion that pitchers be required to face at least three batters. Its debatable exactly how the ramifications of that rule would settle out in terms of player earnings, but it would certainly impact the way teams structure their rosters and invest in certain players (in that case, veteran LOOGYs) in much the same way as a universal DH.
Itll be interesting to see where these discussions go from here. Manfred says the league will engage on the subjects raised by the union, so perhaps theres still some room for an opening. It all takes place against the backdrop of a still-sluggish free agent market in which two young superstars and several other prominent players remain unsigned. Manfred acknowledged today that the hope is to see both Bryce Harper and Manny Machado under contract when Spring Training opens, though even if that occurs its hardly a guarantee of a reduction in tension. For the time being, both the league and union will presumably continue to trade words on these and other matters cognizant all the while that these may be the preliminary skirmishes of a building public relations battle.
The Diamondbacks have announced deals with two veteran hurlers. Both right-hander Ricky Nolasco and southpaw Marc Rzepczynski are slated to appear in MLB camp as non-roster invitees after signing minor-league pacts.
If hes able to crack the roster, Rzepczysnki would earn at a $1.5MM rate, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network (via Twitter). His deal also includes a $500K incentives package.
Another pair of former MLB relievers is also joining the Arizona organization, albeit without camp invites. Righty Michael Kohn and lefty Lucas Luetge also have minors deals in place. Bob Nightengale of USA Today first tweeted Kohns deal.
Nolasco will be looking to break back into the majors after sitting out the 2018 season. He did make 33 starts in the 2017 campaign, and spent camp last year with the Royals, so he hasnt been on the sidelines for all that long.
Even ignoring the absence, it has been some times since the 36-year-old was effective. Nolascos strong 2013 season earned him a four-year deal with the Twins, but he carries a 4.99 ERA with 6.8 K/9 and 2.4 BB/9 in the 575 innings he has thrown since that time.
The 33-year-old Rzepczynski did see MLB action last year, though he was knocked around in both the majors and minors in stints with the Mariners and Indians organizations. At his best, Rzepczynski is an exceedingly tough assignment for opposing left-handed hitters, who have hit just .227/.296/.305 against him in his career.
Kohn and Luetge are each even deeper comeback candidates. Neither has seen the majors since 2015 and neither played in the affiliated ranks at all in 2018.
A new investigation into a deadly nighttime collision involving a U.S. Navy destroyer heading toward a secret mission in the South China Sea reveals several warning signs leading up to the tragic accident that took seven sailors' lives.
ProPublica, a nonprofit that produces investigative journalism, published a series of reports this week on the destroyer Fitzgerald's June 2017 collision with a cargo ship off the coast of Japan. Titled "Fight the ship: Death and valor on a warship doomed by its own Navy," the report reveals multiple troubling mistakes made by Navy leaders, some of which were previously undisclosed.
It also details courageous actions and heartbreaking choices from the ship's crew.
ProPublica combed through more than 13,000 pages of investigative records and interviewed scores of Fitzgerald crew members, Navy officers and maritime experts. Here's a look at some of the report's findings:
1. Incomplete certifications.
Even as the destroyer was headed on a secret mission toward contested waters in the South China Sea, the Fitzgerald had not met its readiness requirements.
"The Navy required destroyers to pass 22 certification tests to prove themselves seaworthy and battle-ready before sailing," ProPublica reported. "The Fitzgerald had passed just seven of these tests."
Perhaps most troubling, according to the report, is that the Fitz "was not even qualified to conduct its chief mission, anti-ballistic missile defense."
2. There were other close calls.
As previously reported by Navy Times, the Fitzgerald had a series of near misses before the June 17, 2017, collision with a merchant vessel.
The destroyer, ProPublica reported, had "maneuvered dangerously close to vessels on at least three occasions." But the incidents had gone mostly unreported. Eric Uhden, a prior-enlisted conning officer responsible for the safe movement of the ship, even told the Fitzgerald's second-in-command, Cmdr. Sean Babbitt, that there was a serious problem on the ship, ProPublica reported.
"And the only way for things to get better here is for us to have a serious accident or someone to die," Uhden added.
3. A ship-wide blackout.
About a week before the collision, there was a fire aboard the Fitzgerald, according to ProPublica. It resulted in a ship-wide blackout, and the classified and unclassified email systems failed.
"Officers used Gmail instead," ProPublica reported.
4. Radar problems.
Reports show that the Fitzgerald's radars weren't in full working order. Sometimes they didn't pick up nearby ships, ProPublica reported. The Fitz relied on a navigation system with 17-year-old software and since the screens didn't automatically update to show the presence of new ships, "a sailor had to punch a button a thousand times an hour" to refresh them, the report states.
Perhaps more disturbing though was the belief that even if the radars had been fully functional, "it's not clear the crew knew how to operate them," ProPublica reported.
5. Ignored pleas.
The Fitzgerald was not the only tragic mishap in the Pacific in 2017. Less than two months later, the destroyer John McCain collided with an oil tanker near Singapore and 10 sailors were killed.
Days after that accident, then-commander of 7th Fleet Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin was relieved of command. Now, he told ProPublica, he wants "the truth to come out."
Aucoin -- who'd pleaded for more manpower, ships and training time -- told ProPublica that Navy leadership has not taken responsibility for undermining America's sea-fighting ability.
6. Crew dedication.
Despite the ship's problems, the Fitzgerald's crew responded courageously when the worst happened. Leaders helped get as many of their sailors as possible to safety, putting their own lives in danger to assist others. It was the crew's actions, the report states, that kept the Fitz afloat.
"They worked in the dark, without power, without steering, without communications," the story states.
"A young officer scribbled algebraic equations in a notebook to figure out how to right the listing vessel," ProPublica reported. "The crew bailed out the ship with buckets after pumps failed. As the Fitzgerald struggled to return to port, its navigational displays failed and backup batteries ran out. The ship's navigator used a handheld commercial GPS unit and paper charts to guide the ship home."
7. A commander's call.
The day before the collision, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, the ship's former commanding officer, had sailors report to duty at 6 a.m. for training. When the drills didn't wrap up until 11 p.m., Benson made a last-minute switch to his typical night orders.
"Normally, Benson directed the officer of the deck to call him if the ship deviated from its planned course by more than 500 yards to avoid traffic," ProPublica reported. "But this night, Benson doubled the number to 1,000 yards, giving the officer more room to maneuver without having to wake him."
8. Possible confrontations.
One of the reasons Benson needed the rest, according to the report, is because he was concerned about the Fitz's upcoming mission.
Even though it's common for COs to remain on the bridge during busy nighttime transits, Benson was worried about sailing into contested waters with territorial disputes off the coast of China, which, as ProPublica points out, "could result in confrontations with Chinese warships."
That left a junior crew that had also had a long day of training in a challenging situation.
9. The crew was undermanned.
Before that mission, the Fitz had spent several months in the repair yards, and almost half of the crew had turned over, ProPublica reported. The new crew was "younger, less seasoned," the story states.
That was "the highest percentage of new crew members of any destroyer in the fleet," ProPublica reported.
"But naval commanders had skimped even further, cutting into the number of sailors Benson needed to keep the ship running smoothly," the story states. "The Fitzgerald had around 270 people total -- short of the 303 sailors called for by the Navy."
10. Key vacancies.
That left key positions aboard the Fitz unfilled -- despite frequent asks from its leaders to Navy higher-ups, ProPublica reported.
"The senior enlisted quartermaster position -- charged with training inexperienced sailors to steer the ship -- had gone unfilled for more than two years," the report states. "The technician in charge of the ship's radar was on medical leave, with no replacement."
That, they added, "made it difficult to post watches on both the starboard and port sides of the ship, a once-common Navy practice."
Read Part 1 of ProPublica's series here.
Part 2, "Years of warnings, then death and disaster: How the Navy failed its sailors," can be found here.
-- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins.
The patrol boats, which have been in the Persian Gulf region since 2003, have been replaced by two of the service's newest...
The Air Force has quietly expanded a database used to keep tabs on airmen under investigation to include all of its officer ranks.
The Automated Case Tracking System, or ACTS, in use by the service since 2003, previously had applied only to field-grade officers -- majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels -- in line for promotion. Last year, the Air Force expanded the database tracking to second lieutenants and above, Military.com has learned.
ACTS is primarily used to record and track Inspector General investigations, which must be reported up to the service level, per Defense Department and Air Force policy, according to Air Force spokeswoman Erika Yepsen said in a recent email.
In 2012, the service expanded the database to include "all open investigations and adverse information for field grade officers, as directed by DoD, to comply with General Officer Promotions policy," she said.
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"The DoD policy required a 10-year look back for O-6 Colonels meeting an O-7 Brigadier General promotion board; therefore, the Air Force Inspector General determined that [its office] would collect and track open investigations and adverse information on all field grade officers [major, lieutenant colonel and colonel] to meet this requirement," she wrote.
To comply with changes to the processing of officer promotion appointments pending investigation the addressing of any other adverse information, "the collection of open investigations and adverse information was expanded for all officers, using the same database -- ACTS," Yepsen wrote.
"Although the Air Force has historically done well at vetting senior officers, we recently took steps to improve screening of junior officers by instructing all commanders to notify the local Inspector General when a commander-directed investigation, inquiry or any other investigation of any officer has been initiated and the resolution of such investigations," her email states.
ACTS primarily tracks IG investigations and dispositions, but also "administrative or adverse misconduct data not tracked by other Air Force databases, such as commander-directed investigations," Yepsen wrote.
ACTS doesn't record criminal accusations and cases because those are tracked by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and Security Forces databases, officials said.
The data is available to inspectors general for review, with access based on their level.
The IG at Air Force headquarters, for instance, can access all ACTS cases across the service. A major command IG may see only the ACTS cases within their respective command, while installation IGs may access cases only within their base, Yepsen said.
The policy change will not drastically alter the promotions system because withholding a promotion during an investigation is standard practice for all boards, per DoD Instruction 1320.04, "Military Officer Actions Requiring Presidential, Secretary of Defense, or Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Approval or Senate Confirmation."
The centralized ACTS process "will improve the Air Force's oversight of alleged adverse information for junior officers," Yepsen said.
-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
The House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill that would provide subsidies to veterans for child care during some medical appointments and make permanent an existing child care pilot program at several Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities.
The Veterans' Access to Child Care bill would make permanent a pilot introduced in 2011 at facilities in Northport and Buffalo, New York, and Tacoma, Washington. It also would provide funds for veterans to pay for child care at a licensed center or private agency, either by paying the facilities directly or going through other agencies.
Bill sponsor Rep. Julia Brownley, D-California, said Friday that the legislation would "break down barriers for veterans to access health care" by having a cost-free child care option while attending a VA medical appointment.
"The lack of child care shouldn't prevent veterans from receiving VA health care services. Ensuring veterans have access to child care is especially important for our growing population of women veterans, who are more likely to be taking care of young children," she said in a release.
Following passage of legislation in 2010 that required the VA to implement a pilot program to provide child care services for patients, the department established centers at three facilities. That program was to terminate in 2013 but was extended several times.
The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Dallas also established a site, becoming the fourth VA medical facility to offer drop-in care.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, was instrumental in drafting the legislation in 2010 that resulted in the pilot, and she introduced legislation Monday as part of a bigger female veterans bill that includes the child care measure. She said Friday she looks forward to fighting for the issue in the Senate.
"Lack of child care can be a huge barrier for veterans with young children," Murray said in a statement. "By offering child care at VA facilities at no cost to our nation's heroes, we can help ensure veterans receive the seamless care they deserve."
The bill, H.R. 840, had widespread bipartisan support, passing the House in a 400 to 9 vote.
Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tennessee, the ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said he "supports the bill ... and I hope to see it become law."
He expressed concern, however, that the bill doesn't include a proposal for covering its cost.
"This action of simply tossing the problem aside and leaving it for the appropriators to deal with is unwise and will have long-term ramifications for other VA programs if we do not tread carefully," he said.
According to the proposed legislation, veterans receiving mental health care and "other intensive health care services," including recurring appointments and treatments, would be eligible to use the program.
-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.
This week marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year. It is a good week to consider with joy and praise the Chinese culture and calendar.
I have understandably focused my column on the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam over the years, but the world cannot come together in understanding unless it begins to know more about the spiritual traditions of Asia, and particularly China.
I have spent many years studying Buddhism as it emerged in India with the life of its founder, Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 BC), called the Buddha. His teaching of the way to become free from the suffering (dukkah) of attachment to the world and the path to achieve enlightenment (nirvana) remain a spiritual high point in the religions of the world.
What most people in the West do not know is that without China, Buddhism might never have survived and thrived. The Buddha wrote nothing, and most of his teachings were not written down by his disciples until Buddhism spread into China, where Buddhists of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism (as opposed to the southern Theravada tradition) translated the Buddhas teachings and helped spread them to Japan and other parts of Asia. Today Mahayana Buddhism represents a majority of Buddhists in the world. This Chinese branch of Buddhism absorbed the Chinese traditions of ancestor worship. The strong vegetarian traditions in Asia are the result of Buddhist teachings of nonviolence. Chinese Buddhism merged with teachings of Taoism and Confucianism in producing the strong cultural teachings that helped form China and its rich culture. One cannot understand modern China without an understanding of its Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist past. One of the great challenges of Chinas future is the way it assimilates its religious past and allows that past to inform its future.
The Chinese New Year also has its own spiritual and cultural traditions, most of which are not known in the West.
The Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar (like the Hebrew calendar). The problem with all lunar calendars is that 12 lunar months are about eleven days shorter than the 365 days of the solar calendar. So in a lunisolar calendar, extra days or months are periodically included so that the holidays always occur during the same time of the year. For Muslims, who have a pure lunar calendar, this is not a problem, and their holy month of Ramadan floats through the solar year. One of my favorite Muslim blessings is this one, May you celebrate Ramadan in every season of the year. Chinese New Year always begins at the end of January or early February.
Like all cultures with embedded religious traditions, folk customs and superstitions attach themselves to New Years celebrations. Modern Chinese folk, like modern heirs to any ancient tradition, have in many cases abandoned these customs, but they add folk texture to the lives of many Chinese this week.
Some of the intriguing superstitions and taboos of Chinese New Year include not sweeping (might sweep out good luck), not eating porridge (porridge is poor food), not eating meat for breakfast (a token of respect for vegetarian Buddhist traditions), not washing hair for the first two days of the New Year (same reason as not sweeping do nothing to wash away good fortune), no needle work (so as not to injure oneself or others), and a married daughter is generally not allowed to visit the house of her parents but is supposed to visit their house on the second day of the New Year. Red is a lucky color and so red clothes are worn during the New Year. Gifts are put in red bags and are given in pairs.
Chinese customs include holiday foods such as: fish, dumplings, spring rolls, noodles, rice balls and orange fruit, all of which are round or long or fish-shaped. Fish are plentiful and thus represent prosperity. Many other cultures seem to have also adopted the round is good philosophy of holiday foods. In Judaism, for example, the New Years challah bread is baked into a round shape.
The most ancient custom of the Chinese New Year that most non-Chinese folk are familiar with is that each year is connected to one of 12 zodiac animals: goat, monkey, rooster, dog, pig (this year), rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake and horse.
So now you know. The reason for this weeks column was not just my joy at wishing another great world culture my admiration and blessings for a Gong Hei Fat Choy, Happy and Prosperous New Year, but also so that all of you dear Chinese readers of my column can tell your families and friends,
Rabbi Marc Gellman just wished us a joyous and prosperous year of the pig.
Now that is interfaith love!
Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including Religion for Dummies, co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman.
As the case of Ricci v. DeStefano played out in Elm City, many citizens followed the suit with keen interest along its circuitous journey to landmark status in the Supreme Court. From the time legal proceedings commenced in 2003 through to its precedent-setting resolution in Washington in 2009, the case proved to be worth its weight (and wait) in gold, supplying copious amounts of copy to study.
Karen Hartmans new theater piece, Good Faith: Four Chats about Race and the New Haven Fire Department, superbly rendered in its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre through Feb. 23, is a fresh opportunity to hear a handful of key players in Ricci v DeStefano talk of how the case affected them, and how theyve moved on with their lives.
Commissioned by Yale Rep, Hartmans play is primarily an aural experience. Its intimacy suggests that Good Faith could serve effectively as a radio play, or, so as to not miss the visual body language, with a few chairs and minimal staging. Kenny Leon directs the piece just so, choosing to let the characters lively debates and often beautifully articulated perspectives supply the dynamic energy and spirit of the production.
Most dramatic are scenes where the firefighters simply sit (or stand) face-to-face as they exalt, argue and sometimes agree with each other, speaking over or simultaneously in front of their interviewer. In the case of two African American firefighters, Tyrone and Mike, their fervent discourse unfolds like any choice, contrapuntal duet by Sondheim. This is when Good Faith most vividly extols the humanity of the case.
Culled mostly from court transcripts, news articles and personal interviews in 2014 and 2017 with the principals in the real-life courtroom drama, Hartman literally inserts herself in the play as the character of the Writer (an engaging Laura Heisler). She starts the play with a direct address to the audience amid Stephanie Osin Cohens open scenic design where the top and sides of the Reps proscenium are awash in firehouse steely red.
Opening her play with an analogy, Hartman fully discloses her involvement in the caper lest any theatergoer suspect that she a two-time Yalie harbors any hidden, liberal agenda favoring the African American firefighters. As incarnated by Heisler, the Writer initially discloses that accepting this commission is not only a grand project professionally but also wipes away her outstanding student loans.
Written and staged in very presentational style, Hartman quickly introduces the characters, specifically firefighter Frank Ricci (Ian Bedford, who plays secondary characters as well), a white man now instructor at the New Haven Fire Academy; and the two previously cited black firefighters Mike (Billy Eugene Jones), an articulate firefighter in 2003 now working for the city in a media capacity with a Ph.D under his belt; and the relatively conservative Tyrone (Rob Demery, also playing secondary characters), now a captain whose sagacity belies his relative lack of formal education.
There is also Karen (Rene Augesen, also playing a world-weary server at a diner), the tenacious lawyer representing the plaintiffs among the New Haven 20 (19 of them Caucasian, one Latinex) in their discrimination suit against the city for denying them promotions despite their qualifying scores on the union-approved, certified exam.
Hartman proffers history and legalese through talking heads, including then-Mayor John DeStefano, Judge Victor Bolden and lawyer John Payton among them. They present the hard facts and legal significance of the case as briefly and clearly as possible without discernibly dragging on the pace. These asides also provide welcome opportunities for theatergoers to digest the often-spirited debates among the three firefighters, as well a breather from such intensely riveting discourse so deftly performed by the excellent cast.
What comes across clearly is that Hartmans Writer character is obviously a participant, as we see her asking questions to ignite conversation. Yet she virtually disappears as the ensuing rhetorical flurries whirl throughout the theater. She tees up the discussion and then wisely gets out of the way as the men have at it. While at times of heightened tension one senses Riccis understandable caution with his words in front of the Writer lest he appear to her (and her potential audience) as racially insensitive, it seems that the subjects are comfortable enough with the Writer to share their stories with her. The audience will judge whether they do so openheartedly or for self-preservation.
Even though Good Faith is essentially a play of ideas, it is filled with tension, suspense and structure. The whole project doesnt merely put familiar faces on a most consuming issue of our time, it reveals its heart and soul from the unique perspective of a few, diverse, well-intentioned human beings most affected by this case. Good Faith is about compassion and empathy.
E. Kyle Minor is the Register theater critic.
MIDDLETOWN A small and little-known peer and mentorship program for young ladies of color has been quietly transforming the lives of high school students determined to be at risk of failure due to behavioral or academic issues.
For a decade, three Middletown High School graduates have been leading Girls Inspired for Total Success, or GIFTS, after then-principal Bob Fontaine asked for help recruiting women interested in helping incoming first-year students with issues impeding their education.
Founder Sue Owens took action, reaching out to Cheryllynn McRae White and Beverly Lawrence. All three have gone on to become strong role models for the more than 200 young women who have graduated from the program.
Although membership is predominately girls of color, White said the group includes young women of all races, as well as some high achievers who volunteer with GIFTS and serve as peer mentors.
We start the year with girls who may be having difficulty transitioning into high school, those with low self-esteem, and even some who identify as enemies, White said. We spend time creating profiles on each of the girls, allowing us to address their needs one on one.
Each Friday, for an hour following the students lunch, the group discusses a range of topics, among them social media, education, self-esteem, post-graduation plans and respect. This year, about 30 girls are part of GIFTS.
Assistant Principal Dawn Brooks has been at the high school for just 90 days. The Middletown High School grad came from Woodrow Wilson Middle School, where she was a Spanish teacher, so many of the students know her.
When she first learned of the program, she was impressed by the name and how empowering the concept is, she said.
We have women of color in our community who are doing something positive for young women of color in the schools, Brooks said.
The term minority is a misnomer these days, she added.
Our students of color are hardly a minority anymore, she said. Theyre just about half. If you look at a picture of the adults in the building who are serving them every day, that picture does not reflect the student body.
The woman who made a difference in her life, she said and set her on the path to becoming a teacher and the woman she is today was the late Christine LaRosa, a former Spanish teacher who died suddenly in 2007. The street the school is located on is named after her.
Brooks had one other person of color to look up to as a student: high school guidance counselor Les Saunders, whom she now works alongside.
That was really it, she said.
Brooks had advantages many of these young women are not afforded.
Luckily, my mom was on the Board of Education and very much involved in the community, she said. She had access to connect me with role models who looked like me. If I did not have that mother, I would have had to rely on school, and those role models would not have been as easily accessible.
But having good role models is working, she said.
When the girls first file into class, White will ask them how their week has gone as a way to open up the conversation.
You can say anything, because anything that is said in here doesnt leave this room, Angelina Rodriguez, 14, said.
What weve learned is most of the girls just want to be heard, White said.
And there are no limits to the conversation, Gabby Gatlin, 14, said.
Both were placed in the group, but soon after had the choice to leave. Each of the young women chose to stay.
You dont just fool around. You come here and learn things that are useful to your life, Angelina said.
Not many participants in the group have great relationships with their parents, Gabby said.
If I dont get it from my siblings, or at home, I should have a support system outside of my house if I dont have it inside, Gabby said. If I have no one to talk to and I feel alone, I know I have people to talk to who really care.
Angelina said she was so angry at everything and had a really difficult time when she first came to the high school.
One thing I like is hearing everybody out, especially knowing what everybodys gone through, she said. I definitely changed my mindset, because when I came in here, at the beginning of the year, I was fighting. Now, I have Ms. White to tell.
Before she enrolled in GIFTS, Gabby had failing grades.
I wasnt listening to anybody. I wasnt listening to my parents, she said.
That soon changed, once she felt safe enough to open up.
The love that they give you is refreshing. When Im out of this program, I feel like Im alone and nobody cares for me, but you come in this room and you feel so much love, said Gabby, who said she feels more comfortable talking to Owens, White and Lawrence because theyve had similar experiences.
Whites mother was a single mom of five kids.
She made me tough. I was born and raised in Brooklyn. I had to be tough. I had six brothers. Im the only girl. Im giving them the real world, White said.
Countless girls from the group have gone on to attend college, entered trade school, joined the military and secured the career of their choice, White said. In many instances, these GIFTS students become mentors themselves.
In the beginning, it was more a call of action from the community. (The rumor was) there was a girls gang, but obviously it wasnt. It was just misunderstood girls who were fighting and they needed guidance, Lawrence said.
One of her goals at Middletown High School is to create access for students, she said.
Thats why, as an administrator, it means a lot to me to be here, so a lot of students who see me, and look like me, could see themselves in a role like mine or a similar one, Lawrence said.
The bottom line is, although they have problems, theyre still good girls, and they just need somebody to support them and help them deal with the problem. All three of us could be doing something else, but this is something that we love, Owens said.
Editors note: The original article stated White is a graduate of Middletown High School. She graduated from the New York public school system.
Managing Editor Cassandra Day may be reached at cassandra.day@hearst mediact.com
Economists report that workers are starting to act like millennials on Tinder: They're ditching jobs with nary a text.
"A number of contacts said that they had been 'ghosted,' a situation in which a worker stops coming to work without notice and then is impossible to contact," the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted in December's Beige Book, which tracks employment trends.
National data on economic "ghosting" is lacking. The term, which normally applies to dating, first surfaced on Dictionary.com in 2016. But companies across the country say silent exits are on the rise.
Analysts blame America's increasingly tight labor market. Job openings have surpassed the number of seekers for eight straight months, and the unemployment rate has clung to a 49-year low of 3.7 percent since September.
Janitors, baristas, welders, accountants, engineers - they're all in demand, said Michael Hicks, a labor economist at Ball State University in Indiana. More people may opt to skip tough conversations and slide right into the next thing.
"Why hassle with a boss and a bunch of out-processing," he said, "when literally everyone has been hiring?"
Recruiters at the global staffing firm Robert Half have noticed a "ten to twenty percent increase" in ghosting over the past year, D.C. district president Josh Howarth said.
Applicants blow off interviews. New hires turn into no-shows. Workers leave one evening and never return.
"You feel like someone has a high level of interest only for them to just disappear," Howarth said.
Over the summer, woes he heard from clients emerged in his own life. A job candidate for a recruiter role asked for a day to mull over an offer, saying she wanted to discuss the terms with her spouse.
Then she halted communication.
"In fairness, Howarth said, "there are some folks who might have so many opportunities they're considering they honestly forget."
Keith Station, director of business relations at Heartland Workforce Solutions, which connects job hunters with companies in Omaha, said service workers in his area are most likely to skip out on low-paying service positions.
"People just fall off the face of the Earth," he said of the area, which has an especially low unemployment rate of 2.8 percent.
Some employers in Nebraska are trying to avoid unfilled shifts with apprentice programs that guarantee raises and additional training over time.
"Then you want to stay and watch your wage grow," Station said.
Other recruitment businesses point to solutions from China, where ghosting took off during the last decade's explosive growth.
"We generally make two offers for every job because somebody doesn't show up," said Rebecca Henderson, chief executive of Randstad Sourceright, a talent acquisition firm.
And if both hires stick around, she said, her multinational clients are happy to deepen the bench.
While ghosting in the United States does not yet require that level of back-up planning, consultants urge employers to build meaningful relationships at every stage of the hiring process.
Someone who feels invested in an enterprise is less likely to bounce, write Melissa and Johnathan Nightingale, co-authors of "How F*cked Up Is Your Management?: An uncomfortable conversation about modern leadership."
"Employees leave jobs that suck," they said in an email. "Jobs where they're abused. Jobs where they don't care about the work. And the less engaged they are, the less need they feel to give their bosses any warning."
Some employees are simply young and restless, said James Cooper, former manager of the Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone Park, where he said people ghosted regularly.
A few of his staffers were college students who lived in park dormitories for the summer.
"My favorite," he said, "was a kid who left a note on the floor in his dorm room that said 'sorry bros, had to ghost.'"
Other ghosters describe an inner voice that just says: Nah.
Zach Keel, a 26-year-old server in Austin, made the call last year to flee a Texas bar-slash-cinema after realizing he would have to clean the place until sunrise. More work, he calculated, was always around the corner.
"I didn't call," Keel said. "I didn't show up. I figured: No point in feeling guilty about something that wasn't that big of an issue. Turnover is so high, anyway."
UPPER THUMB Students from Caro High School and Unionville-Sebewaing High School will move from the classroom to the Capitol later this month for the YMCA Michigan Youth in Government (MYIG) conferences.
They will join more than 1,000 students Feb. 21-24 and Feb. 28-March 3 from around the state and serve as legislators, lobbyists, lawyers and press corps reporters during the three day events. Working with peers they will develop bills, share ideas and grow as leaders.
PIGEON Laker Schools will honor local farmers later this month during a Farm to School luncheon.
The luncheon will take place Thursday, Feb. 20 at the elementary school during student lunch periods.
Local farmers interested in attending and enjoying some Farm to School food items for lunch may call the elementary office at 989-453-4631 to make a reservation.
Lunch will be served from 10:50 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. There is no cost for lunch for participating farmers.
Two months ago, if you would have told me a show about cleaning up messes thats hosted by a petite non-English speaking woman with a tiny voice would be something that Id find not only relaxing but inspiring, Id call you crazy.
Yet here we are, not even halfway through the second month of 2019, and Ive been inspired to reorganize my household and life.
One night in early January, I was searching through Netflix for something to watch as I was getting ready for bed. I know they say its not healthy to watch television right before bed, but it helps me relax and drift off to sleep.
Anyway, so there I was, looking for something boring/relaxing to watch, and I saw a little blip about a new series called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, starring this elfin Japanese woman who looks, well, quite tidy.
I clicked on it, thinking any show about cleaning will no doubt be something that will have me meeting Mr. Sandman in no time.
I was pleasantly surprised by the entire series, which is premised on the Japanese art of decluttering, something I wasnt familiar with before the series.
Apparently, its a global phenom sparked by Kondos self-help books. Im not going to lie, Im much more interested in reading rom-coms or the latest Nick Steele adventure by Casevilles Dave Vizard. So I was pretty much oblivious to the KonMari method outlined in Kondos above-mentioned self-help books and featured in Netflixs Tidying Up series.
The basic premise is that you take everything you own (divided into five categories and done one category at a time or else your head will probably explode) and go through each item, and categorize them by what brings you joy and what should be donated or thrown out.
It sounds goofy and Kondo can seem a little over-the-top with Shintoism or whatever kind of spirituality inspires her but its a fantastic way to deal with sorting, organizing and for families like mine, purging. There were some things we have kept for years, simply because of who gave them to us. Nevermind that the items already served their purpose, or havent been used in years and are literally just taking up space.
With Kondos method, we were inspired to go through items in our home and not just bask in how much joy they bring us, but to evaluate their usefulness and their future role in our lives. Is an item something that once brought you joy but is not something that you want to take into your future? Then give thanks for what it did for you in the past and donate it or throw it out.
So thats the Kate version of the KonMari method. But heres the part that really got my family and I on board: The folding and organizing.
Yes, she teaches you how to fold clothing and organize items in drawers and on tables where everything is easily visible and accessible.
In January, my husband and I went through every drawer and closet in our house, and the result was you can now look at those areas and what you see is what you get there are no piles of things on top of each other. Everything is visible and everything can be taken out and used without having to dig through piles.
My husband says our house literally feels lighter, and he was inspired to really rehab his man cave in our basement, which previously resembled something that looks like a storage unit married a college dorm room. Our 11-year-old says its much less stressful to get ready for the day, and he has become obsessed with constantly sorting his toys into smaller and smaller categories.
At last count, we made 11 trips to the Thumb Industries donation center, and Im sure our garbage man hates us for all the crap weve put out on the curb since that first week of January.
And, as you can read about in the front page center piece in todays Tribune, my familys not alone.
Some local thrift stores are seeing an uptick in donations, and Ive heard more than one friend make the joke that they are loving thrift store shopping now that so many people are on the Tidying Up bandwagon.
For my little family, its had the opposite affect. When we are shopping, we look at items (i.e. cheap plastic toys, decor, etc.) and ask whether these are something that we honestly want to be part of our future. Do they really give us that much joy? Or are they going to add to the already-ridiculously large carbon footprint we are making on planet earth?
And if thats not enough to inspire you to check out Tidying Up on Netflix, do it when youre looking for something relaxing to watch. Kondos adorably petite voice is just the ticket for a great nights sleep.
Kate Hessling is the editor of the Huron Daily Tribune. She can be reached at khessling@hearstnp.com
Attorney General Nessel Weighs in On Sex Offender Registration Cases Before MI Supreme Court
Attorney General Nessel Weighs in On Sex Offender Registration Cases Before MI Supreme Court
Kelly Rossman-McKinney 517-335-7666
February 8, 2019
LANSING, MI Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed amicus briefs in the Michigan Supreme Court today in Michigan v Snyder (Case number 153696) and People v Betts (Case number 148981), arguing that Michigans sex offender registration and notification requirements are punishment because they are so burdensome and fail to distinguish between dangerous offenders and those who are not a threat to the community.
When originally put into place, Michigans Sex Offender Registration Act was narrow in scope and specifically designed to be an important law enforcement tool to protect the public from dangerous offenders, said Nessel. But since its enactment, the Act has swelled without any focus on individualized assessment of risk to the community, which makes it increasingly difficult for law enforcement officers to know which offenders to focus on. It also makes it difficult for offenders to rehabilitate and reintegrate into the community because they are limited in where they can live, work or even attend their childrens school functions.
Nessel also pointed out that public accessibility of the registry has led to shaming, ostracizing, and even bullying of registrants and their families. Because the registry now allows the public to submit tips on the registry website, the public is essentially encouraged to act as vigilantes, opening the possibility for classmates, work colleagues and community members to be vindictive and retaliatory.
There are certainly dangerous sexual predators and the public needs to be protected from them, said Nessel, but the current requirements are not the way to achieve that goal.
Amendments to the Act in 2006 and 2011 especially geographic exclusionary zones and in-person reporting requirements --are onerous restrictions that are not supported by evolving research and best practices related to recidivism, rehabilitation, and community safety. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently agreed, holding that Michigans SORA is punishment and cannot be applied retroactively. A number of state supreme courts have struck down their state registry laws on similar grounds.
Simply put, said Nessel, the state Sex Offender Registration Act has gone far beyond its purpose and now imposes burdens that are so punitive in their effect that they negate the States public safety justification.
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HAYBROOK TOWNSHIP The Haybrook town hall election hours will be from 7 am till 8 pm on Nov. 6th 2018. Respectfully submitted Chris Eggert Clerk Published in the Mille Lacs Messenger October 24, 31, 2018 868482
Ad details HAYBROOK TOWNSHIP The Haybrook town hall election hours will be from 7 am till 8 pm on Nov. 6th 2018. Respectfully submitted Chris Eggert Clerk Published in the Mille Lacs Messenger October 24, 31, 2018 868482
On Saturday, June 19, 2021, Emmett Colon Mitcham Jr. died at Rush Foundation Hospital. He was a true gentleman; He loved God, his family, his church, and his work. Emmett was kind-hearted and quick-witted, often making up songs to describe his current situation. To him, work was the joy of a
Ever since the revolution of computer games, it has been an expensive activity or hobby to maintain. Whether you play on the PC or consoles, buying a proper machine and then games have always been pretty expensive.
Now, we're witnessing a major revolution in the world of gaming with the addition of mobile phones as a platform. Sure, mobile games have existed for almost decades, but the industry is progressing to a whole new level. Thanks to the improvement in mobile OS architecture and hardware, a tiny mobile phone is capable of playing a 2GB Battle Royale game.
PUBG, Fortnite, Asphalt etc. are just starting points and we're already seeing massive new titles coming soon.
If you're looking for a new phone for gaming, we've compiled a list of top phones for gaming, available in India:
1. OnePlus 6T
MensXP / Akshay Bhalla
This is pretty much a perfect Android offering, thanks to best-in-class hardware and well-polished software experience. The phone comes shipped with OxygenOS and is among the most stable skins out there. You won't have to cut corners anywhere with this device, thanks to its well-balanced spec sheet.
The phone has a 6.4-inch AMOLED display with an in-display fingerprint scanner for authentication. The body is built from premium metal and houses a Snapdragon 845 processor, along with 6GB RAM in the base variant. The rear has a 16+20-megapixel dual camera setup, while the front has a 16-megapixel lens for selfies. It also comes with a Gaming Mode that basically mutes all notifications to provide a distraction-free experience.
2. POCO F1
MensXP / Shivam Vahia
It's a flagship-grade phone that comes with an extremely lower price tag. The POCO F1 was built for performance, and the brand has constantly focused on making it faster. Housing a Snapdragon 845 processor, it also comes with a liquid cooling chamber for enhanced performance over longer durations.
The front has a 6.2-inch LCD display, with a wide notch on the top. The rear has a 12+5-megapixel dual camera setup and is capable of clicking surprisingly good low-light pictures. The front has a 20-megapixel selfie shooter. Backing these internals is a 4000mAh battery and the phone ships with POCO Launcher by default.
3. Honor View 20
MensXP / Akshay Bhalla
The phone was launched just a few weeks back in India and has managed to come with its own unique set of 2019ish features. The build quality is exceedingly premium and the front has a punch-hole camera, delivering better screen-to-body ratio. The phone comes with Honor's GPU Turbo mode that optimizes the phone's performance when gaming.
Powering the View 20 is the latest Kirin 980 processor, coupled along with 6GB RAM in the base variant. The rear has a massive 48-megapixel sensor along with a Time of Flight sensor that helps in 3D modelling and interactive gameplay. The front has a 25-megapixel selfie shooter and these internals are backed by a 4000mAh battery.
4. Nokia 8.1
BCCL
This is the only phone on this list to ship with stock Android and is part of Google's Android One program, ensuring timely updates. It continues the legacy of Nokia branded phones and has a significantly premium design and strong build quality.
The phone is powered by Qualcomm's latest midrange, yet highly capable Snapdragon 710 platform. The base variant comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. The rear has a 12+13-megapixel dual camera setup and the front has a 20-megapixel lens for selfies. It comes with a modest 3500mAh battery but supports 18W fast charging.
5. Honor Play
BCCL
It's been quite some time since the phone was launched, but it still manages to kick-ass thanks to a flagship processor. This was technically India's first gaming-centric phone and is equipped with Honor's GPU Turbo mode that intelligently optimizes processes to improve performance while gaming.
The phone has a 6.3-inch display and is powered by a Kirin 970 processor. The base variant has 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. The rear has a mediocre 16+2-megapixel dual camera setup and the front has a 16-megapixel selfie shooter. Backing these internals is a 3750mAh battery with support for 18W fast charging.
6. iPhone XR
MensXP / Akshay Bhalla
We've listed ultra-premium phones towards the end of this list and the iPhone is often regarded to be the best gaming phone one can buy. iOS has maintained an edge over Android for years in terms of game development, and thanks to Apple's insanely fast processor, the gap widens even further.
The iPhone XR has a 6.1-inch display and is powered by an A12 processor. The chipset has a hexa-core dedicated GPU and graphics have never been smoother. The rear has a single 12-megapixel sensor and the front has a 7-megapixel selfie shooter. Backing these specs is a quite large 2942mAh battery.
7. ASUS ROG Phone
MensXP / Akshay Bhalla
Arguably the only dedicated gaming phone in India, the ROG Phone is expensive, but won't disappoint in terms of performance. The design is very refreshing and has an RGB logo on the back, along with mappable air triggers for better FPS experience.
The 6-inch AMOLED display has a 90Hz refresh rate and supports HDR. Under the hood is a Snapdragon 845 processor, coupled with an Aeroactive cooler accessory for long duration performance support. Even a Twinview dock is separately available and the phone has an internal 4000mAh battery.
You know how sometimes something very absurd and unexpected happens and you're convinced you're in the weirdest timeline? Well, the Indian political parties are doing exactly that right now and I'm like 98% sure we really are in some alternate universe, and it's because of all the rap videos and memes by BJP, Congress, and AAP which are flooding the social media.
We all know the elections are coming, so basically, BJP released what seems like a 'Gully Boy'-inspired rap video calling out Congress and its party head Rahul Gandhi.
Parties directly targeting each other is not unusual and thanks to social media, we are all a part of it now and honestly, this year's elections will be a social media battle that will give everyone a lot of second-hand embarrassment.
Coming back to the rap, it's straight up called 'Congress Se Azadi' so no one accidentally misses the point. With lyrics like 'Baaki poor desh doobe, inki naiya paar hai na' and 'akela insaan fir gaadi teri chaar kyun? Ghar me hain chaar fir room tere aath kyun?', it's hard to miss that BJP has gone all out in calling out the entire Gandhi family.
While @RahulGandhi will stay up all night wondering what new lies to peddle tomorrow morning, we leave you with this goal for 2019.
Have a happy friday night, people! :) pic.twitter.com/WOXOJ1QPYO BJP (@BJP4India) February 8, 2019
And, it obviously ended with Modiji, of course.
Then comes Congress' reply and it's literally the last thing anyone would ever expect. Remember the new meme involving Nancy Pelosi sarcastically clapping at Donald Trump? Yep, Congress used that viral gif.
And, looks like AAP didn't want to be left behind, so they just chimed in with this-
Honestly, what is even happening anymore?
Someone even pointed out the hypocrisy.
Even on days when our brave jawans are not risking their lives to protect us, they are still saving lives with their selfless and heartwarming gestures. This incident about a CRPF jawan is from one of those days.
Constable Rajkamal, from the 133 Battalion of CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force), is the nation's hero just like every other soldier who puts his life on the line to ensure our safety. But, now he's become the internet's hero as well, after a photo of him donating blood for an injured naxal was posted online.
Reuters
Reportedly, the Naxal was injured in Jharkhand recently, during an exchange of fire with troops of 209 Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA). Post the shootout, the man was immediately rushed to Ranchi's Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences hospital, where the doctors said that the patient needed blood.
So, Constable Rajkamal readily agreed to donate his blood. Why? Because he "considered his duty to help a fellow Indian in need." Rajkamal told The Pioneer, "I did what I had to on humanitarian grounds. We have had many clashes in the past, but that doesn't mean that I will have a personal grudge against them. They are our fellow Indians after all."
EPITOME OF BENEVOLENCE: CT Rajkamal of CRPF donated blood to save the life of a Naxal who suffered grievous injuries during the encounter which took place when the Naxals attacked a team of 209 CoBRA. Rajkamal said that he considered his duty to help a fellow Indian in need. pic.twitter.com/VNnIi8Qpub CRPF (@crpfindia) February 5, 2019
We salute Constable Rajkamal and his spirit. If people start thinking the way he does, the world can become a better place to live in. Like the tweet reads, it is indeed an 'Epitome of Benevolence."
People on Twitter can't stop showering praises for CT Rajkamal.
Unparallel example of high human values https://t.co/x0eR4i2osI Salil dudi (@DudiSalil) February 6, 2019
This is unheard ever and unprecedented. Kudos to the fellow brave heart for this noble gesture. This is what @crpfindia 's motto is service and loyalty in true sense. Bravery with humanity. https://t.co/6LuAvxaRad Avinash Aggarwal (@avinash_the_cop) February 6, 2019
Donating blood for an injured Naxal by CT RajKamal is an outstanding example shown by this gallant Force. Hope DG CRPF issue his commendation certificate to this CT Pravash (@pravash13) February 5, 2019
Best example of patriotism and humanity. Amit Sarathe (@AmitSarathe7) February 5, 2019
Hats off to these jawans who walk an extra mile beyond their line of duty! Such acts of kindness fill us with pride for our forces.@dasraghubar @Lathkar_IPS @crpfindia @JharkhandCrpf https://t.co/WSMABHZQoR Parimal Nathwani (@mpparimal) February 5, 2019
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The tax software has been updated significantly over the past few years as well, according to Cain.
Then, there is the growth in neighborhoods and residential communities in McDowell County. Cain said the reval will look at different neighborhoods in McDowell, the number of which has grown considerably in recent years. It will also look at different types of properties and compare high value ones with low value ones.
When the last reval was done in 2011, McDowell County had 44 neighborhoods. Cain said Tuesday the definition of a neighborhood is a homogenous area of homes grouped together. The people in that neighborhood tend to go to the same grocery store and send their children to the same school.
The latest revaluation work has determined McDowell now has 270 neighborhoods. Some of them are new subdivisions while others are existing ones that now meet this criteria.
LAWRENCE, MASS. -- Several Massachusetts lawmakers threw their support behind U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warrens White House run Saturday, arguing that shes the best Democrat to take on incumbent President Donald Trump in 2020.
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, and U.S. Reps. Joe Kennedy III, D-Newton, and Lori Trahan, D-Westford, were among the state officials to take the stage to rally supporters who gathered in Lawrence for Warrens 2020 campaign kickoff.
Markey said he was honored to help his U.S. Senate partner launch her White House run, offering that he has watched her fight for working class Americans throughout their time together in Congress.
Ive been in Congress for awhile now and no one, no one knows how to fight for what is right better than Elizabeth Warren," he said. "And these days, fighting for what is right means fighting the dangerous, divisive, hateful agenda of Donald Trump."
Markey, however, added that no one know how to get under Donald Trumps skin better than Elizabeth Warren.
Pointing to her work on Wall Street regulations and as a member of the U.S. Senate, Kennedy argued that Warren is the one candidate in the 2020 race who has dedicated her life to fighting for working class Americans.
I am here with you today because this country needs a leader who will restore the solidarity that Donald Trump stole. Who wont cower from the big, tough battles, from the ugly injustice and oppression that still finds its way to American soil, he said. A leader will bring this country together to take on our greatest common threat: a system that protects the powerful and privileged while the rest struggle to scrape by. That leader is my colleague, my mentor, my friend: Elizabeth Warren."
Contending that the stakes of the 2020 election could not be higher, Trahan, meanwhile, said its critical the country selects a president who acknowledges that while the economy may work well for the wealthy, its not working for most Americans.
That type of champion, she said, is someone like Elizabeth Warren.
Elizabeth will put her finger on the scale for working families --not banks, not multi-national corporations, and not those who can afford to give millions of dollars to political candidates, she said.
Trahan further offered that Americans could count on a President Warren to wake up each and every day and put the needs of the American people at the forefront of our policy debate and that real and enduring and significant change.
Elizabeth has proven time and again that she is up to the challenge and I am proud to be with her in this fight, she said.
Warren formally launched her 2020 presidential campaign during a late-morning event outside the Everett Mill in Lawrence -- the site of the 1912 Bread and Roses labor strike.
The Massachusetts Democrat, who formed a presidential exploratory committee in late December, used the event to make her case to American voters and lay out her vision for a country that prioritizes working and middle-class people over the wealthy and well-connected.
LAWRENCE, MASS. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren officially launched her 2020 White House campaign Saturday, joining the growing field of Democratic candidates hoping to unseat incumbent Republican President Donald Trump.
Standing against the backdrop of Lawrences Everett Mills the site of the Bread and Roses labor strike the Massachusetts Democrat laid out her vision for an America that prioritizes working and middle-class people over the wealthy and well-connected.
Warren, who touted the labor law changes that came in wake of the historic 1912 strike, told supporters who gathered in freezing temperatures outside the mill that the story of Lawrence is a story about how real change happens in America.
Its a story about power our power when we fight together, she said.
Arguing that the struggles mill workers faced 100 years ago are similar to those million of American families face today, Warren said she -- like the women of Lawrence -- is here to say enough is enough" and take her fight for U.S. middle class workers to the White House.
We are here to take on a fight that will shape our lives, our childrens lives and our grandchildrens lives, just as surely as the fight that began in these streets more than a century ago. ... This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone. I am in that fight all the way, she said. And that is why I stand here today: to declare that I am a candidate for president of the United States of America.
The senator laid out her campaigns vision of big, structural change, which includes tackling wealth inequality, overhauling the criminal justice system, addressing climate change and rooting out corruption in Washington, among other things.
Warren, whose official entrance into the 2020 White House race came despite growing concerns raised about her viability as a candidate, acknowledged that her path to the White House will not be easy. She, however, offered that shes up for the challenge.
This wont be easy. There are a lot of people out there with money and power and armies of lobbyists and lawyers. People who are prepared to spend more money than you and I could ever dream of, trying to stop us from making any of these solutions a reality, she said. People who will say its extreme or radical to demand an America where every family has some economic security and every kid has a real opportunity to succeed. I say to them, Get ready, because change is coming faster than you think.
Warren faced renewed criticism this week over her controversial Native American heritage claims after the Washington Post reported that she listed her race as American Indian on a Texas State Bar registration card in 1986.
The report, which marked the first instance yet of Warren making the assertion in her own handwriting, prompted new apologies from the senator.
Warren reached out to Cherokee Nation leaders earlier this month to express regret over her decision to release DNA test results backing up her ancestry claims along with a video highlighting her family story" in October.
Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens, however, argued that the senators actions were too little, too late.
Weve always known that Elizabeth Warrens socialist policies were far outside the mainstream. But Warrens disastrous handling of her false minority claims and her refusal to apologize until now has everyone, including her own supporters, cringing at her campaign," he said in a statement.
Despite such criticism, several Massachusetts lawmakers joined Warren for her Lawrence 2020 campaign launch, including U.S. Reps. Joe Kennedy III, D-Newtown; and Lori Trahan, D-Westford; U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts; Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu; Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Thompkins; and Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera.
Many Massachusetts residents who turned out for the campaign kickoff, meanwhile, said theyd rather see the 2020 race focus on issues that matter to many Americans, such as income inequality, student debt and health care -- not Warrens heritage.
Tracey Peters, an Andover resident who attended the Lawrence event, said shed like to better understand why the senator has drawn criticism for speaking her mind. She praised Warren for bringing attention to things like student debt and for standing up to the banking industry.
"All shes doing is trying to protect us when the storys twisted and, of course as usual, its gets pushed on things like Oh, she said shes Native American. Like, who cares about that? she said. Look at what shes done -- what shes really done. I think the story needs to come back to more of that, which is difficult in this day and age.
Ben Callahan, of Groveland, agreed that he doesnt believe Warrens ancestry should matter entirely.
I didnt get why people felt like it was such a big deal. I kind of just brushed it off. It wasnt my top concern, he said.
Callahan, who noted that hes looking at other progressive candidates, said hed like to see White House hopefuls make gun control, student loans, income inequality and LGBTQ issues top priorities in 2020.
Bridget Rawding, of Lawrence, said shes interested about what people are going to do about the issues that matter in this country.
Im not particularly paying attention to the noise and the distractions of any candidate, whether its someone I support or not, she said. I think thats easy to kind of get full of outrage about that, but it doesnt fix anything. I want to know what people are going to do to fix the issues that matters that we face.
Rawding added that shes thrilled Warren chose Lawrence to launch her 2020 Democratic presidential run, particularly in wake of the deadly September gas explosions that impacted the city and surrounding communities.
Through the gas crisis she has been very supportive and fought for congressional hearings and everything. I think, were a pretty resilient city and its nice to see something like this so soon after what couldve been an even worse disaster than it was, she said.
Warrens Lawrence event came just over a month after she announced her presidential exploratory committee, ending years of speculation as to whether she would seek a 2020 White House run.
Ahead of the 2016 election, Democracy for America and MoveOn.org Political Action launched the Run Warren Run campaign to push the senator to enter the presidential race. Although the Democrat decided against such a run, rumors about her White House ambitions continued to swirl as Warren gained national attention for her vocal criticism of Trump and other GOP leaders.
That speculation hit a fever pitch just months ahead of her U.S. Senate re-election, when the Democrat told supporters at a Holyoke town hall that she would consider running for president after the 2018 midterms.
Since launching her exploratory committee, Warren has traveled to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Puerto Rico to meet with voters and test out her 2020 message.
Immediately following her Lawrence announcement, the senator embarked on a seven-state organizing tour to drum up support for her campaign in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and California -- must-win early primary states.
The mistake was probably in thinking this would be easy and swift.
Thats what many advocates of legalized recreational marijuana felt in 2016, when their side claimed victory in the binding referendum that legalized pot for non-medical reasons. More than two years later, moratoriums on pot businesses are being lifted but some remain, while many other communities are untangling regulations that vary from one to the other.
The election outcome came with the implication that Massachusetts would, in fairly short order, become a legal center for the industry in a systematic, unified manner. Once the Legislature decided to raise the tax rate from 12 percent (as indicated on the referendum) to 20 percent, it appeared the major hurdle toward implementation had been passed.
The reality has been much different, mostly because the local factor of municipal restrictions and laws was underestimated. Marijuana revenue is still flowing into state coffers, but even though fewer than 10 of the initial 150 individual community moratoriums still remain in effect, the rollout of this industry does not resemble what its chief proponents had envisioned - or what they believe the referendum mandated.
Springfield is a prime example. The city lifted its moratorium on pot businesses in September and had rules in place by October. But as February rolled around, not one business has been able to apply for a permit because, according to deputy planning director Philip Dromey, the host community agreement still needed to be clarified.
Theres been a lot to be said for a slower, step-by-step approach to legalized marijuana, regardless of what its most impatient advocates have said. Other states who took this step saw benefits but also problems. If the goal in Massachusetts was to step carefully and avoid the problems while reaching for the benefits, that just makes sense.
But two aspects of this process were, though not overlooked, somewhat underestimated: the strident opposition in some communities of accepting legal marijuana at all, and even more so, the splintered, town-by-town regulations that have confused potential business operators and kept them from entering a field they thought the referendum had cleared for them.
Some of this holdup goes back to how the Massachusetts Legislature dodged the recreational marijuana question until after the fact. Only after the vote was in did they begin to get involved, and by that point, much of the decision making was placed in the hands of cities and towns, where existing business regulations - and community opinion on the entire issue - varied greatly.
Local regulations and variations were rarely mentioned when Massachusetts looked at other states, notably Colorado, to see what its own future might bring. Those discussions invariably described the issue in a one-size-fits-all manner for an entire state.
But that is not how the Bay State is dealing with it. In hindsight, that should have probably been anticipated.
Massachusetts is getting there. Legal marijuana is a reality. But among many other things, the marijuana rollout exposes the slow and cumbersome process of government at even the local level, where zoning restrictions alone make new business formation much more complicated than a referendum yes would suggest.
The picture by the middle of 2019, and certainly by its end, should be clearer. The discussion in many communities is now about how and where to put these new businesses. Its still what advocates had in mind, however, when voters said they wanted marijuana to become legal in this state.
Two Massachusetts people have been arrested by federal authorities after a long-running investigation into a large-scale, international plot to import, manufacture and distribute smokable synthetic cannabinoids, known on the street as Spice or K2.
Daniel Rorer, 42, of Adams and Josephine McLaughlin, 65, of Stoneham were charged with importing large quantities of synthetic cannabinoids and reworking them into a smokable form, referred to by federal officials as SSC, then distributing massive wholesale quantities through the mail across the country.
Borer and McLaughlin, an employee of the United State Postal Service, were arrested Thursday and arraigned in U.S. District Court in Boston.
According to the superseding indictment Borer and McLaughlin imported large quantities of synthetic cannabinoids from China, converted the drugs into a smokable form, then used the U.S. Postal system to send wholesale quantities of the SSCs across the country. The drugs were sold using distinctive names such as Dead Man Walking, Klimax, Zero Gravity, Twilite, Psycho, and Get Real.
Prosecutors allege that Borer and McLaughlin ran their plot between February of 2014 and February of 2019. The investigation was started in in the New York and New Jersey area and initial funding for the investigation came from federal funding for High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA activity. Eventually, law enforcement personnel from New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts were involved.
According to investigators the uneven quality of the manufacture sometimes had dangerous effects on users. This past May in Brooklyn dozens of users were hospitalized over the course of a three-day period when an especially toxic batch of the SSCs was sold on the streets. The drug can have life-threatening effects on users, investigators said.
Earlier, a third man, Jonathan Riendeau, 38, of Port Saint Lucie in Florida, pleaded guilty to six charges related to importation and distribution of SSCs. Federal officials did not say he was directly involved with Borer and McLaughlin, only that he was cooperating with authorities in their investigation.
The two Massachusetts defendants were formally charged with three counts each of conspiring to unlawfully import and distribute controlled substances and controlled substance analogues. Each count carries the potential of a 20 years prison sentence.
According to the Berkshire Eagle, both Rorer and McLaughlin have been transported to federal court in New York City where bail and release condition details are being worked out.
HOLYOKE As students chatted about what they did over the weekend, Amy Pechukas, an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher at Holyoke Community College, walked around the room and listened in on their conversations.
The more they speak it the more comfortable they will be with the spoken part of the test, said Pechukas, referring to the International English Language Testing System, required in many licensed professions for employees whose native language is not English.
The students meet every Tuesday night in the Kittredge Center for Business and Workforce Development to go over sample tests, but more importantly to socialize and speak English with one another. They may come from different backgrounds, but these students have several things in common English is not their first language and they are all registered nurses from other countries.
Passing the advanced English test is the first step in getting into the nursing field in the United States. After they pass the test, students are required to submit their nursing certifications for approval by the state. Once their certification is approved, students go on to take the nursing exam for Massachusetts.
What we have found over the years is that this can be a very long, confusing process and people get discouraged, said Kermit Dunkelberg, assistant vice president of Adult Basic Education and Workforce Development for the college. "We also know that there is a shortage of qualified nurses and hospitals are desperate for nurses.
After Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico in September of 2017, Springfield and Holyoke saw an influx of Puerto Ricans.
As the career center started to process all of these evacuees who were coming to them for services, they found that there were a lot of nurses among them, Dunkelberg said. We saw this as an opportunity to create a course that would serve a need that has existed for international nurses for many years.
The college is hoping to get as many students as possible to participate in the course before the $30,000 grant runs out in June. The grant pays the $240 nonrefundable fee for each student to take the test.
The college teamed up with David Gadaire at MassHire, a career center in Holyoke, and the Bunker Hill Community College Welcome Back Center in Boston to establish the class here in Western Massachusetts.
The Welcome Back Center helps nurses trained in other countries with everything from having their nursing credentials evaluated to preparing for the English and nursing exams with the goal that they can obtain their nursing certification in the state, Dunkelberg said.
Before the class was established at HCC, hurricane evacuee Frank Martinez had set up a study group on his own. He earned his nursing degree in Puerto Rico, but is not able to work as a nurse in Massachusetts until he goes through the testing and certification process.
By day Martinez is an employee at the career center. At night he is a phlebotomist at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton. He evacuated from Puerto Rico after the hurricane and came to Holyoke, where he had lived before and still has family. While registering people for services at the career center he noticed the number of registered nurses coming in.
We had about 30 in the beginning and we just kept getting more and more. We started with a little study group once a week at MassHire and when HCC got its funding we formalized the class, he said. I think its a bonding experience where you get to share your concerns, your struggles with people who are also in the same field as you.
Martinez is fluent in Spanish and English, but still found the English test to be daunting. He recently passed the exam and is now in the process of getting his credentials validated by the state.
The test is very challenging, said Emmanuel Reyes, a career development adviser at HCC. Originally from the Dominican Republic, Reyes knows what its like to learn a new language.
Many of the students get discouraged, especially when they hear about someone taking it and not passing and losing the money. That means they have to go through the whole process again, he said.
Reyes helps to keep the class organized from taking attendance every week to checking in on students who may have missed a week or two and keeping an eye out for job opportunities in the medical field.
I try to keep them motivated and encourage them if they need it. I look for opportunities for them to work at hospitals or doctors offices, just to stay active in the field, he said.
During a recent class all of the students present were already working in the medical field in some capacity. Most are certified nursing assistants.
Its difficult sometimes because I see what the nurses are doing and I know I can do that to and Im ready, said Habiba Atanane, a registered nurse for more than five years in her native Morocco. She has been in the United States for a year and three months and said she is ready to be a nurse again.
Jelitza Rodriguez-Alicea, Daliris Neifa and Julianna Torres are all working as certified nursing assistants. They said having a designated study group to meet with weekly has made the process less stressful.
Here we can practice our English, but talking about things related to nursing, which you cant really do when youre at home with your friends and family, said Torres.
For Neifa, seeing other students sacrificing time with their family and spending hours studying has motivated her. I feel as though if they can do it I can too. We encourage each other, she said.
Dannys Solis and Anaida Vazquez were also trying to study for the test on their own before discovering the group.
I want to do this for me, but more importantly for my children, so that they can see that I will never give up and I will pursue my goal of being a nurse, Vazquez said.
Her sons teacher gave her a newspaper clipping announcing the classes at HCC. When she sent this clipping home with him, I felt like an opportunity was presenting itself to me and I had to take advantage of it, she said.
I tried to start the process on my own, but it was very difficult to navigate the system, Solis said.
Pechukas, a teacher and registered nurse, said the class focuses on teaching content knowledge and test-taking skills as well as building confidence. However, she said, being a nurse is about more than taking a test.
Nonverbal communication is a huge part of being a nurse," she said. Sometimes there is prejudice in the profession where people are judged because they might have an accent or imperfect grammar, but actually they are excellent communicators and that is a huge part of nursing.
Anyone interested in joining the study group should contact Sheila Kelly at skelly@hcc.edu or 413-552-2027 for more information.
SPRINGFIELD American Outdoor Brands Corp., the Springfield-based parent company of Smith & Wesson, hopes new products, creative promotions and bundling products from its firearms, camping and firearms accessories divisions can offset whats seen as a soft market for firearms in 2019.
The company is also a potential buyer for Westfield-based gunmaker Savage Arms. Savages parent company, Vista Outdoor, has announced plans to sell. Industry insiders say AOBC, which has less of a rifle hunting rifle business than Savage, might be interested in buying the company.
American Outdoor Brands faced pressure from gun control activists in 2018, and it will only intensify this year. In December, the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts bought 200 shares of stock, enough to place a question on the ballot presented to shareholders at the corporations annual meting.
The diocese plans to open a dialog about gun control. Its following the lead of Catholic nuns who successfully passed a resolution calling for AOBC to write a report on its gun-safety efforts.
American Outdoor Brands last month bought Arizona-based LaserLyte, a maker of laser gun sights and training aids for shooters and police officers. In a news release, AOBC said it will move LaserLytes operations to the Crimson Trace factory in Wilsonville, Oregon.
AOBC plans to open a $55 million distribution center near Columbia, Missouri, in 2019. Executives have told investors that the new facility will also house engineering and prototyping efforts for its accessories division, the part of the company that sells shooting supplies, gunsmith tools and other outdoors equipment under a variety of brand names. This is according to transcripts of a December conference call CEO James Debney hosted with investors and reporters to announce quarterly earnings.
In a news release the company said the distribution center means 328 new jobs, including 154 new jobs in the first three years.
American Outdoor Brands has 1,600 employees at its Springfield Smith & Wesson plant. It is advertising for production and professional workers in Springfield and at a plastics plant in Deep River, Connecticut, in addition to the new warehouse in Missouri.
This all comes as American Outdoor Brands and Smith & Wesson face increased scrutiny from gun rights advocates seeking solutions to ongoing mass shootings. Those activists are angered by AOBCs continued support of the hard-line National Rifle Association.
Gun control advocates repeatedly demonstrated outside the Smith & Wesson factory in Springfield last year. Among them on one occasion was David Hogg, a survivor of the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida. A gunman at the school used a Smith & Wesson rifle to kill 17 people.
In September, AOBC stockholders approved a referendum requiring that executives write a comprehensive report on what they are doing to address gun violence. That measure was brought by a network of Catholic nuns from across the country. The measure passed despite opposition from Debney and AOBCs executives.
The nuns asked that the report to include:
evidence of monitoring of violent events associated with products produced by the company,
efforts underway to research and produce safer guns and gun products, and
an assessment of the risks to corporate reputation and finances related to gun violence in the U.S.
The sisters want that report by Feb. 8.
It appears the company plans to produce the requested report but this has not been confirmed, wrote Sister Judy Byron, a member of the Adrian Dominican Sisters and director of the Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investments in Seattle.
AOBC might not have heard the last of Byron. Her group, which buys just enough shares to earn the right to put an initiative on the shareholder ballot, also forced Smith & Wesson competitor Sturm Ruger & Co. to write the same report in 2018.
Debney warned shareholders in the corporations annual report that activists favoring tighter gun control posed a risk o American Outdoor Brands because their efforts could damage the companys reputation and cause it to spend money responding.
According to numbers released in early December, AOBCs net sales for the most recent quarter were $161.7 million compared with $148.4 million for the same time last year. Thats an increase of 8.9 percent.
Net profit was $6.7 million, or 12 cents per diluted share, compared with net profit of $3.2 million, or 6 cents per diluted share, in the same three months of the previous year.
These numbers are for the second quarter of the companys fiscal year, the three months that ended Oct. 31, 2018.
The entire firearms industry is seeing soft demand. Late last year, FBI background checks for firearm purchases were off 8.8 percent from the same time period in 2017. Background checks for long guns were off 11.2 percent. The gun industry uses the background check data as a rough estimate of consumer demand.
To counter that, Debney said AOBC is relying on new products and designs for 2019 as well as promotions that go across all its business lines. That means it would include deals on camping and hunting gear or gun accessories along with a firearm purchase.
A Boston police captain has been charged with domestic violence after his wife told authorities that he repeatedly pushed her and hit her during a fight Thursday.
The Boston Globe reported that Captain Timothy Connolly was arraigned on two counts of assault and battery on a family member stemming from an altercation that took place at the couples Milton home Thursday afternoon.
Connolly, 53, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
His wife told a judge in Quincy District Court that her husband of 13 years repeatedly pushed her and hit her with an open palm, the newspaper reported. She also told the court that Connolly had previously threatened to kill her.
Connollys lawyer, Jack McGlone, reportedly called the incident a foolish fight.
Connolly denied assaulting his wife, according to The Globe, and told Milton police after the altercation that his wife had hit him twice in the stomach and once in the groin.
He was released on personal recognizance following his arraignment Friday with orders that he stay away from his wife.
The Boston Police Department has placed Connolly on administrative desk duty pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation, NBC Boston reported.
U.S. colleges graduate 50 percent more students in engineering and in computer and information science than are hired in those fields every year, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.
Employers dont have to show they have a labor shortage to apply. They dont even have to try recruiting an American to fill the job.
Cutting labor costs is clearly the paramount need. In Silicon Valley, computer systems analysts make on average just over $116,000 a year. But companies can hire H-1B workers at a lower skill level, paying them only about $77,000 a year to do the same work, the report says.
And its not unheard-of for companies to ask American workers to train the H-1B workers taking their jobs. 60 Minutes featured Robert Harrison, a senior telecom engineer at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Asked whether training his replacement felt like digging his own grave, Harrison responded:
It feels worse than that. It feels like not only am I digging the grave but Im getting ready to stab myself in the gut and fall into the grave.
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Three of Sinn Feins local government candidates standing in Longford Municipal District, Granard Municipal District and Ballymahon Municipal District have welcomed the tabling of a bill by their partys Justice Spokesperson, Donnchadh O Laoghaire, that if enacted will provide more robust regulations for private security firms involved in evictions.
Tena Keown, Mark McGuire and Geraldine Ryan Devlin have urged all political parties and independent TDs to support Deputy O Laoghaires Bill which seeks to regulate firms that are being used by banks to enforce eviction orders, similar to what occurred in Strokestown late last year.
Ms Keown said: Deputy O Laoghaire's Bill will better regulate private security firms and hold them to account when they are employed in forced evictions. Before drafting the Bill, the Private Security Authority (PSA) informed Donnchadh that as things presently stand, private security firms are unregulated. If enacted, I understand that the Bill will amend section 2 of the Private Security Services Act, 2004, by adding a new category of security personnel to come within the remit of the act, and under the scope of the Private Security Authority.
In summary, continued Tena, it will provide enhanced regulation and oversight of security staff and will ensure that anyone operating within the private security sector must identify themselves clearly and show ID to anyone who requests it. Any company that breaches, they will be subject to serious fines.
Granard SF candidate Mark McGuire also voiced his support for the Bill and said that if door staff and security in shops in our high street are subject to regulation then it was equally necessary that people involved in the most intrusive, hard edged, and indeed potentially violent security be properly regulated.
It is absolutely unacceptable, said Mr McGuire, that violent evictions by hooded men can be allowed to happen in the course of forcibly removing people from their homes.
This important, common sense Bill could, and should, be progressed quickly through the Dail and I hope it will get the backing of all of our Longford/Westmeath TDs, concluded Mr McGuire
Ballymahon candidate, Geraldine Ryan Devlin stated, The lack of accountability is shocking, and for too long those carrying out evictions have been able to use excessive force without being held accountable for their actions when a complaint is made against them.
Deputy OLaoghaires Bill will ensure this is no longer the case and will force anyone involved in carrying out the eviction to be subject to higher standards, oversight and licensing, concluded Ms Ryan Devlin.
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The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks!
Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics.
The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc.
The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics.
The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates.
Access to college recruiters and advisors its harder to line up higher education.
Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family.
Vote
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The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriff's Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Mitchell Kukulka.
Thursday, Feb. 7
11:47 p.m. -- Deputies responded to Edenville Township for a single-vehicle traffic crash.
9:58 p.m. -- A deputy was dispatched to a Lee Township business to speak with a 28-year-old woman about a harassment complaint. The woman said her 28-year-old ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend, whom she does not know, has been messaging and texting her. The woman said the messages were about the well-being/health of children in common between her and the ex-boyfriend. The messages were not found to be criminal in nature at this time, and the woman was told not to message back unless she needed to.
9:24 p.m. -- Officers responded to a traffic hazard near the intersection of North Saginaw Road and Manor Drive.
9:15 p.m. -- A 34-year-old Jerome Township woman had a verbal dispute with her 35-year-old boyfriend after he had made suicidal threats. He refused to speak with deputies, though spoke with Central Dispatch via phone. The woman agreed to stay at her parent's house for the evening
7:13 p.m. -- Officers responded to a verbal domestic situation in the 300 Block of Walter Court.
6:02 p.m. -- A deputy was dispatched to an area in the City of Midland for a car/deer crash.
4:02 p.m. -- Deputies responded to a vehicle in a ditch in Larkin Township. There was only minor damage to the vehicle and no injuries.
3:03 p.m. -- Officers responded to a civil complaint in the 300 Block of Walter Court.
2:08 p.m. -- Officers responded to a malicious destruction of property in the 2600 Block of Louisiana Street.
2:04 p.m. -- Deputies performed a salvage inspection in Greendale Township.
11:33 a.m. -- Officers responded to a crash on private property in the 4500 Block of North Saginaw Road.
11:02 a.m. -- A deputy responded to a report of a single-vehicle crash on eastbound U.S. 10 East of Coleman. Officers from the Coleman Police Department arrived on scene and handled the crash, reporting no damage or injuries.
10:07 a.m. -- Officers responded to a property damage accident near the intersection of Isabella Street and Albee Lane.
8:16 a.m. -- Officers responded to a property damage accident in the area of Eastlawn Drive and Washington Street.
7:49 a.m. -- Officers responded to a vehicle crash resulting in property damage near the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and North Saginaw Road.
6:43 a.m. -- Deputies responded to a single-vehicle property damage accident in Greendale Township.
6:01 a.m. -- Officers responded to a vehicle crash resulting in property damage in the area of East Patrick Road and South Saginaw Road.
4:12 a.m. -- Deputies responded to a single-vehicle crash resulting in minor injuries in Greendale Township. The driver and passenger refused medical treatment.
3:41 a.m. -- Officers responded to a domestic incident in the 5300 Block of Dublin Avenue.
12:22 a.m. -- Officers responded to a report of a missing person in the 2100 Block of Virginia Street.
Police say two people who stole a car at gunpoint in Castroville are under arrest after a high-speed chase ended on San Antonio's North Side early Saturday.
Castroville police began chasing a man and woman they suspected of stealing an automobile sometime before 3 a.m., according to law enforcement at the scene.
LAWRENCE, Mass. - Sen. Elizabeth Warren formally launched her presidential bid Saturday by reemphasizing her signature issues of fighting economic inequality and corporate wrongdoing, an effort to move beyond new questions that arose in recent days about her previous claims that she was a Native American.
The outdoor rally - on the steps of a former cotton mill and the site of a historic labor strike led by women and immigrants - was intended to position Warren as the leader of a renewed crusade against what she called the "corrupt" influence of large companies and powerful politicians.
"The story of Lawrence is a story about how real change happens in America," Warren told a crowd that the campaign estimated at 3,500. "It is a story about power - our power - when we fight together."
The announcement came after a difficult week for Warren. The Washington Post published a document that shows, for the first time, Warren's handwritten assertion that she was an "American Indian" on a 1986 registration card she filled out for the Texas bar. Warren in recent days offered apologies for claiming Native American identity, first privately to the leader of the Cherokee Nation and then publicly.
In forcefully populist language, Warren sought to carve out a distinctive position in the crowded Democratic field, citing achievements like the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which regulates banks and other financial institutions. Other Democrats are also speaking out on inequality, but Warren is hitting particularly hard on the notion of creating new operating rules for the capitalist system.
"It won't be enough to just undo the terrible acts of this administration," Warren said. "We can't afford to just tinker around the edges - a tax credit here, a regulation there. Our fight is for big, structural change."
During the roughly 45-minute speech, she repeatedly stressed her image as a fighter, linking her family's economic struggles to a promise to battle for middle-class Americans. Supporters hope that reputation will eclipse any image of her as someone who misrepresented herself as a Native American for years.
But even some of those who attended the kickoff had concerns about the strength of her candidacy, given the identity issue and President Donald Trump's aggressive campaign style.
"Trump is an intimidating guy to take on," said Hugh Stinson, 40, of Douglas, Mass., before the speech, adding that he hadn't decided whom to support for president. "Warren has left herself open on a couple fronts to pile on. He loves dredging up Pocahontas," he added, referencing Trump's nickname for Warren.
Others worried that the country isn't ready for a female president. "I want a candidate who will win. It's a challenging time," said Pamela Baldwin, 55, of Arlington, who said she likes Warren as a senator but believes sexism will prevent a woman from becoming president in 2020.
Trump's campaign issued a statement Saturday saying Warren has been "exposed as a fraud" by claiming Native American ancestry.
"The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas, like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and crush America's middle class," Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager, said in the statement. The Green New Deal, supported by an array of Democrats, is a sweeping environmental initiative.
Warren acknowledged in her speech that some view her ideas as unrealistic. "There will be plenty of doubters and cowards and armchair critics this time around," Warren said. "But we learned a long time ago that you don't get what you don't fight for."
Warren was introduced by Democratic Rep. Joe Kennedy, once seen as a potential 2020 presidential candidate himself, and Sen. Edward J. Markey, along with local officials whom Warren has backed.
Supporters held signs reading "Persist, Persist, Persist," while some munched on butter cookies with the same word. It became an unofficial Warren motto after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a 2017 incident, complained that she had been warned against continuing to speak on the Senate floor in violation of Senate rules, but "nevertheless, she persisted."
After the rally, Warren headed to Dover, New Hampshire, a town of 32,000 with a long history in now-faded industries like shipbuilding. Several of those who braved the biting wind to hear Warren speak at the old City Hall were impatient with the attention on Warren's Native American ancestry claims.
"If they are going to toss her out of the ring over that, then they aren't looking deep enough," said Sheri Clark Nadell, 58, a high school teacher. "It's a very superficial way of looking at things."
Others cited Warren's explanation that a Native American background was part of her family lore. "She is in the exact same position as me," said Fay Scofield, 70. "I was told ever since I was a young child that we are part Native American. I have no idea if it's true, but it's always been part of the family story, and we've been proud of it. I'm sure she was, too."
At the Massachusetts event, Warren added some biographical elements, describing herself, as a young mother entering law school, having to quickly toilet-train her toddler so she could leave the child at a day-care center while she attended classes.
And she blamed the divides in American culture on "the rich and powerful," saying the country's problems go beyond the current occupant of the White House.
Warren has proposed an "ultra-millionaire" tax that adds an annual 2 percent levy on wealth over $50 million and a 3 percent tax on those with assets worth more than $1 billion. She wants large companies to be more tightly regulated, requiring them to focus on more than stock prices and consider their employees and communities. And she wants workers included on corporate boards.
"When I talk about this, some rich guys scream 'class warfare!' " Warren said. "Well, let me tell you something - these same rich guys have been waging class warfare against hard-working people for decades. I say it's time to fight back."
Warren did not refer to her Native American claims, but she repeatedly mentioned race and the added difficulties confronting minorities. Nonwhite voters made up more than a quarter of the Democratic primary electorate in 2016.
"Race matters - and we need to say so," Warren said, noting that blacks continue to face, for example, discriminatory housing practices. "And we can't be blind to the fact that the rules in our country have been rigged against other people for a long time," listing women, gays and lesbians, Latinos, Native Americans, immigrants and people with disabilities.
She got some of her biggest applause when she talked about her plan to change politics, repeating a pledge not to take money from special interests. "I'm not taking applications from billionaires who want to run a super PAC on my behalf," Warren said.
She also backed a constitutional amendment to ensure the right to vote, and she advocated for tightening ethics requirements on members of Congress and even Supreme Court justices.
Warren was the first major candidate to announce a presidential exploratory committee, sending out a video on New Year's Eve. Since then, the field has grown considerably, including her Senate colleagues Kamala Harris of California, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Cory Booker of New Jersey. It's expected to expand further Sunday, with Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota set to announce her bid.
Warren has visited Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Puerto Rico. In coming days, she plans events in Georgia, South Carolina, Nevada and California. She is scheduled to be in Iowa on Sunday.
Virginians are deadlocked over whether Gov. Ralph Northam, D, should step down after the emergence of a photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook page depicting people in blackface and Ku Klux Klan robes, with African-Americans saying by a wide margin he should remain in office despite the offensive image, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
The poll, conducted Wednesday through Friday, finds residents split over Northam's fate, with 47 percent wanting him to step down and 47 percent saying he should stay on. Northam counts higher support among black residents - who say he should remain in office by a margin of 58 percent to 37 percent - than among whites, who are more evenly divided.
On the scandals buffeting the state's other top elected officials, the poll by The Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University finds that about a thirdof Virginians think Attorney General Mark Herring, D, should resign after he admitted wearing blackface at a party when he was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia. A 60 percent majority say he should stay in office.
Most remain undecided about a woman's allegation that Lt. Gov Justin Fairfax (D) sexually assaulted her in 2004, with 65 percent saying they didn't know enough to judge Fairfax's denial of the accusation. Respondents were not asked about a second sexual assault accusation against Fairfax by a Maryland woman on Friday, after the poll began.
The Post-Schar poll also finds that 11 percent of residents have either worn blackface - a practice rooted in 19th century minstrel shows, which featured white performers portraying African-Americans in demeaning ways - or personally know someone who has.
The survey offers a snapshot of the competing and sometimes conflicting emotions that grip Virginia one week after the state government was plunged into chaos by the publication of Northam's yearbook photo on a conservative website.
Since then the capital has been in a near-constant state of crisis. On Thursday the scandals spread across party lines, as state Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment, R-James City County, acknowledged he was among several editors of the 1968 Virginia Military Institute yearbook, which contained racist photos and slurs. Norment said he was not responsible for the material.
Nearly three-quarters of Virginians report reading or hearing "a lot" about Northam's yearbook photo. Among those who paid attention to the story, 55 percent say the photo offended them.
But befitting a state with a complicated 400-year history of racial divisions, Virginians show deep ambivalence over what should result from the revelations.
Their conflicted views point to a substantial gap between the worlds of politics and social media - which have showcased a near-unanimous consensus among elected officials, advocacy groups and the occasional celebrity that Northam has lost the public trust and must resign - and public opinion.
"The data here are so at odds with what party leaders have led us to believe - that the governor has no support to govern effectively any more," Schar School Dean Mark Rozell said.
Still, the governor's image has taken a hit. Northam's 43-percent approval rating is the lowest any Virginia governor has held in a Post poll since 1997, and contrasts with more positive polling results for Northam last year.
The fallout from a news conference he held on Feb. 2 appears to have been particularly damaging.
At that event, Northam backtracked on his admission just a day earlier to appearing in the photo. The governor said he had realized he was not one of the costumed figures and speculated that the photo had been placed on the page without his knowledge.
He simultaneously admitted that he had put shoe polish on his face to impersonate Michael Jackson during a 1984 dance contest. At one surreal moment during the live national press conference, Northam appeared ready to demonstrate the moonwalk, but was dissuaded by his wife, Pam.
More than 7 in 10 Virginians say Northam's assertion that he did not appear in the photo was not believable after his earlier statement.
"Initially I could have forgiven him, and I think he could have gotten past it. It was something that was 35 years ago," said David Hughes, a Newport News sheriff's deputy. "What really bothered me was the change in story."
Hughes, who is 54 and African-American, said that his career in law enforcement has taught him to look skeptically at reversals of the kind Northam made. "Typically, if a person changes their story, it's not because they remember more," he said. "It's because they're being deceptive."
Hughes voted for Northam in both the primary and general elections. Now he thinks the governor should resign.
"I'm torn, because I do think he's a good governor," he said. "But I think once he changed his story, as far as I'm concerned, I don't see moral leadership there."
Despite their incredulity at his explanation of the yearbook page, a slim 53-percent majority of Virginians say they accept Northam's apology for the photo. Some 50 percent of residents say he could be an effective governor for the remaining three years of his term, while 46 percent say he could not.
Louise Butler, 76, is African-American and grew up in Richmond, where she still lives. In her youth the city was segregated, and Butler can still vividly recall an argument she had as a teenager with a white woman over where she was allowed to sit on a bus.
Butler, who attended Northam's inauguration, said she was shocked and disappointed by Northam's yearbook photo. She said the Klansman costume, in particular, brought back memories of the terrorism and discrimination experienced by African-Americans in the South before and during the civil rights movement.
But she said that whatever views Northam held in 1984, she was confident that he was now committed to advancing racial equity. "He's been a good governor, and he's been good, as far as I know, to black people," Butler said.
While Democratic leaders at the state and national level have called for Northam's resignation, the governor still commands support among many of his party's voters, the poll shows. Some 57 percent of Democrats say he should remain in office.
Independents split more evenly, with 47 percent saying Northam should resign and 43 percent saying he should not. Republicans say he should step down by a margin of 56 percent to 42 percent.
Within the Democratic party, Northam has greater support from African-Americans than whites. A 57-percent majority of black residents who identify or lean Democratic say he should continue to lead the state, compared to 49 percent of whites who identify or lean Democratic. Some 47 percent of African-Americans overall say Northam has accomplished a great deal or good amount as governor, compared with 30 percent of whites.
Kevin Shank, a 57-year-old white Republican who runs a woodworking business in Augusta County, said he was not personally offended by the photograph in Northam's yearbook. He said he had never worn or seen anyone wear blackface, but that based on the revelations of the past week he surmised it must have been a common occurrence.
"I think they was going to parties and it was something they did," Shank said. "Seems like there was a lot of it going on."
The Post-Schar poll finds that Virginians, by a margin of 53 percent to 38 percent, think their leaders have not adequately addressed the state's history of racial discrimination, which began with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans on Virginia soil in 1619. Nearly 8 in 10 black Virginians say state leaders have not done enough.
Patricia Hollins, a 48-year-old paralegal from Fredericksburg, said the state's dark past could still sometimes rear its head in unpleasant ways. Originally from Cleveland, Hollins said she has sometimes been surprised by the views expressed in Southern cities she had lived in over the years as her husband served in the U.S. Coast Guard.
More recently, she said, she was surprised to hear neighbors defend a Confederate flag that flies over part of Interstate 95 in Northern Virginia. "It makes you think," Hollins said. "Have we really gotten past all that? And we haven't, and we have a long way to go."
Hollins, who is white, is a registered Democrat but considers herself a swing voter. She supported Republican Ed Gillespie in the 2017 gubernatorial election. She said Northam, Fairfax and Herring should all step down.
"It's a disgrace to the state," she said. "And now all the other leaders of all the other states and governments are looking at Virginia and saying, 'What is going on over there?'"
The Post-Schar School poll was conducted by telephone Feb. 6-8, 2019 among a random sample of 706 adults in the Commonwealth of Virginia, including 62 percent reached on cell phones and 38 percent on landlines. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points; the error margin is plus or minus 10 points among the sample of 132 African-American residents and 5.5 points among the sample of 459 white residents.
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The Washington Post's Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
BEIRUT - U.S.-backed forces in Syria announced the beginning Saturday of the possible final battle for the last village controlled by the Islamic State.
In a brief statement posted on its website, the Syrian Democratic Forces said the push began on Saturday night and was focused on the village of Baghouz, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River in the southeastern Syria province of Deir al-Zour.
The statement gave no indication of how long it could take to capture Baghouz, but President Donald Trump said last week he had been told that the full territorial conquest of the Islamic State could be completed in the coming week.
That would herald an end to the nearly five-year-old war aimed at pushing the Islamic State out of its self proclaimed "caliphate," the once vast stretch of territory spanning Syria and Iraq that at its peak was roughly the size to Britain.
Success against the Islamic State in Baghouz would also increase pressure on the U.S. military to pull out of Syria, in accordance with Trump's instructions that the troops should leave once the Islamic State has been defeated.
U.S. officials caution, however, that driving the Islamic State out of its territory would not end the threat it poses. The militants have been regrouping as an insurgency in many of the areas they have already lost. They could quickly rebound if the military victory is not accompanied by solutions to the grievances that contributed to their rise, the officials say.
"ISIS remains an active insurgent group in both Iraq and Syria," noted a report last week by the Pentagon's Inspector General. "If Sunni socio-economic, political, and sectarian grievances are not adequately addressed by the national and local governments of Iraq and Syria it is very likely that ISIS will have the opportunity to set conditions for future resurgence and territorial control."
"Currently, ISIS is regenerating key functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria, but absent sustained [counterterrorism] pressure, ISIS could likely resurge in Syria within six to twelve months and regain limited territory," the report added, quoting officials with the U.S. Central Command.
In a reminder that the militants have the capability to mount attacks well beyond the front lines, assailants on motorcycles on Saturday tried to storm a base shared by the U.S. military and the SDF at the Omar oil field, around 60 miles north of the village where the militants are making their last stand.
Most of the dozen or so attackers were killed and two managed to escape after a battle lasting several hours, during which U.S. airstrikes were called in, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
The assault on Baghouz is being conducted by the SDF's Kurdish and Arab fighters, backed by U.S. airstrikes and U.S. advisers. It comes after more than 20,000 civilians were allowed to flee the area over the past two weeks, many of them suspected fighters or the wives and children of fighters. They have been escorted to camps where they are screened for ties to the militants.
Estimates of the number of fighters remaining in the pinprick of territory vary wildly from dozens to hundreds, but they are thought to include some of the most die-hard and committed extremists who have remained with the group to the bitter end.
Many of them are foreigners who can't blend in with the locals to escape, according to SDF and U.S. officials.
U.S. Special Operations forces working alongside the SDF fighters will be particularly keen on establishing whether any key Islamic State leaders are still holed up in Baghouz, including perhaps the Islamic State's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. U.S. and SDF officials say, however, they have no reason to believe he is there.
They will also be hunting for evidence of the survival of any of the Islamic State's foreign hostages who remain unaccounted for, including British journalist John Cantlie and an Italian priest, the Rev. Paolo Dall'Oglio, who was kidnapped by the Islamic State in the city of Raqqa in 2013 and has not been heard of since.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 8) Western Australia has issued a health warning after a person from the Philippines returned there with measles, a highly contagious viral disease.
"Western Australians are being asked to be on alert to the risk of measles following a confirmed case in a person who returned to Perth on 29 January 2019 from the Philippines on a Singapore Airlines flight," Western Australia's Department of Health said in a statement dated February 5. An outbreak of measles was declared in Metro Manila and Central Luzon the following day, which has since expanded to other regions.
The Western Australian government also urged citizens not immune to measles to remain vigilant for the onset of symptoms, which include fever, cough, runny nose, sore eyes, and red rashes.
READ: What you need to know about measles
It specifically warned people who, like the infected person from the Philippines, were on board the January 28 SQ921 flight which left Manila at 7:00 p.m. and arrived in Singapore at 10:45 p.m., and the January 29 SQ213 fight which left Singapore at 7:40 a.m. and arrived in Perth, Western Australia at 12:55 p.m. Those who went to the Coles Central Raine Square in the central business district of Perth late morning of January 30 are also advised to be alert until end of this month.
"There is no risk of acquiring measles from visiting Perth International Airport or Raine Square outside of these times. It is generally considered safe for non-immune individuals to enter a room 30 minutes after a measles case has left the area," the Western Australian government said.
It added that public health staff "have provided information to people who were exposed to the most recent case where they were known, but it was not possible to identify and specifically warn people who were in public places."
More than 70 deaths from measles were reported in the Philippines this year, according to the Department of Health which has recorded around 2,000 cases of the disease locally known as "tigdas." The government is now trying to get parents to have their children immunized as officials said the spike in measles cases could be blamed on a long-term decline in vaccination coverage. Officials also said many Filipino parents feared to have their kids immunized because of the controversy that linked deaths to the Dengvaxia dengue vaccine.
READ: Rise in measles cases blamed on 'chronic decline in vaccination' in PH
Six Interact Clubs and Rotaract Clubs from western Illinois have been raising funds for a center that caters to the deaf community in the Caribbean.
Money raised by the club and some from the Jacksonville Rotary Club Foundations One Love Gala Friday will be used to fund a grant thatll be used to improve the Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf in Jamaica.
Ryan Byers, a member of the Jacksonville Rotary, said six Interact and Rotaract clubs have been challenged with raising money.
We asked them if they wanted to help fund raise for a global grant, so we set up each with an online portal and they were all free to do what they wanted to fund raise, Byers said. All the money they raise will go towards a grant program and we are hoping to fund improvements at the [Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf].
The club that raises the most funds will be named a Global Charity Ambassador.
The current amount raised by the clubs was not available, but Byers said the clubs and Rotary will continue raising funds, until at least $30,000, which is the minimum to start the grant.
Byers said the fundraising will continue and, so far, no timeline has been established for its completion or implementation.
In addition, the Jacksonville Rotary Club Foundation hosted a live and silent auction, as well as raffles to raise funds for its programs within the community.
Jenna Tucker, the chairwoman for the Rotarys One Love Gala committee, said the One Love Gala is one of the clubs fundraising efforts for the year and helps fund community programs.
The focus is not only to raise funds for Jacksonville, but it is also our Global Grant kickoff, Tucker said.
Tucker said the gala use to be a fundraiser for the international Polio eradication program, but said the funds have since been moved to local programs, such as scholarships, schools and the United Way.
This is our way to add funds for programs for our community, Tucker said.
Those that would like to donate to the fundraising efforts can contact a Rotary member, or one of the Interact or Rotaract clubs.
Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree can be reached at 217-245-6121, ext. 1233, or on Twitter @JCNews_samantha.
SAN FRANCISCO - Jeff Bezos' explicit selfies and public attack on the National Enquirer make him part of the club of tech executives behaving badly. But his troubles aren't likely to roil Amazon - at least for now.
On Thursday afternoon, Bezos posted a lengthy letter on the online blogging platform Medium that accused the Enquirer of trying to blackmail him over the publication of intimate details about his extramarital affair with former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez. The letter - which included intimations about the Enquirer's parent company's relationship with the Saudi government and with President Donald Trump - sent shock waves through the business world and across Washington, escalating a drama that had previously been confined to the tabloids.
The letter was highly unusual for any business leader, particularly one like Bezos, who has fiercely guarded his privacy and largely avoided the limelight even as he rose to become the richest person in the world. (Bezos owns the Washington Post.)
But the news didn't appear to impact Amazon's stock price. It was down roughly two percent on Friday, a dip that largely mirrored the broader market. Last week - at the same time that Bezos' personal life was already embroiled in controversy - the company posted record profits for the third quarter in a row. Overall, the company's stock has fallen five percent since the Amazon founder announced his divorce from his wife MacKenzie on Jan. 9.
While the choice to take a below-the-waist selfie in the first place was "unhinged," the decision "to retaliate with guns ablaze" was more strategic and calculated, said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies at the Yale School of Management. "They were trying to blackmail him in secret and this obliterates the issue. He is doing what some presidents call shock and awe, and he is doing it right."
"I bet he feels quite gratified," he added.
Amazon did not respond to immediate request for comment.
Bezos' behavior differs from that of other prominent tech executives that have caused trouble for their companies, Sonnenfeld said. Tesla's Elon Musk took drugs during a media interview and made a sudden announcement about taking his company private on Twitter, which led to an action by federal authorities. Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick fostered an anything-goes environment where sexual harassment proliferated, while other rule-breaking put Uber in the crosshairs of local authorities. He lashed out at an Uber driver on video.
Still, other experts pointed out that if the fight between Bezos and the National Enquirer drags on, either legally or publicly, it will become a distraction for the Amazon founder.
"For a sitting CEO of a public company, it wasn't the wisest move," said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. "By taking that step, you only call more attention to the allegations. It was a mistake, and Pecker will come back at him, and it will come to come to occupy a significant amount of his time."
Reaction among some Amazon employees has also been telling. Bezos' blog was quickly republished across the company's many internal corporate chat rooms shortly after it came out, according to two employees who wished to remain anonymous to discuss internal corporate matters. Discussion turned immediately to the potential impact on the stock price.
People in Bezos' orbit appeared unfazed or rallied around him. A former Amazon executive, Charlie Kindel, who led the company's Alexa product line until last year, tweeted an almost jovial attitude about the letter. He recirculated a limerick about it along with another tweet by a person who said they couldn't wait to pre-order the book about the feud between his former boss and National Enquirer editor David Pecker.
Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley investor who has worked with Bezos and is a vocal critic of Facebook and Google, said he hoped Bezos' efforts would help force tabloids and the political establishment to stop using dirty tricks.
By contrast, Bezos is deliberately defending his private life. He is not misusing company funds or taking actions that specifically impact Amazon's business. Unlike Google and Facebook, where the personal behavior of executives has garnered huge protests from the rank-and-file, Amazon's culture is more pragmatic and less oriented around values that executives are perceived as needing to uphold, the employee said.
"I think Jeff made the point best in the letter, he'll let Amazon's results speak for themselves," said Ted Maidenberg, a Silicon Valley investor. "It has zero impact [on the business]."
When Britain's Prince Philip flipped his Land Rover last month and miraculously walked away from what could have been a deadly accident, many wondered how long it would take for Queen Elizabeth II to ask him to hand over his keys for good.
The answer? About three weeks, it would seem.
Buckingham Palace announced Saturday that "after careful consideration," the 97-year-old "has taken the decision to voluntarily surrender his driving license."
Whether Elizabeth actually influenced the decision hasn't been made public, of course, but experts on the royal family suggested last month that she would be the one to make the call.
"It will be the queen, she'll be the only one who can really tell him," Ingrid Seward, editor in chief of Majesty Magazine, told British ITV after the crash. "And I'm sure she'll be very annoyed with him, obviously sympathetic, but will be saying 'Now Philip, this is enough.'"
The crash earned quite a bit of attention in Britain, where many didn't realize the queen's husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, still drove. It's unclear what exactly led to the crash between his Land Rover and another driver's Kia, which was carrying a 9-month-old baby. The baby survived the crash unharmed, although the Kia's driver had a broken wrist and the other adult in the vehicle was treated for cuts.
Witnesses to the crash were in disbelief that anyone, and especially someone of Philip's age, could have walked away from it so easily. In fact, Philip wasn't even injured, a spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace confirmed at the time.
One witness, Roy Warne, told Britain's Sun newspaper that he heard Philip claim he'd been "dazzled by the sun."
"He was disorientated and humbled," Warne said. "I believe he was very sorry about what had happened. The sun was very low in the sky."
That humbling didn't appear to prevent Philip from hitting the road again soon after. Just two days later, he was caught on camera driving a new Land Rover - this time without a seat belt.
A spokeswoman for Norfolk Constabulary told CNN that police had seen the photographs and "suitable words of advice have been given to the driver."
Philip, who also held a pilot's license, stopped flying at age 76 but continued to drive for more than two decades - even chauffeuring President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama in 2016, the year before he retired from public duties.
U.S. border officials said Friday they saw an abrupt drop-off in illegal crossings during the holiday season, but the number of Central Americans arriving in family groups has returned to record levels since then.
The lull in unauthorized crossings suggests some Central American migrants - and the smuggling organizations that deliver them to the border - may have taken a break or deferred the journey north until after the holidays.
During the first week of January, when the extended Christmas season was still being celebrated in Mexico and Central America, the number of migrant family members taken into custody by U.S. agents fell to as low as 200 on some days, according to preliminary data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
By the middle of January, the number of families members arriving jumped again, reaching as high as 1,400 per day, and smuggling organizations once more began delivering groups of 300 or more parents and children to remote border crossings in Arizona and New Mexico.
A CBP official told reporters Friday that about 75 percent of the family members detained in January arrived during the second half of the month. Family groups accounted for 59 percent of all border apprehensions, and although the total number of parents and children taken into custody - 24,116 - declined slightly from December, "that still represents one of the highest totals we have on record," one official said.
Overall, CBP carried out 58,207 arrests and detentions in January, down 4 percent over the previous month, the latest figures show.
President Donald Trump last spring ordered a "zero tolerance" prosecution push at the border that led to the separation of at least 2,500 families before he halted the measures amid a torrent of criticism. Since then, the number of parents arriving with children has accounted for an ever-growing share of border arrests, as the family groups arrive seeking to turn themselves in to U.S. agents and request asylum or some form of humanitarian protection.
The families are typically processed and released from federal custody after a few days, with a hearing in immigration court that may be months or years away. Critics deride this model as "catch and release," and say it is adding to a legal backlog that has pushed U.S. immigration courts to the brink of collapse.
The number of "family unit" members taken into custody is up 290 percent during the first four months of the government's 2019 fiscal year, compared with the same period last year.
While migration trends have historically followed seasonal patterns, the holiday lull documented last month was especially pronounced.
Homeland Security officials say they are studying intelligence data to better understand why arrest numbers fell so sharply. The arrival of large groups of Central American families is once more placing strains on Border Patrol stations, officials said Friday.
On Thursday a group of 325 parents and children crossed the border illegally west of Lukeville, Arizona, according to CBP officials in the agency's Tucson sector.
The crowd was first spotted by one of the agency's remote cameras, and a CBP team arrived by helicopter to find a large group of people making a bonfire in freezing temperatures.
It was the latest in a series of mass border-crossings in isolated areas with few agents and minimal fencing. According to CBP, "the group illegally entered the country through an area where there is only a vehicle barrier designed to prevent crossings."
The migrants told CBP officials that buses and trucks had dropped them off along a desert highway throughout the night, and the 325 crossed the border together at 8 a.m. to wait for Border Patrol agents to pick them up.
The CBP officials, who insisted on anonymity to share the data with reporters, said narcotics traffickers use these large groups as a diversion to move drugs into the United States while agents are busy processing families with children.
Trump ordered 3,750 additional military personnel to the border this week. Typically, the troops do not interact with migrants, but CBP officials said service members have provided some transportation and medical support to assist busy border agents.
A 66-year-old woman from North Carolina was sentenced to two months in prison this week for encouraging her boyfriend to vote and helping him fill out his voter registration form, even though he was not eligible.
Denslo Allen Paige, a grandmother who works part time at Walmart and also does seasonal gigs as a poll worker, was sentenced to two months in federal prison and a $250 fine by Judge Louise Wood Flanagan after pleading guilty to aiding and abetting voting by a noncitizen. Had she gone to trial on those charges and lost, she faced a potential sentence of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
She had been caught in an aggressive push by U.S. Attorney Robert Higdon Jr., to focus on the prosecution of noncitizens for voting, rather than the ballot-tampering allegations in Bladen County, North Carolina. It's a strategy devised by President Donald Trump and other Republicans, The Washington Post reported earlier this month, "to portray illegal voting as a widespread phenomenon that threatens the integrity of American elections."
Paige was arrested in August, on the same day as the man she had helped vote, Guadalupe Espinosa-Pena, a green-card holder originally from Mexico whom she is no longer romantically involved with. At the time, she told him he should vote "if he wanted his voice to be heard," a news release from Higdon's office said.
On the voter registration card she helped him fill out, they left a question about citizenship unanswered, the release said. Paige told investigators that she then submitted the form to the Board of Elections for processing. But later on in the process, another person erroneously checked the citizenship question "Yes," so Espinosa was registered to vote, Higdon's office says.
During her sentencing Thursday, Paige told the court that she did not know that Espinosa-Pena could not lawfully vote.
"The reason it happened is because there was no training about whether or not legal aliens could vote - never - all of the elections I've ever worked," she said, according to a transcript of the hearing that was published by the Huffington Post.
Paige's lawyer, James Todd Jr., a federal public defender, told the court that the manual given to poll workers had only one relevant mention of citizenship under "reasons for a voter challenge," at the very end.
"I think it's a failure in the system, in this case inadequate training and preparation of those people that are assigned to work at the polling places," he said.
Higdon's spokesman Don Connelly pointed a reporter's inquiry toward the office's news release.
Legal experts interviewed by The Washington Post described Paige's prosecution as unusual. But it was part of a sweep led by Higdon's office in which 20 immigrants were arrested over several days on the suspicion of voting illegally.
"I can't remember having anything ever to do with any voting issues or voting fraud," Nick Akerman, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney and a former federal prosecutor. "Somebody has to go out of their way to look into that."
Higdon, who was appointed to his seat in North Carolina's Eastern District by Trump in 2017, pursued those prosecutions while an organized ballot-tampering effort that state officials had repeatedly warned about was allegedly gearing up in the same part of North Carolina, according to a Washington Post investigation. That effort has tainted a still-unresolved congressional race from November.
"The right to vote is a precious privilege available only to citizens of the United States," Higdon said in the statement. "My office will do its part to protect the rights of every American citizen to cast their vote freely and to have it counted fairly."
Investigators from Homeland Security Investigations and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services were involved in the case.
Akerman said that U.S. attorney's offices typically focus on crimes of significance, wide prevalence, or those that prosecuting would have a deterrent effect. "This is such a rare occurrence," he said of the details of the crime that Paige pleaded guilty to. "It surprises me that resources are being used."
Higdon's efforts, which are ongoing, come amid a national discussion about voting that is increasingly marked by bitter partisan disputes. Republicans in states around the country have worked to implement restrictive requirements for voting to eliminate what they say is a significant fraud problem; experts and researchers say the amount of actual voting fraud has never been shown to be statistically significant.
Trump's claim that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election has never been backed up with any evidence. The commission he formed to investigate voter fraud presented no widespread evidence of fraud before it was disbanded less than a year after its creation.
An outline for a report the commission was working on included blank sections under headings such as "Improper voter registration practices," and "Instances of fraudulent or improper voting," a sign, one of the commission members later said, that it was instead looking to prove preordained conclusions.
In Texas last month, Republican officials announced that as many as 58,000 noncitizens might have voted illegally in state elections in the previous two decades, but it was soon disclosed that thousands of people on the list were eligible to vote. In North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Indiana and Kansas officials made similar claims that later did not pan out, The Post reported.
"For a while a lot of people were using voter fraud as an excuse to pass really restrictive laws to make it harder to vote, but wouldn't make our elections any safer, and there was a swift and convincing pushback among academics, researchers and advocates as to how rare voter fraud actually is," said Myrna Perez, the leader of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections project. "And in response to that we're seeing some folks deciding to be extraordinarily aggressive and pursuing cases so they have some talking points."
Many Democrats say restrictive voting laws suppress turnout and put a chill on voters' desire to engage in the process.
"I wouldn't be surprised if these indictments are later used to justify a whole plethora of restrictions on the Right - many of which are completely unrelated to the underlying issue," Perez said.
In a brief interview with The Washington Post, Paige said that facing the might of the federal government had been difficult for her.
"This stuff will keep you awake - you never think you'd be in any serious trouble," she said. "Going to federal prison and $250,000 fine and that kind of thing. It's been quite traumatic."
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The Washington Post's Amy Gardner contributed to this report.
Apple's Screen Time feature can tell you more about your iPhone usage than you may care to know.
Like how many text notifications you receive, the number of hours you spend on social networking and how your total usage on any given day stacks up against your average.
The numbers don't lie, but they can be surprising. If you find yourself wasting too much of your day on your phone or tablet, here are some ideas for how to use your time and devices for something more productive like saving money.
Double-click on your usage
First, be honest about how many hours you spend staring at a screen.
Mike Johansson, a senior lecturer in communication at Rochester Institute of Technology, has asked his students to keep track of how they spend their time.
"Over time, I had a few students who came back to me and said, 'I was amazed. I didn't realize that over the course of a week I was averaging three to four hours on YouTube every day.' It adds up," Johansson says.
Once you've tracked your habits or checked your phone's tally of your usage, make some judgment calls about which activities are (or are not) a good use of your time.
Double down on your apps
If you can't put down your phone completely, try switching the applications you use most frequently. If you're going to be on your phone, you might as well make it worthwhile, right?
Instead of opening YouTube, Instagram or Facebook, here are some of the apps and tools that can be a more effective use of your screen time:
Financial accounts: Download and check the apps for your various financial accounts. "The first app people should sign in to every day is their bank's app and any credit card apps they use," Robert P. Finley, a certified financial planner and the principal of Virtue Asset Management in Illinois, said in an email. "First, this process will help them better understand their daily spending, and second, help them keep an eye out for any fraud."
Budgeting apps: Similarly, budgeting apps like Mint and PocketGuard can assist in keeping your spending in check. Use these regularly to get a better handle on your cash flow and how much money you're devoting to each category of your budget.
Organizers: Organization tools like Evernote and OmniFocus can help, too. Open up these apps to create shopping lists to prevent you from buying extra things you don't need, or to-do lists to ensure you pay all of your bills on time.
Coupon finders: Coupon apps, including Coupons.com and CouponCabin, compile coupons for free. Take the time to consult these before shopping to lower the amount of money you're spending on life's necessities, such as groceries or household supplies.
Cash-back sites: Take the extra step to use cash-back websites such as Ebates and BeFrugal to earn money back on purchases you're already making.
Freebies: Sure, social media is free, but there are other free apps that could be more educational. Libby, for example, is a reading app that uses your library card to access e-books and audiobooks for free.
Double-check the clock
While these apps are helpful, it can be freeing to cut down your screen time completely. And contradictory as it sounds, your phone can actually help you limit the amount of time you spend on your phone.
Some apps help you stay off your device altogether. Flipd, for example, calls itself a "digital nudge" to discourage phone usage. Download the app to lock yourself out of your downloaded apps for a certain period of time, says Alanna Harvey, co-founder of Flipd.
If saving money is your goal, you can add financial management to that list of things to do in the real (not virtual) world. If it helps, get off your phone and spend some time with an old-fashioned paper budget, calculator, your credit card statement and checkbook.
And perhaps most importantly, start by changing your mindset. You don't have to be tethered to your phone.
"Once upon a time, people literally would call your house, and if you weren't there, they would call back later," Johansson says.
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A NEWCASTLE West woman, who appeared before the local court this Tuesday charged under money laundering legislation, has been remanded on continuing bail to a court sitting in May.
Tracey OBrien, 13 Ash Crescent, Newcastle West was charged with concealing the nature and source of 81,000, the proceeds of criminal conduct at the Bank of Ireland, The Square, Newcastle West while being reckless as to whether or not the said property was the proceeds of criminal conduct.
The charge was brought under the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010 and is alleged to have taken place between September 27 and September 29, 2017.
The DPP had given directions for summary disposal of the case, the court was told.
Garda Elaine OKeeffe gave evidence of arresting, charging and cautioning OBrien and explained to the court that 81,000 had allegedly been deposited in OBriens account, allegedly for renovations to be carried out in Germany which were never done.
The defendant is alleged to have attempted to withdraw the money but when asked about the source of the money as part of an ongoing garda investigation, she is alleged to have not revealed the source. She had, the garda said, spoken about a friend of hers in Turkey but added: Documentation will show there is no Turkish person involved.
In return for this money being stored, she would be paid a fee of 200, Garda OKeeffe explained.
I am not going to accept jurisdiction, Judge Mary Larkin said.
She noted that the defendant was refusing to give information.She is obstructing the investigation, the judge said.
She extended time for a Book of Evidence to be prepared for trial on indictment.
And she remanded OBrien on her own bail bond of 300, with the conditions attached that she reside at a specified address in Newcastle West, different to the one given on the charge sheet and sign on two days a week at the local garda station.
ONE BAR to rural communities developing is the lack of mobile phone signal in many areas, says Limerick TD Niall Collins.
His Fianna Fail colleague, Dara Calleary tabled a Dail question asking for the details of each local authority that has mapped local mobile phone blackspots. The reply from Minister for Rural and Community Development, Michael Ring shows that Limerick City and County Council was one of 17 local authorities to respond. They say that there are 36 blackspots in Limerick. The county was the fourth highest after Longford, Galway and Kerry.
Minister Ring said: My officials, in conjunction with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, are actively engaged with local authorities and mobile phone operators to identify priority blackspots and take action to address this issue.
During 2017, officials of both Departments worked with a group of local authorities to identify the issues associated with mapping local blackspots. Building on this exercise, a call was issued to all local authorities in 2018 to map local blackspots and identify infrastructure that could potentially be used to improve telecommunications services.
Deputy Collins says we all know villages where the mobile reception is very bad or non-existent.
The government and the mobile phone providers are treating parts of County Limerick like second class citizens. They dont provide adequate broadband and there is no proper phone coverage to compensate for the lack of broadband. For the majority of people living in rural areas mobile phones are as essential as a car in everyday life, said Deputy Collins, who tabled a Dail question asking for the list of mobile phone blackspots in County Limerick.
Minister Ring declined to do do, saying while the exercise was informative, it was not comprehensive.
Of the thirty one local authorities, only seventeen returned data to feed into the exercise. The majority did not have the capacity to carry out technical testing. Furthermore, the methods used to collect the data varied. Simultaneously, mobile network operators and infrastructure providers were increasing the number of mobile phone sites in service, as well as upgrading existing networks. As a consequence, the data collected in 2018 only represented a snapshot in time for certain areas and could not be interpreted as a definitive source of information regarding mobile phone blackspots. Nor would it be a fair reflection of the current situation, as network developments are taking place on an on-going basis, he replied.
The council had not supplied the information following a media query at the time of going to press. Deputy Collins said he couldnt understand the cloak of secrecy.
THERE is a lot of talk of rural communities slowly dying but community spirit is alive and well in Dromkeen.
Two huge personalities and servants to the area have retired in recent weeks and locals were not going to let them go without it being marked.
Mary McKenna stepped down as postmistress after 50 years working in the Post Office.
And the oldest sacristan in Ireland 91-year-old Mikie Riordan gave back the keys to Dromkeen church. He and his late wife Nancy have looked after St Bridgets Church since 1974.
A committee under Kilteely Dromkeen Cloverfield Community Council held an appreciation night in The Teach for the two of them on Saturday night.
Robert Holmes, one of the organisers, said even though the road conditions were bad they still had a full house.
In the last few weeks, Mary noticed that one of her wooden stamps went missing. Then a second one disappeared. And lastly her ink pad went AWOL. But she was reunited with them on Saturday as the committee had put them together in a beautiful framed presentation that she will hang with pride on her wall.
Robert said Mary stands for so much in the locality and surrounding parishes.
In one sense she was the local agony aunt. You could equate it to a death because people wont have the same opportunity of meeting her now that the post office is closed. They wont know where she is going to be from one day of the week to the next to call in to say hello. They have lost that opportunity, said Robert.
Mary was also given a piece of jewellery as a small thank you for all she has done behind that small counter attached to a thatched cottage.
Robert jokes that Mikie is almost part of the furniture of Dromkeen church at this stage. The 91-year-old is as fresh as a daisy and Robert said he really enjoyed the night in Cloverfield.
So many people came up to him and thanked him for all he and his late wife Nancy did for almost 50 years. Fr Joe Tynan gave a lovely gift to him, said Robert.
The parish priest of Kilteely-Dromkeen gave Mikie an all year crib which symbolises the fact that sacristans open and shut the doors of, and look after the church 365 days a years.
In last weeks Limerick Leader, Fr Tynan made reference to the fact that it is only in more recent times that the bells sound automatically.
The Angelus bells was one of the big ties to being a sacristan because they had to be rung twice a day at noon and at 6pm every day of the year, said Fr Tynan.
Mikie and Nancy never missed a beat. Former parish priest of Kilteely-Dromkeen, Fr Conor Hayes returned for the evening.
Mikie was also presented with a watch by the committee.
The fire blazed in The Teach while hot tea was drunk and conversation flowed. In this modern era it was a return to olden times. It wasnt long before local musicians for which The Teach is famed pulled out tin whistles and an accordion.
It finished a fantastic evening off on the right note, said Robert. Despite the bad night nobody was in a hurry to leave.
And while Mary and Mikie may be retiring from their respective positions their appreciation night has sparked something new in the parish.
There was a brilliant crowd. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. It has been said by many people we should try and organise a similar event to try and get the community out and socialise with each other without the negativity of funerals. We have spoken about it and hopefully in the next few days well see if we can put something in place later on this year or next year, said Robert. So Mikie and Marys proud legacy, built up for close to 100 years between them, is set to live on in Dromkeen.
See page 37 of L2 for more photographs from the night
WITH THE passing of Ian Hayes, Limerick has lost one of its best-known characters.
Known for his bright jackets and gentle persona, Ian passed away on Saturday, January 26.
Large numbers of people took to Facebook to honour the well known Limerick man, with many sharing memories they had of the friendly stranger in the high-vis jacket.
A man of mystery, Ian mainly kept to himself and lived a humble life. Those who knew Ian said he was quiet and reserved, with one friend saying he played his cards close to his chest. So how did a man of such simple means touch so many of Limericks citizens?
The Boher native was often seen walking the Island Road, where he would sell copies of the Big Issue or a book of poems he had compiled himself. It was through this role that the city will remember Ian the most.
He was a gentle soul, who had his troubles. He was always positive. A truly unique character of Limerick, said Daniel Butler, Mayor of the Metropolitan District of Limerick.
Ian was seemingly the personification of the old saying never judge a book by its cover. One friend, Sean Mc Inerney from Raheen, described how his first impressions of Ian quickly changed.
When I first noticed Ian around Limerick I thought he looked intimidating, but once I spoke with him I realised that he was one of natures true gentleman, said Sean.
Well known author, Helena Close became friends with Ian over time. She described how their friendship grew.
I met him first at Island Road while waiting in my car. He sold a little booklet called Oasis. He wasn't a bit pushy or anything.
Then we were on first name terms and he would call out my way every Sunday. He became a friend. He worked his way into the fabric of our lives, said Helena.
In the weeks following Ians death, flowers appear on the Island road where he was so often seen. A clear sign that this character will be missed, but not forgotten.
THE High Court is expected to rule next week on its judicial review on extending planning permission to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on the Shannon Estuary.
The judicial review hearings were held over several days last week and a ruling is expected on February 15.
The ruling is likely to determine whether New Fortress Energy, the new backers of the project, can proceed to build the plant or whether they will have to apply for a new planning permission or abandon the plan altogether.
Environmentalists opposed to the project will hold a demonstration in Dublin this Sunday.
Groups from all over Ireland and beyond, including Friends of the Earth, Futureproof Clare, Not Here Not Anywhere, Stop Climate Chaos and many more will be participating, Anne Marie Harrington, a spokeswoman for local campaigning group, Futureproof Clare told the Limerick Leader.
These groups recognise Shannon LNG as the biggest and most urgent threat to the Irish environment, she continued.
Last week, Friends of the Irish Environment brought a case before the High Court, challenging An Bord Pleanala's decision to renew planning permission for the project last August, Ms Harrington explained.
This is a technical challenge, on whether An Bord Pleanala followed their own procedures correctly in renewing planning permission. The process was surrounded by controversy,she added.
If successful, the new Shannon LNG owners, New Fortress Energy, may have to go back to the planning stages, buying the campaign Stop Shannon LNG valuable time to raise awareness and engage with politicians.
Meanwhile, John McElligott, of Safety Before LNG, has claimed that An Bord Pleanala knew as early as April 4 last year that New Fortress Energy were coming on board as the new backers for the project.
This company, he pointed out, sources supplies from fracked gas and he believes that the liquid gas intended for the Kerry terminal would all come from fracking.
Yet, he argued, the public and the objectors were not made aware of New Fortress Energys involvement and its plans to use fracked gas until after the planning extension was granted.
All we want is evidence-based decision making in a transparent manner, he said and he feels he has been cheated.
Mr McElligott complained that Bord Pleanala used to be the body you could appeal decisions to, but is now the authority to assess planning applications and he alleges, the body is hiding information from the public when it sees fit.
The only way to appeal their decisions, then, is to go to court, he added.
All this to import fracked gas from America without any SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessment) which would oblige the State to consider all reasonable alternatives, Mr McElligott declared, pointing out that Ireland has banned fracking and acknowledged that fracked gas is one of the most environmentally damaging fossil fuels,
Sundays demonstration will assemble at the main entrance to St Stephens Green at 10.30am and the protest will take place on Grafton Street at 11am.
A Futureproof Clare awareness event on Shannon LNG will take place at the Cheese Press, Ennistymon, this Saturday at 4pm.
PLANS for an executive mayor in Limerick could also bring increased powers for fellow councillors, its been claimed.
In a Dail statement on the creation of a directly elected first citizen, the Minister of State for Local Government John Paul Phelan said he wants to see the strengthening of strategic policy committees (SPC).
My intention would be to create a Cabinet style system, where the chairs of the various SPCs would form the mayors cabinet, replacing the Corporate Policy Group, the Carlow-Kilkenny TD told Dail Eireann.
Former metropolitan mayor Cllr Jerry ODea has, in principle, welcomed the move, which could swing the power decisively away from the executive and into the hands of council members in a similar fashion to the way things are in Britain and across Europe.
But he added: We would need all the proper structures in place. While in terms of democratic responsibility and powers, its all very well to have a directly elected mayor, but we need a proper system in place. We need to evolve along these lines, but id be very careful to rush into it. It would have to be well researched and well set-up. We need to make sure the new powers are used appropriately and not open to any kind of abuse.
While a referendum is expected to be held on May 24 in Limerick the same day as the local election it has not been formally signed off on by government.
Mr Phelan believes the proposed office of directly elected mayor should bridge the gap between the two categories of functions.
It is my view that, subject to some exceptions, responsibility for executive functions could be transferred to the directly elected mayor. This would encompass a civic and representational role, here the mayor would act as the face of the local authority both domestically and internationally, he said.
The Junior Minister said the role would need to be supported by a chief executive officer, who at the moment, is considered to hold far more power than the first citizen.
Senior politicians from across Limerick have also had their say on the reforms which are also being proposed in Galway and Cork.
Sinn Fein TD Maurice Quinlivan said: These mayors will provide for a new type of leadership in our main cities and it will allow candidates from every party and none to set out their ambition and vision for our cities. This is vitally important in my own city, where a mayor could set out their goals for regeneration areas, economic development, boosting tourism and creating a targetted response to try and address the unemployment blackspots.
Mr Quinlivan believes key functions related to transport, infrastructure, economic development, waste management and tourism must be vested in the mayors office.
Former Education Minister Jan OSullivan said far more information needs to be put out there comparing the paucity of this with the unfolding drama over Brexit.
Across the water and north of the border, we see from the Brexit negotiations the damage that can be done if a major change is proposed and the public does not know what its about. The British a public learned a lot about what Brexit is since it decided in favour of it, but it should really have been before it voted. This is an example of putting something to the public without having the necessary broad conversation is dangerous, she warned.
She admitted there are fears not having a debate could lead to the wrong kind of person being elected, perhaps a celebrity mayor.
We need somebody who can take the responsibility, its not just about powers, its about responsibility, she added.
Senator Kieran ODonnell said: A directly elected mayor would be of huge benefit to the development of Limerick. The county is growing and developing and we want to ensure this is done properly and with accountability. A directly-elected mayor who would work in tandem with what government is trying to do under Project Ireland 2040, to ensure proper balanced regional development across the country.
PLANS for a 10m IDA Ireland manufacturing centre at the National Technology Park have moved a step closer after the job creation agency advertised for tenders.
IDA Ireland is seeking a main contractor for the multi-million euro project, as well as a mechanical contractor and someone to work on the electrical and lifts side of affairs.
It comes with a planning decision due by the Council later this month.
Senator Kieran ODonnell has welcomed the news, saying: It shows it will become a reality soon.
As exclusively revealed by our sister newspaper, the Limerick Leader, up to 100 high-tech research jobs could be created, after Limerick beat rival cities across Ireland for the advanced manufacturing facility' to be built in Plassey.
Some 60 construction workers will work to build a two-storey complex featuring facilities to look at the future of manufacturing, plus research and development.
It will make Limerick and the region the centre of excellence for manufacturing, predicted Mr ODonnell. This project is cutting edge, state-of-the-art. It continues to put Limerick and the Mid-West on the map. The fact we have the IDA putting the contract out to tender concurrently with the planning application shows the intent to have this in place as quickly as possible. Its something I wholeheartedly support.
However, the Castletroy-based politician acknowledged three objections from local residents and landowners in the area, citing concerns over noise and light pollution from the project, and urged the IDA to engage with them.
The building will measure some 3,009 square metres and will form a part single and part two-storey complex.
The IDA tenders states: This new project requires key focus on technical integration which will promote and support business-2-business and business-2-academic collaboration and the adoption of existing and emerging industry technologies.
It adds the project will house digitised and smart manufacturing technologies, and will produce significant amounts of data which will require installation of appropriate IT, mechanical and electrical infrastructure to support.
Those lucky enough to be present in The Glens Centre, Manorhamilton last Friday, February 1 were treated to a night that will go down in folklore, as a star-studded line-up gathered for the launch of the Peoples Poet Stephen Murphys first book of poetry, From the Sea Hound.
The title is taken from two of Stephens great non-human loves (dogs and water) and its also a translation of his Irish surname. His poetry focuses on everything from the myths and legends of ancient Ireland to the current state of the country.
Mental health, family, politics and dogs are just some of the topics he touches upon in his spellbinding work.
There are a lot of personal experiences. I write when ideas won't leave me alone, says Stephen, when we speak ahead of the book launch.
Praise has been heaped upon him from all quarters, most notably by President Michael D Higgins, who described him as a splendid, courageous, young poet.
Online, his work has gone viral more than once, although he struggles to comprehend what that actually means. Talking about his relationship with the world wide web he says: You give it all away to the internet and then you are left with that void. You spend months on something, only to give it all away.
The idea of the internet as a vampire; it took me years to get my head around it. Stop feeding it. I havent put anything out there [recently] but Im still writing away.
Stephen recognises the potential of the internet, but hes also well aware of its pitfalls. Its a double-edged sword. If it wasnt for the internet Id be still be up at the barn [where he filmed many YouTube videos] talking to myself. Its got so much going good for it, but it has got so much darkness that we really need to know and learn and teach ourselves.
Elaborating on the downside to focusing solely on life in the online bubble he says: You are seeking that validation so what? So you can go viral? People say Congratulations on your success and Im thinking Success?! Viral sounds like something you should probably get a cream for in the chemist!
Although he is wary about what online exposure can mean, his incredibly powerful poem, Before You Push The Chair, has generated huge reaction. While proud that his work has had such an impact, Stephen admits it is with difficulty that he copes with people telling him he saved their lives.
Its quite a lot to take on board. Some of the messages I have got from people are deeply harrowing and Im not a trained psychologist. Im just a poet who spends quite a lot of time thinking about and writing about things that concern me. When people get in touch and say Your poem saved my life, I don't know if you do cope with that, or if you can really process that.
Although now living in Limerick with his wife Chelsea [who lovingly designed the book] and their young son, he was determined the book launch would take place at home.
Theres no doubting just how much his native county means to him: I miss Leitrim because it is home. I miss going for a 20-minute walk in the forest. You bump into people for a chat and you come back two hours later. People have time to stop and talk to you. Limerick has been very good to us and its lovely but I think ... its where the heart is. My heart is in Leitrim.
The book launch saw the likes of Maurice Lennon, David Keenan, Noel O'Grady and Claire Maguire take to the stage for an eclectic night of music, song and poetry. The volume was launched by Seamus Hosey, who described Stephen's poetry as unusual and alluring.
The rousing standing ovation that followed Stephens performance at the nights end was a perfect illustration of just how powerful his poetry is.
From The Sea Hound is available from by clicking here
Over the years Ive seen many initiatives that aim to celebrate local places but absolutely none of them were ever as brilliant as the Made of Athy Project.
In case you dont know, its a celebration of people who have links to the town and who are high achievers in the music industry.
Plaques are erected on the walls of landmarks around the town explaining their connection.
The vast majority of those honoured so far are still alive, like Johnny Marr or Jack L.
They have very real and tangible links to the town, in the sense that they are ordinary people from the area, or the sons and daughters of those ordinary people.
I probably wont be thanked for saying this, because there is huge genuine tourism interest in him and its bringing in a few bob and all that, yet compared to the recipients of the Made of Athy plaques, the links Ernest Shackleton, the son of gentry who lived in Kilkea House and left for good long before he was in long trousers, has to the town are quite tenuous.
The Made of Athy project on the other hand celebrates the people of Athy and their lives whether its putting a plaque at the bus stop in Emily Square to mark where Manis mother took the bus to England in the 1950s, or in Garter Lane which gave its name to one of Jack Ls songs.
The project celebrates the sense of place in the town, and the sense of community and, as many of the recipients of the awards can attest, a sense of belonging.
It is one of the human primary desires and needs, to have a feeling of belonging to some tribe. And we can but imagine what it must be like to be the son of an emigrant from the area who is greeted by the Cathoirleach of the municipal district with the words welcome home.
Behind the scenes Im reliably informed that in each case, there were tears accompanied perhaps by a feeling of something being resolved in their own sense of identity.
When Mani, a bass player in both the Stone Roses and Primal Scream, came to the unveiling of his plaque, he first visited his family graves in Maganey where he told his two young sons that his mothers heart was in Ireland.
You know what, that was absolutely bloody amazing, he told me over a pint later that day. I brought my kids here with me. Its important for me that they know where their family is from.
Its important that they know not in a cheesy American kind of way that theyve f**king Irish blood in their veins, and for me thats important.
For a variety of reasons too complicated to get into now, Athy has a troubled image, and unfairly so.
The Made of Athy Project is the perfect response to that not because it tries to engage in fake positivity about how great it is, but because it is a profound assertion of self-identity.
This is who we are, and we like it, it seems to say.
And it turns out many others like it too. A group of Finnish mountain bikers who recently came to Ireland to savour the trails of the Wicklow mountains deliberately went to Athy to see where the father of Finnish popstar Erinn used to drink with her mothers family.
And thats the other great thing about it.
Beyond the sense of identity and celebration is a community bound together by great stories, for the local and the visitor.
That the idea for it all emerged from the brain of Colm Walsh, a man who will gladly drop everything to either hear or tell a great story, is no surprise.
Ive known him for 25 years and have come to accept that when I see his name come up on my phone, the next half hour will be both unproductive in the conventional sense and hilarious.
But thats ok, there is far more to life than productivity. There are stories, there is community and there are the wonderful ties that bind.
TROPHIES
A 60-year-old man said his dog intervened and protected him when he was attacked and bitten by a rabid raccoon near Hidden Lake on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware Water Gap Recreation Center. A spokeswoman for the center said the man, a frequent hiker from Bushkill, Pa., was bitten by a raccoon that came out of nowhere and lunged at his legs, causing him to trip and fall on the wet ground. The dog, a black Labrador named Fasha, pulled the raccoon off the man, who was taken to an area hospital for treatment. A veterinarian determined Fasha was not harmed by the raccoon, which later tested positive for rabies.
Last year Transportation Security Administration agents at Lehigh Valley International Airport confiscated seven firearms from people preparing to board a flight. Thats almost twice the number of guns seized the year before, mirroring a national trend. Last year 4,239 firearms were intercepted at U.S. airports, the most since 2008. Clearly, the law isnt getting through to some people, and the number is growing. According to the TSA, travelers with the proper permits may have firearms in their checked bags if they are unloaded, packed in a hard-side case, locked, and packed separately from ammunition.
The Bethlehem Area Public Library will honor Bethlehem native Hilda H.D Doolittle by commissioning a portrait of the renowned poet. Two years ago the library dedicated a literary landmark plaque near the library, where Doolittles childhood home once stood. Doolittle, who died in 1961, is credited with helping to launch the modernist movement in the early 20th century. In a release, the library said Doolittle is widely recognized today as a queer, feminist visionary, and the most influential literary figure born in the Lehigh Valley." Artists are invited to apply to paint the portrait, which will be be framed and hung in the main library. Applications may be sent to to library Executive Director Josh Berk by email until March 8.
The good work of the Center for Animal Health and Welfare is measured by the number of adoptions it facilitates. One of its former residents bolted onto the national stage recently when Jughead, a mixed-breed pup, was selected to take part in Puppy Bowl XV, which aired Sunday on CBS. The pup was adopted by JoAnn and Wenceslao J.R. Silva of Plainfield Township. The center had arranged for foster care for Jugheads mother, Cupcake, when she was found abandoned and pregnant last year in the Bethlehem area. Last Saturday the center hosted a Puppy Bowl Pre-Party with Jughead, featuring a fundraiser bake sale.
TURKEYS
A recent shooting at Spankys East Gentlemens Club in Wilson Borough along with other criminal activity there in recent years there prompted Wilson police and Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli to take action against the strip club. This week a judge agreed to close the club as it goes through the nuisance process, which could result in a permanent shutdown. Authorities said a triple shooting Jan. 19 at the club was the final straw. The building was cleared out and the locks changed on Tuesday.
A Pennsylvania man faces up to five years in prison after admitting he caught protected diamondback terrapins in coastal marshes in New Jersey and sold hatchlings to buyers in the U.S. and other countries. David Sommers, 64, of Levittown, pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to a felony violation of the Lacey Act, which prohibits trade in illegally obtained wildlife, fish and plants. He also agreed to forfeit nearly 3,500 hatchlings.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman on Monday is launching his statewide listening tour on recreational marijuana legalization.
His Lehigh Valley stops won't be until spring. The sessions in Lehigh and Northampton counties are being scheduled for between April 1 and 10, Fetterman's spokeswoman Shavonnia Corbin-Johnson said Friday.
The Democratic former mayor of Braddock in western Pennsylvania was sworn in last month alongside second-term Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, after voters rejected a second term for previous Lt. Gov. Mike Stack.
In the Republican-controlled Legislature, meanwhile, state Rep. Jake Wheatley Jr. this week introduced a bill to legalize recreational marijuana by expanding the states medical marijuana program approved in 2016. Adults ages 21 and older would be permitted to possess and use cannabis and grow up to six plants, or three mature plants, under House Bill 50. As many as 100 licensed dispensaries would be permitted to begin providing adult-use cannabis and cannabis products without a prescription, according to Wheatleys office.
His proposal was sent Wednesday to the state Health Committee.
Similar efforts in Pennsylvania have failed in the past, including a legalization bill introduced by Wheatley during the 2017-18 session. The new proposal comes as New Jersey and New York pursue legalizing recreational marijuana and the tax dollars that come with it. Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale last fall estimated recreational sales could be worth $581 million in annual revenue.
Wheatley, D-Allegheny, wrote in a memo seeking co-sponsors to his bill that the proposal factors in new tax revenue but also provides for social justice reforms, returns both professional and drivers licenses (following convictions for marijuana crimes), incentivizes cannabis businesses to partner with PA farmers, as well as invests in student debt forgiveness, after school programs and affordable housing.
The agriculture component would waive the state tax on grower/processor revenues when they partner with Pennsylvania farms to grow marijuana, according to Wheatley's office.
"It would allow them to convert their crops to a cash crop," Steven Williams, Wheatley's research analyst, said Friday.
Marijuana plants -- 1,600 of them -- fill the Flower Room at the Research and Development Facility for Green Peak Innovations on Jolly Road on Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018 in Lansing, Michigan. The state is one of 10 states plus the District of Columbia to broaden medical marijuana programs into adult use recreational legalization.Kaiti Sullivan
As the 2019-20 legislative session opened last month, Wolf said Pennsylvania should take a serious look at legalization and Fetterman announced his listening tour to gather input from Pennsylvanians about the possibility of legalizing recreational marijuana. The first stops are scheduled Monday in Harrisburg and Tuesday in Newport, crossing off Dauphin and Perry counties on Fetterman's list of 67 counties he plans to visit to explore the issue.
More and more states are successfully implementing marijuana legalization, especially those surrounding Pennsylvania, and we should learn from their efforts, and better understand the potential fiscal impacts of this reality before taking any collective action," Wolf said in a statement Jan. 24 as he joined Fetterman in announcing the tour.
More details on the Lehigh Valley stops will be announced as the dates and locations are firmed up, according to Fetterman's office.
Nationwide, 32 states plus the District of Columbia have approved medical marijuana programs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Taking it a step further to permit adult recreational use are Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Michigan, Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts, plus D.C.
At the federal level, marijuana remains an illegal Schedule 1 drug, alongside the likes of heroin, LSD and ecstasy. U.S. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced a measure Friday that would, in part, leave marijuana legalization up to states without fear of federal interference. His bill, S. 420, is numbered as a nod toward slang for marijuana use.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The governors budget proposal calls for setting a statewide minimum teacher salary of $45,000, a move that would help teachers in the states poorest school districts.
Gov. Tom Wolfs budget proposal unveiled on Tuesday includes more than $350 million in school funding increases, including a plan to boost the states minimum teacher salary to $45,000 a year. State law sets the minimum teacher pay at $18,500 and it hasnt change since 1989.
The average educator in the state makes about $67,535 a year, but there is a great regional disparity in teacher pay with 180 school districts -- thats more than one-third of the states districts -- where teachers earn salaries below $45,000. Thats some 5,100 Pennsylvania public school teachers who are under that threshold.
We are going to start competing to recruit and retain the very best education professionals, not just in well-funded suburban school districts, but in every community every zip code in our commonwealth, Wolf said. This could be a game-changer for our schools especially for our communities that are struggling to attract and retain the next generation of educators.
Administration officials estimate it will cost almost $14 million to bring the states teachers earning under $45,000 up to that level. Wolf is calling for the state to pick up the cost by targeting dollars for that purpose in its basic education funding provided to school districts. The proposal does not cover charter school teachers.
But skeptics suggest the price tag will be higher than $14 million. They note raising salaries at the bottom of the salary schedule will likely have ripple effects that will lead to higher salaries for those higher up the pay scale. So the full cost of this initiative is unknown.
Wolf called his proposal a fully-funded mandate because he pledged the state would make up the salary gap.
This is a real investment in our future, Wolf said. Its an investment the state not local school districts will make and its included in this budget.
The 50 Pa. school districts that pay their teachers the most
Tori Koerbler, a teacher in the Panther Valley School District in Carbon County and a mother of three, is one of the teachers making under $45,000. She loves being a teacher, but its tough to pay her mortgage, car and student loan payments on her roughly $37,000 salary. Shes taken on a weekend job in retail to help pay the bills.
Teachers like me want to be in our classrooms teaching the next generation, but its so difficult to support our families on salaries that trail behind what other professionals earn, she said in a news release from the state teachers union. I shouldnt have to work a second job that limits the time I can spend with my children."
A PSEA analysis found that the median salary of educators statewide earning less than the proposed minimum is $42,481, which is 12 percent less than the $47,470 statewide median salary of Pennsylvanians with bachelors degrees.
The starting salary for Saucon Valley School District teachers was a major sticking point in its lengthy contract stalemate. With a $44,232 starting salary, Saucon teachers were among the lowest paid in the Lehigh Valley, but they had one of the highest median salaries. Their last contract, which expired in July, boosted the entry pay to $50,882, a 15 percent increase.
Pennsylvania State Education Association President Rich Askey in a statement this week commended Wolf for making public education a priority in his budget address. Boosting the minimum salary will help the state attract more great teachers.
Over the past 30 years, the teaching profession has gotten much more challenging, the student debt burden has exploded, and were facing a significant teacher shortage, Askey said. We shouldnt have experienced teachers who earn less than other professionals with bachelors and masters degrees, and we shouldnt have highly educated, dedicated people who teach our kids strapped with student loan debt and struggle to make ends meet, especially in rural and urban communities.
Nathan Benefield, vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative leaning policy center in Harrisburg, said he doesnt dispute that teachers deserve a competitive wage.
His analysis indicates if it applied to charter and traditional public school teachers, the cost would be closer to $39 million. Charter school educators traditionally make less than their traditional public school counterparts. But Wolfs proposal only covers teachers who work for school districts.
Nonetheless, Benefield said the salary teachers earn is only part of the story. Their compensation package also includes a public-funded pension and health benefits, which as he has seen with other public sector workers, brings the total compensation above $100,000 on average.
The budget provides increases of $200 million for basic education, $50 million for pre-k and Head Start, $50 million for special education, $7 million for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and $8 million in one-time grants for community college students or graduates who are working in Pennsylvania.
Pennlive.com contributed to this report. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
- Nollywood actress Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde recently turns 41
- The actress and her children celebrated her new age in the US
- Captain Matthew Ekeinde, he husband, though not there threw her a surprise that left her mouth agape for a long time
Legit.ng had reported that the duo of Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde and her daughter Meraiah turned 41 and 19 respectively on Thursday, February 7, 2019.
It was also reported that the birthday girls were treated to a celebration at The Boiling Crab, Los Angeles, USA. The family seemed to be joyous as they savoured delicious recipes and posed for photos to create special memories.
Though her husband Captain Matthew Ekeinde was not in the US with his family, he sure knows how to make the actress' heart beat faster.
Captain Matthew surprised Omotola with wonderful birthday gifts which was captured and shared by the actress on her Instagram page.
Omotola was presented with a performance by a guitarist at her apartment. She also got a balloon and another packaged gift, all courtesy her husband who she called Honeyboy.
The mother of three could be seen dancing while the guitarist performed, while others in the room cheered them on.
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Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that Nollywood actresses, Stephanie Okereke Linus and Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, recently had their works in the movie industry recognised by the city of Los Angeles.
While Stephanie's movie, Dry, was specially recognised by the Los Angeles City council ahead of the Pan African Film & Arts Festival (PAFF) screening, Omotola was honoured for her many successes in Nollywood.
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Uche Jombo interview at Star Chat: Nollywood Should Be Taxed Less | Legit TV
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A video of a bride reportedly chasing her groom to a shopping mall in Warri, Delta after he called it quits at the altar has gone viral.
According to reports, the couple were tying the knot in Delta but the groom suddenly dumped the woman at the altar and made his way to Robinson plaza were intercepted a large crowd that begged him to listen to his woman.
The distraught bride could be seen putting her hands on her head and pleading with the seemingly upset groom to accept her back and let them proceed with the wedding.
The groom however seemed determined to walk out of the relationship even at such sensitive time. It is unclear what made the groom come to such decision but in the past, it has been heard that cheating couples are often dumped at the altar when discovered.
READ ALSO: Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde and daughter Meraiah celebrate their 41st and 19th birthday
An interesting theory claimed that the groom must have realised he was stepping in a ditch and decided to completely avoid what he must have thought was a big mistake even at the last minute.
Watch below:
Meanwhile, a couple got divorce three minutes after getting married in Kuwait. According to reports, the decision was made by the bride after the groom called her stupid for falling over. Their marriage is believed to be the shortest in Kuwait's history.
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Top 3 Pastor Scandals: Most Discussed Humiliations on Legit TV:
Source: Legit Nigeria
- The NAC party endorses Muhammadu Buhari as its presidential candidate in the general elections
- The former presidential candidate of the party, Hajia Rabia Hassan Cengiz, says Buhari was chosen because of the monumental achievements recorded by the current administration
- The party notes that it has fielded candidates of its own in all the elections with a strong and clear resolve to win all of them
The National Action Council (NAC) and its presidential candidate, Hajia Rabia Hassan Cengiz, have backed the second term bid of President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Hassan Cengiz in a press briefing in Abuja on Saturday, February 9, said the endorsement of Buhari follows the monumental achievements recorded in the past three and a half years by the current administration, The Tribune reports.
READ ALSO: Just in: Buhari arrives Lagos for re-election campaign (photos, video)
She said Buharis commitment to ride the country out of corruption and the fight against insecurity, which bedevilling Nigeria, especially in the northern part of the country, prompted NAC to endorse him for the second term.
The party stated that it has fielded candidates of its own in all the elections with a strong and clear resolve to win all of them.
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Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has suspended its presidential mega rally, earlier scheduled for Saturday, February 9 in Abuja.
In a statement issued by the Director, Media and Publicity, PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, Kola Ologbondiyan on Saturday, February 9, in Abuja, PDP said the decision followed the refusal to grant the party venue of the rally.
Ologbondiyan said that the party had earlier scheduled its Lagos Mega Rally for the Tafawa Balewa Square on Saturday, before the All Progressives Congress (APC) came up with the same date forcing PDP campaign to opt for Abuja.
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Young ladies weigh in on President Buhari's re-election | Legit TV
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- Over 200 senior military officers who attended the Nigerian Military School (NMS) Zaria have been ordered to proceed on sudden retirement
- The directive is sequel to an order from Lt General Tukur Buratai that the five years the affected officers spent as secondary school students in the military school be added to their years of military service
- A source says that the directive which affected the officers is as a result of a new policy of the federal government
There is a reported unease in the Nigerian Army after over 200 senior officers from the rank of lieutenant colonels to major generals were said to have been ordered to proceed on compulsory retirement.
The Tribune, citing military sources reported that the order followed a directive from the chief of army staff, Lt General Tukur Buratai, to the military secretary of the army to serve notice of retirement to officers who went through the Nigerian Military School (NMS), Zaria (a secondary school) where they spent five years.
The sources said the army chief directed that the five years the affected officers spent as secondary school students in the military school be added to their years of military service.
READ ALSO: Just in: Buhari arrives Lagos for re-election campaign (photos, video)
Legit.ng learned that the army spokesman, Brigadier General Sani Usman, was also affected the directive along with over 200 officers.
A source told the Tribune on Saturday, February 9, that the decision which affected officers that was as a result of a new policy of the federal government.
The source dismissed suggestions that policy was targeted at army officers, noting that other services are expected to comply with the policy, but were yet to do so.
The affected officers were said to have received their disengagement letters effective from February 8, 2019, while their terminal leave was supposed to be from that day, but some of them were given March 8, 2019, to sort things out and then leave the service.
Inside sources said the government policy was based on the argument that while the officers were in the Nigeria Military School (NMS), they were being paid salary and that therefore their years of service had started counting by then.
However, the policy was said to have caused controversy as there were reports that most of the affected soldiers did not go to the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) directly from the school as some of them opted to go to the university to obtain degrees before joining the army.
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The decision was also faulted by some of the ex-boys from NMS, who were later commissioned as officers on the ground that that they were given only three to four days notice before been asked to proceed on compulsory retirement.
Another source complained that the affected officers have been asked to go on mass retirement without completing their mandatory 35 years or attaining the 60 years age ceiling.
READ ALSO: Emotional moment lady burst into tears to have a glimpse of President Buhari
Some of the affected officers were reported to have taken their case to the National Assembly, which summoned the Military Secretary (Army) F. Yahaya.
Yahaya was said to have told the National Assembly that there was nothing he could do about the policy as it was a directive from the military authorities.
In another news report, the defence headquarters of the Nigerian Army has released guidelines for its staff during the coming general elections.
The military said that it will carry out its duties during the elections with neutrality and impartiality throughout the coming general polls and zero tolerance for unprofessional conducts from any soldier.
The Nigeria Army said that it will not tolerate any unprofessional conduct from soldiers during and after the polls (Photo credit: Nigerian Army).
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Can Nigerian Soldiers really not deal with Boko Haram fighters?| Legit TV
Source: Legit.ng
- The Nigerian Military said it has deployed 10,250 troops to fight Boko Haram terrorists
- The total number of the personnel were drawn from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon
- Also, the size of the troops had led to the huge decimation of the insurgents in the Lake Chad Basin
Major General Chikezie Ude, Field Commander, Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) on Boko Haram insurgency, said operations of the team were currently being executed by 10,250 military personnel.
He told some Nigerian journalists in Ndjamena, Chad, on Friday, February 8, that the number of the personnel, drawn from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon, the four countries involved in the task force operations, rose from 7,600 in 2015.
Ude, therefore, said that the operations did not have challenge of personnel, adding that the size of the troops had led to the huge decimation of the insurgents in the Lake Chad Basin.
According to him, in 2015, Boko Haram was everywhere, but as at today, no place is under firm control of the insurgents in Nigeria.
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The commander said that with the collaboration of national military forces of member-states of the Chad Basin, the Task Force had been able to recover areas previously lost to the insurgents.
He, however, called for support of all segments of the society in the fight to eliminate terrorism in the region, saying defeating terrorism is not a military affair alone.
He reaffirmed the mandate of the MNJTF, saying that it is to create safe environment in the basin, to significantly reduce violence against civilians, especially women and children.
Ude disclosed that 2,000 civilian casualties were recorded in the insurgency war in 2015, adding however that the number dropped to 573 in 2018.
He said that security operations in the region had improved considerably, adding that MNJTFs activities were being prosecuted in four sectors in Bakasole (Chad), Nigeria (Baga), Niger (Diffa) and Cameroon, with additional contingent from Benin Republic.
He said that the forces had been integrated to respond to situations as they arose, explaining that emphasis was on mobile operations because of the wide expanse of land in the Lake Chad Basin.
The task force has kept up with developments in the field, adjusting as the insurgents change strategy.
Last week alone, we neutralized no fewer than 93 Boko Haram fighters, and this is quite encouraging. All arrested insurgents are often handed over to national forces of the areas where they are captured.
The commander also disclosed that strategies were being evolved for the protection of liberated communities, which number 100s, in the area because no deliberate effort for follow-ups on this.
He said that situation had remained an issue which the countries of LCBC and the international community were trying to harmonise efforts to ensure that it was sorted out.
According to him, the civilian population in the liberated areas needs structured administration and facilities, with adequate security arrangement, to return and remain in the communities.
Ude called for effective policing of border communities of contiguous nations to ensure that the terrorists did not have free movement in the areas.
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He commended citizens of member-states of LCBC for their support for MNJTF and assured that the insurgency would be diminished as the offensive from the joint operations was faring well.
He added that the journey of the war was almost coming to an end, saying that with the support of the people, including the media, the narratives will change.
On funding for the task force, the commander said that it was the responsibility of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), noting that it is progressing.
Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has promised practical measures to end Boko Haram insurgency and restore peace to Borno, if elected.
Atiku said that if given the mandate, he would adopt effective security programmes to end insurgency, protect lives and property as well as enhance peace-building processes in the region.
He said that he would initiate programmes to fast track rehabilitation, resettlement of displaced communities and address humanitarian crisis caused by the insurgency.
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Leadership of Nigeria is not meant for our forefathers| - on Legit TV
Source: Legit
Editor's note: Adewunmi Emoruwa, the lead strategist at Gatefield, a public strategy and media group, in this piece, warns that Nigeria's democracy is fading away especially with happenings in the country's polity in recent times. The article first appeared on Aljazeera.
Read below:
On January 25, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari suspended the country's top judge, Walter Onnoghen, and replaced him with an acting chief justice merely weeks before a presidential election in which judiciary can play an important role.
Onnoghen, as the head of Nigeria's independent judiciary, had helped resolve electoral disputes in past elections, some of which have been marred by violence and vote-rigging. He was similarly expected to preside over any dispute that may arise in the upcoming February 16 election.
The judge's controversial suspension so close to the election date caused uproar across Nigeria, with the Nigerian Bar Association embarking on a two-day strike and the main opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar, calling the president's decision "an act of dictatorship." The international community also expressed dismay over the usurpation of the judicial arm of the government by the executive branch, with the US and the EU suggesting the judge's removal could "cast a pall over the electoral process."
Violating judicial independence
Only four years ago, following the March 2015 presidential election, former President Goodluck Jonathan conceded his defeat to then-opposition candidate Buhari, becoming the first sitting president in Nigeria to do so. Jonathan's voluntary admission of electoral defeat, which was a rarity not only in Nigeria but across the African continent, encouraged Nigerian voters to place their trust in Buhari, an erstwhile dictator who famously labelled himself "a reformed democrat," to protect their rights and freedoms.
Democratic governments function on the principle of separation of powers - the executive, the legislature and the judiciary - which aims to prevent a descent to autocracy by providing for checks and balances. This is why Buhari's decision to suspend Onnoghen, an apparent violation of judicial independence, was a cause for disappointment and alarm for many who believed the president would uphold democratic values. However, it needs to be noted that the suspension of the chief justice was hardly the first time the Buhari administration infringed the principle of separation of powers and put the future of Nigerian democracy at risk.
Since Buhari took over the presidency, the federal government repeatedly used the fight against corruption - one of the cardinal promises of the current administration - as a tool to side-step the judiciary and illegally lock away, intimidate and silence its opponents and adversaries. For example, the federal government refused to release former National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki, who had been arrested on corruption charges in December 2015, even though he has been granted bail by several Nigerian high court judges and the ECOWAS court of justice. He remains behind bars to this day.
Moreover, throughout his first term in power, President Buhari openly argued for putting national interests over the rule of law, preparing the ground for authoritarianism and lawless actions.
At the 2018 General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, for example, the president said, "Rule of law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation's security and national interest," and maintained that the state should be allowed to waive fundamental rights of alleged offenders when national security and public interest were threatened. Ironically, the suspended Chief Justice Onnoghen was in attendance at the event, but failed to respond to the president's blatant attack on the rule of law and the integrity of the judiciary.
Muzzled media, civil society
The judiciary was not the only branch of the government that faced attacks during Buhari's presidency. The members of the legislative branch have also been targeted by state operatives for acting against the Buhari administration.
In August 2018, armed and masked officers from the Department of State Services (DSS) staged a blockade of the National Assembly. That very same summer, prominent senators who have maintained opposition to the government also had their homes raided. The Senate president, Bukola Saraki, and one of his key allies in the Senate, Dino Melaye, are currently being investigated and harassed by the police over alleged criminal activities. The list can go on.
When the institutions that are meant to provide checks and balances, such as the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, are subdued, independent media and civil society are supposed to take over the responsibility of holding corrupt executives to account.
Unfortunately, neither the media nor the civil society fared any better in Buhari's Nigeria.
Nigeria declined three places in RSF's World Press Freedom Index in the last three years, ranking 119th out of 180 countries in 2018. Under the Buhari administration, several journalists and activists have been imprisoned and tried on terrorism charges. A section of the Nigerian Cyberterrorism Act 2015, which was signed into law by former President Jonathan, has also been weaponized against dissenters, especially Nigerian citizens active on social media. Moreover, in 2016 ,the Nigerian Senate flirted with the Frivolous Petitions Bill, aka "the anti-social media law," which included over-reaching provisions for social media regulation. The bill, seen by many as a dangerous encroachment on free expression, was eventually pulled following public outcry. A similar bill that seeks to equate hate speech with terrorism, however, is currently being deliberated in the National Assembly.
In the last four years, the Buhari administration erased all the gains we made in the 2015 election and created the perfect environment for autocracy by further weakening our democratic institutions, muzzling our civil society, silencing independent journalists and questioning the supremacy of the rule of law. As Nigerians head to vote in the upcoming polls, we must bear in mind that elections do not make a democracy. The current state of affairs in Nigeria should be a bigger concern for us all than any potential outcome of the upcoming election.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Legit.ng.
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What has changed in Nigeria since the last election? | Legit TV
Source: Legit.ng
The official Nigerian Navy recruitment has been announced. All interested citizens of our country should now learn more about the process of joining the Navy, the main requirements, and filling out the particular form. Keep reading to learn more about this incredible opportunity.
Image: navy.mil.ng
Source: Facebook
How old should you be to join Nigerian Navy? Can you be a foreigner? Is it possible to apply if you are married? We will answer all these and many other questions in this post.
Nigerian Navy recruitment portal
Anyone who is going to apply should use the joinnigeriannavy site because this is the only official Nigerian Navy e-Recruitment portal for the recruitment 2019 process.
Here are the main steps you should follow to join the NAF recruitment 2019:
Step 1. You need to visit the official Nigerian Navy portal.
READ ALSO: What are the duties of the Nigerian Navy
Image: pexels.com
Source: Depositphotos
Step 2. Read the list of requirements and be sure you are eligible to apply.
Here are the things that make you eligible:
The Nigerian Armed Forces (NAF recruitment 2019) is for Nigerians only; foreigners are not allowed. If you are applying for regular qualification, you should be from 18 to 22 years old (these are the age limits set for the time the candidate gets into the training school). Those citizens who wish to apply with NCE, Nursing, ICT or other higher qualification can apply from 24-26 years old only. Are you married? Do not apply. Only single men and women who have no children are eligible to join the Navy. In case you have a criminal conviction, you cannot be a part of the organisation, so do not fill out the form since only citizens who do not have criminal records are allowed. Your health should be excellent if you are planning to submit your recruitment form (in case you have eye problems or heart disease, ear issues, mental disorders, physical disabilities, etc. avoid this exercise). Women should be at least 1.67 meters high to apply. All male applicants have to be at least 1.70 meters tall to be eligible. It is necessary to be educated and to have your diploma (General Certificate or Secondary School Diploma) and credits for NECO/NABTEB/OND/NIN or other examinations. However, if you have BA/BSC, HND or other higher education diploma, you cannot send your application form and take part in the recruitment exercise. Make sure to select the profession according to your qualification. You can choose from the list of 32 available categories, including engineer, electrical artificer, marine mechanics, computer, journalist, seaman, fireman, caterer, medical assistant, nurse, and many others.
Image: navy.mil.ng
Source: Facebook
Step 3. Fill out the Nigerian Navy recruitment form.
Fill out the Nigerian Navy recruitment form. Step 4. Submit your document online. Once you complete and submit your Nigerian Navy recruitment form 2019, you should print it out. Keep your copy because once you are chosen as a shortlisted candidate, you will need to show it.
Submit your document online. Once you complete and submit your Nigerian Navy recruitment form 2019, you should print it out. Keep your copy because once you are chosen as a shortlisted candidate, you will need to show it. Step 5. Make sure you have printed out two essential forms. They are your Local Government attestation and Parent or Guardian consent forms. You will need to fill them out as well.
Make sure you have printed out two essential forms. They are your Local Government attestation and Parent or Guardian consent forms. You will need to fill them out as well. Step 6. Take all your original documents and their copies and visit the recruitment centre in your state. You will have to bring passport photographs, birth certificate, signed forms (the ones you have downloaded in the previous step), your test results (for WAEC and NECO), etc.
Take all your original documents and their copies and visit the recruitment centre in your state. You will have to bring passport photographs, birth certificate, signed forms (the ones you have downloaded in the previous step), your test results (for WAEC and NECO), etc. Step 7. Keep your fingers crossed and hope that your name will be added to the shortlisted candidates this year. You should also wait for the Nigerian Navy website to announce the date of your Recruitment Aptitude Test.
Image: navy.mil.ng
Source: Facebook
Be sure to list all your certificates, diplomas, and qualification documents because when you become selected as a successful candidate for the Navy in our country, you will not be allowed to change this information, add more documents, etc.
Besides, you have to be honest and provide only real information and documents so that you are not disqualified.
Source: Legit
Kalaburagi, February 9: Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge alleged that the "frustrated" Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants to topple the Karnataka government "by any means." The comment comes a day after Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy released an audio clip in which state BJP president BS Yeddyurappa is purportedly trying to lure a JD(S) MLA.
Kharge asserted that despite BJP's alleged attempts in dislodging the government, the ruling coalition would remain strong. "Everything has come out. They (BJP) are frustrated. They want to pull down Congress and JD(S) coalition government by any means. But our MLAs are strong and the government would remain strong," he told ANI. What Hitler Did in Germany, PM Modi Wants to do in India: Congress' Mallikarjun Kharge.
Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress on audio clips released by Karnataka CM y'day: Everything has come out. They (BJP) are frustrated.They want to pull down Congress&JD(S) coalition govt by any means.But our MLAs are strong & the government would remain strong. Nobody can do anything pic.twitter.com/6DC7PpOBAI ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019
Just a few hours before presenting the state budget in the Karnataka Assembly on Friday, Kumaraswamy had held a press conference and told media persons about the audio clip while targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the same. Launching a fresh attack on the BJP over charges of horse trading in Karnataka, the Congress on Saturday alleged that Yeddyurappa had offered a total of around Rs 200 crore to 18 of its MLAs, in an attempt to destabilise the ruling coalition in the state.
Congress leaders KC Venugopal and Randeep Singh Surjewala alleged that Yeddyurappa offered Rs 10 crore per MLA and Rs 50 crore to the Speaker.Meanwhile, Kumaraswamy on Friday removed dissenting Congress MLA Dr Umesh Jadhav from Warehouse Corporation chairmanship and replaced him with Pratap Gowda Patil. Furthermore, Congress MLA from Raichur Basanagouda Daddal has been appointed as the chairman of Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Board.
Phil Gruber is the news editor at Lancaster Farming. He can be reached at 717-721-4427 or pgruber@lancasterfarming.com. Follow him @PhilLancFarming on Twitter.
Flash
Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said on Friday that China and the United States need to develop even stronger ties in the future despite their differences.
Cui made the remarks while addressing a public event held by a non-profit organization in the Midwestern U.S. state of Michigan.
"We need to develop even stronger relationship on the basis of coordination, cooperation and stability" between the two countries, the Chinese envoy said.
Noting that China and the United States are "two very different countries" in terms of history and culture among other areas, Cui said it was important for the two sides to "have much better mutual understanding" for each other's intention and policy and identify common grounds to stabilize the relationship.
"We have so many global issues that we have to work together on," including climate change, terrorism, poverty, pandemics and natural disaster, the veteran diplomat noted.
"No country can handle it all by itself," he added.
More than 400 guests, including former U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, attended the luncheon held by the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, which aims to provide forums for conversation on international topics.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the China-U.S. diplomatic relations.
Bilateral trade grew from less than 2.5 billion U.S. dollars 40 years ago to more than 580 billion dollars in 2017. Over the same period, the stock of two-way investment rose from practically nil to more than 230 billion dollars.
Flash
U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he will meet for the second time with Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on Feb. 27-28 in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The DPRK will embrace great economic development under Kim's leadership, Trump said.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump tweeted, referring to Stephen Biegun, U.S. special envoy for DPRK-related issues.
"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," he later tweeted in a separate post.
"He (Kim) may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket -- an Economic one!" the White House host noted.
BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) - Officials say the seven fraternities at Montana State University have voluntarily given up hard liquor.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that Montana State Dean of Students Matt Caires told University Council members this week that the fraternities had adopted the policy to be "hard alcohol free," joining a national trend fueled by hard alcohol's links with sexual assaults and hazing deaths.
Alpha Gamma Rho member and Montana State Interfraternity Council President Tory Johnson says all the fraternity presidents and representatives voted for the new policy to take effect Jan. 31.
Caires says most Montana State fraternities can still serve beer and wine to people over 21. The difference is that hard alcohol gets people intoxicated much faster, and it's much easier for people to drink too much too fast and pass out.
___
Information from: Bozeman Daily Chronicle, http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com
(Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
This week, state lawmakers met to discuss HB (House Bill) 345 which would increase minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next 18 months.
The increase would begin July 1st of this year where minimum wage would jump from $8.50 to $12 an hour. On July 1st of 2020 the increase would take another jump to $15 an hour.
A question.
If it if passes, who would feel the impact the most? Corporations, small businesses, who?
KULR-8 spoke to Scott Harris, Associate Professor of economics at Montana State University Billings who provided a little insight on the possible impact of raising the minimum wage.
"What will also happen is something that we wont see as easily and that is that businesses will start to substitute from low paid workers to other means of providing their business," said Scott.
He also says technology will be picking up the slack and that we are already seeing it at airports.
"You check in with machines and it will become relatively more cost effective for companies to go that route," said Scott.
Local businesses may also at risk if the minimum wage makes this jump.
"But if you have small businesses that are really reliant on customer service with people and if those folks find that they are going to have to pay a substantially higher wage, then there's going to be some negative fallout," said Scott.
Montana's last minimum wage increase was by 20 cents just last month.
Flash
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Friday exchanged congratulations on the 40th anniversary of the establishment of China-Portugal diplomatic relations.
China and Portugal enjoy a long history of friendship, Xi said in his congratulatory message, adding that in the past four decades, the two countries, with the spirits of mutual respect, equality, mutual benefits and win-win, have promoted healthy and steady development of bilateral ties.
In 1999, China and Portugal properly resolved the question of Macao, setting a fine example for other nations in tackling issues left over from history through friendly negotiations, he said.
Since a comprehensive strategic partnership was established in 2005, China and Portugal have witnessed frequent high-level exchanges, deepening political mutual trust as well as remarkable achievements of mutual beneficial cooperation in various areas, Xi added.
Citing his successful visit to Portugal in early December last year, Xi said he and President Rebelo de Sousa held deep and friendly talks during the visit, jointly outlining the new blueprint of the China-Portugal relations.
Xi said he highly values the development of the two countries' ties. By taking the 40th anniversary of the establishment of China-Portugal diplomatic ties as a new starting point, he added that he is willing to work together with Rebelo de Sousa to bring the two countries' comprehensive strategic partnership to a higher level to better benefit the two countries and their people.
Noting the harmonious co-existence between Portugal and China, Rebelo de Sousa said the two countries always seek common ground while putting aside differences and pursue mutual benefits and win-win results.
With equal consultations, the two sides reached consensus and made the smooth handover of Macao and its government transfer realized, providing a useful reference for the international community, he said.
Portugal is very proud of the long-term and peaceful relations with China, Rebelo de Sousa said, adding that he believes the two countries will make unremitting efforts with firm determination and enthusiasm to promote their long-term steady friendship to continuously move forward.
On Friday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa also exchanged congratulation messages.
Portugal is an important partner of China in the European Union (EU), Li said in the message, noting that China praises Portugal's active participation in the construction of China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.
Li said China, with the opportunity of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties, is willing to jointly work with Portugal to promote the two countries' bilateral ties and practical cooperation in all fields to move forward.
For his part, Costa said the Portuguese side is ready to make joint efforts with China to continuously deepen the two countries' comprehensive strategic partnership to seek more well-beings for the two peoples and make greater contributions to the development of globalization in the current era.
Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker testified before the House Judiciary Committee, refusing to answer questions about his conversations with President Donald Trump. CNN's Jessica Schneider reports on the fiery hearing.
China's grandest annual celebration, Spring Festival otherwise known as Chinese Lunar New Year, has in recent years become an occasion to celebrate the country's rich culture by the entire world.
We are entering the Year of the Pig, completing the 12-year cycle of the Chinese Zodiac, representing the Twelve Earthly Branches, and said to determine the character and fortune of a person born in a particular year.
Since ancient times the Chinese zodiac, with its rich history and mythology, has shaped the nation's traditional culture and distinguished it from the rest of the world.
Although the Gregorian calendar is now widely used in China, the old system known as "Shuxiang" is still popular and of great significance in people's lives. The Year of the Pig begins on February 5, 2019, and will last until January 24, 2020. The chubby pig is a well-liked animal for Chinese people, who regard it as a symbol of wealth, good fortune and prosperity.
It has also become a Chinese tradition to issue commemorative zodiac stamps on January 5 ahead of a new lunar year, which is a must-have item for domestic philatelists. This time, China Post issued a set of two special zodiac stamps, featuring the Pig; each stamp with a nominal value of 2.4 yuan (US$0.3446).
The designs, namely "Pig Brings You Blessings" and "Five Blessings Gathering", created by Han Meilin, a veteran craft artist and professor at Tsinghua University, symbolize the beautiful and good life, expressing the best wishes for family reunion in the New Year.
Chinese stamp collectors and even ordinary people went crazy buying up the new stamps as soon as they appeared, as they are the last zodiacal stamps in the current 12-year set.
China started issuing stamps featuring one of the 12 zodiac animals before every Spring Festival from 1980. Famous Chinese painter Huang Yongyu designed the image for the first monkey stamp to be issued then, nicknamed "red monkey."
China has now issued zodiac stamps for 40 consecutive years so that people can use new stamps in their correspondence in the days leading up to the Lunar New Year. It is a major source of pride that the Chinese zodiac stamps symbolize the long history of Chinese culture and are now helping the world develop a deeper understanding of it.
More importantly, the issuance of Chinese zodiac postal stamps has a special significance in recording China's landmark changes after 40 years of the reform and opening-up program.
In the Year of Monkey of 2016, for example, China formally ended three decades of population control known widely as the "one-child policy," allowing all couples to have two children. To mark that occasion, stamp designer Huang Yongyu constructed the image of cartoon monkey being kissed by not one but two baby monkeys, symbolizing a bigger happy family.
Last year, China Post issued special zodiac stamps in the Year of Dog designed by the well-known artist Zhou Lingzhao. The stamps he created were seen as a bringer of good luck and prosperity to ordinary Chinese people, a part of "Chinese Dream" to create a moderately prosperous society by 2020.
The animal-themed stamp collections are not only issued in China, but also in many other countries, such as the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, to name a few who think it appropriate to celebrate the Chinese lunar calendar.
The UN Postal Administration, for example, issued a special stamp sheet featuring the Year of the Pig on January 15. La Poste, the National Postal Service of France has been issuing stamps of Chinese zodiac animals for more than 10 years to symbolize the good relations between the two countries. La Poste issued two sets of stamps commemorating the Year of the Pig on January 28.
The zodiac animals are part and parcel of Chinese history and culture. They usher in a blissful lunar new year with their symbolic meanings. To celebrate the Chinese Lunar New, artists in China and the world have drawn many different representations of zodiac animals through elegant stamps, which symbolize the rejuvenation of China and seek to strengthen friendship between nations.
Wishing everyone a happy Chinese New Year of the Pig!
The author is the cultural secretary of New Horizon Radio Listeners' Club, based in West Bengal, India.
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
Russia plans the country's first manned mission to the moon in 2031, RIA Novosti news agency reported Saturday, citing a document by the Russian Central Research Institute of Machine Building.
Full moon in the sky.[File Photo:VCG]
The crew members are expected to conduct astronauts' activities on the moon and implement tasks set by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Russia plans to send a rover to the moon to transport astronauts in 2032. The second expedition team will test the vehicle.
A year later, astronauts are expected to take long-distance trips on the lunar rover to carry out scientific experiments and test robotic systems.
Russia aims to start the construction of a lunar base in 2034 and it will continue into 2035.
Russia is actively implementing a lunar program through 2030, aiming to send astronauts to the moon, President Vladimir Putin said in April 2018.
The Federatsiya spacecraft was nearing completion, while work had begun on creating a rocket for the moon projects, he said.
Silverton couple will use lottery winnings to help dad with liver transplant
President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping / Korea Times file
By Kim Bo-eun
President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping may join the summit to be held between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un this month in Vietnam to declare an end to the Korean War.
As U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun stated last week, President Trump is open to formally ending the war as part of measures to spur denuclearization talks with North Korea. This is an idea Moon, Xi and Kim have all been supporting.
One major obstacle was North Korea's opposition to the continued presence of U.S. troops in South Korea. However, the North has reportedly changed its stance on this.
U.S. and South Korean officials said ending the Korean War is a major topic in the ongoing pre-summit talks in Pyongyang.
The South China Morning Post reported President Xi may fly to Vietnam while President Trump is meeting with Kim.
Cheong Wa Dae said the possibility of President Moon Jae-in heading to Vietnam was low, but did not rule this out, stating it would depend on the ongoing working-level negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington.
The declaration reached between Moon and Kim at their first summit in April last year stated that they would seek to hold trilateral talks with the U.S. or quadrilateral talks including China to end the war and achieve a permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea, China and the U.S.-led U.N. forces are signatories to the armistice that halted the Korean War.
The South Korean President actively supports holding a four-party meeting to end the war, and the government is expected to boost efforts in the coming weeks to create the circumstances under which such a multilateral summit could take place.
The government is known to have sought a trilateral summit around the June summit between Trump and Kim last year, hoping to declare an end to the war.
The U.S. appears to be ready to end the war, according to Biegun's address at Stanford University last week.
The North Korean leader mentioned the need for multilateral talks to sign a peace treaty in his New Year address. He is believed to have discussed the matter with the Chinese president on his visit to Beijing last month.
Kim Joon-hyung, a professor at Handong Global University, said the summit between Kim and Trump could lead to an end of war declaration by the four parties, although with caveats.
"The North Korean leader mentioned a multilateral framework in his New Year address, and the recent display of China's willingness to take part has placed greater meaning on the end of war declaration," he said on a CBS radio show, Thursday.
"If an end of war declaration is discussed as a step toward a peace treaty, it could be made by the four countries this time."
Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said "The possibility appears low."
"It is unclear whether the U.S. would want to include China in the process," he said.
He also pointed out "with little time remaining, it would be unlikely that the four countries would be able to succeed in drawing up a joint declaration."
Instead it seems more likely that North Korea and the U.S. would declare an end to the war and that the declaration would likely be a political statement, he said.
With sexually transmitted diseases on the rise in Northeast Louisiana, educators are making sure they keep students aware.
Kathy Rutledge is the nurse for West Ouachita High School. She says sex education is still in their curriculum.
"Currently, the Monroe region is first in chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis," Rutledge said. "Unfortunately, this is where we are."
Rutledge says the most significant battle when teaching students about STDs and sex is all of the false information they have access to social media.
"We want everything to be medically accurate," Rutledge said.
Rebekah Oaks is the principal. She says teachers and nurses create experiments for the students to show how quickly STDs can spread.
"One of the most important things is we want to educate them on how to know what's correct information and what's not," Oaks said.
The major emphasizes on sex education in the Ouachita Parish School System policy is encouraging sexual abstinence. The policy says educators would like students to refrain from sex outside of marriage.
"They don't always make a good judgment, but we have to give them the information to help them do the best they can," Oaks said.
Oaks says they need parents to do their part when discussing sexual health with students.
"That the job of educating on sexual education is ultimately the parent's job," Oaks said.
OPSS policy also says parents have the choice to excuse students from getting sexual education at the school.
"We want to have an open school, where they feel not judged, but they feel accepted," Oaks said.
Prosecutors in Florida plan to seek the death penalty for a man suspected of killing five women at a SunTrust bank last month, authorities said.
Acting attorney general Matt Whitaker will in fact testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Friday, following a lengthy fight between House Democrats and the Justice Department that placed Whitaker's appearance in doubt for much of Thursday.
The Herald reports:
A stoush has broken out between Northland regional transport committee chairman John Bain and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones, with Jones stating Bain has had his day.
The war of words started yesterday at a sod turning for upgrades to the Loop Rd and State Highway 1 intersection south of Whangarei.
During his speech, Jones turned his attention to the much discussed four lane highway between Whangarei and Auckland, and said he and Bain were on different sides of the debate.
Everyone up north is on a different side to Jones.
Whangareis National MP Dr Shane Reti pointed out all of the Northland mayors and the regional council chairman travelled to Wellington last year to lobby Transport Minister Phil Twyford for the four lane highway.
Giving them some chicken feed money for some minor roads, while refusing to fund the main access road, is not popular up north. Every local Council says a proper access road between Auckland and Northland is what is needed, but Jones cant deliver it because of the Greens.
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MASON CITY, Iowa - The field of democrats running for president in 2020 is getting crowded and each candidate wants to stand out. On Friday, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker was in Iowa hoping to do just that. Booker is kicking off his presidential campaign in Mason City in the basement of the First Congregational United Church of Christ. More than 100 people braved below zero wind chills to hear from the high profile candidate.
I am going to go all over Iowa. Thats what's important to me is to make sure that I run a campaign that doesn't go to the larger cities alone. It's just an honor to start here, says Booker.
The senator from New Jersey immediately pointed to his Iowa roots with his grandmother being from Des Moines, but it wasn't necessarily that fact that grabbed this audience's attention. Anna Jones says it's his willingness to listen and understand what small town Iowans are facing.
He seems to be very supportive of ideas especially people from Iowa or the Midwest, says Jones.
Specifically Jones is concerned about the student debt crisis.
The housing market fell with overspending; the same thing is going to happen with our student debt. It's over lending at a price they can't pay back, she says.
To that, Booker says there needs to be a stronger push for specialized training and remove the stigma associated with not going to a four year school.
I am very familiar with Cory Booker so when I found out he was going to be here I thought we gotta go, says Benjamin Dwyer of Mason City.
Dwyer is another voter, already weighing his options for the 2020 election.
I look at each candidate based on how they feel about all the issues I care about, says Dwyer.
When the tax system or health care comes up, he's all ears. During his talk, Booker called health care coverage a right and has voiced his support for a Medicare For All Act.
Other north Iowa voters asked Booker about saving family farms, air quality issues, and how to properly fund quality education. Through it all though, one message rang out loud and clear.
That garment, that fabric has been ripped and torn and we must repair it. We must stitch it together each one of us, rejoining in common purpose and common cause, Booker says.
And if you ask Anna Jones if it's too early to be out campaigning she'll tell you...
Not at all because right now we have so many people running and more that are going to be running that they need to get out and be heard. Pretty soon it's going to be so spread that you'll pick and choose who you're going to. This is nice, he's got out he's got to hear people, he's got to listen to us, she says.
DAKOTA CITY, Iowa A two-vehicle collision that killed a 12-year-old boy is sending a woman to prison.
Trisha Dawn Luthro, 41 of Marshalltown, has been sentenced to up to 25 years behind bars. She pleaded guilty to homicide by vehicle for a September 2017 crash on Highway 3 in Humboldt. Authorities say Luthro crossed the center line and smashed head on with the vehicle driven by Kevin Ahlstrom of Dakota City.
The crash killed Ahlstroms 12-year-old son.
In addition, Luthro has been ordered to pay a $150,000 civil penalty to her victims estate.
Weather Alert
...EXCESSIVE HEAT WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH TUESDAY EVENING... * WHAT...Dangerously hot conditions Friday through at least Tuesday. Triple digit heat will develop in central Washington Friday and spread into eastern Washington over the weekend. * WHERE...Portions of North and North Central Idaho. Portions of Central, East Central, North Central, Northeast, and Southeast Washington. * WHEN...From Friday afternoon through Tuesday evening. * IMPACTS...Several days of triple digit heat and unusually warm overnight temperatures will make it difficult to control the build up of heat in homes without air conditioning. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...This will likely be an historic heat wave. Chances are good that many long standing records will be broken during this upcoming heat wave. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Monitor the latest forecasts and warnings for updates on this situation. Be prepared to drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air- conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors. &&
EUGENE, Ore. -- Over a dozen protesters waved signs outside the Lane County Courthouse Friday afternoon, claiming the sheriffs office is in violation of Oregons sanctuary state law by assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Several agencies, including immigrant rights groups, sent a letter to Lane County Sheriff Byron Trapp. In the letter, they claim that deputies call ICE when a person who is in the country illegally is released from jail and allows special access to the back entrance of the jail so they can easily make arrests.
They believe the assistance violates Oregon law, which prohibits local law enforcement from using public resources to arrest people whose only crime is being in the country illegally.
The protest was organized by The University of Oregon student group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlan
"This scares undocumented folks from seeking services and honestly causes distrust in law enforcement," protest organizer Yomaira Tarula said.
Trapp told KEZI 9 News that he believes their policies conform to local, state and federal law. He said they give ICE the same access to the jail like any other law enforcement agency.
"The access that ICE has to the Lane County Jail isn't unique," Trapp said. "It's the same as all law enforcement. There is not really a backdoor for any agency, and it's actually a front door on the jail."
Officials with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon who signed off on the letter to Trapp said they are demanding that the sheriff's office change their policies. If the sheriffs office doesnt take action, they said they plan to take legal action.
OAKRIDGE, Ore. -- The suspect in a double homicide investigation in Oakridge has been taken into custody, police said.
At 2:32 p.m. the Oakridge Police Department received a call about a suspicious incident on West 2nd Street near Portal Drive. An officer took the suspect into custody at the call. After a search of the area, police found two people dead. Police said the murders happened after a dispute between the deceased and the suspect. They also said the suspect knew the victims.
Witnesses and neighbors told KEZI 9 News that another person is injured.
"A young lady for some reason stabbed her parents to death and then went next door and attacked an older couple with a knife and injured the wife in her hand," neighbor Dennis Patterson said. "She was taken away with her hand bandaged up."
Another neighbor said he was shocked to hear about the murders, saying it's a quiet neighborhood.
West 2nd Street was blocked off Friday night about half a mile from Oakridge High School. Oregon State Police troopers were also at the location, where two houses are surrounded by crime scene tape.
Police told KEZI 9 News the names of the victims and the suspect will not be released until the next of kin has been notified.
There is a joint investigation underway with Oakridge Police Department, Oregon State Police, Lane County Sheriffs Office, Lane County District Attorneys Office and Lane County Medical Examiner's Office.
Officials ask anyone with additional information to contact the Oakridge Police Department at 541-782-4232 or the Lane County Sheriff's Office at 541-682-4141.
Stay with KEZI 9 News for updates.
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This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com.
Whether you recently completed your residency as an emergency medicine (EM) physician or are ready to move on from your current position, potential locations for work are undoubtedly a big factor in determining which emergency physician jobs youre willing to consider.
If you have children, location is especially important, because you want to be confident they can get the education you want them to have once you relocate. Dont just look at locations based on popular culture and what youve heard about them. Dig in and do your research about the location of any EM physician jobs you consider. You might be surprised at which locations you end up preferring and which ones youre willing to pass up.
Here are five factors that emergency physicians should consider regarding location:
1. Salary and cost of living
Try not to get starry-eyed over what looks like a fabulously generous salary until you determine how far it will go in that location. What might be a fortune in Small Town, USA wont go nearly so far in expensive locations like San Francisco, Manhattan, and Seattle. Likewise, dont write off a salary that looks low until you learn about the cost of living where the job is located. A salary that wouldnt get you a nice apartment in a prime real estate city could get you a comfortable new house in other locations. Always consider salary in relation to cost of living, so youre comparing apples to apples.
2. The competitive environment
EM physicians are in demand, but the competition is fiercer in some geographic locations than others. Every emergency physician should understand the competitive environment in the job market theyre considering. This, of course, can vary within a city as well as from one city to another, and its another great reason to do as much research as you can.
3. Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is often in the eye of the beholder. A grueling, fast-paced EM job in an urban hospital with a Level I Trauma Center may be ideal for one physician and all wrong for another. With emergency medicine jobs, of course, there is a level of unpredictability that your dermatologist friends probably wont have. However, knowing what other EM physicians report about their work environment can help you focus on locations where you have the best chances of excellent job satisfaction.
4. Malpractice insurance rates and who pays premiums
Malpractice insurance rates vary considerably by location, as do their premiums. In general, emergency medicine physicians pay more than their ophthalmologist colleagues, but not as much as obstetricians. Who is responsible for malpractice premiums often depends on the nature of the job itself. Doctors who are employed by hospitals often have their malpractice insurance premiums paid by the hospital, but it is considered part of the total compensation package. Doctors who have hospital privileges, but who are not hospital employees, may have to provide proof that they have adequate malpractice insurance before obtaining hospital certification. Always ask how much premiums run and who pays them.
5. What youre likely to encounter as an EM physician
Again, there isnt as much predictability with EM physician jobs as with some other specialties, but location will have some influence on what you are likely to encounter working in an emergency department. Youre less likely to deal with agricultural equipment accidents in an urban hospital, for example, and, unfortunately, there are locations in the U.S. that have higher rates of violent crime, so you would be likelier to encounter things like gunshot wounds in certain locations. You cant know exactly what youre getting yourself into with EM physician jobs, but location can offer you clues.
Location should never be an afterthought with EM physician jobs, however anxious you are to land a permanent position. Always remember to factor in the cost of living with salary, and to learn the critical details, like who is responsible for malpractice insurance premiums.
Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now.
China's 35th Antarctic expedition team on Thursday set up a new automatic meteorological station, some 100 km away from the Zhongshan Station, a Chinese research base in Antarctica.
The devices will be used to collect information on temperature, relative humidity as well as wind direction and speed in Antarctica.
The newly installed station will fill up the blank research area for meteorological observation along the Panda transect and improve China's observation capability in the area, said Meng Shang, a member of the expedition team.
The Panda transect refers to a research route from Prydz Bay to the Amery Ice Shelf and then to Dome Argus (Dome A).
China has set up several meteorological stations at Kunlun Station and Taishan Station on the Antarctic ice sheet. It is expected to install more meteorological stations along the Panda transect to collect substantial data to improve China's weather forecasting and research on the continent.
In voting 8-0 Thursday against LB399, members of the State Board of Education claimed schools already are teaching the various elements of history and civics the legislation calls for, but its difficult to believe the current approach could be as effective as what Slama proposes. She wants Nebraska students to take the citizenship test by eighth grade and 11th grade. Slamas bill also would alter how districts establish their civics curriculum by conducting public hearings so school patrons can see whats being taught.
We usually dont endorse having lawmakers telling teachers how to do their work, but with so much upheaval in government, Americans must be watchful and defend their system of democracy. The foundation for watchfulness is education, but Americans cannot keep their elected officials in line unless they possess a solid understanding of history and governmental traditions, such as the separation of power, rules of succession and so forth.
The arrest came Friday, he said, because the police had finished their investigation.
Sedlacek, 30, has been charged with six counts of first-degree sexual assault of a child and one count of third-degree sexual assault of a child.
If convicted on all counts, Sedlacek could face at least 120 years in prison. He was fired from OPS in December.
In 2011, OPS officials were criticized for their handling of suspected abuse at Nathan Hale Middle School.
In that case, they were criticized for conducting their own investigation rather than contacting police to look into alleged sexual abuse of students by a teacher.
OPS officials did not report the student allegations against Nathan Hale teacher Shad M. Knutson, despite a state law that requires notification of suspected abuse.
OPS officials at the time said the multiple complaints against Knutson werent reported because district officials could not prove the allegations.
Eventually a parent notified the states child welfare division about the alleged abuse, which led to an Omaha police investigation and Knutsons conviction.
Hospital hallways usually are quiet, still places in the middle of the night.
But about 2:30 a.m. Friday, more than 100 people family members, friends, firefighters from four area communities and medical staff lined a hallway at Creighton University Medical Center-Bergan Mercy to pay tribute to Ralston firefighter Brian Saathoff.
Saathoff, who died suddenly of an unknown medical condition, had registered as an organ and tissue donor. Honor walks typically are conducted by hospital staff to recognize donors as they are transported to the operating room to save lives through organ and tissue donation.
Saathoff, 39, came from a line of firefighters. He began his career as a volunteer firefighter after high school and had served with two other volunteer departments before joining the Ralston Volunteer Fire Department more than a decade ago. So paying tribute to him with an honor walk was particularly fitting, said Paula Wallace, family support coordinator with Live On Nebraska, the organ recovery organization serving Nebraska and Iowas Pottawattamie County.
Ralston Fire Chief Kevin Eischeid said Saathoff was the type of person who brings others together.
Future challenges
As KRMC grows, medicine changes. The push is for more outpatient stays, but the aging population often requires more in-hospital stays and so do younger people who need major surgery.
This winter, the flu has hospitalized people for several days. New mothers require hospital stays as well.
As of now, KRMC has no ambulance service. The CHI Health-based Emergency Medical Services brings patients to KRMC if they ask, but most are automatically transported to Good Samaritan, the designated Level II trauma location in Buffalo County. Within the next 12 months, Calhoun expects KRMC to apply for a Level III trauma designation. The levels refer to staffing, not the quality of care, he was quick to add.
KRMC also needs to expand its medical building. It has converted space for several more offices but needs more, especially after Kearney Clinic closed last year, and more doctors expressed interest in joining the Platte Valley Medical Group.
We dont have the physical capacity for everyone, Calhoun said.
KRMC also hopes to add two more operating rooms, which could cost $3 million. It currently has five.
KEARNEY Interviewing members of the southern Louisiana band, The Iceman Special, on speakerphone feels like stepping unannounced into a free-for-all backroom party.
When we play, people will hear a rendition of a night in the south Louisiana swamp with psychedelic jams, said Hunter Romero. Its our first time in Nebraska so Im pretty sure Nebraska has never heard anything like what were bringing.
Now living mostly in New Orleans, members of The Iceman Special originally came from the areas farther south, where the Mississippi River slowly melts into the Gulf of Mexico.
While not playing strictly zydeco, the band uses tempos and rhythms associated with that form of music.
Zydeco is all in the drums, Romero said in an interview while in New Orleans. If you have the right kick and snare patterns in the music, you can almost trick people into dancing and they dont even know why theyre dancing. Were playing zydeco bass and drum grooves. We carry the south Louisiana sound with us everywhere we go. We cant really escape that.
Nebraska jam band fans can get a taste of this music when The Iceman Special stops in Kearney for a 9 p.m. show Thursday at The Other Side at 15 E. 24th St. Admission is $5.
According to a press release, the Labor Departments Wage and Hour Division found the restaurant wrongly classified workers as exempt from overtime, when they were not.
ROGUE RIVER, Ore.
UPDATE: Appearing via video at her arraignment before a judge on Monday, 49-year-old Kyla Duncan declined to issue any verbal responses answering the judge's questions by nodding her head "yes" or shaking it "no."
"Ma'am, I think you can speak," the judge said at one point, addressing Duncan. "Guilty or not guilty?"
Duncan continued to shake her head, eventually acknowledging that had pleaded not guilty on two counts of Attempted Murder.
According to court documents, Duncan is accused of trying to kill a child on two separate occasions within the space of two days the second of which led to her arrest.
Duncan's bail was set at $1 million, with stipulations that should she post bail she would have no contact with her alleged victim, not possess any weapons, and stay away from alcohol and other intoxicants.
(Updated 2/11/19 at 4:55 p.m.)
INITIAL REPORT: A woman is in custody after allegedly attempting to kill herself and her young child through carbon monoxide poisoning, according to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO).
Just after 10 a.m. this morning, Emergency Communications of Southern Oregon routed a 911 call to Sheriff's deputies, telling them that a woman had been seen in her vehicle, "attempting to commit suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning."
The caller also said that there had been a young child in the vehicle. However, the woman had fled the scene, the caller reported.
Deputies joined troopers from Oregon State Police and officers with Rogue River Police in searching the area described by the caller eventually finding the car.
49-year-old Kyla Duncan of Rogue River and the child were brought to a local hospital and treated for carbon monoxide poisoning. Duncan was then brought to the Jackson County Jail, charged with two counts of Attempted Murder in the First Degree.
The child was released to family, JCSO said. An investigation into the incident remains ongoing, and the agency said that further details would be "released as appropriate."
Apple Inc's fiscal first-quarter earnings reveal that the company's struggles in China and in its critical iPhone business will continue, while analysts say the tech bellwether could reduce prices to remedy the situation.
On Jan 29, Apple said revenue for the three months ended Dec 29 was $84.3 billion, off 5 percent from a year ago. Profit was $19.9 billion or $4.18 a share.
Apple said revenue from the iPhone declined 15 percent from the year-ago period. In China, Apple reported revenue of $13.1 billion, down sharply from $17.9 billion last year.
Apple investors have been worried about China since the company last month lowered guidance for the quarter due to economic pressures in the region and weak iPhone sales. CEO Tim Cook also blamed trade tensions between the US and China for the slowdown in sales.
"Apple and Cook face one of their most challenging growth periods in the company's history with weak iPhone sales in China being the 'albatross around its neck' showing no signs of abating over the next few quarters, a dynamic that will be an overhang on the stock for the next 6 to 9 months with the China trade talks adding to the agita for investors," Wedbush Securities analysts Daniel Ives and Strecker Backe wrote in a research note.
Strategy Analytics, a global consulting firm, said Apple has an Asia problem, particularly in China.
"China is Apple's second most important market, after the US. China accounts for 3 in 10 of all smartphones sold worldwide, and it is a market Apple simply cannot ignore," Neil Mawston of Strategy Analytics told China Daily.
Ives and Backe said Apple needs to consider an iPhone-price cut in China. "Apple is facing a 'code red' situation in China, and the right pricing strategy around XR and future versions will be key to putting a ring fence around the core installed base in the region.
"With lower-priced competition from all directions with Huawei and Xiaomi front and center, Apple needs to make sure that over the next few quarters they do not lose any current iPhone customers," they said.
Mawston said the iPhone has been struggling in China for the past three years after major carriers like China Telecom reduced their subsidy programs for 4G smartphones. "De-subsidization has made the iPhone look much more expensive at the point of sale in China, causing iPhone demand to crash," he said.
Apple can reignite demand for the iPhone by cutting prices, introducing a much cheaper model, or persuading carriers like China Telecom to restart their subsidy programs, added Mawston.
Apple said its services division, which includes iCloud, the App Store and Apple Pay, saw revenue advance to $10.9 billion, up 19 percent over the prior year. The company said China's move to pause approving new games for the App Store last year is affecting revenue in the segment.
Apple still relies on China to produce many of its products, so it will be watching the trade negotiations between China and the US closely.
Mawston said it is highly unlikely Apple will move any iPhone production to the US.
"Manufacturing in the US is very expensive, and the high costs would slash Apple's giant profit margin and cause shareholder uproar. If any iPhone production is ever moved to the US, even after possible punitive tariffs or generous subsidies, the factory would be small, located in one of the poorer states to save costs, and probably only to do final assembly, not full design and production. If iPhone ever leaves China in a major way, it is far more likely to go to India or Vietnam," he said.
Meanwhile, Apple said Wednesday that its retail chief, Angela Ahrendts, will leave the company in April after five years on the job.
Apple did not give a reason for the departure. Ahrendts arrived at the company in 2014 after being chief executive of fashion retailer Burberry Group PLC.
Clinton Ellis, 25, pleaded guilty to animal cruelty charges and received a sentence of 365 days in prison, but 311 of those days were suspended to probation. He was also ordered to pay $11,000 in restitution costs.
US President Donald Trump has announced that US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will head to Beijing for trade talks on Feb 14-15, the White House said Friday morning.
The principal-level meetings, following discussions that took place on Jan 30-31 in Washington, will be preceded by deputy-level negotiations that will begin on Feb 11, led by Deputy USTR Jeffrey Gerrish, according to a statement from the White House Press Secretary Office.
Carlos Gutierrez, former US Secretary of Commerce, said that trade disputes are bad for both sides.
So I would hope that we have reached the limit in terms of escalation, and that we can continue the dialogue to reach an agreement, he said in an interview on Wednesday.
Last week, top Chinese and US trade negotiators concluded a round of candid, concrete and constructive talks that would pave the way to a comprehensive deal the presidents of the two countries directed and probably would finalize when they meet, according to official sources.
Conducted under the guidance of the important consensuses Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump reached in their Argentina meeting on Dec 1, the Jan 30-31 talks have made important progress for the current stage, according to a release from the Chinese delegation, led by Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He.
Following the top leaders Dec 1 meeting, Chinas Ministry of Commerce had said that in 90 days, economic and trade teams of both sides would actively push forward the consultation following a clear schedule and road map.
Members of the US official delegation to Beijing next week also include USTR Chief Agricultural Negotiator Gregg Doud, Under Secretary of Treasury David Malpass, Under Secretary of Agriculture Ted McKinney, Under Secretary of Commerce Gilbert Kaplan, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council and Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs Clete Willems, and Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg, according to the White House statement.
At his studio, Sun Jiaju takes his time to draw a sausage -- part of a Russian-style dish.
In several minutes, the 63-year-old sketches some simple lines on paper and fills the contour with colors.
Be it Russian cuisine, western-style architecture or snowy landscapes, his works all depict characteristics of Harbin, capital of China's northernmost province of Heilongjiang and a city rich for tourism.
After retiring from the tourism department in Harbin, Sun has picked up his drawing pen to show the beauty of the city.
Known as either the "Oriental Moscow" or "Oriental Paris," Harbin won fame in late 1800s and early 1900s after construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway financed by then Russia Empire. Apart from its unique combination of oriental and European architectural styles, the city is also known for its ice and snow festivals in winter, the busiest season for Sun.
"I got up before 4 a.m. because I kept thinking about the work I didn't finish yesterday," he says.
Influenced by his family, Sun developed wide interests in arts when he was young, although he was not professionally trained. His father, who was educated at private school, was good at calligraphy. His brother played violin, and his sister liked to sing Russian songs.
"Growing up in Harbin with its peculiar cultural atmosphere, I found people like us easily developed a hobby in arts," he says. He spent most of his time drawing after class.
He also sketched on bulletin boards when he served the army. But when the veteran started working for the local tourism bureau, he became too busy to draw.
Sun did not pick up his pen again until his 50s, when a sketch brochure introducing tourist resorts of the Republic of Korea amazed him. The brochure was a gift he received on a business trip to ROK.
"The sketches evoked some unspeakable feelings in me. There's a charm in visual arts that cannot be replaced by words," Sun says. He decided to promote Harbin tourism with his drawing.
He started a studio after retirement in 2015. To date, he has created more than 300 works in connection with Harbin. His works are made into bookmarks, postcards and brochures available in bookstores and tourist resorts.
Sun plans to appeal to young people with his work. He has learned how to use Douyin, a video-sharing app also known as Tik Tok, which is popular among young people. He also intends to teach drawing online.
"I hope both locals and tourists can find out more about Harbin, and make the city known to the world," he says.
The Thai Raksa Chart (Thais protect country) Party on Saturday accepted the remarks by King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who said involving the princess in politics is "inappropriate."
In a statement issued on Saturday, Thai Raksa Chart Party expressed its allegiances to the monarch and accepted his disapproval of Princess Ubolratana Mahidol's candidacy for prime minister.
File photo of Thai Princess Ubolratana Mahidol [File Photo: VCG]
Ubolratana on Friday accepted the nomination to run for prime minister in the March 24 general election under the tickets of the Thai Raksa Chart Party.
But in a royal statement broadcast on Friday night, King Maha Vajiralongkorn voiced his disapproval, saying members of the royal family should stay neutral and cannot take any political positions, otherwise it would be against the constitution and constitutional monarchy.
The Thai Raksa Chart Party said it will follow the rulings of the Election Commission, the election law, the constitution as well as royal custom and tradition.
The Election Commission is yet to verify all electoral candidates including those running for post-election prime minister. It is scheduled to officially announce the names of all candidates on Feb. 15.
Meanwhile, Ubolratana said on her Instagram page on Saturday that she sincerely wished to see the country step forward and be admired and recognized by the international community.
She maintained that she is contesting the election as a commoner with the rights and freedom given by the constitution and that she had relinquished herself of royal titles.
She thanked all her supporters, especially the netizens who regularly follow her online.
Its most important you leave here a little bit of a better person than when you walked in, and know where you want to be in life and in relationships, who brings out the best in you and who doesnt, Koebcke told the students. Thats how you get in trouble.
Summerville, SC (29483)
Today
Mainly cloudy. A few peeks of sunshine possible. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 84F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..
Tonight
Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
President Donald Trump claims falsely that he invented the term fake news.
He didnt, of course, but he sure has popularized it. By one count, he has uttered the word fake more than 400 times since he was elected, usually applied to stories, journalists or news organizations.
Im so proud Ive been able to convince people how fake it is, he bragged to Lou Dobbs, one of his favorite media toadies, on Fox Business Network last fall, talking about mainstream media reporting. He specifically called out CBS and NBC, and of course, he has consistently trashed The New York Times.
And yet, just over the past few days, there he was, sitting down nicely with the publisher of The New York Times, practically begging for positive treatment from what he, remarkably, referred to as his newspaper. (I came from Jamaica, Queens ... and I became president of the United States. Im sort of entitled to a great story just one, from my newspaper.)
And there he was with Margaret Brennan of CBS News Face the Nation on Sunday, granting a long interview during which he once again used the fake news slur to describe reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was considering leaving his post to run for retiring Sen. Pat Roberts seat in Kansas.
The Trump we saw tonight is the president we should be seeing every day, not just once a year. He reached across the aisle, appealed to persuadable voters in the center and asked them to consider his reasonable proposals. He made the case for controversial policies in a way designed to win over open-minded skeptics. It worked. A CBS News instant poll found that 76 percent of viewers approved of what they heard in Trumps address, including 72 percent who said they approved of his ideas for immigration.
In short, Trump did something he rarely does: work to expand his base. Its a good start, but wooing persuadable voters takes more than one good speech. It requires discipline and sustained effort.
Its not too late. Trumps approval rating is 40 percent (up slightly from 37 percent during the government shutdown). Before his third-year State of the Union address, Ronald Reagans approval was just 35 percent and he won a second term in a landslide.
Democrats are giving Trump an opening by embracing socialist policies that most Americans know will bankrupt the country. They may go so far left that they will make themselves unelectable in 2020. But Trump cannot count on Democrats to self-destruct. He must actively court the voters they are alienating with their far-left tilt and win over millions of Americans who are benefiting from his policies but still dont support his presidency. In his address, Trump declared that America will never be a socialist country. Whether he is right depends on what he does in the weeks and months ahead.
Marc Thiessen is a columnist for The Washington Post. Follow him on Twitter @marcthiessen.
Then it blared from the biggest amplifier of all. 58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote, President Trump tweeted at this latest purported evidence to support one of his favorite conspiracy theories. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped.
Study after study has shown it is exceedingly rare for someone who is not a citizen to attempt to vote. And registrars across the state immediately recognized the problems with both the claims of widespread illegal balloting and Whitleys approach for rooting it out. In 2017, more than 1.8 million Texans were naturalized citizens. What is becoming apparent is that many who landed on the list are people who took their oath of citizenship since the last time they got a drivers license.
In El Paso County, for instance, election administrator Lisa Wise saw one of her own staff members named on the list of 4,152 names she received. We had a naturalization party for her when the staffer became a citizen in 2017, Wise told the Texas Tribune. She had gone and gotten her drivers license, I think, four years ago.
It may be that every white person in America can technically be labeled a racist, myself included. We may not have worn blackface or lobbed racial slurs, but we have all thought or done things that have positioned people of color inferior to the white tribe. Racism is our countrys deepest and most foundational sin. It is performed as naturally and as involuntarily as breathing.
Recently, the media have embraced the next racist de jour. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam admitted to wearing blackface while pretending he was pop icon Michael Jackson for a dance contest; and it seems he is, at the very least, linked to a picture of someone wearing blackface standing next to another in a KKK costume. The picture dates back to 1984, while he was in medical school.
There is no question this behavior is inexcusable and hurtful and, tragically, all-too-ordinary. Northam, like the rest of us, should be held accountable for his actions. However, there is something far deeper happening here. It is what French anthropologist Rene Girard termed The Scapegoat Mechanism.
Foster, an organist, will play Dialogues for Organ and Strings, originally commissioned by the late John Mueller.
I attended the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Kansas City in July, and her Dialogues were the featured piece in the gala concert. She is a presence in the national organ scene.
Olsen, UNCSA Kenan professor of organ and associate professor of organ and associate director of the school of music at Salem, will play a work commissioned by the Kenan Institute at UNCSA for its 20th anniversary.
I have performed a number of her works, Olsen said. Her compositions vary quite a bit. She has a very interesting harmonic language and interesting rhythmic drive. The music is very accessible. There is a lot of her music that church organists perform on a regular basis.
I knew of her before I knew her personally, but you get the gamut of her personality through her music. Some of it is relaxed and subdued and lyrical that hints at her Southern ease, and at other times there is some feistiness, rhythmic flair and excitement.
The Board of Directors of Shirley Heinze Land Trust has elected five new board members to three-year terms. Dale Nichols serves as Deputy General Counsel for The Northern Trust Company. He is a member of the Chicago Bar Association, American Bankers Association Trust Counsel Committee, and Section leader of the Chicago Bar Association Chorus. Nichols is a resident of Chicago and Beverly Shores. Wendy Vachet is Regional Environmental Manager of Michael Baker International, Inc. in Chicago. She is a member of the American Planning Association, American Institute of Certified Planners, and a Board Member of the Miller Beach Arts and Creative District. Vachet is a resident of Gary. Sean Hay is a Partner at JCMA Inc. a digital marketing, media and branding company that works with small business owners throughout Northwest Indiana. He is a resident of Valparaiso. Martin Lucas serves as County Attorney for Starke County. He has extensive knowledge of the natural history of the Kankakee Sands region. Lucas resides in North Judson. Erin Labovitz serves as Office Support Specialist at Discovery Charter School. She is the advisor to Student Council and is an active volunteer at Discovery. Labovitz is a resident of Valparaiso.
After 200 immigrants living here illegally were arrested in North Carolina this week, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has come under public fire with many questioning the sudden urgency.
But ICE sought Friday to dispel the notion that they are arresting more people. The agency said recent decisions by several North Carolina sheriffs to sever agreements with ICE have forced their hand.
ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said the 200 arrests were on par with the average of 15,000 people they arrest per year, but the arrests have just become more visible, as opposed to picking someone up at a local jail out of the public eye.
When local policies change, it changes the way we do our arrests. Our officers have to go out and take a person into custody in the street, at a workplace, at their home, he said. Usually we would go to the local jail. When they refuse to allow us to do so, we have no choice.
The Forsyth County Sheriffs Office announced Tuesday that it would no longer detain people suspected of being undocumented immigrants in the Forsyth County Jail, severing their previous contract with ICE.
Harris, Miss WSSU, runs for Miss CIAA
Miss Winston-Salem State University Christina Harris is running to become the next Miss CIAA.
Online voting for Miss CIAA 2019 began last Monday and continues through March 1, WSSU said in a statement.
The votes will help to determine the winner of the competition, which will be named March 2 during the CIAA Super Saturday at the Charlotte Convention Center.
Food Lion will present the new Miss CIAA with a $2,500 scholarship.
Also, the queen with the most online votes will present $2,000 to a food pantry in her community to support alleviating hunger, as part of the Food Lion Feeds initiative.
Harris, a senior biology major from Greensboro, is competing for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina, which partners with WSSUs Project GIVE volunteer program.
UNCSA artists win award
We are calling our top shareholders, our top clients, King said. We are in motion, making sure everybody understands that this is positive for everybody. This is great for our clients. It is fantastic. There is no other institution that can go to one of our clients and offer something as good as what we are offering.
We will have other prospects calling us, and we will be seeing other prospects and growing our business, he said.
Competing banks also tend to ratchet up their employee-recruitment efforts during the uncertainty of the new banks decisions on which employees to keep and in what positions.
When asked about employee attrition, King said he expects the combined bank to experience little within its markets.
The challenge here is what type of culture you have, what type of engagement your associates have, and whether you have an attractive place for people who want to work, he said. We both have really, really good cultures. Combined, our cultures, I believe, will be even better. We have really strong benefit programs.
King said he recognizes that employees will get calls from others.
I like the sense of teamwork that strengthens the commitment and direction of Catholic education for the future, said Morello, the pastor, adding, with this new model, our principal, executive director and myself share the responsibility of leadership, vision, and financial stability, which are all needed to be vital and strong in our education and formation for our students now, and in the future.
Cody Cottier covers town and state government. He grew up with a view of the Olympic Mountains, and after graduating Washington State University he traded it for a view of the Tetons. Odds are the mountains are where youll find him when not on deadline.
Instructor Erin Reynolds describes the use of equipment for a health-science class during an open house of Jacksonville High Schools newly renovated CTE building on Thursday.
So many kids have devices in their hands and its easier to not see the face behind the device, Getzin said. We need things like this to remind kids to choose kindness and that kindness matters. We need to teach kids at a younger age to be upstanders - not bystanders and to stand up for one another and to do what is right.
Vora 19 Pursuing Patent for Sleep Study Invention
Feb. 8, 2019
Niyant Vora '19 presented his in-home PSG device invention during IWU's 2018 John Wesley Powell Research Conference.
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Add inventor to Illinois Wesleyan University senior biology major and Bloomington, Illinois native Niyant Voras title.
Vora is spending his final semester as an undergraduate student working toward earning a patent for his invention of an in-home polysomnogram (PSG) device, which is a wireless version of the machine used by sleep centers to conduct detailed sleep studies. He hopes his PSG device will reduce the cost and stress that patients undergo when visiting a sleep center.
I suddenly realized there was a big problem with the way we approach sleep studies, Vora said. Its not that doctors havent noticed it or that it hasnt been noted in research or anything, its just that the only way people can do a sleep study is by going to a sleep center which involves taking three nights out of their time and spending thousands of dollars in insurance to do that. And, I thought, why cant we do it at home?
Vora, who plans to attend medical school, needed guidance beyond his areas of academic focus as a biology major and German minor. He approached Associate Professor and Chair of Physics Thushara Perera, who agreed to serve as Voras research advisor.
With Pereras guidance, Vora conducted a live demonstration of the PSG device prototype at the 2018 John Wesley Powell Research Conference. Voras focus then began to shift toward the patent process. He discovered that at many universities, research projects undertaken in collaboration with faculty become school property. But, not at Illinois Wesleyan.
It turns out that Wesleyan is really, really nice to their students and allows them to own the patent on things they create, Vora said. Wesleyans attitude is that if the student comes up with it, the student owns it.
Vora will soon begin the three-year patent application process and said if things continue as planned, he will soon have a provisional patent.
The inspiration for Voras idea came from his grandfather who, in the early 1980s, suffered an unidentified brain trauma which led to an array of health complications, including narcolepsy, a condition which causes the person to randomly fall asleep.
And so I was thinking, it would have been helpful if we could have known what was actually going on with him, Vora said. So I thought, Let me see if I can do something about that, maybe help someone else who might be struggling.
Although he did not arrive at Illinois Wesleyan with the intention of developing a patent-worthy invention, Vora will graduate this May and enter medical school having already created something that could change the way sleep is studied and the lives of the patients being studied for years to come.
By Megan Baker 21
The massive telecommunications industry has been flunked badly by the Australian graduate community, with not one telco appearing among the top 75 graduate employers in a recent survey .
The aim of the Top Graduate Employers list, compiled by the Australian Association of Graduate Employers, is to recognise organisations that provide the most positive experience for their new graduates as determined by the graduates themselves.
The Top Graduate Employers list was created from a survey of over 2500 graduates, conducted between December 2018 and January 2019.
The survey participants are all current graduates who joined their employer's graduate program sometime in 2018, so they have up to 12 months of full-time experience with their organisation.
Orientation or induction program;
Training and development program;
Quality of work;
Career progression;
Supervisor or manager;
Compensation and benefits;
Work/life balance; and
Company culture.
The survey is completed anonymously and graduates are asked to rate their employer on around 25 different categories including:
A perusal of the newly released list shows that just about every major industry in Australia is represented except telecommunications.
Accounting, banking, health, engineering, construction, mining, utilities, water, law, education, oil & gas, government, as well as IT hardware & software, were all represented by at least one employer. In fact, IT performed admirably, with 13 companies, including a number of home grown players, making the list.
Meanwhile, Telstra management complains about a local skills shortage and uses that as a justification to move its technology development capability offshore instead of embarking on a local training program and recruitment drive.
Australias largest telco, once a leading employer of engineering and IT graduates which ranked number 23 last year, was noticeably absent from this years list of favoured graduate employers.
But lets not stop with Telstra. Also missing were all the rest of the employers of the telecommunications industry, including Singtel Optus (ranked 32 last year), Vodafone, Vocus, TPG, and Macquarie Telecom, among others.
And lets not forget to mention the government-owned, taxpayer funded NBN Co, which was another shameful omission from the list.
The telecommunications industry is among the most profitable and well-funded sectors in Australia. It should be an important source of training and employment for young technology graduates.
Yet, somehow the local industry has been allowed to devolve into a mad scramble to outsource and offshore as many technology functions as possible in an unending quest to maximise short-term profits.
These days, service levels from the telecommunications companies have dropped to the point where the number of missed appointments mainly from outsourced contractors number in the hundreds of thousands each year.
Australia has already lost its car manufacturing capability and 60 years ago this country even made its own TVs.
Now Australias largest companies engaging in high technology are removing the last vestiges of incentive for young people to study ICT and other tech disciplines. It is a great shame and in the end this country will pay the price, as will the companies that have contributed to the de-skilling of this nation.
The Communications Alliance, which represents the telecommunications industry in Australia, has been contacted for comment. If we receive a response, the comments will be added to this article.
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On Friday, officials with the Walker County Hospital District board announced that they have finalized a $7.8 million purchase of Huntsville Memorial Hospital. Do you feel like this is a good use of tax dollars, and is this the right direction for the struggling health care facility?
You voted:
Saturday, February 9th, 2019 (12:01 am) - Score 12,799
A number of former Supanet (Supatel / TimeTalk) customers have been in contact to complain that the ISP has recently started chasing them for alleged unpaid bills, some of which include vague demands for up to nearly 800. In most cases those being targeted left the broadband provider 4-6 years ago.
Supanet, which ambitiously describes itself as being one of the fastest growing ethical ISPs in the UK on their website and claims to have registered over a million subscribers to date (we havent seen evidence of that), is actually the trading name for a Cyprus registered company called Supatel (Supanet was acquired by them in 2010).
Back in 2013 Ofcom fined the broadband and phone provider Supatel 60,000 for mis-selling (slamming) after they were found to have switched 83 customers from one ISP to another without the individuals knowledge (here).
Fast forward several years and some of those who switched away from Supanet / TimeTalk are now being hit with demands for an unpaid balance, which seem to range from around 90 to 800 (purely based on those gripes weve received). Many of those being targeted wont have any paperwork left from such a long time ago but deny that they owe the ISP anything. All of them say this is the first time theyve heard of an outstanding bill.
Sample Complaint 1 This originally started with a text out the blue and then I went onto their site and had a live chat with them before I was cut off. I threatened them with ofcom and I was told it wasnt for internet so they wouldnt do anything. It was for non closure of my account and seemingly there was a charge for me having a supanet.com email address. I believe this is the tip of the iceberg and its only starting. I had only ever used them as my original pc came from them around 20 years ago. Due to the size of Time retail there must be thousands of people who will have these dormant accounts and will be getting contacted in due course.
Sample Complaint 2 I cancelled my contract with Supanet in March 2013. This month I received a text from supanet asking me to contact them regarding an outstanding balance. I ignored it. A few days later I received a letter informing me of a debt of ***.**. Needless to say I was a little shocked. I rang the number on the letter to ask for an address (as the letter only had a Cyprus HQ address on the bottom) to send a subject access request to.
Sample Complaint 3 Ive just received a letter from Supanet saying I owe them almost ***. I finished my term of provision with them in April 2013. They say theyve referred the case to Quick Collect, yet not once in the intervening period have they contacted me to say theres an issue outstanding? Theres no quantification in the letter as to what this all relates to, it looks a bit amateurish to me, and I smell a scam or an attempt to put frighteners on.
Digging deeper, at least some of the outstanding balances appear to be attributed to allegedly unclosed accounts or the use of a supanet.com email address. In other cases weve seen people being charged 69 for non-return of an old router, which many will have long since thrown away.
At this point we note that the letter (see our copy at the bottom) directs its recipients to contact their collection agency Quick Collect within 30 days on 01204 978010 or it warns that the matter ultimately escalates to legal action. However they fail to provide a postal contact for Quick Collect (its wise to keep related correspondences in writing for legal reasons not giving an address is unusual for such a letter).
Meanwhile Supanet itself is listed as a dormant company (here) and another company called Biometrix appears to exist at the same address (here); the latter was once called Supatel. Time Group (here) and Time Holdings (here) also share the address and some directors.
NOTE: A search for 01204 978010 found lots of similar complaints A search for 01204 978010 found lots of similar complaints here and here
Ordinarily in this sort of situation wed be advising customers to pay and then dispute the charge afterwards through an Alternative Dispute Resolution (details below) handler or the courts, but in this case the approach leaves too many questions (some of those contacted initially thought it could be a scam) and a more robust challenge may thus be appropriate.
Challenging the Provider
Broadly speaking debt collection notices are required to adhere to the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims (see here for a good summary), which was introduced in 2017 and advises on what information both sides are required to provide. Supanets letter appears to be missing some key details from that protocol, but we now understand from them that the letters have not yet reached the stage of a formal debt collection process.
Well also highlight the Citizens Advice guidance on debt collection harassment, in case it ever becomes relevant (here). Plus the National Debt Helpline has some sample complaint letters.
At this point the usual approach applies. 1) Find out where the debt has come from by asking the agency to send you a detailed summary that fully explains the charge, 2) Request a copy of your original agreement and, 3) Tell them that you wish to only be contacted by post (request their address and also company details to help confirm its not a scam). Essentially, get as much detail as possible.
Furthermore it might be useful to phone Supanet directly in order to confirm the debt action (here) and at the same time wed be inclined to drop Ofcom a complaint, if you feel it necessary (here). The regulator, which incidentally informed us that they havent seen a particular trend in complaints about Supanet (i.e. not enough people have told them about this), also has a useful page on disputing bills (here).
NOTE: The GDPR law enables customers to make a The GDPR law enables customers to make a Subject Access Request (SAR), which may help to find out what personal data is held on you.
After this you may wish to write a letter that formally disputes the charge and at the same time wed notify them of your move to open a complaint via Supanets Ofcom approved ADR provider Ombudsman Services: Communication, which can investigate the complaint on your behalf at no cost to yourself. Supanet also has a document for their complaints procedure (here) and check our own Complaints Guide for extra help.
Some former customers inform us that Supanet caved in after they opened an ADR complaint (probably because its free for the end-user but costs the ISP). However if all of the above avenues fail and you continue to feel as if Supanets demand is unfounded then the Small Claims Court is often an effective weapon of last resort. Such courts may take issue with how theyve handled this, depending upon your circumstance.
Strictly speaking Supanet are within their rights to chase former customers for unpaid bills, even up to 6 years after the event, although this kind of approach will undoubtedly be viewed with displeasure by many of those targeted. Similarly the fact that the ISP does not seem to have previously apprised those customers who have contacted us of any such debt may reinforce that viewpoint.
Supatels Registered Office
STADYL Building
Corner Them.
Dervis-Florinis Street,
CY-1065 Nicosia,
Cyprus
Supanet Complaints Department
TCS Support Centre,
Time Technology Park,
Blackburn Road,
Burnley,
BB12 7TW
UPDATE 6:39am
Credits to some of our readers for spotting in the comments that the Quick Collect number may be linked to Internexus (company details), which previously used the Supanet name and are also linked to IX Wireless Ltd. (here). The Internexus Group seems to be in an on-going state of liquidation (expected to be dissolved on 5th May 2019).
UPDATE 27th February 2019
We have just received the following statement from Supanet.
Supanet Statement to ISPreview.co.uk: Supanet as a business have located a large number of historical accounts with outstanding balances which we are currently addressing. We appreciate the circumstances may not be of an ideal nature towards our historical customer base but as a business we are acting within statute barred regulations and our company terms & conditions. Quick Collect are a trading entity of Dox2you Ltd, they have no affiliation with Quick Collect Ltd who as you say dissolved in 2016. Quick Collect are located on the same trading estate as ourselves, amongst many other businesses, hence the ideal partnership to work closely together mediating outstanding balances. Specific chase cycles are in place enabling communication channels to be opened between Quick Collect and our historical customer base. If the chase cycle is not effective a Pre Action Protocol is issued by Supanet, should we intend to proceed with legal action, in line with required legislation. Should documentation be requested by our historical customer, the required information is provided proving validity of balances owed and each case file is addressed & analysed individually, ensuring correct advice is given. We can confirm the current circumstances, though not ideal, are of a genuine nature and ask it to be noted that the age of the balances are also being taken into consideration when ensuring amicable resolutions are reached.
By the sounds of it the letters that have been received were part of Supanets chase cycle and thus not a formal Pre Action Protocol letter. On the note about Quick Collect being a trading entity of Dox2you Ltd, we have found two related websites Dox2You and Quickdox (a joint Twitter account also exists). Sadly neither website includes a postal address. At least we were unable to find one at the time of writing and will request this detail from Supanet. We have put a few questions to Supanet in order to get further clarification on several points.
It doesnt appear theres any food besides ice cream, Commissioner Scott Wehrli said. We had another concept that came every couple years and asked for the same license you are asking for, and it was denied. Now she has two licenses and made a restaurant out of her store. There is a precedent that has been set. If youre going to ask, its combined with a restaurant. Quite frankly, weve gotten some really amazing concepts in town because of it. All these people invested big numbers and did what we forced them into.
Commentary The NLD's Path to Constitutional Liberalism
Political activists participate in a popular constitutional amendment campaign in 2014. / The Irrawaddy
Like many people around the world, there are those in Myanmar who honestly believe that democracy necessarily brings about civil rights, freedom of speech, equality, autonomy, religion, good governance and even property rights.
I disagree. Simply speaking, democracy is a political system in which the people elect the government. Under that basic definition, Myanmar has been a democracy since March 2016, when the National League for Democracy (NLD) managed to form a government after winning the general election in November 2015. But as news reports remind us on a daily basis, here in our country obstacles remain in terms of achieving civil rights, equality, press freedom, autonomy and many other political goals.
The fact is, democracy gives people the right to vote for the party of their choosing; it doesnt guarantee rights or any of the underpinnings of a liberal society mentioned above. Only constitutional liberalism can deliver those rights as well as the rule of law to citizens. In the United States, constitutional liberalism protects civil rights and liberties, even under an elected illiberal leader like President Donald Trump. In other words, democracy alone isnt enough.
We need a constitution that can protect those rights and liberties for the people.
Myanmars current Constitution is not really designed for the people; rather, it serves the interests of the military leadership. Its the Constitution itself that keeps the country from moving forward. Only constitutional reform will bring about a radical departure from Myanmars military-dominated system. The charter must be fundamentally transformed.
Last week, the NLD initiated in Parliament the process of forming a joint committee to discuss amending the Constitution. Predictably, the customary objections were raised and heated objections lodged by the military and lawmakers from its proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development Party. Nonetheless, the proposal to form the committee was approved by Parliament, in which the NLD and ethnic lawmakers hold a majority.
This is a battle, is it not? A constitutional battle!
Its a fight between the ruling NLD and the countrys powerful militaryand the majority of Myanmar people, including members of the ethnic communities, are on the side of the NLD.
In reaction to the NLDs move, some critics have asked, Why now? Why didnt the party start this right after it took office in 2016?
Actually, the NLD is acting according to an established plan. That plan was the basis of my analysis written in October 2016. The following paragraphs of that article help to explain the NLDs policy in regard to amending the Constitution:
When the incumbent government led by the State Counselor announced its policy for national reconciliation and Union-level peace in mid-October, it indicated a certain level of determination to suggest that this could be completed in accordance with a predetermined schedule. The policy was published in the governments newspapers after Daw Aung San Suu Kyi described them in her speech on the first anniversary of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement on Oct. 15.
The first two steps of the governments seven-point policy are to review and amend the political dialogue framework that was drafted by the previous government led by ex-general Thein Sein. The third and fourth steps are to continue convening the 21st Century Panglong Conference and to sign a Union peace agreement based on the 21st Century Panglong Conference.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her government never officially disclosed a timeframe for their political roadmap in establishing a democratic federal union, but she seems to have a specific deadline in mind. The fifth point clearly mentions amending the current Constitution in accordance with the Union agreement, while the sixth says to hold multi-party democratic elections in accordance with the amended Constitution.
These two points reveal her timeframe. The general elections mentioned in the governments policy must be a reference to the next election in 2020. Thus, before the 2020 election, the State Counselor must aim to execute the other points of the policy, including the Union-level agreement, and the amendment of the Constitution.
This clearly shows that the governments policies do not only aim to achieve peace but also to change national laws. In fact, such an attempt to amend the Constitution could be considered the bigger challenge, as the militarywhich enjoys the Constitutional privilegeswill definitely resist any change to its current status. Yet one of the longtime goals of the National League for Democracy, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been to create a Constitution that ensures all the people of Burma can live together in tranquility and security. It was officially written as such in the NLDs 2015 election manifesto.
Thus, for their fifth point, the NLD introduced its proposal to form the committee last week. My analysis is based on two thingsthe first is an assumption that the NLD leadership has deliberately waited for this moment to kick the process off. The second is based on privileged information from a reliable source who told me that the top leader of the former military regime, U Than Shwe, asked Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at a meeting in December 2015about one month after the NLD won a landslide victory in the general electionto wait for a couple of years before moving to amend the Constitution.
Its quite likely true, though only those two people would be able to confirm this information. If this agreement was in fact reached, it was likely in the form of a verbal exchange between the countrys most powerful ex-military leader and its most popular elected leader. At that time, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would have known at what pace she and her victorious NLD could proceed. At least she was able to do so in the knowledge that she was not opposed by U Than Shwe, who is believed to retain his influence in the military.
Back then, U Than Shwe was quoted as saying on his favorite grandsons Facebook page: After winning the election, its the reality all have to acceptthat Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be the countrys future leader. The grandson continued in his post that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi reportedly said, For the success of establishing [a brighter] future of Burma, I want to talk to Snr-Gen. Than Shwe for all-inclusive collaboration, including with the Tatmadaw [the military].
After their meeting on Dec. 4, 2015, according to his grandsons post, U Than Shwe pledged to support Suu Kyi as best he can, so long as she truly works for the development of the country.
With these two points in mind, I think the NLD put the wheels in motion in late January in order to try and achieve its goal, as planned, before 2020. Whether the military will collaborate with the NLD or not remains an open question, as demonstrated by its objection to the partys move in Parliament. But the current military commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and his appointees in Parliament said the military is not opposed in principle to amending the Constitution.
My main question is this: Might U Than Shwe be inclined to counsel the commander-in-chief to accommodate the NLDs constitutional reform to some extent? If he were to keep the promise of help that he made to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in 2015, the NLDs attempt to change the Constitution would be significantly more likely to yield fruit.
Certainly, the NLD will not try to amend every undemocratic article in the Constitution. Knowing that success depends on the militarys support, the ruling party will have to leave some space for the military to play a role in politics, even as it implements its plan to amend the Constitution.
If youre wondering about the NLDs priorities when it comes to constitutional reform, here are the articles most likely to be targeted for amendment and why they need to be fixed.
Read this story: Making Myanmars Constitution Democratic
Dateline Will Sound and Fury Over Constitution Reform Committee Signify Something?
The Irrawaddy discusses the NLD's proposal to form a committee to draft amendments to Myanmar's undemocratic Constitution and the prospects for genuine reform.
Welcome to Dateline Irrawaddy! I would call the topic we are going to discuss this week constitutional amendments and the five Ws. After the National League for Democracy (NLD) took steps to amend the Constitution, there are questions: why the NLD took steps at this point in time to amend the Constitution; who would support and who would oppose the constitutional amendments; what main provisions will be amended; the time frame for amending the Constitution; and how the Constitution can be amended. Ko Mya Aye, a member of the political leading committee of the federal democratic force, and political analyst Dr. Yan Myo Thein join me to discuss this. I am Kyaw Zwa Moe.
Ko Mya Aye, as Ive said, it is interesting to see what can be called in journalism terms the five Ws and one H of the NLDs move. People are asking why the NLD has taken steps only now to amend the Constitution and did nothing over the past three years in Parliament. There are just two years until the next elections. Can you explain briefly your views on its motives? Ive also obtained some information.
Mya Aye: People are speculating different things, and I have my own assessment. My view is simple. Id like to look at the principles of politics. It (the NLD) could not amend it over the past three years and it is just now making attempts to amend it. Some people accuse it of targeting the next elections. I dont see it like that. Amending the Constitution is one of the points raised by the NLD during its (2015) election campaign. My view is that the NLD has started trying to amend the Constitution in order to fulfill a promise it made to the people. Presumably, the NLD party or the government believes it is time to amend it now. On the other hand, as everyone knows, the 21st Century Panglong Conference is making little progress while the peace process and constitutional amendments are intertwined. I think (the NLD is taking steps to amend the Constitution) to facilitate the peace process.
Kyaw Zwa Moe: I heard this is privileged information that can be confirmed by only the two of them, and I dont know if it is true or not that after the NLD won the election in 2015, former Snr. Gen. Than Shwe and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi verbally agreed not to amend the Constitution immediately. Nobody can officially confirm it. Only the two of them know if it is true or not. The military raised objections when the proposal (to form a committee to draft constitutional amendments) was submitted. During the debate in Parliament, lawmakers from the USDP (Union Solidarity and Development Party) also strongly opposed it. So who supports it and who opposes it?
Yan Myo Thein: Amending the Constitution, no matter when it is done, is necessary for Myanmar politics. There is no point in arguing if it is too soon or too late. It is important that the amendments are approached strategically. I mean, the NLD proposed forming a joint committee to amend the Constitution. The proposal met opposition in Parliament. But all the people who opposed the proposal said they agree on amending the Constitution. The difference is the extent or degree of the amendments they want to see. Military representatives support amending the Constitution, and so do the USDP lawmakers. But they differ on the extent of the amendments they want to make. My view is that provisions in the Union Accord signed by the president, state counselor, commander-in-chief, deputy commander-in-chief and parliamentary speakers at the 21st Century Panglong Conference must be met and implemented in any way. Otherwise, public trust will decline.
KZM: Military representatives spoke in Parliament against changes to the Constitution that they havent seen yet. In 2014, the NLD proposed 168 amendments. I think the upcoming constitutional changes will be based on those 168 proposed amendments. Overall, three provisions are the most important. The first is to reduce the role of the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) in politics and to reduce the privileges it enjoys. The second is to reduce the authority of the president. In my view it is intended to grant greater autonomy for chief ministers of regions and states. These two are the main points. They are advisable according to democratic norms. But reducing the role of the Tatmadaw is quite problematic 25 percent of the seats in Parliament are reserved (for lawmakers appointed by the military) and the Tatmadaw has a political leadership role. The NLD proposed amending those provisions. How serious will the confrontation be? And can the committee deliver good results?
MA: The Tatmadaw and USDP oppose the formation of the committee, saying that it does not comply with the procedures. They dont say they oppose changing the Constitution. But then, we cant hold expectations. When it comes to politics, reality and wishes are two different things. The reality is we have reasons to be concerned that the country will be thrown back into chaos when there is growing friction. But we must step up to the plate. In principle, we cant make concessions. No way. My view is that it is important that our country has a 100 percent civilian government. There is a convergence in the NCA (Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement) and Union Accord, which mention a Union based on democracy and federalism. I think this is the most basic point in amending the Constitution. It was agreed and signed by the commander-in-chief, NLD, ethnic political parties and ethnic armed groups. It is enshrined in both the NCA and the Union Accord. There is a need to amend the Constitution in line with that. If this yardstick is to be applied, all we need is the Tatmadaws approval of discussion on these provisions.
KZM: Article 8 of Chapter 1 of the Constitution says the Union is constituted by the Union system. But as you two said, what was agreed at the Panglong Peace Conference by all, including the Tatmadaw, was a Union based on democracy and federalism. So, as they have already agreed on it, can related provisions be amended?
YMT: Yes, it should be possible to amend them. Section 7 says the Union practices a genuine, disciplined, multi-party democracy system. But in the Union Accord, genuine and disciplined are not included. The Union Accord is a pact agreed and signed by the leaders of the government, Parliament, Tatmadaw, ethnic political parties and ethnic armed groups. So what we are waiting to see is whether the constitutional amendments due to take place in Parliament can make changes in line with the Union Accord. Who will deter those changes? And how can we overcome the deterrence? We need to think about it.
KZM: So it is likely that the NLD leaders will change the Constitution with reference to the Union Accord. The Constitution mentions genuine, disciplined, multi-party democracy. In its proposed amendments, the NLD says it need not modify democracy. But in the view of some authoritarians and conservative leaders around the world, democracy is anarchy. So (the military) put disciplined before democracy.
YMT: In the Union Accord, it is simple. It just says multi-party democracy, with no adjective before it.
KZM: With the word disciplined, it seems that democracy itself is not disciplined. There was opposition when the proposal to form the committee was submitted. Ko Mya Aye, how can the NLD convince the opposition?
MA: It is no longer the time to sing lullabies. The Tatmadaw said that it wishes to change the Constitution. And so did the USDP. The key is the phrase the Union based on democracy and federalism. This is the terminology for the interim period before we reach federal status. There is a need to amend the Constitution in line with that phrase.
KZM: What should be done if the lullabies cant be sung?
MA: Politicians should seek the publics opinion. The Constitution is eight years old now, and it doesnt serve the country but causes delays in the peace process. Suffice it to say that it is not good in all aspects. In my view, people should express peacefully, within the legal framework, their desire to change the Constitution, whether or not (the military) accepts it. It would be best for the country if the commander-in-chief and the peoples leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, negotiate around a table.
KZM: For the time being it remains a dream. Ko Yan Myo Thein, as it has been agreed in the Union Accord, it (Article 8) can be changed in the Constitution to a Union based on democracy and federalism. But the most important thing, I think, is the role of the military. For example, 25 percent of the lawmakers in Parliament are military representatives nominated by the commander-in-chief. Perhaps the NLD is pragmatic. It doesnt say such provisions must be changed immediately. Instead, it says they shall be amended gradually through negotiation focused on harmony. So it seems that a space is reserved for the Tatmadaw and Tatmadaw leaders, doesnt it?
YMT: The most important thing to do to tackle the constitutional crisis is to have dialogue between the decision makers the civilian leaders and the military leaders. Another thing is that the Tatmadaw said it would leave Parliament some day, but we dont know when. We dont know how long it will take. Taking a look at the closest example, there were military representatives in the Indonesian Parliament. But they have a roadmap for what percent to reduce their representation by in certain years. Due to the lack of such a roadmap, we dont know how long we have to walk to get to the end of the tunnel.
MA: I think the NLD government must have discussed it, as it is now three years since it took office. They (the military) oppose the formation of a committee on constitutional amendments. We dont want the country to suffer. It is wasting time to get back into the argument, and the people will suffer. So there should be negotiations. When we talk about constitutional change, one group thinks it is about purging the 25-percent block of military representatives, and the other group, the military, thinks the same. But it is not the case.
KZM: To be frank and pragmatic, it is also not impossible.
MA: Given the situation, we have to go step by step. Rather than asking them to leave gradually, what I would like to focus on is the emergence of a new Constitution that guarantees a Union based on democracy and federalism. The Tatmadaw says it would leave Parliament only after peace is achieved. Its meaning is broad. It calls for agreement between the Tatmadaw, Parliament, government, ethnic leaders. As there is little progress implementing the Union Accord, it is time lawmakers, including the Tatmadaws, try to collaborate to change the Constitution in order to facilitate the 21st Century Panglong.
KZM: It is now 2019, and the NLD has more than 20 months until the next elections in 2020 to amend the Constitution. When do you think it intends to end the process whether amendments are made or not? Do you think it has a time frame in mind to realize as many of the 168 proposed amendments as it can through the committee? The current government has a roadmap for peace that calls for amending the Constitution and holding elections based on those amendments before transferring power to the next government.
YMT: The first Parliament [under U Thein Sein] dissolved in 2015, the year of the election. So I think the (amendment) process is intended to end in early 2020. We want to change many things, but according to Article 436 (a) and (b), no amendment can be made without the approval of more than 75 percent of lawmakers. This means the Constitution cant be changed without the consent of military representatives. But I expect that there will be potential for constitutional amendments that allow local people to elect their own chief ministers. There are many impossibilities and uncertainties, but I hope it is possible. Presumably the Tatmadaw has given it the green light. Ethnic lawmakers and ethic political parties also want it. So I think it is possible. I dont deny that there should be more significant amendments than that.
KZM: It is one of the NLDs proposed amendments. It is about reducing the authority of the president and granting greater autonomy to regional chief ministers and parliaments. Regarding Article 436, the NLD in 2014 proposed that it should be amended by two-thirds of elected lawmakers or more than 50 percent of all Union lawmakers, in which case military representatives would also be included. So that proposed amendment is interesting to see. The most interesting proposed amendment to me is to replace the existing state flag. Perhaps you two have read it. The proposed amendment says it is unacceptable that the state flag is completely different from the previous one that boosted the morale of the people during the independence struggle and that people cherished greatly. So they have even thought about this. They have thought about subtle details. But we dont know to what extent the Constitution can be changed. Ko Mya Aye, what is your view on constitutional amendments?
MA: The Tatmadaw said it agrees to amend the Constitution, and the NLD has now submitted the proposal to form the committee, and [the Tatmadaw and USDP] oppose forming the committee. I wish everyone would cooperate to amend the Constitution. I dont want to see a blame game being played in amending the Constitution. The country will suffer if a blame game is played. I would like to urge the leaders of the Tatmadaw, government, NLD and ethnic groups to seriously consider this.
KZM: Everyone agrees the Constitution should be amended. But the USDPs and Tatmadaw representatives objection to forming the committee amounts to indirect opposition to constitutional amendments. Ko Yan Myo Thein, how do you think this can be overcome?
YMT: It should be overcome through dialogue. There is a need to hold a national referendum again on the 2008 Constitution.
KZM: It will cost a lot of money.
YMT: It is because 92.48 percent (the official yes vote in a referendum on the Constitution in 2008) is not genuine. No matter how much effort we make based on a fake foundation, the country cant be (a) genuine (democracy). So I think there is a need to conduct a nationwide referendum on the existing Constitution.
KZM: This is another issue. Thank you both for your contributions! We will wait and see how successful the constitutional amendment efforts are.
Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Congratulations to RTE on its documentary series, The Irish Revolution (February 4).
In the first episode the narrator informed us that Britain rejected the democratic mandate of the Irish people, as clearly expressed in the 1918 election. It is rare to hear this simple fact of history so boldly stated.
For too long, the dominant narrative in Irish historiography has succeeded in downplaying the reality of this seminal event in Irish revolutionary history, to the extent that it became known as the forgotten election.
Roy Foster, former professor of Irish history at Oxford, for example, devoted less than half a page (p265) in his almost 400-page opus, Vivid Faces, to the December 1918 election, and failed to accord it any real significance.
Back in 1965, by contrast, the eminent JC Beckett from the unionist community, acknowledged the seismic result as follows: Sinn Fein could now claim, with justice, to represent majority opinion in Ireland [The making of modern Ireland, p 445].
Democracy would have dictated that Britain withdrew its troops, thereafter, and disbanded its armed police. But, then, that is hardly what empires are about!
The first episode was not without its faults, however, such as the assigning of the Famine to the failure of the potato crop without reference to the bulging granaries and the well-fed animals in our fields throughout the period in question.
Billy Fitzpatrick
Terenure
Dublin
Does Liam Neeson deserve to be shunned for all of eternity? No. Most importantly, do we need to sincerely listen to black people about why they are hurt by his comments? Yes, writes Joyce Fegan
We have more in common, you and I, than we do in difference. Though nowadays, that can be hard to tell.
When US president Theodore Roosevelt took office in 1901 he became the leader of a country that was economically shaken and a people who felt different from one another, a palpable disconnect between the privileged elite and the beleaguered working class.
So Teddy Roosevelt took it upon himself to take the train around the US, not just visiting the states he had won in his election campaign, but visiting the places where people didnt vote for him. He did this train journey every spring and autumn for six weeks at a time. He did it, he said, to make Americans feel a common sense of citizenry. We have things in common, as a people, he would say.
Nowadays, in the age of Trump and Twitter, there is very little common sense of citizenry. The 0-60 rush to outrage sends us into one of two camps, good or bad, left or right, right or wrong, places without middle ground and devoid of grey area.
This week we had the pillorying of Liam Neeson for admitting he once had violent thoughts about killing a black person after a friend of his was raped.
Understandably triggering for a descendant of a slave, or for anyone whose family members were beaten, burnt, or hanged? Absolutely. Deeply infuriating for a black person supposedly living in post-racial America, but silently discriminated against on a regular basis? Without a doubt.
Neeson became saint or sinner. You were either righteous in your outrage or you were told that you were vastly overreacting. Him? An instant pariah, his decades of work, both paid and charitable, became suddenly invisible to us. Some say his career may even be over.
There was rupture, but we seem to have little capacity for repair in this Trump-Twitter age. We throw all babies out with the bath water. Its called splitting, a psychological term, more commonly known as all-or-nothing thinking. Its where we cannot process a dichotomy of both positive and negative qualities in ourselves or in another person. A person is either good or bad. We cannot bring the good and bad parts together into an acceptable whole.
Its like the publicly declared vegan and climate-change activist who is seen wearing a cashmere scarf. She is rounded on by her own liberal tribe and ousted from the fold for this seemly unforgivable crime.
The ongoing nurses strike, there are polarised camps here too. You either stand with nurses or you dont. Some believe their strike is putting patient safety at risk, others understand that understaffing and the inability to retain trained nurses is putting patients safety at risk 365 days a year.
We seem to be splitting and polarising like never before.
Pulitzer prize-winning historian and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin was being interviewed on NPR the day before the US midterms last November. The writer, known for her meticulous attention to detail and evidenced-based argument, was asked about the state of world. It is certainly the most partisan time in my lifetime, she said.
Leaning on facts, she referred to how American politics worked in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. She cited how Republican and Democratic members of Congress played poker together and how they drank together.
Speaking specifically about the progress made in the 1960s, she referred to the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the establishment of publicly funded journalism in the form of NPR and PBS, the passing of voting rights, and of medicare.
It was an extraordinary time, she said, when Republicans and Democrats worked together.
But nowadays, we see those with opposing ideologies as other, as a traitor. It is hard to work together to get anything done when you view colleagues or fellow citizens, either online or in real life, as the enemy.
Then there is the next level, where we people intentionally spout out abuse, firing off missives from the greasy screens of handheld devices.
In Ireland, we have an asylum seeker, Ellie Kisyombe, who is running for public office in the upcoming local elections. She was profiled in the news last weekend.
The vitriol towards both the journalist and Ellie online was disgusting, so much so that the journalist in question signed off Twitter for the week. No doubt the cyber wrath was a stirred-up controversy contrived and fuelled by a small few who troll for an unpaid living. Their ideology does not reflect my Ireland. To be honest, I am not sure whose Ireland it does.
Is Liam Neeson in this category of person? No. Did he unknowingly reveal an unconscious bias? Yes. Does he deserve to be shunned for all of eternity? No. And most importantly, do we need to sincerely listen to black people about why they are hurt by his comments? Yes.
In the age of Twitter and Trump, we have to relearn the basic human skill we teach our children, the one that is emphasised by Irish psychologist Joanna Fortune that fundamental concept of rupture and repair.
I make a mistake, an honest, genuine one, I hurt you, and I am sincerely remorseful. You hang around with your understandable hurt for a while. And then we join forces. I listen to you, I learn and we move forward. All-important progress is made.
As Ms Fortune says in her TED talk on social media and public shaming, we need to get better at talking, reading, and reflecting before we respond, and before we rush to see what the herd is thinking.
But not for a Hollywood actors sake, for our own.
The likes of Trump and trolls delight in division, but humanity thrives on understanding, forgiveness, and togetherness.
As the officer approached the vehicle, the driver disobeyed orders to stop the vehicle and attempted to hit the officer with the vehicle, according to a statement from the Waukegan Police Department. The officer fired his duty pistol striking the driver. The vehicle continued to flee the area until it crashed into a telephone pole a block away.
Valentines Day is almost upon us and there is no denying that silky, fragrant wines such as Pinot Noir, Grenache and Viognier can play their part in the noble art of seduction.
These days however wine is facing some stiff competition from the gin boom which is showing no sign slowing down.
The gin and tonic is arguably the most perfectly balanced drink and a decent metaphor for love given that it manages to be both bitter and sweet at the same time.
I was reminded of this once again at an event in Ashford Castle which has recently opened a mini Gin School for guests in conjunction with the Shed Distillery and Gunpowder Gin.
The Ashford Castle Gin Tray Tasting Experience allows guests to learn about how gin is made and the crucial art of balancing a gin with the correct tonic and garnish, and you get the chance to distill your own mini bottle of gin.
Ashford has a good selection of gins from all over the world and it was good to see how Gunpowder stood up so well against them.
Gunpowder uses gunpowder tea as one of its botanicals but also Chinese lemon, kaffir lime and grapefruit botanicals and I have found that you can bring out different subtleties of flavour depending on whether you use herbs (eg, basil, bay, thyme), fruits (eg, redcurrants, raspberry, strawberry) or add lime, a strip of lemon zest, rose petals or jasmine flowers if they are in season.
If you are cooking your loved one dinner this Valentines Day I suggest beginning the meal with an experimental gin tasting or failing that present them with a voucher for a night away in Ashford the only way you will get to taste pastry chef Paula Stakelums gin infused desserts and chocolates.
Other gins I am enjoying these days include Chinnery (which also has some Chinese Tea botanicals), Ornabrak, Berthas Revenge and Glendalough Wild Botanical and do track down the Irish made tonics from Poachers which are a little less sweet, I particularly like their Wild version with elderflower.
Recommendations below include an inexpensive sparkler, a couple of Roses and mention of Grenache, a grape that produces lovely silky wines when done well in the likes of Priorat and Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
Willunga 100 from McLaren Vale is one of the best exponents of the grape and I suggest two of their wines.
Best value under 15
Dona Paula Malbec Rose 2018, Argentina 15
Stockists: Tesco, SuperValu
This is on special offer at the moment and down from its usual price of 17.
Grown in Lujan de Cuyo in the Upper Mendoza valley at 1,000m above sea level.
Picked early, this has a pleasing freshness and is properly dry with good acidity.
Aromas of red berries and a touch of violets, lively and fruity with dry red fruit crispness on the finish.
Dona Paula Black Edition 2016, Argentina 12
Stockists: SuperValu
On special offer at this price in SuperValu until the 13th of this month with a saving of 3.
This is a blend of 60% malbec with 35% cabernet plus 5% petit verdot and has some noticeable oak ageing.
Toasted vanilla and blackberry aromas, red pepper and minty touches, fruity and supple and perfect for a big lump of steak.
Tenuta SantAnna Prosecco, Italy 12.99
Stockist: JJ ODriscolls, Curious Wines Cork, Red Nose Wines Clonmel, Vintry Rathgar, Independents
I rarely recommend frizzante prosecco as most of it is barely fizzy and overly sweet.
This is one of the best with a decent mousse and a dry freshness.
White peach and citrus aromas with lemony crisp fruit and that classic soft prosecco silkiness.
Best value over 15
Willunga 100 Grenache Rose 2017, McLaren Vale, Australia 17.99-18.99
Stockists: ODonovans, Cinnamon Cottage, Grapevine, Hole in The Wall, Jus de Vine, www.wineonline.ie
Willunga 100 is almost fully focused on Grenache, the primary grape in Chateauneuf du Pape and Cotes du Rhone and one of the most common grapes used for rose in France.
This is whole bunch pressed and has lively red fruit aromas strawberries, cherries and floral notes.
Willunga 100 Grenache 2016, McLaren Vale, Australia 18-19.99
Stockists: ODonovans, Cinnamon Cottage, Grapevine, Jus de Vine, www.wineonline.ie
From bush vines up to 80 years old and an average age of 60 from small plots.
Fermented a little warmer with lots of pumping over and extraction and mostly tank aged plus old oak barrels.
Bright aromas of red fruits and soft tannins, silky and dare I say it, sexy on the palate with good length.
Torres Salmos 2014, Priorat, Spain 20
Stockists: SuperValu
This is one of my favourite Torres wines and not widely available so it is great to see it in SuperValu as part of their Spanish Wine Sale which begins on February 14.
As well as Grenache this has Carignan and Syrah and is normally around 30 so this is a great price. Cherry and blackberry aromas silky and supple with a gorgeous juicy character.
Kya deLongchamps celebrates 30 years of romance on ice at the worlds original ice hotel in Swedish Lapland.
While we flip on our slippers, throw on the anthracite and logs, and determine to keep our homes at 21C by day, right now, guests in Jukkasjarvi in the county of Norrbotten in Sweden, settle in for the night surrounded by a crystalline wonderland.
Wrapped in deerskin, presumably clinging to each other, and hunkered into polar-rated sleeping bags, the ambient indoor temperatures are -5C.
The only parts of the Ice Hotel reaching anything we would regard as rational indoor temperatures are the sauna and the hot tubs (outdoors of course).
To use a toilet or shower you have to journey to a warm bathroom facility attached to the hotel (presumably at a smart sprint).
Before bed, you can drink a cocktail in an individually crafted ice glass, beneath ice chandeliers, resting on an ice throne and wander the vast rooms and corridors of the 6,000 sq m frozen palace.
Ice art has fascinated sculptors for centuries.
The Japanese have a particular talent with the medium. Resident, miner, entrepreneur and engineer Yngve Bergqvist travelled from Jukkasjarvi to Japan to see the process in action.
Inspired and determined to invest in the tourism potential of the small town, Bergqvist invited two ice sculptor masters from Japan back to his adopted home.
In the spring of 1989, a well-publicised ice sculpting event was launched. The Japanese contingent decided to stay overnight in the igloo structures created during the master classes.
At 200km north of the Arctic Circle, this simple act of thermal bravado demonstrated to Bergqvist that a comfortable stay (with the right gear) was possible even in the dead of winter.
In the following few years, during the ice- carving events, visitors also requested the chance to stay inside their frozen creations in the 250 sq m igloo Arctic Hall, and the ambitious plan for a full seasonal hotel in ice was born.
The concept of an iced space has been copied in bars (Amsterdam has a notable example), overnight hotels and as wings of standard hotels elsewhere, but Jukkasjarvi vision with its catenary arch self-supporting cathedral-style ceilings throughout, is the original commercial enterprise.
Bergqvist regards the hotel as a renewable gift from the River Torne.
This strange, fantastical building, for all its exquisite detailing, is a seasonal temporary structure sustained by the weather from December to April.
Its an annually created piece of sculpture started in March when blocks of ice are worked on in sub-zero storage to make small portable detailing: fixtures, glasses, lighting pieces.
Blocks of up to 990 tonnes of ice and three times that amount of packed snow are brought from the Torne River.
The natural Arctic ice is taken from a carefully maintained ice field. Its source and character are deeply respected by the local community, artists and staff involved in the hotel.
Petra W Lindh, who has worked at Jukkasjarvi for 21 years writes: For us, the natural beauty and unique story of each individual block of ice provide inspiration that can never be found in artificial ice.
A mixture of snow and ice termed snice is sprayed onto preformed moulds to cast the buildings larger pieces.
Forty artists are taken on to work on the Ice Hotel every year.
The individuals forward ideas and are not required to have actually performed an ice sculpture to qualify.
The collaboration, unique focus and transient quality of the building are all part of its draw for creatives from all over the world.
It takes six weeks to assemble the wondrous surroundings and pack the floors with fresh snow.
The building is powered entirely by solar energy from their solar cell park, a model in sustainable imaginings.
In 2016, Bergqvist, indefatigable and leading guests at the Ice Hotel on rafting expeditions during their stay, added a permanent structure to the site which can now host 20 ice suites year round.
The styling incorporates Baroque splendour and art deco. Its a dazzling enchanted place a dream only hinted at in CS Lewiss Chronicles of Narnia or in the towering spectacle of Elsas castle in Disneys Frozen.
Nothing can quite prepare you for travelling through its diamond-hard, glistening halls.
Nature delivers and reclaims this building in a pleasing cycle facilitated by its makers.
When the air warms and the hotel melts in May, its 2,000 blocks of structural elements are softly ingested back into the river from whence they came, and plans for the Ice Hotel to rise again begin.
Advice: One night in a cold room followed by a couple of nights in a warm room is recommended by the Ice Hotel, as it gives you time to join wilderness excursions on the days when you have a warm room to return to in the evening.
The right choice of layering and thermals is crucial to the comfort of the stay, especially as part of a wedding.
Prices vary from 390 to 560 per room. Day trips are also available.
Flights to Kiruna airport are served from Stockholm (from 140 one way out of Dublin). Icehotel.com.
SDLP members will gather in Newry today to vote on whether the party should link up with Fianna Fail.
Party leader Colm Eastwood said he is hopeful the move will be endorsed by the party faithful.
However, another proposal has been put forward calling for the SDLP to forge greater links with a range of political parties south of the border.
Mr Eastwood insisted the democratic foundations of the SDLP meant there was space for healthy disagreement and debate.
His comments came as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar expressed hope the SDLP's relationship with his Fine Gael party would not suffer as a consequence of the potential Fianna Fail partnership.
Another proposal, put forward by members opposed to the Fianna Fail deal, will instead advocate the SDLP adopt a non-exclusive approach to cross-party cooperation.
Under these terms, it would seek to forge better links with a broader range of political parties in the Republic of Ireland. Many founding grandees of the party favour the latter option.
Mr Eastwood, who met the Taoiseach in Belfast on Friday to discuss Brexit, said he was confident members would back his plan.
"What's going to happen tomorrow is there are two different proposals, one from the leadership and another proposal - I think the one from the leadership will get support. I hope it will," he said.
"The bottom line in this is we are a very democratic party, we can have a discussion, we can even disagree, we can debate and then we can come out united together - and I think that's what's going to happen tomorrow.
"We understand very well that politics has changed here, Brexit has changed everything and it is important that the SDLP are involved in that change.
"I believe that the proposal that I will be putting to the membership tomorrow is one that can get support, not just in the room but, more importantly, with the public out there, and we need to show that our values can survive and thrive in the next decade and I think that's what this is all about."
Asked if he was concerned some members would quit with party if the Fianna Fail link-up is agreed, he said: "No, I think this is a democratic party. There have been things in the past in the SDLP that I have disagreed with.
"You have to stay in and make your arguments and then move on if you are not successful.
"The bottom line in this is the SDLP brand remains, our integrity remains, our independence remains, what we are talking about is a partnership to work together to meet the big challenges of today.
"Brexit has changed the world and if the SDLP are serious about being a player in the future we have to change, too."
Mr Varadkar, the leader of Fine Gael, was asked about the prospective link-up during his visit to Belfast.
"I think primarily that is a decision for the SDLP and I totally respect their right to make whatever decision they think is best for their party," he said.
"The only thing I would say is the Irish government has always had a very close relationship with the SDLP for decades now and my party Fine Gael has had a good relationship with the SDLP, too.
"I just hope that anything they decide to do with Fianna Fail doesn't jeopardise that into the future."
An elected member of Cork County Council has failed in her attempt to block the development of a large apartment block in Passage West.
Marcia DAlton, an Independent councillor from the town, had appealed to An Bord Pleanala the decision of Cork Co Council to grant planning permission for the development of 18 apartments at Pembroke Wood in the town.
Ms DAlton was backed by other local residents, including residents of Pembroke Wood, who submitted 26 objections against the project.
However, the planning appeals authority has upheld the ruling by the local authority and said the three-storey apartment block would, subject to a number of planning conditions, not seriously injure the visual amenities of the area and would be acceptable in terms of traffic safety and convenience and access and car-parking.
Ms DAlton and the residents had complained that there was already a deficiency of car-parking spaces for existing apartments in the estate, while the provision of 30 spaces for the development was inadequate.
The councillor described public transport services for Passage West as deficient, infrequent, and unreliable, with only one bus per hour for most of the day to Cork city.
She claimed that residents had to rely on creche-designated parking in the evenings, while cars were forced to park on both sides of the roads in the estate.
Ms DAlton said the parking was a threat to pedestrians,while also impeding access for emergency vehicles.
She also complained that the apartment block represented gross over-development of a restricted site, and that this could not be justified in a town like Passage West.
Although questions were raised over whether the developer, Rowan View Developments, owned the site, the company said it had bought the property in September 2016.
As part of the granting of planning permission, Rowan View Developments is required to pay 32,285 to the council for public infrastructure, as well as 36,800 towards recreational facilities.
The building firm had originally submitted plans for 24 apartments, but revised down the scale of the development, following concerns raised by the council. It also abandoned plans for commercial units on the ground floor, as the company claimed they were no longer viable.
These units were contained in the original design for Pembroke Wood.
The owners of two buildings which partially collapsed in the centre of a West Cork town have been ordered to demolish the damaged structures and make them safe.
Cork County Council confirmed the move yesterday as it announced it is extending the closure period of Bandons Oliver Plunkett St until March 11 following last Decembers collapse.
The council warned it may have to extend the closure period further, pending progress on the demolition and on making the area safe.
The local authority closed part of the street on December 10 after concerns were raised about the condition of privately-owned buildings on the street.
Scaffolding had been erected at the front of the three-storey terraced buildings and there was mounting concern that the structures presented a serious risk to public safety.
In the early hours of the following morning, a large part of the front facade of the buildings collapsed onto the road below.
Even though the incident occurred at around 2am, the council said the road closure was a very important action that prevented falling debris from injuring people walking on the street or travelling past in vehicles. Since the incident, the council said it has been working with the property owners who are responsible for the buildings to ensure the area is safe and so that public access to roads and footpaths can be restored as early as possible.
A worker at the scene at Oliver Plunkett St, Bandon, after the partial collapse of buildings. Picture: Denis Boyle
However, given the complexity of the situation, the council said it has invoked statutory powers which involved serving notice on the owners of the properties at numbers 2 and 3 Oliver Plunkett St to require them to demolish and make safe the dangerous buildings.
The properties affected by the collapsed section of wall are in private ownership but the council is committed to bringing about an early solution so that the road can be reopened to traffic and pedestrians, the local authority said. Until this is achieved, the council must ensure that appropriate safety measures are in place to protect the public from rubble and falling debris.
With the road closure period extended, the council said it will continue to work with the property owners to get the road reopened as soon as possible.
However, it said the speed at which the council will be able to reopen the road will be very much determined by the level of co-operation and action of the owners of the properties who, the council said, are primarily responsible for ensuring the demolition and safety of the properties.
The risk that the damaged buildings pose to public safety must be addressed before a full or partial opening of the road is considered, the council said.
The situation is under constant review and any steps necessary to protect the public or progress the demolition will be prioritised as a matter of course.
Gardai are seeking to reassure North Dublin residents following the latest shooting in the capital.
John Lawless, a 39-year-old father of three, was gunned down while on his way to work in Darndale yesterday morning.
Over 6m from a fund totalling 23m has been awarded to seven educational projects in Munster.
In all, 22 projects are to receive awards from the Innovation and Transformation fund which was launched last year by the Department of Education and Skills.
The Irish Universities Association receives the largest award over 2.9m, to work with the countrys eight universities on improving the digital skills of university lecturers.
The second largest award of over 2.8m has gone to Letterkenny Institute of Technology which is working with Galway Mayo Institute of Technology and Sligo Institute of technology on developing flexible learning in the West/North-West region.
Some of the third level institutions are partnering with organisations such as An Cosan, Family Carers Ireland, and the Disability Federation of Ireland to develop better ways of ensuring education is open to as many people as possible.
University College Cork has been awarded almost 1m to develop a range of transition modules to support students in making the best of themselves when they graduate.
Trinity College Dublin has been awarded 1.5m to develop student support services to address mental health issues. The funding commitment of 23m for the 22 proposals will be allocated on an annual basis until 2021.
Mary Mitchell OConnor, minister of state for higher education, said the fund would support a range of projects focused on developing new pathways and methods of teaching to support the participation of students from a diverse range of backgrounds.
They will help students to develop individually, address student retention and support the enhanced progression of students across higher education institutions, she said.
Cork-based Fine Gael senator Colm Burke has said he is furious following online allegations that teenagers were tasked with inserting his leaflets into a community newsletter during school time.
Screenshots are circulating on social media of what appears to be messages from a school pupil alleging that they were asked to insert flyers from Mr Burke into a newsletter during school hours.
A teacher who runs the newsletter at the centre of the allegations has denied the claims, which emerged on Twitter.
Screenshots of text messages the first apparently sent at 12.25pm yesterday states there are about 5 of us in a class of double woodwork where the teacher has us just putting leaflets into magazines listening to reggae.
The screenshot also shows a picture of a leaflet from Mr Burke.
The Irish Examiner contacted Mr Burke, who said he was shocked when he saw the allegations.
He said he pays a fee to The Glanmire News so that it will insert his leaflets into the community freesheet, but that he has no hand, act, or part in how the distribution is handled.
He said he was furious over online allegations that he knowingly allowed schoolchildren to do such promotional work on his behalf.
He later issued a statement in which he said the practice is highly unconventional and inappropriate, and done without his knowledge.
On finding out about this incident, I contacted the school and instructed they cease the involvement of their pupils, and I have also followed up with the newspaper to ensure that it never happens again, he said.
The Irish Examiner contacted Mick Young, a secondary school teacher who runs The Glanmire News.
He said he does pay some students to distribute the newsletter, but that it is done in their spare time with their parents consent.
Mr Young said allegations he asked students to carry out such work during school hours were incorrect.
He said he occasionally brings in materials for his newsletter into his woodwork room and that some students may have found the leaflets there.
The Irish Examiner contacted the secondary school at the centre of the allegations. A representative took a message, but no response to queries were received in time for this articles publication.
Office of Public Works projects will be the first to face the cut as the Government tries to make up for escalating overruns on the National Childrens Hospital.
The finance minister has told departments he may adjust their capital budgets as 100m must be found to address the escalating hospital costs, with the OPW being told it will have around 3m taken from its allocation.
As Health Minister Simon Harris faced calls to resign, Paschal Donohoe has moved to claw back 100m from projects earmarked for this year. He will bring a memo to Cabinet on Tuesday.
A tranche of documents released by the Department of Health this week revealed that Mr Harris was told about a 191m overspend on the hospital construction, as well as an additional 200m claim submitted by contractors BAM in August.
Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald said Mr Harris position is untenable and that Fianna Fail needs to stop protecting the minister for health.
She wrote to Micheal Martin asking him to back its motion of no confidence in Mr Harris, while the Labour Party demanded to know what the Government told Fianna Fail ahead of the last budget about the hospital cost overrun.
Mr Martin said Mr Harris needs to correct the Dail and he needs to apologise to the Dail for not providing full information on the cost overruns. He called for the release of all documents relating to the hospital and all briefings the minister received on the cost escalations.
However, he said it is easy to put down motions and a minister can resign and there is a danger that the full facts may not emerge if a minister was forced out of office.
The chapter cannot close on this prematurely in terms of the truth coming out, said Mr Martin.
However, on RTEs Drivetime Fianna Fail Sligo TD Marc MacSharry called on his party to terminate the confidence and supply agreement with Fine Gael and demand that Mr Harris quit.
Speaking in Belfast, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he had absolute confidence in Mr Harris.
Meanwhile, Mr Donohoe is to bring a list of projects that will be directly impacted to Cabinet on Tuesday, with everything from the cath lab in Waterford to the national radiation oncology programme in Cork, as well as schools and road projects expected to be considered for postponement. However, the Taoiseach yesterday said this would be manageable, pointing to the fact that the increase in the capital budget for 2019 was 1.5bn.
OPW Minister Kevin Boxer Moran was yesterday ordered not to appear before the finance committee next week, as the amount he will have to spend on capital projects this year will change.
The OPW wrote to the finance committee yesterday morning stating
that
it had been advised that their revised estimate will be adjusted in the coming weeks.
I understand that a memorandum will go to Government on Tuesday on the National Childrens Hospital which may propose a change in a number of departmental allocations for 2019, the letter to the committee stated. In the event that the memorandum is agreed by Government the OPW Revised Estimate may change.
In light of the above, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has asked that the consideration of the OPW estimate by the Select Committee on Finance, scheduled for February 12 is postponed to allow for the Revised Estimates to reissue to Departments.
Committee chairman John McGuinness turned down this request, stating Mr Moran must still appear.
Numerous departments last night refused to say if there have been direct discussions on adjusting their budgets, with a number stating that Mr Donohoe would be dealing with the issue next week with a view to determining how the additional costs can be accommodated within the existing envelope and within the minimum of disruption to project delivery.
999 operators talked a Dublin woman and her partner through the birth of their baby last night.
Paramedics from Tallaght fire station arrived to look after mum and the newborn, and take them to hospital.
The law in Ireland recognises the rights of recreational users to come on to private land, for the purposes of recreational activity, such as hiking. Landowners have limited rights, and obligations are imposed upon them in the case of recreational users.
The same legal obligations are owed by landowners or occupiers to trespassers as are owed to recreational users.
A landowner must not intentionally injure a recreational user or trespasser, or damage their property, and must also make sure not to act with reckless disregard for their safety. Obligations extend to requiring the landowner to warn a potential trespasser or recreational user of any danger on the land, for example a cliff edge, a grass-covered hole in a field.
The rights of landowners differ, however, when it comes to hunters on land. Under section 44 of the Wildlife Act 1976, it is an offence for a person who is not the owner or occupier of land, without the permission of the owner or occupier, or the permission of a person who enjoys sporting rights over the land:
to hunt an animal on that land
to enter the land for the purposes of hunting an animal on that land
or to carry a firearm, weapon etc, which is capable of being used for hunting an animal on that land
Landowners are not obliged to have a sign to indicate that they do not give permission to hunters to shoot animals on their land.
Hunters are presumed to be aware of this law.
It is for the hunter to prove that he had permission to hunt on the land.
If you are a farmer who does not wish for people to come onto your land, it may be advisable to contact any local gun clubs to make their members aware that they do not have permission to use your land.
Equally, if people are coming on to your land to shoot without your permission, contacting the local gun club may be sufficient to put an end to the activity.
It is not uncommon for easements regarding shooting rights to exist over lands, particularly where the lands are near to hunting grounds.
An easement is a right to use or cross someone elses land for a particular purpose, and easements also exist for fishing rights, rights to cut turf etc.
If these are in existence, they should appear as burdens on the folio, or on the title deeds of the lands.
It is important to investigate title when purchasing land, particularly if it is farmland situated close to hunting grounds.
It is a serious offence to hunt birds or animals without a licence. It is also an offence under Irish law to use a firearm or weapon without the required licence, and to hunt animals outside of their specified hunting season.
The Gardai should be notified if someone is hunting illegally, as the destruction of species at particular times of the year can be detrimental to the local environment and ecosystems. Hunters entering land without permission, in order to shoot wild animals, can be a major problem, particularly where there are livestock on the land.
It is possible to take a civil action in trespass to land.
However, very little compensation would be available, where no actual physical damage to property has been caused, despite the fact that the hunting might cause stress to animals, which can in turn cause problems with calving or lambing as well as damage to fields, drains and ditches, particularly where the hunt is on horseback.
The loss of livestock, such as in the form of stillborn lambs, can be a huge loss to the yearly income of a farmer, and can present a major problem. Generally, a hunt which causes damage due to entering land without permission will arrange to repair the damage.
It is advisable to make it known to the local hunt that you are not agreeable to their use of your land, to avoid damage to your land and potential resulting conflict.
If damage is being caused to your land or livestock by hunting, legal advice should be sought to determine how best to assert your legal rights, in order to restore you to your position before the damage.
The husband of the late award-winning author Emma Hannigan has said he is excited but sad her final book is now ready to hit the bookshops.
The popular novelist who had 14 novels published died on March 3 last year following a very public 11 year battle with breast cancer.
The Wicklow natives heart-wrenching social media post almost a year ago on February 16, which revealed that she was losing her cancer battle, saw an outpouring of emotion from thousands of members of the public, reading fans and authors both nationally and internationally.
Her husband Cian, posted on his wifes official Facebook page saying, 'The gift of Friend arrived to us. A very proud yet sad time as we know it is her last.
He recalled that if his wife had been still alive she would so excited with the latest book.
"At this time, Emma would be getting all excited and nervous. She would be in a frenzy of baking chocolate brownies and wrapping them up in fancy baskets with bows and glitter, they would be everywhere....
She would then travel the country signing books and sweetening up the bookshop staff with treats as only she could. We really hope you enjoy her last gift to you - her friends. As it really is something special.
The book centres around fractured families, unconditional love and the importance of friendship and will be in bookshops on February 28.
Thousands of people reacted positively to the news with hundreds commenting on Facebook with one fan saying, I cant wait to get my hands on a copy....mind you I havent managed to bring myself to read 'Letters to my Daughters' .... Ive been saving it for a rainy day! Now I will have two of her precious books! I think of you all often Cian and miss Emma's posts.
Another added: Well thats what Emma left us The Gift of Friends and that is to be treasured. Friendship is wonderful, just like Emma was.
In 2005, Emma discovered that she was carrying the Brca 1 cancer gene. This meant she had an 85 per cent chance of developing breast cancer and a 50 per cent chance of developing ovarian cancer.
To reduce her risk to 5%, the brave mum opted for preventative surgery. In 2006 Emma had a double mastectomy and had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.
However, in 2007, in spite of the surgery, she was diagnosed with cancer for the first time and her lengthy battle ensued.
Emma, who was an ambassador for Breast Cancer Ireland (BCI) appealed to the public to donate to the charity in a bid to raise 100,000 two weeks prior to her death.
The fundraising campaign which began after the late author announced she had terminal cancer raised 126,000.
The mother of twos book, Letters to My Daughters, just published prior to her death, went to No.1 across several categories on the best selling chart within days of her post letting the public know her fight with cancer was coming to an end.
When revealing her devastating news Emma said: All good things must come to an end. The time that I knew was borrowed must be given back soon, so it seems.
The conversation I never wanted to have has been said. My medical team have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at this fight but all avenues have now been exhausted.
She spoke openly about her love for her children, son Sacha, daughter Kim, husband Cian, parents family, friends and fans adding that her love for them has been integral to her life.
The campaign will launch on February 11 and will run on digital, social, and out-of-home (OOH) platforms. A 60-second video depicting the various scenarios mentioned has been released, with more in-depth videos following each storyline to come in the future, AXA said.
With 50 years in Singapore, AXA takes pride in being a long-term partner to our customers, and our new brand campaign demonstrates our commitment to go beyond the noble purpose of insurance to protect people and their loved ones, said Leo Costes, managing director, retail and chief customer officer of AXA Singapore.
We also recognise that while the notions of a good life in Singapore are evolving, people continue to struggle with societal expectations and self-doubt. With our new brand campaign, we want to connect with people in Singapore and to inspire them through common scenarios they can relate to and identify with in life, with the ultimate goal of instilling self-belief so that they know they can rewrite the rules to achieve a better life. We also believe that as an insurer we can play a role in our customers lives by partnering with them to overcome the obstacles they face and to help them feel in control of their chosen paths.
District spokeswoman Mary Fergus said the flexibility could be particularly beneficial as the district moves forward with its career pathways plan. In addition to classroom instruction, students could pursue other things related to their career goal, such as work-based learning opportunities outside of school, she said.
Real-time social media posts from local businesses and organizations across Northern Virginia, powered by Friends2Follow. To add your business to the stream, email cfields@insidenova.com or click on the green button below.
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Indian American author Sharmila Sens book, Not Quite Not White: Losing and Finding Race in America, has been selected as the winner of the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Adult Non-Fiction category. (Rupinder Singh/Penguin Random House photo)
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Richa Chadha is the only Indian actor to have her handwritten message featured in the book called The House of Commons Book of Tribute to the late Nelson Mandela. (photo provided)
Indias skewed sex ratio is once again the talking point.
The sex ratio at birth (SRB) saw a decline in 17 out of 21 large states of the country. The western state of Gujarat has recorded an alarming dip of 53 points while the other states that saw a decline fell by 10 points or more, a report released by the Niti Aayog stated and stressed on the need to check sex-selective abortion.
Sex Ratio at Birth is the number of girls born for every 1000 boys born during a specific year. It is an important indicator and reflects the extent to which there is reduction in the number of girl child born by sex-selective abortions.
Seventeen out of 21 states have SRB of less than 950 females per 1000 males indicating a substantially lower SRB in almost all larger Indian states.
Representational Image
According to the report, among the 17 states which recorded substantial drop of 10 points or more, in Gujarat the SRB fell to 854 females from 907 females per 1,000 males born registering a drop of 53 points from 2014-15 (base year) to 2015-16 (reference year) in this indicator.
Gujarat is followed by Haryana, which registered a drop of 35 points, Rajasthan (32 points), Uttarakhand (27 points), Maharashtra (18 points), Himachal Pradesh (14 points), Chhattisgarh (drop of 12 points), and Karnataka (11 points), the Healthy States, Progressive India report states. There is a clear need for states to effectively implement the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 and take measures to promote the value of the girl child, the report stated.
The NITI Aayog report suggested an improvement in SRB in Punjab which registered a rise of 19 points, followed by Uttar Pradesh (10 points) and Bihar (9 points).
Sex ratio at birth is an important indicator and reflects the extent to which there is reduction in number of girl children born by sex-selective abortions, the report added.
Representational Image
While India has made stringent laws against prenatal sex determination, they are not strictly implemented.
The Economic Survey tabled by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Parliament during the Budget session recommends that Indians confront the "societal meta-preference" for a son, observing that the adverse sex ratio of females to males has led to 63 million "missing" women.
Putting it simply, the survey observes that many Indians continue to favour male child and relentlessly pursue the birth of a son, despite having number of children.
In 2015, Women & Child Development minister Maneka Gandhi called for a need to fight the scourge of female foeticide which claims "2000 lives of girls daily."
The abnormal sex ratio may potentially give rise to a number of socio-economic threats. Taking strong steps to completely abolish gender-based abortion and educating people to end discrimination against girl child is the need of the hour. While social campaigns like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao by the government of India aims to generate awareness and improve the efficiency of welfare services intended for girls, little has been achieved so far.
Housefull 4 was the first movie that was embroiled in the #MeToo controversy. It all started after Tanushree Dutta had levied sexual harassment allegations against Nana Patekar. While the entire nation was in shock, Nana Patekar along with the team flew to Jaisalmer to shoot for the movie.
Later, a lot of other women also accused Sajid Khan of sexual harassment. After which, the shooting of the movie was stalled and Sajid Khan was replaced as the director.
While Baahubali star Rana Daggubati replaced Nana Patekar, Farhad Samji stepped in the shoes of Sajid Khan as the director.
Speaking about #MeToo recently, Riteish Deshmukh has said that we need to move beyond naming people and rather take it forward.
I just feel that it (the movement) has started, which is fantastic, but I think it also needs to figure out a way so that it can find its way to justice, beyond just naming a person and saying that this is what it is. I think people also get lost as to how to take it forward. Be it court, police or whatever, one needs to figure out a way so that theres certain justice given, he was quoted as saying by Indian Express.
After Sajid Khan was accused of sexual harassment, Riteish Deshmukh had tweeted, Deeply disturbing to hear and read the news of so many women who had to go through these incidents of harassment in various fields. I think its extremely brave of every woman to have shared their stories. All need to be heard and not judged. I stand with them today. #MeToo.
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Mr. Wood violated the trust of the public and of his fellow police officers by stealing a significant amount of money from the union fund set up to support its members, Kane County States Attorney Joe McMahon said. Unfortunately, after a lengthy career in public service, he tarnished his record of service. He also has fully reimbursed the union for the money he stole. This guilty plea holds him accountable for his criminal conduct.
China and the United States will resume high-level trade talks in Beijing on February 14 and 15.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will attend the talks.
National flags of China and the U.S. [File photo: VCG]
According to a statement by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the US team will arrive in Beijing on Monday, February 11, three days before the talks officially start. The two sides will further discuss issues of common concern on the basis of their talks in Washington in late January.
The last round of talks made important progress for that stage, and the two sides also determined the timetable and roadmap for next-step consultations, the Chinese delegation said at the time.
RTHK: Jihadists get life for deadly 2015 Tunisia attacks
A Tunisian court has sentenced seven jihadists to life in prison over attacks at a museum and on a beach in 2015 that killed 60 people, many of them British tourists, prosecutors said on Saturday.
Dozens of defendants faced two separate trials over the closely linked shootings, which occurred just months apart in Tunis and Sousse, but many were acquitted.
Four were sentenced to life in prison for the shooting rampage at a Sousse tourist resort in June 2015, which killed 38 people, mostly British tourists.
Five other defendants in the Sousse case were handed jail terms ranging from six months to six years, while 17 were acquitted, prosecution spokesman Sofiene Sliti said.
Three were given life sentences for the earlier attack in March 2015 at the capital's Bardo National Museum, in which two gunmen killed 21 foreign tourists and a Tunisian security guard.
Others found guilty of links to the Bardo attack were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to 16 years, and a dozen defendants were acquitted, Sliti said.
The prosecution will launch an appeal, he added.
The court heard that the two attacks, both claimed by the Islamic State group, were closely linked.
Several defendants pointed to the fugitive Chamseddine Sandi as mastermind of both.
According to Tunisian media, Sandi was killed in a US air strike in neighbouring Libya in February 2016, although there has been no confirmation.
Among those who were facing trial were six security personnel accused of failing to provide assistance to people in danger during the Sousse attack.
That shooting was carried out by Seifeddine Rezgui, who opened fire on a beach before rampaging into a high-end hotel, where he continued to fire a kalashnikov and throw grenades until being shot dead by police.
Four French nationals, four Italians, three Japanese and two Spaniards were among those killed in the Bardo attack, before the two gunmen, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, were themselves shot dead.
Investigations showed one of the gunmen, Yassine Laabidi - who was born in 1990 and was from a poor district near Tunis - had amphetamines in his body.
His fellow attacker Jaber Khachnaoui, born in 1994 and from Tunisia's deprived Kasserine region, had travelled to Syria in December 2014 via Libya.
One suspect questioned in court, Tunis labourer Mahmoud Kechouri, said he had helped plan the Bardo attack, including preparing mobile phones for Sandi, a neighbour and longtime friend.
Kechouri, 33, said he was driven by a "duty to participate in the emergence of the caliphate," that IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed in June 2014 across swathes of territory the jihadists controlled in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
Other defendants accused of helping prepare the attack said they had only discussed ideas with friends. Several alleged they were tortured in detention.
Victims' family members in France and Belgium watched Friday's hearing via a live video feed.
"It was important for us to see, and especially to hear - to try to understand the role" of each defendant, said one French survivor.
"Arriving at the end of the process will help us to turn the page, even if we can never forget."
Gerard Chemla, a lawyer for French victims, said the live feed had brought some degree of comfort to relatives.
"The trial allowed them - by organising the video conferencing and giving the floor to lawyers chosen by the victims - to finally be recognised as victims by the Tunisian state," he said.
But he lamented that the families of those killed had not been compensated.
The Sousse attack, which killed 30 Britons, is also the subject of proceedings in front of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, which is seeking to establish what happened.
After holding inquests into the British deaths in January and February 2017, judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith concluded that the response of Tunisian police was "at best shambolic, at worst cowardly".
He said hotel guards were not armed and had no walkie-talkies.
There have been substantial improvements in security at Tunisian tourist resorts since the massacre and in July 2017 Britain lifted its warning against "all but essential travel" to the North African country.
The attacks and resulting travel warnings dealt a devastating blow to Tunisia's vital tourism sector from which it has taken time to recover.
Since a 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, jihadist attacks in Tunisia have killed dozens of members of the security forces.
Thousands have also travelled abroad to join jihadist organisations in Iraq and Syria, Libya, Mali and Yemen, according to the United Nations. (AFP)
This story has been published on: 2019-02-09. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren has made her bid for the US presidency official.
Speaking in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Ms Warren grounded her 2020 campaign in a populist call to fight economic inequality and build an America that works for everyone.
Ms Warren delivered a sharp call for change, and decried a middle-class squeeze that has left too little accountability for the rich, too little opportunity for everyone else.
She and her backers hope that message can distinguish her in a crowded Democratic field and help her move past the controversy surrounding her past claims to Native American heritage.
Weaving specific policy prescriptions into her remarks from Medicare for All to the elimination of Washington lobbying as we know it Ms Warren avoided taking direct jabs at President Donald Trump.
A bank teller who takes a few 20s from the bank is looking at serious jail time. But the @WellsFargo CEO can cheat millions of Americans and walk away. Thatas a rigged system - and it needs to change. pic.twitter.com/thRT5lTxjX Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 8, 2019
Instead, she aimed for a broader institutional shift instead, urging supporters to choose a government that makes different choices, choices that reflect our values.
Ms Warren announced her campaign in her home state of Massachusetts at a mill site where largely immigrant factory workers went on strike about 100 years ago, a fitting forum for the longtime consumer advocate to advance her platform.
She was scheduled to travel later in the day to New Hampshire, home of the nations first primary, where Ms Warren could have an advantage as a neighbouring-state resident with high name recognition.
Ms Warren intends to spend Sunday in Iowa, where the lead-off caucuses will be the first test of candidates viability.
She was the first high-profile Democrat to signal interest in running for the White House, forming an exploratory committee on New Years Eve.
Virginias governor has pledged to work towards healing the states racial divide, as calls mounted for the lieutenant governor to resign.
Governor Ralph Northams move caps an astonishing week which saw all three of the US states top elected officials embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals.
Two women have accused Lt Gov Justin Fairfax of sexual assault. He emphatically denies both allegations.
After the second allegation was made on Friday, Mr Fairfax who stands to become the states second black governor if Mr Northam resigns over a racist photo was barraged with demands to step down from top Democrats, including a number of presidential hopefuls and most of Virginias congressional delegation.
Meanwhile, Mr Northam now a year into his four-year term announced his intention to stay at a Friday afternoon Cabinet meeting.
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In so doing, Northam defied practically the entire Democratic Party, which rose up against him after a racist photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook page surfaced and he acknowledged wearing blackface in the 1980s.
In his first interview since the scandal erupted, Mr Northam told The Washington Post that the uproar has pushed him to confront the states deep and lingering divisions over race, as well as his own insensitivity.
But he said that reflection has convinced him that, by remaining in office, he can work to resolve them.
Its obvious from what happened this week that we still have a lot of work to do, Mr Northam said. There are still some very deep wounds in Virginia, and especially in the area of equity.
Mr Northam said he planned to work for the rest of his term to address issues stemming from inequality, including improving access to health care, housing, and transportation. He also repeated his contention that he is not the one pictured on his yearbook page in blackface. But he could not explain how the image ended up there, or why he had initially taken responsibility for it.
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I overreacted, he said. If I had it to do over again, I would step back and take a deep breath.
On Saturday, Mr Northam made his first official public appearance since he denied being in the photo, attending the funeral of a state trooper killed in a shootout. He made no public comments upon arriving in Chilhowie, four hours west of the tumult in Richmond.
Moments after Mr Northams meeting with his Cabinet on Friday, a second woman went public with accusations against Mr Fairfax. The 39-year-old woman claimed Mr Fairfax raped her 19 years ago while they were students at Duke University.
Mr Fairfax denied the new allegation, having also denied an earlier claim that he sexually assaulted a woman at a Boston hotel in 2004.
It is obvious that a vicious and coordinated smear campaign is being orchestrated against me, Mr Fairfax said. I will not resign.
Top Democrats running for president in 2020 called for Fairfaxs resignation, including senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Virginias Democratic congressional delegation was split.
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The tumult in Virginia began late last week, with the discovery of the photo on Mr Northams yearbook profile page that showed someone in blackface standing beside another person in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.
Mr Northam at first admitted he was in the picture, then denied it a day later, but acknowledged he once put shoe polish on his face to look like Michael Jackson for a dance contest in 1984.
Virginia slid deeper into crisis on Wednesday when Attorney General Mark Herring acknowledged wearing blackface at a college party in 1980, and Mr Fairfax was publicly accused of sexual assault for the first time.
Although the Democratic Party has taken a zero-tolerance approach to misconduct among its members in this #MeToo era, a housecleaning in Virginia could be costly to them: If all three Democrats resigned, the Republican Kirk Cox would become governor.
US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Beigun, left, and South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha shake hands during their meeting in Seoul (Ed Jones/Pool Photo via AP)
The top US envoy for North Korea returned from three days of talks in Pyongyang and will meet again with his North Korean counterpart before the second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Earlier, Mr Trump said his planned summit will take place in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.
Stephen Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, met with South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha and Seouls chief nuclear envoy Lee Do-hoon on Saturday to brief them on his negotiations with North Korea.
Our discussions were productive, Mr Biegun, said while meeting Ms Kang.
The president is very much looking forward to taking next steps. We have some hard work to do with DPRK between now and then. I am confident if both sides stay committed we can make real progress here, he said, referring to North Korea by its formal name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
In Pyongyang, Mr Biegun and Kim Hyok Chol, North Koreas special representative for US affairs, to discuss advancing Trump and Kims Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearisation, transforming US-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, the State Department said in a statement.
It said that Mr Biegun and Mr Kim agreed to meet again before the leaders second summit, scheduled for February 27-28 in Hanoi.
Mr Trump tweeted the venue on Friday in Washington, saying Mr Biegun had just left North Korea after a productive meeting on the summit.
Mr Trump added: I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!
The president had previously announced Vietnam as the summit location, but the city had not been identified.
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Mr Biegun is thought to have discussed specific disarmament steps that North Korea could promise at the Vietnam summit and what corresponding measures the United States is willing to take.
US-led negotiations aimed at stripping North Korea of its nuclear weapons programme has made little headway since the first Kim-Trump summit in Singapore last June, when Mr Kim pledged to work toward the complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, without providing a clear timetable.
Experts say Mr Kim is determined to win relief from US-led sanctions to help revive his countrys troubled economy, while Mr Trump, faced with domestic problems such as the Russian investigation, needs foreign policy achievements.
If the second summit fails to produce a breakthrough, scepticism about the current nuclear negotiations will grow. Some experts say North Korea is trying to use the negotiations to weaken the sanctions and buy time to perfect its weapons programme.
Mr Trump also tweeted: North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse. He may surprise some but he wont surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket an Economic one!
Seven people have been jailed for life following a trial over two 2015 terror attacks in Tunisia which killed 60 people, including 31 Britons.
Samir Ben Amor, a lawyer for one of the 44 defendants, said the verdicts were handed down over a massacre at the popular Sousse resort and another deadly attack on the countrys famous Bardo Museum.
Thirty Britons were killed in the mass shooting in Sousse which left 38 people dead, while another UK citizen died in the Bardo assault, which killed 22 in total.
Other defendants received jail terms ranging from 16 years to six months, while the charges against 27 of the suspects were dismissed, according to Mr Ben Amor.
None of the defendants received the maximum penalty of capital punishment for a range of charges that include premeditated murder, threatening national security and belonging to an extremist-linked group.
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The prosecution has said it will appeal the verdicts.
The suspected mastermind of both attacks, Chamseddine Sandi, has not yet been caught and is thought to be hiding in Libya.
Police say the defendants denied having participated directly in the March and June 2015 attacks during their questioning, but several of them acknowledged having provided logistical assistance to Sandi.
On March 18 2015 at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, 22 people were killed by extremists. Two of the gunmen were killed by police.
Three months later, on June 26 in the coastal city of Sousse, attacker Aymen Rezgui walked onto the beach of the Imperial Hotel and used an assault rifle to shoot tourists, killing 38 people, including 30 Britons.
Rezgui, a Tunisian student who trained with Libyan militants, was killed about 15 minutes later by police.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for those attacks, which devastated the countrys tourism sector as travel agencies pulled out and governments issued travel warnings.
Tourism has since partially bounced back after Tunisias government implemented a series of security measures to protect popular destinations.
It appears President Donald Trump is suddenly fond of a new phrase: "Presidential Harassment."
Thursday began with tweets on the topic. First, Trump targeted House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who announced on Wednesday that the committee would investigate alleged financial crimes involving Trump's businesses. The message accused Schiff of "Unprecedented Presidential Harassment", which had "never happened before".
Trump returned to Twitter less than two hours later and repeated the mantra: "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!" Trump's tone implies wrongdoing, but what he calls "presidential harassment" is known to most as congressional oversight, an integral part of the United States' system of checks and balances.
Though Trump recently took to the turn of phrase, Thursday was not the first time he used it. "Presidential Harassment" has come up on a handful of occasions, mostly when Trump is searching for someone to blame:
According to Trump, in November, it was "the prospect of Presidential Harassment" by Democrats that caused stock market volatility.
In early December, "Presidential Harassment" - also known as the "phony Russia Witch Hunt" - caused his plummeting approval rating.
After Republicans lost control of the House during November's midterm elections, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cautioned Democrats against "presidential harassment".
As the 'Washington Post' reported, McConnell warned that "efforts to obtain President Trump's tax returns and conduct oversight of his administration would backfire politically".
"The whole issue of presidential harassment is interesting," he told reporters. "The Democrats in the House are going to have to decide just how much presidential harassment they think is good strategy. I'm not so sure it will work for them."
Democrats took control of the House on January 3, and vowed to aggressively pursue oversight investigations, which may include issuing subpoenas for potentially damaging documents and advancing the Russia investigation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made clear that she is prepared to respect, even defend, the rule of law. Democrats, she said, have a responsibility for oversight as part of the nation's system of checks and balances.
Legally, harassment is a term used in civil lawsuits alleging workplace discrimination. Criminal harassment, which differs from state to state, typically involves behaviour intended to alarm, annoy or terrorise another, often causing that person to reasonably fear for their safety.
Congressional oversight fits neither definition. Trump may not enjoy the oversight process. He may fear the information congressional committees may unearth. But Congress is supposed to bird-dog the executive branch of government.
As House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said on Wednesday, "To say that we can't do [oversight] is to say that we shouldn't do our constitutional duty. It's to assert an executive pre-eminence that one would think he might want to be a dictator."
The publisher of the 'National Enquirer' said yesterday it will look into claims of extortion and blackmail made by Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, who said the tabloid threatened to publish intimate photos of him unless he stopped investigating how the 'Enquirer' obtained his private exchanges with his mistress.
American Media Inc said it "acted lawfully" while reporting the story.
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The company's statement is the latest twist in a high-profile clash between the world's richest man and the leader of America's best-known tabloid, who is a strong backer of President Donald Trump.
Mr Bezos's investigators have suggested the 'Enquirer' coverage of his affair - which included the release of texts - was driven by dirty politics.
Mr Bezos, who is also owner of the 'Washington Post', detailed his interactions with American Media Inc, or AMI, in an extraordinary blog post on Thursday on Medium.com.
The billionaire did not say the tabloid was seeking money - instead, he said, the 'Enquirer' wanted him to make a public statement that its coverage was not politically motivated.
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The company has admitted in the past that it engaged in what's known as 'catch-and-kill' practices to help Mr Trump become president. Mr Trump has been highly critical of Mr Bezos and the 'Post's' coverage of the White House.
"Of course I don't want personal photos published, but I also won't participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favours, political attacks, and corruption," Mr Bezos wrote of AMI, in explaining his decision to go public. "I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out."
The Bezos affair became public when the 'Enquirer' published a January 9 story about his relationship with Lauren Sanchez, a former TV anchor who is also married. Mr Bezos then hired a team of private investigators to find out how the tabloid got the texts and photos the two exchanged.
Mr Bezos's personal investigators, led by his longtime security consultant, Gavin de Becker, concluded that Mr Bezos's phone wasn't hacked. Instead, they've been focusing on Ms Sanchez's brother, according to a source familiar with the matter. Mr De Becker and his team suspect Michael Sanchez, a talent manager who touts his support of Mr Trump and is an acquaintance of Trump allies Roger Stone and Carter Page, may have provided the information to the 'Enquirer', the person said.
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Mr Sanchez, who is also his sister's manager, declined to speak on the record and did not respond to an email seeking comment. In a tweet, he said Mr de Becker "spreads fake, unhinged conservative conspiracy theories" and "'dog whistle' smears".
Several days ago, someone at AMI told Mr Bezos's team that the company's chief executive, David Pecker, was "apoplectic" about the investigation, Mr Bezos said. AMI later approached Mr Bezos's representatives with an offer. "They said they had more of my text messages and photos that they would publish if we didn't stop our investigation," Mr Bezos wrote.
Mr Bezos wrote that this week, the tabloid's editor, Dylan Howard, emailed an attorney for Mr Bezos's longtime security consultant to describe photos the 'Enquirer' "obtained during our newsgathering".
The photos include a "below-the-belt selfie" of Mr Bezos, photos of him in tight boxer briefs and wearing only a towel, and several revealing photos of Ms Sanchez, according to the emails Mr Bezos released.
According to the emails, an attorney for AMI offered a formal deal on Wednesday: The tabloid wouldn't post the photos if Mr Bezos and his investigators would release a public statement "affirming that they have no knowledge or basis" to suggest the 'Enquirer's' coverage was "politically motivated or influenced by political forces".
Mr Bezos said he decided to publish the emails sent to his team "rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail," despite the "personal cost and embarrassment they threaten".
In its January 9 story, the 'Enquirer' said reporters followed Mr Bezos and Ms Sanchez "across five states and 40,000 miles" and "tailed them in private jets, swanky limos, helicopter rides, romantic hikes, five-star hotel hideaways, intimate dinner dates and 'quality time' in hidden love nests".
It reported that Mr Bezos sent "sleazy text messages and gushing love notes" to Ms Sanchez, months before Mr Bezos announced he was splitting up with his wife, MacKenzie. The story carries the bylines of Mr Howard and two reporters.
AMI's relationship with Mr Trump has gotten the company into hot water in the past. It admitted to 'catch-and-kill' practices as part of a deal with federal prosecutors, who agreed not to pursue charges against the company.
AMI acknowledged secretly assisting Mr Trump's campaign by paying $150,000 to a 'Playboy' model for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with the then-candidate. The company then intentionally suppressed the story until after the 2016 election.
Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, reportedly told an aide that he would use "a bullet" on Jamal Khashoggi one year before the journalist was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
US intelligence intercepted a phone call in September 2017 in which the crown prince said Mr Khashoggi should be lured back to Saudi Arabia or forced to return to the kingdom, according to 'The New York Times'. If neither method worked he should face a bullet, the prince reportedly said.
If confirmed, the phone call would appear to be the most direct evidence yet linking Crown Prince Mohammed to plans to kill the 'Washington Post' columnist.
Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir last night insisted the prince had not order the October 2018 killing. "We know that this was not an authorised operation. There was no order given to conduct this operation," he said.
The White House has continued to stand by the 33-year-old prince - who is effectively the kingdom's ruler - despite a classified CIA assessment which concluded that he had ordered Mr Khashoggi's assassination.
Meanwhile, a senior aide to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, slammed Saudi Arabia for a "complete lack of transparency" over the investigation into Mr Khashoggi's death and again demanded that the suspects be extradited to Turkey to stand trial, a demand that Saudi Arabia has ignored.
The kingdom has charged 11 people with the killing, including members of royal entourage, and is seeking the death penalty against five of them. However, the proceedings have continued in secret and no evidence against the men has been made public.
Kurdish officials have said Isil may be claiming to hold high-value captives to gain a stronger hand in the negotiations. (Militant Photo via AP)
The landscape of the eastern Syrian Desert is so flat that from a vantage point 300 yards away you can almost see the entirety of the minuscule last pocket of territory ruled over by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Women in black abayas walk the street that runs through the village of Baghuz in Deir Ezzor province - a hamlet so small it does not even feature on the map - while white Toyota pickup trucks speed past.
A once-vast, cross-border territory that had covered an area the size of Britain has been reduced to just a square-mile patch, surrounded on the eastern side by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the militia allied with the UK, and cut off to the west by the Euphrates river. The topography has made it easy for the SDF to keep an eye on its enemy, but has also made the final battle the most difficult in the three-year war against the jihadists.
"You see those women just over there?" asks Heval Khalid, the local commander, as he points into the near distance. "Daesh [a pejorative term for Isil] has put them between our forces and theirs, using them as human shields so we have not been able to advance.
"They make the women and children walk outside the houses, collecting firewood and water, leaving us with no choice but to change tack."
The SDF says it has halted fighting to protect civilians, though reports suggest the real reason for the pause is that negotiations are taking place over a number of hostages held by the jihadists, including dozens of SDF fighters captured several months ago. Whether this includes John Cantlie, the British photojournalist kidnapped in 2012 whom Ben Wallace, the UK Security Minister, said this week may still be alive, remains unclear.
Kurdish officials have said Isil may be claiming to hold high-value captives to gain a stronger hand in the negotiations. It is understood they are yet to provide proof of life, but have been asking in return for safe passage to Idlib in north-western Syria - the only remaining rebel stronghold.
The fact the SDF feels comfortable enough to take journalists to a rooftop within striking range of Isil suggests a de facto ceasefire is in place.
Commander Khalid estimates some 1,000-1,500 hardcore fighters remain - most of them foreign - and as many as 2,000 civilians.
Another commander, who declines to give his name as he is not authorised to speak to the media, says there are three groups left: "The local Syrians who believe this is their land and it should be up to them to decide what to do; the Iraqis who see themselves as acting in the wishes of their caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (himself an Iraqi), and the foreigners who believe they are the most important."
He adds: "The locals want to surrender, while the foreigners want to stay and fight until the end as they have nothing to lose."
While Isil has threatened those who try to flee, civilians still stream out. More than 36,000 people have escaped since December, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and every day hundreds more are being received at a screening centre just outside Baghuz. ( The Daily Telegraph, London)
Tributes: Praise for the late Albert Finney poured in after his death yesterday. Photo: William Conran/PA Wire
British actor Albert Finney, who rose to fame on a post-war wave of gritty, working-class dramas and became an Oscar-nominated international star, has died at the age of 82 after a short illness.
Born in Salford, Greater Manchester, in 1936, he began his career as a Shakespearean theatre actor.
He made his name in 1960 with 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning', one of a new generation of down-to-earth British films dubbed kitchen-sink dramas in which he played an angry young factory worker.
His fame spread when he was cast as the lead in bawdy historical romp 'Tom Jones' in 1963, which won four Oscars including Best Picture and brought Finney the first of four nominations for Best Actor.
Finney, who twice refused official honours including a knighthood, also starred as Hercule Poirot in 'Murder on the Orient Express' (1974) and appeared in 'Erin Brockovich' (2000) - for which he was nominated as Best Supporting Actor - and the James Bond film 'Skyfall' (2012).
He continued to grace the stage, where he won two Tony awards, and tackled meaty Shakespearean roles including 'King Lear', 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth'.
"His performances in plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov and other iconic playwrights throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s stand apart as some of the greatest in our 200-year history," London's Old Vic Theatre said on Twitter.
Finney revealed in 2011 he had been suffering from kidney cancer.
Daniel Craig, current incumbent of the James Bond franchise, said "the world has lost a giant".
Referencing Finney's turn in as 007's gruff gamekeeper in the acclaimed 'Skyfall', he added: "Wherever Albert is now, I hope there are horses and good company."
Celebrities from the world of comedy, television, film and theatre also posted messages online after the news broke.
Bernadette Peters starred opposite Finney as Lily St Regis, Rooster's girlfriend, in the 1982 film of 'Annie'. She said: "I had the great pleasure of working with him on 'Annie' the movie. Who could forget him in Tom Jones."
Finney was married three times, to actresses Jane Wenham and Anouk Aimee between 1957-61 and 1970-78 respectively, and travel agent Pene Delmage in 2006.
He is survived by Delmage and his son Simon, from his first marriage.
Royal move: Princess Ubolratana lived in the US for more than 26 years. Image: AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File
Thailand's King Maha Vajiralongkorn has moved to block his elder sister's surprise bid to run for prime minister in March, calling her candidacy for a populist opposition party unconstitutional.
Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi (67) stunned the nation when she announced yesterday she would be the sole prime ministerial candidate for the party, which is loyal to ousted ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, in the March election.
Her candidacy threatened to upend the first national ballot since a military coup in 2014 that ousted a government loyal to Thaksin, who has been at the centre of years of political turbulence and rival street protests.
But her foray into politics looked to be short-lived after public opposition from King Vajiralongkorn, which is likely to lead to the Election Commission disqualifying her or the princess dropping out of the race.
Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932, but the royal family has wielded great influence and commands the devotion of millions.
"Involvement of a high-ranking member of the royal family in politics, in whatever way, is an act that conflicts with the country's traditions, customs, and culture, and therefore considered highly inappropriate," the king said in a statement.
The statement was issued by the palace and later read on air by a television announcer.
King Vajiralongkorn also cited a provision in the constitution that states the monarch stays above politics and maintains political neutrality.
"All royal family members adhere to the same principles ... and cannot take any political office, because it contradicts the intention of the constitution," he said.
The Election Commission declined to comment, with an official saying members will hold a meeting on Monday.
The princess was nominated by the Thai Raksa Chart, an offshoot of the larger pro-Thaksin party ousted from power in the 2014 coup.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who was army chief when he led the 2014 coup and now heads the ruling junta, also announced his candidacy yesterday.
Ubolratana, who has starred in Thai soap operas and a movie, relinquished most of her royal titles in 1972 when she married an American, a fellow student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Peter Jensen.
She lived in the United States for more than 26 years before they divorced in 1998.
She had thanked her supporters in an Instagram post.
"I have accepted the Thai Raksa Chart Party nomination for prime minister to show my rights and freedom without any privileges above other fellow Thai citizens under the constitution," she said.
Her Instagram account was silent immediately after the king's statement.
Nominating a member of the royal family had seemed a game-changer for Thaksin loyalist parties, accused by their enemies of being opposed to the monarchy - charges they have always rejected.
Rivalry between the Bangkok-centred, royalist elites and Thaksin and his rural-based supporters has led to street protests, military coups and violent clashes over 15 years.
Ubolratana's announcement followed a long period of mourning for King Bhumibol, who died in October 2016, and as her brother establishes himself on the throne in preparation for an official coronation in May.
A number of factors went into determining this list, including critical assessment, box office performance, and how influential the movie has been. Some of these movies were sensations right out of the gate, while others required the benefit of time to reveal themselves as classics. There are comedies and dramas, horror films, and family features. Some of the movies are set in the same year in which they were made, while others recreated the fashion and look of a decade or more beforehand.Hopefully you have already seen the biggest movie set in the year of your birth. If not, you'll have a great viewing recommendation. For more galleries visit Ranker.com
A pilot has explained a key flight manoeuvre that British Airways performed while descending into London Heathrow during the difficult weather conditions of Storm Erik.
The BA Dreamliner aircraft was filmed by Big Jet TV as it was forced to abandon its landing after strong winds put the plane off-balance seconds before it was about to land.
Fortunately, the plane was able to circle back around and land safely after the go around manoeuvre was performed.
Scott Bateman, chief executive of 9-Line Aviation and a retired member of the Royal Air Force, went on Twitter to explain the necessity of the manoeuvre, and why it was the safest option for the aircraft.
He explained: This is a professional team making the correct decision to go around after an approach is destabilised by a gust.
A practised and entirely safe manoeuvre.
During extremes of weather itas likely the Captain will plan to land the aircraft, to utilise their experience & exposure to these events. This increases the likelihood of landing but is never a guarantee. The team will always work to their parameters set in the brief #StormErik pic.twitter.com/rhJ7dMBOWD Scott Bateman MBE (@scottiebateman) February 8, 2019
Mr Bateman said: Most approaches start an long way from the airfield.
The pilots will get the weather and assess the likely threats.
In the case of wind they will verbalise and practice manoeuvres such as a go around as well as setting acceptable and safe parameters for the day.
There is no point in continuing to land if you havent touched down in the correct place.
To do so would be unwise and its safer to go around.
Did you know that the pilots can execute a go around even after landing? This is an entirely safe & practiced manoeuvre. There is no point in continuing to land if you havenat touched down in the correct place. To do so would be unwise and itas safer to go around. #StormErik pic.twitter.com/T3ueZI6uzJ Scott Bateman MBE (@scottiebateman) February 8, 2019
Storm Erik has seen wet and windy weather forecast across the UK and Ireland, with winds of 70mph in some areas and heavy rain across large parts of the UK.
The Met Office has issued two weather warnings for Friday for strong winds across Northern Ireland and western Scotland until the evening, and for heavy rain in Scotland until Saturday afternoon.
Elsewhere, the Welsh and Cornish coasts could see winds of 55mph, while along the coast of southern England gusts could reach 50mph.
Seven people have been jailed for life over two separate attacks in Tunisia that killed 60 people in 2015 - including three Irish tourists.
Samir Ben Amor, a lawyer for one of the 44 defendants, said the verdicts were handed down over the deadly attack against the country's famous Bardo Museum and a massacre at the popular Imperial Marhaba Hotel at Port El Kantaoui in Sousse.
He said other defendants received jail terms ranging from 16 years to six months, while charges against 27 of the suspects were dismissed.
No-one received the maximum penalty of capital punishment.
A lone Isil gunman shot dead Athlone couple Martina and Laurence Hayes and County Meath nurse Lorna Carty during the hotel massacre on June 26 2015 that claimed 38 lives.
Ms Carty's husband Declan has previously spoken about his ordeal and looking for his wife in the aftermath of the shooting.
Speaking on RTE's The Late Late Show last year, he said: "It went from a holiday resort to a war zone.
"We went down to the reception area and there were people gathering there at this stage.
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"I knew if Lorna could have been there at all she would have been there because she would have been worried about me with the heart condition I have and I knew if she was mobile at all, she would have come looking for me.
"I waited maybe ten minutes or so and I just put down my head and said Im going and I headed out for the beach...
"I went down and lifted the towel and it was Lorna and she had been shot in the chest, so she was just lying in the sun, oblivious to it all and there was a few sun beds just around blocking the area with people taking photographs, so there wasnt even peace that you could grieve in."
With additional reporting from the Press Association
Roz Purcell has become what is known as a 'multi-hyphen' force to be reckoned with in the Irish industry.
Model, blogger, author, hike organiser and Instagram star are just some of the titles you could use when describing the former Miss Universe Ireland. With two books under her belt and over a quarter of a million followers on social media, she is a familiar name across age groups and genders. In recent years, she's evolved from a well-known beauty queen to an all-natural, organic foodie who prides herself on being environmentally aware without being preachy. It's that down-to-earth image that has informed much of her success.
The 28-year-old regularly shares her daily routine online, which begins from a breakfast (usually a recipe from her Natural Born Feeder collection), gym sessions or hiking up the Wicklow Mountains. Even last week, dosed with a chest infection, Roz was sharing her life with her followers right until she went to sleep.
Her sister Rachel, an integral part to her digital team, has become something of a celebrity herself and the two even shared a magazine cover last year, while her boyfriend of three years, music promoter Zach Desmond is more of a rarity, a nod to the balance which she enforces when it comes to harmonising work and a private life.
I dont feel like there's a pressure to post. Even when I was out sick, I was just so bored at home," she tells Independent.ie Style. "With Zach I guess, hes very private. He has a job thats very much in the industry and he kind of keeps out of it. He doesnt mind going on my stories, sometimes hed be like delete that and Im like that too. I guess I respect that. I put him on my Instagram very irregularly and when I do its usually very lovey-dovey, so he doesnt mind.
My sister (Rachel) I guess, shes very open online as well. Its one of those things I dont have to ask her permission for, she laughs. I have another sister whos very private, shes not on any social media and whenever I put something up of her Ill always ask her. Im so used to sharing my life that sometimes you have to remember that other people are okay with it as well.
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Whatsapp Roz Purcell Pictured at the launch of Zest Active from Galway super supplement business, Revive Active, a new natural supplement for those between 20 35. Photo: Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland.
Roz 2.0 is making it her mission to encourage responsible influencing on Instagram: after the positive feedback and international headlines she received for posting a picture of her stretch marks on a holiday trip to Bali in December, she is on a mission to normalise what we often airbrush or filter out of our feeds, similar to Chrissy Teigen and Jameela Jamil, both of whom have made wildly successful careers from their 'normal' approach to Instagram.
When I posted it, I was just lying around in a bikini and just noticed the stretch markets. I was just thinking, 'Im so lucky Im at the stage now where I can walk around confidently'. Before I wouldnt have been able to pass my friends at a pool because I wouldve thought, 'Oh my God theyre looking at my stretch marks and my cellulite," she told us at the launch of Revive Active, her latest brand ambassadorial role.
Im so lucky Im at that age where I can totally accept myself, I dont worry about what other people think. When people told me their stretch mark stories it opened a huge conversation. And Ive noticed a lot of other influencers now sharing their stories, but it should be completely normalised. And why it hasnt been before is because its not seen in the media, its not seen in society as something you should show and that just needs to change.
Despite the floods of praise she received for being an honest influencer, the term is not something that appeals to her, mainly because of the negative connotations associated with the word. She explains that while she does collaborate with brands for sponsored posts, she sat down with her manager at the beginning to make a list of all the brands she genuinely loves and used.
Its really weird because people tell me oh youre an influencer but Ive always been online. I started in the industry as a model and it progressed. I never think of myself as an influencer because then Im assuming that everyone who follows me is influenced by every single thing I do," she explained.
Everyone who follows me has their own mind, I just share my life and thats how I look at it. Sometimes Ill look at people I know and think- you dont use that. "I sat down with my manager and said, ''This is my dream list. If any of these come to me, I want to work with them. And lets start going to them and telling them I use their products, and thats how weve done it'. Its one of those things that I realised, if people are going to spend their money from something theyve seen me use, it better be something Im willing to spend my money on.
While the influencer title might stay off her multi-hyphen list, she is considering adding student to her ever-growing CV. She left UCD after two years when she won the Miss Universe Ireland title to pursue modelling full-time, but is interested in going back to complete her studies - something her mother Cecily, a primary school principal, has always encouraged.
If theres anything I would like to add to that list - I would love to go back to college and study ethics, social and environmental ethics," she said. "So maybe a title along those lines, but its having the time to find that. I would love to launch my own food products, obviously that would be a huge thing as well. Food entrepreneur would be another one.
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At the time mum said, 'Look, this might be the only opportunity you have to go live in a different country, and you can come back and finish it'. I understand now that loads of kids when you ask them what they want to be they say I dont want to go to college, I want to be a YouTuber, a blogger - and thats really great that people are getting into showcasing their lives.
But also, you cant rely on that because media is very fickle, especially social media, we dont know when platforms are going to all of a sudden just disappear. You always need to have some sort of asset behind you," she added.
Its all well and good to say you want to become a blogger or influencer, but for what? You want to get into foo. Okay, well why dont you try to be a really good food author or recipe developer. If you want to become a really good fashion blogger, why dont you go do fashion or get really into styling? Educate yourself on it so if your social media platform dies, youve still earned a skill.
As for the future, outside the photoshoots, brand collaborations, sharing recipes and organising her Hike Life events, top of her list is more plans to travel with her boyfriend this year.
Im going to Tokyo with Zach. We have a few trips planned. I went through a period where I got very settled at home, and he just loves travelling," she said. "I think one of the best things about going out with him is that he just really inspired me to get back travelling."
Roz is a brand ambassador for Revive Active, an Irish supplement
John Shaw, who was convicted of murdering Elizabeth Plunkett near Brittas Bay in 1976
The State's longest serving prisoner is set to continue his legal bid for two days' temporary release per year.
English national John Shaw (73) has been in custody in Ireland since September 1976 when both he and another English man, Geoffrey Evans, were arrested for the abduction, rape, torture and murder of Elizabeth Plunkett (22) in Wicklow and Mary Duffy (24) in Mayo that year.
Shaw and Evans were both given life sentences at the Central Criminal Court on February 9, 1978.
Evans died in 2012 from an infection after spending more than three years in a vegetative state. He had been at the Mater Hospital, under round-the-clock guard by prison officers, at a significant cost to the State.
Over the years, Shaw's case has been the subject of a number of reviews first by the Sentence Review Group and subsequently the Parole Board.
In April 2016, the Prison Review Committee noted Shaw was 'very frustrated that he has never got a day out of prison in his 38 years in custody He has no family in Ireland and has only received one family visit over the course of his sentence.'
The following June, a dynamic risk assessment of Shaw found him to be at a 'high-level risk of re-offending'. Areas of particular concern to the assessors were 'poor problem solving skills; negative emotionality; deviant sexual preference; cooperation with supervision; significant social influences; hostility towards women; general social rejection; and lack of concern for others.'
In 2016, the Parole Board recommended Shaw remain in Arbour Hill prison to allow speedy access to medical treatment and that he be granted two days of escorted outings per year.
However, the Minister for Justice did not support the recommendation for two days of escorted outings, which Shaw's lawyers challenged in the High Court.
In a judgment delivered last March, Ms Justice Mary Faherty said she was satisfied that Shaw had been afforded the full panoply of fair procedures due to him.
However, Ms Justice Faherty commented that the reason's provided for the Minister's refusal left 'something to be desired'.
on Monday, Shaw's lawyers were granted an extension of time to appeal the High Court judgment. His lawyers filed an appeal approximately one month late due to an inadvertence.
President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham said Shaw had clearly formed an intention to appeal within the time required and suitable grounds of appeal had been identified.
He said there was every chance Shaw would continue his legal challenge, if the court refused to extend time, and the same issue could come back before the court in two years time.
Shaw was not present in court for the application to extend time to appeal.
Ms Justice Faherty had said the function of the Parole Board was to provide an advisory role to the Minister for Justice in the exercise of the the Minister's discretion. There was no suggestion that the Parole Board did not abide by the processes set in place in order for it to be in a position to assist the Minister in the consideration of the management of the Shaw's sentence.
She said the opportunities afforded to Shaw to make his case to the Parole Board were clear from the process in which he engaged. He participated in two interviews with the two members of the Parole Board who were designated to interview him.
Furthermore, he wrote to the Parole Board taking issue with what was said to be the interviewers' misstatement of answers given by him in the course of the interview and with their having raised certain matters which the applicant contended were outside of their remit, Ms Justice Faherty said.
She dismissed his application for judicial review.
The company behind the proposed new data centre for Arklow launched the project this week and announced that it is expected to be operation by March 2021.
Echelon Data Centres Limited, owned by Aldgate Developments, is to develop the centre at the former IFI site at Avoca River Park.
The site was sold for 10m through Arklow agent Raymond Gaffney and it is expected that the construction phase will create 450 jobs followed by another 90 positions to operate the facility.
Planning permission for the Arklow project is said to be imminent and, once approved, will see a 484,000 sq ft campus with a 100MW capactiy developed on the outskirts of the town.
Echelon, at the same launch event, announced plans for a second data centre to be constructed in Clondalkin.
Niall Molloy, CEO of Echelon Data Centres, said that the provision of customisable, scalable data centre facilities is key to the continuing growth of the digital economy, driven by social media, ecommerce, digital broadcasting and the internet of things.
'We're thrilled that work to build Echelon's first data centres has commenced. Between our two sites in Clondalkin and Arklow, and other sites that we are in the process of identifying and acquiring in Ireland, the UK and Europe, Echelon will become one of Europe's biggest data centre providers,' he said.
'What this major investment means for Ireland is the creation of many high quality jobs. The development and operation of these two sites alone will provide employment for 1,100 people through a capital investment of 1bn which will enhance and support Ireland's growing tech ecosystem.'
The announcement is the first significant one of its kind for Arklow since the economic downturn and there is much optimism within the community that this signals that the fortunes of the town have finally turned. According to TD Pat Casey, the centre is the symbol of a 'new era' for Arklow.
'The old IFI site which began construction in the 1960s and at its height in the 1970s employed more than 1,500 people, eventually closed in 2000 and has been a symbol of the lack of regional job growth not just in Arklow but in south Wicklow. This is the perfect industry to be located at this site as there are limitations as to the type of development that can take place here and there are crucial infrastructural benefits such as grid connection and its location near the N11 only an hour's drive from Dublin Airport. This development by Echelon is the beginning of a new era of industrial development and jobs for Arklow and I am delighted to have been of assistance in getting this project to this crucial state. This is one of the reasons why I entered national politics and I am determined to see this project benefit jobs and commercial activity not just in Arklow but throughout south Wicklow,' he said.
Key business stakeholders attended a breakfast briefing held on Friday morning in the Druids Glen Hotel and Resort and hosted by Wicklow County Council.
This year's theme was 'Making Wicklow Great for Business'.
Wicklow County Council chief executive Frank Curran detailed future strategic plans the local authority aims to carry out, including strategic infrastructure projects such as the upgrading of the N11-M11, Arklow sewerage scheme, Bray public transport bridge, Arklow Historic Quarter and Fitzwilliam Square and a new public library in Wicklow town.
'I believe that Co. Wicklow's strategic location, with easy access to Dublin Airport, Dublin, Wicklow and Rosslare Ports; its skilled workforce and transport links places the county in a strong position to attract industry and enterprise opportunities' said Mr Curran.
He also made reference to the recent commuter survey carried out by the local authority, with 70 per cent of people willing to consider taking an equivalent job in Co. Wicklow in order to reduce their commute time while one-third would do so even if it meant a lower salary.
This, stated Mr Curran, demonstrated that County Wicklow has a highly skilled and educated workforce which was a valuable resource for a potential business looking to locate in Wicklow adding that this information will be used by as a marketing tool for to attract business to the county.
The cathaoirleach of Wicklow County Council, Cllr Pat Vance, said: 'We are delighted with the level of engagement today.
'It's all about building relationships and we can tap into huge potential by working together'.
The briefing also heard from Dr Barry McCleary, CEO of Megazyme, who described the company's development, its successes and challenges since relocating the business to the Southern Cross Business Park, Bray in 1996 from Sydney, Australia. He also talked about the range of products developed by Megazyme.
The Breakfast Briefing concluded with some final thoughts and commitments by the council chief executive following a question-and-answer session and contributions submitted by participants.
An Bord Pleanala has granted permission for 271 dwellings at Tinakilly in Rathnew but refused permission for a further 84 dwellings on lands zoned for Active Open Space.
Permission was also granted for the first phase of the new Rathnew inner Relief Road, a creche and for passive open/active space.
In February of last year, Wicklow County Council gave Keldrum Ltd permission to construct the 271 homes, although the initial planning application had sought 369 dwelling units.
That decision was appealed to An Bord Pleanala on a number of grounds by local Rathnew residents. The Bord found that the nature, scale and design of the proposed development was in accordance with the provisions of the County Development Plan and with the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness.
Also taken into consideration was the availability in the area of a wide range of social infrastructure and the pattern of existing and permitted development in the area.
According to the inspector's report: 'The proposed development would be in accordance with the zoning objectives for the area, would not seriously injure the residential or visual amenities of the area or of property in the vicinity, would respect the existing architectural heritage and character of the area and would be acceptable in terms of traffic safety and convenience. The proposed development would, therefore, be in accordance with the proper planning and sustainable development of the area'.
The development will be carried out in three phases, with Phase One delivering 80 units, Phase Two delivering another 80 units and Phase Three delivering 111 units.
The Spanish Navy intend to send a vessel and crew later this year to coincide with Sligo's Spanish Armada celebrations.
The new Spanish Ambassador to Ireland, Ilde Castro outlined the intentions to send a vessel in a meeting with Fianna Fail TD Marc Mac Sharry recently
Mac Sharry was the first member of Dail Eireann to meet with the newly-appointed ambassador who previously served as Deputy Head of the Spanish Mission to Ireland.
Mac Sharry said he was 'honoured' to be invited to a breakfast meeting with Ambassador Castro at his residence in Dublin.
"He informed me it was the very first meeting he sought to hold which to me is a great testament to the esteem with which the Spanish Mission to Ireland hold Sligo and the North West."
Deputy Mac Sharry attributed this affinity for Sligo by the Spanish people to the 'extraordinary work' of the Grange Armada Development Association and their efforts over the years in commemorating the Spanish Armada story and Sligo and Irelands unique part in it.
The Spanish Armada resulted in up to 24 ships making landfall on the coast of Ireland, from Antrim to Kerry.
Three ships grounded near Streedagh Strand, with 1,800 men drowned and perhaps 100 coming ashore. The wreck-site was discovered in 1985.
The Ambassador confirmed to Mac Sharry the Spanish Navy's intention to send one of their vessels together with its crew and an Admiral of the Spanish Navy later this year to coincide with the annual celebrations being organised by the Grange Armada Development Association.
Mac Sharry said "I am hoping that the Irish Navy will reciprocate by providing one of our own vessels in line with the wishes of the Grange based organisers".
In relation to the close historic ties between Sligo and Spain, through the Armada events, the Deputy said the discussion included efforts by the Embassy and Mac Sharry to establish an intra-parliament friendship group between the Dail and the Spanish Parliament.
"We all hope this can progress matters of mutual interest naturally with our shared Armada heritage high on the agenda. In addition, the great numbers of Spanish students and tourists who come to Ireland and the North West each year and of course the many thousands of Irish who holiday in Spain"
He continued, "I was very encouraged by Ambassador Castro who was unequivocal in stating his country's support for Ireland throughout the ongoing Brexit debacle. He very much looks forward to returning to Sligo," adding that the people of Sligo and the Grange Armada Development Association would no doubt extend a warm welcome to the Ambassador.
Giordano, of Monee, and Lorri Nagle, of Tinley Park, had a desire to put some of their own charitable dollars to work without the trouble of organizing fundraising events. According to Giordano, it was Nagle who suggested creating a local chapter of 100+ Women Who Care.
It's a stretch of the N4 that has claimed the lives of 27 people in 30 years and a Government has finally gotten around to giving it the green light for funding which will allow a February start date.
Transport Minister Shane Ross has gained approval from Government to award a contract to replace what he described as the "notoriously dangerous" section of the N4 Sligo to Dublin road from Collooney to Castlebaldwin.
Apart from the 30 fatalities on that section of the N4, accidents have also resulted in 87 serious and 897 minor injuries.
Minister Ross said: "Over the decades there have been many serious collisions and fatalities in this area.
"There are families and communities in the North West region who are still suffering the loss of loved ones who have died on this road.
"Many others have been seriously injured. After a fatality in 2015, this section was described by the Sligo County Coroner as possibly the worst road in Ireland. This is not acceptable.
"Good roads can save lives. On behalf of this Government and local representatives, I'm pleased that this road will now be rebuilt to a modern standard.
"It is an investment package of approximately 150 million.
"When complete it will enhance safety by dividing traffic and offer an improved road alignment for all those travelling along the N4/M4 between Sligo and Dublin.
"It will also contribute greatly to the quality of life of those who live in the North West regions of rural Ireland.
"A better, safer road network leads to improvements in employment, education, healthcare and social cohesion - as well as saving lives.
"Nevertheless, no matter how good a road is, every motorist must take all necessary caution when driving a motorised vehicle - a lethal weapon.
"In the aftermath of an extremely tragic week on our roads I appeal to all drivers to please keep to the speed limits, don't drink and drive, wear your seatbelt at all times and never use a mobile phone while driving.
Michael Nolan CEO Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) stated: "This is a welcome announcement and TII looks forward to working with Sligo County Council and the contractor Roadbridge to achieve this project's completion in 2021."
The project is part of the Project Ireland 2040 and the National Development Plan (NDP) 2018-2027.
Minister Ross is due to turn the first sod on the project on February 25th and while also in Sligo do the same on the WD road and Eastern Bridge route.
Just under 1,000 members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation went on strike in Sligo last Wednesday in a dispute over the safety of patients and wages.
Hundreds of INMO members in Sligo joined the picket, and they may well do so again over five days in February if the dispute is not resolved.
Martina Harkin Kelly, President of the INMO, who is based in Sligo, explained the purpose of the strike to The Sligo Champion: "The purpose of this is to look at the recruitment and retention crisis in nursing and midwifery.
"The HSE have tried and tested a number of proposals, policies, they've tried strategies over the last 3-4 years. However, recruitment and retention has proved very difficult for the HSE albeit they've tried. The 'Bring Them Home campaign', the rehired retirees, all of that has been tried and tested. The point I'm making is, it doesn't seem to be holding on to the nurses and midwives that we have within the country."
She added that a survey carried out by the INMO showed that the majority of graduates had planned to leave the country for work.
"There's still a huge attrition rate. We commissioned a survey last May and in that 71% of new graduates said that they were going to leave the country. 57% of them had already been approached. These were graduates that would be qualifying in September but they had already been approached by overseas employers and agencies in UK, USA, Australia, Canada. Conditions of work have a huge impact on anybody's potential to be able to carry out their day's work in the way they want.
"Nurses and midwives have and suffer from moral distress where they cannot give the care that they want to give. They're not allowed to give it within their work environment. They basically have to prioritise their care and move on to the next very sick patient."
Despite many accusations, the INMO have insisted that this dispute is not entirely about pay.
"Pay is an element, conditions are huge. Release for continuing professional development is huge. Nurses at the minute are not always released, it depends on their line manager whether or not they are released for educational programmes. Nurses and midwives have put their shoulder to the wheel for the last 11 years.
"It's not about pay. The nurse and the widwife, start on a salary of just below 30,000. After 15 years of nursing, with possibly a degree, a diploma and a masters, they get 45,000. Any money they get above that is worked for. If they work a weekend, they've had to work a weekend to get extra. They work bank holidays, they work Christmas, they work Easter. There's a claw back on holidays over the summer so that there's fairness and equity."
The INMO and its members felt as though they were left with no choice but to strike, as they feel as though the Government is not willing to engage in talks to resolve the current staffing crisis.
The INMO were yet to have any contact with the Government regarding the strike action last Wednesday, but Health Minister Simon Harris did say that financial penalties against nurses will be considered in the coming days and weeks.
"We have exhausted every single mechanism in the industrial relations process, there is no other line. The Labour Court couldn't get any common ground between the different parties. The issue is recruitment and retention, it's not a national problem, it's global.
"Those nurses abroad want to know that they have something to come back to, that the conditions of work are safe and that they will enjoy and give what they want to the profession that they chose."
The severe overcrowding at hospitals throughout the country is putting lives at risk, added the INMO President.
"We run at 100-120% capacity. The death zone is when you tilt above 94% capacity at hospitals. That technically means there are patients at risk because of overcrowding.
"No nurse wants to be on strike. I find it difficult to comprehend that they would let nurses, who have a moral conscience in all of this, and they would let them walk to the footpaths and roads outside the major hospitals and community health organisations."
Martina Harkin Kelly says the INMO are more than willing to sit down and talk, should the Government decide they wish to do so.
"What I would say to Government is that we are always available for talks, there is a willingness there to engage. There has to be middle ground sought in this dispute. That narrative of 'putting the country through this' I put in conjunction with the patronising narrative of 'we respect ye, you're good little girls and boys'. That doesn't pay the bills."
She described conditions at Sligo University Hospital as being like 'a war zone' at times.
"Last year alone in Sligo University Hospital there were 4,174 patients that were on trolleys. That's your Emergency Department. You cannot sleep on a trolley in the ED department. The lights are on, there's continuous bleeping, people are coming in and out, there are infection prevention and control issues and the nurses try and deal with that. It's a war zone at times.
"It's an across the board strike but nurses have given a lot of goodwill, there is emergency cover and essential care services being given by our members. I think it's important that every citizen merits a professional, qualified nurse at the end of the day
"For the Sligo branch there's around 1,000 members, most are out on strike. We've had to put up with the weather conditions but the weather conditions at least we know will go but the conditions inside have remained for the last 11/12 years but now is the time. This is for the nurses of the future."
One nurse told The Sligo Champion: "This strike has happened because of patient safety and conditions, and really it's about the staffing levels. That's the main reason we are here today."
Zana McGowan urged the Government to take heed of the industrial action.
"Our priority is patient safety. We're striking mainly for them and for the future of healthcare in Ireland. At the minute with short staffing levels ad problems with recruitment and retention we can't cope. At times it is (like a war zone), especially in the summer. We work in dialysis which is a specialised area so we need more nurses. We were down four or five nurses some days. It was stressful and stressful for the patients.
"We don't want to be here. We want to be by the bedsides. Hopefully the Government will listen to us because we're crying out for help and they're ignoring us."
Speaking on the picket line, Sinn Fein Councillor Chris MacManus reiterated his support for nurses and midwives as they attempt to get the government to engage with them to solve the recruitment and retention crisis.
Councillor MacManus said: "Nurses and midwives did not want to have to strike today. However, it is obvious that this action by the INMO has massive backing amongst the public. We all support their right to strike for better conditions, for a better health service, for respect, and for better pay.
"The government and their spokespeople fail to understand that if nurses and midwives are outside our hospitals, it means something is very wrong both inside hospitals and in government buildings. Successive Government have had over a decade to address the nursing recruitment and retention crisis. They have completely failed, and the situation has deteriorated.
"It is Fine Gael who are compromising patient care, not our nurses and midwives. Under Fine Gael the health service has been reduced to the point where waiting lists soar because of a lack of resources. Where countless operations are cancelled because of a lack of staff. Where hundreds of patients languish on trolleys daily because of a lack of hospital beds and staff."
Scottish pair Rachel Winter and Simon Clark recently braved the elements in Sligo during the cold snap while running the coastline of Ireland for charity.
From Findhorn, near Inverness, they set off on their adventure last August from Dublin to raise funds for Ecologia Youth Trust.
The Trust provides orphans and vulnerable youngsters with family homes, an education, school meals, child sponsorship, and mentoring in Kenya, Uganda, Russia and Scotland.
Arriving recently in Sligo, Rachel, Manager and Volunteers Co-ordinator with the charity and Simon, an architect, said they have been enjoying the county's hospitality.
Managing the 2,250 mile trek surviving on as little as 10 per day, with that figure now down to 5, the runners have been getting by thanks to the generosity of people all over Ireland.
"We sleep anywhere from cow sheds to laundry rooms and community centres. We're lucky that anywhere we stay people usually feed us too. The people of Sligo have been so kind," said Rachel.
As Rachel is currently carrying an injury she sets out in the mornings two hours before her partner in order to get a head start..
"Originally we thought we'd be finished by Christmas. We're keeping as close to the coast as possible so that's why it's taking us longer," Rachel explained.
Having completed an arduous 5,100-mile run around the British coastline in 2017 for the charity, raising over 25,000, Simon hopes this challenge will help raise 10,000 to continue the charity's work.
"Sligo is our tenth county...We've been getting around town visiting the tourist board and went to Sligo Yoga Centre where Tara was amazingly kind," said Simon.
Covering 15 to 25 miles per day, Rachel and Simon aim to finish up their navigation in early March right where they started on O'Connell Bridge, seven months after setting out on their coastal challenge.
The woman who oversaw the programme to integrate Syrian refugees into Co Wexford has said the people of the county fully embraced the initiative and made the people coming here very welcome.
Hannah Culkin, who is the Refugee Resettlement Manager with Doras Luimni, met with this newspaper to discuss the programme which is nearing its end after a two-year period that saw 215 people settle in Wexford from a country that has been ravaged by war.
Doras Luimni is an independent, non-profit, non-Governmental, organisation that works to promote and protect human rights.
Integration planning is a key component of what the organisation does and that was also a priority aspect of the work Hannah has done in Wexford over the last two years in conjunction with Wexford County Council.
Doras Luimni was set up in Limerick in 2000 and the first resettlement programme took place in Co Laois in 2015.
Now that the programme is winding down in Wexford Hannah said the last meeting of the inter-agency committee will take place this coming Thursday.
She underlined the fact that sometimes the general public have a misconception about refugees.
'They have been invited to Ireland by the Government's resettlement programme,' she said.
The inter-agency group in Wexford is composed of Hannah, Noirin Cummins, Sulafa Ali, Kamal Tribak and Mercedes Hoad Moussa.
'We won the tender to administer the resettlement programme in Wexford,' said Hannah.
'Our job is to support the families on a daily basis,' she added.
That support is provided in a number of ways and many of the things that Irish people take for granted are completely new learning experiences for the Syrian people who are here.
'A big part of our work is collaborating with partner organisations,' said Hannah.
In some ways the role of Hannah's organisation was to coordinate the programme between the families and services and for her it was a case of liaising between all of the people and organisations involved.
'With families arriving it's a case of helping them get to grips with their new surroundings and we mustn't forget what it is they're coming from,' she said.
'The things we take for granted like going to the supermarket, knowing bus stops and timetables, and making appointments, these are some of the everyday things we help them with.'
Doras Luimni also works with the Waterford and Wexford Education and Training Board (WWETB) to give the Syrian people English classes.
Hannah, who is from Galway, was full of praise for the people of Co Wexford who she said made the refugees feel very welcome.
'Yes, there will always be one or two people who have concerns but the vast majority of people have been so welcoming and that's something that the Syrian people themselves have spoken about,' she said.
'The families have been warmly welcomed in Wexford,' she added.
'They say the people in Wexford people are always happy and smiling.'
The inter-agency group has also developed a team of around 30 volunteers in Co Wexford and Hannah said their input and support has been invaluable.
'We organise home visits too because that helps people get comfortable in their new surroundings.'
When the programme winds down it's expected the volunteers will provide ongoing help and support to the refugees as they integrate themselves in their local communities.
'We have a befriending programme and the volunteers go to some people's homes as well,' said Hannah.
The Syrians were also offered tutoring in English under the ESL (English as a Second Language) initiative and that was delivered by retired teachers and people who never did such work before but were trained.
'We are rolling out a family advocacy programme at the moment as well,' said Hannah.
For her the human aspect of the programme is always at the forefront: 'These are people and they had lives before they came here.'
'They are human beings just like us.'
Last month the first Wexford integration network meeting took place and saw around 20 different stakeholder organisations represented.
Eva Sheeba and her son Jonathan Estaiffan, from Iraq, met the Pope in Dublin. They are part of the Doras Luimni resettlement programme
Two hundred and fifteen refugees - the vast majority coming from war-torn Syria - have been housed in County Wexford by the local authority in a 20-month period.
The first of the 47 refugee families arrived in May 2017 under the Government's Irish Refugee Protection Programme - which is tasked with accommodating 4,000 Syrian people in Ireland.
The Syrian families, who have been left with little option but to abandon their native country, have been allocated three and four bed council houses in County Wexford, offering them a level of comfort most have not seen in several years. There are also several Iraqi families and a Iraqi Kurdish family which have been housed here.
Senior Staff Officer in Wexford County Council's Housing Capital department, Noirin Cummins said the local authorities became involved after the Government agreed to take 4,000 refugees.
'In 2016 we were contacted by the Irish Refugee Protection Programme and they came down and gave a presentation to the local authority here. Initially we were allocated 150 refugees and then another exercise was carried out and the allocation went from 150 to 210 for County Wexford,' Noirin said.
The allocation was based on population and the council's housing list. 'In the end 213 refugees came from Lebanon or Greece originally and most were settled in the emergency and orientation centre in Clonea, Dungarvan. They were there for at least two months,' Noirin says.
Another two refugees arrived into the county since bringing the total number to 215.
'It was decided that we would create four clusters in the four main towns where the houses were available. Apart from that it was because it's far more than housing as we needed all of the support services. We set up an inter-agency working group before they arrived and the local authority has the lead role in the group with the Irish Refugee Protection Programme.'
On the inter-agency group sits representatives from the HSE, Department of Social Protection, Tusla, Education and Training Board, Citizen's Information and creche and other support providers.
'They all had to bring something from their expertise to the support services. We bought the houses for them through funding from the Department of Housing, Planning & Local Government. It didn't impact on funding for other housing projects.'
Each group that sits on the inter-agency group has to bring something to the project.
'We bought houses and we worked with approved housing bodies. The families that went into the approved housing bodies are like social housing tenants so they have the house for life if they so wish. We provided the houses and the Department of Social Protection fitted them out and there were grants for white goods.'
Noirin praised the work of Doras Luimni, an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation which works to promote and support the rights of migrants in Ireland.
She said the work their team of five support staff - led by Hannah Culkin - do in County Wexford is funded by the Department of Justice.
'I think the success of the project in Wexford is really down to Doras Luimni being here providing all of those services because their needs were great when they arrived. Even the orientation to show them where their shops were was vital.'
Noirin said the Department of Justice funding always had a limited time-scale so they are now withdrawing it after two years.
'We have been told it will be April or May. The Department of Justice are funding the support scheme. That was always time limited but Wexford County Council hope to continue to provide and fund some level of supports for the county's new 215 (and growing) citizens, including offering interpretative assistance.
'We will always be there to meet their housing needs and we would hope to continue providing supports on a much lower scale,' she added.
Today there are 13 refugee families based in Wexford town, 12 in New Ross and Enniscorthy and nine in Gorey.
Four families have been allocated houses in Rosbercon, New Ross, through Kilkenny County Council.
The final two families were allocated houses in mid-January and Wexford County Council has been one of, if not the, quickest to accommodate the families nationally.
'It's the start of a new life for them and they are so house proud,' Noirin says, alluding to how anyone who enters a Syrian home is offered a cup of fresh coffee and some Syrian food.
Noirin has visited all of the families and was there when they were handed their house keys. 'It was very emotional. It's a huge day for them. You see them arriving with their belongings on a bus and they are just so very appreciative.'
Some of the families took a little time acclimatising to their Irish house living-room as in Syria the husband would have a reception room and the woman would have a different reception area.
'Culturally we are different. The difference of their original home to what they had endured in the camps to what they have now is massive. One man said he lived in a tent that was smaller than the kitchen table he was sitting at.'
Funded by the Department of Justice, the refugees have been availing of a suite of supports through Doras Luimni, including 20 hours per week of English classes meaning younger children are cared for at creches across the county and at schools where they have settled in fantastically well, Noirin said.
She said: 'I find it to be such rewarding project. The families are coming to us so it is very rewarding and I am delighted to be part of it. We (in Wexford County Council' Housing department), house people every week, but clearly their needs were huge,'
Many of the men and women who have arrived in County Wexford over recent months worked all their lives, having received a good education. These include people who are from a professional working class background in Syria and all are more than willing to work and contribute to Irish society.
Noirin: 'They are very sociable. The fact that there hasn't been any backlash has to do with all the supports that have been put in place by Doras Luimni. Imagine arriving in a country with just your baggage.'
Hannah praised the 30-plus volunteers who have helped the family members, most of whom range in ages from newborns to men and women in their forties. Many speak good English and are progressing very quickly, she added.
Hannah said: 'We are at 215 with babies and some family reunification also.'
Under the Irish Humanitarian Admissions Programme family reunification scheme some families have been able to get their elderly parent(s) resettled with them.
'It was quite restricted to a parent, spouse or a child under 18.'
While they certainly had to brave the cold, the winter sun shone on nurses and midwives as they picketed Wexford General Hospital on Wednesday as part of a nationwide protest revolving around pay and conditions. As the group of some 60 nurses trod a path up and down outside the hospital to keep warm, they'll have taken heart in the incessant honking from passing motorists, showing support for their plight.
Spirits were high and throughout the day, some of the midwives even generated a few laughs with creative signs such as 'Leo, Make Womb In Your Budget' and 'We are having a Midwife Crisis'.
While outside the hospital was a flurry of activity, inside things were a little quieter. Although patients and other medical professionals still milled about, there was a noticeable absence of nurses as they stood in the cold outside.
Local INMO Representatives Emer Ward and Brid Jordan Murphy stated that while all elective procedures had been cancelled for the day, the wards at the hospital were being covered and that high risk areas were being staffed as normal.
'Things are constantly being monitored,' Emer said. 'There's additional staff available if necessary and we have on-call teams to deal with any theatre emergencies or anything like that.'
While the cancelling of elective procedures, they said, was regrettable, they pointed out that cancellations had become common place.
'Every day, most appointments are cancelled due to over-crowding in the hospital anyway,' said Brid. 'The cancellation of elective procedures is happening on a daily basis at this stage.'
According to the nurses, the main focus of the strike is to do with the recruitment and retention of staff. They say that nurses are the lowest paid graduate health professionals by some margin and it's growing increasingly difficult to attract young people into the profession, while many opt to leave Ireland and work in countries where the conditions are more favourable.
'The government has put in place every other possible mechanism to try and deal with recruitment and the retention of staff and it hasn't worked,' said Emer. 'The one thing they haven't tried is looking at pay. Nurses still haven't gained pay parity with other graduate healthcare professionals. Often they'll have trained side by side with other healthcare colleagues and yet they start off on a salary that can be up to 7,000 lower. For every four jobs that are advertised at the moment, only one application comes in.'
Wexford General Hospital, they say, is being hit just as hard as anywhere else with staff often opting to leave and try their luck elsewhere.
'We're trying to encourage staff from Wexford to come back and live here,' Emer said. 'However, retaining them is often the big issue. Younger nurses just won't put up with the conditions and they will move on elsewhere.'
One of the favoured destinations currently is the UK, where pay-parity has existed among healthcare professionals for over ten years.
'A lot of the nurses here will do six months on their postgrad and then they're gone,' said Brid. 'We've also had staff who've gone off and taken a leave of absence to work in the likes of the UAE and they cannot believe how bad things are when they come back.'
'I worked in the UK myself for years,' explained Emer. 'I came back around 21 years ago and we've been discussing pay parity ever since.'
Speaking on the eve of the strike, the choice of words from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar perhaps only served to inflame tensions with the nurses. He suggested that 'it would not be fair to taxpayers' and other health professionals to borrow money to fund pay increases - increases which he says could amount to over 300million.
Having worked in Wexford General briefly himself in his early years as a doctor, there was certain surprise on the picket lines in relation to the Taoiseach's seemingly dismissive attitude towards the strike action.
'Leo's comments don't help,' said Brid. 'Nobody wants to be out here on the picket line. As a group we are so frustrated. We are dedicated to the job we do. This is not a decision that was taken lightly.'
'What's not fair on the taxpayer is that they are having services, surgeries and appointments constantly cancelled,' added Emer. 'It's not fair that nursing has become a graduate profession, but they are paid much less than those in similar healthcare roles.'
Meanwhile, in a statement, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe said that the Labour Court's decision not to intervene in the dispute 'undoubtedly reflects the fundamental issues at dispute between the parties on the claim by nurses who wish to generate additional pay increases over and above those provided under the terms of the Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA) to which they have subscribed'.
He said that conceding to the nurses demands for a pay hike over and above those in the current agreement would have 'serious consequences' for public finances and public pay policy and would undoubtedly generate knock-on claims from the rest of the public service workforce.
Both local representatives of the striking nurses say that the support for them at Wexford General on Thursday was fantastic, across the board. 'There's wonderful support in the hospital here for us,' said Emer. 'Our colleagues here understand completely our issues and have been very supportive. They will do nothing to undermine the strike. Also, the service users here in the hospital have been great. They see exactly what's going on themselves and are behind us every step of the way.'
With the INMO and the government seemingly poles apart in their stances, it seems that strike action is set to continue at hospitals around the country, Wexford being one of them.
'It's planned that there'll be two more days next week and three the week after that,' said Emer. 'This has been discussed for the past 12 months and the government hasn't provided what it promised. There have been constant talks for the past four months and nothing has been forthcoming. This is absolutely a last resort, just as it was in '99. This is not where we want to be. As things stand, we will be back out on strike again next Tuesday. We hope we won't be, but the government has to come up with a real plan for nurses.'
From left: Eoin Kinsella, assistant agricultural scientist, Wexford Co Council; Sinead Casey, district manager, Wexford Co Council; John Carley, director of services, Wexford Co Council; Cllr Michael Whelan; Minister Andrew Doyle; council cathaoirleach John Fleming; Brenda Cooney, senior executive scientist, Wexford Co Council; Cllr Willie Fitzharris; Cllr Martin Murphy; and Dr. Mairead Shore, from the Local Authorities Water Programme
An innovative project to get a blue flag for Duncannon Beach has been launched in the seaside village.
550,000 was recently awarded to Wexford County Council by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine under the European Innovation Project to fund a unique initiative aimed at improving water quality.
The project was officially launched by Minister Andrew Doyle, Minister of State for Food, Forestry and Horticulture, in Duncannon Community Hall, with representatives from all the project stakeholders in attendance, including the local community, the farming community, Wexford County Council, Teagasc and others.
The money was awarded by the Mr Doyle under the European Innovation Project and it is hoped the project will lead to the popular seaside village recovering its former Blue Flag status.
The initiative involves cooperation between farmers, scientists, advisors, NGOs, and others who have come together in an operational group to address the issue of water quality in the local area.
The Duncannon project is one of a number of Department of Agriculture innovation partnerships designed to road-test new ideas and practices which can then be used more widely by farmers and others to improve productivity, enhance resource efficiency and pursue sustainable farming practices, and in this case to demonstrate how good agriculture practices can help minimise impact on local water quality.
The initiative will see implementation of innovative practices, based on research carried out by the Teagasc Agricultural Catchments Programme. It will see the mapping each and every farm and farmyard, the identification of any pollution potential zones 'PPZ' and then using them as education and engagement tools to show farmers in a simple visual way, the water-quality risks specific to their farms. The project will also involve local farmers themselves collaboratively proposing solutions to problems identified on their farms which are workable and which they are willing to implement. These solutions would also be used as the basis for a water-quality focused, results-based, reward scheme which could be used to improve water-quality in particularly sensitive catchments.
Included in the project is a mechanism to effectively communicate and share local water-quality results with the local community and the establishing local 'citizen scientist' groups whereby local community members monitor the quality of their local streams and develop a pollution alert system.
The Duncannon Blue Flag Farming and Community Scheme project was one of 12 to which funding was awarded in 2018 under the European Innovation Partnerships (EIP) initiative of Ireland's Rural Development Programme. The county council will use the funding to employ a full-time Assistant Agricultural Scientist and part-time Clerical Officer over a three-year period.
On Saturday, February 16, The Helen Blake project, a voluntary steering committee tasked with building a 100-year-old replica boat lifeboat, is holding an exclusive black tie ball at the Brandon House Hotel.
Her Excellency, Else Berit Eikeland, Ambassador of Norway to Ireland who has taken huge personal interest in the project will be in attendance.
Chairperson of the committee Brendan Power said: 'This is a very exciting time for us to be able to share with the public why we are all so passionate about this historic and exciting project. The courage the lifeboat crew showed that night when in 1914 the Norwegian schooner Mexico went aground on the Keeragh Islands off the coast of Wexford was simply extraordinary. The Helen Blake lifeboat, from Fethard on Sea, went to its aid but was swamped by a freak wave and nine men lost their lives.'
In their honour the project committee wanted to preserve their memories by building a replica of the lifeboat, which will commence in the coming weeks and will be launched in 2020.
Over the past three years The Helen Blake project have been fundraising to raise matching funds to build the replica lifeboat.
'We have received fantastic support from our community and Bord Iascaigh Mhara through their Flag Programme (Fisheries Local Action Group). This funding enabled a feasibility study which identified the replica Helen Blake as a great community project.'
Flag also provided funding towards the capital costs of the build. Wexford Local Development are sponsors of the Tus Programme and have provided Tus participants to assist in the building of the lifeboat, as well as gaining valuable training in boat building.
Currently the team are working on a 15ft hand-crafted Canadian Hiawatha Canoe which uses the same build techniques and shipbuilding methods that will be used on the replica Helen Blake. 'This is providing invaluable experience to the team ironing out any issues encountered, as well as being a huge asset to the project. A number of expressions of interest have been received in relation to purchasing this beautiful craft, from which the funds will be put into the replica Helen Blake.'
The canoe is a general purpose recreational 15ft cedar strip build, coated using the West epoxy system. The design is Canadian and called the Hiawatha.
Mark Brennan of the Helen Blake project said: 'To date the Helen Blake is fully lofted (marked out) and mounds are currently being made to start the strip planking. Also since starting in July the team have crafted four crosses from Azobe an African Hardwood to go on the graves of some of those brave men who lost their lives.'
A sample of the hull of the Helen Blake has been prepared for inspection by the Department of the Marine for the procurement of a P3 license for the Helen Blake.
Mark said: 'We have been amazed with the take up of tickets and this has now become our major fundraiser of the year, during which all attendees of the function will be entered into a 'Super Draw' and raffle with high-value prizes. The finished Canadian Hiawatha Canoe will also be revealed and proudly displayed on the evening.'
There will be special guests, a live auction, a live band followed by a DJ. To book visit www.thehelenblake.com/events or contact Brendan on 087 9861756.
The sudden death of Johnny Roche of 54 JKL Place, New Ross, on New Year's Day has occasioned great sadness in his native New Ross and further afield.
Johnny died aged 67 at his home at 54 JFL Place. on New Year's Day night.
From Charlton Hill, Johnny was the son of Johanna and Laurence and had two brothers, the late Jim and Pat and is survived by his four sisters, Ellen, Frances, Noeleen and Maria.
He attended Michael Street and CBS national schools and in his youth played with a tin whistle group.
His father Laurence passed on a love of the outdoors to Johnny who loved nothing more than going off fishing on the quay in New Ross or hunting in the area.
In later years he enjoyed walking his dog and playing darts, often winning turkeys and hams.
Such was his prowess at hitting the high scores, his dart skills were seen at pubs and venues across the country. Johnny also enjoyed racquetball with the late Johnny Lacey.
He worked delivering parcels of meat for Pat Bailey's butchers on North Street in his teens, before going on to work at Stafford's fuels. Always wanting to see more of the world he left to join the Merchant Navy in his early twenties, taking him around the world, working in ship kitchens. He would be away from New Ross for weeks and months at a time, but always loved coming home.
In 1973 Johnny returned to New Ross. He lived in Mary Street prior to settling in JKL.
He worked for Nicholas Doyle on Mary Street delivering beer to pubs across the county. A man who loved interacting with people on a one-to-one basis, Johnny had a very quirky sense of humour, but with his trademark glint in the eye and smile he could get away with saying anything. A loyal friend, Johnny met Patricia who became his partner for the following 30 years up until his untimely passing.
Johnny enjoyed good health up until his mid-fifties when he suffered him hip problems. He retired early on account of it, but continued getting out and about. He loved animals and being out on the land and loved being out in nature where he could tell whoever was in his company which animal had passed that way recently from the tracks. He walked his dog Tiny daily and found great companionship in his cat Charlie who died four months before him.
Johnny was at home on New Year's Day when he passed away in his chair, shortly after chatting with family. His sudden death is something Patricia, his daughter Sarah and all his family and friends are still struggling to come to terms with. They said they have received great support within the community for which they are eternally grateful.
Johnny was a source of comfort, love, joy and companionship, a confidant, best friend, partner and an amazing and loving father to Sarah.
He is survived by his loving partner Patricia; daughter Sarah; sisters Maria, Noeleen, Ellen and Frances, brother Pat; brothers-in-law; sisters-in-law; nephews; nieces; relatives and friends.
A large crowd attended Johnny's funeral Mass at St Mary & St Michael's church, where members of New Ross Sea Scouts and the civil defence - both of whom Patricia is a long term member.
He was laid to rest afterwards in St Stephen's Cemetery.
Local electoral boards, often comprised of incumbents (or their allies), are by their nature integrated with local politics. Even the most well-meaning local electoral board members would be hard-pressed to absolve themselves of any and all biases they may have. This doesnt imply that they are corrupt; theyre just human. Imagine being a candidate who must face an electoral board and the person you are challenging is one of those deciding your fate. Its no wonder that candidates may view the handling of objections to their candidacies as intimidating, inconsistent and biased.
Full reconstruction of the treacherous R556 Dale Road is finally on the cards after years of campaigning by residents who are literally living in the shadow of the constant threat it poses.
It's a raised causeway road with no hard shoulder, and it has subsided heavily to the point where vehicles have to slow to a crawl to pass it safely. And with no hard shoulder, there's no room for safe evasive action - a fact discovered by many motorists who miraculously emerge unscathed after their cars plummeted off the road in the numerous accidents there over the years.
There was widespread relief last week when locals learned the Dale Road was finally granted funding - of 300,000 - towards the design of a safe new road and towards initiating the land-acquisition process.
It doesn't remove the threat overnight, but this week's funding announced by the Department of Tourism, Transport and Sport Minister is expected to lead to the imminent reconstruction of the entire road, subject to the planning process. It's expected the road could be built as soon as 2020.
"Getting it recognised as the worst road in Kerry was crucial," local County Councillor Aoife Thornton (FG) said this week, welcoming the news.
"I am delighted that the Minister and the Department has granted this funding following KCC's recent step to make an application in respect of the R556, a step that I had fought for since my election to Kerry County Council in 2014."
As Cathaoirleach of the Listowel Municipal Area, Cllr Thornton facilitated the biggest deputation of locals to have ever come before the district authority early last year.
It was led by the recently departed Eamonn Fitzmaurice of Ballinclogher, who told the Council the long-running danger posed by the road was tantamount to a breach of locals' human rights.
His message hit home, with the road given emergency status. Transport Minister Shane Ross walked part of it shortly thereafter, meeting with Minister Griffin, Cllr Thornton and engineers on the Dale Road subject last November.
So long was the battle to get the road addressed that many locals had simply given up hope of funding.
"I was actually canvassing around the area last week, and there was one householder who bet me there would be no funding announced this year at all, such was the extent to which confidence locally has dwindled," she said. "I told him I was very confident though and suggested the figure of 50. He said that was too high, so we went for a bet of 5 instead!"
Cllr Thornton is also betting on a relatively quick delivery of the project, now calling on the Council to expedite the design and planning. She paid tribute to the many residents and local firms who backed the campaign - with 1,500 signatures gathered on a petition last year.
Minister Ross was presented with urgent appeals from the numerous companies dependant on the access of the R556 at November's meeting. Minister Griffin described the announcement from his department last week as 'hugely significant'.
The 2018 Science for Development Award presented by Minister Helen McEntee TD to Timothy McGrath, Killorglin Community College for his project, An Investigation into using CRISPR-Cas9 to genomically edit Paramecium Caudatum to purify Vibrio Cholera infected water in third-world countries. Photo by Chris Bellew
Fifth-year Killorglin Community College student Timothy McGrath will this month jet off to Uganda with genuine hope of helping the African nation - and Principal Donal O'Reilly, who will travel with him from February 16, was full of praise for Timothy this week as well as the school's tradition when it comes to innovation and invention.
Timothy was a winner in the Irish Aid-sponsored 'Science for Development Award' category at the 2018 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition for a project that purified water.
He sought to develop a micro-organism that feeds on Cholera, and he built home-made microbiology and centrifuge machines to multiply DNA for the project.
The award is organised annually by Self Help Africa, and for his efforts, Timothy will now fly to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, and visit farming communities in rural parts of the country.
Mr O'Reilly explained to The Kerryman that Timothys dad will also travel over, and some similarly impressive students from around Ireland will also join Timothy.
"I am excited to live a new experience and to be in a new environment," Timothy said.
"I think there will be a lot to take in. "I'm hoping to bring one of the actual machines that I've developed with me and see if the people I meet in Uganda think it can be applied there."
Mr O'Reilly explained that Timothy developed the normally expensive technology for a mere 120, and it is hoped that Timothy can instruct the people of Uganda on how to develop this technology - perhaps for as little as 20 to 30.
"It's amazing to see a young man like Timothy in the current climate with such a focus on looking after our planet," Donal said.
"I suppose we were the generation that nearly destroyed the earth, and now you see people like Timothy coming along and being more aware of the world around us and looking as well to help those who are less well off. "I hadn't been expecting to be going over as well myself initially but, luckily for me, it falls during mid-term - so it works out quite well!"
Timothy's achievement follows a long line of similarly impressive efforts by the school in recent years.
Aside from the 2018 win that led to Timothy securing a spot on the upcoming trip to Uganda, he was again amongst the prize-winners in the 2019 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition at the RDS in Dublin, finishing third in his category for creating a biofilter system using halophyte plants to combat oceanic dead zones. It was one of two awards for the school at this year's exhibition, to which Killorglin Community College sent four participants.
In late 2016, students Jack Nagle and Eoghan McKenna were among 600 finalists at Maker Faire Rome exhibition, the largest showcase of inventions and innovation in Europe.
The duo were the only Irish secondary school students at that year's event having developed a cot that allows parents to easily elevate a baby to the medically recommended 30-degree angle.
Jack Nagle has also won awards and plaudits aplenty for developing the 'Tractor Safe Lock', which automatically engages a tractor's handbrake when the driver leaves his or her seat.
These examples only scratch the surface of Timothy, Jack and the school's achievements, and Mr O'Reilly said there's definitely something about the school and the Killorglin community that helps foster innovation - innovation that has seen the school performing at the highest level in events such as the Young Scientist Exhibition and the Kerry Student Enterprise Awards.
"There's definitely something in the water here," Mr O'Reilly joked.
"The school places a focus on science, technology and problem-solving, and the students are always encouraged to think for themselves rather than just being spoon-fed everything.
"I think you'd also have to look at Killorglin itself and its reputation as an entrepreneurial town, home to the likes of FEXCO and a number of other big businesses.
"I think those things have combined to contribute to the success we've had here at the Community College over the last number of years."
Drawing on his family's often controversial involvement in machine hire for building sites, Deputy Danny Healy-Rae made an interesting contribution to last week's Oireachtas Health Committee debate on the spiralling cost of the National Children's Hospital.
"Like everybody else, I am very concerned about this unmitigated mess, with the cost of the hospital practically doubled," said Deputy Healy Rae.
"I am worried about a number of aspects. Who decided only five contractors were to be shortlisted? Who decided the procurement ground rules at the start of the tender process? That is an important question," Deputy Healy-Rae told the committee.
"When one contractor was awarded the phase A part of the work, was it the only contractor allowed to tender for the second stage? If that is the story, as I understand it, the contractor would be able to increase costs day after day because it is the only one there," the Kerry deputy asked.
Deputy Healy-Rae also raised concerns about the number of contractors that had been involved in the tendering process.
"Was it a mistake to confine the number of contractors to just five being allowed to tender? Five is a very small number and some of these contractors may be found not to be competing but rather working together. One may know the other would not have the capacity to do the job because it is busy elsewhere or other contracts have been secured. Does this compromise whoever is paying for this, which is the taxpayer in this case?" asked the Kilgarvan based Independent.
Department of Health Secretary General Jim Breslin defended the small number of firms involved in the process.
"There is a really limited number, not just in Ireland but in Europe, with the capability to deliver a project of this scale. I am not sure I agree with the Deputy on the point. If this was a small project and many builders would be capable of doing it, I might agree, but very few people have the scale to deliver something of this size," he said.
Deputy Healy-Rae also questioned whether the chosen site for the hospital - a matter that was contentious long before the decision was made - had contributed to the soaring cost of the project.
"Does the witness agree that if the hospital had been built on a greenfield site, there would have been much lower costs in extracting materials from the site and getting materials into the site? Many people, including me, believe that is where the exorbitant cost is. It arises because of the confined space in which the hospital is being built and the difficulty in getting materials in and out of the place," said Deputy Healy-Rae.
Health Minister Simon Harris disagreed with Deputy Healy-Rae's take on the situation regarding the location.
"The primary reasoning behind the location of the site must be the clinical outcomes for our children," he said.
"I also do not believe, for the purposes of these conversations about overruns, that it is a relevant point," said Minister Harris.
Striking nurses in Kerry say that they have been overwhelmed by the support they are receiving from the public as they down tools in search of better pay and conditions.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation's second 24-hour strike action began at 8am on Tuesday, with the main protest in Kerry taking place at University Hospital Kerry (UHK).
Other large protests took place at community hospitals in Dingle, Kenmare and Cahersiveen, while INMO members were also on strike at Kerry respite centres and care homes for the elderly and the disabled. At UHK roughly 300 out-patient appointments have been cancelled over the two days of the INMO strike action.
On Tuesday some 250 nurses were on the picket line at UHK, and as traffic passed along the busy road, many motorists were beeping their horns in support of the striking nurses. Many local businesses were also doing what they could to show their solidarity.
Last Wednesday and again on Tuesday, many Tralee restaurants and cafes have delivered tea, coffee and sandwiches to the nurses who have braved appalling weather on both days of the strike. Many other restaurants in Tralee have also been offering free food and refreshments to all striking nurses. Kerry INMO representative Mary Power said the nurses had been "overwhelmed" by the public support.
"There were motorists beeping their horns all the time and lots of people were bringing coffee. One business even came along and set up a trestle table full of teas and coffees which was very kind," she said. "People have been giving us very serious support," said Ms Power.
"There has been a very big turnout in Kerry even in the hail and rain. But this is not a place that any of us want to be," she said. While most health services were impacted, vital services were still operational. UHK's Emergency Department remained open, though, with a significantly reduced staff.
INMO members were available to deal with emergency situations, and on several occassions nurses left the picket line to assist with emergency cases. Ms Power said the hospital was "very full" on Wednesday and that there were 14 patients on trolleys in the Emergency Department at lunchtime on Wednesday.
Though many patients have had appointments and procedures cancelled, there is still widespread support for the striking health workers. A national poll by iReach found that a massive 64 per cent of the public back the nurses.
Meanwhile, with no end to the nursing strike in sight, the industrial strife in the health service was due to worsen on Wednesday with GPs - including several from Kerry - set to join the INMO and Psychiatric Nurses Association and launch their own action with a march on the Dail.
Though funding was set aside for lighting in Glenbeigh village from local development levies the seaside village remains dangerous for walkers at night-time due to a lack of public lighting.
Local business man, Sean Falvey, believes that some-one will be killed if public lighting is not installed on the Cahersiveen side of the village - which is where there are over 40 houses and the local caravan park, which he runs.
A footpath to the village has been installed as part of promised works but lights have not. "It is lethal without lights," said Sean.
During the summer months those holidaying in the village are walking into the centre on an unlit path.
"We don't need a lot of lights but we were told that we would get them as part of the development of the housing estates but this has not happened. A path has been put in, and ducting, but the lights have not been installed," explained Sean.
There is lighting in the centre of the village close to the Glenbeigh hotel but not in the area where most houses are located Mr Falvey told The Kerryman this week.
He and Cllr Damian Quigg (SF) are now calling on the local authority to put in place the lighting that has been planned for many years.
Cllr Quigg, hopes that lighting can be included as an overall scheme for the village which will include traffic calming measures - another necessary step for the village due to the level of speed on the Ring of Kerry road. This too could include an overlay of the village.
"Glenbeigh is an unusual village as it is probably the only seaside village on a national road. A design plan has been completed so now all we need is funding," said Cllr Quigg.
Cllr Quigg raised it at Kerry County Council last month. In response council officials said that Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) have carried out a road safety inspection and that a number of issues have been identified and that a programme of works will be devised to address these issues which include lighting and footpaths.
They added that pavement works in the village could also be carried out in the future if funding becomes available.
A new uber-style taxi service for rural areas, which would allow local people to use their own car as a taxi, has got the full backing from the Kerry Vintners Federation, who described the plan as a no brainer.
Their strong support comes as taxi drivers call for the industry to be liberalised to allow a level playing field for all. Local taxi drivers claim that uber-style is not the solution and that the Government must take steps to help the taxi industry.
Crippling insurance, regulations and maintenance costs are forcing taxi drivers out of the business, leaving many of Kerrys rural areas without a service.
Junior Minister for Older People and Mental Health Jim Daly is proposing the uber-style taxi service and is to meet the National Transport Authority today, Wednesday, to put forward plans for the new proposal.
Under the proposal, people in small towns would be allowed to use their own car to pick up people within 15 kilometres of where they live and act as taxi drivers to plug a public transport gap. NCT regulations and insurance would also have to be in place.
The new drink-driving legislation has been blamed for rural isolation, forcing many to remain at home, with Independent TD Danny Healy-Rae leading the charge against the drink-driving rules.
The Kerry Vintners believe such legislation is devastating rural Ireland.
What we find is that people in rural Ireland find it more and more difficult to come into local bars because of the perception out there about drink-driving. Something like this is a no-brainer, said Chairman Christy Walsh, adding: With over 300 pubs in Kerry, an uber-style taxi is needed more than ever to help save rural communities and the rural pub trade.
He conceded that there may be issues with taxi drivers. Kerry Vintners Federation has met with local representatives to forward the idea of uber style-taxis, which they first proposed to the Vintners Federation of Ireland in recent years.
Ger Counihan, who runs Bunkers Bar in Killorglin, says the Goverment is ruining rural Ireland, forcing local people to be prisoners in their own homes.
Both Mr Counihan and Mr Walsh are critical of Local Link transport services, introduced by the Government as a way to help rural Ireland. These are run by Local Link Kerry, but the vintners claim that are not helping rural Ireland.
It is a shocking plan to appease rural Ireland, said Mr Counihan.
However, Local Link Kerry has hit back at the criticism and said that numbers are increasing on night-time services. Currently five operate in Kerry, but the Listowel-area route is no longer in place due to a low take-up. Local taxi drivers claim that uber style is not the solution and that the Government must take steps to help the taxi industry.
It is a populist solution rather than realistic. Minister Shane Ross has no idea what is going on in rural Ireland and should meet with taxi drivers. Incentives for taxi drivers in rural communites would go a long way, said Terry Boyle of Tralee Taxi Association.
Cahersiven Hackey operator Muiris Walsh is also strongly critical, saying crippling insurance costs are damaging the taxi industry and making it unviable to operate in rural areas. He does not think an uber-system would work but co-operation between taxi drivers could help in rural communties.
Killarney taxi driver, Kevin Moriarty, says that a level playing field is needed but that transport in rural Ireland needs to be addressed. He believes the uber-style system would not directly hit taxi drivers in Killarney, many of whom cannot service rural areas.
Amy Reidy from Cordal pictured showing off the tickets bought for her so generously by a complete stranger, Stefan Roth. Photo by Fergus Dennehy
A Cordal woman and a former Kerryman reporter has spoken of the emotional moment a complete stranger in Pudong Airport in Shanghai paid almost 1,700 for her flight home.
Amy Reidy, now a presenter on Radio Kerry, had been on the holiday of a lifetime with her sister, Katie, when her return flight home was abruptly cancelled leaving her faced with having to pay an extra 1,700 to get on another flight home.
Amy and Katie ended up on separate flights home with Katie flying ahead to Frankfurt while Amy faced an anxious wait alone in the airport with no obvious means of getting home.
Lufthansa said that because Amy had not taken her original flight, which she missed due to a job interview, she had then forfeited her place on her return flight something that Amy said she knew nothing about until she arrived at the airport to check in.
Despite pleading with staff at the check-in desk, Amy was told that there was nothing that could be done to help her, and with the situation coinciding with Chinese New Year, all flights home for the days ahead would have cost thousands of Euro.
Now facing having to spend two full days waiting in the airport for a cheaper flight to come up, Amy was getting increasingly stressed.
As she unsuccessfully tried to make contact with customer service, Amy overheard a young German man Stefan Roth going through the exact same situation as her.
Stefan and Amy, who had spoken briefly and bonded a little over how unhelpful we felt the airline was, were now left facing with paying a crazy price for tickets home.
As Stefan was forced to pay over 10,000 for his ticket, Amy was sitting, crying and anxiously searching through her online banking for the funds to make it home.
And thats when Stefan made an incredible gesture.
He handed his card to the lady behind the desk and said that he was paying for my flight as well, said Amy.
It was just unbelievable. I had tears in my eyes, I was so upset at this stage and I just told him absolutely not. I said thats not happening.
He just turned to me and said you asked me if I was going to get sorted in the middle of your ordeal, you asked about me when you were struggling yourself. You were in trouble when I was in trouble. Now, Im sorted, and its only right that youre sorted too, Amy continued.
Likening the entire situation to a plot from a Christmas film, Amy said that the generosity that she witnessed from Stefan was something unbelievable.
He said that he wasnt bothered about the money involved and that all that mattered was me getting home safely. I obviously insisted on getting his bank details to pay him back which he gave very reluctantly. Then, he gave me a hug, and he just legged it away to catch his flight in another terminal and that was it.
Once she was safely on the flight to Frankfurt to meet up with Katie, Amy said had her first chance to reflect on Stefans amazing gesture.
Once I was on the plane, I was just hysterical thinking about this man who, realistically, I will never see again. Having had the chance to sleep on it since, honestly, the whole thing is even more surreal, she joked.
When it was all happening, it was such a whirlwind, and you are just in fight or flight mode.
It was one of those rare situations where you literally have nobody to turn to for help. My parents were thousands of miles away, and I did not want to worry them needlessly when they wouldnt be able to do anything from that far away.
I said that I would try to sort this by myself, but, obviously, I hadnt counted on Stefan and his generosity.
I feel totally humbled. I am so appreciative of his gesture. I will never forget his face, I will never forget the feeling of his hug when he left and then just the utter, utter relief of waking up in my own bed after the flight.
I, hand on heart, have never been so emotional or grateful to anyone in my entire life like I am to Stefan.
One more surprise awaited Amy upon her arrival back on Irish soil in Dublin Airport; she came into arrivals and was delighted to see her mother standing there and waiting to collect her and Katie.
All we heard was my mother calling our names as we came in. She had surprised us and came to collect us, said Amy.
Now rested up at home and reflecting on an amazing series of events, Amy would not go so far as to call it life-changing but that it definitely has changed her perspective on people in general.
I am quite a positive person in general, but the kindness from this stranger blew me away, she said.
I do not know, genuinely, what I would have done without him.
More than a decade on and the LNG saga continues: Then Enterprise, Trade and Employment Minister Micheal Martin announcing the plant in 2006. Photo by Domnick Walsh
Judgement in the environmental challenge to the Shannon LNG gas plan will be delivered in little over a week. Judge Garret Simons is expected to deliver his judgement on the matter at 10.30am on Friday, February 15, next.
The judgement will pave the way for either the development of a 500-million terminal supporters hail as the answer to all the region's economic woes - or a major victory for environmental interests concerned over what they see as a threat to the State policy of fossil fuel divestment; pending further challenge.
The latter point formed the brunt of the Friends of the Irish Environment judicial review challenge of the Bord Pleanala decision last week. But the Shannon LNG legal team mounted a comprehensive argument as to how the plant is - as they put it -fully 'in keeping' with national energy policy.
Friends of the Irish Environment succeeded in securing the review, and argued in the hearing which got underway last week that the Bord should not have granted the planning extension due to the Climate Change Act of 2015.
FIE maintain that all public bodies would have regard to both the National Mitigation Plan and National Transition Objectives; government policies steering the move to a low carbon economy.
FIE counsel James Devlin SC said the Act was a major development since planning was originally granted by An Bord back in 2008. In its submission to the review, Shannon LNG's legal team said the gas plant is fully in keeping with national energy policy.
Shannon LNG counsel Jarlath Fitzsimons SC said the development of the plant is fully supported by a number of draft and ratified State policies:
The draft National Energy and Climate Plan 2021 - 2030; finding the development of an LNG terminal would 'improve energy security' through direct access to the global market
The National Mitigation Plan and the National Development Plan which hold the development of gas infrastructure as key to achieving energy security for the State, and
A study by Gas Networks Ireland proposing a floating LNG terminal as the most economic measure towards attaining security and diversification of gas supply.
The Government is supportive of the gas industry in general with Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment Richard Bruton saying as recently as last month that gas has the 'potential' to seriously empower the State in meeting its low-carbon economy targets - by replacing more intensive CO2 fuels.
A Christmas campaign on behalf of homelessness and the presentation of a 'Jesse' tree as part of Advent liturgies in St Brendan's, among many other achievements, saw a group of Transition Year students certified in the Diocesan 'Ogra Beo' programme at St Brendan's Parish on Monday.
The students received their certificates on completion of the Ogra Beo programme which offers young people 'opportunities to grow in faith as they take an active part in their local Church community'.
And the students were most certainly active, tailoring the programme to their own God-given talents and the needs of society as they identified them. The presented a Jesse Tree (a medieval Christmas tradition of using a tree to tell the story of the Bible) to St Brendan's Church during Advent; and they organised a carol singing session at the Marquee on the Mall in aid of Arlington House.
Facilitator Margaret Culloty paid tribute to all the students for their great efforts - which also saw them presenting the proceeds of the fundraiser to Martina O'Connor of Novas, the organisation which runs Arlington Lodge, on Monday night.
Because the crimes were committed before 1998 when there were different sentencing guidelines, Libricz is required to serve only half of his prison sentence. He was sentenced on just one count of predatory criminal sexual assault. He also was sentenced to a total of another 42 years for the additional charges, but those sentences will run concurrently with the 18-year sentence, Cowlin explained.
It's set to be a busy month in St John's, Listowel, with a broad range of events lined up for February.
The Mapping Kerry exhibition, showcasing the drawings and watercolours of Gosia Shaikh-Horajska, runs throughout the month at the Listowel venue.
Tonight (Wednesday), February 6, five-piece Dublin band 'The Eskies' will bring their blend of folk songs, gypsy jazz and sea shanties to Listowel.
The band members are regulars at the Glastonbury and Cambridge festivals, and they are now set to take the north Kerry town by storm.
Tomorrow (February 7) and on Friday, John B Keane classic 'Sive will be presented by the Abha Bhan Players of Glin/Ballyhahill.
On Wednesday, February 13, American Country and Bluegrass will be the order of the day as Austin, Texas five-piece 'Whiskey Shivers' play one of just four dates on their Irish tour.
The following night, accordion player David Munnelly, vocalist Anne Brennan, and fiddle-player Joseph McNulty will bring the best of traditional to Listowel.
The group is sure to be a big hit as it brings its new arrangements of old music to the fore on the night.
The action continues on February 22 with 'Inspiring Bach'.
This will be a Music Network Concert featuring Claire Duff on baroque violin, and Benjamin Allard on harpischord.
On two consecutive nights, Saturday and Sunday, February 23 and 24, 'The Honey Spike' will see the Tarbert Theatre Players return with Bryan McMahon's play on the journey of a young Traveller couple from the Giant's Causeway in Antrim to the Kerry-Cork border.
Another double staging is 'What Now' on the 25th and 26th.
This will see the theatre delving into satire and humour as it looks at the world around us. It's all part of a play written by the group and directed by Chris Fitzgerald.
The night following these shows, February 27, features Terry Lee Goff and his Ohio group presenting ' The Man in Black', billed as the top Johnny Cash tribute show in America.
The February schedule comes to a close on the last day of the month, February 28, with Claude Bourbon and a fusion of Blues, Jazz, Folk, Classical and Spanish Guitar.
All shows take place at 8pm, and further information on the month's events is at www.stjohnstheatre.com/programme.html.
Gorey musicians Mark Redmond and Pat Fitzpatrick received a standing ovation after their amazing sold out performance in Dublin City Hall as part of the Temple Bar Tradfest.
Lord Mayor of Dublin Niall Ring who was in attendance, went on stage after the performance to congratulate them on a wonderful concert.
RTE's Kieran Hanrahan, artistic director of TradFest, who was instrumental in selecting Mark and Pat to perform at Tradfest was also full of praise for the duo.
Mr Hanrahan had been very impressed by their collaboration having heard them on RTE Radio One a year previously.
As a duet, Mark and Pat mixed the unique sound of the uilleann pipes with clarinet - a combination yet to be recorded commercially.
Throughout the concert they played numerous wind instruments, offering great variety of sound and versatility.
The repertoire has a strong local flavour with many of the melodies having Wexford titles that Redmond had sourced from old manuscripts in recent years.
He said that some of the tunes may not have been heard for decades. The set list for the Tradfest concert included a reel called 'The Pretty Girls of Gorey' (from the Cannon Goodman collection of the mid nineteenth century), 'Redmond's Frolics' (from the O'Neill collection of the early Twentieth Century) 'The Wexford Lasses' (from the Rowsome collection) and 'Trip the Hills to Gorey' a reel taken from a manuscript of local fiddler Tomas Keegan.
Tradfest is Ireland's largest festival of traditional music and also features artists from the world of folk music.
It is marketed as a boutique Winter festival - closing the door on the darkest season and ushering in the light and energy of Spring.
Mark said that energy was certainly felt by the large audience.
The large attendance at the public meeting in the Tara Vie Hotel in Courtown
There will not be enough secondary school places for children in north Wexford when the current third class pupils finish primary school.
The stark reality of the lack of school places in the district was laid bare at a public meeting highlighting the need for an additional secondary school in the area.
The meeting was chaired by Elaine Clarke, a concerned mother from Riverchapel, who has also set up an online petition to secure a secondary school in Riverchapel to address the difficulties parents have in securing a place for their child in Gorey schools. The petition, which has over 1,000 signatures already, will be sent to the Department of Education once complete.
Those attending the meeting heard that there will be just about enough secondary school places for current fourth, fifth and sixth class pupils, but Elaine said that only remained the case if no new families moved into the north Wexford area over the coming three years. Gorey Community School has reached its capacity, while Creagh College can only accommodate another 200 students for the coming three years - but that still does not guarantee a place for everyone who applies.
According to Census 2016, Riverchapel, combined with Ardamine and Courtown, has a population of over 6,000. Elaine, along with many others at the meeting, said they will fight for a new school as they feel Riverchapel is not a village anymore, but an urban district that could provide a second level education to the catchment areas, while also taking off pressure from Gorey Community School and Creagh College.
Elaine said the population of Riverchapel is the same as Gorey's population 20 years ago. At that time Gorey already had a secondary school - Gorey Community School - and another one, Creagh College, in the pipeline.
'Parents should not have to sit and wonder for a year if their child will secure a place in school,' said Elaine. 'The Department of Education should have got the ball rolling on this a few years ago.'
She added that it will take at least three years before a school is built, and by that time it will be too late as schools in Gorey are already facing huge demand for places.
It was reported in last week's Gorey Guardian that principal Paul Glynn from Creagh College and Michael Finn from Gorey Community School fear that a shortage of secondary school places is looming again, stating how important it is to flag this with the Department of Education sooner rather than later.
Local authority representatives Cllr Malcolm Byrne, Cllr Robbie Ireton, Cllr Fionntan O Suilleabhain and Cllr Joe Sullivan, along with Minister Michael D'Arcy addressed the meeting too, stating that the shortage of school places in Gorey has been coming down the line for some time.
Minister D'Arcy said according to calculations school places should be fine for a few years, but that doesn't mean nothing should be done in the meantime.
'The Minister for Education will come to Wexford in the next couple of weeks and we will be highlighting the issue with him,' said Minister D'Arcy.
Cllr Byrne said he chaired the campaign that led to the creation of a new school at Creagh College and the pressure they needed to maintain on the Department of Education at the time.
'We have been pointing out that the schools problem in the Gorey area has been coming down the line for a number of years and we had warned the Government,' added Cllr Byrne.
Cllr Ireton said he had been pushing for a school in Riverchapel for quite some time.
'Bunclody does not have the population we have and they have a school, Kilmuckridge does not have the population either and they have a school,' said Cllr Ireton. 'The Department of Education state North Wexford does not need one until 2022, but that is just ridiculous.'
Cllr Ireton said that no child should have to go through a lottery system for a school place. He added that they are now looking at building an additional school in Clonattin or Riverchapel, but he strongly believes it should be in Riverchapel.
Cllr O Suilleabhain, who sits on the board of Creagh College and Colaiste An Atha, outlined the process needed to apply to build a new secondary school and said that with 4,500 children currently enrolled in primary schools in the Gorey district and Gorey's two post-primary schools near and above capacity there will be a need for a third school as soon as possible.
'We need a mixture of political pressure as well as parent power when Minister for Education Joe McHugh visits Gorey later this month,' said Cllr O Suilleabhain.
'Its simply unacceptable that a child's local education in a modern republic should have to be dependent on a lottery and shows time and time again a lack of forward planning by the government.'
He added that with 'two post-primary schools there is huge congestion in the town already at peak times'.
'The extra 200 spaces in Creagh won't meet the demand that is looming,' added Elaine. 'Once the housing developments that are in the pipeline for Gorey are constructed that will be added pressure.'
She said Riverchapel is a town in itself and made reference to its growing population and infrastructure.
'I have been living in Riverchapel for 17 years and it has not stopped growing in that time, nor is there any sign of it stopping,' said Elaine.
Siting a new school in Riverchapel would also help relieve congestion in Gorey town.
'Kids are leaving Riverchapel at 7.45 a.m. and still arrive late to school,' said Elaine.
Going forward, Elaine has set up a working group who have created an online petition campaigning for a new school and who will hopefully meet the Minister for Education Joe McHugh in a few weeks to discuss the situation. She said if Minister McHugh doesn't meet them, they will put together a summary report to post to the Department along with the petition.
The famous red carpet of the Oscars ceremony beckons for Ballyhealy, Kilmore woman Julie Caulfield who was a make-up artist on Detainment, the controversial film directed by Vincent Lambe which has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Film (Live Action).
Julie is a freelance make-up artist and clothing designer and was the lead make-up artist on the 30-minute movie which was filmed in Dublin and released in January of last year. She is listed in the official credits alongside fellow make-up artist Aitana Silvana.
Detainment which won a Best Director Award for Lambe at Wexford Film Festival last August, is about the detention by police of two 10-year old boys on suspicion of abducting and murdering a toddler and is based on transcripts and records from the James Bulger murder case in 1993.
The two-year old toddler's killers Jon Venables and Robert Thompson became the youngest convicted murderers in modern British history in an unforgettable case that shocked the world.
The film has proved controversial with James Bulger's mother Denise complaining that she was not contacted for approval before the project went ahead and arguing that it should be exempt from award nominations.
His father Ralph has accused the film of being overly sympathetic to the killers and is reported as saying that it would be 'horrific' if it won an award.
Detainment won the Oscar-qualifying Grand Prix HCA Award at the 43rd Odense International Film Festival in Denmark, putting it on the longlist for the Academy Awards.
The jury said it had 'a hard time sitting through the entire duration of this film' and added: 'It features some extremely clever and at the same time heartbreaking performances from two very young actors. Rarely does one come across a film with an impact such as this one. A look into the unfathomable darkness within us all. A tale of how we all long to be forgiven, long to be loved, no matter how heinous a crime we might have committed'.
Julie has worked as a make-up artist for the past 10 years and has looked after the make-up of well-known people such former American President Bill Clinton and MMA fighter Conor McGregor. She does commercial and film work and is currently in a feature film, Fairytale of New York, starring Jim Belushi and Colin O'Donoghue which is shooting in Dublin where she is based part of the time.
She has shop in Kilmore Quay under the name Julie Caulfield, where she designs and sells clothes including custom made outfits for special occasion.
Julie is planning to travel to Los Angeles for the Oscars ceremony on February 18 with the director and other members of the crew.
A local group opposing plans to take the outfall from the planned giant regional sewage plant at Clonshaugh off the coast at Portmarnock has used World Wetlands Day to make its point.
World Wetlands Day is celebrated each year on February 2.
Portmarnock community activits Catherine McMahon and Betty Ennis first organised an event in celebration of World Wetlands Day back in 2007 but they had added reason to mark the day this year.
Catherine told the Fingal Independent: 'This year our World Wetlands Day walk served to highlight a very serious issue, the recently lodged planning application by Irish Water that proposes tunnelling a 6ft diameter sewage pipeline under the estuary, dunes, and beach, terminating just off Ireland's Eye.
'This is the outfall section of the Greater Dublin Drainage Project, that also proposes a massive sewage plant in Clonshaugh, about four times the size of Croke Park.'
The ladies have been very active, along with the Portmarnock swimmers (the Red Hot Mommas), Clonshaugh residents, Portmarnock residents and various other groups in opposing the unimaginative planning application and have held a number of protests since the planning was lodged in the summer. It is presently with An Bord Pleanala and because of the huge amount of objections an oral hearing is due to be held before June giving all groups an opportunity to voice their concerns.
The enthusiastic walkers started off from the Kingfisher Green across from the Texaco garage on Strand Road, where they then staged a protest through the village carrying banners highlighting the issue. Protestors from Clonshaugh joined in the event as did local TD, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, who addressed the gathering, re-stating his opposition to the sewage plant plans.
Moira Cassidy one of the swimmers who has been working along with other members of CUAS (Communities Unite Against Sewage) said: 'Those of us who swim daily off the beach for health, well-being and recreational purposes will not have the same confidence swimming in waters that potentially could contain bacteria, prions, and in the event of plant or pipeline malfunction, raw sewage.'
She added: 'The estuary and beach is our centre, the heart of our community and paramount to our identity...'
The council has been called upon to provide traffic management measures at a junction at Dublin Rd and Barnageeragh Road (formerly Townparks Road), where there had been 'numerous crashes', and other related incidents.
In a motion put forward to the Balbriggan/Swords Area Committe by Cllr Tom O'Leary (FG), it was claimed it was 'a matter of time' before there was a fatal incident at the junction, where traffic was 'unsighted' turning into the Townparks housing estate.
Cllr O'Leary, claiming that a number of councillors had raised the issue in the past, said he did not accept there was no solution to the problem, adding that a number of residents had also expressed concern.
The councillor said the local authority needed to find 'some way' of making the junction safe for both pedestrians and cars, adding that a resident had considered legal action should the issue not be resolved.
Saying he had 'no idea what the solution was', Cllr O'Leary called for an engineer's report to be prepared.
Claiming there had been a number of incidents at the junction, the Councillor added that the road surface was 'broken', and had resulted in cyclists falling off their bikes.
Cllr O'Leary said 'something' needed to be done 'in the next three months' to address the problem.
Cllr Cathal Boland (NP), supporting the motion, said that Skerries was 'supposed to be an age-friendly town', which would cater for people with disabilities, and added that anyone with an infirmity was 'literally taking their life in their hands' when crossing the junction.
Council official Andrew Nolan, addressed the committee, saying he 'fully accepted' the difficulties at the junction, pointed out that a 'fully-signalled system' had been rejected by residents, but added this was 'understandably' so.
Mr Nolan also pointed out that Irish Water had plans this year to carry out work in the area, and that any work by the council prior to this work would be 'premature'.
Saying he 'fully accepted' that the opening of the Barnageeragh Distributor Road would attract increased traffic to the area, Mr Nolan said that work at the junction could not be assessed until that time.
A report from the local authority said it was 'not currently envisaged' that further traffic measures would be provided at the junction.
A former nurse given a suspended sentence for possession and distribution of child pornography has been spared jail a second time, despite an appeal by prosecutors to jail him.
Steven McGinty (47), of Cherry Garth in Swords, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of 260 images and four video files of child pornography stored on a laptop at his home on October 24, 2013.
He also pleaded guilty to distribution of child pornography within the state on dates between August 2006 and October 2013, as his computer showed that some material had been shared with others.
McGinty was given a wholly suspended sentence by Judge Karen O'Connor on March 15, 2018.
The Director of Public Prosecutors sought a review of his sentence on grounds it was 'unduly lenient'. However, the Court of Appeal on Wednesday deemed it within the range available to the Circuit Court judge and dismissed the DPP's appeal.
Giving judgment in the three-judge court, Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said McGinty handed himself into Swords Garda station, the day after his laptops were seized by gardai. He provided passwords to his computers and his remorse appeared to be genuine, the judge said.
A probation report found McGinty to have a low risk of reoffending and he had no previous convictions. He had engaged with psychiatric services and due to the nature of the offences, he lost his job as a nurse.
The DPP argued that the sentencing judge erred in failing to impose a sentence that reflected general deterrence, or the need to send out a message to wider society that this type of offending was not acceptable.
It was argued that offences of this type were capable of being committed in private and there existed the potential for large numbers of offenders to go undetected.
Mr Justice McCarthy said the question of general deterrence weighed heavily in cases of this nature. Crimes were often committed in private and were difficult to detect. It placed a premium on the need to deter others engaged in this conduct.
He said the underage victims depicted in the material were often deprived persons 'with no voice' and anyone viewing the material was 'complicit'.
Despite the manner in which McGinty responded to his detection, the judge said, expeditious resolution of the case didn't happen due to a lack of Garda resources. Although McGinty presented himself to gardai in 2013, his computer was not examined until 2015, at which time he was charged.
He said the decision to suspend McGinty's sentence fell at the 'very outer limit' of the Circuit Court judge's margin of discretion but did not fall outside of the available range.
Mr Justice McCarthy, who sat with President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham and Ms Justice Marie Baker, dismissed the DPP's appeal.
The planned Metrolink line to Swords should not be held up by delays on the south side of the Liffey, according to a local TD who has called for the prioritisation of the northern portion of the light rail line.
Fine Gael TD for Dublin Fingal, Alan Farrell, and Fine Gael TD for Dublin North West, Noel Rock have called for the Metrolink project to be separated into two phases with the prioritisation of the development of Metro from Dublin City Centre to north Dublin.
Speaking of the importance of Metro for the Fingal area, Deputy Farrell said: 'The delivery of Metro from the city centre to north Dublin, the airport and the Swords community is vital in providing transport links to cater for the demands of a modern city and a growing population in north Dublin.
'It is essential that a rail link is established to the airport from the city centre, particularly to support those who commute every day for work or education, and for the benefit of the 31 million passengers who use Dublin Airport.
'As such, I believe that the Metro link between the city centre and north Dublin should be prioritised and separated from the Metrolink running from the city to Sandyford, in order to allow this project to proceed.'
Saying the transport infrastructure for the people of north Dublin and Swords 'must be delivered', Deputy Farrell said any delay in the provision of Metro to Swords and Dublin Airport due to difficulties with the southside route selection would be 'wholly unacceptable.'
Supporting Deputy Farrell, Deputy Rock stated: 'The Metro Project to link the city centre to north Dublin will provide an integral link between communities in Ballymun and Santry with the city centre. The Southside squabble should not be allowed to derail this long-promised project.'
He said: 'The fact is that the north side of Dublin has significantly less transport infrastructure, particularly in terms of rail links that the south of the city.
'The northbound phase of the Metro project should be separated from the southbound phase to allow for its delivery as soon as possible.'
Saying that separating the Metro project into two distinct phases would be a 'recognition of the need' for greater public transport infrastructure for the northside, Deputy Rock said that doing so would 'work to bring such an infrastructure on par with the south side.'
He said: 'The needs of north Dublin cannot, and must not, be forgotten or pushed aside when it comes to the delivery of Metro.'
If the committee is going to act with a preliminary vote, I think process matters, Lauzen said. My question is when are you going to let neighbors know? One of the things people really get upset with their government about is they think decisions are made behind closed doors. Thats not happening. These are all open meetings, but people are busy. They cant follow all the small things we are doing that end up being important to them.
Oberstown Children Detention Campus in Lusk launched their inaugural well-being month for staff, in an initiative which will include a range of activities to give staff 'the tools and advice to maintain good mental and physical health.'
Ireland's only children detention centre, Oberstown, aims to provide a safe and secure environment for children (usually aged between the age of 13 and 17), who are placed in the campus by the Children Court.
The initiative will see staff at Oberstown engage in a range of workshops designed to assist in both mental health and well-being.
Staff will attend workshops, while Cara Driscoll, organisational psychologist at the campus, will also launch a pioneering new mental health handbook for staff.
Other activities taking place on campus include: peer support training; information on creating a healthy work environment; and Operation Transformation on campus featuring walks, weigh-ins and healthy breakfast options.
Ms Driscoll said: 'Increasingly, promoting positive mental health and well-being is a key focus in workplaces throughout the country, and we recognise the importance of this for Oberstown. The new mental health guidebook we have produced with and for our staff can help them look after their own mental well-being, and foster an ethos of positive mental health on campus.'
Director of Oberstown Pat Bergin commented: 'Working at Oberstown is a very positive experience for staff, but can also be a challenging one.'
He concluded: 'We believe in supporting our staff to manage the emotional stresses and strains the job occasionally involves.'
We all know the special role grandmothers play in our children's lives, and how they love to fuss and dote on their grandchildren, but for one Fingal granny it was to her much delight and surprise when she was awarded the accolade of 'Grandparent of the Year', a title she'll proudly hold.
Kathleen McGuinness, a Swords native now living in Rush was nominated for the Specsavers 'Grandparent of the Year' competition by her 11-year-old grandson Anthony, who is autistic. Anthony knew in his heart that Kathleen was without doubt the best granny in Ireland, and was confident she'd win the distinguished title.
Speaking after receiving her award at Specsavers in Pavilions Shopping Centre in Swords, Kathleen (82) told of her shock at receiving the award, what it means to be a great granny, and how she got to meet and impress one Mary Black.
She says: 'Anthony, my 11-year-old grandson nominated me. I didn't know about it beforehand, and it came as a great surprise. I couldn't believe it, and I didn't know if I deserved it or not. I got a beautiful big trophy, a picture frame and a voucher to spend in Specsavers. I also won a weekend away in my choice of hotel for a family of four, a CD specially signed by Mary Black and champagne. I got a lovely photograph with Mary, who was delighted to meet me, and my grandson was in all the shoots too. Mary was standing beside me in all the photographs, so we got to have a nice chat. I'd be a fan of hers, and I love listening to her records, so it was great to meet her.'
Kathleen has lived in Rush since her wedding in 1963 but is a native of Swords. As 'Grandparent of the year', she'll no doubt be the envy of all the equally great grannies in the town, but, despite her accolade, she remains quietly modest:
'I was very excited about winning; it's nice to think my grandson thought so much of me, and I didn't even know I was entered into the competition. I don't really know why I was nominated, but it must have been something he said on the form.'
'My family were all delighted, and were very proud of me, and they all said I was a great granny, so that really meant a lot. The children were all delighted too. It's a great achievement, and my friends were all congratulating me too.'
Kathleen says she has three children, six grandchildren and one great grand-child. Not only is she the best granny, she is obviously a busy one too.
An avid reader of The Fingal Independent, Kathleen says she has been reading the newspaper 'for years', and she loves catching up on what's going on around Rush.
And what does Kathleen feel makes a great granny? She replies, with much modesty: 'It's like this, I wouldn't consider myself a great granny.
'We all do what we can for our grandchildren, so to me, every granny is wonderful.'
Fingal Enterprise Week is launched at County Hall and will take place just three weeks before Brexit is due
The impact of Brexit will be uppermost in the minds of the local business community as they gather for the annual Fingal Local Enterprise Week just three weeks before the deadline for the UK leaving the EU arrives.
As businesses continue to prepare for the full impact of a potential hazardous crash-out Brexit, the Fingal Local Enterprise Office (LEO) is sending a clear message to small businesses to engage immediately to ensure they are adequately prepared for a worst case scenario, hard Brexit.
Fingal LEO has launched a series of business events and initiatives to take place during Local Enterprise Week this year, which takes place between March 4 and March 8.
At the launch, which took place in the Atrium of County Hall, Swords, last Thursday, the Mayor of Fingal Cllr. Anthony Lavin highlighted the necessity for all small businesses to use the opportunity as a stimulus to seek supports in preparation for a potential hard Brexit.
Mayor Lavin said: 'I am pleased to see that Fingal businesses currently trading with the UK have taken the implications of Brexit very seriously and are continuing to do their utmost to prepare for a worst case scenario.
'I would urge all businesses, even those that are not trading directly with the UK, to examine their own situation very closely to ensure that they have identified and are preparing to deal with possible knock-on threats to their business.
'Through our Local Enterprise Office, Fingal County Council is providing advisory services and assistance to our local businesses, to ensure that they are maximising the array of state supports on offer.'
This year, Local Enterprise Week features a host of events and activities that are aimed at stimulating business activity locally, in conjunction with various key business support organisations and state agencies, including: Enterprise Ireland, Plato Dublin, Chambers of Commerce, Enterprise Centres, business financing organisations and many more.
During Enterprise Week last year LEO Fingal welcomed more than 1,200 business owner/managers to the various business events in Fingal.
With the threat of Brexit looming, it is anticipated that there will be an even greater level of interest in the events that will run between 4th and 8th March this year.
Speaking at the launch of Local Enterprise Week, the Chief Executive of Fingal County Council, Paul Reid, said: 'In Fingal, we relentlessly strive to be the best at everything we do. With Brexit just around the corner, our businesses face an unprecedented threat.
'It is imperative that we do our best to help them prepare. Local Enterprise Week is an excellent opportunity to network, keep up with developments and find the right supports for your business.
'I am particularly pleased to see so many of our state agencies and business organisations supporting Local Enterprise Week this year.'
Head of Local Enterprise Office Fingal, Oisin Geoghegan said: 'Local Enterprise Week is an initiative of the Local Enterprise Offices across Ireland. During the Local Enterprise Week 2019, many small businesses will be exposed to a range of supports they have on offer through LEO Fingal, such as training, mentoring, grants and other practical business supports.
The entire programme of events is funded by the Local Enterprise Office. The series of events was designed to appeal to all entrepreneurs, whatever stage of development they are at, pre-start, start-up or growth.'
The Local Enterprise Office (LEO) in Fingal is part of a network of 31 Local Enterprise Offices nationwide, located within the Local Authority structure.
The Fingal office is one of the largest and most active LEOs in the country. The role of the LEO is to support and provide assistance to existing and potential small business promoters located in Fingal. In addition Fingal LEO aims to foster the development of an enterprise culture. The LEOs operate under a Service Level Agreement with Enterprise Ireland.
You can find out more at www.localenterprise.ie/fingal
A Cavan resident has been jailed for 18 years for a 92,000 post office robbery during which three women were tied up and abducted from a Malahide home.
Paschal Kelly (53) was one of a gang of three men who burst into the home of postmistress Susan Lawlor at Seabury Drive, Malahide, Dublin on September 25, 2014.
The gang used to cable ties to bind Ms Lawlor, her daughter and an Italian student who was staying at the home.
The women were brought to a field where they were held over night before the gang drove them to the Bayside Post Office in Sutton, Dublin.
At one stage Kelly threatened to burn them alive in a car by pouring petrol over it.
The raiders eventually left with the cash.
Last December Kelly with an address in Cootehill, Co. Cavan, was convicted of trespass and false imprisonment Ms Lawlor, her daughter Emma Carter and student Gabriella Saisa.
He was also convicted of robbery at Bayside Post Office and of threatening to kill the three women.
He was found guilty of possession of a stolen vehicle, all on the same date.
The father-of-two had denied all charges. His trial last year extended into a ninth week at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Judge Karen O'Connor paid 'a very special tribute to the three remarkable women' who she said showed courage that not only got them through their ordeal but led to the capture of one suspect.
She said it was clear Ms Lawlor was using her mind right to the end of the incident when she suggested the raiders put money into post office bags so it could be traced.
She noted too how Ms Carter had tried to delay leaving the house because she thought her screaming might have alerted the gardai.
'These women have demonstrated extraordinary dignity throughout this case and for that I am very grateful to them', Judge O'Connor said.
She said during the sentence hearing, Kelly's defence team had suggested this case did not meet the criteria for a tiger kidnapping.
Judge O'Connor said she disagreed and described how Ms Lawlor's home was violated and targeted and that she was 'clearly the subject of surveillance'.
The judge said the offending was premeditated, because the raiders used duct tape, cable ties and guns and they had their faces disguised.
She said Ms Lawlor was separated, punched and threatened before being brought to the post office and that the money was only recovered because her 'fast thinking actions' had alerted the authorities.
Judge O'Connor told the court it made for 'disturbing viewing' to have watched the CCTV footage of the three women being brought into the post office in their night wear.
Judge O'Connor said the aggravating factors in the case was its premeditated and planned nature, the violation of Ms Lawlor's home and the use of firearms.
She said the threats to kill instilled considerable fear and terror.
The judge told the court she was respecting the three women's wishes by not disclosing details of their victim impact statements in public.
She acknowledged the crime clearly impacted them and said 'one cannot imagine the terror the three women endured that night'.
She accepted Kelly had a difficult and chaotic upbringing and had suffered deprivation from a young age.
She said he had suffered 'extremely serious abuse' in State institutions, but has a supportive partner and two 'impressive' children, who have never come to garda attention.
The court heard Kelly's 60 previous convictions include assaults, escaping lawful custody, robbery and road traffic offences.
Judge O'Connor imposed an 18 year sentence with credit to be given for time Kelly has already spent in custody on the matter.
Action Ireland Trust held its annual gala dinner in The Grand Hotel in advance of its 2019 mission to Lesotho.
Some 180 guests attended the event which was hosted by Marty Whelan at teh Grand Hotel in Malahide.
Guests were addressed by Francis Whelan CEO of AIT who outlined the work of AiT in Lesotho.
In particular he highlighted two key projects The construction of 'An Early Childhood Development Centre' and the reforms that AIT are delivering at local and national level in the form of policies and national planning.
The delivery of child care in Lesotho requires considerable investment and AIT are leading the way here.
The Early Childhood Center is due to open in June of 2019 and has the support of UNICEF and The Ministry of Education and Skills in Lesotho.
This will be a model of excellence in child care envisaged to be replicated across the country.
The other key project mentioned was the digital mapping and spatial planning being delivered by volunteers from Fingal CC. And can be viewed at # MapLesotho.
Two planners from Lesotho have just completed a master Spatial Planning Development at DIT they are now back in Lesotho working with Local Government and Chieftainship where they are applying their newly acquired skills.
Currently there are three planners from Lesotho beginning a masters at DIT.
Students from Portmarnock community school will continue the digital mapping of the country when they travel to Lesotho in February.
Mayor of Fingal Anthony Lavin acknowledge the work of the Trust and Fungal volunteers with the charity Ciaran Staunton and Stephen Peppard. The mayor welcomed the newly appointed Embassdor of The Kingdom of Lesotho HE Sekhulumi Ntsoaole.
The ambassador then spoke thanking AIT and Fingal for their work in Lesotho. He acknowledged the long and historical links between Ireland and Lesotho and the work of AIT and Fingal was important in keeping this historical link alive. He went on to wish the students from Portmarnock community school and the volunteers traveling the very best for their project.
The charity acknowledge the support and presence of Deputy Darragh O'Brien (FF), Deputy Alan Farrell (FG), Cllr Eoghan O'Brien (FF) and Cllr Brian McDonagh (Lab).
Fingal County Council is currently inviting submissions from the public in response to the Draft Climate Change Action Plan 2019-2024.
The Draft Action Plan has been developed by the four Dublin local authorities alongside the Dublin energy agency Codema.
As part of this public consultation process, Fingal County Council is launching its #Councils4ClimateAction public information events at Fingal County Hall, Swords on Monday February 18, at 5.30pm-8.30pm. This is a family friendly event with ReCreate sustainable activities to enjoy.
A second public information event will be held at The Bracken Court Hotel, Balbriggan on Wednesday February 20 at 5.30pm-8.30pm.
SEAI will be in attendance at both events to provide advice and information on home energy efficiency, grants and supports, and to answer technical questions on home retrofits.
In order to make progress in addressing climate change, the council aims to achieve a 33% energy efficiency improvement by 2020, and a 40% reduction in Greenhouse Gas emissions by 2040. The Draft Action Plan outlines the actions being taken by the Council in order to achieve these targets.
Included in the council's targets are the complete use of LED public lighting across Fingal by 2021, and the introduction of more electrical council vehicles.
The development of new cycle networks across the county such as the Fingal Coastal Way, the Sutton-to-Malahide Cycleway, the Broadmeadow Way, the Harry Reynolds Road Cycle Route in Balbriggan and the Royal Canal Urban Greenway are also planned. The council also aims to further develop flood protection schemes in areas at risk in the county.
The Mayor of Fingal, Cllr Anthony Lavin and council chief executive, Paul Reid encouraged Fingal residents to take part.
A musical penned by a young and talented Malahide woman is coming back to the Dublin stage after wowing audiences in London and the US.
Big Shot is the musical and Lauryn Gaffney from Malahide is the musical, writer, composer and director behind the show.
On February 22, there is another chance for Dublin audiences to experience the joy of this great musical when Big Shot comes to the Helix.
By the age of 22, Lauryn Gaffney had written, staged and toured her first musical, Big Shot.
Just a few short years later, the show has played in London and the US to great acclaim and now it is back on home soil.
So how did the young Malahide woman come to write an entire musical at the age of 21, taking it to the stage and touring it London, the United States and even Mexico at just 22?
The musical was 'Big Shot' and Lauryn explained how it came about: 'I was in my final year in college and I always loved writing music and I always had it at the back of my mind that I wanted to write a show.
'I was sitting at the piano one day and I started writing a song and I heard a lawyer character singing it and it kind of grew from there. I built a story around it involving a lawyer and I started writing and writing and before I knew it, I had a musical. I was 21 when I started writing it and 22 when we started staging it.'
A J1 trip to Boston turned out to be crucial in the development of the show as Lauryn explained: 'I was in Boston on a J1 for four months and I was working in Ben and Jerry's, scooping ice cream and living in this Frat House with all these nerdy boys from MIT. 'They had rented the house out and we got this loft apartment in the house. They had a grand piano in the main house and nobody used it - it was just abandoned. So, every morning I would get up before work and I'd go down to the piano and write songs and then I would try them out on some of my house-mates. We would sit around the piano and they would ask to hear songs that they remembered so I knew it was those ones I should put in the show because they were obviously catchy.'
She put the show on in college first and then it began to tour and its success became something of a rolling snowball that is still rolling four years later. She said: 'I always wrote music and I loved theatre even as a kid so I think it was always in the back of my mind to write a musical. There was an intention there, it didn't happen by accident but I didn't plan it out either.'
At the Lexicon Literary Launch at Enniscorthy Vocational College were, back row: Brian Stack (teacher), Daniel Kealy (St Senans PS), Bridin Kelly (teacher), Emma Bolger (teacher), Ria OLeary (St Aidans PS) and Majella Stafford (Year Head). Front: Frank Murphy (principal St. Aidans PS), Oonagh Rackard (principal St Senans PS), Dr Iain Wickham (principal Enniscorthy Vocational College) and Carmel Donoghue (Dep of Education)
A new Literacy Initiative was officially launched at Enniscorthy Vocational College (EVC) on Friday. First year students were issued with a 'vocabulary enrichment booklet' called 'Lexicon Launch' which comprises of three sections - English, Maths and Science. As each student encounters a new word in these three subjects, the word is spoken, written into the appropriate section, defined using newly purchased dictionaries, and finally 'put in action' in the classroom. Each month, students will be exposed to a separate list of new words.
Teams from St Senan's NS, St Aidan's PS and EVC have been working together on this initiative for over a year. Carmel Donoghue, inspector from the Department of Education and Science, has been overseeing the School Excellence Fund project while liaising with principals Oona Rackard, Peter Creedon and Iain Wickham.
All three schools have recently received training from the Australian literacy expert Steven Graham, who has a very innovative approach. Students from both Enniscorthy town primary schools have benefited hugely from this and vocabulary enrichment is the chosen path of the core team at EVC in order to continue the excellent work done at primary level.
Lexicon Launch is among several literacy initiatives in the Vocational College, such as 'Word of the Week', 'Word Millionaire' the school newspaper and the JCSP library.
Principal Iain Wickham thanked Emma Bolger, Bridin Kelly and Brian Stack, along with subject teachers for driving this new initiative in the school. He also took the opportunity to wish St Aidan's PS Principal Peter Creedon all the best in his retirement, while wishing his replacement Frank Murphy all the very best in his new role.
With addiction being an issue that affects so many homes around Ireland, Leaving Cert students at Enniscorthy Vocational College decided to examine its scopes, effects and public attitudes towards addiction as part of their Social Education Task for the Leaving Cert Applied Programme.
In late September, the students began their research, taking a lead role themselves in deciding upon the topic, as well as negotiating with their tutor on the individual aspects of addition they would examine.
As part of their research, each student researched ten pieces of information on their subject and completed a representative survey on their particular focus.
These surveys returned some fascinating results, giving a good indication of public attitudes to the wider questions surrounding addiction. A total of 12 different aspects were explored including addictions to gambling, drugs and prescription medications. They also examined the relationship between addiction and the prevalent issue of homelessness in Ireland today.
The surveys examined general attitudes to these topics as well as the responsibility of government and people themselves to solving them. One student discovered that 60% of those surveyed would oppose the building of a drug treatment centre in the town. Another student's research highlighted little public awareness of what constituted binge drinking in terms of units with only quarter of those surveyed knowing it was 6 units.
A third of those surveyed by another student believed that the National Lottery should put a warning band on all their products to make people aware of the dangers of lottery style gambling, while 15% of those surveyed on the connection between homelessness and addiction, felt like the latter was the main cause of the former.
To raise awareness in relation to some of these issues, the class produced a video on site at the school for YouTube with an emphasis on recovery from addiction.
The group's work has gained some great traction since and will contribute up to 10% of their final Leaving Cert mark.
Local businesses, community groups and non-profits are encouraged to participate. Those that wish to participate must complete an entry form, obtain a certificate of insurance, sign off on the rules and regulations and return the documents along with the appropriate entry fee via email to info@downtownstcharles.org or to the Downtown St. Charles Partnership office at 2 E. Main St., St. Charles, IL 60174 no later than Feb. 22.
Students from Colaiste Bride have created their own bit of history in becoming the first girls from the school to donate blood.
Teachers Sara Murphy and Anne-Marie Kane give blood regularly when the blood bank is in Enniscorthy and speaking to this newspaper Ms Murphy said that the last time they did they contemplated the idea of asking sixth year pupils would they like to as well.
'We said it to the principal and she thought it was a great idea and the girls themselves really embraced the idea,' she said.
The girls were allowed out of class so they could arrive at the blood bank early and Ms Murphy said they were more excited than nervous.
Such was the popularity of the initiative that some of the other girls in the school who haven't yet turned 18 expressed regret that they were ineligible to donate.
'We will keep it going every three months when the blood bank is in Enniscorthy,' said Ms Murphy.
'We hope other schools will follow our lead now as well because it really is a potentially life-saving exercise.'
At the presentation of certificates. Back: Helen Wildes, Eileen OConnor, Red Cross trainer Paddy Redmond, Antonette Davis, and Brian Coady, Michael Doyle of Bellefield GAA, Winnie Hogan of Bellefield GAA. Front: Mary Sinnott, Sandra Walsh of Wexford Local Development, Mary Vardy and Kitt Kenny
Certificates have been presented to participants of a Wexford Local Development administered course in how to use a defibrillator.
The presentation was made at Bellefield GAA complex where the new life-saving AED equipment was installed in December last year.
Sandra Walsh, who is the LEO community development officer for Enniscorthy, told this newspaper that the course was funded through the Community Enhancement Programme from Wexford County Council.
'It was a collaborative project,' said Ms Walsh.
The organisations involved included: Delightful Dollies; the Greater Bellefield Area team; Bellefield GAA and the Enniscorthy branch of the Irish Red Cross.
'It was a collaborative decision between the organisations to install the defibrillator as they identified a need for it themselves,' said Ms Walsh.
'It was put up in December and we also provided training in December,' she added.
Ms Walsh praised all of the people involved in securing the defibrillator for the Bellefield GAA complex and highlighted its importance in terms of saving lives.
She also encouraged more people to get involved in community based organisations and initiatives and said anyone interested in doing so can contact her directly at 087 6039212.
Susan Campbell is the new principal of Drogheda Educate Together Secondary School, opening this September, on the town's southside.
Originally from East Meath, Susan worked as a marketing manager before embarking on her teaching career in 2002. Susan taught French, Spanish and Business in St. Peter's College Dunboyne before moving to Colaiste na hInse in Bettystown. Here Susan gained vital experience in a start-up environment as Acting Deputy Principal.
She worked as Deputy Principal in Sacred Heart Secondary School in Drogheda before moving to Clonturk Community College as Principal. Clonturk Community College is a co-educational post-primary school under the patronage of CDETB with Educate Together as trustee partners and, since its opening in 2016, Susan has led the establishment of this vibrant and rapidly growing school in Dublin City.
"I am so excited to be returning to my community and working with parents and students alike to establish an innovative school where all students can flourish in a mutually respectful environment and where the wider community feel involved in the life of the school,' she stated.
Educate Together will hold a Public Information Meeting in the Boyne Valley Hotel on Thursday 14th February 2019 at 7:45 pm. The meeting will include an introduction to new principal Susan Campbell, enrolment/ Admissions for the 2019/20 academic year and accommodation arrangements for the 2019/20 academic year. This meeting will be of particular interest to parents and students looking to attend in 2019/20 academic year.
Drogheda ETSS will open in Autumn 2019 to First Years. Enrolment is ongoing and interested families can find out more at https://www.educatetogether.ie/drogheda-etss. The Department of Education and Skills is currently sourcing accommodation for the school.
Fighting for the rights of nurses and midwives, INMO members at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital
It's noon on a Wednesday morning, bright and breezy around Bothar Brugha and Hardman's Gardens, but there's a distinct chill in the air and it stays with you until you reach Crosslanes - then it explodes into a buoyant sea of determination and resilience.
There could have been a foot or two of snow, but you get the feeling that nothing would be getting in the way of the nurses at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.
They are on the picket lines, hundreds of them, making their stand for equality. It's a noble stance and has been born from years of frustration.
But one feels this is different. If these nurses bring the same enthusiasm to this fight as they do to helping save lives and caring for people within the walls of Drogheda's biggest employer, then their voices will be heard - big time.
Yet, you get a sense that they don't want to be here, they'd rather be working on the frontline as they do on every single day. However, there comes a time when you must make that stand, simply out of necessity.
This debate is about a host of things, parity of pay just one. Fully qualified sections of the workforce want to be given the same basic pay as their counterparts in other professions. It's hard to argue with their reasoning.
When the playing field is not level, expect the consequences. Hospitals can't retain staff and can't recruit enough staff, it's a vicious circle and the nurses and midwives are in the eye of it.
If nothing else, the nurses of Drogheda got one simple message from the people of Drogheda last week - we support you.
Horns were blaring from passing cars and in a tea room, the buns and biscuits piled up.
Members of the public came in with snacks and treats, local restaurants donated food and the likes of the Windmill Stores handed out tea and coffee to thaw out freezing hands.
Local INMO reps Karen Clarke and Melissa Garvey watched on as the sea of support threatened to engulf the place.
'We have to thank the people of the area. They have given us so much support,' Karen stated.
While the fight today is for better pay, they know it's a stand for the future too.
They know what's happening. Nurses are trained to a high standard, better than many other industries, and are then off to places like the UK, Australia and the Middle East. A generation lost.
They know if they stay here, the pay is less and conditions can be testing to say the very, very least. As Karen remarked, ' we are at crisis point'.
The problem is not going away - a bit like the nurses fight - and until a solution is found, it's likely to just fester.
Yet, all over the world, nurses want to come home and provide the care people need in this country, but they need a reason.
The facts are striking, nurses, for the most part, are paid thousands of euro below other professions from the time they enter the workforce to the time they retire.
Add in costs for the likes of accommodation and that wage packet is squeezed even further.
There are 900 members of the profession in Our Lady of Lourdes and many of their stories are similiar.
Karen tells of one nurse who emigrated to Perth, but missed home too much and returned. But she simply couldn't continue to work in this country and returned to Australia as pay and conditions are superior.
'No-one wants to be standing at a gate,' Melissa states, but the nurses have waited patiently for years to have their review of working conditions and in the end, a key aspect - pay - was put to one side.
This Tuesday and Thursday and next week, the nurses will again take to the paths outside Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in their stance, not just for now, but for the future of nursing and the people it impacts so greatly on - the public.
As evidenced last week, they are one group Drogheda is backing to the hilt - they can be assured of that.
Sinn Fein TD for Louth and East Meath Imelda Munster has called on the government to support a Sinn Fein bill which will stop banks from selling mortgage loans to vulture funds and other third parties without the consent of the mortgage holder.
Speaking in the Dail on the Pearse Doherty proposed No Consent No Sale bill, she called on the government to support the bill..
Deputy Munster said: "Just three months ago, a state bank that had been bailed out by the Irish people, stated that it was selling over 6,000 family home loans to an unknown entity.
'Many of my constituents in Louth, in Drogheda and Dundalk, have received these letters, despite the fact that they had been engaging with the banks and many of them had never missed an agreed payment. This goes against the Central Bank's Code of Practice
A man who hit his five-year-old son with a belt, has pleaded guilty to a charge of cruelty to a child, contrary to Section 246 of the Children Act 2001.
The 36-year-old defendant had his case further adjourned, having initially appeared before Drogheda court in December. The offence took place at the man's address in Drogheda on a date unknown in 2017.
Reporting restrictions were imposed in order to protect the identity of the young boy, who is awaiting a diagnosis for autism.
'Parenting is not simple,' Judge Coughlan remarked last week, and he added he was sympathetic towards the defendant.
Previously, Sgt Ray Brady said the DPP recognised there are 'familial difficulties' and directed summary disposal of the matter.
Last week, the judge said he would accept jurisdiction in the case. He noted a conviction would result in the man being dismissed from his job.
Sgt Brady said the child received no medical attention following the incident, the exact date of which was unknown. He was alone with his father at the time.
It was accepted by the DPP an adult caution for the defendant was an avenue that may have been explored, but the sergeant continued an adult caution was not open to the court.
Solicitor Siobhan Murphy added this was a 'once-off'. Tusla (Child and Family Agency) were briefly involved and are happy with a return to access for her client.
The boy, aged five at the time, is awaiting an autism diagnosis. He has a support worker in school.
His father very much regrets what happened. Nothing like this occurred before or since.
Ms Murphy said the victim's mother is very supportive of the father, and appreciates they are co-parenting the child.
While he knows the parents are estranged, the judge said he wanted to see the mother in court. He also sought a report from the Tusla officer who investigated the incident. The case was adjourned to 1 March next.
Plans are underway in Duleek to celebrate the remarkable achievements of its most famous but forgotten emigrant, Kate Kennedy.
The pioneering visionary who became the first person in the world to achieve equal pay for equal work following persistent agitation in California in the late 1800s, looks set to have a sculpture unveiled in her honour in the summer of 2020.
According to Duleek journalist Ken Murray who is leading the project, "Kate Kennedy is famous outside Ireland and her name appears in numerous books celebrating international feminist achievements yet relatively little is known about her here.
"All going to plan, that will change in the Summer of next year. She has been a great inspiration to so many female activists who continue to push for real equality," he said.
The story of Kate Kennedy is a modern-day reminder of the many Irish emigrants who left this Country in search of a better life but through circumstances, vision and sheer determination, made an outstanding mark elsewhere for future generations.
Born in in the townland of Gaskinstown, west of Duleek in 1827, she attended the local national school followed by a brief spell at Loreto College in Navan before emigrating to San Francisco in the early 1856.
Having secured a position as a Principal teacher at North Cosmopolitan Grammar School in San Francisco in 1867, she learned some years later, that male principals were paid more than females and after intense personal lobbying, she eventually persuaded the California State legislature to change the law.
The rebellious Duleek woman then found herself demoted for political activism and undertook legal action in 1887.
Her successful court action against the local Board of Education three years later saw a landmark decision rule that teachers could not be demoted unless for misconduct or incompetence ensuring security of employment for male and female teachers!
She achieved another unique claim to fame when she became the first female to run for public office in the State of California.
According to Ken "I first became aware of her achievements in 1993 when I came across her details in a book and having eventually tracked down her relative Pat, who lives in Randalstown outside Navan, we formed a Committee which includes Thomas Byrne TD.
"We are in talks with Sculptor Betty Newman-Maguire to develop this project and the work is progressing nicely."
Fianna Fail Councillor Stephen McKee, who lives in Gaskinstown and is part of the organising Committee, said the proposed commemoration is long overdue.
He said "it is extraordinary that so many decades have come and gone since her passing in 1890 and yet so little is known about her in Ireland.
"If all goes to plan, we hope to have a number of prominent people from San Francisco in Duleek to mark the occasion and Kate Kennedy will get the recognition here she fully deserves."
Kate Kennedy died in 1890 and a school in her honour still functions to this day at 1670 Noe street in San Francisco
The historic Carstown House near Termonfeckin, badly damaged by fire and vandals in recent years, is on An Taisce list of national buildings at risk.
The report has prompted Cllr Kenneth Flood to again call on Louth CC to purchase and restore it.
'Carstown has been listed in the report as being one of the most 'at risk' historic buildings in the State. An Taisce is a charity that works to preserve and protect Ireland's natural and built heritage and its report listed, for the first time, the country's 'Top 10 Most-at-Risk Buildings'. To the shame of Louth, Carstown House was on that list."
"Carstown House has been discussed in the Council chamber on a number of occasions and the response from Council officials has always been lack of available finances for such a project,' he states.
However, Cllr Flood feels that we can not 'just sit back and do nothing'.
"The warning couldn't be starker. We must act to save Carstown House. People in the Drogheda/South Louth area are extremely proud of the buildings of historical significance in our locality, such as St Laurence's Gate among others. The thought of what happened to The Buttergate, being neglected to the point of having to remove the top half, ever happening again is anathema to local residents."
The An Taisce Report recommends Carstown House being used as a residential property to save it. Cllr Flood suggested "if Louth County Council cannot afford to restore it then we need to look at other options like having a Voluntary Housing Body agreeing to build on the site to use for social housing. My party colleague Cllr. Joanna Byrne is Chair of the Council's Housing Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) and we will be exploring this option in the coming days.
"We need and plan to take action to save Carstown House as saving a building of historic significance and providing a house/home seems like a win win situation and one that Louth County Council should not ignore."
An emotional Monsignor Jim Carroll said farewell to the parish of St Peters last weekend after almost 14 years as parish priest. Photo:Colin Bell/pressphotos.ie
Messages of goodwill came in from around Europe last weekend for Archdeacon Jim Carroll as he departed as Parish Priest of St Peter's.
Addressing the congregation at Saturday's mass in Our Lady of Lourdes Church, at which he was welcomed by a round of applause, he said that his departure was like leaving a house, only this time he would miss the people and the team around him.
He said he had been 'privileged' to journey with the people for the last 13 and a half years and recalled that he arrived on his first day on a steam train, courtesy of the Old Drogheda Society.
'A lot has happened, ups and downs, and you learn as you go along. The best way to be a good leader is to surround yourself with good people,' he stated, mentioning the likes of housekeepers, office staff and sacristans, as well as the parish councils and pastoral teams.
He spoke of his family and those that had passed away, but 'you keep the memory there' and said they are still minding us.
A well known lover of long walks, he spoke of people taking the 'inner journey, the journey of the soul', saying it was important for people to reach out to those in need.
'My father was a carpenter and he'd say, the man who never made a mistake, never made anything.
'Many the mistake I made and I'm sorry for that,' he added.
Following the mass, Fr Paul Murphy spoke on behalf of the priests present, saying that Monsignor Jim's pilgrimage would continue on to Clogherhead and Monasterboice.
A number of presentations were made by parish groups and his 'great ability to listen' was recognised.
Goodwill messages were read out, starting with Bishop Michael Smith who said the parish of St Peter's had worked well with St Mary's down the years.
Monsignor Ciaran O'Carroll, Sr Mairead from the Siena community and Fr Ray Kelly in Oldcastle also sent messages added to comments from Downside, Argentina, Hanover and Lambspringe in Germany, where they lit a candle at the shrine of St Oliver.
He said he was proud to have played his part at the national shrine of St Oliver, revealing that he was christened James Oliver.
Afterwards, members of the congregation gathered in a marquee at the front of the church where Mon Carroll was again feted for his enormous contribution to life in the town for more than a decade.
Archbishop Eamon Martin will officially induct Canon Eugene Sweeney as Parish Priest of St Peter's Parish on Saturday evening next at the 6:15pm Vigil Mass in St Peter's Church.
Canon Eugene will also celebrate and preach at the Triduum Mass on Monday February 11th (the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes) where there will be the anointing of the Sick.
All are welcome
Irish National Opera, Ireland's first national opera company is celebrating its first year with an extensive tour of Gluck's masterpiece Orfeo ed Euridice.
The production which had a sold-out run at Galway International Arts Festival last July, will visit 11 venues around the country including a concert performance in St Peter's Church of Ireland presented by Drogheda Classical Music on Sunday 10 February at 7:30pm.
The all-Irish cast is headed by mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty, whose debut in the role in Galway won widespread critical plaudits. Sharon has been praised as "quite simply sensational" by the German magazine Der Opernfreund. While for her Wexford Festival Opera debut as Lucy Talbot in William Bolcom's Dinner at Eight last October, Operawire described her "subtle shading and carefully accented vocal line" as bringing "depth and ambiguity to her character".
Sharon is joined by Sarah Power as a mysterious Euridice and Emma Nash as Amore, all under the musical direction of Peter Whelan who will conduct the Irish Baroque Orchestra.
Gluck's version of the Orpheus myth features the composer's most famous aria, the profoundly moving Che faro senza Euridice.
INO artistic director and Julianstown resident, Fergus Sheil, said, "I am delighted that one of our stand-out shows of 2018, the profound and deeply moving production of Orfeo ed Euridice, featuring the gut-wrenching sincerity of Sharon Carty, will now be seen by opera lovers all over the country, including Drogheda. Our Orfeo brings 21st-century Irish creative perspectives to bear on one of the 18th century's most haunting operas."
Tickets are 19 / 17 conc (in advance) or 20 / 18 (on the door). Student / child ticket 5. Booking is highly recommended and available through Droichead Arts Centre on 041 9833946 or www.droichead.com
Drogheda Classical Music is presented in partnership with Droichead Arts Centre and funded by the Arts Council and Create Louth with sponsorship from the d hotel.
The consent decree is necessary because previous policing reforms failed due to a lack of political will and resistance within the force. The judge, who will work with a federal monitor, has indisputable power over City Hall, regardless of whos in office. But the document is still just paper. Its components must be breathed into life, first by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and then by whoever follows him. Members of the department will have to implement the policies and hold officers accountable for violations.
There were beaming smiles all round from the O'Flynn family of Millstreet, who collected the Cork Chamber SME Company of the Year award.
Tadhg O'Flynn, CEO of O'Flynn Medical, told "It really is a very nice one to have under our belt. There were 1,000 people attending the awards ceremony, and the tickets were like gold dust to get. And then to win an award was just so nice and really thrilling for us," said Mr O'Flynn.
The company, based in Millstreet, began 19 years ago with two employees on the books, but now the medical supply business has increased and that number today stands at 30.
The company sells, rents, services and decontaminates a wide range of medical equipment. It also has operations not just in Ireland but also in the UK.
Reflecting on the growth of the company, Mr O'Flynn said that they grew gradually over the years, "but when the recession began to bite and banks began to lend 100-per-cent mortgages, I said to my staff that I felt it was the beginning of the end," he said. He believed that this would have a detrimental impact on the economy, and his thinking proved correct.
"I then changed the business direction, and while there were many people giving warnings, such as George Lee, on the economy, few were listening to him. We changed business direction from sales to our rental in the recession, and this really paid off as it is now our biggest market business," said Mr O'Flynn.
With just shy of two decades in business, O'Flynn Medical are highly regarded as being experts in their field, and with a further expansion to a brand new 25,000-square-foot facility, the business is set to grow even further.
"We hope to make the move in 2019, but at the moment there is a lot of work and setting up to do," he said.
"Cork Chamber do truly amazing work and really are a great organisation with great staff. The awards night was an amazing night and it was a complete sell out." At the awards ceremony, the President of Cork Chamber, Bill O'Connell, said the awards provide "a wonderful platform for Cork's most pioneering businesses to celebrate success."
"It has been a fantastic journey for all of us on the judging panel over the last few months, getting to meet an impressive and diverse mix of companies who are leading the way in innovating; transforming our business landscape; leaving a lasting mark on both Cork and the world," said Mr O'Connell.
Cork County Council planners have given the green light for a 32-unit residential development on the grounds of the former Presentation Convent in Mitchelstown.
In June of last year an application for the development was lodged with the authority by Limerick-based Rockspring Properties (Newport) Limited.
It made provision for a total of 32 new units on the grounds of the protected structure, which has been idle for years and has become a major eyesore after falling victim to vandals, who have destroyed much of its historic facade and interior.
Under the plan, the Convent building itself will be repaired, restored and converted into six residential units comprised of four dwellings and two apartments, with the existing chapel remaining in place. It also provides for the demolition of the former convent nursing home wing and other ancillary buildings on the site.
The development will also consist of nine new detached, six semi-detached and 11 'townhouse' dwellings, and five garages.
The plan also provides alterations to the site entrance from the local road, the provision of internal roadways, associated car-parking and landscaping of the entire site.
Following the submission of the application, a single observation was lodged by the Mitchelstown Heritage Society, which was were quick to point out that it broadly welcomed the development, going on to say it had always been its "express goal that a viable and appropriate future can be found for this important site."
However, it did raise a number of concerns relating to the conservation of the convent building, the proposed demolition of the nursing home wing, the retention of gates at the entrance to the site and the layout and design of the scheme.
In granting permission for the development, planners stipulated a total of 52 conditions that must be observed both before and during construction.
While planners ruled that works could commence on the six units within the Convent structure and up to nine of the other units, the remaining 17 units have been put on hold until the start of upgrading work on the local waste-water treatment plant and can not be occupied until that work is complete.
Other conditions dealt with a variety of issues, including the proper conservation of historic and protected structures on the site; that a survey be undertaken to see if bats are living in the building before work can start; that provision be made for an internal play area; that building only be carried out at specific times of the day; and that all works are carefully controlled so as to safeguard the amenities of the surrounding area and local wildlife.
Planners also ruled that none of the dwellings can be occupied until water and sewage connections are installed and working; all internal roads and footpaths have been completed; and all public lighting is in working order.
The developer was also ordered to lodge a bond of 41,444 to guarantee the restoration of the road surface at Convent Hill; and to pay a development contribution of 55,737.69 to Cork County Council.
Although the decision to give the development the green light was welcomed by local Fianna Fail TD Kevin O'Keeffe, he expressed concern that 17 of the units would be stalled pending works to the waste-water treatment plant. "This is yet another example of more residential developments being held up in Mitchelstown because the plant has not yet been upgraded," he said.
"Irish Water need to give this priority and urgently give time-frame for the commencement and completion of these works," he added.
A new pamphlet outlining the range of mental health services available for young people in Cork was launched this week by Lord Mayor Cllr Mick Finn.
The pamphlet is part of the 'Connecting for Life Cork' project, the suicide- and self-harm-reduction plan for the city and county, and was produced by Cork/Kerry Community Healthcare resources Officer for Suicide Prevention Martin Ryan and partners from across the community and voluntary sector.
He said the booklet was targeted at young people aged 15 and over, and aimed at providing "information that was accessible, clear and youth friendly."
"I would like to thank the many services and organisations who contributed to the development of this booklet. This underpins the collaborative approach to suicide prevention in Cork, which has grown in recent years," said Mr Ryan.
"Throughout the development of the booklet, many services and groups have been asked to review the content and approach, including our own drug and alcohol services, Jigsaw, the Cork Life Centre, reachout.com and many others."
Cllr Finn said the booklet, along with other resources produced by various youth organisations, is part of an ongoing effort to alert young people to the many supports that are available to them.
"I encourage all youth groups and organisations, as well as all secondary schools in the city and county, to ensure this information gets to its target population," said Cllr Finn.
The head of Mental Health Services for Cork/Kerry, Sinead Gleeson, paid tribute to all of the groups and individuals who contributed to the pamphlet.
"We hope that the booklet will also be useful resource for adults and those working with young people," she said.
To get a copy of the booklet, contact Martin Ryan on martin.ryan8@hse.ie.
A rebel based company with a Milford native at the helm scooped the 'Large Company of the Year Award' at the Cork Chamber gala banquet which was held on Friday.
Sean Sheehan, is CEO of Wisetek which is regarded as a global leader in advanced IT asset disposal, data destruction, technology reuse and manufacturing services.
The firm was one of three companies short-listed for an award. The others in the category were Amarenco and Johnson & Perrott.
Recently, Wisetek announced it is opening a branch in the UK market with a facility in Reading, where it will initially hire over 10 new employees with that number set to grow.
The Cork based company has previously expanded into the United States where it is located in Austin, Texas and Sacramento in California as well as the Middle East; and there is also a facility in Thailand with plans to expand into further into South-East Asian markets.
Sean said he was obviously delighted to win the prestigious award, adding that is an honour to be acknowledged in this manner by The Cork Chamber of Commerce.
"The services provided by Wisetek are becoming essential in the market and this is recognised by companies here in Ireland and also internationally. The successful development of our business in Ireland and abroad is down to the great team of people we have across the company and the award it due to their endeavours," he added.
Bill O'Connell, President of Cork Chamber, said that the Cork Company of the Year Awards provide a wonderful platform for Cork's most pioneering businesses to celebrate success.
"It has been a fantastic journey for all of us on the judging panel over the last few months, getting to meet an impressive and diverse mix of companies who are leading the way in innovating, transforming our business landscape, leaving a lasting mark on both Cork and the world," he added.
A large crowd of more than 270 people attended a public meeting last Friday night in Mourneabbey to discuss a proposal to build a 27 turbine wind farm on a section of the mothballed Bottlehill 'super dump' site.
Last month The Corkman revealed that Canadian company Brookfield Renewable (Ireland) Ltd and Coillte had commenced the pre-application process with An Bord Pleanala for the development at Knockdoorty, Glannasack.
Last Friday's meeting, which was attended by residents from Carrinavar, Mourbeabbey, Glenville, Killavullen, Whitehurch and Grenagh, was organised by the recently formed Nagle View Turbine Aware (NVTA) group.
A number of speakers addressed the meeting, airing concerns about a number of issues, including the potential damage the development could cause to the local ecology, the risks it could pose to people living in close proximity to the turbines and the impact it may have on local property prices.
Speakers included Caroline Cook of Scartaglen, Co Kerry who spoke about how her home had become a "war zone" since turbines close to it became operational last year.
Betty Hyde, a GP from Mallow, highlighted the negative health effects that can be caused to those living close to wind turbines and spoke about the symptoms experienced by those suffering what has been termed 'wind turbine syndrome'.
Fred O'Sullivan of Sliabh Luachra Wind Aware urged farmers approached by developers seeking to put wind turbines on their land to seek legal advice and "think twice" before signing contracts as these developments place a "heavy burden" on farmland.
Stephen Glass of the Ardglass Wind turbine Awareness Group spoke about how they had defeated two wind farms projects in East Cork and encouraged the community to have their say when it came to submitting objections once a planning application is lodged.
Speaking to The Corkman, NVTA PRO Amy Connolly said it was wonderful to see so many people come out to support the group and "voice their concerns" about the proposed development.
She stressed that while the NVTA was not against the creation of renewable energy it was important that the switch from fossil fuels was done "in a responsible manner and not to the detriment of the health and wellbeing of those living in rural Ireland."
Ms Connolly described the public consultation between Brookfield, Coillte and the local community to date as being "woefully inadequate".
"Initially we had been promised six technical workshops which would address a number of aspects of the project, such as noise, visual impact etc. Instead, there were three information sessions which were run in quick succession over a week last November 2018," she said.
"The community got very little notice of these meetings and anyone from the community who did attend with very important questions left those meetings none the wiser as to what this development could mean for the community as those questioned went unanswered."
She said that in preparation for the meeting the NVTA met with eight auctioneers from areas in Cork, Kerry and Waterford where there were operational wind farms.
"The results of that were very worrying. They found there was a drop of at least 50% in the value of property in areas where there are industrial wind farms and, in some instances, were finding it difficult to sell houses and sites at all," said Ms Connolly.
She said it was "extremely frustrating there was no protection for rural communities fighting these kinds of developments."
"The 2006 Wind Energy Development guidelines are completely outdated and unfit for purpose and were drafted at a time when wind turbines were standing 60-80 metres high. We now have wind turbines standing at 169 metres high and getting higher, yet the Government has failed to implement revised guidelines for a very long time now and are dragging their heels on the issue," said Ms Connolly.
"What we as a group, and indeed other community groups around the country, are calling for is for a moratorium to be placed on all wind developments until revised guidelines are put in place."
The Corkman attempted to contact both Brookfield Renewable (Ireland) and Coillte for comment but had not received a reply from either at time of going to press For more information about Nagle View Turbine Aware and their campaign visit www.nvta.ie or their dedicated Facebook and Twitter pages.
A report by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has said the findings of its latest inspection at Kanturk Community Hospital had "demonstrated that the HSE had failed to address the deficits in governance and management" identified during previous inspections.
In its report, HIQA said that "poor findings and inadequate provider responses" to three previous inspections completed since January 2018 had precipitated the most recent unannounced inspection, which took place last November.
The subsequent report found the hospital to be non-complaint in more than a dozen specific regulations under the headings of 'Capacity and Capability' and 'Quality and Safety'.
Under the first heading, HIQA noted that "an absence of an effective system of governance was evident" in the failure to progress remedial works required to address fire safety risks; a failure to improve the privacy and dignity of residents; and "a lack of involvement of and oversight by senior managers in plans to address both issues."
Inspectors said a comprehensive review of occupancy levels was not carried out to inform the profile and number of residents that could appropriately be accommodated at the hospital, and reported "findings of repeated regulatory non-compliance over four inspections".
They went on to say that despite three inspections with findings of poor regulatory compliance since January 2018, the HSE had "failed to implement their own compliance plan and to make necessary improvements".
Examples cited included: the failure to appoint a director of nursing; that long-term residents continued to be accommodated in situations that "adversely impacted their daily quality of life, privacy and dignity"; that personnel records reviewed did not contain Garda vetting disclosures; and that no system to determine if staff training to ensure the protection of residents was "understood and implemented".
"The evidence of this inspection and documentation reviewed demonstrated the absence of a coherent approach on the part of the HSE in addressing fire safety risks while upholding and improving the privacy and dignity of residents," read the report.
"In conclusion, the findings were that the HSE had failed to take the necessary action to strengthen the governance and management of this centre for the purpose of improving the quality of life for residents and supporting staff on the ground in striving to achieve greater regulatory compliance."
In relation to the Quality and Safety element of the inspection, HIQA found that while some staff understood and demonstrated a strong person-centred approach to care and interaction with residents, "the prevailing culture was that of a hospital, focussed on caring for 'patients'".
"Daily routines and practices did not reflect the fact that the centre was a person's home or recognise that, while health impacts quality of life, it should not define quality of life for residents. "As with previous inspections, institutional practices continued to negatively impact many aspects of each resident's daily lived experience," read the report.
The report also found that appropriate personal storage facilities were not available to residents; the premises "was not fit for purpose" for the number of patients living there; procedures consistent with the national standards for infection control "were not demonstrated"; the findings of non-compliance in relation to fire safety reported during an inspection last August had yet to be addressed; and that individual assessment and care plans "were not comprehensively completed or updated in a timely manner."
The report found that while staff had been trained in relation to the detection and prevention of abuse, this training had "not resulted in improved outcomes for residents" and that the lack of protections "was evidenced in the exposure of residents to institutional practices on a daily basis".
In relation to 'residents rights', inspectors observed "some interactions that respected peoples human rights; however, this was not always seen."
"Some staff members showed kindness and offered choice, while others performed their duties in a perfunctory manner," read the report.
"There appeared to be an over-reliance on the activities coordinator to socially engage with residents, and it was not seen as the responsibility of everybody to engage and socially interact with the residents," it added.
A compliance plan drawn up by HIQA set out a list of regulations deemed to be 'non-compliant' and the actions that needed to be undertaken to address these deficiencies.
The full report and the Compliance plan, which contained steps being taken to address the issues identified, can be viewed in full at www.hiqa.ie.
Statement from Cork Kerry Community Healthcare following HIQA report into Kanturk Community Hospital
We accept today's report by HIQA into Kanturk Community Hospital, and acknowledge the serious issues it raises.
We also acknowledge that this is part of a series of HIQA reports raising these issues.
We want residents and their loved ones to know that we are taking these reports very seriously and are acting to bring about improvements at Kanturk Community Hospital.
Improvements were made on foot of previous reports, but some of the steps taken didn't have their full impact as quickly as we would have liked.
We acted as soon as it became evident that further action was needed, and a significant programme of change is now well underway at the community hospital.
Kanturk Community Hospital is already moving towards a vastly improved environment and experience for residents.
While the initial efforts we put in place did not bring about the changes that both we and HIQA were hoping for, we have now further enhanced our efforts.
A high-level group of senior managers from across Cork and Kerry has been set up to oversee and support the staff at Kanturk Community Hospital as they continue to bring about the changes and improvements which need to take place.
This group will also make sure that the efforts we put in have the impact we hope for, while a new Quality and Safety Committee will also be set up for the community hospital.
We have also actively sought the input of residents, and this has informed the changes - for example, residents have had an input into the redecoration carried out recently. Putting the residents at the centre of what we're doing is a more time-consuming approach, but is very worthwhile.
Other recent improvements include:
An occupational therapist has visited to assess residents, with more occupational therapy intervention planned for the coming weeks.
Training took place throughout 2018, we are now ensuring it is applied to day-to-day practice. Staff training and mentoring will continue during 2019.
Work is underway and will be completed shortly on a new area where residents and their visitors can go and have a cup of tea or coffee, away from the main communal/shared areas.
The Cork/Kerry Health and Well-being division will support the team at the community hospital as they deliver this ambitious programme of change.
In December, a survey of residents and their loved ones took place. We were encouraged by some of the positive feedback in that survey, which included comments praising the staff for how caring and kind they are. Areas mentioned for improvement are being acted on.
The need to provide a dementia-friendly environment has also been identified, and this will be pursued as part of wider discussions with an occupational therapist.
Significant improvements are planned for the building itself, with some already underway:
A plan for the extension and extensive refurbishment of the facility has been finalised, with an application for planning permission to be lodged shortly. This ambitious construction project will provide a much better environment for residents and staff.
In the interim, refurbishment works have taken place in advance of the more extensive work. These works also address the fire safety issues raised by HIQA.
New televisions have been installed, interactive tablets for residents' use are on the way, and each resident is getting a new wardrobe.
This report does not reflect our values, or the standard of care we strive to provide for residents at all community hospitals. We are committed to working with HIQA to ensure that we address the issues raised.
It is very clear that significant change is needed at Kanturk Community Hospital, and work is underway to bring that change about, with real changes already evident.
We wish to thank residents, their families and staff for their patience and understanding."
Mourneabbey's Liam Madden and solicitor Cian Moriarty have been selected as the two FG candidates in the upcoming local elections in the Mallow catchment region.
While Cllr John Paul O'Shea's brother, Tony, was hoping to follow in his brother's footsteps, he was not selected at the convention, which was held on Sunday night in the Hi-B Hotel. Donal Buckley of Ballyclough and Brian Hyde were also unsuccesful.
Cian Moriarty hails from Cork city but now calls Mallow home. Growing up, he spent a decade in the Kingdom as his father - Tom, a garda - was stationed at Abbeydorney.
He then returned to Cork city and went to UCC, where he studied Philosophy and Sociology. He went on to undertake a Masters in Sociology.
He then followed the legal route and qualified as a solicitor. He lives in Mallow with his wife, Aimie Brennan.
Mr Moriarty told The Corkman that he joined Fine Gael quite recently but always had an interest in politics: When we moved to Mallow, I wanted to get involved in politics as this is now our home, he said.
When asked about the possibility of FG securing two seats in the region in May, he said both he and Liam would campaign hard to bring about that possibility.
Liam Madden told The Corkman that he was delighted to have been selected at convention, but it is now that the battle starts with the local elections just months away.
He lives in Mourneabbey with his wife, Alice, and he worked in the insurance business for 25 years until he retired. The couple have two sons, David and Seamus.
He said he has been "an active member" of FG for four decades and, should he succeed in attaining a seat in May, it will then become his full-time job.
When asked why he put himself forward for convention, he said that he has been dealing with people in his work for many years, whether it was "solving tax problems to pension problems for people", or his involvement in the community.
On the night of the convention, he said he received the "largest vote" of the candidates put forward. When asked about FG securing two seats in May, he said the boundary change - with Grenagh and Whitechurch now in the Mallow region - takes in regions that "have strong FG roots", as does Buttevant, where he grew up.
Last June's boundary review saw the Mallow region emerge as a stand-alone five-seater district - covering a population of about 30,000 people. It encompasses Mallow town and a broad rural hinterland, including the villages of Churchtown, Liscarroll, Buttevant, Dromahane, Glantane, Burnfort, Grenagh, and parts of the Killavullen and Doneraile parishes.
Millsteet welcomes the Irish Mountain Running Association on commencing their 2019 programme of activity on a visit to the Clara Hill Run on Saturday commencing at 1pm. There are two race scheduled for Millstreet, also on Saturday, Sli Gaeltacht Mhuscrai (Muskerry Gaeltacht Way) return with the Ultra Trail Race entailing a 70 km race over part of the famous O'Sullivan Bere route. Starting in Kealkil, the race is scheduled for a finish in Millstreet.
Those involved are scheduled to convene in Millstreet at 6am on the Saturday morning before being transported to the start in Kealkil. Sli Gaeltacht Mhuscrai is a fully way-marked trail that covers just over 70km of the route, running between Kealkill and Millstreet.
Runners will cross the Sheehy and Derrynasaggart mountain ranges over a variety of tough open mountain terrain, forest trails and quiet country roads.
Stage 1 of the route between Kealkill and Gougane Barra is also part of a local Pilgrim Walk entailing 16.6km with a cut-off time of three hours to complete. Next up is a 12.2 trek on Stage 2 from Gougane Barra to Ballingeary, the cut-off time for reaching this check-point from the original outset is 5 hours.
Stage 3 is the 19km trail from Ballingeary to Ballyvourney traversing the foothills of the Derrynasaggart mountains.
This route passes the Shrine of St. Gobnait and its said O'Sullivan Beare and his followers stopped there on New Year's Day 1603 to seek the guidance of St. Gobnait for the long journey ahead.
The final stretch of the Sli climb involves stage 4, the 23.4km distance from Ballyvourney to Millstreet traversing the Derrynasaggart mountains, Mullaghanish and contouring around the north side of Claragh mountain before ascending towards Millstreet town for an official finish in the West End.
Community Council to host AGM
The AGM of Millstreet Community Council will be held at the Wallis Arms Hotel on Tuesday, February 12, starting at 8pm sharp. New members are welcome to attend.
On of the last functions of the outgoing team was as welcome extended to representatives from the Men's Shed and the Active Retired Group who are in the process of installing a Bowls Rick in the town. To start them off, the Council presented the group with a cheque for 1,500.
The proceeds of their 2019 calendar will be presented to Millstreet Tidy Towns Committee at a date to be decided. Meanwhile, Senior Alert Alarms are currently available. For details, contact Dan Collins 087- 6893378 or Michelle O'Keeffe 087 -9227415.
The proceeds from the annual Mushera Mountain climb, organised by Aubane Social Club, will be presented to the Irish Air Ambulance Group on this Thursday night at a get together in Aubane Community Centre at 8pm.
Cullen Weigh In sheds weight
The Cullen and District Special Needs Association Annual Weigh-In continues to enjoy support with weekly exercises and dancing continues with regular patrons again attending each Monday.
The association was founded in 1980 in a response to people with specific needs in the greater North Cork region. And for more than three decades, the Cullen group diverse fund-raising has helped numerous and worthy causes in Rathmore, Charleville, Kanturk, Mallow, Millstreet and Beaufort.
The final night is Monday, March 11, presentation of cheques to COPE Kanturk, Mallow and Cork, St Joseph's Foundation, Charleville; Kerry Parents and Friends.
Day Care Centre thanks
Millstreet Day-Care Centre directors and management wish to thank everybody for their kind generosity at the annual church gate collection, also many thanks to all the collectors and organisers for their help. All funds generated go directly to Millstreet Day-Care centre.
Lotto winners
The Millstreet Town Park, Youth Amenity and GAA lotto draw was hosted at the Wallis Arms Hotel.
Numbers drawn were 1, 15, 21, 25 and the jackpot was not won. 100 went to Joseph Lawlor, Millstreet, the seller was Herlihy's Centra and they receive 50 sellers prize, 50 to Tim and Kathleen McCarthy, Carriganima; 20 each to Breda FitzGerald, Minor Row; Mags O'Callaghan, Clara Road; Pauline Sheahan, Kilcorney; Millstreet GAA, Marie and Cathal c/o Colemans, Miss Walsh's Lovely Mammy, c/o Michelle; Julia Mary OSullivan c/o Herlihy's Centra, Sandra and Hayley Enright,Station Road
This weekend's jackpot is 12,200, the draw takes place at Tarrant's Bar on Sunday night.
Family business is top SME company
O'Flynn Medical scaled new heights on winning the Cork Chamber SME Company of the Year. In the presence of a distinguished attendance at Cork City Hall, headed by President Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina, Cork's most esteemed and longest running business awards attract significant attention.
Again, the 2019 awards, recognised and celebrated the success of forward moving and growing companies such as O'Flynn Medical, a prominent player in the medical equipment market.
The O'Flynn business started with just two employees 20 years ago and the company now employ 30 people selling nationwide and also into the UK.
A strong family and community business, O'Flynn Medical's 2019 investment plans will enable further growth of the business, which has seen steady growth from year one.
MD Tadgh O'Flynn extended a huge thanks to all valued customers, suppliers, friends and neighbours while also valuing the support and good wishes received from near and far.
"I would particularly like to extend sincere thanks and appreciation to a loyal staff. Their diligence, motivation and dedication has made O'Flynn Medical what it is today," he said.
Minister Eoghan Murphy; Tony Keohane, Chairman of Ervia; Eamon Gallen, MD of Irish Water; Cllr Pat Vance, cathaoirleach of Wicklow County Council; and Minister of State Andrew Doyle at the Vartry Water Plant on Monday
A new pipeline from Vartry to Callowhill, which will supply water to more than 200,000 people, has been completed.
Dignitaries including Cllr Pat Vance, cathaoirleach of Wicklow County Council, Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Eoghan Murphy, Tony Keohane, Chairman of Ervia, and Eamon Gallen, MD of Irish Water, gathered at the Vartry Water Treatment Plant on Monday to mark the significant milestone in a larger project to redevelop the Vartry Water Supply Scheme.
The 4km pipeline replaces one that had been in existence since the Vartry Water Supply was constructed in the 1860s. It old pipeline was in a poor state of repair and at risk of collapse.
Planning permission for the new pipeline from Vartry to Callowhill was granted in February 2017. Construction began in January 2018 after the contract was awarded to Roadbridge.
Cllr Pat Vance welcomed the completion of the vital and challenging project.
'The size and scale of the challenge in replacing 150-year-old infrastructure is not to be underestimated. I want to pay tribute to the contractor, Roadbridge, and Local Authority staff who delivered this vital project, which will benefit 200,000 people in north Wicklow and across south Dublin, on schedule, and to Irish Water for prioritising investment in this scheme,' said Cllr Vance.
Minister Eoghan Murphy said the Vartry Water Supply Scheme was 'amongst the most vital water infrastructure in all of Ireland' as it provides a huge population with a 'safe, sustainable supply of water'.
Eamon Gallen, MD of Irish Water, said the replacement of the pipeline was a 'priority project' because of its importance to so many people. 'This significant project builds on the legacy of the scheme constructed in the 1860s and will benefit the lives of those who work and live in north Wicklow and south Dublin,' he said.
The construction of the new pipeline is part of a 200m investment in the Vartry scheme, which include upgrades to the Vartry Treatment Plant and Stillorgan Reservoir. Once completed, the upgrade will provide a safer, more secure water supply and will allow the water scheme to be removed from Remedial Action List maintained by the EPA.
Bray Sea Scouts won the Eco Group award at last week's Outsider Awards in the Sugar Club.
The Dublin venue was packed to the rafters for the awards ceremony, with mountaineers, open water swimmers, hikers, climber, mountain bikers and more gathered to celebrate the thriving outdoor scene in Ireland.
Nominees ranged in age from six to 94, and included everyone from give-it-a-go heroes to experienced athletes.
The Eco Group Award with Clean Coasts and Leave No Trace recognises communities that have made outstanding efforts in 2018 to improve their local environment. The award recognises that environmental efforts taken by the community can take on any form that has improved its region, including tidy towns efforts, area clean-ups, promotion of environmental messaging, adoption of environmental practices etc.
The young people of Bray Sea Scouts are making a positive impact on the environment, and learning how important it is to protect our coastlines.
Anita Oman Wrynn heads up the Wednesday night section of the Bray Sea Scouts and it seems her passion for the environment is rubbing off. From May to September the scouts conducted beach cleans along Bray Harbour and Harbour Beach either before, during or after their activities on the water.
The group signed up for Clean Coast Ireland and makes the weekly clean an official part of the Bray Sea Scout's programme. The group also conducted larger beach cleans along the seafront.
And their passion didn't stop there. Bray Sea Scouts also applied for a sponsorship to do conservation work with scouts from Slovakia, Greece, England and Malta in Malta. Here the group were educated on and worked on microplastics on the beaches.
In a bid to get other young people involved in beach cleans in Ireland, Bray Sea Scouts offered land-based scout troops a day on the water in return for doing a beach clean.
The Bray Sea Scouts have formed amazing new habits and will now reach for litter in the water without even thinking about it when they are out canoeing.
We have tried their approach for 40 years, Ocasio-Cortez replied. For 40 years we have tried to let the private sector take care of this. They said, We got this, we can do this, the forces of the market are going to force us to innovate. Except for the fact that there's a little thing in economics called externalities. And what that means is that a corporation can dump pollution in the river and they don't have to pay for it, and taxpayers have to pay.
Kerry Foods has responded to claims it is misleading customers with information on packaging of a meat product produced in its Shillelagh plant.
The issue arose last week following concern raised by respected food writer Katy McGuinness that Denny sliced chicken is not 'Made in Wicklow' as its labelling indicates.
The Denny meat product is processed and packaged in the South Wicklow plant but it was later confirmed that the meat used is imported from a number of EU countries.
Initial reports that suppliers in Brazil were used, were later clarified by the company which employs some 750 staff in Wicklow.
A statement from Kerry Foods said that Denny 'only use industry trusted EU suppliers' including some in the UK and Northern Ireland.
'Each supplier meets our strict quality criteria and we regularly audit every supplier to ensure the highest standards of quality. Our packaging fully complies with the strict EU labelling regulations. The 'Made in Wicklow' claim refers to the product being cooked, cooled, sliced, packaged and labelled in Co. Wicklow. Our Denny Chicken is fully prepared and packaged on our Shillelagh site,' the statement outlined.
A company spokesperson added that the issue of whether such labelling is misleading is a 'broader industry question'.
Meanwhile, the IFA has entered the debate and has called on Kerry Foods to support Irish produced chicken.
IFA Poultry Chairman Andy Boylan this week said Irish consumers feel misled by a brand that they have loyalty to.
'Kerry Foods has failed to show the same support for locally-produced Bord Bia Quality Assured chicken,' said as he called on Irish MEPs and the EU Commissioner for Agriculture to ensure that this issue is highlighted and addressed as a matter of urgency at EU legislative level.
IFA want the country-of-origin of the primary source of meat used in prepared foods such as this Denny product to be clearly stated on the packaging to stop misleading Irish consumers who thought they were buying locally-produced food.
'This loophole in the current labelling legislation that Kerry Foods are exploiting to mislead consumers reinforces the importance of trusting the Bord Bia Quality Assurance label,' Mr Boylan added.
IFA has requested a meeting with Kerry Foods to highlight the grievances felt by Irish poultry producers.
'Poultry farmers have had their margins squeezed with all inputs increasing by 15-30% in the past two years. They need an increase to cover their costs, and don't want to see an Irish food company, Kerry Foods, and their brand Denny which is perceived as an Irish brand, using imported product,' Mr Boylan said.
Zanfi and Jonny OBrien from Bray Choral Society who took part in Give Us a Song for the Caroline Foundation at the Holy Redeemer
Christ Church COI: Services of Worship for this Sunday - The Fourth Sunday Before Lent: 8.30 a.m. - Holy Communion Two; 11 a.m. - Morning Prayer.
Mothers' Union: Meets next Monday night at 8 p.m. in the PLC.
Mothers' Union Special Visitors: One of the enduring legacies of the Mothers' Union is the bonds of friendships that form across the world. On Saturday, February 23, and Sunday, February 24, we get the opportunity to make new friendships and worship side by side with our sisters and brothers from the fellowship of Mothers' Union members from Zimbabwe. This group of members who now live in the UK and Ireland are made up of members of the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church and the Anglican Church. Their current link to our parish is our enrolling member/convenor Daphne Danga - our future link will be the friendships that we form together as we gather to worship. The programme of events begins at 10 a.m. in Christ Church Bray and will include a service of Holy Communion - to which all who are members of the MU and those who aren't are warmly invited to join us. This fellowship numbers over 70 members and we are really looking forward to hosting this group.
Annual Register of Vestry Persons: Every year we revise our register of parishioners. If you are new to the parish, or have reached the age of 18, you are entitled to become a registered member of the parish. (This entitles you to vote at the annual Easter Vestry meeting and is quite different from being a member of the Select Vestry) The current list is available to review at the back of the church.
Holy Redeemer Parish
Where Are We At Now?: On the foot of Welcome Ministry Training that took place a couple of years ago, a seminar day will be held on Saturday, February 16, between 10.30 a.m. and 2.30 p.m.
in the Little Flower Hall at Holy Redeemer Parish to review where we are at with our parish all welcome. The day will cover what initiatives have worked so far for you and what didn't. What stumbling blocks were encountered and what more needs to be done to support parish welcome initiatives. Anyone, who would like to attend is very welcome, as the first part of the day will review the training programme. This is such an important aspect of growing our faith communities and as many people as possible are encouraged to come along. To confirm attendance please contact Aideen at 086 8182241. This is essential for providing light refreshment on the day.
Memorial Cards/Photos: Can you please collect any memorial cards or photos left for the Sacred Space in November 2018 from the sacristy.
Refurbishment of Holy Redeemer Church and Parish Centre: Thanks to all of you who have already contributed to this worthwhile project. If you haven't done so yet please remember to return your donations/pledge form to the parish office or to the sacristy. All contributions, large or small, will be greatly appreciated.
St Peter's Parish
Young at Heart Dinners: Will not recommence till further notice due to cold weather. Volunteers needed.
Child Safeguarding: An Update Session for all volunteers will be held on Saturday, February 23, from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. in the Parish Hall. Please note attendance is mandatory.
Christian Mothers: The next meeting will take place today (Wednesday) in the Parish Hall after the 11 a.m. Prayer Service.
Child Safeguarding: An Update Session for all volunteers will be held on Saturday, February 23, from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. in the Parish Hall. Please note attendance is mandatory.
Parish Cell Group: The aim of the Parish Cell Group is to foster within a parish a greater community spirit and an awareness of God in a more personal way - parishcellsireland.ie. The next meeting will take place in St Peter's Parish Hall next Monday at 7.45 p.m. - for further information contact Colin at 085 1746601.
Welcome Ministry Training: A Seminar Day will be held on Saturday, February 16, between 10.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. in the Little Flower Hall in Holy Redeemer Parish to review where we are with our parish welcome. The day will cover what initiatives have worked so far and what didn't. Anyone, who would like to attend is very welcome as the first part of the day will review the training programme. To confirm attendance please contact Aideen at 086 8182241. This is essential to determine numbers for providing light refreshment on the day.
Used Stamp Collection: Please drop in any of your used stamps into the parish office. They are a great source of income for the missions. Thank you to all who have left their used stamps into the parish office to-date.
St Vincent de Paul Society: Anybody looking for assistance from the SVP please do so by ringing SVP Dublin at 01 8550022.
Wicklow Dementia Support Group: Meets in St Peter's Parish Hall every Monday from 10.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. The Monday Club is a social club for people with memory loss and their family carers. Support activities, fun and outings. For more information contact 089 428692.
St Fergal's Parish
Novena to St Anthony: On Tuesday Mornings, during the 9.30 a.m. Mass.
Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament: On Friday Mornings from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Welcome Ministry Training: A Seminar Day will be held on Saturday, February 16, between 10.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. in the Little Flower Hall in Holy Redeemer Parish to review where we are with our parish welcome. The day will cover what initiatives have worked so far and what didn't. Anyone, who would like to attend is very welcome as the first part of the day will review the training programme. To confirm attendance please contact Aideen at 086 8182241. This is essential to determine numbers for providing light refreshment on the day.
Facebook page. for the Bray and Enniskerry Pastoral Area: Check out 'Bray and Enniskerry Pastoral Area' for all the news and information of our Pastoral Area.
Our Lady Queen of Peace
Christmas Stamps: If you have any used stamp, please leave them into the Villa Pacis during office hours. Please leave at least a quarter - inch around each stamp. Thank you.
Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration: As you know we are always looking for new adorers and would be very grateful for help during the night hours from 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. and 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. and 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. Please contact the sacristy at 01 2723865.
Our Lady of Lourdes: Next Monday is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Lourdes and World Day of the sick. Mass in our church is at 10.30 a.m.
Parish Pilgrimage to Lourdes: Bookings for our Parish Pilgrimage to Lourdes are now being taken in the Villa (weekdays 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.).
Our Lady Queen of Peace Bethany Bereavement Support Group: We meet in the Villa Pacis on the second Tuesday of the month between 8.30 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. and also on the first Friday of every month after 10.30 a.m. Mass for those affected by grief.
Hospitality: The hospitality team this Sunday is Team D.
Where Are We At Now?: On the foot of Welcome Ministry Training that took place a couple of years ago, a seminar day will be held on Saturday, February 16, between 10.30 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. in the Little Flower Hall at Holy Redeemer Parish, Bray, to review where we are at with our parish welcome. The day will cover what initiatives have worked so far for you and what didn't.
What stumbling blocks were encountered and what more needs to be done to support parish welcome initiatives. Anyone, who would like to attend is very welcome, as the first part of the day will review the training programme. To confirm attendance please contact Aideen at 086 8182241. This is essential for providing light refreshment on the day.
Church Cleaners: We are seeking volunteers to help with church cleaning. The cleaners meet on Wednesday after the 10.30 a.m. Mass. Please contact the sacristy or the parish office if interested.
Our Facebook page: Please visit and like our Facebook page: Bray and Enniskerry Pastoral Area.
QOP youth club
Queen of Peace Adventure Youth Club during the month will introducing drift wood art to members, a trip to St Michan's to see the Dublin Mummy, night walking, hill walking, and swimming. There are a lot more vacancies for new members for boys, and girls from 10 years of age upwards.
New leaders are very welcome. Give Paul a ring at 086 3516630, and you could be up to your neck in adventure in no time.
Diving club
Having had 140 scuba dives in 2017, and 137 in 2018 and with 10 this year to date Bray Divers offer more to the club members than any other club in Ireland. On Monday, February 11, a free try a dive in Shoreline Swimming Pool in Greystones will be the second such opportunity for interested persons to experience what it is like to be an underwater diver. Just call Albert at 087 6756439 and he will be glad to facilitate you.
Bray Library
Bray Library opening hours are - Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday - 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday - 10 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. Borrowers are reminded that books can be renewed by phone - call 01 2862600.
Ballywaltrim Library
Branch opening hours are 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.,and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesdays - the library is closed on Mondays and Fridays. Borrowers are reminded that books can be renewed by phone - call 01 2723205.
Cualann Society
Maritime history will be the subject for this month's meeting of the Bray Cualann Historical Society, the local history society for Bray and North Wicklow, when historian/author Brian White will present an illustrated talk at 8 p.m. on 'The Maritime History of Bray, County Wicklow' in the Royal Hotel, Main Street, Bray, on Thursday, February 21.The talk will trace the history of the five harbours of Bray, include stories of smugglers and reveal the development of the esplanade and the Grand Marine Promenade and the three Martello Towers, and how a how a church spire in the town played an important role in calculating pilotage fees for Dublin Port, the role of the Coastguard Station in Bray and various maritime clubs and societies including Bray Sailing Club, Bray Rowing Club, Bray Swimming Club, Bray Cove Swimming Club, Fishermen and Anglers of Bray, and Sea Scouting. In 1957 the lighthouse at Bray Harbour was washed into the sea, prompting the saying that 'Bray was the only place in the world with a lighthouse for submarines'. All welcome - admission 5.
In the meantime some events taking place which may of interest to members and supporters of the Bray Cualann Historical Society are tonight's (Wednesday) 7 p.m. lecture by Tom Conlon on 'Kingstown - the First Decade (1821-1831): from green fields to active town' in Marlay House, Marlay Park, Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin - admission is free but must be pre-booked via email dlrheritageevents@dlrcoco.ie; the 8 p.m. lecture by Fergus Mulligan on 'William Dargan - An Honourable Life' to the Rathmichael Historical Society in Rathmichael National School, Stonebridge Road (Dublin Road end), Shankill, Co. Dublin. All welcome - admission 4.; and Friday night's 8 p.m. lecture by Brigadier John Powell on 'General Sir Edward Bulfin: Ireland's forgotten general of World War 1' to the Military History Society of Ireland in Griffith College, South Circular Road, Dublin eight. All welcome - admission free.
Further information on the Bray Cualann Historical Society programme available on the Society's website braycualannhistoricalsociety.ie.
Donal O'Kelly's dramatic masterpiece 'Bat the Father, Rabbit the Son' comes to the Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely, on Friday, February 22.
It's Dublin in the 1980s. Rabbit is a self-made haulage magnate. But something's wrong. He cuts a deal with his underling Keogh to help him find his lost moorings. The quest is hampered by his dead father Bat, Citizen Army volunteer and pawn shop assistant, bubbling up. The struggle between father and son, past and present, imagination and reality, spans Dublin. Their voyage out of Howth and up the River Liffey builds to a climax described by The Guardian as 'one of the strongest dramatic conclusions I've ever seen'.
An explosive exposition of the generation that led us to Boom and Bust. Written 30 years ago, 'Bat the Father, Rabbit the Son' is more pertinent than ever. Doors open at 8 p.m. and tickets are 16/14.
St. Louis staff and students celebrated the return of one of the school's most cherished features last week.
Historic stained glass windows which had been installed in the Chapel Hall were lost in the devastating fire in the school last May.
Teacher Orla Drumgoole explained how important their return was to all in the school.
'One of the worst losses to the school in the fire was of some of the beautiful stained glass windows in the Chapel Hall.'
'Thanks to Alpha Stained Glass, a company based in Derry, the windows are being carefully and sensitively restored and last week the first fruits of that labour were brought back to the school,' said Orla.
Theresa Coyle of Alpha Stained Glass explains: 'The windows were badly damaged. The first thing we did was to send samples of the damaged glass to Germany where they made sheets of glass to match and sent back to us. We then cut and painted the glass, and finally leaded the windows together.'
One of the windows was so badly damaged that the decorative panel in it could not be repaired.
There was a unique touch to the new design as art student Katarina Sidorova was chosen by her teacher and Principal Michelle Dolan to design a panel for the window.
'It is a depiction of the school castle with the red door to offer a splash of colour. The rays around the castle represent the sun behind our students as they head towards their bright futures,' said Ms. Drumgoole.
'Katarina worked on the design over the summer months back at home in Latvia and submitted two other designs. Although they were too complex for stained glass she learned a lot about the process of creating a design that would work well in glass.'
The talented student was thrilled to see her panel appear in the window last week.
'I love art and it was a really interesting project to be involved in. I am delighted to see how well my design fits with the rest of the windows,' said Katarina.
Other windows in the Chapel Hall are set to be installed in the coming months.
The mother of the Blackrock student who died following a road accident in Texas has written to thank his fellow students and friends for their kindness.
Mark Sands from was an exchange student at the University of Texas at Austin.
The 21-year-old had joined the universitys Fall 18 class of the Texas Iron Spikes and had thrown himself into university life, endearing himself to fellow students.
A past pupil of Blackrock NS and Dundalk Grammar School, Mark was doing a computer science course at UCD and had taken the opportunity of an exchange year to broaden his horizons. He had returned to Austin in January after spending Christmas at home in Blackrock.
After he was involved in a serious accident while riding a scooter last Friday, a fellow student who set u0p a GoFundMe page to help the familys travelling expenses said If youve ever been lucky enough to meet Mark youve surely noticed his constant smile. He was one of the most charming and amusing people you will ever meet. Mark never met a stranger or someone he didnt like. He had a passion for everyone he knew and he always looked out for others.
Heartfelt tributes were paid by other students and their parents, some of whom had met Mark when he acted as photographer for the Iron Spikes parent/student night.
His heartbroken parents Paddy and Ruth and sisters Aoife and Laura travelled to Austin to be at his bedside after he underwent emergency surgery but sadly he passed away. They decided to donate his organs to help others.
Writing on the GoFundMe page yesterday (Monday afternoon) his mother Ruth said: We are overwhelmed by all you support. Your comments are uplifting and a great comfort to us.
She explained that Marks organs were being harvested and asked that his friends to play the U2 song Elevation and take a few minutes to remember him, saying that it would be playing in the operating theatre.
It was a very special song between Mark and I and one I was going to dance with him at his wedding and do our goofy dance, she said. It would mean a lot to me.
Such sadness is overwhelming us. X
'Nurses and midwives would much rather be working than on the picket line but they have been forced out by the government,' said Tony Fitzpatrick, Director of Industrial Relations, IMNO as he visited striking nurses outside the Louth County Hospital last Tuesday.
If the amount of tooting and beeping by passing motorists was anything to go by, then the nurses have the support of the general public in their bid to get better pay and conditions.
'Our members have said enough is enough,' explained Tony, adding that they were resolute in their decision to hold out until their demands are met.
He said that unless pay and conditions are improved, the HSE won't be able to recruit and retain enough nurses to deliver bed capacity and Shared Care.
'We have 1,700 less nurses than in 2008 and that needs to be reversed.'
It was the first time in twenty years that nurses have staged a 24 hour strike, and Colette Vize, chairperson of the Dundalk branch of the INMO, said that the public support has been 'pheonomenal'.
'Motorists are tooting their support and a number of local shops have send food down,' she said.
She also voiced frustration that nurses had been left with no option but to take industrial action, saying that unless pay and conditions were improved, no young nurses would stay in the country.
She produces a newspaper clipping from 1999 which shows her at the picket line, carrying her baby son.
Now a 21 year old student at DkIT, he joined her on the picket line on the frosty Wednesday morning.
'Things haven't changed - if anything they are worse,' she said.
Other DkIT students on the picket line were the fourth year nursing students who have been working on the wards of the Louth County Hospital, getting paid the minimum wage.
They say that three-quarters of their year are considering working overseas once they qualify, with only mature students with families and ties planning to stay in Ireland.
It's not just the prospect of better pay which is enticing them abroad but a safer working environment.
'We want better conditions,' said Aine Maguire. 'I'm actually looking at a job aboard. The pay is only one thing. We want to be the best nurses we can but we can't do that with the staffing levels in Irish hospitals as basically we would be asked to do the work of three nurses.'
Elizabeth Martin Carroll said she too will probably emigrate. 'If things were to chance, if there was better pay and staffing levels, it would entice us to stay.'
They speak of how they have seen unsafe practices due to insufficient staff numbers during their time in hospitals and say they don't want to be part of that.
'We have spent four years training to get our 'pin' but if we're working in unsafe conditions we could lose it,' said Megan Clark.
'Staff are stressed and they are going out sick because of the pressure they are under,' said. Pamela Jones.
Further 24 hour strikes are taking place today (Tuesday) and Thursday, with a national rally planned for Dublin on Saturday. Strikes are also planned for February 12, 13 and 14, 19 and 21.
The strike is also being escalated as more services will be affected, with the provision of respite services for adults and those with intellectual disabilities being included in the dispute,
Former Tanaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Frances Fitzgerald TD, with Bill Graebel (right), CEO of Graebel Companies Inc, and Martin Shanahan, CEO, IDA Ireland at the official opening of Graebels newly established Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Financial Shared Services and Operations Centre in Dundalk, Co. Louth with the creation of 125 new jobs over the next three years in September 2017
The IDA are supporting 3,903 jobs in multi national companies across Louth, according to the latest figures released this week by Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys.
The IDA work exclusively on encouraging investment into Ireland by foreign-owned companies, and provide a range of financial supports to companies in the form of employment, capital, research and development, environmental and training grants.
'These grants remain an important means of encouraging firms to invest in Ireland, particularly in regional locations, said the Minister in reply to a Dail question from Louth TD Fergus O'Dowd.
She added: 'The government is fully committed to the creation of high quality and sustainable employment across Ireland, including in County Louth. There are now 3,903 people employed in IDA client companies in Louth with 139 net new jobs added in 2018.'
The Business and Enterprise Minister explained that the new National Development Plan 'recognises the importance of Dundalk and Drogheda as key centres in the context of the Dublin-Belfast economic corridor.'
'Both towns have a strong track record in attracting multi-national companies due to the quality of the local infrastructure as well as their proximity to Dublin's transport hubs. I am therefore confident that we will be able to sustain and grow investment levels in County Louth, said Minister Humphreys'
The IDA currently support some of the biggest employers in Louth, including National Pen, PayPal, Xerox, Wasdell, Prometric, and Chinese pharma firm WuXi Biologics which announced in 2018 it will create 400 new jobs over five years at a new bio pharma manufacturing facility in Mullagharlin.
The number of jobs created by IDA companies in Louth has tripled from 1,300 in 2010 to almost 4,000.
In addition, the Minister added that Enterprise Ireland supported companies employed 215,207 people throughout Ireland in 2018. Latest figures showed that in 2018 alone there was a total of 3,079,928 paid by Enterprise Ireland to client companies in Louth.
'Enterprise Ireland is actively working with companies in Louth to drive competitiveness, innovation and market diversification.'
She added that 'LEO Louth is the first-stop-shop for anyone wishing to start a business in the area.
One of the most senior members of the German Cabinet has pledged the ongoing support of the EU's most powerful State to the retention of the 'backstop' contained in the withdrawal agreement reached between the UK and EU Member States, including Ireland.
German Federal Minister for Justice, Katarina Barley vowed the support of her government during a visit to the border on Friday last
Louth Senator Ged Nash led the delegation meeting with the German Minister during her high profile visit.
'Katarina is a member of Labour's sister party, the German SPD. She contacted me to arrange this high level visit as she was anxious to see for herself what life is like in a border community, how life has changed for the better in recent years and precisely why businesses, workers and the local community in general need the protection that the backstop gives Ireland in the context of the UK's planned withdrawal from the EU.'
The visit saw the German Minister visit Flagstaff and journey along the narrow country roads that weave from north to south. Senator Nash pointed out: 'She could see for herself how the border effectively no longer exists thanks to the Good Friday Agreement and Ireland and the UK's joint membership of the EU, the single market and the Customs Union.'
The Minster also met with the local lobby group Border Communities Against Brexit, Dundalk Chamber of Commerce, SIPTU, Louth County Council, the East Border Region Committee and the Centre for Cross Border Studies.
'All left the Minister under no illusions as to the importance of Germany and our other EU colleagues continuing support for the agreed backstop and for the integrity of the Good Friday Agreement,' he added. 'I was pleased to arrange this important visit and to see the German government recommit its support for the Irish position as we enter the Brexit endgame.'
Border Communities Against Brexit members who met with the Minister were Bernard Boyle, Paul Gibbons and Brian Cunningham. 'We welcomed the opportunity to discuss the serious Brexit situation with the German Justice Minister, to outline how vitally important it is that the deal which was agreed between the EU and Britain, containing the all important Backstop is not tinkered with. Minister Barley drove around the border area to see for herself that there is no border, and she firmly supports Ireland and the Backstop in these negotiation.'
Dundalk Port was busier in 2018 than in previous years with 55 ships docking, more than double the traffic seen in 2015
It's always been a case of 'swings and roundabout' for businesses along the Border and Dundalk Port Company is one of those keeping a close eye on how Brexit will play out in the coming weeks.
Sean O'Hanlon took over the running of Dundalk Port in 2011, leasing it from Dublin Port Company.
It was a natural progression for the South Armagh man who had worked in the port for 30 years, starting out as a crane driver.
Business has been growing in recent years, says his daughter Claire, who works in the shipping agency office at Quay Street.
O'Hanlon Shipping Services handles all the work at the port, from doing the paperwork for ships to stevedoring, storage and haulage.
'Sean brings all the trade in and has been working to increase the number of ships using the port,' she says.
Thanks to his effort and the growing economy, the number of ships coming into the port has doubled in the last few years, with 55 ships coming in last year, compared to less than thirty in 2015.
'We're a small port and are restricted in the size of boats we can bring in and also get a lot of competition from Dublin, Drogheda, Greenore and Warrenpoint,' she says.
That said, the port has managed to carve out a niche, bringing in timber from Latvia and winning a new contract to bring in maize for the distillery.
'The maize used to come through Warrenpoint, but with the prospect of Brexit, they decided to bring it in through Dundalk instead.'
And while this was a win for them, she admits 'Brexit could also hinder us. It's hard to know what will happen.'
'Like every business, we just have to wait and see what happens. It could bring more business or it could see us losing business.'
A no deal Brexit could pose a threat to the part of their business which sees scarp being transported from Northern Ireland for export either to England or Europe.
One of the main activities at the port is the export of scrapped cars which come from Northern Ireland and are shipped to Liverpool. Other scrap materials coming from Northern Ireland are exported to Spain and France.
She says that the EPA regularly inspects the port to see that the scrap is stored properly and that there is no oil spilling out of the scrap cars.
There had been complaints from local residents about the smell coming from bales of waste which had been stored at the port for export overseas, she admits, but that business has ceased since the incinerator at Poolbeg, Dublin went into operation two years ago.
And while the prospect of business being channelled to smaller ports from Dublin after Brexit has been mooted, Dundalk is restricted by the size of ships it can accommodate.
One of the main challenges facing the port is the build up of silt in the channel used by ships to gain access to the docks
'It was last dredged three years ago but the sand is building up again,' she says.
'Ships are getting bigger and bigger and it's difficult to bring them in without dredging being done, but it's very expensive.
She pays tribute pilot Paddy Mackin for his skill in guiding ships into the harbour.
Dundalk port was once associated with coal, but it's many years since a coal boat docked at the harbour, she says.
In fact, Bord na Mona are in the process of winding down their operations at the port which had been used as a distribution centre for turf briquettes.
The Samaritans in Newry and Dundalk are looking for volunteers to get involved with the charity and give something back to the local community, while making a difference to people's lives.
An information evening for those interesting in volunteering takes place on Wednesday, February 13 at 7pm in the Newry branch at 19 St Colman's Park, Newry.
Anyone, men and women, of all ages and walks of life,is welcome to go along and found out what is involved in becoming a volunteer.
The Samaritans are best known for its 24-hour telephone service and volunteers can also offer support by SMS, email and face-to-face in communities, festivals and outreach events.
Eileen Campbell, the newly appointed Director of Samaritans in Newry explains: 'Newry and Dundalk Samaritans offer round-the-clock emotional support to anyone who is struggling to cope with whatever it is that life has thrown at them.'
'Over the Christmas period, our amazing volunteers were helping people 24/7, with 14 volunteers on duty in Newry on Christmas Day itself.'
To find out more about becoming a volunteer with Samaritans in Newry, telephone 03705 627282 from the UK (1890 200 091 from the Republic of Ireland) or email volunteering@samaritans.org
For more information check out www.samaritans.org
The trust set up to raise funds in aid of Sean Cox has been announced as the official charity partner of the 2019 Night Run, which gives runners the opportunity to run through Dublin's streets after dark.
Sean himself participated in last year's event, just days before he sustained serious life-altering injuries in an unprovoked attack before the champions league semi-final in Liverpool.
Five euros from each entry will be donated directly to 'Support Sean', the Sean Cox Rehabilitation Trust which aims to ensure the best possible care is accessible to Sean in his rehabilitation process.
The announcement of the new partnership was made at Sean's local GAA Club, St. Peter's, Dunboyne, where his wife Martina and children Shauna, Jack and Emma were joined by former Ireland Rugby international and lifelong Liverpool FC fan, Alan Quinlan, who is supporting the partnership by running in this year's race.
Martina said: 'We have been overwhelmed by the compassion shown to the Support Sean campaign and are extremely grateful to all those who have contributed in a number of different ways. While this is a very difficult time for us all, the enormous goodwill of Sean's family, friends, supporters and the general public has helped him make small but encouraging steps in his recovery.'
'Running was always a passion of Sean's and I have no doubt if events of last year had have been different, he would be joining the thousands of runners who are taking part in the Night Run this April.'
Over the past number of months, Sean has made small but crucial steps on a long and difficult road to recovery. Further fundraising initiatives are scheduled to take place over the coming months as Sean's family and friends continue their tireless work to ensure the best available care is afforded to him.
Night Run 2019 takes place on April 28 and runners can register at www.nightrun.ie
One retirement party I certainly wasn't going to miss last weekend was Ann McKey from Lower Point Road who recently finished with O'Fiaich College after more years than she remembered. The party was thrown by her fellow teachers in O'Fiaich in Kennedys on Friday night and a big crowd were attendance to wish her all the best for the future.
Ann was accompanied by her husband and well known bus driver Kevin and daughter Susan, missing from the party was daughter Niamh in London and son Fergal in Canada. She told me she doesn't have any quiet time now because her various hobbies and interests will be keeping her busy for some time to come.
I then got talking to main organiser of the night Martina O'Reilly from Carrickmacross who worked in unison with Elma Martin, Nicola Quinn, Anne Frawley and Rosemary Fee to make sure the night was a huge success.
Not too long later I met up with school principal Padraig McGowan who told me that Ann was a totally dedicated teacher who taught to the highest levels and showed great interest in her students, was an excellent childcare course co-ordinator and worked way above and beyond what was required. Padraig was there with his wife Susan who also wanted to Ann all the best for the future.
Seated close by were Nicola Quin from Newry Road and Patricia Minogue from Carrickmacross who said Ann would be sadly missed and they were there to give her a good send off because she certainly deserved it.
Next, I got a word with Pauline McGuinness from Blackrock who told me Ann is wonderful teacher and a beautiful lady and a great friend to all the staff.
She was sitting with Emma Mackin from Drogheda who also said Ann is a real lady and the school just isn't the same without her.
Also in their company were Rosemary Fee from Blackrock and Ann Frawley from Ravensdale who said they were all there to give her the send off she truly deserved.
I headed over for a chat with Ann's husband Kevin and daughter Susan who told me she is extremely busy since she hung up the chalk and duster and Susan said she has to book two weeks in advance if she wants to get her attention!
They were enjoying the company of Mary Kerr from Bay Estate who has also retired and said she was there to show her the way.
Heading for another table I then got talking to Maureen Marron from Haggardstown, Catherine O'Connor from Bay Estate and Joan McKenna from Knockbridge who all agreed she is a true lady and they were going to make sure she had a great night.
Seated close by were Aoife Lynch from Blackrock and Karen Varley from Rock Road who described Ann as a lovely person and will be genuinely be missed.
Not too far away I then caught up with Evelyn Sheerin from Ashbrook, Marie McMullin from Cooley and Karen Wiseman from Jenkinstown. Evelyn sad she has already retired and was there with plenty of good advice on how to enjoy it. Both other ladies admitted that they were jealous of her being finished teaching and enjoying her retirement.
Also in their company were Audrey Flood from Monaghan and Andree Boyle from Blackrock who descried Ann as a real lady and they were there to give her the send ff she deserved.
Finally, before I departed, I met up with Colm McCourt from Dublin Road, Peter Murphy from Riverstown and director of PLC Joe McEneaney form Seatown who described Ann as a pure lady and had a wealth of experience having had her own creche and had actually started as a night class teacher. They also wanted to wish Ann all the best in her various endeavours.
Dundalk resident Anne Mager (half of the corridor project team) is organising and curating an exhibition featuring the protest banners of the Irish Artists' Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment in Cologne.
Part of that protest was the Artists' Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment with which roundabout 3,000 Irish artists engaged since 2015. For the large March for Choice protests Sarah Cullen, Rachel Fallon, Lisa Godson, Alice Maher, Breda Mayock, Aine Phillips and other artists created over a dozen protest banners in hundreds of work hours of detailed handicraft, which take up motives of protest culture and arts history and were shown, amongst others, at the Talbot Rice Gallery Edinburgh and at EVA International - Ireland's Biennial of Contemporary Art.
The exhibition, entitled Repeal & Reward, opens on Thursday and runs until February 21.
I'm a nurse 'recovering' from a week of night duty. I'm a member of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and totally support the strike. I think the people of Ireland, deep down, know the nurses had no choice but to call a halt.
We're sorry for your cancelled operations, dressing changes, outpatient appointments and investigations. The Irish health system is falling apart and the dogs on the street know this. Patients are getting appointment dates for investigation for two and three years' time.
This is not good enough.
Wake up, Simon Harris, and Paschal Donohoe with you. You talk of not stepping away from the public service pay agreement. Nursing is in crisis. There are no nurses to step in. The Army and teachers are not in crisis to the same extent.
I marched this week for the elderly who dread getting sick and having to go to an A&E department. I marched for junior, disheartened nurses who work in such unsafe environments. I marched for the sick who need help when lying in bed and all they see is the back of their nurse's head as he or she scurries away from them to do something else.
And all the while it seems the Government is not very good at maths - look at the National Children's Hospital costs fiasco.
Other countries are delighted with our blind Government. It costs Ireland thousands to train a nurse and then it gifts them to the likes of Australia, where that government gets rewarded twice - a ready-made nurse and tax returns from their salary. Wake up Simon, it's time to face up to your people and provide what you signed up for as a minister - a health service that works.
Mary McElligott
Listowel, Co Kerry
Our TDs are nowhere to be seen on the picket lines
What a strange little country we live in. Our nurses go on strike and the only TD who actively shows them any support, Michael Healy-Rae, says he was on his way to meet them on the picket line when he was photographed driving in a bus lane.
Where are all our supposed socialists and champions of the working class? They all seem to be running for cover.
It's easy to see why our President ditched the Labour Party when he wanted a second term.
When farmers decide to clog up the centre of Dublin with tractors, all our rural TDs are falling over themselves to be associated with them. Do the nurses not deserve the same support?
Nurses, their families and their supporters also vote.
Vincent Ryan
Navan, Co Meath
Financial penalties? That might just work, Simon...
Health Minister Simon Harris recently mooted the idea of imposing "financial penalties" on the striking nurses as a measure to resolve the current crisis.
Perhaps he has struck on a productive idea. I feel that we should further explore legislation which would allow the people of Ireland to impose financial penalties on those in Government who consistently fail to deliver.
My supposition is that if Mr Harris, his Cabinet colleagues and those providing 'Confidence and Supply' had their generous wages docked, we would soon find a solution to our current dilemmas.
Glyn Carragher
Ballygar, Co Galway
Don't drop the backstop, drop the Brexiteer mob
Why should Ireland or any EU member do anything other than send the primarily English project that is Brexit packing?
Britain joined the EU for primarily economic reasons and has never really been a committed participant in the European project. Unlike Ireland.
So often when there was a step forward in that project, Britain asked for some form of opt-out from responsibility and/or contribution, while retaining most of the benefits.
Britain asked for its cheap and small-minded rebate and got it.
Now Britain wants to do Brexit in a way that lets it, once again, access many of the economic benefits of the EU while stepping aside from the responsibility and contribution associated with being a member.
The Withdrawal Agreement is effectively yet another 'yes' to these kind of tiresome British 'have my cake and eat it' demands.
It is like working with a teenager.
I'm fed up with it.
Now the particularly unpleasant wing of the Brexiteer mob wants Ireland and the EU to drop the backstop. That is, to undermine the Good Friday Agreement and the common market foundations of the EU.
At what point do we in the EU finally tell the British, and in particular English Toryism and more extreme Ulster Unionism, to get lost?
Do we in the EU really want to facilitate as nasty and self-centred an outlook as is that of those extreme Brexiteers?
Don't drop the backstop, drop the British. Let them go off and figure out their folly on their own.
Adam O hAodha
Sutton, Dublin 13
Temperature in hell has not cooled in 150 years
On February 17, 1867, Bishop David Moriarty of Kerry stated in a sermon that "eternity is not long enough nor hell hot enough for such miscreants", referring to the Fenians of that time. His remarks were cited at least twice in the House of Commons the following week, once by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Naas, who indicated that nobody left the church and that the audience was attentive. It would appear that the honourable members of the House took no offence to the remarks.
Roll on almost 152 years and Donald Tusk has put the boot on the other foot.
Raymond Kirby
Kildalkey, Co Meath
Leo is backing wrong horse in Donald Tusk
Shame on Taoiseach Leo Varadkar for cosying up to self-serving Eurocrat Donald Tusk, adding injury to insult by laughing and agreeing with Mr Tusk's outrageous remark that a special place in hell should be reserved for those who promoted Brexit without any plan.
How embarrassing for the Irish to stoop so low with their incessant stereotyping of Brexiteers. The British should be admired for standing up to the bureaucrats.
We have so much in common with the British people, who I have always found very courteous. There is hardly a family in Ireland that doesn't know of someone benefiting from living and working in Britain.
Sovereignty and independence are important factors for a nation - an ever-integrated united states of Europe with a European army encroaches on national identity. We are rapidly losing ours.
Mr Varadkar is backing the wrong horse.
Barbara O'Hanrahan
Blackrock, Co Dublin
The road to invasion of Venezuela is being paved
Last Sunday, an RTE News camera showed the front door of the Department of Foreign Affairs in St Stephen's Green, Dublin. This was the second time in about a week.
The reporting journalist said that the department had given the Venezuelan government eight days to have an election.
But there was an election only about four months ago and the current incumbent won, having received about 60pc of the vote.
I am old enough to detect the slow, drop-by-drop, preparations for outside interference, and maybe war.
Because I remember Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, all now maimed for 100 years.
In US President Donald Trump's weekend interview on CBS's 'Face the Nation', he said that America's decision to invade Iraq was one of greatest mistakes ever made by his country.
And he said: "What we're doing has to stop." He was also referring to the 19-year conflict in Afghanistan.
Peter Kennedy
Sutton Park, Dublin 13
How could abortion ever be called a human right?
I note that the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has stated that it '"will act in whatever capacity is available to it to support women and girls to vindicate their rights" in relation to abortion.
How ironic that equality is mentioned when, in fact, there is no equality for the baby about to be killed through abortion, and, to compound matters, 50pc of these babies will be girls. We really have come to a right pass when abortion can be described as a human right when it results in the death of a human baby.
With the censorship which was present during the abortion referendum campaign, surely the Irish Independent is not going to add to this by curtailing our opinions through its reduced letters page?
Mary Stewart
Donegal Town, Co Donegal
It's true that a picture can paint a thousands words - but it can also be used to try to paint over a sad and painful reality.
A few years ago, a friend asked me if my life was really as exciting as all the photographs on my Facebook suggested.
The question gave pause for thought because, of course, I didn't spend all my time partying and holidaying. Like everyone else, most of my waking hours were spent sitting at a desk or attending the most monotonous events.
But the version I subconsciously wanted the world to see was full of weekends away and interviews with household names. You'd be hard pressed to find any photos on my Facebook these days.
Theresa May is trying to live her life like a millennial determined to impress her backbench frenemies.
She doesn't need social media, instead the British prime minister has the Tory media.
To the outside world, it looked like Mrs May spent the past week fighting hard to deliver a Brexit deal that will satisfy the DUP and hardliners in her own party.
"When I return to Brussels I will be battling for Britain and Northern Ireland, I will be armed with a fresh mandate, new ideas and a renewed determination to agree a pragmatic solution that delivers the Brexit the British people voted for," May wrote in last Sunday's 'Telegraph'.
On Monday and Tuesday, she toured Belfast where she got a tepid reception from people who remembered that not so long ago the prime minister promised them 'the backstop' in order to avoid a hard Border.
But that didn't deter her from making a speech full of contradictions and anaemic reassurances, including her "unshakeable" commitment to no hard Border.
After a day of old-fashioned wrangling in the House of Commons, Mrs May then hopped on a plane to the EU capital with a different agenda.
The 'soft and friendly' Theresa that went to Northern Ireland spent the night practising her angry face before meeting with 'meanboys' Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker.
She brought neither new ideas, nor a renewed determination, to agree a pragmatic solution.
Instead, she disposed of the usual niceties to blatantly grimace in photographs with Mr Juncker before scolding Mr Tusk for pondering what version of the afterlife Boris Johnson might discover. It's likely Mrs May would also like to see Johnson and Nigel Farage meet their match - but her trip to Brussels was focused on playing to their gallery.
The photos were beamed back home in jig time.
Mission accomplished and yet nothing was actually accomplished.
And finally came her dinner date in Dublin with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who has long stated that he can't directly negotiate with her on the backstop. To do so would detrimentally undermine the solidarity being offered to Ireland by the EU27.
But as Dublin city embarked on its weekend, Mrs May jetted into Baldonnel under the cover of darkness.
She is like that neighbour who drives everybody in the estate mad, knocking around all hours uninvited and without so much as a bottle of wine or a packet of Marietta biscuits to offer.
According to one source on the Irish side, they struggled to get clarity from Downing Street on exactly what they wanted publicised from last night's rendezvous.
In the end, one photographer was allowed in to provide proof to the media pack outside in the cold that she even arrived in Dublin.
And that sums up the 'week in Brexitland': It was all one big photo-op for a prime minister who is out of ideas.
Meanwhile, the Brexit clocks ticks louder and louder.
The word "know" is a slippery one at the best of times. Put it into the realm of politics and it becomes even more fluid and elusive.
So, up until Thursday evening, the Health Minister Simon Harris only knew in a general way that there were serious pricing problems with the flagship children's hospital project. By his early version of events, he was trying from his first alert about problems, on August 27 last year, to get a fuller picture.
And when he got that he told the Taoiseach and the Government all he knew on November 9. But memos released at various stages on Thursday suggest that there were indicative figures available to Mr Harris in September which outlined the bulk of the runaway spending problem, close on 400m extra costs, and counting.
We didn't plan to go to El Chalten originally. But there is not much to do at El Calafate besides the Perito Moreno Glacier, and we found out we could do El Chalten as a day trip when we were in El Calafate, so we bought the tickets (1,600 Argentina Pesos PP, which is about $43).
Basically, it was just round-trip bus tickets. They did do hotel pickups from 7 am to 7:45 am using a shuttle. The double decker bus was supposed to leave the bus terminal at 8 am, but the hotel pickups took longer than schedule and we arrived at the bus station after 8 am, so the bus didn't leave until 8:10 am. Took about 3 hours to get to El Chalten and we had to stop at a national park office just outside El Chalten to get a quick introduction about area trails first.
The return bus leaves at 6 pm, so we got about 6 hours, enough to hike to Friz Roy Viewpoint and Laguna Capri. We started our walk around 11:30 am, took 20 minutes to walk through the town and reached the trail head. Started hiking around 12 pm. Took an hour to reach the Friz Roy Viewpoint. The mountain was covered in cloud on top even though it was kind of a sunny day. We waited quite a while but the mountain just refused to show its whole face that day :(
1. El Chalten.
2. Walking to the trailhead.
3. Friz Roy Trailhead.
4.
5.
6. Friz Roy Viewpoint.
7. Friz Roy.
8. Friz Roy.
9. Laguna Capri.
10. Laguna Capri.
11. Friz Roy from Laguna Capri.
12. El Chalten.
13. El Chalten.
14. Our bus at a bathroom stop.
(The End)
P.S. $1 was about 670 Chilean Pesos and 37 Argentina Pesos in Nov / Dec 2018.
It is now 961 days since that fateful date of June 23, 2016, when Britain voted to exit the European Union. Here's 15 things we now know about Brexit as we approach 'B-Day' on March 29.
1. Political careers could be destroyed within a few months as brinkmanship reaches fever pitch. Leo Varadkar and Theresa May carry the highest risk of a dramatic fall from grace.
2. The Government continues to receive unprecedented backing from the Opposition parties. Micheal Martin, Brendan Howlin and Roisin Shortall painstakingly explained on British television why a non-time-limited backstop is vital for this island.
3. They articulated a residual fear among many Irish people that 'one thing might lead to another' if a hard Border emerges. They realise a gradual return to customs posts, and other paraphernalia, would create tempting flash points for those who murder and maim to get their way.
4. Sinn Fein is increasingly out of step with the public mood. In the Republic, there is an insistence on 'fair play' in the North. But there is no sudden lurch towards a desire for a united Ireland.
5. Many of the most fervent supporters of the backstop find calls by Mary Lou McDonald for a Border poll an irritant at best, a stirring of sectarian tensions at worst. On this, as on many other issues, her style is far too strident.
6. The stance of the DUP has been increasingly extremist. The party's decision to go against the majority of the electorate in the North - who voted to stay in the EU - is especially divisive. Matters have been made worse by the toxicity of its alliance with far-out fringes in Westminster.
7. Some of the DUP's leading members bitterly opposed the Good Friday Agreement at its inception. It is a deal they still find anathema. Are they using Brexit to destroy one of its main tenets - no visible divide in Ireland?
8. This grouping - despite public protestations to the contrary - would be secretly happy with the greatest cleavage possible between North and south. They would see it as halting what they fear is creeping silent integration on the island.
9. The DUP is playing a high-stakes game. This week there was a clear consensus among Northern farmers, and many business people, that a no-deal exit will be disastrous for their living standards. Most are unionist voters. If things go seriously awry, Arlene Foster's party could pay a heavy price at the ballot box.
10. Theresa May must now be viewed with the deepest suspicion. She is the silver fox of the whole process - running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Her endgame remains a mystery.
11. The support of our EU partners is indeed remarkable. In a sense, Anglo-Irish relations will never be quite the same again. Britain is our closest neighbour and the drive for mutual goodwill will be rebooted when all this is over. But we have found there is strength in numbers. There will be occasions when the old Dublin-London axis will play second fiddle to the needs of the EU.
12. We should remember backing from Brussels is what we are entitled to. We are grateful - but it is also our due. And, of course, there will be times in the future when we will have to fight our own corner within the Brussels monolith.
13. Despite populist rhetoric that British-Irish relations are badly damaged, there is no evidence this will last in the longer term. There are too many shared interests. In a perverse way, Westminster may need us more than ever, as a conduit to the EU corridors of power. Especially if it leaves and slams the door behind it. Equally, not giving ground on something as crucial as the peace process does not overnight turn anybody into a born-again, all-purpose, Brit-basher.
14. "We will not gamble with peace or put a sell-by date on reconciliation. And this is why we insist on the backstop." This was the crucial sentence in Donald Tusk's 'rot in hell' jibe at some Brexiteers. He berated those who wish to leave but "who do not have a sketch of a plan to carry it out safely". Safely being the operative word.
15. The EU had its genesis in trying to bond various countries together following the carnage of two world wars. "It is first and foremost a peace project," said Tusk. A bit like the much-dissected backstop really.
There's nothing exciting about this, son, I say. - Is there? I'm with one of my boys, in his car. We're in Meath, above Kells somewhere. We might even be in Cavan.
- No, he says. - No, there isn't. He sighs. - Did you expect it to be exciting? he asks me. I can't answer him. I can, but I don't.
When myself and the wife were looking for somewhere to live - the first time, and the other times - we always knew we'd be grand. We'd get somewhere that suited us, that we could afford, that was maybe even nice - in Dublin. We enjoyed ourselves.
I know: I'm looking back through the proverbial rose-tinted glasses. But I think it's true. We did enjoy it. We were moving out of one world, into a new one of our own. It was an adventure.
The first place we looked at - Jesus. It was just the two of us; we'd been together less than a year and we weren't married yet. The place, though - it was a room in a house on the North Circular Road, beside O'Connell's School. We looked at the walls, at each other, and at the walls again. They were black - all of them. And so were the curtains.
- Is it paint or damp? I asked the chap who'd let us in.
He didn't answer. It was too dark to see him properly but I'm betting he was blushing.
- Are you interested? he asked.
- Fascinated, said the woman who was going to be my wife. We laughed all the way back down to the bus stop at Newcomen Bridge. The poor chap had told us that the Christian Brothers were the landlords.
- Are you are a Brother, yourself? I'd asked him.
- Not really, he'd said.
We found a place the following night, if I'm remembering right. In Clontarf. One room, big windows, small fridge, no telly. It was grand until we needed somewhere bigger. By then we were married, she was pregnant and we wanted to start owning a house. And we found one.
It wasn't all a laugh - far from. We were turned down for a mortgage; we didn't even get to meet the bank manager. We were both working, we had the deposit, we thought we were grand. But, no. We were lucky, though. The manager had a heart attack and died. I had nothing to do with it, by the way, and neither did the wife. We were miles away when it happened. We even have the photographic evidence.
But anyway, we got to see the new manager. He didn't look at us during the meeting. Well, he did - he glanced once or twice at the wife's breasts. But he didn't look us in the eye and he hardly spoke; it was terrifying. I was on the verge of confessing to the murder of the previous manager when he saved the day, looked up from our application and said: "Right - okay."
The lad I'm with now, he'll probably never own a house. His partner's at home in Dublin, with the kids. The landlord's selling - so he's told them - and they've two months left to find somewhere else. They already know it won't be in Dublin; they've given up looking for somewhere they can afford. They'll have to take the kids from their schools and their friends and start again, and hope for the best.
- The scenery's nice, I say. My son beside me laughs.
- It is, I say.
- It's something you said, he tells me. - Years ago.
- What?
- Scenery's for people who don't have Sky Sports.
We're both laughing now.
- I'm a gobs***e, I say.
He doesn't respond.
We found the house we live in now, me and the wife. We'd three kids - the boys - and she was six months pregnant. And we couldn't get the table into the new kitchen. The angle - whatever it was - we couldn't get it through the back door or in from the hall.
We sawed a few inches off each leg of the table and superglued the bits back on when we had it in the kitchen. But we must have got the legs mixed up, because the table shook every time you leaned on it, or even walked past it. Plates slid, mugs toppled; it was like eating at sea - for years. But I missed it when we eventually got a wider back door, and bought a new table.
I'm tempted to apologise, say sorry to my son. But I don't know what I'd say if he asked me why I'm apologising. The country's a mess, the world's a mess. We've elected people who think profit is more important than homes. We've let it go on for decades. Our parents left the world a better place; they probably did - their parents definitely did.
But I don't know.
I don't know.
- I'm sorry, son, I say.
'I don't like Communists," sniffed the lady cramming sticks of sugarcane into a juicing machine on Calle Ocho.
A fan whirred over our heads, and the old man beside me nodded.
"I spent nearly two years in prison," he said, going on to unpack the story of his capture as a Cuban exile fighting at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
"They spent millions getting us out. I finally came back here on Christmas Eve," he sighed, gesturing to the streets outside.
I sipped my guarapo, amazed at how quickly I'd become immersed in his neighbourhood. An hour or two before, I was pinning Calle Ocho in Google Maps. Now, I was in the thick of it - from minty mojitos and cigars being rolled, to watching old men play dominoes and chatting to people like the owner of a nearby Santeria shop ("it's the religion of the street," he told me).
Calle Ocho is not in Cuba, of course. It's the beating heart of the Cuban community in Miami, Florida. I was a guest with Urban Adventures (urbanadventures.com; 52), whose walking tours aim to connect visitors with local takes on city neighbourhoods.
Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Los Pinarenos Fruteria, Little Havana, Miami Zarelys Diaz (right), an Urban Adventures tour guide, with salsa dancers at the Ball & Chain bar in Little Havana Little Havana, Miami. Photo: Pol O Conghaile Men playing dominoes in Little Havana, Miami / Facebook
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It was the latest of several similar tours I've taken - from City Unscripted in Tokyo to local strolls with Sligo's Auriel Robinson (seatrails.ie) and Donna Fox in Armagh (donnafoxtours.com).
Why not explore alone?
Well, I do. But, as a travel writer, small tours and local guides also help me get my bearings and an inside track on how a culture works. They open up storylines. I listen to locals in their own words.
There are practical benefits, too. Travellers get to meet like-minded souls, explore in safety, find places to return to and get an authentic, interactive experience - something I think is increasingly valued over traditional sightseeing.
Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Men playing dominoes in Little Havana, Miami Los Pinarenos Fruteria, Little Havana, Miami Zarelys Diaz (right), an Urban Adventures tour guide, with salsa dancers at the Ball & Chain bar in Little Havana Little Havana, Miami. Photo: Pol O Conghaile / Facebook
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The key thing is that the tours are small and responsibly managed. Urban Adventures is part of global adventure tour operator, Intrepid Travel, but it works with local guides and focuses on sustainable, immersive travel - an approach I wish was more mainstream. Yes, 50 or 60 is an expensive few hours. But it's worth it - not least to the small businesses that get a few extra visits, tips, and social shares.
When I first began travelling, I did it out of a desire to experience other cultures, to meet the people who lived in them, to share what I found. I learned that, wherever we live, from a mosquito's perspective, we're all the same.
Today, that feels more important than ever. In a world strangled by political divisions and threatened by overtourism, a local approach can not only take the pressure off peak attractions, but engage us with the people who live in the places we visit.
Even a simple sugarcane juice can help save tourism's soul.
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In Kerry, tourism is everybodys business.
That was the take of Joan McCarthy, Head of Tourism with Kerry County Council, at a special lunch ceremony held to honour winners of the Irish Independent Reader Travel Awards 2019 in Dublin yesterday.
Kerry was presented with Ireland's Favourite Home Holiday Destination, joining 15 other category toppers at an exclusive gathering at the Cliff Town House hosted by Irish Independent Travel Editor Pol O Conghaile.
All winners were voted for by Irish Independent readers and the awards were sponsored by Iarnrod Eireann.
Winners accepting their awards included household names like Neven Maguire's MacNean House & Restaurant (Best Irish Breakfast), Aer Lingus (Ireland's Favourite Airline) and The Shelbourne (Ireland's Favourite Hotel), as well as a a new generation of holiday heroes including the Waterford Greenway (Ireland's Favourite Adventure) and Hidden Valley Holiday Park in Co Wicklow (Ireland's Favourite small Stay).
Tanya Airey (below), the third generation in her family to run Sunway, picked up the award for Ireland's Favourite Travel Agent, while Italy was voted Ireland's Favourite Overseas Holiday and Royal Caribbean its No.1 cruise line.
Expand Close Tanya Airey of Sunway with her Irish Independent Reader Travel Award 2019 for Ireland's Favourite Travel Agent. Photo: Fran Veale / Facebook
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Whatsapp Tanya Airey of Sunway with her Irish Independent Reader Travel Award 2019 for Ireland's Favourite Travel Agent. Photo: Fran Veale
In the three years since their inception, the Reader Travel Awards have grown into the biggest and most credible of their kind in Ireland.
Next year will be bigger still.
The Reader Travel Awards 2020 ceremony will take place in The Round Room at The Mansion House on Friday, January 17, 2020, it was announced by Cliona Carroll, INM's Sponsorship and Events Manager.
Tickets are on sale now here.
Reader Travel Awards 2019 winners:
Ireland's Favourite Home Holiday: Kerry
Ireland's Favourite Spa: Monart, Co. Wexford
Irelands Favourite Hotel: The Shelbourne, Dublin
Ireland's Favourite Overseas Holiday: Italy
Ireland's Favourite Beach: Curracloe, Co. Wexford
Ireland's Favourite Local Attraction: Phoenix Park, Dublin
Irelands Favourite Small Stay: Hidden Valley, Co. Wicklow
Irelands Favourite Adventure: Waterford Greenway
Ireland's Favourite Cruise line: Royal Caribbean
Ireland's Favourite Foodie Experience: Ballymaloe, Co. Cork
Ireland's Favourite Ferry Experience: Stena Line
Ireland's Favourite airline: Aer Lingus.
Best Irish Breakfast: MacNean House & Restaurant, Co Cavan
Ireland's Favourite Visitor Attraction: Cliffs of Moher, Co Clare
Irelands favourite Travel Agent: Sunway
Best Irish welcome: Castlewood House, Co. Kerry
For more, see independent.ie/travelawards.
February 14 is perhaps a night best avoided in restaurants, as there can be little more dispiriting than row upon row of two-tops adorned with single red roses, the air heavy with the weight of expectations un-met. But while forced romance can leave you feeling anything but loved-up, there are restaurants all over the country that just can't help being romantic, whatever the date. Here - in no particular order - we list 30 of the most romantic places to have a meal across the country.
1 Piglet Wine Bar
Enrico Fantasia and Thibaud Harang's ramshackle little wine bar serves delicious food and memorable wines. Drop in for anything from snacks of duck gizzards with garlic bread to plates of (excellent) pasta and a fine cote de boeuf. You may start by thinking that you're just having the one glass, and before you know it you're a magnum down. On summer evenings, you can sit outside.
Find it: Cow's Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. pigletwinebar.ie
2 Luna
The cosy banquettes and booths at Luna have fanned the flames of many a romance and the glamorous decor almost demands the putting on of the glad rags and making an occasion out of dinner. The menu is geared towards the luxurious, with oysters, truffles and seafood all featuring, and the Louis Copeland-tailored staff look magnificent. Manager Declan Maxwell runs the room with aplomb, and if the evening goes really well you can host your wedding reception here too.
Find it: 2-3 Drury Street, Dublin 2. lunarestaurant.ie
3 Campagne
Garett Byrne and Brid Hannon's Michelin-starred Campagne is where you'll find the best eating in Kilkenny, and the luscious, no-holds-barred French-inspired food is the perfect match for an elegant room and classy service. Catch the train down for lunch for a decadent escape from reality - Campagne is a handy two-minute walk from the station.
Find it: 5 The Arches, Gas House Lane, Kilkenny. campagne.ie
4 Greene's
The dining room at Greene's has floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook a 60ft waterfall, and Bryan McCarthy's food is a sophisticated take on high quality local and seasonal ingredients. Manager Frank Schiltkamp runs a seamless service, while the smart Cask bar next door is the ideal spot for pre- or post-dinner cocktails.
Find it: 48 MacCurtain Street, Montenotte, Cork.
greenesrestaurant.com
5 Etto
Take the object of your desires to Etto, sit either at the counter or at the cosy corner table on the left, away from the door, and share burrata, cote de boeuf and red wine prunes, perhaps with a little cheese to finish - not forgetting some good Italian red wine - for a guaranteed 'yes'.
Find it: 18 Merrion Row, Dublin 2. etto.ie
6 Uno Mas
Uno Mas is Etto's younger but slightly bigger sibling and whereas Etto's schtick is Italian, Uno Mas' is Spanish. Everything is good, but the tortilla is unmissable. Ditto the octopus. And the mushrooms. And the Delmonico. The little nook for two opposite the bar is the place to hide away if you're trying to keep a low profile. Drink sherry, vermouth and delectable Spanish wine.
Find it: 6 Aungier Street, Dublin 2. unomas.ie
7 La Maison
Classic French cuisine - think escargots, coq au vin and creme brulee, low lighting and a bistro ambience make La Maison the first choice for Francophile romantics in the mood for amour.
Find it: 15 Castle Market, Dublin 2. lamaisondublin.com
8 Blairscove House & Restaurant
On one side of the courtyard of a beautiful Georgian House is a stone-walled, church-like restaurant converted from the original stables belonging to the house. There's a help-yourself buffet of starters, meat is cooked over an open fire in the dining room, and local seafood is a specialty. Four smart suites are just across the courtyard, so if you plan ahead it's only a one-minute stroll from table to bed, and you can walk the Sheeps Head and Mizen peninsulas the next morning to blow away any cobwebs. Blairscove also has an excellent reputation as a wedding venue.
Find it: Dunmanus Bay, West Cork. blairscove.ie
9 The Green Hen
Perhaps it's the fact that the city centre restaurant doesn't allow children on the premises after 5pm that makes upstairs so popular with couples? The menu is concise and won't scare off plain eaters; food blogger Rory Carrick says "it has a nice date feel about it".
Find it: 33 Exchequer Street, Dublin 2. thegreenhen.ie
10 Terra Madre
Down a few steps off Bachelor's Walk, the quality of the food at tiny Terra Madre belies the restaurant's slightly higgledy-piggledy feel. This is the real Italian deal - none of your red-sauce excuses. Eat truffles and burrata or whatever is on the day's highly seasonal short menu and drink serious red wine, while gazing into one another's eyes.
Find it: 13a Bachelor's Walk, Dublin 1. terramadre.ie
11 Peploe's
Peploe's is looking good after a deep-pockets refurb, and chef Graeme Dodrill's high-end bistro food employs fine local produce to create a crowd-pleasing menu that's a cut above. Peploe's is somewhere worth donning the heels and glad rags for, with maitre d' Frederick coming in for special praise - "he has a lovely natural way of making me feel like a lady," says one fan.
Find it: 16 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2.
peploes.com
12 Chapter One
The Michelin-starred Chapter One manages to be both sophisticated and unstuffy, and the tables are pleasingly far apart, ideal for the whispering of sweet nothings. Ross Lewis' cooking is amongst the best on the island; it's impossible to eat at Chapter One and not feel that you've had a very special experience.
Find it: 18-19 Parnell Square North, Dublin 1.
chapteronerestaurant.com
13 Pilgrim's
Mark Jennings and Sadie Pearce's lovely restaurant in Rosscarbery serves a hyper-seasonal menu that changes every day. One of the tables has a secret drawer of love letters underneath, and a fan says that "you'll be weeping into your oak-smoked potatoes" after reading a handful. TV chef, food tour leader and blogger, Karen Coakley (@Kenmare Foodies) says that she loves the ethos, the vibe and those oak-smoked potatoes with wild garlic aioli.
Find it: South Square, Rosscarbery, Co Cork. pilgrims.ie
14 Il Vicolo
Il Vicolo is a favourite with Galway couples, who love its quaint charm and romantic ambience; the sharing boards of cheese and meat are one relaxed option, but you won't go wrong with linguine alle vongole made with Connemara clams, tagliata and tiramisu.
Find it:, The Bridge Mills, Dominick Street Lower, Galway. ilvicolo.ie
15 Mustard Seed
Sophisticated Irish food combined with old-school hospitality in a gorgeous rural location makes The Mustard Seed at Echo Lodge one of Ireland's favourite spots for romance. Fans commend "open fires to snuggle up in front of when the rain is lashing down outside" and "amazing food, a beautiful high-ceilinged room, pristine linen, and above all the friendliest staff in Ireland".
Find it: Ballingarry, Co Limerick. mustardseed.ie
16 Port House
The dimly lit little cave that is the Port House on South William Street is cosy, intimate and ideal for dates. A menu of tapas and pinxtos, complemented by sherries, ports and Spanish wines, is ideal for sharing.
Find it: 64 South William Street, Dublin 2. porthouse.ie
17 Inis Meain Restaurant
A table in the tiny 16-seater dining room is highly sought after, and if you are lucky enough to secure one then you really should consider proposing. Top tip: selfless folk will sit with their backs to the wall of glass and the views out over the island towards the sea. Open from mid-March to the end of September; if you are very lucky you can stay in Inis Meain's suites but they are all booked out for 2019.
Find it: Inis Meain, Aran Islands, Co Galway. inismeain.com
18 Inishturk Community club
Open for lunch and dinner for three months in the summer, the community centre on the island has a bar at one end and serves simple, impeccable local fish and seafood, including lobster. Wine is available but you can bring your own if you ask ahead. "The views from the window table across the sea to the Reeks is breathtakingly beautiful," says one visitor, who warns that it's a steep walk up a hill from the pier.
Find it: Inishturk, Co Mayo. inishturkisland.com
19 Wilde at the Westbury
"Food, atmosphere, decor and especially the staff," are what make the upmarket Wilde restaurant at the Westbury special for Talha Pasha, last year's Dublin RAI restaurant manager of the year, of Michael's in Mount Merrion. "It's the perfect spot for a romantic meal," he says, "they treat you like royalty."
Find it: Westbury Hotel, Dublin 2. doylecollection.com
20 Chez Max
The branch of Chez Max beside Dublin Castle is "dark, cosy and French," with a menu of reasonably priced bistro classics that make it a perennial favourite. A good choice for romantics on a budget.
Find it: 1 Palace Street, Dublin 2. chezmax.ie
21 Aldridge Lodge
The combination of Billy Whitty's food (Aldridge Lodge holds a prestigious Michelin Bib Gourmand) and the welcome from Joanne Harding is "second to none" says one loyal customer, who advises trying to book a window seat looking out across Duncannon towards Hook Lighthouse for maximum romance.
Find it: Duncannon, Co Wexford. aldridgelodge.com
22 O'Dowd's Seafood
In Connemara romantics are spoiled for choice when it comes to places to eat - Renvyle House where the poet Yeats spent his honeymoon and the table by the window at Inagh Lodge being just two - but a walk along Gurteen Beach followed by Guinness and oysters at O'Dowd's, overlooking the harbour in Roundstone, is hard to beat.
Find it: Roundstone, Co Galway. odowdsseafoodbar.com
23 L'Atitude 51
With a menu crafted from ingredients of impeccable provenance, plenty of dishes designed for sharing and a magnificent wine list, Corkonians say that L'Atitude 51 is amongst the best places for romance in the city.
Find it: 1 Union Quay, Cork. latitude51.ie
24 La Cucina
Mateo Saina, whom you'll recognise as one of the stars of First Dates Ireland - and who shares his tips for a successful first date with us today on page 12 - is the maitre d' at La Cucina. A cosy, intimate ambience and authentic rustic Italian food complete the experience.
Find it: Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, 59 South William Street, Dublin 2. lacucinarestaurant.ie
25 Moran's Oyster Cottage
Moran's is deservedly an institution and it's lovely to sit outside on a summer's day, but for our money it's even more romantic if you manage to nab one of the snugs to the front and happen to get stuck there, eating oysters, when the weather is bad and the water comes up over the road making it impossible to leave.
Find it: Kilcolgan, Co Galway. moransoystercottage.com
26 An Port Mor
Frankie Mallon's restaurant serves some of the best food in the west, and regulars commend its great vibe and lovely service. A gem.
Find it: 1 Brewery Place, Westport, Co Mayo. anportmor.com
27 Deasy's Harbour Bar & Seafood Restaurant
A pub by the water with candles and open fires is the location of Caitlin Ruth's kitchen, where the US-born chef crafts food that has garnered Deasy's a reputation as one of the best places to eat in West Cork. Nice and relaxed, perfect for low-key romantics.
Find it: Ring village, near Clonakilty, Co Cork. (023) 8835741.
28 Rosa Madre
Rosa Madre is the seafood lovers' restaurant of choice, which makes it a perfect spot for a romantic dinner for two. Raw fish is the specialty - Sicilian red prawns, sea urchins and the like - but there's plenty of impeccably cooked fish too.
Find it: 7 Crow Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. rosamadre.ie
29 Salmon Inn
The Salmon Inn comes highly recommended as a "beautiful spot to share a lobster or two while watching the sun go down over Donegal Bay." Idyllic.
Find it: Mullinasole Pier near Donegal Town. thesalmoninn.ie
30 Everett's
Peter Everett's smart city centre establishment is the restaurant of choice for sophisticated gourmands in search of excellent modern food and fine wine - no surprise that the chef has a stint at Chapter One on his CV. Located in the remains of what was once the 15th century home of the 11-times mayor of Waterford, you can choose between eating in the Front Room or the atmospheric Vault.
Find it: 22 High Street, Waterford. everetts.ie
Anger: IFA poultry chairman Andy Boylan takes part in the protest outside the Kerry plant in Shillelagh, Co Wicklow. Photo: Finbarr ORourke
Poultry farmers are demanding a commitment from Kerry Foods to support Irish-produced chicken after revelations that chicken sold under the Denny label did not come from Ireland.
Addressing a protest at the Kerry Foods plant in Shillelagh, Co Wicklow, yesterday, IFA poultry chairman Andy Boylan said the fact that Kerry Foods originally claimed the chicken came from Brazil, but then that it came from other countries, only added to the general confusion for consumers.
The IFA said Kerry Foods was exploiting a loophole in current labelling legislation, which it said meant Irish consumers were being misled into thinking they were buying locally produced food.
It is calling for the country of origin of the primary source of meat used in prepared foods to be clearly stated on the packaging of Kerry Food products and its subsidiary brands, including Denny, to ensure Irish consumers understand the origin of the product they are buying.
Denny admitted this week that the chicken in its 'Made in Wicklow' chicken wasn't from Brazil, as it had initially informed journalist Katy McGuinness, but actually came from Holland.
The meat producer said it made a mistake in saying its 'Made in Wicklow' product was made with chicken from Brazil.
It also insisted it sourced all its chicken from Northern Ireland, Britain and European suppliers, with none coming from Brazil or outside the EU.
Asked why it doesn't source all its chicken in Ireland and whether its decision to import chicken and pigmeat is down to cost, it said: "In Ireland, the cooked chicken consumption is predominately breast meat and this creates an imbalance in requirements.
"To ensure we can always meet the demand and provide consistently high quality, we also source chicken breast from EU-approved suppliers who meet our strict standards of quality and traceability."
It also said, in relation to pork processed in the same Wicklow factory which has been picketed previously by pig farmers over the importation of pig meat, that its policy was to "source as much of our pork meat from Irish suppliers as possible".
It also said that sometimes it had to import pigmeat as some customers wanted pork from certain customers.
Denny also said its packaging fully complied with the strict EU labelling regulations and that the 'Made in Wicklow' claim refers to the product being cooked, cooled, sliced, packaged and labelled in Co Wicklow.
The IFA is calling for the closure of the loophole in the current labelling legislation which it said was allowing companies mislead consumers and reinforced the importance of trusting the Bord Bia Quality Assurance label.
Springtime may have arrived in Dublin city, but just half an hour away by car - at the Captain Noel Lemass Memorial in the Dublin Mountains - it feels decidedly wintry. Snowdrifts remain from last week, a strong wind blows along the side of the mountain and the steady rain exacerbates the sense of cold.
There is nobody about on this midweek day and if you find yourself at this simple stone monument - in honour of the older brother of Taoiseach Sean Lemass, kidnapped and killed two months after the Civil War - you will feel as though you have the whole of your surrounds to yourself. The odd car winds its way along Killakee Road but it does little to break up the sense of desolation. You have to remind yourself that O'Connell Street is just 15km away as the crow flies.
But being alone is not the only reason there is such a sense of disquiet here. This place - where the counties of Dublin and Wicklow meet - has been the last resting place for several Irish women robbed of life in the most violent manner.
Elaine O'Hara's remains were found a few kilometres from here in 2013. Her killer Graham Dwyer was caught and is now incarcerated in the Midlands Prison. But for the families of other murdered women, the knowledge that their loved one's killer has never been brought to justice is a constant sorrow.
Expand Close More victims: Rachel Smith, Antoinette's daughter, believes the killer may have murdered others. Photo by Damien Eagers / Facebook
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Whatsapp More victims: Rachel Smith, Antoinette's daughter, believes the killer may have murdered others. Photo by Damien Eagers
Rachel Smith was just three years old when her mother Antoinette vanished in the summer of 1987. Nine months later, her body was found close to a bog road near this spot. Despite one of the largest garda manhunts of the 1980s, nobody was apprehended. "Whoever killed my mam and buried her in the Dublin Mountains like she was an animal is still out there," she says. "I will never give up the hope that he will be caught."
****
For music fans, July 1987 was all about David Bowie and his headline appearance at Slane Castle. Despite his prodigious output in the 1970s and 1980s, he had never played a show in Ireland before.
But this was an Ireland with high unemployment, especially among young people, and it was a decade that saw many young men and women in their twenties leave in search of a better life abroad. There were tickets to be had right up to the day of the concert, and it was on the day before that Antoinette Smith decided she would go.
Expand Close Antoinette Smith / Facebook
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The 27-year-old mother-of-two from Clondalkin, Dublin was separated from her daughters' father, Karl, so nights out were comparatively few and far between. She got a bus to Slane with a friend, having purchased a pair of matching Bowie T-shirts in Dublin before making the journey.
The pair made it back to the city by 11.30pm and decided to make the most of their freedom by going to a now long-defunct nightclub, La Mirage, on Parnell Street in the north inner city. They met friends there and Antoinette must have enjoyed letting her hair down, knowing that her girls, Lisa (7) and Rachel (3), were safely tucked up in bed.
When the club drew to a close, Antoinette was keen for fast food, but her friend wanted to get home. She gave Antoinette a spare key to let herself in later and she went off, secure in the knowledge that Antoinette would be safe walking down O'Connell Street because there were two male friends with her.
But when the friend awoke the next morning, Antoinette was nowhere to be seen. She had not gone home either - and as the day wore on, panic set in for all those who knew her. She was never seen alive again.
****
"My sister and myself were told that Mam had gone to heaven," Rachel says today. "I was only three then. It was much later, years and years, that I found out what really happened."
The child - then not yet at school - was shielded from the news that her mother's body had been found months later, in April 1988, in a shallow bogland grave in the Dublin Mountains.
She was identified by the Bowie T-shirt, and the key that her friend had given her was still on her person. Forensic tests revealed she had been raped and strangled. The discovery attracted enormous media attention. A potential witness came forward. It was a taxi driver who told gardai he had picked up a woman who looked a lot like Antoinette from outside the Abrakebabra on Westmoreland Street. She was with two men, whom she seemed to know, according to the driver, and they asked to be taken to close to the Yellow House pub in Rathfarnham on Dublin's southside.
Another man came forward to tell police that he had been walking his dog on Glendoo Mountain, just south of Enniskerry, when he noticed two men hurrying down the hillside. They looked agitated and offered no greeting as they passed him. The spot was close to where Antoinette's body was found.
In the 32 years that have elapsed, there have been no new leads. Gardai are no closer to identifying the killer - or killers - of Antoinette Smith now than they were in the weeks immediately after the discovery of her corpse.
Rachel Smith is 35 now. She works in the catering industry and lives in Swords, Co Dublin. She is determined to keep her mother's memory alive and she hopes that any media coverage will provoke someone, somewhere to come forward.
"All we want is anybody with any kind of information to come forward, no matter how small it might be," she says. "Just the slightest thing at all - it might give a breakthrough.
"That's the only bit of hope we hang on to and when you look at cold cases all over the world, it has happened. It's what's kept us during this long investigation."
****
The investigation remains live and is under the command of Bray Garda Station. Gardai are appealing to anyone who knows anything to speak to them in confidence.
The RTE Prime Time reporter Barry Cummins has covered the Antoinette Smith case extensively. He says the investigation was hamstrung by the fact that CCTV barely existed in the 1980s - anyone hailing a taxi on Westmoreland Street today would be spotted by dozens of surveillance cameras - but he believes Rathfarnham holds the key.
"The killer or killers either had left a car in Rathfarnham or were living there and had access to a vehicle," he tells Review. "They would have needed a car to bring Antoinette's body to where they buried her on the Dublin Mountains.
"I believe gardai should conduct door-to-door enquires in Rathfarnham once more," he says, citing the case of Ann 'Nancy' Smith.
"That was a cold-case murder solved in Kilkenny 30 years after she was killed, and it was partly solved by guards going out unannounced and knocking on doors again. 'Here we are - is there anything you haven't told us 30 years ago? I think the man or men responsible had some link to property in Rathfarnham at the time." Cummins also believes that Antoinette may have been killed by a serial killer.
"Antoinette disappeared in 1987. And then Patricia Doherty disappeared in much the same way a few years later at Christmas time in 1991. She also had been raped and strangled and buried in the same bog as Antoinette. I see those as the first two of these type of cases in the Dublin area.
"And then you have Annie McCarrick, who disappeared in March 1993. Operation Trace [An Garda's long-running investigation] looked at the six cases beginning with Annie McCarrick, but my argument was maybe Annie wasn't the first and maybe whoever killed Antoinette Smith struck again afterwards."
It's a view shared by Rachel Smith. "I think whoever killed my Mam could have killed others. It was so cold and calculating, and the fact that her body was buried near where other female victims have been found"
Rachel has visited the burial spot a handful of times. "The first time I went up there, it made me feel so sad and upset. It's so isolated.
"You're on your own up there. There's no-one around."
She has been in close contact with the investigation team at Bray and she says officers there have told her that the notorious criminal, Larry Murphy, has been ruled out as a suspect.
"They haven't told me why exactly, but they seem confident that it's not him. I have my doubts, but they're the ones who have the expertise."
Murphy has long been suspected of being responsible for the disappearances of several women, including Annie McCarrick, JoJo Dullard and Fiona Pender. He denies any involvement. The so-called Beast of Baltinglass served 10 years of a 15-year sentence for rape and attempted murder.
****
For many years, Rachel Smith tortured herself with 'what-ifs'. What if her mother had gone straight home after the nightclub on Parnell Street? What if she had decided not to make the trek to Slane? What if her father had been unable to look after Lisa and her that night, and Antoinette would have had to stay at home? She knows her life would have been entirely different.
"Those kind of things used to go through my head all the time," she says. "But you have to stop beating yourself up with it. None of that will bring Mam back, and she wouldn't have wanted us to mope like that. She'd want us to live our lives."
Today, her most precious possessions are the small number of photographs she has of Antoinette, eternally in her 20s. "People ask if what happened to her has made me fearful? I try not to let it be. We [Lisa and her] still go to concerts, we love nights out. We're just extra careful - no short cuts."
****
For some, both the disappearance of Dublin schoolboy Philip Cairns in 1986 and the discovery of Antoinette Smiths's body two years later marked the end of innocence. Perhaps it's a simplistic way of looking at things, especially as the country had been no stranger to violent crime before, but as the 1980s drew to a close, parents worried about the safety of their children on the streets and others panicked about 'stranger danger' when it came to crime against women. Something had changed.
"When Antoinette first went missing, there wasn't much media coverage and I don't know if alarm bells were ringing with the guards as early as they should have been," Barry Cummins says.
"Police officers look at things differently now - sadly, they learn by experience.
"You would hope against hope for a breakthrough. That some little part of the puzzle will present itself and whoever's responsible for this will be brought to justice. It's the very least that Rachel and Lisa deserve."
Learning exercise: Bishop-elect of Clogher Larry Duffy will hold talks on how to fill the void of having fewer priests. Photo: Rory Geary/The Northern Standard
The new Bishop of Clogher intends to invite lay people to perform funeral duties as declining priest numbers will see three parishes become priestless for the first time from next week.
The radical move on funerals is part of a restructuring plan under way to offset the lack of priests.
Clogher's Diocesan Liturgy Commission is planning a series of workshops in Monaghan and Enniskillen beginning later this month, at which Bishop-elect Larry Duffy, as well as clergy and laity, will focus on those liturgies which are presently led by priests but could be led by lay people.
"Some elements of funeral liturgies may be part of this, such as the reception of remains at the church.
"This will be a learning exercise for us all, myself included," Bishop Duffy told the Irish Independent.
The new bishop explained that all of Clogher's parishes and pastoral areas - groups of parishes working together - will be holding discussions on "how we can fill the void when parishes are left with reduced numbers of priests or, increasingly, no priests and at all. This is now a reality for us here in Clogher".
The 67-year-old former parish priest of Carrickmacross will be installed at St Macartan's Cathedral in Monaghan tomorrow by the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin.
He said the decline in priest numbers would be a priority for him and he acknowledged that parishes with no resident priest were "a big change for people and a big change for the diocese".
The Magheracloone native explained that due to the lack of priests and the ageing profile of those in ministry, it was becoming increasingly difficult for priests to even find the time to attend the wedding receptions of couples they marry.
"It is becoming more difficult now because many weddings can be on a Saturday and priests may have an evening Mass or maybe there is a funeral the same day or a baptism. There can be a lot on with less of us to cover the same ground as before."
The diocese is, he said, "looking for and praying for deacons. We have one permanent deacon in the diocese with the possibility of a second. But we need to do more work on that".
On morale in the Church, he said: "A lot of priests and people today have come through a rough 20 to 25 years. It is a great credit to so many that they have stayed with it."
Asked about recent incidents where politicians who supported a repeal of the Eighth Amendment and the introduction of abortion services have been refused communion by priests, Dr Duffy said: "If somebody comes for communion - I would never refuse them.
"If somebody speaks about it, we will engage in a chat and I would be prepared to listen and then advise, but I would never refuse communion."
However, he warned that promoting abortion was "a grave sin" and that "if we have sinned, such as helping to promote abortion, then we must examine ourselves".
Of the lessons the Irish Church has learned on safeguarding children, the bishop, who was ordained in 1976, added: "I think we have come a long way in Ireland. What happened was very wrong. If we have anything to teach anybody it is that it is a painful journey and that those who have been abused must be looked after as the number one priority."
Clogher Diocese straddles the Border, encompassing all of Co Monaghan, most of Fermanagh and portions of Tyrone, Donegal, Louth and Cavan with a Catholic population of 88,000 across 37 parishes.
On the issue of Brexit, which will affect most of his flock, Bishop Duffy encouraged politicians to "be prepared to compromise and work together" to achieve the best for everyone concerned. They "have got to come together to get a solution that is the best for people on both sides", he stressed.
The Catholic prelate, who described himself as having "a great regard for the work of nurses" and the many people who care for someone at home, said he was "keen to support Catholic schools" but that not every school had to be Catholic. "There has to be variety," he said.
He said it was significant that many parents, when they are asked if they wanted their local school to be divested to an alternative patron, by and large were very keen to maintain the Catholic ethos.
"The Church and Catholics put a lot into supporting Catholic schools. There are so many lay people who work on boards of management, in parents' associations - they help out in so many different ways just for the advancement of the school.
"It is a huge contribution to our nation and our country and that lovely value of volunteering isn't something we should easily lose," he said.
On the forthcoming referendum on divorce, which proposes a reduction in the amount of time couples must be separated before they can divorce, he said if politicians believe there is a good reason for this law, that can be debated. "My role is more a spiritual one," he said. "To encourage people when they get married to work at it as it needs to be for life. But you feel sorry for couples when it doesn't work out."
The HSE is not undertaking any additional recruitment campaign to try to poach NHS staff who may want to leave the UK due to Brexit.
The UK is less popular with EU workers and staff from outside the eurozone because they are worried about a change in their rights.
Prime Minister Theresa May has attempted to retain nurses and doctors, speaking of the "Brexit dividend" - the extra money that she says can be spent on the NHS because the UK will no longer be paying into the EU budget.
Asked if it was stepping up its recruitment campaign in the UK to lure nurses and doctors to Ireland, the HSE said that it recruited on an ongoing basis, both locally and nationally.
It has recruitment campaigns for all grades of qualified healthcare professionals "both at entry and promotional level".
A spokeswoman said: "All of these campaigns are run in line with codes of practice and are designed to attract the broadest global reach possible."
There are also fears that the traffic could go the other way as the UK post-Brexit may offer extra incentives to health staff in Ireland to work in the NHS.
There were 690,278 nurses and midwives registered in the UK as of March 2018, a decrease of 495 on the previous year.
Some parts of the NHS have created special groups whose job it is to examine the "key concern" of recruiting workers after Brexit.
We've been talking about the Children's Hospital all week - what is going on?
The new National Children's Hospital is being built at St James's Hospital in Dublin 8. It was signed off by the Government in 2017 at a cost of 983m. That was a landmark decision because the hospital has been something of a jinxed project with repeated delays over two decades.
But last December, the Government signed off on the next phase of works and a revised cost of the project was now 1.4bn - a rise of 450m for construction costs.
How the figure rose so dramatically and when the Government became aware of the problem are questions that have dominated the political agenda this week.
What happened this week?
Various documents have been released including minutes of meetings of the board steering the project, memos sent to Health Minister Simon Harris and correspondence between the two relevant departments, the Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Two Dail committees questioned Mr Harris and Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, as well as officials, on the controversy.
Do we know how costs spiralled by 450m?
Critically, no. In the tranche of documents released we can see where the increases hit. This includes an increase of more than 26m in design team fees, a hike of 12m for the extension of National Paediatric Hospital team, specialist consultants and construction management team. The increase in the maximum price for construction costs represented the main increase of 318m.
How those costs increased has not yet been pinned down. The Government has drafted in PwC to review the escalation and that is due to be delivered on March 29.
So what did we find out?
The documents shed light on how this issue was brought to the attention of those who needed to know about it.
The most troublesome memo for the Government is one dated August 27 which shows that Mr Harris was aware of a potential cost overrun of up to 391m. That related to a 191m increase in construction costs and a separate claim of 200m made by the contractors. That claim was challenged by officials.
Mr Harris set in motion a process which was designed to get to the bottom of just how much the hospital would now cost and this was completed in November, which is when he says he told the Taoiseach and Finance Minister about the runaway budget.
Other records show the discussions between those in charge of the hospital and officials from the Department of Health about the overspend and efforts by department officials to meet with their colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure between September and November.
Does this spell trouble for the Government?
For now it appears Brexit is saving the Government from an election. Fianna Fail said because of it, normal politics does not apply at the moment.
Will we still get our new Children's Hospital?
Yes, the project will still go ahead. Crucially nobody is suggesting the project be halted or scrapped.
A Garda technical team record the scene of the fatal shooting of John Lawless in Darndale, north Dublin. Picture: Kyran O'Brien
The country's latest gun murder victim has been named as father-of-three John Lawless (39), who was shot dead on his way to work yesterday morning.
Gardai have confirmed they are exploring a number of lines of inquiry into his killing but do not at this stage believe it is connected to serious organised crime.
Mr Lawless himself was not linked to any ongoing gangland feud in the capital or to high-level crime.
One motive being looked at is that the shooting was linked to a local issue, with "all the indications" pointing to the locality where he lived.
Supt Gerard Donnelly, of Coolock garda station, said "he was not a person known to us for serious criminal activity".
He also revealed that a silver Ford Focus vehicle that has been linked to the shooting was stolen from the Santry area on New Year's Day.
Mr Lawless was described as a family man whose partner is expecting their fourth child.
Members of the Garda Technical Bureau carried out a forensic examination of the scene throughout yesterday morning, and have focused on the area where the gun victim's body was discovered.
"Shortly after the shooting, a burnt-out car was discovered at Greenwood Avenue. This car is described as a silver Ford Focus, with a 132 registration number.
"Now, we believe this car may have some connection with the shooting incident," Supt Donnelly said. "This is a car which we believe was stolen on January 1 this year in the Santry area.
"Two scenes were examined, the scene at Marigold Crescent where the shooting took place and the scene at Greenwood Avenue where the car was located. These scenes were examined by the Garda Technical Bureau.
"At this stage, we have no known motive for this shooting. Mr Lawless left his home [yesterday] morning on the way to work.
"He is not a person who was known to us for involvement in serious criminal activity," he said, adding that gardai were satisfied there was no criminal link.
He also appealed for any person who may have witnessed the shooting, or any motorist who witnessed the silver car driving from Darndale to Greenwood Avenue.
"We will adjust our policing arrangements in accordance with the investigation as it progresses.
"We have a number of lines of inquiry which are pointing in a number of directions at the moment and we are exploring all avenues.
"No firearm has been recovered We believe it is a handgun from the ammunition we picked up at the scene."
Bin companies face a slew of data breach claims if they co-operate with plans to pass customers' details to local authorities.
The Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) told the Irish Independent it has concerns over the 'bin garda' plan, which would involve private waste companies passing the Eircodes of their customers to local councils to help identify households without a private waste collector.
The office was not consulted on the proposal, which has GDPR compliance implications for waste companies.
Inspectors could be on the streets by the second quarter of the year. But any move by a waste company to share the Eircodes of customers en masse with councils is open to complaint by any one of those customers.
Both the Department of the Environment and Hugh Coughlan, regional co-ordinator of the Eastern Midlands Regional Waste Office, had insisted Eircodes were "geo co-ordinates" and did not constitute personal data. The customer codes will be cross-referenced with Eircodes of a given locality, allowing officials to pinpoint households with no private waste collection contract.
Last night, the DPC suggested data protection laws would come into play if waste companies tried to share data with local authorities.
"The reported context of this issue appears to be that Eircodes would be provided by private waste management companies to public authorities to enable the ultimate identification of householders that are not contracted to such a service.
"Such identification appears to be for the purpose of potential enforcement," a statement said. "The [Eircode system] implemented in Ireland is unique to each individual household and the DPC would consider that the processing of such data, in the manner reported, could represent the processing of personal data."
A DPC spokesman said it was a matter for an organisation to justify and provide the legal basis for sharing information.
In this case, the waste management company would be responsible, he said. To share the Eircodes may require, for example, the consent of the customers.
Dublin City Council, which has already put bylaws in place, did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman for the Department of the Environment said local authorities were authorised to collect address and postcodes "for the collection of waste" and other functions.
However, it said with regard to the use of Eircodes by a service provider, "it is the responsibility of the service provider to ensure that they are GDPR compliant".
Earlier this week, Mr Coughlan said not having a private bin collector in itself would not be considered an offence and there were no plans to force people to take up contracts with private collectors.
But the bylaws being put in place by local authorities aim to help target tens of thousands of homes not currently using private waste collecting companies. Inspectors will be able to issue fines of 75 on anyone who can't prove they are disposing of their waste legally in a bid to clamp down on illegal dumping. Fines will increase to up to 2,500 if a case is brought before court.
People in 'bin-sharing' arrangements with neighbours will need to put a formal declaration in place, while those who choose to go to the local dump will need to keep receipts.
The leader of the so-called 'New IRA' in Dublin has been jailed for life for the murder of another dissident republican almost six years ago.
Kevin Braney (44), of Glenshane Crescent, Tallaght, Dublin 24, was found guilty by the Special Criminal Court last Monday of the "premeditated" murder of Peter Butterly (35). Butterly was gunned down outside The Huntsman Inn in Co Meath on March 6, 2013.
The victim's widow Eithne told the Irish Independent: "Kevin Braney murdered Peter to boost his own ego, but it's him gardai were monitoring. It's him that got everyone caught. It's because of him that three others are also serving life just like him.
"The evidence heard in the first trial was that at the time he organised the murder, his instructions to the killers were 'box him in and empty it into him'. Well, look who is boxed-in now, starting a life sentence," she added.
"Braney is a coward. He couldn't even look at me in the court as I read out my victim-impact statement."
Braney last night began his sentence on the E wing of the top security prison in Portlaoise. He will be among a group of 30 'New IRA' on that wing of the jail.
The 44-year-old was the key figure in the 'New IRA' on this side of the Border. Having been a strong supporter of the peace process, Braney grew disillusioned and joined the ranks of the 'Real IRA'.
Around this time an alliance of the 'Real IRA', the Republican Action Against Drugs and other former Provisionals in Dublin formed.
The 'Real IRA' in the capital, under the control of Alan Ryan, had developed into an undisciplined gang immersed in a deadly feud with criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking and extortion.
The Northern leaders began stamping their authority internally through threats and punishment shootings and when it was over Braney was in charge of the Dublin and Cork units.
Among the victims of the infighting was Peter Butterly with Braney playing his part in the planning of the murder.
One of its first targets was prison officer David Black, shot dead driving to work at Maghaberry jail in November 2012. Planning his murder, the 'New IRA' turned to Braney's terrorist team to supply a car for the killers. Bought in Tallaght and taken to Carrigallen, Co Leitrim, it was handed over to Northern-based terrorists.
The PSNI revealed in 2017 the 'New IRA' had developed a highly dangerous explosive device, with a pressure plate designed to detonate when a vehicle drives over it.
The device was developed because of the difficult of attaching booby-trap bombs to the underside of cars - a method used by dissidents to kill their target. The group was also behind the recent courthouse car bomb in Derry.
For much of this trial, the focus has been fixed firmly on key witness Mary Lowry, her testimony and her relationships.
This week, however, the spotlight shifted, at last, to the silenced, and most important, person at the centre of these proceedings - the deceased man, Bobby Ryan.
There were many witnesses called to courtroom 13 at the Central Criminal Court this week. The most poignant evidence, however, was that which focused on Bobby Ryan, the man.
For the first time, we heard what he was like - as a father, as a friend, as an employee, even as an ex-husband.
"Wow," was the simple word used by his daughter, Michelle Ryan, to best describe him.
"Happy ... always a bit of craic," was how his son, Robert Junior, summed him up.
To his former wife, Mary Ryan, he had remained a friend, despite the ending of their marriage.
Likewise, he had remained a friend to his former partner Mary Glasheen after the end of their three-month relationship.
Even his boss at Killough Quarries, Niall Quinn, recalled him as a punctual and "perfect" employee.
For each, their grief was palpable at what had happened to Bobby, that fun-loving man who had recovered his zest for life in the devastating aftermath of the break-up of his marriage.
The man whose joint passions for music and dancing had been a fulcrum.
Mary Lowry's son Tommy remembered him as being "a fun guy", always trying to crack a joke. He had bought them remote-control cars at Christmas. Bobby had made his mother happy - and her children were happy that she was happy.
Pat Quirke (50) of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Bobby Ryan (52), a DJ known as Mr Moonlight, on a date between June 3, 2011 and April 2013.
On Monday last, Mr Ryan's children took to the stand to give evidence.
"He was a brilliant father with a great personality," Michelle Ryan told the court.
Her parents split up when she was around 18 or 19, she said, and she and her brother, Robert Jnr, lived with her father. She described her relationship with him as being "brilliant".
After her parents split up, she had concerns for his mental health because he was "very down" afterwards.
If he had a confidante in the family, it was probably her, she accepted. In those early months, she was ringing him "every 20 minutes", she told the court, explaining that it was just "a quick phone call".
It was about nine months before she could say: "Yeah, there's Daddy again."
She agreed with the lawyers that he had got his love of life back.
He had told her about a row he'd had with Mary Lowry on a trip away in Bundoran, the last weekend before he died.
Michelle told him to 'P45' her. "He didn't need that in his life," she said.
As far as she knew, the relationship ended on the Tuesday before he disappeared.
Robert Junior told the trial how he had called to Mary Lowry's farm in Fawnagowan, Co Tipperary, on the day of his father's disappearance.
She was shaking, he said, describing her demeanour as if she had just walked out of a car accident.
"I don't know where he is. We didn't have a row," he claims she had "mumbled" to him.
She had mentioned something about a river but he said this was "lies" and told her: "Daddy never said anything to me about a f****** river."
He said he got a feeling "straight away something wasn't right" and added: "I knew something wasn't right about the way she was acting."
He refused to give her his phone number, explaining to the court that he didn't know why but that he "just didn't want her to have it".
Mary Ryan, the former wife of Bobby Ryan, told the court that she had married Bobby in 1986 and they had two children. After many years, differences arose between them and they grew apart, she said.
Eventually, they separated.
"We were more like friends than husband and wife at that point," she said.
She was aware of his relationship with Mary Lowry, saying: "I was happy for him, why wouldn't I be?"
Mary Glasheen told the court that she dated Bobby Ryan in 2008, they met at the Times Hotel in Tipperary town and would go to dances there and at Pat Fox's in Cashel.
They went out for three months and remained friends afterwards.
When Mr Ryan met Mary Lowry, she was happy for them. "They seemed happy," she said.
He invited her to come along with them on the trip to Bundoran to see showband The Indians play.
But she did not want to go, she explained to the court, saying that they were a couple, though she might have gone if other people had been going too.
The snapshot of Bobby shown by witness Eileen Barlow, a long-time friend of Mary Lowry, told of their first meeting in the Times Hotel in August 2010. Bobby had asked Mary to dance and Ms Barlow noticed she was "so alive" on the dance floor.
She asked Bobby to look after Mary because she needed "a refuge".
When she met them some months later, they seemed "very joyous", said Eileen.
Tommy Lowry told the court he and his two younger brothers had been happy when their mother, Mary Lowry, had met Bobby Ryan.
"We got on well - Bobby was funny, he'd always try and crack a joke," he said. "There was no problems - we were all happy that mam was happy and Bobby was happy too."
He conceded his younger brother Jack had given Bobby a "hard time, slagging him about being bald", but said he was young at the time and "it was all fun and games".
He also told the court he did not like spending time with Patrick Quirke.
The families had gone on holidays together, and asked how he had felt about that, Tommy replied: "I didn't like to spend time with him. I didn't like it one bit. It's just the way it was."
When Tommy's father died of cancer in 2007, the farm had been leased to Pat Quirke, he said.
"As time went on, I felt that he came into the house a lot more and made himself at home," he added.
"I didn't feel like he belonged inside my house but he was there."
Meanwhile, the court heard from two brothers of the deceased Martin Lowry.
Jimmy Lowry said he was happy that his sister-in-law Mary had met Bobby Ryan.
Asked how Pat Quirke and Martin had got on, Mr Lowry replied: "Quite well."
Asked who knew of the existence of the tank where Bobby Ryan's body was discovered, he said: "As far as I know, myself, my brother, Johnny and Pat."
Johnny Lowry told the court that he had met Bobby Ryan and found him "grand".
Asked about the relationship between Mary Lowry and Pat Quirke after Martin's death, Mr Lowry said: "They seemed to be close. Closer than normal." Asked whether he was aware of anything going on, he replied: "No, but I had my suspicions."
The trial continues.
Dublin's Lord Mayor Nial Ring has managed to save his home from a bank sale after raising well over 1 million to pay off debts he owes Bank of Ireland Mortgage Bank, the Circuit Civil Court has heard.
Kate Conneely, counsel for Ring and his wife Joyce who was also named in re-possession proceedings, told the court a three-mortgage debt amounting to 903,420, together with the bank's undisclosed legal costs bill, could be struck out by consent of both parties.
Ms Conneely told Judge Jacqueline Linnane the extent of the new funds, and where and how they had been raised, could not be divulged on the basis it may breach data protection legislation.
She said funds capable of meeting all outstanding debts owed to the bank and its legal costs had been lodged with Mr Ring's solicitors ready to be transferred to Bank of Ireland Mortgage Bank.
Judge Linnane said she did not think the proceedings should be struck out until confirmation was received that the funds had been transferred to the bank, just in case of any slip up.
Eithne Corry, counsel for the bank, confirmed that the bank accepted it was to be put in funds for settlement of outstanding debts and the bank's costs which, it had been suggested, could be measured by Judge Linnane.
Judge Linnane said that on May 24, 2017, she had made an order for possession of the Ring family home, at St Lawrence Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3.
The Civil Bill had outlined three loans for 234,000; 380,000 and 486,000 (totalling 1.1m) with a stay on her order for six months on the basis that 10,000 a month would be paid off for the duration of the stay.
It was part of her order that on default of any 10,000 payment the stay would be automatically lifted.
Mr and Mrs Ring did not have to attend court for mention of the settlement and will not have to attend on Monday.
The Master of the High Court has strongly criticised the senior judge who decided he should no longer deal with debt cases.
Edmund Honohan, a frequent critic of financial institutions, challenged the President of the High Court to explain the move.
"He should really come out and say why. But he won't because he feels probably it is not his function as a judge. He just made a decision and that is it," said Mr Honohan.
In an interview with the Irish Independent, Mr Honohan said Mr Justice Peter Kelly's decision to remove debt cases from the Master's court could lead to debtors being "steamrollered" as inexperienced judges may be more accepting of affidavits filed by banks than he would be.
Mr Justice Kelly, one of the country's most respected and experienced judges, has not publicly explained his decision and Mr Honohan said there had been no communication between them since the practice direction was issued on January 23.
Since last Monday, all motions seeking liberty to enter a final judgment in summary summons proceedings must go before a High Court judge rather than the Master.
The decision has proved controversial and prompted a demonstration outside the Four Courts on Monday.
As of yesterday, more than 4,300 people had signed an online petition seeking the return of debt cases to the Master.
In the interview, Mr Honohan was also heavily critical of cuts to legal aid, saying the overriding agenda of the Government was not due process, but saving money.
Although not a judge, Mr Honohan is a senior counsel with a quasi-judicial role.
In contested cases he ensures correct procedures are followed and paperwork is in order before sending a matter on to the High Court.
He can also deal with applications for judgments in uncontested cases.
However, he has been criticised by a number of judges, including Mr Justice Kelly, for acting outside his powers by dismissing summonses.
Mr Honohan said he had been complaining for many years that procedures relating to motions for final judgment were "unfair". Among his concerns are the court examines written evidence on affidavit and hears "no live evidence".
He argues that while lawyers are familiar with the procedures, lay litigants are not and their affidavits are usually inadequate.
Mr Honohan claims that after he raised the issue in 2011, a High Court judge, who he did not name, warned the Irish Human Rights Commission against supporting him.
"They were told Honohan is a nutter," he said.
Mr Honohan said some affidavits from banks were "really offensive to my eye" as they "really seek to portray a defendant as misleading the court, a charlatan".
However, he denies being biased against financial institutions. "All I am doing is applying the rules across the board," he said.
Although "not as distressed and shocked as some people seem to think", he admitted being "quite annoyed" by Mr Justice Kelly's decision.
"What I am doing, in the absence of proper legal aid, is attempting to act in a Christian manner to defendants who want to know what they should do next. I ask them what their story is and I say: 'This is how you deal with it.'"
He now fears defendants might not get the same "care and attention" from a judge.
While he has not spoken with Mr Justice Kelly, he believes the decision may have been prompted by two recent cases. In one matter last month he struck out a 19m claim by Nama for judgment against a businessman, finding it time barred.
Standing over the decision, Mr Honohan said what had been "lost in the welter of annoyance from Nama" was a "missing piece" in the special endorsement of claim.
The second case was a decision last October where he criticised what he termed Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan's "facile" response to calls from legal advice charity FLAC for a legislative amendment to ensure legal aid is available for families facing repossession of their homes.
Mr Flanagan had responded that if Abhaile, the service aimed at finding solutions for mortgage holders in arrears, required improvement, he would consider it.
"I challenged the minister to explain how he expects a litigant without representation to navigate his way through the issues, procedures and law," said Mr Honohan.
There is no suggestion Mr Flanagan influenced the decision to remove debt cases from the Master's court.
Mr Honohan's disenchantment with the President of the High Court extends to another issue - his exclusion from a group, chaired by Mr Justice Kelly, which is conducting a major review of the administration of civil justice.
"The reason I'm not [on it] is probably because I have been giving out," he said.
Usually new rules of court are signed off by the justice minister, but Mr Honohan believes whatever the review group comes up with should also be scrutinised by the Oireachtas Justice Committee.
A print and design company has been ordered to pay 2,500 to a gay man over its refusal to print invites for the man's civil partnership ceremony to his long-term partner.
This follows a landmark ruling by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) which found Beulah Print and Design discriminated against Jonathon Brennan (33) on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Adjudication officer Orla Jones ordered the Drogheda company to pay for the discrimination under Section 3 of the Equal Status Act.
Mr Brennan contacted the firm in March 2015 to print invites to the ceremony with his long-term partner, John Kierans (39). However, Mr Brennan told the WRC hearing he was "shocked and embarrassed" when Beulah refused. He said the co-owner of Beulah told him they couldn't do it as they were Bible-believing Christians.
In her findings, Ms Jones stated that Beulah confirmed to the hearing that its wedding invitation service is available to heterosexual couples.
Ms Jones found that Beulah refused a service to Mr Brennan that is freely available to heterosexual couples.
She said that it is clear that whatever Beulah's reasons for refusing to provide Mr Brennan with the wedding invitation service, Mr Brennan could have accessed that service but for the fact that he is a gay man.
She concluded: "I am thus satisfied that in refusing to provide the service to the complainant the respondent did discriminate against the complainant on the ground of his sexual orientation."
In a statement on the WRC outcome, Beulah said that it rejected the findings of the WRC.
Efforts to obtain comment on the WRC outcome from Mr Brennan have been unsuccessful to date.
In an interview, there are certain things you rely on. Chief amongst them is your recording device. And so, when I played back the file there was nothing, not muffles, not barely audible squeaks. Nada. Thankfully, there were notes, but there are still a couple of facts to be checked. And one is about underpants.
Specifically their location and from where my interviewee took them before going to his aunt's funeral. Even though he is back-to-back with meetings and press obligations, Dermot Bannon is very gracious. "Sure, it happens to us all," he says, before clarifying: "I put the underpants in a box and put the box on the back seat of the car. And then I had to bring my box with my underpants to the funeral. Then, my other aunts got into the car and there was the box of underpants." Of course they did. That makes much more sense. More on underpants later.
Bannon had been chatting in advance of Incredible Homes, his new series which, like 2017's New York Homes, lets him stretch his legs outside of Ireland. This series takes him to Australia, Sweden and somewhat less exotically, London. He's now served 12 tours of duty on Room To Improve, in the trenches with Ireland's most enthusiastic homeowners. You have to wonder whether he gets to leave the country as some kind of R&R.
Incredible Homes mixes high, and eye-wateringly expensive, architecture, with subtle, restrained design. Sometimes the most elaborate houses - it's hard to call them homes - are not at all inviting. He visits some extraordinary properties, he remarks that the 60-seater dining room in Indigo Slam, a Sydney "residence", probably seats more people than the dining room at Aras An Uachtarain.
Here, some homes are remarkable for what they don't have. Several leave out air conditioning units in favour of design-led solutions. "They're all thinking about how to get air moved around," Bannon says. "They're trying to get rid of the AC. We need to be thinking about this, about our use of fossil fuels, even cars are moving towards electricity.
"I'm in the middle of my own project at the moment and I'm doing everything I can to be energy efficient and get it up to an A-rating."
His "project" is his new house. And he is as excited about this as one might expect. It's a 1930s home in Dublin's Drumcondra to which the 46-year-old and his wife, Louise, who is also Financial Director of Dermot Bannon Architects, are applying a "modern twist". He is determined to make it fossil fuel-free. "It's very simple, it's all about insulation. It's like going out for a walk. You don't plug yourself into an electric blanket and walk around pulling a generator. You put on a big heavy overcoat. At the moment we're insulating the existing house. We're triple glazing the windows. We're having an air-to-water heat pump."
A what-now? "It's instead of a boiler. It takes the heat out of the air - like the reverse of a fridge - puts it into water which then goes into your under-floor heating."
He says he's always lived in older houses and "always been chasing draughts" and certainly old houses are colder. But there's a charm to older Irish houses that it's hard to mimic with new-builds. Why, then, do we seem so keen on them? "Absolutely there is an obsession with new houses. There's always a draw to a new house. It's about not having to do work - I get it. From the time we bought the house and went sale agreed, it's giving up a year of your life. But older houses have great proportions and are in great areas, well serviced with bus routes. I see the benefit of moving into an established neighbourhood. We like living in the area and the kids [Sarah, James and Tom] were in school here."
He says they are doing everything to retain the original features in the house - including the fireplaces - despite it not being a protected structure. "I love our architectural heritage. We bought an old arts and crafts house. What we're doing is putting a modern twist on it. We're being true to the original house.
"There's something beautiful about these older places. They don't build new houses in the city centre. I would rather invest the year in doing up the house. I have the privilege of being able to drop my kids to school in the morning, I wouldn't swap that for a brand new house. I love living in the city."
There is certainly an argument that we often fail to protect what we have and recognise its value. And this is especially the case when it comes to the built environment. "I'm a conservation architect as well and I would often see the merits in some of the most mundane things that I think in 20 years' time, 30 years' time it will be incredibly important.
"I was always a big advocate for the 1940s fireplaces - those beautiful curved ones - when everybody was ripping them out of homes, they were keeping the ones that were in Georgian homes and Victorian homes, but anything from the 1920s, 1930s they weren't keeping. There's a huge amount of wealth of architectural details in those houses from the 1920s and 1930s and they're not protected.
"The house I'm renovating is not a protected structure but I'm keeping every door and keeping every fireplace, keeping every bit of coving, I'm keeping the skirting boards. It's really important for me to keep the trace of what the house was like. I don't want to sanitise it."
Of course, Bannon's house will always be of interest. And the chance to nose around the home of Ireland's favourite architect was not passed up when he put his house on the market last year. "I was really shocked by how newsworthy it was. I was a bit surprised with the level of interest. It was a bit unnerving. I sometimes forget because we have a very normal life.
"Room to Improve has been amazing to me. There are incredible upsides, and then there are downsides, one of which is your privacy. I don't mind for myself, it was more that it was the family home. I think we had around 100 people through the door and about 80pc of them had no interest in buying whatsoever. We tried to keep it private but then once people got wind of it, it was all over the place."
In the middle of the sale he suffered a pang of paranoia over some underpants - yes, those underpants.
"My aunt died in the middle of the sale and I got so paranoid. All our clothes were in the wardrobes and I had to go down to Dungarvan for the funeral. I took all my underpants out of the wardrobe because I thought people might go through them. It was fine in the end. Instead of being annoyed about it you just have to prepare yourself."
Part of Bannon's own USP is his excitement, - the Duracell bunny of primetime TV. But beyond that he is passionate and sincere about his field. He says he can sometimes be "obsessive" when it comes to building design. And that he first became aware of the importance of public spaces as a child visiting his granny.
Of course the housing crisis and the impact of the crash will always loom over his work. He believes that millennials have the "right" attitude towards housing and living and we are witnessing a generational shift in the market.
"There is a shift. My generation - the Pope's children - our mantra was always to get yourself on the ladder. That's what you did. You didn't enjoy yourself. You saved for a deposit through your 20s and 30s. Then you moved out to wherever you could afford.
"Then the crash happened. There's a whole generation of people now who feel like they're doomed, that they can't afford to buy a house and they never will. I look at that generation and see their priorities, they're different. They're resigned to renting. Or instead of thinking, 'Where can I afford to buy a house?' They think, 'I'd rather have a smaller house that I rent.' They've started to think about the lifestyle. Once the shackles of a mortgage are removed, you they start to see the advantages. They don't have cars. If they need one, they rent it. They really think about their life. For them, a short commute is really important. They want to live beside facilities, where they can socialise. They have it right."
None of this, of course, addresses the housing crisis - a difficult and complex issue that doesn't offer a simple solution. But there are some aspects of the crisis which merit further exploration. "We have around 2 million houses in the country. But we have around 850,000 families and 1.75m family homes, so 900,000 homes are under-occupied. So we keep talking about dwelling units but we should probably talk about bed spaces. That shows where the imbalance is. We need to start building more diverse housing. Because people don't want and shouldn't have to leave their area to downsize - especially when you're retired, when you need to be more in your community."
The issue, he believes, isn't a shortage of housing, per se, but a shortage of the right kinds of housing. "We have a huge shortage of one- and two-bedroom homes for young Irish people and for older Irish people. There are more family homes than we need in the city."
Of course opening this debate in the court of public opinion may well prove too politically toxic for the current Government. But there are ways to introduce a better housing mix. In the Swedish episode of Incredible Homes, Bannon visited a development by Danish 'starchitect' Bjarke Ingels, which, he says, proves that variety works. "It had one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments, ranging in price from 300,000 to 1.8m. There was a lovely social and age mix, there were families and single people, within the one development. So if I had a small apartment, you have a family that might get a bigger apartment, you downsize when you're a bit older and that can all happen within the one complex."
You get the impression that he is something of a romantic when it comes to buildings and housing, enthusiastic but not impulsive. His approach to a housing isn't "build, build, build" but rather to assess need and suggest the best means of provision. He doesn't, for example, believe skyscrapers are a good option, saying the capital's height is one of "Dublin's USPs", but he does believe that building up around the city should be examined. "If you go either side of the Liffey, you've got Ringsend - single-storey buildings; Ballybough is single-storey buildings. And then you go into the suburbs, Mount Merrion, Artane, Beaumont, they're all very low density housing but they're all only within minutes of the city.
"Whereas if you go to any other European city you're a good five miles outside before you get to low density, but we don't."
Bannon is a good mix of high and low himself. But could he possibly be as nice as he seems on TV? He can. And I (finally) have the tape to prove it.
'Dermot Bannon's Incredible Homes' starts tomorrow at 9.30pm on RTE One
In Jane Harper's novels, the Australian landscape is much more than a setting. Harper describes the topography of her adopted country as "a gift for writers," and it's a gift she puts to excellent use.
"It's such a huge country," she says, on the phone from Melbourne where she lives with her husband and young daughter, "and there's so many different landscapes you can draw on. I love the fact that it can be very isolated, and that really lends itself to books that have mystery elements, and I love the fact that the landscape can become part of the plot so it actually shapes who characters are and can inform their behaviour."
It's night-time for Harper when we speak - 11 hours ahead - but she talks energetically and affably about her writing process and the surprise of literary success. Seeing the books in shops "never gets old," she says. She's unpretentious and, I'd wager, pretty unflappable. In a previous life she was a journalist, a profession that gave her some insight into the detective work her main characters undertake.
Though readers of her latest novel, The Lost Man, would be forgiven for thinking that she grew up in outback Queensland - so vivid is her depiction of the parched, barely peopled terrain - Harper was born in Manchester in 1980, where she spent her early childhood. When she was eight, her family moved to Australia for six years, before returning to the UK.
In 2008, already an experienced journalist, she moved back to Australia to work at the Geelong Advertiser and later the Herald Sun in Melbourne, where she met her husband, fellow journalist Peter Strachan. In 2016, her first novel, The Dry established her as the new star of Australian crime fiction, winning several prizes and becoming a New York Times bestseller. Reece Witherspoon's production company bought the film rights and the movie adaptation of The Dry, starring Australian actor Eric Bana, is due to begin shooting in Victoria this month.
Both The Dry and Harper's second novel, Force of Nature, feature police detective Aaron Falk travelling to a remote setting - his hometown in the first instance - and becoming embroiled in a mystery. The Lost Man is a standalone book but like Harper's other fiction, it explores the impact of rural isolation and extreme heat, opening with a body lying by a tombstone - the only landmark for miles.
The dead man is Cameron Bright, one of three brothers who run enormous cattle properties in a region where next-door neighbours can live a three-hour drive apart. The circumstances of Cameron's death don't make sense - there is no sign of violence - but as in all good crime fiction, nothing is as it first appears.
It's an evocative, sharply written and expertly plotted novel, subtle in how it navigates its themes of misogyny, retribution and guilt. The spectre of climate change is also there, so glaring it barely needs to be referenced. In the best possible way, Harper blindsides her readers again and again.
"I always know the ending in quite a lot of detail, I always know what I'm aiming for and that the core plot is solid," she says. "It's easier then to start weaving in the red herrings, the diversions."
Part of the novel's power stems from how it captures the claustrophobia as well as the vastness of the outback. Because there are so few people around, the characters are doubly dependent on those who are there. The stakes are automatically high when the nearest cop is hundreds of miles away and when anything more than a quick walk outside means death from heat exposure and dehydration. And because Harper's instincts as a writer are so honed, her "diversions" are often stories in themselves: the decade-long shunning of Nathan by the minuscule local community - his punishment for refusing to assist a neighbour - and a rape story in which the victim is disbelieved.
Harper's background in journalism means she understands the importance of thorough research. For The Lost Man, she read memoirs by people who lived in similar areas to the Brights and, where possible, spoke to the writers and their contacts. She went to outback Queensland in the middle of summer and met a retired cop called Neale McShane who, for 10 years, from a small town called Birdsville, policed an area the size of the UK on his own.
"He drove me 900km across the outback to his town, told me stories and answered my questions and introduced me to people, so it was a really incredible experience and I got a huge insight from that," Harper says.
She needed to check some facts - how high frequency radios work, where the locals get their food supplies. She also ran the story of Nathan's shunning past McShane, who thought that in reality, outback residents might be even less lenient.
"When you're in a really isolated area, I think you become a lot more aware of how power dynamics in relationships play out," Harper says.
All of her novels play with power dynamics but the way in which The Lost Man unpicks them is particularly current. Against an unforgiving landscape, her story has the qualities of an epic, its plot specific, its themes universal.
"I spend a lot of time thinking about what are these characters going through, how is their background contributing to the people they are, and what kind of issues are they facing, and what kind of things are going to be coming up in their lives?" Harper says.
"That's where the themes start to come out. They're real things that people do face and we read about and we discuss in our own lives."
A few hours before I meet Kristen Roupenian, I am having a breakfast interview with a very celebrated author. "Oh my god," he says, when I tell him who I'm meeting. "Tell her to try to enjoy it. I'd hate to be her right now."
Which is an odd thing to say, unless you're familiar with Roupenian's trajectory. In 2017, whatever planet governs supreme and unruly success floated into her orbit when The New Yorker published 'Cat Person', a short story about a young woman's relationship with a much older man. The story was a blow-by-blow account of a miserable date, of depressingly bad sex, and of being a young woman who is aroused by the very concept of someone being aroused by you. It was, for many women, almost too real. The timing could not have been more appropriate. #MeToo was, at the time, a relatively new term. The Massachusetts-born writer and Harvard graduate was catapulted into literary, viral stardom.
In person, Roupenian is sunny and self-deprecating, with a darkly brilliant sense of humour. She's happy to play ball, but mature enough to have clear boundaries about her personal life. She's quietly bemused by her success, careful to approach it gently and from the side, as though it were a horse that could spook easily.
"For all that it happened overnight and probably way too quickly, I still feel lucky that I was at least older," she says. "I'm 37, and if it had happened at 27, I would have lost my mind completely. It helped a lot to have many, many years of normal living before things got so weird."
I had not known Roupenian's age before meeting her, and for some reason, I had assumed she was younger. This is not a mistake. She is constantly referred to in the press as a "student", a "young woman", a "new talent".
"It's interesting," she says, when I point out the coverage. "You notice it in all these little ways. Even now. There's a lot of focus that I was a student, which is true, but I was certainly an older student. I wasn't 20."
Is it because, I ask her, that when a previously unknown woman does something of artistic merit, the media likes to pretend that it's an astounding fluke - like a cat learning to talk.
"Yes! I do feel like a cat who has learned to talk!" she laughs. "Cat Person speaks!"
Her collection is brilliantly funny and often horrifying. In Roupenian's world, monsters exist and people's most private desires dominate and warp their world. Women bite men, abuse them, asked to be punched in the face by them. The whole book is heavy with female desire turned sour, a subject Roupenian has a lot to say about.
"I've been thinking about this a lot because there's this new Ted Bundy thing on Netflix. It honestly makes me feel very old, this new interest in him," she confesses. "There's all these people who are like 'Ted Bundy! He's a serial killer! But he's kind of hot! Isn't that interesting?' I'm like, 'girl, I was having complicated feelings about Ted Bundy when I was 11 years old'.
"I was always stealing the books off my dad's book shelf. And what I'm so unnerved by is this memory of him being there, and there being all these pictures of beautiful girls. And I just stared at them. I would think: 'They are very beautiful. I, too, would like to be very beautiful. They have been murdered. I would like not to be murdered.' I'm compelled, I'm repulsed, I'm deeply confused."
I bring up the proliferation of "murder content" around right now: every weekend, it seems, there's a new documentary, a new podcast, a new film about a gruesome murder that women, in particular, find themselves darkly fascinated with.
"There is always one murder for women," she says. "Something you hear about at a formative age. A true thing that happens, that becomes your idea of what danger is, what it looks like, and what can happen to you. I remember that so vividly. I remember that so clearly, being a pre-teen and hearing about Polly Klaas [a US teen abducted from a slumber party in 1993 and murdered], and realising that a man can just come into your bedroom, at a sleepover, and take you away. And probably will. Because you have no sense of odds, or what's likely and what isn't. You're just like: the world feels very dangerous suddenly."
It feels weird to say it, but it's true: Roupenian comes alive when she talks about murder. In general, she talks about extremely morbid subjects with great lightness, and positive subjects with frank interrogation. She is extremely suspicious, for example, of her history in Kenya with the Peace Corps, an organisation so many are so quick to praise. This period is reflected in one of her stories, 'The Night Runner'.
"I did HIV education," she says, adding that at that point - the early 2000s - HIV and AIDs had taken a stronghold over Kenya, and that drug therapy was still a long way off.
"It was a really complicated thing. Much more complicated, I think, then I was able to wrap my head around at 21. I loved the family I lived with, we're still close, I learned the language. It was wonderful. But also, I was utterly over my head. I didn't have the words I needed to explain what was going on. Now we have the term 'white saviour complex' to explain why it's uncomfortable to be in a certain position.
"It was so beyond any of the tools they had to give us. I don't even blame the trainers or the Peace Corps. No one knew what to do. It just felt so urgent that you had to do something. Which is when all the really messy things start to happen. The good thing was that the amount of harm I could cause was relatively minimal because I was just a kid," she laughs.
It's a funny way of phrasing it. The "amount of harm I could cause" is not how people usually refer to their time working in international aid. Roupenian's father is a surgeon, her mother a nurse, and something tells me that she grew up in a house where "good intentions" weren't quite enough.
"One of the things about being a doctor is you have to bring 100pc to your work everyday. You can't fall apart. And if you're going to fall apart, you're going to fall apart at home, in private. Not in public," she says, definitively. "There's all this unspoken fucked-up-ness (in the book) that isn't fully able to express itself. It's maybe a very, very exaggerated version of growing up in a house where people were making life or death decisions, then coming home and trying to be regular people."
The success of 'Cat Person' has meant that Roupenian has second-album syndrome, despite You Know You Want This being her first book. The people who loved 'Cat Person' have ridiculously high expectations, and the people who were jealous of its success want to see her fail.
"The weird thing about this book coming out with massive hoopla behind it is that people do feel obligated to keep reading the book, even if they don't want to. Which is the last thing I ever wanted. People are like 'why do I have to read this terrible story?' And it's like: you don't have to!"
The Central Bank prohibition arose from a whistleblower tip-off to the regulator in 2016
THE former partner of a Galway financial brokerage has been banned indefinitely by the Central Bank from having any function in a regulated firm over what was described as the misappropriation of client funds.
Paul Tarpey, who was the partner in Costello & Tarpey Financial Services, failed to act honestly, ethically and with integrity, according to the Central Bank.
The financial services firm has since been dissolved. He has been prohibited indefinitely from carrying out any controlled functions, including pre-approval controlled functions, in any regulated financial service provider.
"The prohibition arises from a Central Bank investigation into the misappropriation of client funds by Mr Tarpey during his time at Costello & Tarpey Financial Services," the regulator said in a statement.
An indefinite ban is the most serious outcome when the Central Bank conducts an investigation under its fitness and probity regime. Central Bank director of enforcement and anti-money laundering Seana Cunningham referred to what she called a statement of undisputed facts, signed by the former financial adviser. She said this document "clearly demonstrates Mr Tarpey's failure to act honestly, ethically and with integrity".
Ms Cunningham added: "This case should serve as a reminder that the Central Bank will prohibit people who act dishonestly."
The Central Bank prohibition arose from a whistleblower tip-off to the regulator in 2016. Mr Tarpey misappropriated two cheques totalling 31,711 from a client. The money was supposed to go into a pension fund.
One of the cheques had been altered by Mr Tarpey to make him the payee. The money has since been returned, and compensation of 13,289 paid.
When the regulators began probing the financial firm, Mr Tarpey's solicitors wrote to the Central Bank admitting he had misappropriated funds.
Medical reports on Mr Tarpey were submitted to the Central Bank by his solicitors. It is understood Gardai are not currently investigating Mr Tarpey.
Others banned by the Central Bank from acting in financial services firms include the former manager of the now closed Rush Credit Union Anne Butterly, the former assistant manager of the same controversial credit union Geraldine Harford, former director of Citybus Employees' Credit Union David Stamper, and former director of a Tipperary financial firm Darren Gleeson.
There is growing support at EU level for the vision of Brexit being presented by the leader of the UK opposition, Labour's Jeremy Corbyn.
Long derided as a Eurosceptic and unelectable by many European leaders, Mr Corbyn is now being looked to as the man who could crack the Brexit impasse.
His proposal includes keeping the UK in a customs union with the EU, a move that would help ensure no return to a hard Border.
However, British Prime Minister Theresa May has made leaving the customs union a red-line issue.
Mrs May and Mr Varadkar had discussions over a three-course meal last night of salmon, fillet of beef and fruit and cheeses.
The one-on-one between the two leaders came at the request of the British government at the end of a week where Mrs May has travelled to Belfast and Brussels.
Her team were warned in advance by Irish officials that while they were happy to host her, any Brexit discussions could only be interpreted as "talk". Ireland negotiates its position through the EU taskforce led by Michel Barnier.
Mr Varadkar said the meeting was an opportunity "to share our perspectives and for us to listen to each other".
"There is much more that unites us than divides us and time is running short," he said.
Mrs May has still to outline exactly what "alternative arrangements" she wants to the backstop that she already agreed with the EU.
The prime minister is believed to have used last night's meeting to explain her desire for legally binding changes to the Brexit deal. This has been repeatedly ruled out in recent days by Mr Varadkar and a series of key EU leaders.
Mrs May argues that without tangible changes she will not be able to get a deal through the House of Commons.
After a gruelling week of rejections, her position is now being further undermined by EU diplomats who are privately discussing the virtues of proposals being tabled by her rival, Mr Corbyn.
The Labour leader has written to the prime minister with five demands he believes would help get a majority of MPs behind a deal.
Sources believe that if any deal is to get through the UK parliament, it will need cross-party support.
"We are still very much in the party politics perspective. The only hope is that, at some point, the threat of 'no-deal' disruptions would mobilise minds in the UK," said an EU diplomat.
"For now, May is still looking at her own party rather than a nationwide consensus."
The EU says London agreeing to closer ties with the bloc after Brexit would give a clear path to avoiding the backstop ever being required.
Downing Street says it is studying Mr Corbyn's proposals but there "are obviously very considerable points of difference" with the prime minister's approach.
Staying in a customs union with the EU would limit the UK's ability to seal trade deals with other countries on its own. Mr Varadkar described the Corbyn plan as "very interesting".
"I think what Jeremy Corbyn has done is fleshed out a potential future relationship which is one that would mean a future relationship that is very close between the European Union and the United Kingdom, and I think in that regard they are very interesting," he said.
"But ultimately when dealing with these matters I deal with the democratically elected government of the United Kingdom and that is headed by prime minister May."
Speaking in Belfast, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said Mr Corbyn's plan "doesn't have the support of his own party, obviously".
"The way to a majority for a deal in the United Kingdom is with the Conservative Party and the DUP," said Mr Dodds.
"I don't believe Theresa May is going to split her party in order to reach out to a Jeremy Corbyn who is going to find it difficult to bring his own party along and who can't be relied upon to deliver the Brexit which the prime minister believes people voted for."
Meanwhile, former Ukip leader and Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage has announced he will stand as a candidate for a new 'Brexit Party' to contest European Parliament elections if Britain's departure from the EU is stalled.
"The party was founded with my full support and with the intention of fighting the European elections on May 23 if Brexit has not been delivered by then," he said.
Once upon a time I was a living embodiment of Robert Conquests third law, which holds: The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
This was literally true when I was deputy editor of the New Statesman, and the editor, Stuart Weir, couldnt make it for a meeting of the steering committee of Charter 88. Thus I found myself, briefly, in charge of an organisation with which I profoundly disagreed.
This was in 1988, hence the name, which was borrowed from the Czechoslovak democracy movement founded by Vaclav Havel, Charter 77. I thought it was tasteless to compare the whingeing of anti-Thatcherites about the state of British democracy to the demands of dissidents under Soviet totalitarianism.
More than that, though, I disagreed with the central demands of Charter 88, which were for a written constitution and electoral reform. Unfortunately, I failed to use my position of temporary authority to sabotage the campaign. I should have suggested they waste their time by drawing up an entire constitution for the UK, including the DHondt method of highest-averages party-list proportional representation.
Anyway, here we are, 31 years later and the idea of a written constitution refuses to die. The stresses of leaving the EU have prompted another wave of demands for codifying the basic rules of how our democracy works.
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City will finally pick up the trophy after they won the league on 11 May Getty UK news in pictures 22 May 2021 Gary Kenny lifts the Buildbase FA Vase Trophy after Warrington Rylands won the FA Vase Final against Binfield at Wembley Stadium Getty UK news in pictures 21 May 2021 A family buffeted by the wind whilst crossing the the Millennium Bridge in London, with wind and rain forecast to ravage the UK on the first Friday that people have been allowed to meet in large groups outside in England PA UK news in pictures 20 May 2021 Devon And Cornwall Police Demonstrate Their Skills For Policing The G7 Summit Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 May 2021 An employee stands before a costume for the Queen of Hearts by Bob Crowley on display at the Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London PA UK news in pictures 17 May 2021 Passengers prepare to board an easyJet flight to Faro, Portugal, at Gatwick Airport after the ban on international leisure travel for people in England was lifted following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 16 May 2021 Emergency workers at the scene of a suspected gas explosion, in which a young child was killed and two people were seriously injured, on Mallowdale Ave Heysham which caused 2 houses to collapse and badly damaged another PA UK news in pictures 15 May 2021 Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters let off smoke flares, wave flags and carry placards during a demonstration in support of the Palestinian cause as violence escalates in the ongoing conflict with Israel, in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 14 May 2021 Member of staffs tighten screws and paint a Marlin skeleton, before it goes on display at the Natural History Museum in London, as the museum prepares to reopen to the public on 17 May, following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 13 May 2021 A worshipper at the Baitul Futuh Mosque in Mordon, south London, ahead of Eid al-Fitr. 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The Blues won the game 4-1, (and the tie 5-3 on aggregate) sending them through to their first Champions League final AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 1 May 2020 Demonstrators during a march through London during a 'Kill the Bill' protest Angela Christofilou UK news in pictures 30 April 2021 Shoppers queue outside Primark in Belfast as shops reopen and hospitality is able to open outdoors in Northern Ireland where lockdown restrictions have begun to gradually ease PA
The most authoritative, and therefore the most dangerous, of these comes from Vernon Bogdanor, whose book, Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution, was published this week. Professor Bogdanor is famous for having been David Camerons tutor at Oxford, but his authority comes from his wisdom as a constitutional historian, and from the clarity of his analysis of contemporary history. His Gresham College lecture on the Iraq war, for example, was a model of its kind.
So I was disappointed that he appeared to be advocating a codified constitution. (At least he knows better than to call it a written constitution, because our current flexible constitution is written down in different places, and is governed by conventions, which are also written down.)
In fact, his book is cautious in its proposals. He does say that Brexit has injected further uncertainty as to what the British constitution actually is, uncertainty that can only be resolved by a codified British constitution. But a few pages further on in his conclusion he says only that perhaps a codified constitution could replace EU membership as the glue that holds the UK together. And the subtitle of the book promises only to take us towards a British constitution.
Indeed, most of the book is an excellent survey of how joining the European community and now our preparing to leave it have affected the UK. As Bogdanor notes, the UK is unusual in being the only country in the world, apart from New Zealand and Israel, to have no protected constitution, and even Israel has a basic law on human rights.
He rehearses the inconsistencies and contradictions of a nation pieced together out of units of differing sizes, with different forms of devolution and different voting systems. All this is topped with a doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of the people as represented in the House of Commons, which in turn leased some of that sovereignty to the EU and to the European Court of Human Rights, and which also occasionally asks the people to exercise their sovereignty directly in the form of referendums.
And when John Bercow, the speaker, overturns decades of convention to allow a majority in the House of Commons to take control of legislation from the government whose authority rests on a differently constituted majority in the Commons you can see why the tidy-minded reformer thinks it is time to start again with a blank sheet of paper.
Even 31 years ago, though, I thought this was an impulse to be resisted. A codified constitution does not resolve conflict and contradiction, it just moves it somewhere else. Look at the federal government shutdown in the US, produced by the separation of powers in the Constitution. Or the crisis over counting the votes in a few counties in Florida in 2000, decided in the end on party lines by the Supreme Court.
The idea that Brexit would have been easy and consensual if only we had a constitution drawn up by my colleagues at the New Statesman in 1988, proportional representation and all, is a mirage.
The European economy is stuck, and this has nothing to do with Brexit. Try this question: out of the four largest European economies Germany, the UK, France and Italy which grew fastest in the second half of last year?
The answer is almost certainly the UK. We dont have the final figures yet for all the countries, but we know that Italy was in recession, with the economy having shrunk in both quarters. Germany shrank in the third quarter, and economists expect it to have grown very slowly, if at all, in the fourth. France grew by 0.3 per cent in each quarter. And the UK grew by 0.6 per cent in the third quarter and is expected to have grown by about 0.3 per cent in the final three months we get figures this coming week.
This is not a political observation, and in any case figures always get revised so we should not take them too seriously. But economic stagnation is a fact. Last week the European Commission acknowledged the slowdown, cutting its forecast for the eurozone to 1.3 per cent. The official gloss on this is that its temporary. Pierre Moscovici, commissioner for economic and financial affairs, said that the slowdown is set to be more pronounced than expected last autumn, but he expected that growth should rebound gradually in the second half of this year and in 2020.
That may be right, and it is true that the problems of Germany are in fair measure the result of exceptional factors. One was the new car emissions brought in during the autumn, and more generally the switch away from diesel cars. Another was the slowdown in the Chinese market, something that has also hit Jaguar Land Rover. And the incipient trade conflict with America does not help a country that is overly dependent on exports to sustain demand. Germany is running a current account surplus equivalent to 8 per cent of GDP.
But this last number underlines the tension within the European economy. Germany is busy selling to everyone else, but is not importing as much in return. Other weaker European nations, notably Italy, feel under pressure as a result. The new populist Italian government is lashing out, most recently not against Germany but against France. Last week, the Italian deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, met French gilet jaunes protesters in Paris, something likely to annoy Emmanuel Macron, the French president.
Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.
The French response, recalling its ambassador in Rome, is one of those classic diplomatic manoeuvres that countries take when they are cross. It is a long way short of breaking off diplomatic relations, but it is not the sort of thing that happens among supposedly friendly nations. A number of countries, and the EU, withdrew their ambassadors in Moscow after the Salisbury poisonings. Turkey withdrew its ambassador in Israel after deadly clashes on the border between Israel and Gaza last year. But I cannot think of a single instance when an EU member has done this to another EU member.
So what is really happening? This is not really just about Italy and France. It is about the failure, real or perceived, of the European economy to deliver higher living standards for many of its people. Italy has been particularly hard hit, with 20 years of barely any increase in living standards, but many people in France, witness the appeal of the gilets jaunes, feel similarly disadvantaged.
This dissent is not unique to continental Europe. There is plenty of it in the UK, the US indeed right across the developed world. But it has become particularly corrosive across the continent. Unless Europe can demonstrate greater economic vibrancy, the protests will escalate. And this is why the new evidence of stagnation is so alarming to the European high command.
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Looking ahead, it is possible that the muddle through policies will continue, and that there will be some speeding up of activity in the second half of this year. But it is equally possible that the world economy will head into a serious slowdown, and if that happens continental Europe will be particularly vulnerable.
There are some policy levers that Europe can pull. Germany could cut taxes and spend more on infrastructure. Its government is in surplus, so there is the headroom to do that. The European Central Bank could go back to printing money again, buying bonds and injecting cash into the economy that way. But if ultra-easy monetary policy has created only the most modest of recoveries, it is a bit optimistic that think that continuing that policy will help much if there is a wider global downturn.
None of this has much to do with Brexit. It is all to do with the difficulties of pushing through reforms in France and Italy, and the rigidities imposed by having a single currency. There is no magic wand that can fix things. But what is clear is that Europe will, in any case, have a difficult summer ahead, and the rougher the Brexit, the more difficult it will become.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers during protests at the Gaza border on Friday, according to Palestinian health officials.
The teenagers killed on Friday were named as 14-year-old Hassan Shalabi and 18-year-old Hamza Ishtiwi. Officials said the youngest was the son of a niece of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh.
The health ministry said 17 other protesters were wounded.
Israels military said troops had opened fire on Friday in response to explosives and rocks hurled at the border fence.
Palestinians have been staging weekly protests at the border of Gaza, an area controlled by the militant group Hamas, since March last year. They are demanding an end to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the enclave.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
A UN report released in January estimated that 295 Palestinians have been killed and 6,000 wounded by Israeli troops since the border protests began.
A military spokesman said troops had faced off with more than 6,000 Palestinian protestors on Friday, when rocks were thrown and a number of explosive devices exploded on the Gaza side of the fence.
The spokesman said soldiers had used riot dispersal equipment and opened fired in accordance with standard operating procedures.
Gaza border protest on 8 February (Mahmud Hams / AFP / Getty Images)
Israel argues it has no choice but to use deadly force at the protests to defend the frontier, and accuses Hamas of exploiting the protests as a cover to carry out attacks against its soldiers.
Earlier this week, security officials began reinforcing its fence, erecting a galvanized steel barrier 20ft high that will run the length of Gazas perimeter.
Israel and Egypt imposed a security blockade on the enclave after Hamas seized control of it in 2007. The World Bank has warned that the strategy has reduced the local economy to a state of collapse, with half the population of Gaza living below the poverty line.
Additional reporting by agencies
Near the bottom of the island of Hispaniola in southeast Haiti is a forgotten village, cut off from its own country, and slowly emptying as its residents leave for the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Without health services, electricity, or paved roads, Boucan Ferdinand lost its only road to the nearest Haitian town, Bois Negresse, in devastating floods back in 2004.
Some of its residents have left for the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and others cling on to a precarious life. Many have crossed illegally into the more prosperous Dominican Republic.
They do not have access to basic social services, this situation is at the root of the mass migration to the Dominican Republic, says Jean Gilles Viola, mayor of the municipality that governs Boucan Ferdinand and around 20 other villages.
Those who remain live in thatch and stick hovels, collecting rainwater to drink and at constant risk of infectious diseases. Some children, in impeccable blue uniforms, walk to a school in the town of Chapotin a trip that takes an hour and a half over a narrow path, impassable in the rainy season.
In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Show all 20 1 /20 In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Cristera Jusma hands a towel to Enol St Pierre as he gets ready to go to the church in Boucan Ferdinand Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village A boy carries sticks to be used as firewood Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Naida Ogisten walks with her daughter Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village A man, who goes by the name Polo, rests in the kitchen of his house as he gathers with family and friends at the end of the day Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Children attend a class at the Baptist church school Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Children gather to read school books Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village A woman leans on a mattress belonging to a neighbour, who came back after years of living in the Dominican Republic Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Adults take care of a newborn Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village A family eats dinner in a makeshift kitchen outside a house Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village A boy rests on a pile of avocados at the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Children carry a neighbours mattress Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Women use a homemade tool to make holes and sow seeds in a field near Boucan Ferdinand Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Aurana Augustin, known as Timatant, a salesperson, rests on a bed Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Girls and a woman harvest corn in a field Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Believers gather to pray inside a house Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Residents look as Senfleur St Pierre, known as Mello, works on the frame of a new facility for a Protestant church Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Trees at night Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village A man cuts a tree in the fields of Chapotin, with Boucan Ferdinand and the Dominican Republic in the background Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Residents dance at a bar in Boucan Ferdinand Reuters In photos: Haitians abandon forgotten village Anita bathes his son Romenson Exalus at their house Reuters
In the village are two makeshift classrooms, run by the Baptist and Catholic chapels.
This year my children will not go to school, says village farmer Wilber Jean, as his children play nearby. Here you pay a ton. There, pointing across the border, the president pays.
Children collect firewood or graze small flocks of goats and sheep to help their parents. During planting time, many skip school in order to help on the farms, earning less than $2 a day.
In the mornings, the village smells of burning firewood brought by the children as the women make breakfast: sometimes there is pasta, but more likely coffee and a piece of bread. Often there is rice and beans. Meat, a luxury. Haiti, which according to the World Bank is the poorest country in the Americas, has not recovered from a powerful earthquake that hit it in 2010, leaving more than 200,000 dead.
The countryside has been emptying out. Less than half of Haitians live in rural communities compared to 84 percent in 1960, World Bank data shows. Boucan Ferdinand seems to have fallen off the map. Radios mainly capture Dominican signals.
Im tired of looking for stations in Haiti, complains Polo, a 64-year-old man who returned here with his wife and one of his grandchildren after spending more than 40 years in the Dominican Republic.
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Aurana Augustin Timatant sold bread and sweets until a few months ago when the left half of her body was paralyzed. Today, the grandmother spends her days lying in bed.
The nearest Haitian health centre is across a mountain, so she has been crossing the border on a mule to seek care in the Dominican town of Duverge. The local government wants to rebuild the road taken out by the floods but lacks the financial means, the mayor says.
Reuters
A yellow vest demonstrator suffered serious hand injuries after trying to pick up a sting-ball grenade during the 13th weekend of protests in France.
The man lost four fingers when the device exploded in the street during clashes with police in the streets near the National Assembly in the centre of Paris.
Mobile phone footage shared on social media showed a protester crouched in pain as medics tended to his severely-damaged hand.
Police said the grenades, which scatter rubber pellets and emit tear gas, were used to disperse protesters after they tried to storm the parliament building.
At least 31 people were arrested, several cars, a scooter, several rubbish bins and a police van were set on fire and some shop windows were smashed.
Around 4,000 people attended the mostly-peaceful march in Paris, with a further 8,000 people taking part in protests across France, according to the Interior Ministry.
A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests Show all 20 1 /20 A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests Come With Us: a woman in support of the gilets jaunes holds a placard in Place de la Bastille square in Paris Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A man stands by Place de la Republique with a photo of a wounded protester around his neck Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests No to Marine No to Macron! Power to the People: graffiti on a side wall on the way to Place de la Republique Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A woman covered in fake blood stands in memory of those wounded by police violence during the gilets jaunes protests Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A volunteer first aid team marches with the gilets jaunes towards Place de la Bastille Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A woman attaches a placard to her jacket with two photos depicting recent violent clashes with the police Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests Generation Sacrifice Power to the Yellow Vests family: a gilets jaunes protester holds placards in Place de la Bastille Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A gilets jaunes protester covers his eye with a bandage in support of Jerome Rodrigues, who was hit in the eye by police and severely wounded Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A woman holds a placard in support of the gilets jaunes march and the right to protest freely Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A man in Place de la Bastille holds a placard in memory of those killed during the gilets jaunes demonstrations. The movement launched protests on 17 November 2018 against rising fuel prices and a planned fuel tax Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A man stands in Place de la Republique with a bandage covering his eye calling for an end to the use of LBD flashballs by the police Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests Who will protect us from the police?: a banner hangs near Place de la Republique Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A gilets jaunes protester marches with a banner calling for an end to the use of flash balls by the police Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A placard in Place de la Bastille that reads: What makes us angry? Contempt, lies, injustice and violence Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests Without a way, without a voice, without a roof, without a law, without him: A gilets jaunes protester holds his placard in Place de la Bastille Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A protester wears a yellow vest with the dates of gilets jaunes marches written on the back Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests Stop the weapons that mutilate: a gilets jaunes protester holds a placard denouncing police violence Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests Crowds gather in Place de la Republique for the gilets jaunes ACT XII Great March of the Wounded Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A woman holds a placard in support of the change the gilets jaunes are fighting for Angela Christofilou A first-hand look inside the gilets jaunes protests A man marches towards Place de la Republique holding a placard against the use of grenades by the police at protests Angela Christofilou
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner reacted to the violence by posting on Twitter the words Indignation and disgust above a picture of a burning van belonging to the security forces.
Every day the military ... protects our compatriots from the risk of terrorism. These attacks are intolerable, Mr Castaner added.
The yellow vest, or gilets jaunes, demonstrations began in mid-November as a protest over fuel taxes but have since widened into a general revolt against Emmanuel Macron and politicians in general.
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Were not children, were adults, said Hugues Salone, a computer engineer from Paris who joined the protests. We really want to assert our choices, and not the choices of the politicians who do not live up to them.
The protests took place hours after an arson attack on home of Richard Ferrand, president of the National Assembly and a close ally of Mr Macron.
Mr Ferrand posted pictures of his burnt living room on Twitter and said police found a homemade torch at the scene. Nothing justifies intimidation, nothing justifies violence and degradation, he added in a statement.
The French president also condemned the intimidations and violence towards an elected official of the Republic.
Protests also took place in Latvia, where activists staged a demonstration in front of the French embassy in Riga.
The crowd waved Latvias red-and-white flag and shouted: The French have woken up, while Latvians remain asleep.
Additional reporting by Reuters and Associated Press
Ukraines democracy might be lacking in many important regards but on the participative principle, it excels in the extreme.
On Friday, Kievs Central Elections Commission kicked off the presidential campaign by announcing it had registered a record 44 candidates for the 31 March vote. This was over twice the number that took part in the last elections in 2014, and left many asking where the exactly the hopefuls had appeared from.
Some of the names were familiar, if not entirely typical presidential candidates.
Following the long-time favourites ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and current president Petro Poroshenko came the names of a comedian (Vladimir Zelensky), former spook (Valentyn Nalyvaichenko), a taxman once accused of embezzlement (Roman Nasirov), and a blogger currently under investigation in connection with a sex scandal (Volodymyr Petrov). As Petrov boasted on Facebook, he will make history as the first candidate to run a campaign while under house arrest.
But about a dozen of the names had appeared out of nowhere and seemed to be tasked with fake campaigns in favour of other candidates.
Yulia Tymoshenko was particularly irked at the inclusion of two names on the list Yuri Tymoshenko and Yulia Litvinenko which will likely confuse the more elderly sections of her electorate. Tymoshenko immediately accused President Poroshenko of fraud and demanded the candidates be removed.
With two months to go before election day, polls fail to show a clear leader. No candidate has passed 20 per cent of decided voters, let alone the 50 per cent required to avoid a second round run-off.
Yulia Tymoshenko out on the campaign trail (EPA)
But the one man who has consistently grown in popularity is the joker of the pack, Vladimir Zelensky.
A number of polls now suggest the comedian has overtaken Tymoshenko to occupy pole position. Depending on the poll, 14-16 per cent of the active electorate say they will now vote for him. That rating has shot up by 5 per cent in the last month, with much of the increase coming at the expense of rock-star Vladislav Vakarchuk, who withdrew from the contest without ever declaring.
Zelenskys clever campaign is based on engaging disaffected voters and looks to take advantage of the kinds of swings that brought Donald Trump and Brexit home.
Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Show all 32 1 /32 Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Activists of opposition parties burn flares during a rally demanding to break an agreement with Russia on the use of the Azov Sea and the Kerch Strait, in front of the parliament building in Kiev Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Volunteers with the right-wing paramilitary Azov National Corps light flares during a rally on the snowy streets in front of the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev after Russia seized two of their armored artillery vessels and a tug boat in the Black Sea AP Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Ukrainian Nationalists demand to break the diplomatic relations with Russia and nationalization of Russian property in Ukraine EPA Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Ukrainian activists burn flares during their rally in front of Russian Consulate in Kharkiv EPA Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Seized Ukrainian ships, small armoured artillery ships and a tug boat, are seen anchored in a port of Kerch Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 AP Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 The President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, announced, on 25 November, at a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council that they will introduce martial law in Ukraine for a period of 60 days and appeal to the Parliament to consider the move Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Russia seized two small-sized 'Berdiansk' and 'Nikopol' armored artillery boats. The 'Yany Kapu' tugboat has forcibly been stopped Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Children from an orphanage volunteer to help the city defenders strengthen trenches on Ukraine's Army positions near the village of Rybatske 25 km from Mariupol AP Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 AP Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Policemen guard at Russian consulate during a protest action in the Black Sea Ukrainian city of Odessa AFP/Getty Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 EPA Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 AFP/Getty Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 With relations still raw after Russias annexation of Crimea and its backing for a pro-Moscow insurgency in eastern Ukraine, the capture of three Ukrainian naval vessels risks pushing the two countries towards a wider conflict. Graphic explains how the naval incident unfolded on a map Graphic News Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Activists of far-right parties burn flares in front of the parliament building in Kiev during a rally to support the Ukrainian navy Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 A Ukraine army APC moves toward on position at an undisclosed location in eastern Ukraine AP Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Ukrainian Nationalists sign a banner with a slogan reading like 'Not retreat and not surrendering!' EPA Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 AFP/Getty Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Activists glue Ukrainian flag on the fence of Russian consulate AFP/Getty Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 A volunteer with the right-wing paramilitary Azov National Corps during a rally on the snowy streets in front of the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev AP Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 AP Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 EPA Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 A National Guard serviceman extinguishes a torch thrown by a protester during a rally against the seizure by Russian special forces of three of the Ukrainian navy ships Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 A protester throws a smoke grenade during a rally in front of the embassy of Russia in Kiev AP Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Protestors set up paper ships on the tires during their rally near of Russian embassy building in Kiev EPA Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 A man extinguishes a burning car of the embassy of Russia Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 Paper boats are seen placed during a protest Reuters Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 EPA Protests break out after Russia seize Ukraine warships in 2018 EPA
His major advantage is that people already know him. His Kvartal 95 comedy collective are a household name in Ukraine. Hes also well remembered for a role in a long-running serial called Servants of the People, where, appropriately enough, he plays a secondary school teacher whose battle against government corruption propels him to run for the presidency.
And the TV image of an outsider, breaking into politics, is fuelling his popularity.
This myth that he can come from the people to become president is very strong, says the independent expert Vladimir Fesenko. Its completely illusionary, and doesnt prepare him for the government, but is a problem for the old guard standing against him.
Petro Poroshenko attends an election rally in Kiev (Reuters)
Despite his lack of political experience, Mr Zelensky has shown solid political intuition, focusing on positive themes of dreams and national renewal. This plays in sharp contrast with the aggressive patriotic, anti-Tymoshenko positions of Poroshenko, and equally aggressive populist, anti-Poroshenko positions of Tymoshenko.
According to veteran poll watcher Volodymyr Paniotto, director of the International Institute of Sociology in Kiev, only three candidates Zelensky, Tymoshenko and Poroshenko stand a chance of ending up in a second-round runoff. At this stage of the campaign, there is little to distinguish between the levels of their support, he adds.
But much of Zelenskys potential electorate is untested. On the one hand, he is best placed to benefit from a wave of distrust in politics and politicians. But his young following is usually the least likely to vote. He is also the least scrutinised of the three, and may well run into problems as negative campaigning steps up in the weeks to come.
One known weakness is his closeness to the controversial oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who is a business partner. Already, opponents are stepping up attacks on this front.
Many anticipate the elections will be both among the most competitive and contested in recent memory.
Already allegations of vote rigging and criminality abound. This week, Yulia Tymoshenko was among several leading candidates to sign a memorandum openly criticising the tactics of President Poroshenkos team, who, they alleged, were preparing mass falsifications and electoral manipulation.
The disgraced former president Viktor Yanukovych also made a surprise intervention from exile in Moscow, claiming Petro Poroshenko was unable to win honestly.
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While the current president is not out of the race, and has improved his poll standing significantly in recent weeks, he does have an uphill battle on his hands. Even if he manages to break through to the second round, he has to improve on poor net voting intentions to win outright.
On the basis of current polling, his anti-rating, which will likely transfer to an opponent in a second round, is the highest of all the leading candidates. Nearly 50 per cent say they will never vote for him. Tymoshenko fares only slightly better on this marker at around 30 per cent.
And it is this wariness with the old guard is that plays most in Zelenskys favour, says expert Fesenko, who suggests the comedians chances of taking the presidency may now be as high as 25 per cent.
If Zelensky can get through to the second round, he has every chance of winning, he says.
"The presidential office is ready for the joke candidate even if he isnt quite ready for the presidential office.
A political party in Thailand has sworn its loyalty to the king, a day after it stunned the nation by nominating the monarchs sister as its candidate for prime minister.
King Maha Vajiralongkorn called the decision by the Thai Raksa Chart Party to select Princess Ubolratana Mahidol as a candidate highly inappropriate, invalidating her selection in a special decree issued late on Friday.
Thai Raksa Chart issued a statement saying the party loyally accepts the kings order and expresses gratitude to Ms Ubolratana for her kindness towards the party.
Ms Ubolratana, who is active on Instagram, did not directly mention the kings order in a message on Saturday. She merely thanked supporters for their encouragement and insisted on her desire to see the country move forward.
Thailands 24 March election will be the countrys first since a 2014 military coup put in place after a junta determined to end the influence of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, whose allies have won every national election since 2001.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. 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Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. 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Not only did the princesss entry into the election campaign break with a tradition forbidding the monarchy from direct involvement in politics, but her alliance with a Thaksin-backed party came as an additional surprise.
Even though she relinquished her title according to royal laws ... she still retains her status and position as a member of the Chakri dynasty, stated the kings order.
Bringing high-ranking royal family members to be involved in the political system, in any way, is an act that is against the ancient royal protocol and national custom and culture, and is seen as a highly inappropriate act.
Party officials submit the princess's candidancy (EPA)
Ms Ubolratanas candidacy would have set her up against junta leader and current prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the preferred choice for premier of the pro-royalist military.
Mr Thaksin was ousted by the military in a 2006 coup, and the countrys establishment has spent more than a decade trying to neuter his political machine through court rulings and changes to the constitution. Just eight years after ousting Mr Thaksin, the military stepped in again to remove his sisters government in 2014.
Mr Thaksin remains hugely popular with the countrys rural majority, who were drawn to his populist policies such as universal health care and rice subsidies. His backers were willing to overlook accusations that he was enriching himself while in office.
But Mr Thaksins popularity made the Bangkok-based establishment uneasy and some saw his popularity as a threat to the monarchy itself.
Going into exile in 2008 to avoid serving prison time on a conflict of interest conviction, he is generally believed to have been involved in setting up Ms Ubolratanas candidacy.
It shook the countrys royalists, who have long seen their campaign against Mr Thaksin as a way to protect the monarchy.
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It was assumed that Ms Ubolratana, thought to be close to her brother, had at least received his approval for her action, but the royal familys private affairs are almost never leaked.
King Vajiralongkorns order stressed that the monarch and those around him stay above politics.
It also directly addressed the point that his sister was a member of the royal family even though her formal royal titles had been lifted decades ago when she married a US citizen.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
A team of Australian researchers have called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers after a study claimed organs were unethically harvested from Chinese prisoners.
According to the study, published by the journal BMJ Open, Chinese scientists may not have followed international ethics rules over donor consent for organ transplants when carrying out the experiments using hearts, lungs or livers taken from dead prisoners.
Wendy Rogers, from Macquarie University in Sydney, said there was no real pressure from research leaders on China to be more transparent.
Everyone seems to say, Its not our job. The worlds silence on this barbaric issue must stop, she told The Guardian.
A 2016 report by former Canadian lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights lawyer David Matas, and journalist Ethan Gutmann found a massive discrepancy between official figures for the number of transplants carried out and the number of transplants reported by hospitals.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
While the Chinese government claims 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report claimed the shortfall is made up by secretly executed prisoners of conscience those whose crimes are having political or religious views that clash with Chinese authorities.
The scientific community has strict standards for organ transplant research but China is one of the few countries where the use of prisoners' organs has been government sanctioned.
The new study looked at transplant research experiments carried out from January 2000 until April 2017. They identified 445 studies involving 85,477 transplants.
A large body of unethical research now exists, raising issues of complicity and moral hazard to the extent that the transplant community uses and benefits from the results of this research, the researchers write in the study.
We call for a retraction of this literature pending investigation of the individual papers.
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This is the first study to track the progress of the transplant community in vetting unethical research.
In 2017, medical journal Liver International retracted a paper by Chinese transplant surgeons after the source of organs used in their research was queried by a group of academics.
While China vowed to stop using organs from executed prisoners in 2015, no new law or regulation has been passed banning the practice.
Donald Trumps daughter, who serves as a senior adviser in the White House, denied on Friday that her father was involved in issuing security clearances for her or her husband, Jared Kushner.
Ivanka Trump made the remarks during an interview with ABC News host Abby Huntsman in an interview for The View.
There were anonymous leaks about there being issues, Ms Trump said. But the president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husbands clearance, zero.
Asked what had delayed her security clearance, as well as the clearance for Mr Kushner, Ms Trump replied, There werent any, other than a backlog that exists of close to a million clearances across government.
Her comments marked the first time that she has spoken about the clearance issue that dogged both her and her husband for the first year of the administration. She described the delays which lasted into May 2018 as part of a normal course of business.
This isnt new, Ms Trump said. This was happening under the Obama administration, the Clinton administration.
Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specialises in security clearances, said Ms Trump was citing a backlog that does not apply to her or her husband, given their special status as presidential family members and the ability of the White House to ask for expedited clearances for high-ranking advisers.
Her comment is not as black and white as she portends it to be, Mr Zaid said.
She and Mr Kushner, who has a broad portfolio including Middle East policy, received clearances last year, after what multiple officials within government described as delays caused by concerns that the FBI and the CIA flagged about their foreign contacts and private business.
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The questions surrounding their clearances lingered for many months. But when Kushner received a clearance in 2018, his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, described it as a normal process.
With respect to the news about his clearances, as we stated before, his application was properly submitted, reviewed by numerous career officials and underwent the normal process, Lowell said at the time. Having completed all of these processes, hes looking forward to continuing to do the work the president has asked him to do.
A report by NBC recently revealed that career White House security specialists had rejected Kushners clearance twice but were overruled by their supervisor. A senior administration official confirmed that account to The New York Times.
In a recent interview with The Times, Donald Trump said he had no role in getting officials to give his son-in-law a clearance.
The New York Times
A fourth man was found guilty Friday of brutally attacking a 20-year-old African-American man in a city parking garage during the deadly "Unite the Right" white nationalist rally in 2017.
Tyler Watkins Davis, 50, of Middleburg, Florida, once a member of the white nationalist group the League of the South, entered an Alford plea in Charlottesville Circuit Court on a malicious wounding charge. The Alford plea acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him in the assault on DeAndre Harris, a former special education instructional assistant.
During Friday's hearing, prosecutors told Judge Richard Moore that Davis was seen on video whacking Mr Harris in the head with a wooden stick - a tyre thumper. The injury gave Mr Harris such a large laceration on his head that it required eight staples.
Davis, through his attorney, told The Washington Post after the hearing that he has renounced white nationalism.
In the 18 months since the August 2017 rally, Albemarle County and Charlottesville, Virginia, prosecutors have secured convictions and harsh sentences for seven of the rally's most high-profile criminal defendants. Four of the seven include the men who pummeled and kicked Mr Harris in the Market Street parking garage. Mr Harris suffered a spinal injury in addition to the head wound.
Video of the garage attack - and of Mr Harris' bloodied head - sped across the internet, ultimately helping online sleuths, led by journalist Shaun King, to identify the assailants. The three others are: Jacob Goodwin, 24, a white nationalist from Arkansas who received an eight-year sentence; Alex Michael Ramos, of Georgia, who got six years; and Daniel Borden, of Ohio, who is serving a nearly four-year sentence.
They argued they were acting in self-defense. Because they'd seen Mr Harris himself smack a white nationalist in the head with a heavy flashlight moments earlier, the white nationalists then claimed he was trying to attack them. But video evidence showed that by the time Mr Harris was fully in the garage, he was scrambling on the floor and the assailants - armed with a shield, a wooden board or a stick - were standing over him in a full-scale attack.
Local prosecutors have also won convictions against: James A. Fields, an avowed neo-Nazi, sentenced in December to life in prison for ramming his car into a group of protesters, killing 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer; Richard Preston, of Maryland, a self-identified Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard, given four years in prison for firing his gun in the direction of a counterprotester who had shot fire from a makeshift flamethrower; and Christopher Cantwell, known as "the Crying Nazi," who pleaded guilty in July to assault and battery for pepper-spraying two counterprotesters the night before the rally during a march near the University of Virginia rotunda. Cantwell, who appeared in a viral Vice documentary, was barred from Virginia for five years.
Among the four men arrested for beating Mr Harris at the parking garage, Davis has had the most unusual legal path. Despite objections from Charlottesville prosecutors, he was the only one who was eventually allowed to go free on bail as he awaited trial, which had been scheduled for next week.
During Friday's hearing, Davis was allowed to go free again and return to his Florida home, though he asked to be put on home electronic monitoring. He will be sentenced 27 August. One of his attorneys, Matthew Engle, told Moore that his client's Alford plea does not mean he contests the fact he hit Mr Harris in the head with the tyre thumper.
Mr Engle said Davis believes the malicious wounding charge, which carries a sentencing range of five to 20 years, is too severe and doesn't reflect his actions. Like Goodwin, Borden and Ramos, Davis entered the fight believing Mr Harris posed a threat, Mr Engle said. But unlike the other three men, Davis withdrew from the altercation once he hit Mr Harris, believing "his perceived danger had been neutralised," Mr Engle told the judge.
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Among the four convicted garage assailants, Davis may get the lightest sentence. Mr Engle said Davis' sentencing guidelines range from 18 months to a little more than four years.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Davis was a charter member of a chapter within the Florida League of the South. The law center describes the League of the South as a "neo-confederate" organization that wants to establish "a white, Christian ethnostate in the southeastern U.S." Shortly after his arrest, according to the law center, a high-ranking league official went on Gab, a social media platform popular among white supremacists, and declared, "This is our boy. He and his family will need our help."
Davis declined to comment after the hearing, but he released a short statement through Mr Engle declaring he is no longer a member of the League of the South and no longer supports the white nationalist movement.
Prosecutor Nina-Alice Antony said more men are wanted in the garage attack whom authorities have so far been unable to identify or find.
The Washington Post
"I would say it was a productive set of discussions over the last few days, and our team engaged on a number of areas of mutual interest, and we've agreed to meet again," Biegun said. "So I think this is a constructive place to be especially in advance of the president's second summit with Chairman Kim."
US officials are working to protect a herd of female northern elephant seals who took over a major tourist destination in California and gave birth to their pups during the federal government shutdown.
The animals hauled out over a stretch of the popular Drakes Beach and a nearby a visitor centre at the Point Reyes National Seashore, where female seals are viewed by tourists as they congregate during the winter months and give birth to pups every year, according to an active alert posted on the National Park Service (NPS) website.
Nearly 50 to 60 seals were reportedly left unwatched by NPS officials amid the shutdown the longest of its kind in US history which allowed the herd to take over areas where tourists typically view the pregnant animals from a safe distance.
The federal employees probably would have tried to move the seals further away from the parking area had the shutdown not occurred, John DellOsso, the chief of interpretation and resource education at Point Reyes National Seashore, said in a statement to Motherboard.
The site remained accessible until the seals began occupying sections of the beach near the Kenneth C Patrick Visitor Centre. The Drakes Beach road and surrounding area has since been reopened on weekends as the National Park Service determines how best to provide visitors opportunities to view the seals at Drakes Beach in such a way as to not disturb the seals, according to the alert.
Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Federal workers and contractors rally against the partial federal government shutdown Getty Images Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures The US Capitol on the first morning of a partial government shutdown in Washington EPA Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Federal workers and contractors rally against the partial federal government shutdown Getty Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures President Trump speaks with children who called the North American Aerospace Defense Command Santa tracker in the State Dining Room of the White House. He earlier in the day, tweeted that he was 'all alone in the White House' waiting for Democrats to make a deal on border security EPA Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Furloughed federal workers pick up free food at a pop-up store of Kraft Heinz Getty Images Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Hundreds of federal workers and contractors rally against the partial federal government shutdown Getty Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Reuters Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures From left, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Dick Durbin and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi walk to speak to reporters after meeting with President Donald Trump about border security in the Situation Room of the White House. Trump declared he could keep parts of the government shut down for "months or even years" as he and Democratic leaders failed in a second closed-door meeting to resolve his demand for billions of dollars for a border wall with Mexico Evan Vucci AP Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Federal workers and contractors rally against the partial federal government shutdown Getty Images Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures A sign alerts visitors to the closure of the National Archives on the fifth day of a partial government shutdown EPA Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Hundreds of federal workers and contractors rally against the partial federal government shutdown Getty Images Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Visitors read signs announcing the closure of the White House Visitor Center EPA Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures President Donald Trump speaks during a round-table discussion on border security and safe communities with State, local, and community leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House Getty Images Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures A sign alerts visitors to the closure of the White House Visitor Center on the first day of a partial government shutdown EPA Trump shuts down US government over Mexico border wall in pictures Furloughed federal workers show their IDs for entering a pop-up store of Kraft Heinz Getty Images
Mr DellOsso described methods the National Park Service has employed in past years to wrangle the pregnant seals to portions of the landmark site without harming the animals in the statement.
This would be done by a standard practice of using tarps and waving them at the seals, The official said.
Recommended Trump caves on border wall demand to reopen US government
The seals would typically turn around and go further down the beach upon seeing the tarps, according to Mr DellOsso.
Northern elephant seals are considered the largest true seal in the Northern Hemisphere by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. They typically congregate near a point on the peninsula popular with tourists who stop and take photos of the herds from a parking area, known as Chimney Rock.
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Officials are now reportedly considering guided tours through the beach now that the seals have seemingly taken over major portions.
Nearly 35 pups were birthed since the seals began congregating this winter, according to SF Gate.
Mining giants are threatening to wipe out a newly discovered hummingbird, according to campaigners.
The blue-throated hillstar, which was discovered last year on mountaintops in southern Ecuador, is already critically endangered.
But mining corporations have gained the rights to move in on its habitat to extract metals, which experts say would be disastrous for the bird and other wildlife.
Scientists estimate there are only between 250 and 750 hillstars, which grow up to 5in long. They are unusual among hummingbirds because they are suited to the low temperatures of the Andes, the only place in the world where they live.
The metal-rich landscapes of the South American country have been increasingly targeted for industrial mining. Swathes of tropical forests have been cleared to allow copper, gold and lead to be extracted from large open pits.
If the mining companies take up their new permits, experts fear it will mean almost certain extinction for the hillstar.
Ecuador's national mining agency, Arcom, has been contacted for comment.
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World Land Trust is trying to raise 30,000 to put the 70,000-acre habitat under government protection and prevent mining.
The project also aims to provide clean water for at least 470,000 Ecuadorian people by extending a proposed water protection area.
Recommended 17 die in Ecuador rehab blaze started by patients trying to escape
This is a unique opportunity to save a critically endangered species from extinction, said Richard Cuthbert, head of conservation at the trust.
For every habitat we lose, we eliminate a stronghold for numerous plant and animal species. For species such as the blue-throated hillstar, with such a small range, this can mean extinction.
The fact that we are continuing to discover new species in habitats facing threats like mining shows we may not even be aware of the ecological damage these activities cause.
As well as the hillstar, a new species of frog, the tik tik rain frog, was also discovered last year in ther area, which is home to spectacled bears, mountain tapirs and the Andean condor.
Officials are protesitng after the Arizona healthcare facility where an incapacitated patient was raped and impregnated announced its intention to close its 60-bed operation.
The closure of Hacienda HealthCare was announced after the non-profits board of directors considered if keeping the facility open was sustainable, and just days after the nurse charged with the rape pleaded not guilty in court.
The board has come to understand that it is simply not sustainable to continue to operate our Intermediate Care Facility for the Intellectually Disabled, the company said in a statement.
The facility has been embroiled in controversy since thee woman gave birth unexpectedly in December. Officials then conducted an investigation that involved testing the DNA of men who work at the facility and had access to the woman, with nurse Nathan Sutherland allegedly matching with the childs DNA.
The decision to close the facility was quickly criticised by state officials, including governor Doug Ducey, who called the decision concerning because state oversight officials had been working to ensure patient safety since the incident came to light.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
For some patients at the facility, this is the only home they know or remember, Patric Ptak, a spokesman for Mr Ducey, said in a statement to The Arizona Republic. Forcing this medically fragile community to move should be a last resort. Everyones first priority should be protecting their health and safety.
The facility said the board of directors voted to close down the operation last Friday.
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The vote to close the facility now brings into question where those patients left behind in the facility might go, and it is not clear that the other state-run operations have the capacity to care for the patients who are facing unclear futures. The most recent federal tally listed 39 patients in the facility.
The woman who gave birth to the child in December was a 29-year-old incapacitated patient, who needed maximum level of care, according to court records.
Mr Sutherland was one of her healthcare providers, and was charged last month with one count of vulnerable adult abuse, and another of sexual assault.
Authorities have launched a manhunt for a suspect who stole a police cruiser moments after being revived from an apparent overdose.
Police were responding to reports of a man having overdosed at a home in Columbus, Ohio, on Friday at about 8:45am when they found Jeremy Davis.
Officers administered Narcan, a nasal spray that helps to reverse opioid overdoses, and successfully revived the 25-year-old.
Mr Davis was still being examined by paramedics inside an ambulance near the house where he was found on East Gates Street, located in the citys South Side, when he reportedly jumped out of the vehicle and into an police cruiser.
The cruiser was unattended and running when Mr Davis entered it and drove away from the scene, the Columbus Dispatch reported on Friday. He crashed nearly two miles away near East Woodrow Avenue and South Pearl Street, according to the newspaper.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
After crashing the cruiser, Mr Davis took off from the wreck by foot, police said.
The Columbus Division of Polices Facebook account shared a mugshot photo of Mr Davis, who is seen with multiple neck and face tattoos as well as facial hair.
Calls to the Columbus Ohio Police Department were not immediately returned.
Officers were reviewing whether he had any outstanding arrest warrants when he ran out of the ambulance.
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Authorities have urged the local community to call 911 with any information about Mr Davis and his whereabouts.
A senior figure in a right-wing organisation which has received support from several Conservative MPs has been criticised for recent comments about Adolf Hitler.
Candace Owens, a prominent conservative pundit and director of communications at Turning Point USA, defended the political ideology of nationalism by claiming Nazi Germanys wartime leader wanted "globalism".
I actually dont have any problems at all with the word nationalism, the 29-year-old told an audience in London in December. "I think that the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism.
Globalism is what I don't want. Whenever we say 'nationalism,' the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. You know, he was a national socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine."
The problem is that he wanted he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German, everybody to look a different way. That's not, to me, that's not nationalism. In thinking about how we could go bad down the line, I don't really have an issue with nationalism. I really don't. I think that it's OK."
The far-right politicians winning power across Europe Show all 7 1 /7 The far-right politicians winning power across Europe The far-right politicians winning power across Europe Viktor Orban Hungary, Fidesz The Prime Minister of Hungary has threatened to shut down NGOs that help refugees; run a state backed hate campaign against George Soros and removed constitutional checks and balances. He said: 'We have replaced a shipwrecked liberal democracy with a 21st century Christian democracy' Reuters The far-right politicians winning power across Europe Matteo Salvini Italy, Lega The leader of Italys junior governing party has pledged to deport 500,000 irregular migrants; stated joining the euro was a mistake and wants to end sanctions against Russia. He said: 'The only antidote to racism is to control, regulate and limit immigration' AFP/Getty The far-right politicians winning power across Europe Heinz-Christian Strache Austria, FPO The deputy prime minister of Austria wants to drive Islam out of public life in Austria; has threatening mosque closures and wants to end sanctions against Russia. He said: 'Let us put an end to this policy of Islamisation as soon as possible' AFP/Getty The far-right politicians winning power across Europe Marine Le Pen France, Front National The runner-up in the French presidential election wants policies to favour native French; has stated she would hold an EU referendum and wants to deport irregular migrants. She said: 'Im not offended when I hear President Donald Trump say "America first". In fact, I want America first for the American people, I want Britain first for the British people and I want France first for the French people' AP The far-right politicians winning power across Europe Janez Jansa Slovenia, Slovenian Democratic Party The leader of Slovenias largest party says the country is run by a secretive former communist cabal; has appointed political allies to press agencies and was sent to prison for alleged corruption which was later overturned by the Constitutional Court. He said: 'Our party puts Slovenia, Slovenians first' Reuters The far-right politicians winning power across Europe Alexander Gauland Germany, AfD The leader of the first far-right party in the Bundestag in decades says Islam is not a part of Germany; wants a ban on public Islamic symbols and wants to leave the euro. He said: 'A German or English football team hasnt been German or English in the classical sense for a long time' Alamy The far-right politicians winning power across Europe Jarosaw Kaczynski Poland, Law and Justice The chairman of Polands governing party says migrants spread infectious diseases; wants to ban gay people from being teachers and has sought to implement constitutional changes to give government more power over courts. He said: 'It is absolutely clear a homosexual should not be a teacher' Kacper Pempel/Reuters
A video of Ms Owens comments was shared on Twitter on Friday and quickly condemned by a number of high-profile figures.
Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, said ignorance about Hitlers evil regime must always be confronted".
That burden should not fall on Holocaust survivors, she said on Twitter. There was nothing, using [Ms Owens] own words, great about the Third Reich before it began annexing & invading its neighbors.
Jewish historian David Perry wrote: I'd like to assure you that the problem with Hitler wasn't that he wanted to conquer other places, but that he wanted to kill Jews, disabled folks, Roma, Communists, and others.
Responding to criticism, Ms Owens said she was attempting to address the really wrong identification of Hitler with nationalism.
He wasnt a nationalist, he was a homicidal, psychotic, maniac who was bent on world domination outside the confines of Germany, she said on social media platform Periscope.
Ms Owens' initial comments were during an event to promote Turning Point UK, an offshoot of its American cousin, which has links to Donald Trumps administration and became notorious for creating a watchlist of leftist university professors that has drawn comparisons with McCarthyism.
Claiming to be the biggest and most far-reaching youth organisation in America, it says it espouses freedom, free markets and limited government and runs events sponsored by the National Rifle Association.
It has repeatedly denied racism accusations by former staff, and ejected several members following scandals over racial slurs.
Ben Shapiro makes bizarre Hitler comments at pro-life march
But a report by counter-extremism group Hope Not Hate said Turning Point USA was mainstreaming extreme views, including the white genocide conspiracy theory and Islamophobia.
Sharing a Turning Point recruitment video, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg wrote: People of all ages make up their own minds. The left has no monopoly on the young.
Former international development secretary Priti Patel said the group represented a new generation of conservative values and fellow Tory MP Chris Green wrote: Choose your side and Im with Turning Point UK.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP said it was great to hear the voices of young voters with right-wing views finding a new outlet and her fellow Conservative MP Steve Baker claimed Turning Point UK could be huge.
A Brazilian Catholic archbishop has banned priests in his district from being alone with children.
Manoel Delson, archbishop of the northeastern state of Paraiba, signed the decree on Wednesday following a court order forcing the archdiocese to pay almost 2.5m in compensation over the sexual exploitation of minors.
Mr Delsons decree prohibits priests from being in the company of children and vulnerable adults unaccompanied by their parents or guardians.
It also states they are not allowed to offer parish accommodation to minors, while spiritual care must be done in confessionals or locations that ensure safety and visibility, according to Brazilian newspaper Globo.
The decree was signed the same day Pope Francis for the first time admitted the Catholic Church has an ongoing problem with priests and even bishops who sexually abuse nuns.
Speaking to reporters, he said some nuns had been used as sex slaves, and more needed to be done within the Church to prevent it.
It is true ... there have been priests and even bishops who have done this. I think it is still going on because something does not stop just because you have become aware of it, he said, according to the Associated Press.
We have been working on this for a long time. We have suspended some priests because of this.
Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Show all 55 1 /55 Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis celebrates the Holy Mass at the Phoenix Park, in Dublin AP Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis arrives at Phoenix Park for a Papal Mass of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin EPA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures A vigil takes place at the site of the mass grave which contained the remains of 796 named babies from the Bon Secours Mother and Baby home in Tuam. The vigil coincides with the Phoenix park mass which is taking place in Dublin held by Pope Francis. Excavations at the site in 2017 revealed underground structures which held babies bodies with ages ranging from 35 weeks to three years old with most of the dead buried in the 1950s when the facility was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic religious order of nuns who received unmarried pregnant women to give birth Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures An aerial view of the crowd at Phoenix Park Getty Images Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Children queue for communion during Pope Francis' closing Mass PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures The Stand4Truth rally gathers outside a former Magdalene laundry in Dublin as part of the demonstrations against clerical sex abuse PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis leads the Holy Mass at Phoenix Park AFP/Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis arrives to celebrate the Holy Mass at the Phoenix Park AP Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures The names of the victims are read out as a vigil takes place at the site of the mass grave which contained the remains of 796 named babies from the Bon Secours Mother and Baby home Getty Images Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis leads the Holy Mass at Phoenix Park AFP/Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures A member of the clergy carries a bowl of incense PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures AP Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures A vigil takes place at the site of the mass grave which contained the remains of 796 named babies Getty Images Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Members of the public pray as they watch Pope Francis deliver a Papal Mass of the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park EPA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis attends the closing Mass at the World Meeting of Families at Phoenix Park in Dublin PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis passes by a banner of a protester as he leaves St Mary's Pro-Cathedral AP Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis speaks during his visit to the Capuchin Day Centre for Homeless in Dublin AP Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis waves to the waiting crowds on Christchurch PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis waves to the waiting crowds on College Green PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Members of the public wave at Pope Francis as he travels through the city Getty Images Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis laughs as he leaves St Mary's Pro Cathedral during his visit to Dublin Reuters Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Two boys wave flags after climbing a post as they wait for Pope Francis Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pairs of baby shoes are hung from black ribbons on Gardiner Street in Dublin in memory of the children who died at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Crowds on O'Connell Street PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures WMOF2018/Maxwell Photography/Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis memorabilia on sale on O'Connell Street PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis arrives at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral during his visit to Ireland to attend the 2018 World Meeting of Families AFP/Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis waves to the waiting crowds on O'Connell Street PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis addresses the congragation at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral AFP/Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Stephen O'Brien selling bottles of holy water from the St Mary's Pro Cathedral PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis prays inside St Mary's Pro Cathedral Reuters Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures A man waves a rainbow flag behind a model of a pope which stands in the window above a bar Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures People hold a banner against Pope Francis on the way to St Mary's Pro-Cathedral AP Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Nuns wait by the side of the road for Pope Francis Reuters Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures A model of a pope is placed in the window above a bar as crowds wait for Pope Francis to travel through the city Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Crowds on O'Connell Street, Dublin waiting to see Pope Francis as he travels in the Popemobile PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis waves to wellwishers as he arrives at Dublin Airport Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures His visit, the first by a Pope since John Paul II's in 1979 is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of Catholics to a series of events in Dublin and Knock PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis talks to journalists aboard a plane flying from Fiumicino aiport to Dublin AFP/Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures LGBT protestors from Dublin Pride and We Are Church with flags and umbrellas on Ha'Penny Bridge, Dublin to remember the victims of clerical sex abuse ahead of the start of the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis disembarks from the aircraft as he arrives at Dublin Airport Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Woman wait for Pope Francis to drive past, in Dublin Reuters Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Reuters Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Taoiseach Leo Varadkar delivers a speech watched by Pope Francis in St. Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle WMOF2018/Maxwell Photography/Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Protesters hold banners during a demonstration against clerical sex abuse, in Dublin Reuters Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis plants a tree during a meeting with Irish President Michael D Higgins, at Aras an Uachtarain PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis walks with the President of Ireland Michael Higgins at Aras an Uachtarain WMOF2018/Maxwell Photography/Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Reuters Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis, center, is flanked by Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, right, as they arrive to meet authorities, in Dublin AP Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Protestors wearing baby shoes, to signify the children who died in mother and baby homes in Ireland, protest in Dublin ahead of the start of the visit to Ireland by Pope Franci PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis exchanges gifts with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar AFP/Getty Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Pope Francis speaks with President Michael D Higgins in his study during a visit to Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park, Dublin PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Navy band march prior to the arrival of Pope Francis at the Presidential residence in Dublin AP Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures Eddie McGuinness from Dublin LGBTQ Pride carries a rainbow flag across Ha'Penny Bridge, Dublin ahead of the start of the visit to Ireland by Pope Francis PA Pope Francis visits Ireland in pictures A message left by Pope Francis in the visitors book at Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park PA
Pope Francis has summoned key bishops from around the world to a summit later this month at the Vatican to find a unified response on how to protect children from sexual abuse by clergy.
Politicians in Arizona are calling for pornography to be declared a public health crisis saying porn perpetuates a sexually toxic environment.
Arizona state representative Michelle Udall has introduced a resolution declaring pornography is a crisis leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts.
The resolution says porn pushes a sexually toxic environment that damages all areas of our society.
Ms Udalls bill argues children being exposed to widely available porn on the internet can lead to low self-esteem, eating disorders and an increase in problematic sexual activity at ever-younger ages.
The measure draws attention to research that has shown pornography is biologically addictive.
Recommended Tumblr porn ban goes into effect as huge numbers of posts disappear
Potential detrimental effects on pornography users include toxic sexual behaviours, emotional, mental and medical illnesses and difficulty forming or maintaining intimate relationships, the measure says.
The proposal also says excessive porn consumption can trigger extreme or violent sexual behaviours.
It normalises violence and the abuse of women and children by treating them as objects, increasing the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution and child porn, says the measure.
Like the tobacco industry, the pornography industry has created a public health crisis, Ms Udall told lawmakers. Pornography is used pervasively, even by minors.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
Opponents are in agreement that excessive porn poses dangers but they argue the resolution fails to address the underlying problem.
Democrat Pamela Powers Hannley, who is sponsoring a different bill which focuses on medically accurate sex education, said: If we really want to look at this, we should start with education.
Its embarrassing that we are one of the states that does not have medically accurate sex education. In testimony, they were trying to blame everything on pornography. That is a stretch.
Arizona ranks fourth lowest in America for offering comprehensive sexual education in middle school, according to a 2016 report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Democrats said porn addiction is a problem but the resolution did not use scientific evidence to demonstrate that the state needs to announce a public health crisis.
There are statements in here that seem hyperbolic and unproven, Democrat representative Kelli Butler said. I just dont think there is necessarily the science to back up those claims.
Lawmaker proposes pornography fee to fund border wall
Republican representative Jay Lawrence, who voted for the measure, said: I dont disagree that the bill needs more teeth. That is our goal.
The resolution passed a committee vote along party lines and now moves to the Arizona House where Republicans hold a slim majority.
According to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, similar measures have been passed in 11 states declaring porn a public health crisis.
This comes after a Republican lawmaker in Arizona recently proposed an unusual albeit not entirely unprecedented proposal seeking to fund US president Donald Trumps border wall by charging tech users who wish to watch porn online.
Gail Griffin, an 84-year-old senator serving in the Arizona House of Representatives, unveiled a measure that would install a block on all software sold in the state capable of accessing the internet.
Consumers would be unable to access sites featuring pornography under the new legislation unless they were willing to prove their age and pay a fee to the Arizona Commerce Authority. Users would be required to prove they are 18 or above and be forced to pay $20 (15) in order for the block to be removed.
A six-year-old with terminal cancer has fulfilled her dream of becoming a police officer.
Abigal Arias, who suffers from stage-four Wilms tumour, a rare kidney cancer in children, worked in law enforcement for the day after she was sworn in as an honorary officer for the Freeport Police Department.
Wearing a tailor-made uniform while standing on a stepladder, the youngster from Texas pledged to keep fighting the bad guys at a ceremony attended by her family and police officers from around the state.
Freeport Police Chief Ray Garivey fought back tears as he helped make the little girls dream a reality.
Her spirit, her toughness, her will to survive, thats what [we believe in], Mr Garivey told CNN.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
Her terrific smile and will to keep fighting the bad guys inside of her I wanted to make her dream come true. You have to meet her to really understand what a great and inspiring young lady she is.
Abigail was first diagnosed in 2017 and after 80 rounds of chemotherapy was in remission for five months, but the disease returned in both lungs.
She had shared her wish of becoming a police chief with Mr Garivey in December when the pair met at the forces Pancakes with Santa event.
Touched by her story, he started to set the wheels in motion to make her an officer. He reached out to an organisation in neighbouring Pearland called Cop Stop and asked for a custom Freeport police uniform made especially for Abigail.
Mr Garivey added: She is no doubt God-sent. Her story brought police officers from all over today into one room and it was a magical moment for all who were in attendance.
During her special day, she got to travel in a police car and was treated to a doughnut.
Theresa May went to Brussels to get concessions on the Brexit deal in the hope that the controversial Irish backstop could be scrapped. But she was sent back empty-handed.
What happened?
The prime minister met the heads of all the EU institutions and was told the same thing: we wont renegotiate the withdrawal agreement.
Labour could still throw its weight behind a new Brexit referendum, Jeremy Corbyn has said as he sought to quell a furious backlash from his own MPs.
The Labour leader said the option of a Final Say vote remained on the table if Theresa May cannot get a compromise deal through parliament, in line with the policy agreed at the partys annual conference last year.
Mr Corbyn sparked a row when he wrote to Theresa May on Wednesday setting out Labours terms to support her Brexit deal but failed to mention the prospect of a fresh vote.
The letter caused dismay among pro-EU Labour MPs, who had hoped that the leadership was moving towards declaring its support for a second referendum.
More than 1.1 million people have backed The Independents campaign for a Final Say referendum since it launched last summer.
A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Show all 65 1 /65 A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit An estimated 700,000 people marched through London to demand a final say on the withdrawal agreement Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Red smoke from a canister hangs in the air as around 100,000 demonstrators march through London during a People's Vote anti-brexit demonstration savings banners and placards Anti-Brexit People's Vote March for the Future in London Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Mayor of London Sadiq Khan takes part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Protesters wearing final Say shirts and holding placards Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit MP Chuka Umunna (left) and MP Vince Cable (right) as MP Anna Soubry (centre) addresses Anti-Brexit campaigners at a rally after the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A Peoples Vote march attendee calls for a Final Say Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators with banners 'We're with EU' during the People's Vote March for the Future in London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Protesters at Londons march for the future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Editor of The Independent Christian Broughton speaks to demonstrators in Parliament Sqaure after they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A poster at the March for the Future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 campaigner wrapped in EU flag Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators pass Trafalgar Square as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators wave Union and European flags and hold up placards as they pass Trafalgar Square, taking part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A demonstrator holds a message during a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators take part in the 'People's Vote March for the Future,' in central London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A protester brandishes an Independent t-shirt during the Brexit March Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Tens of thousands of people take part in People's Vote March for the Future in central London. The march organised by the People's Vote campaign is led by young people calling for a People's Vote on the Brexit deal Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA
In a speech in Coventry, Mr Corbyn restated Labours position to call for a general election if Ms May cannot get a deal through parliament and then to keep all options open.
He urged Ms May to look seriously at Labours five proposals, which include a customs union with the EU and guarantees on workers rights.
He accused the prime minister of an utterly cynical and reckless attempt to run down the clock before exit day on 29 March, saying Labours plan could win the support of parliament and bring the country together.
If she is unable to adopt a sensible deal because it would split the Tories, then the answer is quite simple: there must be a general election, Mr Corbyn said.
The prime minister survived a confidence motion in her government tabled by Mr Corbyn, which could have led to an election, after her Brexit deal was overwhelmingly rejected by MPs in January.
Mr Corbyn said that without an election we will keep all options on the table as agreed in our conference motion including the option of a public vote.
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He said: The country cannot be taken over the cliff edge for the sake of Tory party unity.
Several MPs threatened to quit over the letter, including vocal Corbyn critic Owen Smith, who said the leadership was rolling the pitch to back a Brexit deal.
Others claimed it was a change to the partys policy of keeping open the prospect of a second referendum if Labour couldnt force a general election.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell then admitted it would be necessary to go back to the people if the prime minister refused to accept Mr Corbyns offer.
Still, Warren must compete against other popular Democrats who will be able to raise substantial money. A recent CNN poll found that fewer Democrats said they'd be very likely to support Warren if she runs than said the same of former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Sanders. Still, about as many Democrats said they'd be at least somewhat likely to support Warren as said the same of Harris or Sanders.
A majority of the country want Theresa May to delay Brexit, according to a new poll released ahead of a fresh Commons showdown over her exit strategy.
With less than seven weeks until exit day, the exclusive survey for The Independent found 53 per cent of voters would support postponing Britains departure from the European Union, opening the door to a second referendum or further talks with Brussels.
The poll comes as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sought to quell anger among his own MPs by stressing that a Final Say vote was still on the table.
Several cabinet ministers have openly mooted extending Article 50 for a short period to get crucial legislation through the Commons, amid a growing realisation that a short delay may be inevitable.
The poll by BMG Research found that the public also favoured a delay, possibly to prepare for a second referendum, while 33 per cent would back a no-deal exit, even if it hits the economy, and 14 per cent did not know.
Recommended Jeremy Corbyn says Labour could still back new Brexit referendum
The poll found nearly half (49 per cent) believed a no-deal Brexit would be an economic catastrophe that would do lasting damage to the country. Some 28 per cent disagreed with the statement.
Asked if they would support a final vote, whether a deal is reached or not, 50 per cent backed the idea, while 32 per cent opposed it.
More than 1 million people have backed The Independents campaign for a Final Say referendum on the prime ministers Brexit deal, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets last year.
MPs are bracing for a Valentines Day clash over Ms Mays Brexit plan, as the prime minister scrambles to break the impasse over the divisive Irish backstop.
Ms May held talks in Belfast, Brussels and Dublin this week after MPs ordered her to ditch the mechanism, which acts as an insurance policy against a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The EU has repeatedly said it will not renegotiate the Brexit deal that took 18 months to secure.
The BMG poll showed the majority (53 per cent) believed she will fail to win the concessions she needs to get the deal through parliament, with only 22 per cent saying she would be successful.
If Ms May cannot bring a revised deal back to parliament then she must table a motion on Valentines Day, allowing the Commons a fresh chance to seize control of the Brexit process.
MPs are poised to launch a fresh bid to thwart a no-deal exit after the original plan led by Labour MP Yvette Cooper and Tory Nick Boles was defeated in the Commons last month.
The Independent understands that a new version of the bid has been drawn up to extend Article 50 to prevent a disorderly exit in March.
However senior cross-party MPs involved in the project are said to be waiting to see what the prime minister brings to parliament next week before deciding to act.
Meanwhile, a separate group of Tory ex-cabinet ministers has warned Ms May that the monumental problems with her Brexit plan cannot be solved by cursory tweaks.
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Pro-EU Conservative Nicky Morgan and Brexiteers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, who are in talks to find an alternative to the backstop, said the measure was simply never going to pass the Commons in its current form.
Attorney general Geoffrey Cox has been leading work within Whitehall on securing either a time limit on the backstop or giving the UK an exit mechanism from it.
Both proposals have been rejected by Dublin, which insists the backstop cannot be time-limited if it is to provide an effective insurance policy against a hard border on the island of Ireland.
BMG Research interviewed a representative sample of 1,503 British adults online between 4 and 8 February. Data is weighted. BMG is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules
Chris Grayling is facing calls to quit after the government scrapped a multimillion pound ferry contract to provide no-deal Brexit services, awarded to a firm with no ships.
The under-fire transport secretary was widely criticised in December when it emerged he had given a 13.8m contract to Seaborne Freight, to provide extra ferries to ease pressure on important freight routes between Dover and Calais.
His department said it has now terminated the contract after another firm, Arklow Shipping, stepped away from the deal. The support from the Irish company had given the government confidence in the viability of the deal.
Labour demanded Mr Grayling quit or be sacked as he was heaping humiliation after humiliation on the country.
The row began when tender documents slipped out on Christmas Eve revealed Seaborne Freight was one of three companies awarded contracts totalling 108m, despite the firm having never run a Channel service.
How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Show all 14 1 /14 How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Passports British passports that expire after 29 March 2019 will continue to be valid as UK travel documents, but will lose the power that comes with being a European Union passport notably the right of free movement within the EU27. UK passports issued from 30 March 2019 will have the words European Union removed from the cover and the first page (along with the translations into Welsh and Gaelic). But they will still be burgundy. By October 2019, new British passports will have dark blue covers Getty How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Pets You will still be able to travel to the EU with your pet after Brexit, but it could well get more complicated depending on the status that the European Union decide to apply. If the UK is given Part 2 listed status, there would be some extra requirements for travelling pets and owners post-Brexit. These would require an additional visit to the vet and some additional papers to be carried but would not prevent you from enjoying your trip, says Eurotunnel. But it adds that if the UK is given unlisted, third-country status, owners who wish to travel with their pets from the UK to EU nations will need to discuss their specific preparations and requirements with an Official Veterinarian at least four months prior to their desired travel date AFP/Getty How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Eurotunnel/Eurostar The Treaty of Canterbury between the UK and France governs the Channel Tunnel link and operations will continue subject to any local disruption at Folkestone and/or Calais AFP/Getty How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Driving Motorists, whether taking their own cars or hiring abroad, are likely to need to obtain an International Driving Permit or two; different EU countries are signed up to different treaties, so for a trip embracing Spain and France you would need both types. These are currently sold from a limited number of Post Offices, but the government intends to make them widely available. The cost is 5.50 for each. Motor insurance will no longer automatically extend to the EU. Insurers will provide on request a Green Card, for which an extra charge will be made PA How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Flights Even in the event of a no-deal Brexit, flights will continue to operate between the UK and European Union. However, in the event of the UK leaving with no deal, many flights are likely to be cancelled because departures would be capped at 2018 levels. As UK airlines have already announced thousands of new flights to Europe from the end of March 2019, some would have to be cancelled Getty How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Air routes The network of flight links between Britain and eastern Europe could be affected by any reduction in the number of workers from those countries. Not only do they use the flights so do their families and friends PA How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Flight disruption rights Current European passengers rights rules, known as EC261/2004, stipulate high payouts for delays and cancellations that cannot be attributed to extraordinary circumstances. Buried in a document called Beyond the Horizon: The Future of UK Aviation, the government says the UK will not fall below current standards of protection when we leave the EU AFP/Getty How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Entry regulations to the European Union From 11pm GMT on 29 March 2019, UK travellers will become third-country nationals when travelling to Schengen countries and subject to the standard rules of admission for citizens of nations such as the US, Japan and Australia. That means there must be at least 90 days (roughly three months) left on your passport beyond your intended date of departure. Because third-country nationals can remain in the Schengen area for 90 days, the actual check carried out could be that the passport has at least six months validity remaining on the date of arrival Getty How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Online registration prior to travel ETIAS From 2021, non-EU nationals who do not require a visa to enter the Schengen area including British travellers will need to request prior authorisation to visit Schengen countries. The Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) is aimed at reducing the migration, security or public-health risk from nationals of visa-exempt third countries, which is what the UK will become after Brexit. It costs 7 for three years AFP/Getty How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Brexit clauses A large number of travel providers even including National Express coaches have added Brexit clauses to their terms and conditions. These generally specify that they will not be liable for consequential losses as a result of Brexit-related issues PA How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Fast track lanes for passport control entering EU countries British passport holders will not be able to use them, and must join the queue for third-country nationals. People holding an EU passport or ID card as well as a British passport will be able to exit the UK on the British passport but enter Europe on the EU document Getty How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Ferries The ferry industry insists vessels will continue to sail. The UK Chamber of Shipping says: Unlike the carriage of cargo, trade deals do not have a significant effect on the cruise and passenger ferry industry. The explicit standardisation of commodity codes and tariffs associated with trade deals have little relevance to holidaymakers. Having said that, the government and Kent County Council are planning for possible chaos at Channel ports because of a backlog of trucks in the event of a no-deal Brexit. This would impinge on holidaymakers plans PA How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) The EU says: If you fall ill or have an accident during a visit to another EU country, as an EU citizen you have the right to receive the necessary public healthcare in any EU country under the same conditions as people in the host country. The EHIC also works in Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Treatment, says the NHS, is at a reduced cost or, in many cases, free of charge. From 11pm GMT on 29 March 2019, when the UK ceases to belong to the European Union, British travellers will have no automatic right to use the EHIC. There is no certainty about what may replace it PA How Brexit will affect your travel to Europe Mobile phones From 30 March 2019, the law banning mobile phone firms from charging extra for calls and data in Europe will cease, though operators have yet to set out exactly what will replace it. In theory, mobile phone firms can impose whatever fees they think the market will bear. But Dave Dyson, chef executive of Three, says his firm is committed to maintain the availability of roaming in the EU at no additional cost following Brexit AFP/Getty
It also emerged that the ferry company appeared to have copied its terms and conditions from a takeaway outlet.
Mr Grayling previously defended the decision, saying due diligence had been done and he would make no apologies for supporting a new British business.
Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said: This cannot go without consequence. The Chris Grayling catalogue of calamities grows bigger by the day.
This contract was never going to work but this secretary of state, true to form, blunders from one disaster to another.
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Whilst Theresa May needs the few friends she has right now, we cannot have this incompetent transport secretary carry on heaping humiliation after humiliation on our country. He has to go.
Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran said: With less than 50 days to put new arrangements in place there are serious questions to answer over how this multimillion pound contract was awarded in the first place.
This saga has been beyond satire and its a worrying indictment on this governments lack of preparation.
However, leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg questioned whether Leo Varadkars Irish government was responsible for Arklows decision.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, which revealed the decision, he said: One has to hope that the Irish government has not leant on or put any pressure on Arklow to persuade it to pull out.
That would be a very unfriendly act of a neighbour to obstruct no-deal preparations and one has to hope very sincerely that this is genuinely a corporate decision.
It comes after Mr Grayling, whose department is heavily affected by Brexit, said attacks on his competence were because he had become a lightning rod for the anti-Brexit brigade.
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A Department for Transport spokesperson said: Following the decision of Seaborne Freights backer, Arklow Shipping, to step back from the deal, it became clear Seaborne would not reach its contractual requirements with the government.
We have therefore decided to terminate our agreement.
The government is already in advanced talks with a number of companies to secure additional freight capacity including through the port of Ramsgate in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
A kitesurfer died after an accident on a beach in north Devon as Storm Erik battered the UK with winds of up to 75mph.
The man, who has not been identified, was fatally injured at Saunton Sands, near Barnstaple, at around 11am on Saturday.
He was airlifted to North Devon District Hospital but was pronounced dead at 1.27pm
The kitesurfer is believed to be the third victim of Storm Erik, after two motorists were killed by falling trees on Friday.
A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said: This incident is not being treated as suspicious at this stage.
Storm Erik hits the UK: in pictures Show all 7 1 /7 Storm Erik hits the UK: in pictures Storm Erik hits the UK: in pictures A tree has fallen through a bus in Poole, with no reported injuries PA Storm Erik hits the UK: in pictures Storm Erik makes landfall in Prestwick, Ayrshire Getty Storm Erik hits the UK: in pictures Workmen tidy fallen scaffolding in Chelsea after winds approaching 80moh hit England and Wales on Thursday PA Storm Erik hits the UK: in pictures Waves crash against the seawall in Dawlish, Devon on Friday morning Reuters Storm Erik hits the UK: in pictures A woman battles against strong winds and rain on Waterloo Bridge in London on Friday PA Storm Erik hits the UK: in pictures Storm Erik makes landfall in Prestwick, Ayrshire Getty Storm Erik hits the UK: in pictures Storm Erik makes landfall in Prestwick, Ayrshire Getty
The incident will remain in the hands of the coroner and a file of evidence will be submitted to the coroner.
It is then a matter for an inquest.
The Met Office issued a yellow weather warning for strong winds on Saturday covering much of Wales, central and northern England and southern Scotland.
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Wind speeds of 75mph were recorded in Powys, Wales, and 74mph in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The rest of the country saw gusts of between 40 and 50mph.
A separate yellow weather warning was issued for heavy rain in northern Scotland.
However Storm Erik is expected to have cleared by Sunday and the weather is epxected to improve during next week.
Forecaster Steven Keates said: There will be thicker cloud and we expect outbreaks of rain on Sunday.
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Next week there will be a significant improvement in the weather thanks to the high pressure from the south. We can expect dryer and more settled weather with some rain and wind at times.
We can expect to see 12-13C in parts of the south, which will feel warm in the sunshine during the day.
Storm Erik caused widespread travel disruption over a 48 hour period, with emergency services warning motorists to take care when driving through the difficult conditions.
Early on Friday morning a 50-year-old man died after his car was crushed by a tree in on the A394 in Buckfastleigh, Devon.
A few hours later another motorist was killed by a falling tree on the B4306 between Pontyberem and Llannon in west Wales.
Speed restrictions were placed on trains between Leeds and York and between Newcastle and Carlisle and a British Airways pilot was forced to abort a landing during strong winds at Heathrow Airport.
Additional reporting by Press Association
A medical school student is under investigation by his university after posting messages describing women in derogatory sexual terms in a social media chat group containing more than 240 fellow trainee doctors.
The messages, which received no response, include a screenshot of a female students Instagram post where she is pictured with one other woman, her name clearly visible, followed by a message describing them as easy shags.
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Going on to urge others in the chat to use protection, the Sheffield University student then sends a voice recording that says: Remember to use the old condoms, be a good boy, STIs are not a joke. He adds, wrong chat lol I mean the message still stands before sending a further voice message ridiculing STIs.
The university has said it is now investigating the incident and examining whether it is a breach of General Medical Council rules on doctors use of social media.
Students say the post, made in the early hours of last Sunday morning, is only the tip of the iceberg of an endemic lad culture within group chats of students at British universities.
Speaking to The Independent, the person who disclosed the messages, who wants to remain anonymous, said: I find it saddening that such harassment appears to be such commonplace amongst university students.
The group chat exists for all the medics in that year group to chat and arrange things and I hate to see that coming from a group of students who are meant to represent integrity and professionalism.
By sending it to a group this big it made us aware that this sort of thing is happening behind closed doors.
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Sheffield Students Unions Feminist Society called for universities to respond more swiftly to support students affected by rape culture, which is what this is.
Sheffield needs to look closely at how it will vocally support the students affected and take this as an opportunity to reform their sexual consent education we need signposting of existing services and a genuine political will to deal with lad culture, the societys president Emily Doyland said.
I wouldnt know who to send those screenshots to other than a newspaper, and if I dont know then how is anybody else meant to know?
This case follows widespread outcry over a Facebook chat at The University of Warwick which saw 11 male students suspended over racist, anti-Semitic and misogynist exchanges last year, with messages including sometimes its fun to just go wild and rape 100 girls.
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Warwicks student union president called for the institutions vice-chancellor Stuart Croft to resign unless he could explain why two of the perpetrators had their 10-year bans lifted, as hundreds marched on Warwicks campus on Wednesday demanding urgent action into how the university fail[ed] the victims of the group chat in its investigation.
Megan Wain, a Warwick student who was targeted in the chat, said: My mental health deteriorated as a result of the situation, having men who were once my friends speaking about me so explicitly, impacted my life drastically. Campus makes me feel uneasy and anxious as a result of the climate created by the chat.
Launching an independent review into Warwicks disciplinary procedures in the wake of the scandal, Mr Croft said: We are deeply sorry and understand the distress this has caused the victims of this abuse and the wider impact which we know has been felt by our students and our staff.
Ms Doyland added: This is clearly a symbol of a wider problem its not just happening in group chats or at some universities, this is happening in everyday encounters and it is ingrained within society. It is the responsibility in particular of universities to lead.
A spokesperson for The University of Sheffield said: As soon as our Medical School was made aware of this issue it followed established investigatory procedures, in line with University disciplinary and Fitness to Practise regulations.
Fitness to Practise procedures use standards set by national regulatory bodies, including the General Medical Council, to review conduct that could impact a students suitability to practise medicine.
A grandmother whose entire family is settled in the UK has been told she must leave the country.
Susita Balasubranamiamm, 63, has been ordered to return to Sri Lanka, leaving behind all her children and grandchildren because the Home Office says her 71-year-old husband, who recently retired, no longer meets the required income threshold.
Her husband, Shanmugham, was granted refugee status by the Home Office in 1994 after fleeing persecution for being part of the Tamil ethnic group. Their four children joined him in the years that followed and were also given refugee status. Ms Balasubranamiamm joined them in 2014 on a spouse visa.
The elderly couple has since been living with their 35-year-old son and his family, contributing to the household by preparing meals and caring for their grandchildren as is tradition in Tamil culture.
But when she applied to renew her visa in 2016, the Home Office refused it on the grounds that Mr Balasubranamiamm, who previously worked as a food factory manager, no longer earned enough because he had retired.
Susita Balasubranamiamm (left), here with her family, has lived in the country since 2014 (Mohanathas Balasubramaniamm)
Speaking to The Independent, Ms Balasubranamiamm, who has health problems, said: I am not well. I feel I cant go back. My whole family is here my husband, children, and grandchildren. No one is there. I wont have anyone there to take care of me there.
I feel comfortable here. My whole family is here and its secure. I love spending time with my grandchildren. I was very relieved to come here. Now Im feeling very anxious.
The Home Office said the couple would not face very significant difficulties continuing their family life together outside the UK in Sri Lanka, and that any infringement of their right to family life would be justified and proportionate in the pursuit of maintaining effective immigration control.
The department said in the refusal letter that were Ms Balasubranamiamm claiming welfare benefits, she may be exempt from meeting the requirement.
The couples son, Mohanathas Balasubramaniam, 35, who is hosting his parents, said: If she is sent back, she would be living on her own. No one would be looking after her. Im settled here. I cant always travel to Sri Lanka to look after my mum.
They are staying in my home and would remain here. They arent claiming any benefits. I would continue to look after them. I worry about them going to Sri Lanka with no family around when they are growing older.
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Naga Kandiah, the familys solicitor, said: This is a sad case which shows the harsh realities of an inflexible immigration system. In a case such as this where the applicant is not a burden on the state, families should be able to stay together.
If immigration rules continue to be implemented in such a restrictive and indiscriminate way, then we will continue to see cases where elderly relatives are separated from their loved ones.
Satbir Singh, chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: No family should be forced apart. Yet a grandmother is being forced out of her home and sent halfway around the world from her family simply because her husband has retired.
We are told that we have to blame people born elsewhere for everything thats wrong in our society, but can anybody tell me whose life gets better when we do this to people?
A Home Office spokesperson said: We dont routinely comment on individual cases nor would it be appropriate to comment while there are ongoing legal proceedings.
Supermarkets are luring shoppers into buying chicken reared in grim factory farms with a string of tactics including making out that the birds were free-range, the RSPCA claims.
The animal-welfare charity claims that the big retailers are still failing on chicken welfare a decade on from campaigns by celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver to improve standards.
Research from the RSPCA says the most popular supermarkets encourage consumers to buy chickens that have suffered in industrial-style systems, with strategies such as:
Some intensively reared chicken was labelled higher standards
Some had photos giving the misleading impression the bird was reared outdoors
Putting higher welfare chicken in less prominent shelf positions
Special offers on only factory-farmed chicken found in all supermarkets except Waitrose
Excessive price differences of up to 3.40 a kg between intensively reared and free-range
Asda and Aldi had own-brand packs marked higher welfare standards, and Lidl featured a golden stamp saying higher welfare, the researchers claimed.
And while Sainsburys offered more choice of higher welfare cuts, some smaller local stores apparently had no higher welfare options at all.
Shoppers spend five times more 1.5bn on intensively reared chicken, mostly unknowingly, than on birds raised in higher standards, including RSPCA Assured, organic and free-range, the report said.
But a poll found 86 per cent of those questioned said they expected supermarkets, including Tesco and Morrisons, to ensure the chicken they sold was higher welfare.
In 2008 Hughs Chicken Run and Jamies Fowl Dinners revealed how factory-farmed birds were reared in squalid barns where the overcrowding makes them ill and fast-growing breeding makes them crippled.
Claire Williams, of the RSPCA, said: Supermarkets were quick to promise better welfare but 10 years later weve not made much meaningful progress. Although shoppers believe theyre buying higher welfare, most birds sold are intensively reared indoors.
Aldi packaging suggests the chicken had outdoors access, with logos of lots of green leaves (Aldi)
The study claims that some packaging of factory-farmed chicken was marked higher-welfare or had images suggesting birds were free-range.
The RSPCA wants to see compulsory method-of-production labelling after Brexit.
Experts say popular breeds of chicken struggle to walk and can suffer heart defects, and that a grown factory-farm bird has less space than a caged egg-laying hen.
A background image on a Tesco label suggests the chicken lived outdoors, and the price was reduced (Tesco)
Some supermarkets sell higher welfare chickens for just 71p more per kg, proving better chicken doesnt have to cost much more, said Ms Williams.
A Sainsburys spokesperson referred to its policies, saying: As the UKs biggest retailer of RSPCA Assured products, ensuring high animal welfare standards is important to our customers and to us. While we share commitments to improving animal welfare practices, we have also explained we believe a different approach is more effective.
A Lidl label has a round gold logo saying higher welfare standards even though the chickens would have been factory-farmed (Lidl)
Weve created a cycle of measuring, managing and continuously improving the health and welfare of our animals based on a range of welfare indicators, which weve created in collaboration with our farmers for each species, and we believe the results speak for themselves.
A spokesperson for Co-op said: Shoppers want food that is responsibly sourced, maintains welfare standards and is competitive on price. We only use British chicken and offer choice to customers with premium birds, which are RSPCA certified, while all our poultry meets the Red Tractor Farm assurance standards in line with other major supermarkets.
An Asda label boasts of high welfare standards in natural light which the RSPCA says is not true of intensive farming (Asda)
Tesco declined to comment but referred to its animal-welfare policies.
Lidl and Asda referred to a statement by the British Retail Consortium, which said: Our members take their responsibilities to animal welfare very seriously and would never compromise customers expectations by offering lower standards. They are committed to upholding high animal-welfare standards whilst offering great value.
An Aldi spokesperson said: We are the largest retailer of RSPCA Assured chicken by volume and all our Specially Selected fresh chicken is free-range and sourced from RSPCA Assured farms.
Aldi also sells indoor-reared fresh chicken sourced from Red Tractor assured farms, she said, adding: The welfare measures used during rearing exceed this industry standard as our own animal welfare policy requires the birds to have access to natural light and environmental enrichment such as hay bales.
Waitrose said its entry level chicken had more daylight and space than birds elsewhere, as well as environmental enrichment, and beak-trimming was not carried out on any of its flocks.
Morrisons did not respond to requests to comment.
Nasa is making plans to send astronauts to the moon again, but this time it wants to keep humans there.
Thats according to the space agencys administrator, Jim Bridenstine, who called for the best and brightest of American industry to help design and develop human lunar landers, in response to what he says is a clear mandate from Donald Trump and Congress to once again get astronauts out of Earths orbit.
In a post detailing his agencys lofty goals to return astronauts to the moon, and one day send them to Mars for the first time in human history Mr Bridenstine said that, this time, the US is playing for keeps.
As a lifelong NASA supporter, I am thrilled to be talking once again about landing humans on the moon, Mr Bridenstine wrote on Ozy. But to some, saying were returning to the moon implies well be doing the same as we did 50 years ago. I want to be clear that is not our vision.
He continued: We are going to the moon with innovative new technologies and systems to explore more locations across the surface than we ever thought possible. This time, when we go to the moon, we will stay.
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Show all 30 1 /30 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013 Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Hubble Cosmic Couple The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 more commonly known as WR 124 and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago Nasa's most stunning pictures of space The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. 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Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Black Hole Friday Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead sharing pictures of black holes Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space NuSTAR X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Cassiopeia A c A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Orion Capsule splashes down The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965 This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. 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The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Morning Aurora From the Space Station Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station Nasa/Scott Kelly Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984 The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. 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Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region
Mr Bridenstine said that the ambitious plans will begin next week, when partners from private industry and elsewhere have been invited to Nasa headquarters to discuss lunar landers.
So far, Nasa has already contracted with nine companies to send cargo to the moon, with the ultimate goal being to develop landers that can take astronauts back to the surface of the Earths satellite.
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Ultimately, Mr Bridenstine said, the goal is to get astronauts back on the moon within the next decade.
Billions of people around the world will watch history being made as astronauts explore more of the surface for longer periods of time than ever before, and help us prepare for missions to Mars and other destinations," he wrote.
To first understand how the European and British press covered the Brexit referendum and subsequent aftermath, a general knowledge of the differences and similarities of their news sectors is necessary.
While at least one tabloid dominates circulation in nearly every European country, a broadsheet is part of the top three widely-read newspapers in many nations such as Germany, Spain, Austria and France.
The same is not true for the UK where the three most read newspapers The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror are all tabloids. Britains fixation with tabloids stems from the countrys regard for social stratification. Class is engrained into the cultural framework of British society and Britons take discernible pride in their class identity, not just in their work but also in the news they absorb.
For years, Alison Stewarts mother had been intending to write her life story. For good reason: the life of Elizabeth Morgan, nee Caswell, is like a plotline on Call the Midwife. Morgan was born in Castleside, County Durham, the surprise twin to parents so unprepared for two babies that at first she had to sleep in a drawer.
Aged 16, she qualified as a nurse and worked in the Edinburgh slums. After responding to an advert from the Department for International Development in the 1960s, she was posted to Borneo where she delivered babies in the rainforest and set up medical centres in remote tribal villages. By the time she came home, she had been involved in delivering the last ever smallpox vaccine in Ethiopia.
Morgan had been to classes to learn how to write a memoir. She tried to write down the things she had experienced, but they always looked like lists of dates. Then last year, when she learned she had an aggressive form of breast cancer, her daughter knew it was their last chance. Dr Stewart says: We thought if we didnt get it written down we never would.
In February, Dr Stewart and her mother received four bound copies of their mothers hardback memoir: Elizabeth Caswell: Ai ya, Sister! Elizabeth appeared in a black and white portrait on the cover: a striking dark-haired woman with clear eyes and a prim white nurses hat. The memoir is one of hundreds that have been produced by StoryTerrace, a startup founded on the idea there should be a biographer for every person. Using ghostwriters, it plans to turn a million life stories into books within 10 years.
Its like social media for writing books, you find the person who fits with you, Dr Stewart says.
She had looked at hiring a biographer before, but had always been put off by the cost, which ran into the thousands. On the StoryTerrace website, she was able to browse writers, read sample chapters and select a package starting at 1,500 for four hours of interviews and four copies of a 60-page colour hardback book.
Rutger Bruining, who started StoryTerrace in the Netherlands in 2014, got the idea for a bespoke writing service after he saw Australian company Freelancer.com, a platform described as the worlds largest marketplace for outsourcing where people can compete for jobs, go public. In 2013 the company was forced to close its initial public offering (IPO) early after demand overwhelmed supply of the 30 million shares offered.
The IPO caught Mr Bruinings attention. He had been thinking about scalable ways to tell peoples stories. After a stint in management consultancy, he did an MBA at Columbia University in New York and then returned to Europe to work in private equity in London. He saw the Freelancer.com IPO and was struck by two things: the site hosted really good writers who were offering their services to anyone, and the founders were using software to manage freelancers all around the world.
The life of Elizabeth Morgan, nee Caswell, is like a plotline on Call the Midwife (Courtesy Photo)
This technology opened up the possibilities for a memoir-writing agency. Rather than hire 20 staff writers to work with customers, StoryTerrace works with 500 writers and matches them to clients based on their location, education and cost, among other factors. We can do that anywhere in the world, and we can still make beautiful books for people, Mr Bruining says. Without tech that wouldnt be possible.
StoryTerrace recommended a writer called Judy Brown to tell Elizabeth Morgans story. The family were allocated several hours, but Dr Stewart says they spent a productive afternoon. Mrs Brown came to see her mother despite a broken ankle and asked gentle questions that started to reveal a narrative. Ms Brown says that process of getting to know a client well enough to inhabit their voice can take a few gos, but describes the process as an honour. It makes people feel like they have done something. Until you look back and you see the story as a whole it can be hard to see quite how much youve achieved.
Neither Mr Bruining nor Mrs Brown reveal writers rates. The former says the writers, who get paid a set fee per job, are by far the biggest cost to the business. Mrs Brown, who is retired and has worked on as many as 14 memoirs through StoryTerrace, says the work provides useful extra income, but that it would be difficult to make a full-time living out of it.
StoryTerrace launched in the UK in 2016 and has now had 700 clients globally. The company raised 590,000 in a crowdfunding round with Seedrs in 2017, taking the total value raised to 1.5m. Mr Bruining says the money is going towards building a bookmaker platform that will automate the design processes so they no longer have to employ inhouse designers.
The next task will be to scale. In January the company recruited new board members Francois Coumau, a former eBay executive, to make new hires and smooth processes as the company grows. Angela Watts has joined the board after spending eight years at Spotify in the lead up to its IPO, to work on building awareness of the brand. Ms Watts says she was impressed by the early success of the service: StoryTerraces growth to date is admirable for a company creating a completely new product category and theyve only just scratched the surface.
Half the books commissioned on StoryTerrace are gifts, often from relatives. Many have revealed extraordinary stories. A woman called Teresa Ibrahim has narrated her story growing up in poverty in rural Sudan, in the fog of civil war, to setting up charities for the education and empowerment of other displaced women. Another explores the journey of a Mongolian child to Britain in 1998 as one of the first generation of post-Soviet Mongolians allowed to leave the former communist regime.
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Alison Stewart says her mother, now 80, never thought her story was that special. But the process of writing the book has brought back many memories, from the ambulance men who used to flirt with her at the Mayday Hospital in Croydon, to the sudden surfacing of a whole set of photos from her graduation as a nurse.
Dr Stewart, who has a passion for working out her family history, imagines the book will sit alongside her other research: from the family tree, to the diary of her great great grandfather, who was born in 1801. Ill put them all together, she says. In 100 years, someone else will be able to find it.
Apple is going to pay the American teenager who discovered a security flaw in the companys FaceTime system.
Grant Thompson, a 14-year-old from Arizona, found a bug that meant he could listen in to group chats on the video-calling service.
The bug meant an iPhone could be turned into a live microphone while using Group FaceTime, with callers able to activate another persons microphone remotely even before the person has accepted or rejected the call.
It has not yet been revealed how much the teenager and his family will receive. Apple also plans to give him an additional gift towards his education, reports say.
Grant Thompson and his mother said they tried to contact the company about the problem for more than a week before Apple turned off the group-chat feature.
Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary
Apple has since released an iPhone update to fix the FaceTime flaw. The software change became available to install on Thursday as a part of Apples iOS 12 system.
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The new version includes a message saying it provides important security updates and is recommended for all users.
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The prviacy bug was not just limited to iPhones. All devices that allow group FaceTime, including iPads and Macs, each have their own software update.
While in Asia, Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, is thought to have discussed specific disarmament steps that Pyongyang could promise at the Vietnam summit and what corresponding measures the United States is willing to take.
The big day has finally arrived. No, we're not talking about Valentine's Day or Brexit day, both of which the nation is undoubtedly waiting for with bated breath.
We are, of course, talking about National Pizza Day.
Whether you're heading out for a meal with friends this Saturday 9 February, or staying in for a night of TV and takeaways, your day will be made that much better with a delicious, discounted pizza by your side.
Several eateries are offering mouth-watering deals on pizzas, including Domino's, Papa John's and Pizza Hut.
If you're a fan of pizza, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of them.
Here are all the best pizza deals for National Pizza Day:
The chance to a win a year's supply of Domino's pizza
Yes, you read that correctly. Domino's is offering its customers the chance to win a year's supply of pizza, simply by giving one of the pizza delivery company's most recent tweets a retweet.
Sure, your chances may be slim, but someone has to win, right?
If you don't fancy your odds at winning an unimaginable quantity of pizza, then you could make the most of the deals on offer on the Domino's website instead.
The company is offering 30 per cent off its Pizza Legend, which allows you to customise your own pizza, and buy one get one half price on pizzas when the second pizza is either of equal or lesser value than the first.
A third off your total spend at Papa John's
For National Pizza Day 2019, Papa John's is offering 33 per cent off when you spend 30 or more on pizzas or sides.
The deal is available on the website and at the restaurant's hundreds of local stores nationwide.
To find your nearest Papa John's chain, enter your postcode here.
Free dough balls at Pizza Express
If you download the Pizza Express app, you could be treated to complimentary dough balls until 11 February in celebration of National Pizza Day.
That's not all, as the restaurant chain is also offering a set menu of three courses for 13.95.
What's more, for every sale of a Padana pizza, Pizza Express donates 25p to cancer charity Macmillan.
To see what deals are on offer at your local Pizza Express restaurant, enter your postcode here.
Half price happiness at Pizza Hut
When you spend 30 or more on pizzas at Pizza Hut, the restaurant will cut your bill in half.
This means you may only end up spending 15 on 30 worth of pizzas at the American restaurant chain.
Side dishes and drinks aren't included in the offer.
Give the 'Bagelizza' a try
Just when you think pizza couldn't get any more exciting, New York-inspired restaurant Mulberry Street Pizza goes and creates the pizza-bagel hybrid of our dreams - the 'Bagelizza'.
Created in collaboration with New York Bakery Co., the Bagelizza measures 12 inches in diameter and is topped with pastrami, sauerkraut, swiss cheese and Russian dressing.
Mulberry Street Pizza is giving away free Bagelizzas to 200 customers at midday on 9 February on a first come, first serve basis at its Notting Hill, Queensway and Bayswater branches in London.
Deliveroo orders of the dish are also free from midday.
KFC and Pizza Hut take extravagant pizza to the extreme
The 'Gravy Supreme' pizza (KFC x Pizza Hut Delivery)
Together, KFC and Pizza Hut have gone big for National Pizza Day 2019.
The restaurant chains have launched the 'Gravy Supreme' for the big day, a pizza that combines Pizza Hut's cheesy bites base with KFC gravy, popcorn chicken, mozzarella and garlic sprinkles/
The dish is currently being tested and trialled by Pizza Hut Delivery and KFC.
The eateries haven't yet revealed when the pizza will be made available, although many pizza fans have expressed their excitement over trying the dish.
Discounts at pizza restaurants nationwide
As part of National Pizza Day, you can claim 30 per cent off pizzas at more than 600 locations across the UK, thanks to food and drink magazine Foodism.
To check out all the participating restaurants and claim your voucher for the discount, click here.
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The Foodism initiative is being supported by Action Against Hunger, a global humanitarian organisation that strives to end world hunger.
As we try to adapt to these cold climates, theres only one jacket worth wearing right now, and it looks a bit like a duvet.
The humble puffer jacket has acquired cult status in recent years, and its trajectory is impressive, having gone from cushioning outdoorsy types on their morning dog walks to snuggling some of the most famous torsos in fashion.
Its versatility is reflected by its eclectic fanbase, with lithe-limbed models on one end Karlie Kloss, Hailey Baldwin and Gigi Hadid are all puffer fans and world leaders on the other; Theresa May has been spotted wearing hers outside No 10 Downing Street.
The puffer is no stranger to the runway either, with Vetements, Balenciaga, and Burberry all taking their turn to step into the sartorial ring.
Most recently, it made an appearance at New York Fashion Week via Tom Fords autumn/winter 2019 collection.
Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Show all 10 1 /10 Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Prime Minister Theresa May Rex Features Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Hailey Baldwin Rex Features Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Kendall Jenner Rex Features Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Sienna Miller Rex Features Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Kim Kardashian West Rex Features Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Rihanna Rex Features Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note The Duke and Duchess of Sussex Rex Features Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Gigi Hadid Rex Features Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Bella Hadid Rex Features Celebrities in puffer jackets: The latest outerwear trend to note Millie Bobby Brown Rex Features
Clearly this is not a trend thats going anywhere, anytime soon.
According to online retailer Net-a-Porter (NAP), the puffer jacket is one of the most popular styles on its site, with sales up by 41 per cent since 2018.
Puffer jackets graced the catwalk at Tom Ford during New York Fashion Week. (Getty Images)
Best-selling brands championing the jacket style on their websites include Fendi, Ganni and Alexander Wang.
But when it comes to puffer jackets, theres one brand that reigns supreme: Moncler, whose sales have surged by 46 per cent this year on NAP.
The luxury Italian label might make some of the most expensive jackets in the business prices range from 950 to 5,795 but theyre some of the comfiest and indeed the warmest around, thanks to their signature down quilting. Its no surprise, then, that Moncler also happens to be the label of choice for celebrity skiers think Kim Kardashian West and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
Vetements oversized appliqued quilted shell jacket: 879, Dr. Martens Elsham 8 eye boots in cherry red: 135, Loewe fisherman cotton poplin-paneled cropped boyfriend jeans: 525, Staud Bissett crocodile-effect leather bucket bag: 310.
Designer versions of the puffer jacket have been around since the Eighties, explains Dr Harriet Atkinson, senior lecturer in design history at the University of Brighton.
The history of these coats can be traced both through the influence of expeditionary outdoor clothing and through the history of bedding, she tells The Independent, adding that it is thought to have been developed by US inventor and adventurer Eddie Bauer.
Winnie Harlow wears a sparkling sequin puffer jacket on the Moschino x H&M runway in October 2018. (Rex Features)
The catalyst for Bauers invention was a fishing excursion in 1935 during which Bauer suffered hypothermia, inspiring him to create his first quilted-down jacket designed in 1936. The quilting allowed him to keep the down in place, spreading the warmth across the jacket, which received patent approval in 1940.
How then, did this swashbuckling staple become the versatile outerwear it is today? One that is as much associated with Nineties fashion and streetwear as it is with parents on the school run?
Ganni Bijou leopard-print cotton mini dress: 200, Veja holiday Bastille suede-panelled satin trainer: 140, Moncler quilted velvet down jacket: 1,550.
In 1973, New York-based designer Norma Kamali launched her full-length Sleeping Bag coat, Atkinson continues, a style that has been produced ever since.
It is this that is largely viewed as the fashion moment that catapulted the puffer jacket out of campsites and into the mainstream.
As for why its popularity persists today among such a wide-range of clientele, celebrity stylist Alex Longmore tells The Independent that this is all part of a wider resurgence in functional fashion.
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Theres been a massive interest in making functional cool again, she tells The Independent, referencing the recent surge in hiking boots, a style with similarly practical roots.
Streetwear is the biggest business in the fashion industry right now, and puffers fall under that category having once been deemed as an urban staple, so its no coincidence they have been made cool again, she adds.
Ganni Whitman quilted shell down jacket: 300, Adidas Originals falcon mesh, suede and metallic leather sneakers: 85, Joseph Haim houndstooth-check cotton-blend trousers: 345, APC Maelys half-moon leather cross-body bag: 205.
To be honest they never really went out of fashion, especially overseas in the US.
Whether you choose to wear yours like a politician or a pop star, chances are that so long as the weather is frightful, the warmth of a puffer will be eternally delightful.
A new social media trend that sees people throw boiling water into freezing air has landed several participants in the hospital.
The boiling water challenge, also known as the cold challenge, became popular during last week's polar vortex in the US, and has since spread to other parts of the globe.
However, hospitals are warning that the challenge is not worth the resulting pictures - after eight people were treated for burns at the burn centre of Loyola University Medical Centre in Chicago.
According to CNN, a spokesperson for the hospital said the participants were treated for injuries to their feet, arms, hands, face, and varying degrees of burns, as well.
The challenge is done by throwing boiling water into the air, which then instantly condenses - resulting in powdery snowflake shapes.
Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Show all 52 1 /52 Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Ice covers the Lake Michigan shoreline Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Minnesota A firefighter walks past an ice-encrusted home after an early morning house fire AP Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Ontario People walk in a park on the US side of Niagara Falls AFP/Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Massachusetts Mike Calen, left, and Steve Goyette, right, prepare to tie off as the ice covered fishing boat, Buzzards Bay, arrives at New Bedford harbour AP Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Pedestrians protecting their faces from the cold in New York City, in Washington DC, along Lake Michigan's ice covered shoreline, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, in Chicago, in Kingston, Ontario, and in Montreal AFP/Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Snow and ice covers Soldier Field Getty Images Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Gas-burning heaters are placed on railroad tracks as Metra commuter train passes by EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Ice builds up along the shore of Lake Michigan Getty Images Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Ontario A tree is covered in ice from the mist at park beside the falls in Niagara Falls AFP/Getty Images Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Minneapolis Water vapor rises above St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River beneath the Stone Arch Bridge AFP/Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Massachusetts Ice flows fill the Merrimack River as it heads towards the Atlantic Ocean in Newburyport AFP/Getty Images Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Ontario A tourists take pictures of the Canadian Horseshoe falls in Niagara Falls AFP/Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Minneapolis Sub-zero temperatures produce icicles that hang from a restaurant EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Ontario A person takes a selfie beside on the US side of Niagara Falls AFP/Getty Images Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US AFP/Getty Images Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Minneapolis Water vapor from the Mississippi River envelopes a bridge as sub-zero temperatures produce dangerous windchills EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US New York Pedestrians walk through the falling snow in the Financial District Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Ontario Steam rises from the US Niagara Falls before sunrise AFP/Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Snow covers Wrigley Field entrance Reuters Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US New York Workers shovel at the entrance to City Hall in whiteout conditions Reuters Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US NASA's 'Blue Marble' data set of weather systems over the continental United States US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Ice and snow builds up along Lake Michigan EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Minneapolis EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Minneapolis Chuck Carpenter is frost covered as he goes for a walk EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago A man walks along the lakefront as temperatures hovered around -20 degrees Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Frozen Chicago River Reuters Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US New York A man walks next to a subway train as heavy snow falls AFP/Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago A digital board shows flight cancellations at Terminal 3 at O'Hare International Airport EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Reuters Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago A shirt that was hung is seen frozen Terry Greenbeans/Reuters Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago People walk along the lakefront Getty Images Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US New York A young man waits on a subway platform in freezing temperatures AFP/Getty Images Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Mist rises from the city and Lake Michigan EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US New York People walk through the snow in lower Manhattan Getty Images Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago The James Versluis breaks ice on the frozen Chicago River near Navy Pier EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Michigan Reuters Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Minneapolis AFP/Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US New York Reuters Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago AP Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Michigan Reuters Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US New York AP Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US New York AP Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Minneapolis AFP/Getty Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago AP Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Reuters Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago EPA Polar vortex brings temperatures colder than Antarctica to the US Chicago Getty
On Instagram, more than 2,000 pictures of the challenge have been uploaded in the last month under numerous hashtags, including #coldchallenge, #boilingwaterchallenge and #dubakchallenge.
But the challenge can easily go wrong if the water doesnt evaporate into steam quickly enough.
And it isnt just the people throwing the water who are getting injured - bystanders have also been treated after they were exposed to the boiling water, with the youngest patient a three-year-old.
Hennepin County Medical Centre in Minneapolis, Minnesota has also seen injuries requiring emergency attention as a result of the challenge, according to CNN.
A spokesperson for the hospital told the news outlet that parents participating in the challenge have accidentally thrown boiling water on eager children who were too close.
Or, people throw it in the air just as a gust of wind comes, and [the water] catches the wind and it blows it back on them - so we see some face scald injuries from that, she said.
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Apart from completely avoiding the challenge, Dr Arthur Sanford, a burn surgeon at Loyola told ABC News people should seek emergency medical attention if a burn begins to blister or doesnt hurt at all.
If you are seeking more information on burns, you can read more at The Burn Foundation or the American Burn Association.
Its a typical, clear winters evening in London, the temperature averaging at about 4C as thousands of people make their way to the world-famous Royal Albert Hall. Shandien Larance is indoors, meticulously applying her elaborate stage makeup as she prepares to display her talents as a hoop dancer for a very special audience.
Tonights show isnt like the countless others the 26-year-old has spent on stage paying tribute to her Native American ancestry through dance. 18 years after first picking up a hoop and learning how to gracefully manipulate it with ease, the millennial is performing in front of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at the premiere of Cirque du Soleils Totem show in the English capital.
The hoop dancer is no stranger to the pressure of having to perform in front of large, intimidating audiences. But just like any other profession, being a circus performer can have its drawbacks.
Larance is only human, and as such, mistakes can sometimes happen on stage. When a mishap does occur, the connection the hoop dancer forges with her audience gives her the boost she needs to make it through the remainder of the routine. It hurts a little at times when I drop a hoop or miss a beat, but the energy exchange between myself and hundreds of people is unbelievable, the artist tells The Independent. To conquer that moment together of finishing a strong powerful sacred, dance and hear the applause is the best feeling ever.
From a very young age, it was apparent that Larance was always destined to become a performer. Growing up on a Hopi Native American reservation in New Mexico, USA, she was encouraged by her father from the age of one to dance every day after school. A quarter of a century later, Larances ability to dance has taken her around the world to countries including France, Spain, Russia and Japan.
Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Show all 9 1 /9 Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in 'Totem' Cirque du Soleil Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in 'Totem' Cirque du Soleil Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in 'Totem' Cirque du Soleil Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in 'Totem' Cirque du Soleil Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in 'Totem' Cirque du Soleil Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in 'Totem' Cirque du Soleil Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in 'Totem' Cirque du Soleil Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in 'Totem' Cirque du Soleil Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in Cirque du Soleil's 'Totem' Hoop dancer Shandien Larance performs in 'Totem' Cirque du Soleil
Creativity runs in her blood through her parents, both of whom have artistic professions. Her older brother, Nakotah Larance, is a multiple World Native American Hoop Dancing Champion. Three years her senior, Nakotah is more than a sibling to Larance hes also her mentor, having first introduced her to hoop dancing when she was eight years old.
Hoop dancing is a very symbolic art in Native American culture. The four points on the hoops used by dancers symbolise the four seasons of the year, thus representing the circle of life and the transience of nature. Art and Native American culture have always been present in my life and I consider myself very lucky to grow up around such talent and indigenous beauty, the hoop dancer says.
Hoop dancer Shandien Larance (Cirque du Soleil)
Throughout her childhood and adolescence, Larance continually honed her skills as a hoop dancer. One of the most defining moments of her career arrived seven years ago, when the performer followed in her brothers footsteps by joining the theatrical company Cirque du Soleil. I have been with Totem since I was 19 and growing up is just hard in general. But Totem has always given me the support Ive needed during my low points as an artist, Larance states.
Being a part of the circus means having to learn how to adapt proficiently. Larance may only spend a couple of months in a country at a time, during which time she has to quickly acclimatise to her new surroundings and get used to an entirely new training schedule. When performing in Japan in 2016 and 2017, Larance would sometimes perform at midday. When appearing on stage in Spain in 2018, shows would start as late as 10pm.
Regardless of her ever-changing regime, Larance is committed to her craft, her main priority always being that she gets enough rest in preparation for her on-stage routines. Some days I feel the only thing I really have control of is my hoops, she says. The world can be mad and life always has its ups and downs. But me and my hoops have a good bond and good relationship.
While the hoop dancer may not lead the life of a typical millennial, she still finds the time in between performances to explore the various cities shes temporarily residing in. One of Larances favourite pastimes is a quintessentially millennial activity finding good brunch spots wherever she is in the world, opting for a frothy cappuccino as her caffeinated drink of choice.
Once Larances free time is over, its time to get back to the business of perfecting her hoop dancing routines. The hoop dancers latest show sees her perform both as a solo artist and as part of a duo, with fellow hoop dancer and partner Eric Hernandez.
While training during the day, Larance and Hernandez will spend around an hour together ironing out the details of their routines and refining their technique, giving each other guidance on their solo and duet dances. If training on stage in preparation for the live shows, Larance and Hernandez run through both of their routines at least twice to ensure theyre as polished as possible before the curtain call.
Hoop dancer Shandien Larance (Cirque du Soleil)
Having first started as a group of 20 street performers on the streets of Quebec in Canada, Cirque du Soleil now boasts hundreds of artists from more than 50 different countries around the world. Meeting an array of talented individuals from different walks of life has been an especial highlight for Larance during her seven-year tenure with the company.
Despite coming from a family of performers herself, the hoop dancer was particularly struck by how unassuming her peers turned out to be. I love meeting different artists of different skills, Larance states. It is the best when you meet them first and see what they can do after because youre just amazed at what wonderful humble and caring people they are, as well as talented, extremely skilled and straight-up awesome as well!
Back when Larance was a child, she set herself a goal that she wanted to achieve as a performer. Now, years later, the millennial has realised her aspiration of honouring her Native American heritage through dance. I wanted to share my culture with the world, the hoop dancer says.
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The Cirque du Soleil Totem show is being performed at Londons Royal Albert Hall until 26 February 2019, and at Neu Marx in Vienna, Austria from 9 March 2019 until 22 April 2019.
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A young orangutan that had been kept locked in a wooden crate for four years has been rescued by conservationists in Borneo.
Indonesian Forestry officials aided in the rescue of the ape after a tip-off from residents in the small village of Punai Jaya.
A local man identified as Aliansah admitted he had found the orangutan in the palm oil plantation close to his house in 2015, and had been illegally keeping her as a pet ever since.
The young female, named Senandung, was kept in a cage no larger than 2m by 1.5m. Her owner claimed he had tried to set her free but she had returned to the house.
Initial inspection by a vet suggested the ape was healthy, but was recovering from a cold.
Environment news in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Environment news in pictures Environment news in pictures Davos 2019: David Attenborough issues stark warning about future of civilisation as he demands practical solutions to combat climate change Sir David Attenborough has issued a stark warning about climate change to business figures gathered in Davos, telling them that "what we do now...will profoundly affect the next few thousand years". On the eve of this year's World Economic Forum, the renowned naturalist told the audience that the worlds of business and politics should "get on with the practical solutions" needed to prevent environmental damage. "As a species we are expert problem solvers. But we've not yet applied ourselves to this problem with the focus it requires. "We can create a world with clean air and water, unlimited energy, and fish stocks that will sustain us well into the future. But to do that, we need a plan," he said. The broadcaster made his speech after receiving a Crystal Award, which is awarded by the forum to "exceptional cultural leaders". AFP/Getty Environment news in pictures At least 60% of wild coffee species face extinction triggered by climate change and disease Two decades of research have revealed that 60 per cent of the worlds coffee species face extinction due to the combined threats of deforestation, disease and climate change. The wild strain of arabica, the most widely consumed coffee on the planet, is among those now recognised as endangered, raising concerns about its long-term survival. These results are worrying for the millions of farmers around the world who depend on the continued survival of coffee for their livelihoods. As conditions for coffee farming become tougher, scientists predict the industry will need to rely on wild varieties to develop more resilient strains Alan Schaller Environment news in pictures Warming Antarctic waters are speeding the rate at which glaciers are melting The Antarctic ice sheet is losing six times as much ice each year as it was in the 1980s and the pace is accelerating, one of the most comprehensive studies of climate change effects on the continent has shown. More than half an inch has been added to global sea levels since 1979, but if current trends continue it will be responsible for metres more in future, the Nasa-funded study found. The international effort used aerial photos, satellite data and climate models dating back to the 1970s across18 Antarctic regions to get the most complete picture to date on the impacts of the changing climate. It found that between 1979 and 1990 Antarctica lost an average of 40 gigatonnes (40 billion tonnes) of its mass each year. Between 2009 and 2017 it lost an average 252 gigatonnes a year. This has added 3.6mm per decade to sea levels, or around 14mm since 1979, the study shows Nasa/Getty Environment news in pictures Greater Manchester to ban fracking, paving way for confrontation with government over controversial industry Greater Manchester is to effectively ban fracking, raising the prospect of fresh confrontation with the government over the controversial industry. All of the regions 10 councils are to implement planning policies which create a presumption against drilling for shale gas in their areas, Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has announced. Campaigners said the move was the latest sign that the tide was turning against fracking, which has been the subject of multiple legal battles across the country. Critics of fracking say it poses environmental and health risks. Drilling at the UKs only operational fracking site, run by Cuadrilla in Lancashire, has repeatedly been halted due to earth tremors. But ministers support the industry and last year unveiled plans to accelerate the development of new drilling sites Ross Wills Environment news in pictures Japan confirms plan to resume commercial whaling in its waters from next year Japan will resume commercial whaling next year for the first time in more than three decades, in a move that has provoked strong criticism from campaigners and the international community. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said his nation would leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to resume hunting the marine mammals in Japanese waters. However, he stated the activity would be limited to Japans territory and the 200 mile exclusive economic zone along its coasts. This means controversial scientific trips to Antarctica in which Japanese vessels killed hundreds of whales, as well as activity in the northwest Pacific, will stop in 2019 AP Environment news in pictures COP24: Environmental groups criticise morally unacceptable climate deal reached after major Poland summit Diplomats from around the world have agreed a major climate deal after two weeks of United Nations talks in Poland. But climate campaigners warned the deal effectively a set of rules for how to govern the 2015 Paris climate accord agreed between almost 200 countries lacked ambition or a clear promise of enhanced climate action. Activists cautiously welcomed elements of the plan, saying important progress had been made on ensuring that efforts to tackle climate change by individual nations can be measured and compared. But environmental groups were also highly critical of the agreement, warning it lacked ambition and clarity on key issues, including financing for climate projects for developing countries. The COP24 deal, which is aimed at providing firm guidelines for countries on how to transparently report their greenhouse gas emissions and their efforts to reduce them, was confirmed on 15 December, after talks overran Reuters Environment news in pictures Unprecedented changes needed to stop global warming as UN report reveals islands starting to vanish and coral reefs dying Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut almost in half by 2030 to avert global environmental catastrophe, including the total loss of every coral reef, the disappearance of Arctic ice and the destruction of island communities, a landmark UN report has concluded. Drawing on more than 6,000 scientific studies and compiled over two years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings, released this morning, warn enormous and rapid changes to the way everyone on Earth eats, travels and produces energy need to be brought in immediately. Though the scientists behind the report said there is cause for optimism, they recognised the grim reality that nations are currently nowhere near on track to avert disaster AFP/Getty Environment news in pictures Africas three biggest elephant poaching cartels exposed using DNA from illegal ivory shipments DNA taken from massive shipments of ivory has been used to identify the three largest wildlife trafficking gangs operating at the height of Africas elephant poaching epidemic. Ivory tends to be shipped around the world from African ports in bulk, and scientists have used genetic evidence gleaned from intercepted batches to reveal their origins. Led by Dr Samuel Wasser from the University of Washington, they traced a number of these shipments to three cartels operating out of Kenya, Uganda and Togo. Evidence collected by Dr Wasser has already helped convict ivory kingpin Feisal Mohamed Ali, and as his team joins the dots between shipments they plan to shore up the cases against more of the continents most prolific smugglers Art Wolfe
Staff from International Animal Rescue and the Nature Conservation Agency (BKSDA) of West Kalimantan conducted the rescue and took the orangutan to a nearby conservation centre.
There she will be kept under quarantine for two months and tested to ensure she is not carrying any diseases that could be passed onto other orangutans at the centre.
Despite considerable campaigning and education programmes, the illegal practice of keeping these endangered creatures, as pets still persists in remote parts of Borneo.
Its time everyone who keeps an orangutan realises that, if they persist in breaking the law, orangutans will become extinct, said Karmele Sanchez, programme director of International Animal Rescue Indonesia.
Anyone who has an orangutan in their possession should immediately report it to the authorities.
Orangutans are under threat from deforestation and hunting as palm oil operations expand into their dwindling forest territory.
Orangutan appears to try and stop bulldozer from destroying its natural habitat
Numbers of these great apes in Borneo have roughly halved over the past two decades, with human operations wiping out up to 90 per cent of their habitats.
Normally young orangutans of Senandungs age would be with their mothers, so the conservation groups said it was highly likely the baby apes mother had been killed.
Conservation groups operating in the region aim to rehabilitate rescued apes, but said this is often not possible if the former pets are too old to safely return to the wild.
In order to give the species a chance, they said something must be done to stop the deforestation that lies at the heart of their decline.
Orangutans need the forest, the forest needs orangutans and as humans we need both the forest and the orangutans, said Sadtata Noor Adirahmanta, Head of the BKSDA.
In 2016, in response to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences started trying to reform their membership. The aim was to ensure that the same old films werent the only ones winning awards, that new voices were given proper consideration and, most importantly of all in that image-obsessed industry, to avoid bad publicity.
The good news for the academy is that their efforts have had a seismic effect on the films and actors winning nominations and prizes, in overdue and welcome ways. But as a side effect, the changes have made Oscar punditry far harder than ever before. Now the sort of film that will take home the big prizes has become much more difficult to predict. Still, it injects a sense of excitement to proceedings that have long seemed set in stone.
To put the changes in context, the membership of the academy in 2017 (the last year for which figures are available) was 6,687 members. In 2016, the academy had added 683 new members many of them women, people of colour, or non-Americans more than doubling the previous record for new admissions in a single year. In 2017, it went even bigger and invited 774 new members and in 2018, called on 928 new names.
The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners Show all 10 1 /10 The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 10. The Life of Emile Zola Prestige counts at the Oscars. That is why a stodgy literary biopic like The Life of Emile Zola somehow won the main award at the 1937 Oscars. Its a solid and worthy piece of work, with a grandstanding performance from Paul Muni (under a lot of whiskers) as the campaigning French novelist. The idea, though, that it is one of the few truly great pictures of all time, as its own publicity suggested, is clearly idiotic. Rex Features The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 9. Rocky It may seem churlish to go after an underdog like Rocky but this was an undeserving Best Picture winner. The Academy voters in 1976 acted as if they were punch drunk and had spent too long in the ring with Apollo Creed. The problem with its victory wasnt so much the film itself but with the other nominees that were spurned in its favour. Taxi Driver, All the Presidents Men and Network all surely had a better claim to that years statuette. Rex Features The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 8. Around the World in 80 Days This was a perfectly amiable big-budget travelogue but you cant help but suspect its Best Picture Oscar was more to do with the marketing and hustling skills of its producer, Mike Todd, than with any brilliance in the filmmaking. It was directed by the Englishman Michael Anderson, previously best known for The Dam Busters, and featured David Niven as the intrepid traveller, Phileas Fogg, who bets he can travel all the way round the world in a little over two months. Rex Features The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 7. Crash Paul Haggiss Crash is a decent and well-meaning study of the consequences of racism and violence in contemporary LA. It was independently made and had a large ensemble cast, all giving heartfelt performances. However, Robert Altman had covered similar territory better in Short Cuts and the feeling persisted that it had won the Best Picture award because some Academy voters were determined not to give the Oscar to the gay-themed contemporary western Brokeback Mountain. Rex Features The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 6. Chicago You rarely win an Oscar without a strong marketing campaign. The now disgraced distributor/producer Harvey Weinstein knew the secrets of getting Academy voters on his side better than anyone else in the business. Whether it was the Blitz-like approach to advertising in the trade press, or the timing of the awards screenings, or the way he kept the films stars in front of the media or his relentless courtship of the Academy members, he was arguably as important to the Oscar success of the so-so musical Chicago as any of the creative talent behind it. Rex Features The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 5. A Beautiful Mind Its not bad. Its a love story that touches on mental illness and mathematics (neither usually subjects that Hollywood embraces). Russell Crowe gives a fine performance as John Nash, the Nobel prize-winning boffin with the beautiful but unstable mind. Nonetheless, Ron Howards biopic isnt any kind of classic. It won its Best Picture Oscar in an unusually thin year. Rex Features The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 4. Marty Marty, the 1955 winner, isnt even the best version of its own subject matter. This story, scripted by the great Paddy Chayevsky, about an emotionally repressed Italian American butcher from the Bronx looking for love, had already been made as a live TV drama the year before. In the small-screen version, Rod Steiger gave a superlative performance in the lead role. Ernest Borgnine in the film version cant help but seem like second best to anyone who saw Steiger in the same part. Whereas the puggish Borgnine makes Marty a figure of pity, Steiger turned him into a full blown tragic hero. Rex Features The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 3. Out of Africa Youll remember the pink flamingos and all those scenes of beautiful Kenyan landscapes that looked as if they were cribbed from a David Attenborough natural history documentary. You wont ever forget Meryl Streeps eccentric accent as the Danish baroness and author, Karen Blixen (I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong hills). This is mushy stuff, though, and hardly deserving of its Oscar. Rex Features The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 2. Braveheart This rousing, Scottish-set (but partly Irish-filmed) medieval epic is famous for its scenes of William Wallaces army in blue faces lifting their kilts and baring their bums. Regardless of how accurate this was as history, it played into ongoing debates about devolution and Scottish independence. The film also did its bit for the Scottish tourism business. Mel Gibson knows how to stage a battle scene. Whether that qualifies his film for a Best Picture Oscar is another matter. Rex Features The 10 worst Oscar Best Picture winners 1. The Greatest Show on Earth From a vantage point 67 years on, the decision to give the Best Picture Oscar to Cecil B DeMilles circus epic in 1952 is truly baffling. British viewers who have seen it will almost certainly have done so on TV (where its 152-minute running time made it useful for filling in gaps in the schedule). It has a decent cast and some reasonable stunts but Academy voters were surely clowning around when they chose it over other nominees in the same year which have aged far, far better like High Noon and The Quiet Man. Rex Features
They also made it harder for non-active members to vote, defining active members as those who have worked in the motion picture industry in the last 10 years; those who have worked anytime during three 10-year periods whether consecutive or not; members who have won or been nominated for an Oscar. This knocked out some elderly, retired voters who had barely made films in the first place, or whose career finished decades before. New members included Get Outs Jordan Peele, Wonder Womans Gal Gadot, Widows Daniel Kaluuya and Star Wars Daisy Ridley. But while the headline names were actors, the academy also invited younger directors, VFX artists and cinematographers in great numbers to balance out the acting branch a little.
Its a significant change because the voting membership was, on average, over 60, male and white. They liked predictable things films with male leads, films about great men of history and they tended to vote in relatively predictable ways. The biggest bloc, by a long way, were actors, so films with big, showy central performances tended to be over-represented while more technical or genre films think Mad Max: Fury Road, for example were often shut out of the big prizes.
So today, Oscar prediction has become as much a science as an art. The sort of nominations the film has, particularly if they include Best Director and Best Editing, combined with the previous awards won, especially the various Guild prizes voted for by industry professionals, gives a much shorter list of likely winners than the eight or 10 Best Picture nominees would suggest.
Golden Globes are a bad indicator of Best Picture winners and only slightly stronger in the acting categories, despite giving themselves two chances each year by dividing their spoilers between Drama and Comedy/Musical categories. The Screen Actors Guild Awards are better predictors of the acting awards, though their big ensemble prize rarely lines up with Best Picture. And the Toronto Film Festival audience award winner has a much better record at the Oscars in recent years than the winners at the Cannes, Berlin or Venice film festivals.
One historically strong predictor was the Producers Guild Award for Best Feature: the academy went for the same film for Best Picture on 20 out of 30 occasions. But that relationship seems to be weakening this year. The PGA went to Green Book, which doesnt look like an Oscar frontrunner given that its director, Peter Farrelly, isnt nominated for Best Director (traditionally a bad sign for a Best Picture nominees chances, though there are exceptions). The PGAs Best Documentary winner, Wont You Be My Neighbor, didnt even get an Oscar nomination. And the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Ensemble, another occasional Best Picture signpost (though one with a less impressive hit rate), went to Black Panther, a film that looks very much like an outlier in the Best Picture race.
But then, the kind of film that we assume the Oscars will reward is changing. The smart money for Best Picture in 2017 was on La La Land, because the academy has a history of rewarding films about show business and/or Los Angeles life (look at the wins for The Artist and Chicago, not to mention the egregious choice of Crash over Brokeback Mountain in 2006). That impression was only confirmed as the ceremony proceeded, and Damien Chazelle took Best Director and Emma Stone Best Actress for the modern musical. Yet it was the quiet, unassuming indie film Moonlight that finally took the Best Picture prize.
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If last years nominees had come up a few years ago, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri or Dunkirk would likely have duked it out for the top spot. But in 2018 it was Guillermo del Toros defiantly odd love story The Shape Of Water that won Best Picture.
Oscars 2019: Nominations for Best Picture
And this year looks no easier to predict. Roma and The Favourite lead the field with 10 nominations, but if either film wins it will be a remarkable break from the norm. Roma is entirely in Spanish and Mixtec, and no film in a foreign language has ever won Best Picture. The Favourite, meanwhile, is a film with three female leads and no major male roles, traditionally a handicap to being taken seriously by the academy. It also features a lesbian relationship, so a Best Picture win would mark only the second time that a film with gay themes has won the big prize (after Moonlight).
Even a win by a contender like Green Book would be somewhat historic; that too features a prominent gay character and focuses on an African American, traditionally an underrepresented group at the Oscars. In fact the only Best Picture nominee that does not feature a significant LGBT+ character or person of colour among its cast is A Star Is Born, and even that romance sees its two leads meet in a drag club.
Part of this explosion of diversity is, of course, down to the films being produced, and the fact that Hollywood has finally begun to question its racist old assumptions that straight, white men are the principal box-office attractions. The Oscars must, at least to some extent, reflect the films made.
But there has also been a sea change in the way that the academy considers films for its big awards night, and in the breadth of films considered Oscar worthy by this new generation of Oscar voters. Films that might once have ruled the Independent Spirit Awards but been locked out on Oscar night films like Call Me By Your Name, Roma, Lady Bird or Moonlight are now contenders for the big prizes, and that is something to celebrate. Even if it does make life harder for all the self-appointed Oscar gurus of the world.
Imperial Valley News Center
Relationship Between Female Labor Force Participation Rates and GDP
Washington, DC - Men and women are not represented equally in the global labor force. Despite representing just over half of the adult population worldwide, women are underrepresented in the workforcewomen are working at a lower rate than men in nearly every country.
There are a range of reasons that women may opt against, or be prevented from, pursuing formal employment opportunities, including taking care of children or family members and other productive activities that are outside of the formal labor market, discriminatory laws and practices, and social and cultural norms that limit female employment opportunities. Research has found that increased gender parity has several potential positive outcomes. For example, the World Bank has suggested that improved gender parity increases political stability and reduces the likelihood of violent conflict.
Increasing female labor force participation rates creates an opportunity for countries to increase the size of their workforce and achieve additional economic growth. Below, we highlight this connection between female labor force participation rates and a countrys economic advancementa national security priority for the Trump Administration and a key driver of the White House-led Womens Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative.
One way to explore the importance of women to economic growth is to consider the share of adult women who are participating in the labor market. The labor force participation rate, which reflects the share of adults who are either working or looking for work, is a fundamental component of a countrys total economic output. For example, if workers in two countries are equally productive but the countries have different fractions of their populations working, then the country in which a larger share of people are working will produce more output per person. Hence, to the extent that countries increase the engagement of women in their workforces, this has the potential to increase economic output.
As illustrated in Figure 1, female labor force participation rates vary substantially across countries. This variation is particularly apparent across regions of the world. Countries in Central Africa and Southeast Asia consistently have some of the highest female labor force participation rates, whereas countries in northern Asia, the Middle East, and southwest Asia have some of the lowest. Looking beyond this regional variation, it may be surprising at first glance to find that female participation in the labor force is high in both countries with a high GDP, such as Canada (61 percent) and Norway (61 percent), as well as many low GDP countries, such as Burundi (80 percent) and Mozambique (83 percent). However, the similarity in female labor force participation rates between some high- and low-GDP countries fits the wellestablished U-shape relationship between female labor force participation and economic development.
This clear U-shape relationship can be seen even more clearly by plotting the relationship between female labor force participation and GDP per capita in Figure 2. This pattern reflects a bidirectional relationship between womens work decisions and economic output. The share of women who are working increases GDP per capita, but at the same time, women change their work decisions based on their financial circumstances and the financial viability of forgoing the additional family income that working would generate.
Female labor-force participation rates are among the highest in low-income countries where women are engaged in subsistence activities. But as GDP rises, some women who otherwise would have worked out of necessity will choose not to work and instead spend their time on activities outside of the labor market. For example, some women will choose to engage in home production activities rather than pursuing formal work. Others are attending school, or staying in school longer, to develop additional human capital that will increase their productivity in years where they are working. (Schooling, however, cannot fully explain the relationship seen in Figure 2, as Claudia Goldin has found a similar U-shape when looking only at women ages 25 to 59.)
Furthermore, economic development among these low-GDP countries often comes from a shift away from agricultural employment and into industrialized employment. This shifts the number and nature of jobs that are available to women. Labor force participation can also decline because of the associated stigma in some societies against families where women are engaging in these industrialized blue-collar jobs. Hence, the downward relationship between GDP and female labor force participation rates at the lower end of the distribution is not an indication that lower female labor force participation rates increase GDP, but instead is indicative of women changing their work decisions as GDP rises.
Meanwhile, this downward trend reverses among middle- and higher-income countries where female labor force participation rises with GDP. As womens education increases and fertility rates decrease, employment in white-collar positions also increases, absent any social barriers. Additionally, holding productivity per worker constant, an increase in the share of adults who are working through a rise in the female labor force participation rate will directly increase GDP per capita.
The relationship between female labor force participation rates and GDP can also be viewed from another lens: We can consider womens labor force participation rates relative to that among men, rather than considering the absolute rate at which women are working (Figures 3 and 4). This approach reflects the relationship between the gender gap and GDP, rather than just the share of women who are working overall. Nevertheless, the overall pattern remains the same, with relative employment rates for women falling with GDP among lower-income countries and then rising with GDP as income increases further.
A third way to think about how increased female labor force participation rates can contribute to economic growth is to ask how much GDP would increase if women worked at the same rate as men, and earned the same wages. To do so, we can hold male wages and employment rates constant and observe how an increase in gender parity would affect GDP.
McKinsey observes that if women contributed to GDP at the same pace as men it could add $28 trillion to global GDP by 2025; however, McKinsey acknowledges that complete gender parity within a decade is unlikely. For a more realistic estimate, McKinsey assesses that if female labor force participation rates in each country increased at the same pace as the most rapidly improving country in their region, global GDP could increase by $12 trillion over the course of 10 years. This is equivalent to adding 1 percentage point per year to global GDP growth (11 p.p. over the course of the decade). Similarly, the International Labour Organization estimates that reducing the gender gap by 25 percent would increase global GDP by $5.8 trillion by 2025, with much of this growth coming attributed to emerging economies where the gap is the widest. In part these growth rates reflect a shift from home production activities, which are excluded from GDP, to labor market activities, which are included in GDP. Nevertheless, the results of these studies highlight the potential for additional growth as a result of moving toward gender parity in employment through increased participation of women in the labor force.
The analysis above indicates that there is much room to bring additional women into the labor force and to grow the economy as a result. By considering absolute labor force participation rates, countries economic development paths, the opportunities available to women, as well as social norms, laws, and policies, we can better understand paths forward to increase the female presence in the labor force, thereby boosting global economic growth.
Imperial Valley News Center
Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump: Empower Women to Foster Freedom
Washington, DC - As the Trump administration launches W-GDP, we ask leaders everywhere to join us as we work toward a future in which women in every society can achieve their full potential and foster greater freedom, peace and prosperity around the world.
Empower Women to Foster Freedom
By Ivanka Trump
The Wall Street Journal
February 6, 2019
On Thursday President Trump will sign a memorandum establishing the Womens Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, or W-GDP. This new initiative will for the first time coordinate Americas commitment to one of the most undervalued resources in the developing worldthe talent, ambition and genius of women. This initiative aims to help 50 million women in developing countries realize their economic potential by 2025.
Expanding womens economic participation has the potential to boost global economic output by an additional $12 trillion by 2025.
This number represents far more than an economic boomit represents millions of lives full of promise: mothers who could provide for their children, daughters who could be the first to graduate from high school, and young women who could start businesses and create jobs. This is the future we can and must achieve together.
W-GDP establishes an innovative new fund at the U.S. Agency for International Development to support proposals that enable women to succeed in the economy. The president has directed USAID to allocate an initial $50 million for this new fund.
The economic empowerment of women shouldnt be viewed as a womens issue. Smart development assistance benefits families, communities and nations. By investing in women, we are investing in a future in which countries can support themselves by unleashing the potential of their own people.
W-GDP establishes a cohesive three-pillar structure to support governmentwide programs and partnerships. Pillar One will advance workforce development and vocational education for women.
Pillar Two will empower women to succeed as entrepreneurs. Women own or run more than a third of all small and medium-size enterprises in emerging markets, yet the United Nations has found that less than 1% of spending by large corporations on suppliers is allocated to women-owned businesses.
Pillar Three focuses on eliminating the legal, regulatory and cultural barriers that prevent women from participating in their local economies. According to the World Bank, more than 100 countries prohibit women from working in specific industries, which means 2.7 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men.
Read the full op-ed here.
(The Center Square) High school students may soon be able to take financial literacy courses as part of their required two years of social studies with a measure awaiting the governors approval.
Asked about the bill introduced this week, Jubeir said that "there's no need to be taking steps like this, because we are doing what we need to do. . . . I think logic would say, wait until the process plays out, and then judge it. Here, I think people are putting the cart before the horse, and I believe that's driven in part by politics, in part by the atmosphere in Washington. It's a horrific crime. We understand that. But I think wisdom has to prevail, and people have to let the legal process play out," he said.
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I never saw the file, said Berrios, who was defeated by Kaegi in last years Democratic primary. I dont have the file in front of me. I never looked at the file, that I recall. ... Ed Burkes file was looked at by staff, like every other file that comes up there. Weve had other politicians files up there. I never look at them.
We expect a runoff, CTU President Jesse Sharkey said. Were looking at the arc of the entire campaign and we expect to play a role. The role of finance in politics isnt our favorite, but thats an important part of how the process works. Were not a piggy bank, but were going to try to do what we can.
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In 1961, America faced what conservatives considered a mortal threat: calls for a national health insurance program covering senior citizens. In an attempt to avert this awful fate, the American Medical Association launched what it called Operation Coffee Cup, a pioneering attempt at viral marketing.
Heres how it worked: Doctors wives (hey, it was 1961) were asked to invite their friends over and play them a recording in which Ronald Reagan explained that socialized medicine would destroy American freedom. The housewives, in turn, were supposed to write letters to Congress denouncing the menace of Medicare.
Obviously the strategy didnt work; Medicare not only came into existence, but it became so popular that these days Republicans routinely (and falsely) accuse Democrats of planning to cut the programs funding. But the strategy claiming that any attempt to strengthen the social safety net or limit inequality will put us on a slippery slope to totalitarianism endures.
And so it was that Donald Trump, in his State of the Union address, briefly turned from his usual warnings about scary brown people to warnings about the threat from socialism.
What do Trumps people, or conservatives in general, mean by socialism? The answer is, it depends.
Sometimes it means any kind of economic liberalism. Thus after the SOTU, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, lauded the Trump economy and declared that were not going back to socialism i.e., apparently America itself was a socialist hellhole as recently as 2016. Who knew?
Other times, however, it means Soviet-style central planning, or Venezuela-style nationalization of industry, never mind the reality that there is essentially nobody in American political life who advocates such things.
The trick and trick is the right word involves shuttling between these utterly different meanings, and hoping that people dont notice. You say you want free college tuition? Think of all the people who died in the Ukraine famine! And no, this isnt a caricature: Read the strange, smarmy report on socialism that Trumps economists released last fall; thats pretty much how its argument goes.
So lets talk about whats really on the table.
Some progressive U.S. politicians now describe themselves as socialists, and a significant number of voters, including a majority of voters under 30, say they approve of socialism. But neither the politicians nor the voters are clamoring for government seizure of the means of production. Instead, theyve taken on board conservative rhetoric that describes anything that tempers the excesses of a market economy as socialism, and in effect said, Well, in that case, Im a socialist.
What Americans who support socialism actually want is what the rest of the world calls social democracy: A market economy, but with extreme hardship limited by a strong social safety net and extreme inequality limited by progressive taxation. They want us to look like Denmark or Norway, not Venezuela.
And in case you havent been there, the Nordic countries are not, in fact, hellholes. They have somewhat lower gross domestic product per capita than we do, but thats largely because they take more vacations. Compared with America, they have higher life expectancy, much less poverty and significantly higher overall life satisfaction. Oh, and they have high levels of entrepreneurship because people are more willing to take the risk of starting a business when they know that they wont lose their health care or plunge into abject poverty if they fail.
Trumps economists clearly had a hard time fitting the reality of Nordic societies into their anti-socialist manifesto. In some places they say that the Nordics arent really socialist; in others they try desperately to show that despite appearances, Danes and Swedes are suffering for example, its expensive for them to operate a pickup truck. I am not making this up.
What about the slippery slope from liberalism to totalitarianism? Theres absolutely no evidence that it exists. Medicare didnt destroy freedom. Stalinist Russia and Maoist China didnt evolve out of social democracies. Venezuela was a corrupt petrostate long before Hugo Chavez came along. If theres a road to serfdom, I cant think of any nation that took it.
So scaremongering over socialism is both silly and dishonest. But will it be politically effective?
Probably not. After all, voters overwhelmingly support most of the policies proposed by American socialists, including higher taxes on the wealthy and making Medicare available to everyone (although they dont support plans that would force people to give up private insurance a warning to Democrats not to make single-payer purity a litmus test).
On the other hand, we should never discount the power of dishonesty. Right-wing media will portray whomever the Democrats nominate for president as the second coming of Leon Trotsky, and millions of people will believe them. Lets just hope that the rest of the media report the clean little secret of American socialism, which is that it isnt radical at all.
Krugman is a New York Times columnist.
Just after New Years Day, I boarded the Lake Shore Limited in Boston, my two-week rail pass in hand.
The route would bring me to Chicago and then to New Orleans, El Paso, Tucson, Ariz., Los Angeles, St. Louis and Nashville, Tenn. I had people to visit and warmer temps to experience.
RELATED: Welcome, Mr. President. Here's the truth about El Paso.
Aboard The City of New Orleans, the scenery turned sober as we passed through roughshod Mississippi towns and then stark areas of abject poverty along Louisiana swamps, which continued on the Sunset Limited out of New Orleans.
Train travel offers rare relaxation, uninterrupted work time and the chance to see eye-popping American vistas. On this trip, however, another country was on my mind. While in El Paso for two days, I would have the chance to visit Mexico and get a look at those polarizing, accursed fences that dominate so much of our politics.
Somewhere between San Antonio and Del Rio, amid breathtaking tumbleweed and brush-studded desert landscapes in all shades of beige and brown followed by majestic, orange clay mesas and hillsides, we neared the Mexican border. Thats when I began spotting the white pickup trucks of the Border Patrol from the trains observation lounge.
They look for the footprints of migrants, explained an Arizonan in the swivel seat next to me. She pointed out deer feeders as well, blue stands meant to attract and target the animals.
Later, they drag tires over the prints to obscure them, and they start again, she said.
She told me the area was full of rattlesnakes to begin with, making it pretty impossible for migrants to cross. Although she was a world traveler who stayed at peoples homes in a program that promotes international relationships, she seemed to have no problem with keeping immigrants out of the United States. She also appeared unmoved to their situations.
They have scouts who find unused winter homes in Arizona, and bring the immigrants to them but not mine! she declared disdainfully.
It was not the first time I bit my tongue along the journey. But I had surprising moments as well, such as when a man in a military uniform and a buzz cut laughed when I said that I wasnt able to see a wall, fence, steel slats or whatever it is.
What truly surprised and stunned me was the sight, once we had arrived in El Paso and I was off the train, of hills filled with the lights of Mexico, a short walk away over the Porte del Norte bridge. My Airbnb host verified all Id need to cross over was a passport and three quarters. As for safety, he said, You could go there naked with $100 bills all over you, and no one would bother you.
I had neither the inclination nor the currency to try that, but I could almost see his point. More than 10 million people enter the U.S. from Mexico at the Paso del Norte Port of Entry each year, making the border crossing one of the busiest in America. Whatever challenges Mexico faces when it comes to crime and they are numerous you dont notice it walking across the border.
On my first day in the West Texas town Bob Weir sang so wistfully about, I ascended Sunset Heights to check out Beto ORourkes house a mansion that, as my witty host said, resembles a Taco Bell. I then proceeded south in search of the border.
My first sight of the metal border fence was in the Chihuahuita neighborhood. I walked down to a mural-covered community center with a park, marred by the high fence behind it.
As I moved down behind adjacent houses, barbed wire appeared along the fence followed quickly by poles with American flags painted on them.
Dogs in small yards, likely there to alert people to migrants, started barking. I was able to quiet them by extending my hand and speaking softly to them as I photographed the long barbed-wire barrier.
Chihuahuitas residents are overwhelmingly Mexican. Although their ancestors historically assisted those who climb and cross over, some now resent them for walking through their properties, and, I would imagine, also for the role they play in the entire problematic situation.
Eventually I made my way to the border crossing entrance. All thats required is to line up, pay 50 cents to the official in the booth and walk across the bridge.
Below us was a highway under construction and the ribbon of the Rio Grande, its concrete banks covered with graffiti art. One piece, proclaiming Berlin Wall, caught my eye. Between the bridges walkways were lanes backed up with automobile traffic.
And then, there I was in Juarez. I walked among street vendors, automobile lots, health appraisal and dental offices and pharmacies top destinations for cost-conscious U.S. savers. There were souvenir stands, taco and burrito carts, pastries and doughnuts and multicolored candies. As I proceeded down Avenida Benito Juarez I passed small restaurants, bars and cafes. I even saw a New York Yankees saloon. There were clothing stores selling southwestern hats and boots, Mexican blankets, trinkets and tchatchkes.
After a couple of amazing hours, I paid my quarter at the Mexican side of the bridge and headed back, got out my passport at the Customs and Border Protection inspection station, put my stuff through a scanner, and re-entered the United States. (They let me back in, I informed friends and family.)
It was a startlingly straightforward experience for something so politically complex.
On my final day in El Paso, I headed downtown but got lost when Google Maps rerouted the trip. Trying to reorient myself, I stepped off the curb to view a street sign when I was promptly stopped by two policemen in a patrol car. They asked me what I was doing in El Paso, how I had gotten there and where I was going, and requested an ID.
I answered their questions politely and didnt mention that I had been to Juarez, nor that I was going to the nearby Holocaust Museum.
Im not going to cite you, the officer finally said, handing back my ID. But stay on the sidewalk.
It was only a small taste of the constant police scrutiny that others face. Still, I was apprehensive as I entered the one-story brick facility of the El Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center and touched the doorway mezuzah in gratitude.
Once inside, I stopped at one photo of a refugee family, bundled up and bent over in fear, walking by a barbed-wire fence. Seven decades separated this fence and those I had seen the day before. One enclosed genocidal annihilation, the others barred entry one keeping would-be refugees in, the others keeping them out.
Davidson is a Boston-based journalist.
A naval battle just might be on the horizon in one of Houstons most competitive congressional districts.
On Thursday, Navy veteran and science teacher Elisa Cardnell, a Democrat, filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to challenge newly elected U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Houston Republican who is a former Navy SEAL.
Cardnell said she has been considering a congressional bid for more than a month. In January, she told her social media followers she was getting ready for the race.
Before 2016, I tried to stay out of politics, especially since as a member of the military I viewed my role as necessarily nonpartisan at least in public life, Cardnell said. But now I feel that I have to do something, and my entire career of serving my country and my community has led me to this point.
The 32-year-old Cardnell, who holds bachelors and masters degrees from Rice University, spent five years on active duty in the Navy and nearly six years in the Navy reserves. While on active duty, she rose to the rank of lieutenant, serving as an anti-submarine warfare officer and an officer in charge of port operations in Yorktown, Va.
Cardnell said after leaving the Navy reserves last year, she started looking for other ways to serve the country.
More Information A competitive 2nd District Republicans have held the 2nd Congressional District for years, but the margins continue to tighten. 2018 Election Dan Crenshaw, Republican, 53 percent Todd Litton, Democrat, 46 percent 2016 Election Ted Poe, Republican, 60 percent Pat Bryan, Democrat, 36 percent 2014 Election Ted Poe, Republican, 68 percent Niko Letsos, Democrat, 30 percent SOURCE: Texas Division of Elections See More Collapse
Crenshaw, a retired lieutenant commander, spent 10 years in the Navy SEALS that included tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Crenshaw nearly lost his vision when an IED blast in Afghanistan put him into a coma for five days. He survived but lost his right eye.
Crenshaw, 34, was elected in November to a two-year term in the 2nd Congressional District, which runs from portions of Montrose, the Rice University area and the Heights to west Houston and north to the Montgomery County border, and includes Atascocita and Humble. Crenshaw defeated Democrat Todd Litton, 53 percent to 46 percent.
Crenshaw has fast become a budding star in the GOP. Hes made appearances on various national Fox News Channel shows every week since he was elected.
He filed paperwork for his re-election campaign with the FEC on Dec. 5, 2018. Cardnell is the only challenger to emerge so far.
While the district has been considered safe Republican territory for years, Democrats have spied trends they believe has the district shifting more toward them. In 2012, then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won 60 percent of the vote in the areas within the 2nd Congressional District. But four years later, President Donald Trump won just 52 percent in the district, which has seen increasing diversity and a growth in college-educated voters, two demographics that favor Democrats.
The commander said he saw some changes once (his son) started interacting with positive role models such as police officers, according to the report. He was really interested in what they did, how they did it, what the rules were, what a good guy was versus a bad guy, Escamilla told the office. So at that point I decided that I wanted to bring him in on a voluntary basis to help out and volunteer in the (community policing) office on Wednesdays because they have a lot of duties that he can do such as, you know, stuffing envelopes for meetings, setting up.
OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- The Sands -- a 57-unit townhouse project underway on Front Beach in Ocean Springs -- is moving forward after aldermen overturned a planning commission decision to deny sketch plat approval for the project.
Aldermen voted 6-1 Tuesday night to overrule the planning board, which had voted 3-2 in early January to deny approval, in essence siding with a group of neighbors who have consistently challenged the project since it was first announced in 2015.
Biloxi attorney Leonard Blackwell, representing the neighbors, addressed the board of aldermen before Tuesday's vote, outlining the residents' objections. Their claim is the City's zoning ordinance doesn't allow for the project as currently constituted and is subject to essentially the same multi-family requirements as an apartment complex.
Blackwell said they had met with Brumfield and his team to "try and help them, but they rejected those overtures. I don't think the appreciate the situation they're in."
Blackwell also said he had a petition signed by 75 Front Beach-area residents objecting to the project.
Donovan Scruggs, a former Ocean Springs City Planner, spoke on behalf of Brumfield and his company.
Scruggs said a townhouse in no way meets the definition of a multi-family dwelling and is only addressed in one area of the City's zoning codes.
"If it's not multi-family, what is it? It's a townhouse," Scruggs said. "The only statue that addresses townhouses in your entire ordinance is in your subdivision regulations under group housing."
Aldermen asked no questions of either Blackwell or Scruggs and then went into a lengthy executive session to discuss the issue.
After they emerged, there was no discussion before Ward 1 alderman Rickey Authement, who represents the Front Beach area, made the motion to override the planning commission decision, saying the sketch plat met City requirements and the project qualified as group housing under City code.
Ward 6 alderman Mike Impey was the lone dissenting vote.
Prior to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, two apartment complexes -- D'Iberville Apartments and El Madrid Apartments -- were located on the property at the corner of Front Beach Drive and Martin Avenue and housed a total of 112 units. Both were leveled by the hurricane.
Brumfield's development company already owned the property then and had plans to build a new development there after Katrina, but those plans were scrapped when the market went south.
Then, in 2015, Brumfield received plat approval for a 41-unit development of upscale townhouses on the 5.6-acre parcel. Once complete, the project would have featured townhouses ranging in size from 2,200 to 4,000 square feet and in price from $350,000 to $1 million.
But that project came to a screeching halt after the neighbors filed suit in county court, claiming that because the units Brumfield's company was proposing to build were not attached, they were single-family dwellings not allowed under the property multi-family zoning.
"(The neighbors) didn't like that plan and the judge ruled the units had to be attached," Brumfield said. "So we've attached them. They weren't satisfied with 41 units that weren't attached, so now we're moving forward with 57 that are attached."
Brumfield said it's his belief the neighbors won't be happy unless the property just remains vacant.
"I don't think they'll be satisfied unless we do what we've been doing the past 10 years -- paying the taxes on it and mowing the grass," he said. "We've paid over a quarter-million dollars in taxes on the property since Katrina. We're entitled to use our property, too."
The next step is for Brumfield's group to apply for preliminary plat approval, which would trigger another legally-mandated public hearing on the project.
Four days before Christmas, Beach Citys new mayor learned something worrisome: A company was seeking a permit to dredge near hazardous waste pits in the San Jacinto River. The firm wanted to dump the potentially toxic sludge 15 miles away on a neighborhood lot next to the only park in Beach City, which stretches along the coastline south of Mont Belvieu and Baytown.
Mayor Jackey Lasater heard about it not from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which received the application, but because of an advocacy group, which in turn was tipped off by a Channelview resident the Corps notified by mail. At the time, Lasater was on his way to Arkansas to visit his father, who fell and had hip surgery. But the 15-day public comment period for the project was halfway over. The mayor and others got to work.
This was their reality. With clean-up of the waste pits planned but not yet started, local politicians, nonprofits and residents still vigilantly watch what takes place around the rivers Superfund site, a scary sounding name for a spot, visible from Interstate 10, where waste from a paper mill was dumped decades ago and is today unsafe. Pollutants like that are not a concern in Beach City, where residents rely on water from wells.
We just dont want that here, Lasater said.
By days end, the opponents had won a reprieve. With input from U.S Rep. Brian Babin, a Republican from Woodville, and others, the Corps increased scrutiny of the permit. The agency changed it from the 15-day so-called letter of permission process to that of an individual permit, which would undergo a month-long public review, ending Feb. 15.
Lasater e-mailed Beach City residents that evening.
Rest assured that we are doing our due diligence to learn more about this project so that we will be prepared to deal with this development in the appropriate manner, he wrote. I will Keep you updated.
The fight had begun.
Scanned warning
Greg Moss moved to Channelview, an unincorporated area next to the San Jacinto River in northeast Harris County, in 1994. In 2011, he read in the newspaper that Harris County and the state were filing suit against three companies allegedly responsible for pollution from the Superfund site, one of 55 in Texas that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deems a national priority among known or threatened hazardous waste locations.
Moss made a living fixing boats. He wears a necklace with a boat-propeller pendant. The lawsuit article was the first he had heard of the danger. Chemicals at the site known as dioxins caused cancer and reproductive problems in lab animals, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Moss sold his jet ski and stopped fishing.
It was Moss who opened his mailbox in December to find notice of the dredging project, a familiar topic. He and other residents near the proposed site were notified. From his home, he can see the roof of the waterfront company behind it, Holtmar Land LLC. He recalled that the company failed to push through a similar plan several years before, which the Corps said was withdrawn.
Holtmar now outlined a plan to dredge 31,000 cubic yards of material from the waterfront, enough to fill at least 2,000 dump trucks. As Moss understood it, the company wanted to build a place for others to park their barges.
Hurricane Harvey inundated the ramshackle neighborhood that Moss and Holtmar both inhabit, San Jacinto River Estates. Moss did not want to deal with the smell and noise of those boats. He thought the company needed to test more stringently the dredged-up material it would be removing from the so-called Area of Concern for San Jacinto River Waste Pits Superfund Site. Did the people in Beach City even know what was coming?
It needs to be done safely, Moss said.
The 63-year-old scanned the 12-page document and on Dec. 19 e-mailed it to Jackie Young, who leads the Texas Health and Environment Alliance, and to the Mithoff Law firm, which is representing him and more than 600 others in a class action lawsuit.
Young grew up across the river in Highlands. She took Mosss information and spurred the flurry of activity involving the mayor on his way to visit his recovering father. Clean-up of the waste pits was coming. She wondered: Was now really the right time to bring in construction equipment and boats?
Full-on attack
An estimated 2,600 people live in Beach City, which stretches in a long, skinny curve along the coastline. It incorporated in 1966 so that Baytown could not gobble it up. A conservative philosophy prevails: There is no city tax and, with a budget of around $140,000, few city services. Two part-time employees work in the City Hall office housed in a county building.
Some residents years before had won a similar fight against a company that tried to build landfill for contaminated material, recalled Billy Combs, who was sworn in Jan. 2 as a Chambers County commissioner. This is not the first threat, Combs said.
Holtmar proposed to dump its dirt on a wooded, three-acre lot. A resident lives on one side. The county-maintained McCollum park is on the other. On a recent afternoon, birds chirped in the foggy quiet and someone walked laps around the parks path. In front of it stretched Trinity Bay.
Across the street lies a neighborhood called Barrow Ranch. Nichole Holmes and her husband moved there in 2017, intending it to be the place where their two boys would grow up.
Holmes felt blindsided by the email from the mayor. A native of Channelview, she takes daily supplements because her thyroid was removed years ago; she suspects the fish she ate from the river may be to blame. She knew the issues her hometown faced, and she did not want to see those same problems in Beach City, where many of her relatives now lived. They werent a bunch of rubes readily taken advantage of, she said.
They organized, posting on Facebook and NextDoor and, one weekend in early January, going door-to-door with a petition. Holmes said everyone she asked agreed to sign it. She took a copy wherever she went, be it H-E-B, Target or the eye doctor.
We, the undersigned, demand that any materials from near the San Jacinto River Waste Pits Superfund Site, NOT be moved into Beach City," the petition read. "We are concerned about the potential adverse impacts on the environment and public health during removal, transport and deposition. More than 800 people signed.
That was just one tactic. On Jan. 22, Commissioners Court and the City Council passed resolutions opposing the project.
Then there were the letters, which the Corps project manager says the agency takes into account. They described residents concern for their drinking water, property values and environment. The mayor wrote one. The man living next to the proposed dump site wrote one. The Houston chapter of the Sierra Club, and members of the health and environment alliance, wrote, too. What happens if kids track their dirt in on their shoes? What happens if another storm comes?
In hers, Holmes offered a warning: Please understand that we will tirelessly fight to prevent any San Jacinto River dredge material from coming to our community.
A handshake
Good news came Feb. 4, when the Army Corps of Engineers says that Holtmar notified the agency that it wanted to pull its permit application. Those opposing it felt cautious optimism. They would not declare victory until they saw the proof. At 5 p.m. Friday, the Army Corps sent word that the application had been withdrawn.
Tom Marian, an attorney representing the applicant, wrote in an email that he was unavailable to comment last week.
Moss, who tipped everyone off about the project, worries the company will file again and try this time to dump the dirt on a swampy property it owns near him. He says the firm asked his neighbor about putting a driveway through the neighbors property to access it. His neighbor, Joe Sartain, said he had no problem with it.
A second permit application for work around the Superfund site has been submitted, this one from a company called the San Jacinto River Fleet. Its notice went up a day before Holtmars and expires Feb. 14. The proposal details work on existing infrastructure at its facility, where barges park. Advocates have reservations about this, too.
There is broader concern about barges in the area: what if storms blow the boats into the pits? What if an accident sends a barge knocking into them?
Environmental justice advocates note that other communities might face barriers that Beach City, a predominantly Anglo community, did not. Environmental issues disproportionately affect communities of color with limited resources, said Yvette Arellano, policy research and grassroots advocate for Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services. Some communities might not be organized, feel reluctant to speak out or lack connections with legislators.
"What this community was able to do, not all communities are able to do that," said Juan Parras, the advocacy groups executive director.
The San Jacinto Waste Pits are closely watched. Young, who got the tip from the Channelview resident, holds monthly meetings of a group known as the San Jacinto River Coalition. About 30 people attended the Feb. 5 meeting, where members discussed the two permit applications one over for now, one not then spent much of the 90 minutes with detailed updates on the progress of the clean-up, which Young thinks could begin before the end of the year.
On top of the meeting agenda was a quote attributed to anthropologist Margaret Mead: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, its the only thing that ever has.
After the meeting, Young and Mayor Lasater shook hands.
Let us know if you need us, Young said.
You, too, said Lasater, headed for the door.
emily.foxhall@chron.com
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is officially disputing a claim by a German lawyer that it does not rightfully own Henri Edmund Cross Regatta in Venice, an early 20th century pointillist painting that was given to the MFAH in 1958 by philanthropist Oveta Culp Hobby.
MFAH officials filed a pleading Friday with a court in Potsdam, Germany as a rebuttal to a claim of ownership filed Jan. 21 by Berlin-based attorney Christoph Partsch, who said his clients are grandchildren of the late Gaston Levy, a Jewish real estate developer who fled his chateau in France in the 1940s before his famous art collection was confiscated by Nazi forces.
Partsch told the Chronicle last week his clients learned of the painting after it was lent to the Museum Barberini in Potsdam for a retrospective of Cross works that is up through Feb. 17. Regatta in Venice, a 29-by-36-inch canvas, depicts leisurely boaters in a bay with the Venetian skyline and sailing ships.
No one questions that at some point the painting was confiscated by German forces: A label on its verso (or back side) carries an inventory number from Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Third Reich task force charged with confiscating furnishings and artworks from Jewish owners, after they were seized. But the majority of works taken by those forces were recovered and returned after the war, through restitution programs, to their original owners; so the existence of the label may not tell the whole story of the paintings ownership history.
The museum questions several elements of Partschs claim; but most importantly, it has produced documentation of a paper trail that shows the painting was owned by the Parisian Natasha Fliegers, not Levy; and that it was returned to her by authorities before she sold it through a New York gallery to Hobby.
According to a statement from the MFAH, the museums researchers established that on May 10, 1949 the painting was recovered by the Office des Biens et Interets Prives (OBIP) and the Commission de Recuperation Artistique (CRA) and returned to Fliegers, who was living in New York at the time. Documents related to the restitution identify the painting by the label MAB 1085 the ERR inventory number.
The museums pleading also notes that the plaintiffs have not presented proof that they are Levys rightful heirs; and that Levy did not file a claim for compensation for Regatta in Venice in 1956, when he filed claims for other objects from his collection, including other paintings by Cross.
According to the MFAH document, Fliegers consigned the painting for sale in 1953 to Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. Hobby purchased it from the gallery in 1954. Both transactions are documented in the gallerys stock book.
This is contrary to the claimants assertions that the painting was smuggled out of France by Mrs. Hobby, the museums statement notes. Based on the facts of the provenance research, the museum stands by its ownership of Regatta in Venice.
Partsch said he was amazed by the poverty of the MFAHs arguments.
Partsch said he plans to reply to the museums brief; then the court will decide who owns the painting or call for a hearing.
Molly Glentzer is an arts critic for the Houston Chronicle. Read her on our free site, chron.com, and on our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com. | molly.glentzer@chron.com | Twitter: mnglentzer
A historian, a pastor, volunteers and nonprofit leaders were honored Friday at the second annual Mayors History Makers Awards presented by Comcast and the City of Houston.
Theyre making history now with the work theyre doing in our city, said T. Ray Purser, vice president of external affairs in the Houston region for Comcast.
The ceremony, which ties in to Black History Month, recognized 10 black Houstonians for their personal impact in the community, helping further the mission of a nonprofit organization and overcoming personal obstacles, said Purser. All nonprofits that nominated the winning honorees received $1,000 each from Comcast.
Patricia Smith Prather, historian and co-founder and executive director of the Texas Trailblazer Preservation Association, received the Living Legend award for her work highlighting the accomplishments of African-Americans in Texas and Houston.
Her daughter, Keiba Stevenson, accepted the award in her place as Prather recovers from an illness.
She was so excited, Stevenson said, and it takes a lot to get her excited.
Mayors History Makers Awards Honorees This year's 10 honorees were recognized at a ceremony held at The Houstonian Hotel. They were: Sam Alix, peer support mentor at the Military Veteran Peer Network's Gulf Coast chapter Darryl Blackburn, board member atBig Brothers Big Sisters Donna Brownlow, director of food services operations at Target Hunger Leonard Donaldson,volunteer at CanCare, a nonprofit that matches cancer patients with cancer survivors LaShonda Johnson, volunteer atthe Mission Continues, a veterans support organization Rev. William Lawson, pastor emeritus of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church and adviser for LULAC Howard Middleton, former commissioner of the Port of Houston and founding chairman of the H.E.A.R.T Program, which offers continuing education and work training for adults with special needs Patrick Purnell, volunteer atMental Health America Greater Houston Tiffany Sanders, board member of Kids Meals Inc. Patricia Smith Prather, historian and co-founder and executive director of the Texas Trailblazer Preservation Association who received the Living Legend Award See More Collapse
Stevenson added that she felt grateful for the recognition while her mother is still alive to enjoy as so often accolades are given posthumously.
Mayor Sylvester Turner, who selected Prather as this years Living Legend recipient, said the ceremonys intent was to set an example for others to also give back to the community.
You dont have to be a seasoned saint to make a vital contribution, he said.
Additional honorees included the Rev. William Lawson, pastor emeritus of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, for his work in helping establish the Houston Chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.
Lawson, who played a leading role in the Civil Rights Movement through his church, said he felt honored to be nominated by LULAC.
Ive always been concerned about minorities, and certainly about Latinos, he said.
Several veterans were also honored including Patrick Purnell, a U.S. Air Force veteran and survivor of three cancer diagnoses and a stroke. Purnell volunteers regularly at four different nonprofits, and was nominated by Mental Health America Greater Houston for his mentorship of veterans struggling through difficult transitions into civilian life.
When you work for your purpose, your purpose will work for you, Purnell said.
There were also nonprofit leaders including Donna Brownlow, director of food services operations at Target Hunger, a United Way affiliate. Brownlow oversees the delivery of food to senior citizens in need, serving 600 seniors a month.
Giving of her time and resources to others is a passion, she said.
I really believe I was put on this earth to serve other people.
ileana.najarro@chron.com
Ileana.Najarro@chron.com
Texas homeowners, many burdened by high and rising property taxes, can rightly understand why Republican leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick want the Texas Legislature to tackle property tax reform this year.
Unfortunately, however, their track record on the subject doesnt inspire confidence especially since they are also vowing to reform the states notoriously Byzantine system of school finance. The property tax relief the Legislature provided in 2015, for example, failed to constrain the growth of property taxes and gave homeowners little succor, to boot.
And many Texans worry about the property tax reform proposal that Abbott and Patrick put forward last month at a joint press conference with Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen.
Developments this week did not allay those concerns.
On HoustonChronicle.com: Senators hush critics at first property tax reform hearing
The Texas Senates property tax committee held a hearing Wednesday on Senate Bill 2, which seeks to limit the growth of property tax revenue in cities, counties and school districts with collections of at least $15 million a year.
Some of those jurisdictions have seen significant revenue growth in recent years due to rising property values across Texas. Under SB 2, voter approval would be required if revenue growth exceeds 2.5 percent compared to the previous year.
Many witnesses testified in favor of the measure, an identical version of which has been filed in the Texas House.
Witnesses who testified against it may have been left with the impression that their perspective is literally irrelevant.
The committee is a newly created one. Four of its five members are Republicans. And the outcome of Wednesdays hearing was a foregone conclusion, according to state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who serves as the committees chairman.
Im never going to stop on this until we get this bill passed, Bettencourt said that morning.
"I'm trying to understand why you are here opposing the bill," he told El Paso County Commissioner David Stout at one point.
Thats arguably a fair question. I wouldnt bother to testify for or against this bill until its taken up by the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by state Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock.
On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas politicians promise property tax reform, just dont expect lower taxes.
With that said, its churlish to fault local officials for testifying about a bill that would affect the community they serve.
El Paso County, for example, might not face immediate consequences as a result of SB 2s passage. The county hasnt raised property tax revenues by more than 2.5 percent in the last five years. Stout said he opposes the bill in part because its passage would erode local control.
Thats what SB 2 is designed to do. Property taxes in Texas are levied locally. But the state has some say in how revenues are distributed, since the the Texas Constitution requires the Legislature to make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.
That puts elected officials who serve in state government on a collision course with their counterparts at the local level.
Tensions between the two have been growing since the adoption in the 1990s of the Robin Hood system, which shifted resources from property-wealthy school districts to poor ones.
The property tax revenue collected by taxing agencies across Texas has soared since then. And a portion of that revenue flows through the Legislature, which allocates roughly 40 percent of the states biennial budget to public education.
On HoustonChronicle.com: Texans should hope for the best for the 2019 legislative session
Still, Texas public schools are underfunded and homeowners are struggling to keep up with their tax bills. Thats why Republican leaders have vowed to tackle school finance this year, as well as property taxes.
But the passage of a major property tax proposal like Senate Bill 2 would affect the states ability to provide more funding for public schools, which Republican leaders have described as their goal.
And although Bettencourt may be able to crowbar this bill through the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans, he should try to show more respect for Texans, like Stout, who have concerns about his proposal.
The concerns raised about Senate Bill 2 at this weeks hearing arent frivolous or insincere. And Texans who want a say in the matter can count on getting a real hearing in the House.
Editor's note: This column was revised to change the quote attributed to state Sen. Paul Bettencourt in his questioning of El Paso County Commissioner David Stout. A transcript of the hearing shows the original quote was inaccurately reported in a prior news article.
erica.grieder@chron.com
At this moment in Houstons history, there is no more meaningful piece of public art in the city than The Rebirth of Our Nationality, the historic Chicano art movement mural at 5900 Canal Street, on a facade of what is now Harris Countys Precinct 6 headquarters.
A crowd of several hundred people braved the heat midday Thursday to celebrate the re-dedication of the early 1970s mural, which the county spent $70,000 to restore as part of an $8 million renovation to the former Continental Can Company property. Befitting the murals sprawling size 240-by-18-feet the remarks ran long, but everyone seemed to be savoring the spirit of the moment and what it represented for three generations of the East End community.
This is what public art is for, for the community to share, said Gonzo 247, the urban art entrepreneur who led the restoration. Normally composed and business-like, he was so choked up he could barely get through the list of people he wanted to thank.
Leo Tanguma, the murals creator, slowly explained the symbolism of the 70 figures who parade across the monster wall a history lesson about the struggles of Mexican-Americans, the importance of their cultural roots and the need for political activism. Some of the figures that look like victims actually reflect criticisms; Tanguma wasnt afraid to scold his own people. A man who is tied up in a rope, for example, is about Chicanos wrapped up in their own attitudes and machismo, Tanguma explained.
He also spoke of unity with other communities of color, including blacks and native Americans. Together, we can accomplish more, he said.
Tanguma, now in his 70s, left Houston shortly after creating the mural, frustrated by racism and convinced his politically inflamatory artworks, which included a number of smaller projects, would never be accepted. He has only returned in recent months to help repaint some of the more intricate details of his masterpiece. Gonzo noted that Tanguma put on the first touch of brown paint within the skin of the murals figures, thus blessing the wall with his own hands.
Tanguma looked happy but also a little stunned at being called a hero in a community where he had once felt so isolated he saw no other path than to escape. The countys good stewardship had brought the biggest work of his life full circle.
Im not used to this kind of accolades, he said.
A uniformed group from the Houston chapter of the pro-Chicano organization the Brown Berets looked like figures from the mural come to life as they waved a flag and posed for photographs. Their activism now focuses on educating the community about the citys Chapter 42 ordinance to slow gentrification in the barrios, said member Willie Rodriguez.
Its so emotional, said East End resident Yvonne Garcia, who like so many of those who came out for the party grew up watching Tangumas mural slowly decay.
We all share a community story, said Gonzo, whose real name is Mario Figueroa Jr. And the community story is this wall behind us.
Climate crisis is an urgent threat and, indeed, cities are on the front lines of both impacts and the solutions, Gore said. Bill Daley is the right person to ensure that Chicago leads by tackling this issue head-on. Ive relied on him myself during important moments in my career and Im extremely grateful for all that hes done. I want others to know that they can rely on him as mayor of Chicago.
A state-sponsored website used by millions of Texans to shop for electricity could be on the chopping block, a move consumer watchdogs say could leave consumers with fewer choices and bigger bills.
Texas Rep. Jared Patterson, a freshman Republican who represents Denton County, wants the Public Utility Commission to drop Power to Choose, the website introduced two decades ago when Texas deregulated the electricity industry. Patterson has introduced a bill in the Legislature that would eliminate the website that compares dozens of electricity plans, arguing that the government shouldn't be competing with private businesses.
"Government doesn't offer pricing comparison sites for groceries or car tires, and shouldn't for electricity rates either," said Patterson.
Patterson is director of energy services at Rapid Power Management, an electricity brokerage firm based in Carrollton that buys electricity on behalf of manufacturers and commercial clients.
On HoustonChronicle.com: It pays to switch power plans, but few do
But analysts say that Power to Choose provides transparency to the electricity buying experience that has become so complicated an entire cottage industry has developed that helps consumers sort through the offers. Retail electric providers dont have to pay commissions to be listed, so they can offer lower prices to encourage customers to sign up.
Some of the rock-bottom deals are only offered on Power to Choose. They dont appear on the websites of retail electric providers or for-profit electricity brokers, said Fred Anders, the founder of Texas Power Guide in Houston, a website that uses Power to Choose to calculate the best deals for consumers based on their energy use.
I cant image what the market would turn into with it, he said.
Power to Choose is also the place where small retail electricity providers without much of a marketing budget can offer competitive plans to attract customers they might not have reached any other way. Offers from smaller providers put pressure on the larger ones to remain competitive, one retail electricity provider said.
If Mr. Patterson is really about promoting competition, he should welcome a site like Power to Choose, said Joshua Pesikoff, president and CEO of retail electricity provider Infuse Energy.
The free website is also where the biggest retail electricity providers can showcase their offerings.
It fills a vital role in the Texas competitive market, said Pat Hammond, spokeswoman for Houston and Princeton, N.J., based NRG Energy which controls nearly one-third of the retail electricity market. NRGs brands include Reliant Energy, Discount Power, Pennywise Power and Cirro Energy.
But Direct Energy, which has about 10 percent of the retail power market in Texas, said the shopping website isnt needed anymore. Patterson, meanwhile, criticized Power to Choose for the marketing gimmicks that many retail electricity providers use to lure customers into believing they're getting a good deal. The Public Utility Commission cracked down last year on many of the abuses, but Patterson said its just a matter of time until retailers find another way to game the system.
I don't think its as accurate as people think it is, he said.
On HoustonChronicle.com: Cottage industry rises from complexity of choosing a power plan
Ed Hirs, energy economist at the University of Houston, suggested that Patterson was more interested in acting on behalf of himself and the electricity industry in which he works than looking out for consumers.
Hospitals have to display their prices beginning Jan. 1, Hirs noted, and the Trump administration has proposed a rule requiring drug companies to tell consumers how much it costs to buy the drugs featured in television advertisements.
So is requiring transparency a bad thing? asked Hirs.
Patterson rejected any notion there might be a conflict of interest in offering his bill, noting that he represents industrial and commercial electricity shoppers, not residential buyers. It has nothing, he said, to do with me.
lynn.sixel@chron.com
twitter.com/lmsixel
Amazon's Jeff Bezos just accused The National Inquirer and its parent company American Media Inc. of blackmailing him with nude selfies and Terry Crews said they did the same thing to him with fake stories about prostitutes. If you can remember, Terry sued Adam Venit for sexual assault and The National Inquirer and some of the people behind the publication was one of a few people trying to silence him.
"This same company, AMI, tried to silence me in my lawsuit against @wme and Adam Venit by fabricating stories of me with prostitutes and even went so far as creating fake receipts. I called their bluff by releasing their threats online. They blinked," Terry wrote on Twitter alongside a re-tweet of Jeff's claims.
Jeff was being blackmailed by the publication because they wanted him to stop his investigation on how the magazine got its hands on sensitive information regarding his affair and drop the idea that it was a "political move."
On another note, according to Page Six, David Pecker (who runs AMI) has admitted to buying the rights of sensitive and personal information about President Donald Trump (his friend) as a means to keep them under wraps.
UFC 234 is barely upon us, but Dana White is already looking well into the future. The UFC president spoke with MMAJunkie in Melbourne, Australia before the big the inter-generational clash of Israel Adesanya and Anderson Silva in UFC 234's main event. Not only did he outline his plans for Daniel Cormier should the Heavyweight Champ for three more fights, but he also pegged Tony Ferguson as the fighter most deserving of a shot at Khabib Nurmagomedov's UFC title, when lightweight champion returns from suspension.
If you'll recall, Khabib Nurmagomedov jumped the fence at UFC 229 after securing a submission victory over Conor McGregor. The attack of McGregor's training partner saw him fined half-a-million dollars by the Nevada State Commission and barred from competition for the next 9 months. As ESPN is reporting, the ban can be reduced to a 6-month bid if Khabib complies with a UFC-appointed anti-bullying program.
"Of course Tony deserves it," White told MMAJunkied. "He's the No. 1 contender. He's the guy. That's the fight," - all but confirming Tony Ferguson as the next guy in line, be it in 6 months or 9 months down the road. Ferguson last fought on the same UFC 229 fight card that ended in controversy, a performance which earned him "Fight of the Night" honors.
Yesterday, Tekashi 6ix9ine's ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child spoke directly to The Daily Beast about the relentless abuse she faced at his hands. She alleges that he used to violently beat her and forced her to have sex with him in a hotel room in Dubai. The incident occurred after she was beaten so badly that her face was dripping blood. The same interview brings forth plenty of other terrible instances when 6ix9ine was supposedly in a crazed state.
SMXRF/Star Max/Getty Images
It was made clear that many of Tekashi's issues stemmed from the fact that he believed Sara Molina, his ex-girlfriend, was sleeping with Kifano "Shotti" Jordan, his manager at the time. However, according to Molina, the rapper had slept with over seventy women in the span of a year, even getting a few of them pregnant. Sara says that she got multiple STDs as a result of her boyfriend's promiscuity.
One of the most troubling sections of the article details a time when Tekashi allegedly beat up Molina in the car while their daughter was present. If any of this is true, it obviously paints 6ix9ine in the most negative light. Violence of this sort is completely intolerable and it only makes things worse to realize that their daughter was present for some of it.
Read the full piece here.
From 660 Curries: The Gateway to Indian Cooking by Raghaven Iyer
From 660 Curries: The Gateway to Indian Cooking by Raghaven Iyer
Kelsey Campbell lives in Mitchell and writes the Lost River Producer Spotlight for the Times-Mail. For more information on Lost River Market and Deli, visit its website at www.lostrivermarketanddeli.com, stop by the store at 26 Library St., Paoli, or follow its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/LostRiverMarket/.
Enter the Once Upon A Child Spring Style Sweepstakes today for the chance to WIN! Refresh your child's wardrobe! You could be the LUCKY WINNER of $200 in Store Cash!
The Democratic Party, which has promoted itself as the champion for African-American causes since the civil rights era, is in a real pickle over whats going on in Virginia. If the Democratic governor is forced to resign over blackface, Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is next in line. But hes battling #MeToo allegations, having been accused of two sexual assaults. That would put Herring up next, and he has acknowledged a bout with blackface, too. With all the top Democrats out of the way, it would open the door for a Republican, Speaker of the House of Delegates Kirk Cox, to move into the governor role. If Cox is unable to serve, the Republican-majority House would have to choose someone.
More information
Inmates released from Indiana prisons get a ride to their new home from a friend or family member, or get transported by prison staff.
They receive the following before they go out the gate:
Some cash. $75 is the limit for most offenders. Extra money is available to cover temporary housing costs for hard-to-place inmates.
Clothing. A pair of khaki pants, a T-shirt and a pair of canvas shoes during warm-weather months. When the weather turns cold, released inmates also receive a green knit stocking hat, a canvas coat and a pair of work boots.
Click here to find out where to get a COVID-19 vaccine or test.
To find out how many local residents have been vaccinated for COVID-19, click here. Use the map to find numbers for individual counties.
Find detailed statistics about COVID-19 tests, cases and deaths by county and for the state as a whole on the Indiana State Department of Health's online dashboard.
Lima, OH (45805)
Today
Partly to mostly cloudy. A sprinkle or two possible. High 76F. Winds SW at 5 to 15 mph..
Tonight
A few clouds. Low around 59F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
Copyright 2019 at Sun Newspapers/ APG Media of East Central Minnesota. Digital dissemination of this content without prior written consent is a violation of federal law and may be subject to legal action.
Copyright 2018 at Sun Newspapers. Digital dissemination of this content without prior written consent is a violation of federal law and may be subject to legal action.
Universities and schools in the United Kingdom attract students from rich families from across the globe, but the son of a former prime minister who paid 1,000 per day for an apartment in Knightsbridge drew the attention of crime officials.
The student, named Vlad Luca Filat, 22, paid 390,000 upfront in rent for the apartment. He now must hand over nearly half a million pounds following an investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
NCAs financial investigators suspected that the funds used were derived for illegal activity by his father, Vladimir Filat, the former prime minister of Moldova in east Europe. His three bank accounts were frozen under new forfeiture provisions introduced by the Criminal Finances Act 2017.
NCA said the former prime minster is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence after being convicted in June 2016 for his part in the disappearance of $1billion (646 million) from three Moldovan banks.
With no registered income in the UK, HSBC records showed that the Vlad Lucas accounts and living expenses were funded by large deposits from overseas companies, mainly based in Turkey and the Cayman Islands, the NCA said.
Multiple cash deposits were also identified across the UK branch network, with 98,100 paid in over one three-day period. After moving to London in July 2016 to begin his studies, Vlad Luca led an extravagant lifestyle, spending significant sums of money on luxury goods and services, including a 200,000 Bentley Bentayga bought from a Mayfair dealership.
At the City of London Magistrates Court, district judge Michael Snow granted forfeiture orders on Vlad Lucas three frozen accounts, requiring 466,321.72 to be forfeited.
Snow said: I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the cash was derived from his fathers criminal conduct in Moldova.
Rob MacArthur from the NCAs International Corruption Unit, said: Account Freezing Orders are a valuable tool in the fight against illicit finance in the UK. Where we suspect money in an account is the proceeds of crime, we can apply to the court to freeze and then forfeit the sums.
In this case, Vlad Luca Filat was unable to demonstrate a legitimate source for the money and the court determined it to be recoverable.
The Thai princess whose stunning announcement that she was running for prime minister was quickly opposed by her brother, the king, thanked her supporters on Saturday, saying she wants Thailand to be moving forward, but did not comment on her candidacy.
Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi, 67, shocked the country on Friday when she announced she would be the prime ministerial candidate for a populist party loyal to ousted ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, in a March 24 election.
But her foray into politics breaking with royal tradition looked to be short-lived after her younger brother, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, quickly signalled he opposed it, which is likely to lead to her disqualification.
The Election Commission, which is overseeing the first polls since a 2014 military coup that overthrew a pro-Thaksin government, said it would issue a ruling on the issue on Monday.
The nomination of a royal family member by pro-Thaksin forces was an audacious gambit, potentially undercutting Thaksins ardently royalist foes, and setting up an election showdown with Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who led the 2014 coup and heads the military government.
But King Vajiralongkorns swift rebuke of his sisters bid could backfire on pro-Thaksin forces, who could face retribution if judged by election authorities to have tried to illegitimately use a royal connection.
Fridays events were astounding and have people completely rethinking their assessments and perspectives and the countrys future political trajectory, said Jay Harriman, senior director at BowerGroupAsia, a government affairs consultancy.
The monarchy has semi-divine status in Thailand. Public appearances and statements often pertain to royal duty or events, he added. A disagreement like this has almost never happened in recent memory.
The Thai Raksa Chart party, which nominated Ubolratana as its candidate for prime minister, said it graciously accepts the kings statement and would abide by election regulations and royal tradition.
King Vajiralongkorn, 66, issued his message late on Friday, saying his elder sisters candidacy was inappropriate and it was against the spirit of the constitution for royalty to be involved in politics.
While the Election Commission has the final say on approval of candidates, it seems unlikely its members would ignore the powerful influence of the king in making its decision.
Moving forward
In an Instagram post on Saturday, the princess did not directly mention her brother or her political hopes, but thanked supporters for their love and kindness toward each other over the past day and expressed gratitude for their support for her.
I would like to say once again that I want to see Thailand moving forward, being admirable and acceptable by international countries, want to see all Thais have rights, a chance, good living, happiness to all, she said, concluding with #ILoveYou.
Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932, but the royal family has wielded great influence.
Friday was the last day for parties to declare candidates.
The general election had been broadly viewed as a straightforward battle between Thaksins populists and their allies, on the one hand, and the royalist-military establishment on the other.
The main opponent of the princess, if her nomination were to stand, would be Prayuth, who also announced his candidacy on Friday, as the candidate for a new pro-military party, set up by his loyalists.
The princesss nominating party is an offshoot of the larger pro-Thaksin party that was ousted from power in the 2014 coup, and is seen as a back-up party in case the main party is disqualified.
It cancelled a planned event on Saturday. The princess had not been scheduled to appear.
Ubolratana relinquished her royal titles in 1972 when she married an American, a fellow student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Peter Jensen. She lived in the United States for more than 26 years before they divorced in 1998.
As work gets underway for their second summit, US president Donald Trump is talking up the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un calling him a capable leader who will turn his country into a different kind of Rocket a economic one.
The President also announced in a tweet the summit will take place in Hanoi, on February 27-28; he had announced the dates at his state of the union address.
Officials have started work on it and US special representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun returned Friday after talks with his counterpart in Pyongyang, Kim Hyok Chol.
Their discussion were focussed on commitments (from the first summit, in Singapore last summer) of complete denuclearisation, transforming US-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, said the state department. They will meet again closer to the summit.
President Trump reported the meeting in a tweet and proceeded to talk it up, with a glowing assessment of Kim. North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse. He may surprise some but he wont surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!
North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse. He may surprise some but he wont surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2019
Trump used to call Kim Rocket-man when they were trading insults, but since the start of a thaw in tensions leading up to their first summit, he has been conciliatory and complimentary as he pursues one of his key foreign policy initiatives, which critics believe has yielded not much else but photo-ops for Kim to enhance his profile globally.
While Trump and senior aides have spoken optimistically about getting Pyongyang to denuclearise completely and also give up its missiles programmes, US intelligence officials remain skeptical, and told lawmakers recently that in their assessment, North Korea is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons.
Acknowledging that Pyongyang has not conducted missiles or nuclear tests and has reversibly dismantled portions of its WMD infrastructure in a year, US intelligence said in a report that North Korea retains its WMD capabilities, and... it is unlikely to give up all of its WMD stockpiles, delivery systems, and production capabilities.
North Korean leaders view nuclear arms as critical to regime survival, it said.
Also read: How India stands to gain from Trump-Kim summit
It has been noted that though Kim has said in his New Year address last month, for instance that North Korea is not producing any m re nuclear weapons, he has not yet said what he plans to do with his existing arsenal.
And the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a US think-tank, said in a recent report that experts had discovered 20 previously undisclosed missile sites in the country.
Some experts have argued for the United States to abandon its goal of complete denuclearisation to managing a nuclear North Korea.
Fans of the popular Netflix original, Sacred Games, are waiting to know more about the lives of Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and Inspector Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan) in the second season, which is currently under production.
Hinting at what is to come, casting director Shivam Gupta told BollywoodLife, Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui will blow your mind away in the second season of the web-series. You cannot even imagine how big it would be.
He also revealed that several new characters will be introduced in season two.
Without revealing names, Shivam said, If you were amazed by the actors in the first season, the second one will have talents that have never been seen on screen.
Earlier, Nawazuddin had told Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview, It should arrive between June and August. You will forget the first season after watching the second season.
Also read: Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Zoya Akhtar take Gully Boy global. See pics from Berlin Film Festival
Gaitonde is killed in the first episode of the series, and the first season tells his story in flashback. Season two will further explore his tale, and his relationship with Pankaj Tripathis character, Guruji. Tripathi will be seen in a more prominent role in the upcoming season along with Elnaaz Norouzi, who was last seen visitng Gaitonde in jail.
The cast of the show flew to South Africa for the second season and have shot in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
The first season of Sacred Games was co-directed by Gangs of Wasseypur director Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane of Lootera fame. Now Neeraj Ghaywan has replaced Motwane as the director in the second season. Netflix had earlier revealed that two out of three viewers of the show came from outside India.
Follow @htshowbiz for more
"When women are able to be at work, be present and not drop out of the workforce, they have been able to perform and advance with their peers at the same level," says Dean Carter, Patagonia's vice president of human resources. "We have a lot of women who are in leadership positions, and we want to help them be moms and get work done."
Mankhurd police arrested a 44-year-old hospital staffer and union leader from Vashi on Thursday along with two accomplices for the murder of 28-year-old Rohini Ghorpade, who went missing in November 2018. Sunil Shirke had been in a relationship with Ghorpade whom he allegedly killed and buried in Raigad, with the help of two of his friends. A post mortem revealed Ghodpade died due to unnatural head injury. Shirke and the two accomplices have been charged for murder and destruction of evidence.
Rohini Ghorpade, a conservancy staffer with a civic run hospital in Navi Mumbai, was reported missing on November 16. She was last seen by her family on November 14, shed left her residence at 11am, ostensibly to attend a friends wedding. Investigations revealed that Ghorpade, a widow, had been in a relationship with Shirke, 44, who is already married and works as a conservancy staffer at a Vashi hospital where hes also a union leader. Rohini had been asking Sunil to marry her. Sunils wife and family had learned about their affair and hence there were frequent skirmishes between them, said Shahji Umap, deputy commissioner of police, zone 6.
The police believe Shirke plotted with two of his friends Ramchandra Jadhav, 36, who works for a cable firm in Navi Mumbai, and Vijaysinh More, 22, a bus driver to kill Ghorpade.
On November 12, 2018, Shirke dug what would end up being Ghodpades grave at a barren spot near Shirsad village, in Mangaon, Raigad. Two days later, Ghodpade and Shirke went to for a picnic to Shirsad in Shirkes car, accompanied by More. Ghodpades family knew she was going for a wedding. Jadhav reached Shirsad by bus.
The accused trio and the woman reached Shirsad village in Mangaon which is Sunils native place during night, said Umap. Investigations revealed that the woman was taken to a barren land where Ramchandra hit her head using a spade. When they realized that she was still alive, they smothered her to death using her saree, he said. After burying Ghodpade in the pit that Shirke had dug two days ago, Shirke went to his family home while More and Jadhav returned to Navi Mumbai in Shirkes car.
The Mankhurd police found their first clue when they learned there were withdrawals of 65,000 from two different ATM centres based in Navi Mumbai, on Ghodpades debit card on November 15 and 16. CCTV footage revealed Jadhav had withdrawn the money. Initially, we were not able to identify Ramchandra as her family and friends did not identify him as being an acquaintance of Rohinis. However, investigations revealed that he is Sunils friend, said Umap.
When Shirke was questioned, he admitted to the police that Jadhav was seen withdrawing money from Ghodpades card and that he had killed her with his friends help. The accused showed the place where the body was dumped. We exhumed the fully decomposed body in presence of executive magistrate and a post mortem was conducted at Sir JJ Hospital, said Umap.
Two days after an open letter to people, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav took to Twitter on Friday with the hashtag #NeverAgain, asking people to vow that they would stand against the BJP and not fall for its gimmicks.
Let us vow that we will #NeverAgain... let people die waiting in line to withdraw money from a bank...fall for the 15 lakh rupee lie...allow farmers to kill themselves...let national security enrich the famous few...let people be killed for their beliefs...let two and half men rule us, he said in a Tweet two hours after held a press conference where he said, This time people will revolt against BJP.
It was followed by the SP running a series of tweets on its account with the same hashtag and endorsing Yadavs message to corner the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Its an attempt to make people aware of the BJPs gimmicks and stand against it, a senior party leader said.
The SP chief is very active on Twitter and has 90 lakh followers on the microblogging site, while the party has more than 16 lakh followers.
The series of tweets is seen as an attempt by the SP to counter the BJP IT cell, which was dubbed recently by Yadav as Internet Terrorist cell.
On Tuesday, Yadav had repeatedly said two and a half men were running the country, apparently targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
When the SP was in power, they (BJP) used to say that there were five CMs running the state. Now our party is saying that two and a half men are running the country. They can be easily guessed, a party leader said.
At the press conference, Akhilesh) attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for mocking the proposed opposition alliance as maha-milawat. Hewarned Friday the concoction of parties should not be taken lightly.
This is such a concoction that you dont know which party will get obliterated (yeh aisi maha-milawat hai ki kaun kahan mit jayega pata nahi), Yadav said.
On the prime ministers ulta chor chowkidar ko daantey (thief accusing the guard) remark, Yadav said Modi should make clear for whom does this comment hold true.
Yadav took potshots at the BJP for not implementing promises made in its manifesto ahead of the 2017 assembly polls.
The state government presented its third budget but no promises have been fulfilled. The BJP has forgotten its own Sankalp Patra.
He said with the hopes of the nations youth for jobs dashed, they will be restless and punish the BJP in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
SP chief draws liquor-cow cess link
Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav said the BJP government wanted to encourage liquor consumption for protecting cows.
The Uttar Pradesh government recently decided to impose special cess on Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) and beer to fund stray cow shelter homes, grazing grounds and other cattle protection activities. The SP chief blamed the BJP government for the recent deaths due to spurious liquor.
The government is responsible. Who is brewing such liquor, the government knows everything? BJP leaders are involved in it, he alleged. HTC
When Priyanka Gandhi Vadra arrives on her first visit to Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) headquarters here on Monday, she will have her task cut out for her to build the party organisation in the state ahead of the Lok Sabha election.
A list of the existing team of office bearers has been already made available to the All India Congress Committee (AICC) and the state unit is getting ready with briefs about them to let the leadership know about their experience, potential and usefulness for the party organisation.
Priyanka, who has been appointed Congress general secretary for east Uttar Pradesh, will hold meetings with the partymen from 42 Lok Sabha constituencies. Her counterpart Jyotiraditya Scindia, the Congress general secretary for west UP, will interact with the partymen from 38 parliamentary seats.
Accompanied by Congress president Rahul Gandhi, both Priyanka and Jyotiraditya, will reach the UPCC headquarters in a procession from Amausi airport here on Monday.
While Rahul Gandhi will leave the same day, Priyanka and Jyotiraditya Scindia will camp in Lucknow till February 14, to take feedback from partymen and gear up the cadres for the Lok Sabha election.
Rahul Gandhi has tasked both the leaders to form the next government in Uttar Pradesh.
A breakup of Lok Sabha constituencies in east and west UP indicates Priyanka will have seats of central UP, including Lucknow, under her charge, besides the districts of east UP. Scindia, on the other hand, will have the Bundelkhand region under his charge, besides the districts of west UP.
We have sent information to all the districts for meetings with the two leaders. We expect large groups of partymen from nearby districts while those from distant places may come in smaller numbers on the first day. As Lok Sabha seat-wise interaction with partymen will take place on February 12, 13 and 14, we have sent information to about 20 senior leaders from every constituency. These leaders, include sitting and former legislators and the party candidates etc. Each group will get 30 to 40 minutes, we hope about 13 to 14 Lok Sabha seats will be covered each day, said a senior party leader.
Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) president Raj Babbar meanwhile had a closed door meeting with partymen, including those from Lucknow unit, and put final touches to the arrangements for Priyankas visit.
About 28 welcome points from Amausi airport to UPCC headquarters have been finalized. More welcome points may be added to the list.
We will accord a grand welcome to our leaders, Babbar said.
A number of hoardings are being put up along the welcome route. The UPCC office and the crossing in front of UPCC headquarters is being spruced up.
A special protection group (SPG) team reached the UPCC headquarters and had a meeting with the party leaders to make necessary security arrangements for the visit of the top party leaders.
As the death toll in the hooch tragedy that hit Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh rose to at least 77, the Uttar Pradesh police on Saturday arrested 175 people in possibly the biggest crackdown yet on those involved in manufacture and sale of bootleg liquor.
Police also stepped up raids and an official said a record 92,697 litre of illicit liquor was seized from across Uttar Pradesh, while 297 separate cases were filed.
The first of the deaths were reported on Thursday and by late Saturday, 37 had died in Saharanpur district of western Uttar Pradesh, 11 in Kushinagar district of eastern UP while another 31 had succumbed to the poisoning in Balupur and neighbouring villages in Uttarakhands Haridwar district. In at least the Saharanpur and the Haridwar district deaths, the hooch is suspected to be from the same source, possibly made in villages that fall near the Uttarakhand-UP border.
UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath also spoke to his Uttarakhand counterpart Trivendra Singh Rawat for a coordinated crackdown on bootlegging rings. We wont spare the guilty. We are focusing on the mastermind, Adityanath said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party leader hinted involvement of the Samajwadi Party, saying, In the past, too, such type of mischievous acts by SP leaders had come to the fore. In Azamgarh, Hardoi Kanpur and Barabanki, SP leaders were found to be involved in past hooch tragedies. We cant deny a conspiracy this time too.
Between July 2017 four months after the BJP government came to power in UP and last week, at least 74 people died after consumer hooch. Consumption of bootleg liquor is a problem in rural districts of India, where the poor are often unable to afford legal alcohol. Such liquor turns poisonous if brewed improperly.
Consumption of bootleg liquor is a problem in rural districts of India, where the poor are often unable to afford legal alcohol. Such liquor turns poisonous if brewed improperly.
In just 11 months, 2 lakh gas connections distributed: PM Modi
In just 11 months, 2 lakh gas connections distributed, 20,000 houses and more than 1.25 toilets have been built in Tripura, says PM Narendra Modi.
Under PM Shram Yogi Maandhan scheme, pension of Rs 3000 per month will be given to eligible subscribers: PM Modi
As per the budget announcement, PM Shram Yogi Maandhan scheme is meant for workers employed in unorganised sector. Under the scheme, pension of Rs 3000 per month will be given to eligible subscribers, says PM Narendra Modi.
Answer to every question is to abuse Modi, per Mahamilavat: PM Modi
The answer to every question is to abuse Modi, per Mahamilavat. They have sensed that the people of the country are with Modi. Its nothing but the fear, says PM Narendra Modi.
Opposition parties forming grand alliance known as mahamilavat: PM Modi
The parties that didnt see eye to eye in Tripura can now been seen holding hands and forming a grand alliance known as mahamilavat, says PM Narendra Modi.
We have taken care of every section of the society: PM Modi
In the recent budget, we have taken care of every section of the society which was unthinkable during previous governments, says Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
All the infrastructure projects inaugurated today are reflection of the HIRA Model: PM Modi
I talked about the HIRA - Highway, Iway, Railway, Airway- model when I visited last time during the state elections. All the infrastructure projects inaugurated today are reflection of the HIRA Model, says PM Narendra Modi.
Tripura is now being made gateway of the South East Asia: PM Modi
Tripura, the state that was deprived of development on the pretext of being a landlocked region, is now being made gateway of the South East Asia , says PM Narendra Modi.
PM Modi inaugurates Garjee - Belonia Railway Line in Agartala
Tripura: Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates the Garjee - Belonia Railway Line in Agartala. CM Biplab Kumar Deb also present.
Tripura: Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates the Garjee - Belonia Railway Line in Agartala. CM Biplab Kumar Deb also present. pic.twitter.com/NCROJvNdYP ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019
For the first time in the state, paddy was procured at the MSP: PM Modi
For the first time in the state, paddy was procured at the MSP. Besides, recommendation of the 7th pay commission was implemented, says PM Narendra Modi.
PM Modi lays foundation stone and inaugurates development projects at Agartala.
PM Modi lays foundation stone and inaugurates development projects at Agartala, Tripura.
PM Narendra Modi unveils the statue of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur in Agartala
Tripura: Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveils the statue of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur in Agartala.
Tripura: Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveils the statue of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur in Agartala. pic.twitter.com/2TslbeKoJg ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019
Congratulate Arunachal Pradesh for achieving 100% household electrification: PM Modi
I would like to congratulate Arunachal Pradesh for achieving 100% household electrification.
12 hydro electric projects of 110MV were inaugurated which will not only help Arunachal but also the other states of Northeast, says PM Narendra Modi.
We will protect the rights of the tribes of Assam: PM Modi
Without providing any harm to anyone, we gave 10% quota to the poor. Similarly, we will protect the rights of the tribes of Assam,said PM Modi in Assam.
No Indian citizen will be excluded out of the NRC list: PM
The issue of citizenship amendment is not merely limited to Assam or Northeast, its a relevant issue for the country. I assure you, no Indian citizen will be excluded out of the NRC list,said PM Modi in Assam.
Theres no place in the country for infiltrators: PM
Opposition spreading lies about citizenship bill. The BJP govt has brought NRC to rid the country of Bangladeshi infiltrators. Theres no place in the country for infiltrators, the Centre govt is committed to Citizenship bill, said PM Modi in Assam.
They just have one identity, mahamilavat: PMs jibe at Oppns proposed mahagathbandhan
They just have one identity, mahamilavat and to rid the country of these corrupt people, we need the help of the citizens, said PM Modi.
BJP government has expanded the gas network in the state: PM
The BJP government has expanded the gas network in the state. We have developed gas processing plants storage facilities which will boost employment opportunities in the state, said PM Modi in Amingaon
BJP govt has completed projects worth over Rs 14,000 crore for Assam: PM
The BJP govt has completed projects worth over Rs 14,000 crore in Assam which will develop the state, said PM Modi in Amingaon
PM attacks Congress for ignoring real ratnas of India
I pay my tributes to Dr Bhupen Hazarika. He raised his voice for the deprived and the poor, said PM Modi.
While repeating his BC and AD jibe, PM Modi said, I want to ask Congress, why did they fail to confer Bharat Ratnas to those who really deserved it. Why did they ignore reat ratnas of India.
His remarks came close on the heels of Bhupen Hazarika being conferred Bharat Ratna posthumously.
Historic day for Assam: PM
Its a historic day for Assam. Today a new page has been added to Northeasts history. We have unveiled and inaugurated projects worth thousand of crores today, said PM Modi in Amingaon in Assam,
PM unveils projects worth Rs 18,000 crore for N-E in Assam
PM Modi, who is on a two-day visit to the Northeast unveiled project worth Rs 18,000 crore in Assam. Hailing the move, BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma said, the projects will open the gateways of growth.
Arunachal is security gateway of the country: PM
Arunachal Pradesh is the security gateway of the country and we are taking every step to develop this state, said PM Modi in Itanagar.
PM kisan samman nidhi will benefit the farmers of Arunachal: PM
To benefit the farmers of the country, the BJP government proposed PM kisan samman nidhi scheme in this years interim benefit. This scheme will benefit the farmers of the state. We are also working towards boosting organic farming in the state, said PM Modi in Itanagar.
To give a boost to culture of Arunachal, we launched Arunachals first dedicated TV channel, DD Arunprabha: PM
Growing the states tourism sector will grow more employment opportunities for the youth. The people will know about the culture of the state. To give a boost to culture and custom of the state, we launched Arunachals first dedicated TV channel, DD Arunprabha., said PM Modi.
What Arunachal Pradesh achieved today will soon be achieved by the entire nation: PM
I would like to congratulate the state and the CM that every household here now has electricity connection under Saubhagya scheme. What Arunachal Pradesh achieved today will soon be achieved by the entire nation, said PM Modi in Itanagr, Arunachal Pradesh.
Apart from airways, we are connecting the state to the rest of the country through railways and roadways: PM
Apart from airways, we are connecting the state to the rest of the country through railways and roadways. This will solve the connectivity problem that the people of the state face. In our bid to connect every capital to railways, we have connected Itanagar to the rail network of the country, said PM Modi in Itanagar.
BJP government is dedicating two airports to the state: PM
Since independence, there wasnt any airport in the state with modern infrastructure or connectivity. But, the BJP government is dedicating two airports to the state. We are trying that through UDAAN scheme, the people of the state can avail cheap flight services, said PM Modi in Itanagar.
We neither limited the budget nor our will power to develop Arunachal: PM
The country can progress only when Northeast will progress, said PM Modi, adding, Working on the lines of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas, the BJP tried to develop the state. We neither limited the budget nor our will power, said PM Modi in Arunachal.
Previous govt neglected Arunachal: PM
Arunachal has the gift of water resources. It has the capability to generate electricity. However, these gifts of Arunachal wasnt used by the previous government. They neglected Arunachal. Previous govts neglected this state for decades but we are here to change this. New India can only be built if North East can be developed well, said PM Modi.
We are working on projects worth over Rs 13,000 crore for Arunachal: PM
The Centre govt and Khandu government in Arunachal is taking every necessary step to make this state strong. We are working on projects worth over Rs 13,000 crore for Arunachal. These will improve transportation, health care and benefit the state, said PM Modi.
Arunachal is the land of rising sun: PM
Arunachal is the land of rising sun. Arunachal gives strength to our resolves, said PM Modi in Itanagar.
PM inaugurates development projects in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh
PM Narendra Modi laid foundation stone and inaugurated development projects in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh.
PM Shri @narendramodi to lay foundation stone and inaugurate development projects at Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh. Watch at https://t.co/opYaHIENRn #NorthEastForModi pic.twitter.com/IvUMtMwmw7 BJP (@BJP4India) February 9, 2019
BJP has realised that Rahul Gandhi will do anything to expose their jumla and lies: Surjewala
The BJP has realised that Rahul Gandhi will do anything to expose their jumla and lies, which is why they are so appalled, said Randeep Singh Surjewala.
Chowkidaar should answer who is the thief: Surjewala on Karnataka poaching row
Which industrialist is funding this bribing bid? Which deal is funding this? Is this a result of some defence deal? PM Modi should answer these questions. Chowkidaar should answer who is the thief, said Randeep Singh Surjewala
CBI should probe this case: Surjewala
Karnataka government has filed a case. But, the line goes straight to the doors of Amit Shah. This is not limited to a state anymore. This is about the country. So, this case should be probed thoroughly. CBI should probe this case. The audio clips states that BS Yeddyurappa is offering Rs 10 crore per MLA and in his deliberation, its clear there are 18 MLAs. Therefore it comes at the rate of around Rs 200 crore. Hes offering 12 MLAs minister post, 6 were offered chairman posts in different boards.It should be probed who is giving money to the BJP to bribe these MLAs, said Congresss Surjewala.
Will PM send a notice to Yeddyurappa over these clips: Congresss Surjewala
Reading out excerpts from the transcription of the audio clips purportedly of opposition leader BS Yeddyurappa allegedly trying to poach a Karnataka MLA, Surjewala claimed, This clip confirms that the BJP is tryinig to bribe MLAs to topple government. It is clear that the voice on the tape is of BS Yeddyurappa. Will PM Modi raid him, will he send a notice to him in anti-corruption case and money laundering case.
BJP using Karnataka governor as puppet to topple the government: Congress
The BJP is using the Karnataka governor as a puppet to topple the elected government. They dont have any regards for the constitution . The released audio clips also prove that the BJP leaders have access to the Supreme Court judgments and they could try to meddle in cases to turn them in their favour, claimed Randeep Singh Surjewala.
Is the money used to bribe MLAs black or white?: Congress
Is the money used to bribe MLAs black or white? PM Modi should answer this, said Randeep Surjewala
This is a matter of national shame, says Surjewala on poaching row
This is a matter of national shame, says Surjewala on poaching row while raking up the audio clip released by Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy purportedly of opposition leader BS Yeddyurappa allegedly poaching JD(S) legislator Naganagouda Kandkur.
BJPs gang of 3 trying to topple Karnataka govt: Cong
BJPs gang of three is trying to topple the Karnataka government. This gang of PM Modi, Amit Shah and Yeddyurappa is using the Karnataka governor as a puppet to topple the elected government of the state says Congresss Randeep Singh Surjewala.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation stones of several projects worth over Rs 4,000 crore in Arunachal Pradesh. The PMs two-day visit to Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura, which began on Friday, comes amid protests in the region against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
I am happy to inaugurate and lay foundation stones for projects worth over Rs 4,000 crores. Besides this, work on projects worth Rs 13,000 crores is taking place at a fast pace in Arunachal Pradesh, the PM said at a meeting at Indira Gandhi park near state capital Itanagar.
The projects launched today would not just improve connectivity in the state, but also strengthen the power sector. They would boost the health sector and help promote the states culture, he added. Modi laid foundation stone for the greenfield airport at Hollongi near Itanagar and inaugurated the retrofitted Teju airport in Lohit district.
He also inaugurated a 110 MW hydro electric project at Pare, launched Arun Prabha a Doordarshan channel exclusively for Arunachal Pradesh and 50 health and wellness centres. The PM laid foundation stone for a film and television institute at Jote, seven electric sub stations and the Sella Tunnel and its approach road in Tawang.
Arunachal Pradesh is a strategically important state related to national security. But still not much focus was given by earlier government to improve facilities in this state. Our government made continuous efforts to change this, Modi said.
In the past few years, Centre has given funds worth Rs 44,000 crores to Arunachal Pradesh, which is double in comparison to what previous governments allocated for the state, he added. The PM is slated to address a rally at Changsari near Guwahati and another at Agartala in Tripura later in the day before departing to New Delhi.
Trinamool Congress legislator Satyajit Biswas was shot dead in Nadia district on Saturday evening when he went to attend a programme to inaugurate a Saraswati puja. Biswas, 37, Krishnaganj MLA, was shot dead around 7:30 pm when he went to attend the programme at Phulbari about 140 km from Kolkata.
Minister Ratna Ghosh and Gourishankar Dutta, president of Nadia Trinamool Congress unit, were also present on the dais. The incident happened minutes after they left the spot. As Biswas came down from the dais, criminals, who seemed to be within the crowd, shot him multiple times from close range and managed to escape.
Biswas was rushed to a hospital where doctors declared him brought dead. We have recovered the country made revolver used to fire on the MLA, said Rupesh Kumar, superintendent of police of Nadia district.
Trinamool leaders immediately blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the killing.
Satyajit was a dear party colleague of mine. Words are failing me. Recently BJP leaders have tried to create disturbance in the area and stoke tension. There was a carefully orchestrated plan to eliminate Satyajit that is designed to benefit the BJP, alleged Trinamool secretary general Partha Chatterjee.
The BJP is responsible. They are solely responsible. It has not happened in Bengal earlier. I shall reach the spot by tomorrow 10 am, said Anubrata Mondal, the Trinamool observer of Nadia district and party president of Birbhum district.
The BJP does not have political ground under its feet in the state. So it is resorting to such tactics, Mondal said.
Satyajit Biswas took on the BJP successfully and trounced them in the assembly elections. Those who killed him acted under instructions from the BJP and especially their leader Mukul Roy. He was like my son. We will see this to the end, said district Trinamool president Gourishankar Dutta.
Dutta also said that Biswas was involved with the Matua community.
BJP Bengal unit president Dilip Ghosh refuted the allegations of Mondal and denied that anybody with any links with his party had any links with the crime.
Its a most unfortunate incident. Anubrata Mondal is importing this culture of violence from Birbhum to Nadia. We want the truth to be revealed. Criminals have united under the banner of the ruling party. The tendency to label accusations against the BJP must end. Has anyone of the BJP ever been found to be linked with incidents of violence, though allegations are made all the time? Ghosh asked.
BJP Bengal unit general secretary Sayantan Basu alleged that Biswass death could be an outcome of Trinamools factional fights. He even asked for an investigation by central agencies and questioning of Trinamool leaders.
In December last year, the BJP president Amit Shah alleged that West Bengal accounts for as many as 26% of all political murders in the country in a year.
During election rallies in Bengal, senior BJP leaders have alleged that about 70-80 lives were lost in political violence in Bengal since April 2018 when nominations for the panchayat polls started.
The Jalandhar diocese of the Roman Catholic Church has revoked the transfers of the nuns protesting against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal and assured them that there will be no move to shunt them out of the Kerala convent as long as they as they are needed for the court case.
An e-mail was sent to the five nuns, who are staying with the survivor nun, by apostolic administrator of Jalandhar diocese Bishop Angelo Gracias, one of the nuns said in Kottayam on Saturday. The bishop has assured the nuns that there will be no move from the diocese of Jalandhar to oust them from Kuravilangad convent in Kottayam district as long as they are needed for the court case, she said. Authorities of Jalandhar diocese could not be reached for comment. On Saturday, the five nuns joined a convention called Save Our Sisters an outfit floated during the protests last year in Kottayam where Sister Anupama confirmed receiving the email. She expressed gratitude to all who supported their cause and said they would take the case to its logical end.
Just after they arrived, a group of people belonging to the Catholic Federation of India raised slogans saying the nuns were discrediting the whole community. For a while, a tense situation prevailed till the police removed the group from the spot, police said.
Last month, the head of their congregation, Missionaries of Jesus under the Jalandhar diocese, had issued transfer orders to four nuns who took part in the protest demanding Mulakkals arrest and asked them to join their previously assigned convents. Another nun, Sister Neena Rose, who is staying with the survivor nun, was asked to report to the Jalandhar convent on January 26. The four nuns had written to Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan seeking his intervention to ensure that their transfer orders were not effected till the trial of the case was over.
The survivor nun had also written a separate letter to the chief minister, seeking his help in the matter. Their aim is to single me out and to harass and torture me. My life will be in danger if such a situation arises, she said in her letter.
Last September, the protest led by the nuns and Catholic reformist forums in Kochi had led to public outrage and demands for action against Mullakkal. A senior member of the Roman Catholic clergy in India, Mulakkal was arrested following allegations by the nun that he repeatedly raped her at the Kuravilangad convent between 2014 and 2016, a charge denied by him. He was given bail after three weeks.
(With inputs from PTI)
A woman in Hyderabad went through excruciating pain for three months before an x-ray revealed a pair of surgical forceps in her abdomen that doctors forgot to remove after a surgery in November.
The mistake came to light when the patient Maheshwari Chowdary (33) of Mangalhat area in Hyderabad, returned to the same hospital Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), a prestigious state-run hospital in Hyderabad, on Friday with severe stomach pain.
An X-ray of her abdomen revealed that a pair of artery forceps (a scissors-like instrument used by surgeons to remove tissues and hold internal parts during surgery), was firmly embedded in her stomach.
Accusing the doctors of their criminal negligence in conducting surgeries, relatives of the patient on Saturday staged a dharna in front of the hospital and demanded action against the surgeons who botched up the surgery.
The doctors pacified them saying they would conduct another surgery by evening to remove the instrument from the abdomen. They ensured that they would take care of Maheshwaris health.
Director of NIMS Dr K Manohar said Maheswari had been admitted to the hospital with severe abdominal pain on October 28 and had undergone a surgery for hernia in the first week of November. She was discharged on November 12.
Mahadev, a close relative of the patient told media that a few days after returning home, Maheshwari started feeling pain in the abdomen. She continued taking medicines for pain, as suggested by doctors, but it intensified in the last few days. So, she came back to NIMS for further check-up, where it was revealed that the medical instrument embedded in her abdomen.
She was complaining of stomach ache within days of surgery at NIMS. We tried different kinds of medicines but her condition did not improve. This is totally negligent on the part of surgeons because of which she had to suffer, said Mahadev.
Dr Manohar said an enquiry had been ordered into the episode. According to preliminary investigation, three doctors Beerappa, Venu and Varma participated in the surgery. We have constituted an internal committee to probe the issue and action would be initiated against them after due inquiry process, he said.
The Guwahati Police today detained seven people in connection with black flag protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. police commissioner Deepak Kumar said.
The Prime Minister who left for Arunachal Pradesh this morning will return to Assam to lay the foundation stone for All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and a six-lane bridge over river Brahmaputra in Changsari on the outskirts of Guwahati where he is also scheduled to address a rally.
He also inaugurate Numaligarh Refinery Ltds bio-diesel refinery, the Barauni-Guwahati gas pipeline and the North East gas grid through remote control. He will also visit Tripura later in the day.
Kumar said prohibitory orders have been imposed in Guwahati for three months.
Protestors belonging to Assam Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP) and the powerful All Assam Students Union (AASU) waved black flags on Saturday to protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill which proposes to relax conditions for citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan . The Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha in January.
On Friday evening too protestes waved black flags as Modi drove down from the Guwahati airport.
The Bill has sparked major protests across the Northeast and particularly Assam. The BJPs coalition partner, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) pulled out of the government in December in protest against the Bill.
Last week, Assams top bureaucrats conceded that the situation in the state is challenging.
A section of the Gujjar community is on the streets in Rajasthan blocking roads and railway lines demanding five per cent reservation in jobs and education. Sawai Madhopur is the epicentre of the protests leading to cancellation of four trains in the Kota division and diversion of more than a dozen others. Reaching out to the protesters, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday asked them to address their concerns to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Their demands (for reservation in jobs and education) can only be met after amendments in the constitution, so they should submit a memo to PM, news agency ANI quoted Gehlot as saying. The Rajasthan chief minister appealed to the Gujjar community to vacate the railway lines.
The protesters from the Gujjar community erected tents on the railway tracks disrupting movement of the trains. They occupied the tracks near Malarna Dungaar station in Maksudanpura village of Sawai Madhopur district.
We have a good Chief Minister and a good Prime Minister. (But) We want that they listen to the demands of the Gujjar community. It isnt an uphill task for them to provide reservation, the news agency quoted one of the protesters as saying.
The Gujjars had staged a rasta-roko dharna on Friday in Sawai Madhopur stating that they were promised implementation of five per cent reservation by the state government. The protests are being held under the banner of the Gujjar Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti (GASS) led by Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla.
The Rajasthan government, in October last year, had passed a bill providing for raising the quota for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from 21 per cent to 26 per cent. Two months later, in December 2018, the state government approved one per cent quota for Gujjars and four additional OBCs.
At present, these communities are getting one per cent separate reservation under the legal limit of 50 per cent reservation meant for the most-backwards category in addition to OBC reservation.
(With ANI inputs)
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday asked the partys state chiefs and leaders to attack the Narendra Modi governments anti-people policies ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
The meeting was called to review the partys election preparedness and strategy in each state.
We discussed a wide range of issues related to the upcoming elections. I thank all those who came to Delhi to attend this meeting, Rahul said in a tweet.
Today I met with our CLP Leaders & PCC Chiefs from all over India to review our election preparedness & strategy in each state. We discussed a wide range of issues related to the upcoming elections. I thank all those who came to Delhi to attend this meeting. pic.twitter.com/phJ4Wdku3K Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) February 9, 2019
He asked the party leaders to expose the anti-farmers, anti-youth, anti-women and anti-people policies of the Modi government, a statement released by the party said.
He stressed on the burning issues of unemployment, farmers distress, sabotage of constitutional bodies, misuse of institutions and investigative agencies through mass campaigning and social media.
The meeting comes two days after the Congress president met the general secretaries of the party to review the preparations for the general elections.
Rahul also asked the leaders to emphasise on pro-people policies of the Congress like the minimum income guarantee scheme.
He asked them to focus on state-oriented issues and suggest them to the Congress manifesto committee.
An extended Congress Working Committee (CWC) will also meet soon to discuss preparations for the upcoming elections, endorse Rahul Gandhis proposal for a minimum guaranteed income, and welcome the induction of recently-appointed general secretaries, Priyanka Gandhi and Jyotiraditya Scindia into the partys highest decision making body.
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Congress general secretary in-charge of the organisation, KC Venugopal had said after the general secretaries meeting that all the general secretaries and state leaders have been told to complete selection of candidates by the end of this month.
Rahul Gandhi has been relentlessly attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP on several fronts, including the controversial Rafale fighter jet deal, farmers distress, jobs, corruption and other issues.
The party had come to power in the recent state assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, ousting the BJP and hopes to repeat the same in the Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP has tweeted a series of counter-attacks over Rahul Gandhis pointed jibes on the controversial Rafale fighter jet deal, accusing the Congress president of peddling lies.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha election in summer this year, Rahul Gandhi has stepped up his line of questioning of Prime Minister Narendra Modis National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government over the Rs 59,000-crore Rafale deal.
And, a new report has added fresh ammunition to Gandhis attacks. The report had said that the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) had conducted parallel talks with the French government over the Rafale jet fighter deal and had prompted the ministry of defence to protest that the PMO was undermining Indias negotiating position.
Gandhi has reiterated his demand for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe of the Rafale deal after the report published in The Hindu. The Bharatiya Janata Party, on its part, tweeted a 10-point lie versus fact rejoinder to defend the Rafale deal on Saturday.
Also read: Video war plays out as BJP, Congress seek azadi in parody songs
While you are starting a new day of honesty and hard work, #LiarRahulGandhi is preparing to peddle more lies. Its difficult to track all his lies, but weve tried to track major lies peddled by him on #Rafale. A heads up before his todays quota! the BJP tweeted from its official handle.
Lie No.1: #LiarRahul tried to twist some report in a French media house to say making Reliance an offsets partner was a tradeoff for Dassault to get the deal with India. Fact: Both Supreme Court & Dassault CEO said Indian govt had nothing to do with choosing of offsets partners, it tweeted.
Lie No.2: #LiarRahul tried to create false impression that SC has found grave irregularities with the deal. Indulged in third grade level propaganda on a sub judice matter, it went to say.
The ruling party tweeted memes, photographs of documents and videos to point out, what it said, holes in Rahul Gandhis attacks over the Rafale deal, which was signed between India and France in 2016 for the purchase of 36 fighter jets.
It also attacked The Hindu over its report that claimed the French side took advantage of parallel parleys by the PMO that weakened Indian teams position in negotiating the Rafale deal with France as it cited a November 24, 2015 note of the defence ministry.
If #LiarRahul and his partner in crime, The Hindu, really had faith in their discovery they shouldve ideally wanted to approach Honble SC with these discoveries. But they know they wont stand a chance. Even now, we challenge liar to approach SC with his new evidence, the BJP tweeted.
We have tried to document most of Rahul Gandhis #RafaleLies. But given his superhuman capabilities of lying, we realized its humanly impossible to document it all. We hence invite you to tweet with #LiarRahul and further this cause of exposing the pathological liar! ruling party signed off by tweeting.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured the people of Assam and other north-eastern states on Saturday that they would not be disadvantaged by the citizenship bill, which aims to grant citizenship rights to non-Muslim minorities from three neighbouring countries among his first public statements on an issue that has roiled the region.
The Prime Ministers comments came in a speech in Guwahati, Assam; the Prime Minister also addressed rallies in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh and Agartala, Tripura. On Friday, in Guwahati, the Prime Ministers cavalcade was met by black flag waving protesters who signalled their opposition to the proposed law.
People who ruined this country are now spreading lies about the bill for their own benefit. We need to be wary of them, Modi said.
It is a national commitment to the people of the north-east that they will not be harmed in any way and citizenship will only be granted after due investigation and recommendation of the state governments, he said.
Protests have broken out in north-eastern states over the citizenship bill amid concern that the legislation could dilute local and indigenous identity by accelerating demographic change. The bill provides that persons belonging to minority communities, namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan shall not be considered illegal migrants.
The PM assured his Assamese audience that citizenship would be granted to the people from the three neighbouring countries only after they are vetted by the state government and after a recommendation by the latter.
He also sought to make a distinction between illegal immigrants from across the border and people who have fled a neighbouring country to escape persecution on account of their faith.
Illegal immigration is a big issue in the north-east (and especially in Assam), and the governments decision to go ahead with the citizenship bill it has two more days next week to pass it in Parliament has provoked angry responses in the region where the party has made significant gains in recent years. The Asom Gana Parshid (AGP) recently snapped its ties with the BJP government in Assam over the citizenship bill. The opposition to the bill has united many north-eastern parties.
Ten political parties from the north-east, including the BJPs current and former allies, came together last month to oppose the controversial bill. The parties, several belonging to the BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance resolved to oppose the bill in the interest of the people of north-east.
This is of concern to the BJP, which was looking to better its tally in the north-east in the summers Lok Sabha elections. All told, the seven north-eastern states send 25 representatives to Parliament. The BJP currently holds eight of these seats and was hoping to increase that tally to almost 20.
The Prime Minister also said in his speech in Assam that his government is committed to implementing all aspects of the Assam Accord, including Clause 6 which promises to have constitutional and legal safeguards for the protection of the cultural and social identity of the Assamese.
Modi also said that a lot of protests over the citizenship law were the result of misinformation being spread by his rivals. The Congress has said the bill will create ethnic divisions not just in Assam but the entire north-east and could lead to a resurgence of extremist groups.
Modi was visiting Assam for the first time since the citizenship bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on January 8. It awaits the approval of Rajya Sabha, where the ruling coalition is short of numbers.
In Guwahati, Modi inaugurated development projects worth about 18,000 crore including a gas processing plant, a bio-refinery, a gas pipeline and a six-lane bridge. He inaugurated projects worth more than 4,000 crore in Arunachal Pradesh for an airport near the state capital Itanagar, a hydro-electric project, a national television channel and 50 health and wellness centres.
Arunachal Pradesh is a strategically important state related to national security. And yet, earlier governments didnt improve facilities here. The Centre has allocated funds worth 44,000 crore to the state over the past few years, Modi said.
Speaking at a rally in Tripura, Modi appealed to voters to choose a strong government in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. You supported us [in assembly elections] eleven months ago I appeal to you for similar support for the Lok Sabha elections.
National Peoples Party (NPP) president and Meghalaya chief minister Conrad K Sangma on Saturday threatened that his party will quit the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) if the proposed legislation is passed in Rajya Sabha.
Reacting to Modis remarks, Assam Congress MLA Debabrata Saikia said: The citizenship bill will encourage fundamentalist elements in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan and lead to a loss of cultural identity in Assam.
Atul Bora of the Asom Gana Parishad said the bill will violate provisions of the Assam Accord which assure the protection of Assamese cultural identity.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati took to Twitter on Saturday to defend building memorials and parks, a day after the Supreme Court in oral observations said she should reimburse the public money spent on erecting statues of herself and the party symbol, the elephant, in public places during her tenure as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
Mayawati who joined Twitter only last month said the memorials give a grand identity to Dalits and give regular income to government.
Marvellous Sthals/Memorials/Parks etc. built to honour hitherto ignored great Sants, Gurus and great men born in deprived and oppressed Dalit and OBCs are new grand identity and tourist attraction of Uttar Pradesh which gives regular income to government. Mayawati (@SushriMayawati) February 9, 2019
She asked the media not to distort the courts oral observation .
Humble request to media please don't distort oral observation of Hon'ble court. Sure to get justice in this matter also. Media and BJP leaders please stop kite flying. Mayawati (@SushriMayawati) February 9, 2019
The apex courts observation came when it was hearing advocate Ravi Kants PIL alleging misuse of crores of rupees of public money spent for installing the statues, including in a park in Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi. The PIL was filed in 2009.
He has sought a restraint order against the installations, which Kant said was being done at the cost of the state exchequer. He also asked for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe and also a directive to remove the statues.
The statues in Noida and Lucknow were unveiled in March 4, 2012 after the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh which the BSP had lost.
The statues were covered on January 11 that year on the orders of the then Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi, after opposition parties complained that the elephants, made at the cost of public exchequer, gave an unfair advantage to the BSP which was then in power.
Union minister Arun Jaitley on Friday recalled how the late journalist Kuldip Nayar withstood government pressure and became the voice of the journalistic fraternity during the Emergency, and described him as an iconic political journalist.
Releasing a book, On Leaders and Icons from Jinnah to Modi, by Nayar, who died last August at the age of 95, Jaitley, who attended the event through video conferencing from New York, said Nayar was a newsman with an ability to sniff out scoops.
The event was also attended by former Union minister Kapil Sibal of the Congress, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Janata Dal (United) leader Pavan Varma and diplomat Navtej Sarna.
Jaitley said some of Nayars most significant contributions came during the Emergency. When Emergency was imposed, press censorship imposed, and the journalistic fraternity was looking for a leader who would speak up, he became the natural choice. Therefore, he stood out, suffered detention, fought out in the courts, after some time got released, never looked back and never compromised his views, Jaitley said. Jaitley recalled two of Nayars stories as hallmarks of his journalism; one about Pakistan having possessed the capability to make the nuclear bomb, and the other on then prime minister Indira Gandhi being set to announce the general elections in January 1977. The book launch was also expected to be attended by former prime minister Manmohan Singh, who declined to attend. A letter from Singh, read out at the event, said he was staying away because of a reference to him in the book.
Quoting from the letter written by Singh to Nayars wife, the latters son Rajiv read: I found a reference to me on page 172 that during my prime ministership government files would go to Sonia Gandhis house. This statement is not true; and Kuldip never checked with me about its truth. In this background, I would find it embarrassing to attend the book release function. In his book, Nayar has written that Manmohan Singh not having a popular base helped him in his political career and that government files would go to Sonia Gandhis house at 10 Janpath.
Former minister Sibal concurred with Singh. Sibal said during his term as a minister in the United Progressive Alliance governments, neither the PMO nor 10 Janpath called for any file.
Responding to Sibals charge that institutions were being desecrated, Puri said the only occasion when there had been an organised onslaught on civil liberties was in 1975.
When you talk about other institutions, when you talk about judiciary, who attacked it? Who led the attack on the SC, Puri said.
The stalemate between the state government and the Gujjars continued for the second day on Saturday as the Gujjar leader Kirodi Singh Bainsla, spearheading the stir, rejected the government invite for talks in Jaipur and said talks would only be held on the tracks in the open.
Tourism minister Vishvendra Singh assured that the government is committed to giving them 5% reservation and reached the protest spot at Malarna-Dungar station where Gujjars began their sit-in on Friday. He suggested that the Gujjars form a delegation for talks with the government representatives that could be held in Jaipur on Sunday. He said the CM had asked him to meet the Gujjars listen to their issues.
However, Bainsla said the government would have to come to the venue of the protest for talks.
Addressing the protestors, Singh said talks would not be feasible in the commotion. We will hold talks at length and discuss all issues point by point, he said. However, Bainsla refused Singhs suggestion.
The state government came into action and formed a committee comprising Tourism minister Vishvendra Singh, Health and Family Welfare minister Raghu Sharma and Social Justice and Empowerment minister Bhanwarlal Meghwal and IAS Neeraj Pawan. Efforts will continue on Sunday as minister Raghu Sharma or minister Bhanwarlal Meghwal could join the dialogue. Talks are to be held on three issues 5% quota, backlog in government jobs and increasing creamy layer to 8.5 lakh.
Meanwhile, Chief minister Ashok Gehlot, in a bind over the Gujjar reservation, put the ball in the Centres court. Gehlot, who was in Delhi for a meeting to discuss Congress candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, said the state government has done its bit on reservation and now the demand can only be fulfilled through an amendment in the Constitution for which the Gujjars should approach the Prime Minister and Union home minister.
Bainslas son, Vijay said that the Gujjars were feeling cheated and were angry. Why should we talk to the Centre? The Congress is in power in the state. And it is the Congress which had in its manifesto promised reservation... Now after winning elections, they cant dilly-dally. They should talk to the Centre and fulfill our demand....
The BJP criticised the government for failing to fulfil its promise of quota to Gujjars. Former BJP minister Arun Chaturvedi said the state government was shirking its responsibility and putting the onus on the Centre. He said In the previous elections, the Congress promised reservations to Gujjars and four other communities. The Congress got votes on the basis of these promises... the Congress government is trying to run away from its responsibilities by putting the onus on the Centre.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday questioned Robert Vadra, Congress president Rahul Gandhis brother-in-law, for the third time in the last four days in connection with its probe into charges of money laundering in illegally acquiring assets abroad.
Vadra arrived at the ED office at 10.45 am and stayed till 2pm. He returned an hour later and the questioning went on till late in the evening. Earlier, Vadra was quizzed on February 6 and 7. The ED case against Vadra relates to allegations of money laundering in connection with a London-based property worth 1.9 million GBP (British pounds).
Vadra has been granted protection from arrest till February 16 as he agreed to join the investigation in the case. During the hearing on Vadras application seeking protection from arrest, the ED had alleged that it had received information about various new properties in London which belong to Vadra. But Vadra and his lawyers have denied the charge repeatedly and termed the investigation a political witch hunt. Vadra is also likely to appear in the Jaipur office of the ED on February 12 in connection with another money laundering case related to a land scam in Bikaner.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday registered a case against Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), a Pakistani terror group, for their involvement in money laundering through various hawala channels.
A senior ED official said that the case was registered under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on the basis of a case registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in September 2018.
The financial probe agency will try to establish money trail and to identify proceeds of crime that are suspected to be generated out of the criminal activities from the accused.
On September 26, 2018, the NIA has arrested Mohammad Salman from south Delhis Nizamuddin area who was in regular touch with a Dubai-based Pakistani national, who in turn was connected with the deputy chief of FIF, a front-end organisation of proscribed terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
According to the NIA case, Salman was alleged to have received funds from FIF operators through hawala channels.
The NIA in its FIR claimed that the accused and other persons reportedly received money illegally from various people in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates and these funds were utilised to carry out terrorist activities and to create unrest in India.
The agency has recovered and seized cash amounting to Rs 1.56 lakh, Nepali currency worth Rs 43,000, 14 mobiles phones, five pen drives and other incriminating documents.
Besides Salman, the NIA has also arrested FIF hawala conduit Mohammad Salim aka Mama, a resident of central Delhis Daryaganj, and Srinagar-based hawala courier Sajjad Abdul Wani.
According to the NIA, FIF is a Lahore-based organisation established by the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and acts as a front for the LeT.
It was founded in 1990 by Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack.
Andhra Pradesh chief electoral officer Gopalakrishna Dwivedi promised on Friday to inquire into the complaints of YSRC party over the alleged elimination of 40 lakh voters unsympathetic to the ruling TDP within two weeks.
Leader of opposition YS Jaganmohan Reddy is scheduled to meet Governor ESL Narasimhan at Raj Bhavan in Hyderabad on Saturday over the issue.
Jagan Reddy had requested chief election commissioner of India Sunil Arora at a meeting in Delhi on February 4 to take a fresh look at the published rolls and re-include the voters eliminated allegedly at the behest of the ruling Telegu Desam Party.
Dwivedi conducted an all-party meeting at the secretariat with the left parties, the Yuvajana Sramika Rytu Congress and the ruling TDP to seek suggestions on conducting free and fair polling in 2019.
YSRC leader Ambati Rambabu stressed the need for the poll body to set the record straight by addressing the alleged goof-ups in the electoral rolls. The goof-ups included bogus voters with fake identities and deletion of voters who could vote against the ruling party, he said at the all-party meeting.
Rambabu accused the TDP of being jittery of its prospects of winning the election this year and tampering with the electoral rolls. He recalled a thin margin of 1.8% of vote share with which it came to power in 2014.
Former YSRC minister Botsa Satyanarayana had met Dwivedi in January and claimed he had caught some people belonging to a private agency allegedly hired by the ruling party at two places in Vizianagaram district red-handed while trying to delete voters from the lists by accessing data on tabs.
Dwivedi said a token system will be introduced during the polling to ensure voters exercise their franchise on the first-cum-first-serve basis without having to wait in queues for longer durations as is the case during the previous elections.
He said a team from the election commission will visit the state on February 11 and 12.
He said 1.15 lakh electronic voting machines are readily available enabling 3.69 crore voters to take part in the polling. The devices are being subjected to trials in the first phase in the districts.
In addition to the 3.69 crore voters, the state election commission has received 9 lakh applications for inclusion in the lists as fresh voters. Close to 18 lakh young voters are poised to take part in the polling for the first time in the 2019 general elections, Dwivedi explained.
A 28-year-old woman domestic help in an east Delhi neighbourhood has alleged that she was repeatedly raped by her employer and also gang-raped by nine other persons since last October, police said Friday.
On one occasion, she was allegedly raped by a friend of a doctor at the Lok Nayak Hospital after she was taken there for treatment of injuries caused by the first rape.
The woman had secured the job as a help at the property dealers home with the help of a woman neighbour, Geeta Sethi, after her husband was left unemployed due to the sealing drive. In her complaint, the woman has accused 42-year-old Sethi of facilitating the sexual assaults on her.
According to Meghna Yadav, deputy commissioner of police (Shahdara), the property dealer and the woman neighbour has been arrested after the help approached Geeta Colony police station last Sunday.
We have registered a case of gang rape under the IPC and under sections of the Immoral Trafficking Act. We are trying to identify the other persons involved in the rapes, the DCP said. In her statement to police, the victim has identified some of the suspects and provided some of their phone numbers.
The woman help had been subjected to repeated rapes since October 21, the DCP said.
Sethi got her to work as a domestic help at the home of the property dealer, a widower. Soon after she started working, the property dealer raped her. He also recorded a video and used the footage to blackmail the help, an investigator, who did not want to be identified, said.
Since the woman was injured in the sexual assault, Sethi allegedly took her to Lok Nayak Hospital where she was introduced to the friend of a doctor that Sethi knew. The doctors friend took me inside and raped me, the victim alleged in her complaint.
The DCP said the rape suspect in the hospital case is yet to be identified. The rapist could have been another patient, a ward boy or someone else, the DCP said, adding it was unclear if the crime happened inside or outside the hospital. Dr Kishore Singh, medical director of the Lok Nayak Hospital, said no such incident happened inside the hospital premises. We have investigated and found no such case, he said.
Over the next few months, the woman alleged that she was gang-raped multiple times by a total of nine persons.
The victim alleged that she was being blackmailed with the rape videos and was threatened that she and her daughter would be killed if she told police about it.
The Bahujan Samaj Party on Saturday called off its nearly nine-month-old alliance with Haryanas main opposition INLD and announced to forge ties with LSP, an outfit floated by rebel BJP MP Raj Kumar Saini.
The development comes days after Om Prakash Chautala-led Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) suffered a humiliating defeat in the Jind bypolls, with party candidate Umed Singh Redhu forfeiting his security deposit, amid the ongoing family feud in the Chautala family.
On the directions of BSP national president and former UP chief minister Mayawati, the BSP today ends alliance with the INLD and ties up with the Loktantra Suraksha Party (LSP), BSP Haryana incharge Meghraj told reporters here.
Under the new arrangement, the BSP and the LSP will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and Haryana Assembly polls.
In Haryana, the BSP will contest on eight and the LSP on two Lok Sabha seats, Meghraj said.
He further said his party would contest on 35 seats and LSP would on 55 seats during the Haryana Assembly polls.
The BSP had Friday hinted that it may soon call off its alliance with the INLD. It had earlier also said that it would part ways with the INLD if it fails to get united.
Following family feud in the Chautala clan, Ajay Chautala and his two sons Dushyant Chautala and Digvijay Chautala had floated the Jannayak Janata Party last year.
Saini, a rebel BJP MP from Kurukshetra had last year floated his Loktantra Suraksha Party and the candidate fielded by him in the Jind bypolls had put up a better performance than INLDs Redhu.
The ruling BJP had won the Jind bypolls while Digvijay Singh Chautala, the candidate of the Jannayak Janata Party, had finished runners up.
The INLD and the BSP had entered into an alliance in April last year, which both ruling BJP and opposition Congress had described as a marriage of convenience which they entered into just to grab power in the state.
After forging the alliance, the two parties had announced to jointly contest the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.
Congress has demanded the release of pricing details of Rafale fighter jet deal, in response to BJPs 10-point rebuttal to Rahul Gandhis pointed attack on the controversy.
The Congress pointed out that the government had not submitted before the Supreme Court the objection raised by defence ministry against parallel negotiations by the prime ministers office, as mentioned in the newspaper, The Hindu.
The ONLY reason to hide this from the SC protect their supreme leader, Congress said in a series of tweets, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It also reiterated that the CAG report on the Rafale deal was still not out in public domain, but the government had claimed that the CAG report was already released.
Third, it is clear from the story in @the_hindu, that the Modi Govt had not submitted (in its 'sealed cover') objections by MoD officials against PMOs intervention to the SC. The ONLY reason to hide this from the SC - protect their supreme leader. #ChowkidarChorHai Congress (@INCIndia) February 9, 2019
Rahul Gandhi has been accusing the Prime Minister of corruption by alleging that the price of the deal was raised to Rs 59,000 crore although the Rafale jets in the new deal and the old one were exactly the same.
Congress pointed this out in another tweet, with a picture of the joint statement by the then-French president Fran cois Hollande and Modi, and asked the government to release the details of the pricing.
It also tagged a video put out by BJP and said that the current French president Emmanuel Macron said that Indian government can release the pricing information to Parliament.
One last time to the @BJP4India team, please watch this video carefully. The French President clearly says that the Indian Govt can release the pricing information to the parliament - if they ever choose to be honest. https://t.co/oPfIXBpISA Congress (@INCIndia) February 9, 2019
BJP had earlier put out a 10-point rebuttal to attack Rahul Gandhis statements on the Rafale deal and tweeted memes, photographs of documents and videos.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Arunachal Pradesh on Saturday saw jagged exchange between China and India. Chinas foreign ministry Objected to PM Modis Arunachal visit saying resolutely opposes activities of Indian leaders in the region.
Responding to Chinas objection to PM Modis visit to the northeastern state, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the state is an integral and inalienable part of India. Modis visit was part of a series of public meetings in the region aimed at garnering support for the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of elections that are due to be held by May.
The State of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India This consistent position has been conveyed to Chinese side on several occasions, news agency ANI quoted MEA as saying.
Despite recent efforts to improve bilateral ties in both countries, disputes over the mountainous Indo-China border - which triggered a war in 1962 - and the region that China claims as southern Tibet have remained a sensitive issue.
China urges the Indian side to proceed from the overall situation of bilateral relations, respect Chinas interests and concerns, cherish the momentum of improving relations between the two countries, and refrain from any actions that intensify disputes and complicate the border issue, the countrys foreign ministry said in a statement.
On Saturday, Indias foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Both India and China have sought to rebuild trust after an armed standoff over a stretch of the Himalayan border in 2017.
Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met a number of times last year to give impetus to the trade discussions. But progress, according to Indian government officials and representatives of various Indian trade bodies, has been very slow.
(With inputs from Reuters)
Data presented by Anupriya Patel, the minister of state for health and family welfare, in Parliament on Friday showed that Chandigarh topped the list of 36 Indian states and Union Territories in terms of contraceptive usage of males.
The percentage of males using family planning methods such as sterilisation and condom stood at 28.6% usage. Delhi and Punjab followed closely at 20.2% and 19.5%, respectively.
The national average stood at 5.9%, showed government data. Among the states where the number of men having undergone sterilisation and using condoms is low are: Andhra Pradesh (0.8%), Tamil Nadu (0.9%) and Bihar (1.1%).
While the government has taken several measures to raise awareness and encourage men to adopt family planning methods, such as conducting a vasectomy fortnight in November, enhancing compensation for male sterilisation and door-to-door condom distribution, the numbers still are far from encouraging. Even though the exposure to family planning messages is higher for men (76%) than women (72%), three in eight men believe that contraception is a womans business and that a man should not have to worry about it.
We are still struggling with the biases surrounding male sterilisation. Gender is a huge factor and our focus is to create awareness, said Manoj Jhalani, mission director of the National Health Mission under the Union health ministry.
Experts agree that there are lots of myths surrounding the topic.
The male sterilisation or vasectomy figures are even lower because the mindset needs to change. Providing incentives will not help unless the thought process changes, said Poonam Muttreja, executive director of Population Foundation of India.
Facing sharp criticiam from the opposition over issues like Rafale deal, farm distress and unemployment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday asserted at his Agartala rally in Tripura that his government in New Delhi works with good intention. He said the people of the country will teach the opposition parties a lesson for peddling lies.
PM Modi lashed out at the parties working for opposition unity reiterating his charge that this is a mahamilawat (highly adulterated) that favours middlemen in the government. They are trying to form a majboor (weak) government in Delhi. They are worried about the present majboot (strong) government, PM Modi said.
He alleged that an olympic is going on among the leaders of mahamilawat to see who hurls more abuses at Modi.
He said, All the partners of mahamilawat have understood that the youth, the poor and farmers of the country see their aspirations in Modi.
Those who get their photographs clicked in Delhi holding handsand also in Kolkatathey dont see to each other in Tripura, Kerala or BengalThe people of the country will teach them a lesson for peddling lies, he said.
PM Modi has been facing severe criticism from the opposition parties over Rafale deal, which has put the BJP and the NDA government on defensive. The Congress has led the charge against the Modi government on the issue of Rafale.
Also read | After China objects to PM Modis Arunachal visit, MEA says state integral part
Congress president Rahul Gandhi has alleged that PM Modi scrapped the defence deal being negotiated during the UPA government and replaced it with the new Rafale deal with intention to benefit a business group. Gandhi has repeated his charge several times saying, Chowkidar chor hai (the watchman is a thief).
The BJP has responded to Gandhis attack by accusing him of peddling lies to spread misinformation about Rafale deal. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday called it flogging a dead horse to dismiss the allegations leveled by the Congress president.
PM Modi listed out his governments scheme aimed at benefitting the poor, farmers and the middle class. At his Tripura rally, PM also patted the back of the Biplab Deb government of Tripura, where the BJP formed government in 2018 after 25 years of Left rule.
The prime minister listed out central schemes including recently launched PM Kisan, Ayushman Bharat, Ujjwala Yojana for LPG connection and insurance for workers to counter the oppositions charge that the BJP-led governments policies are not benefitting the people.
Tripura was deprived of development on the pretext of being a landlocked region. It is now being made gateway of the South East Asia under the BJP government, the prime minister said adding, I was surprised to know that for the first time in Tripura, paddy was procured at MSP (minimum support price).
He also gave credit to the Biplab Deb government for implementing seventh pay commission in Tripura slamming the previous Left Front government saying, It was not done by those who claim to be champions of the workers and the poor.
Earlier, PM Modi reached Agartala after having unveiled a series of developmental projects in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. Here, he unveiled a statue of Tripuras last ruler Birbikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur, and inaugurated a 23-km long railway track.
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The agriculture ministry will hold a national-level scrutiny of PM-AASHA, the Narendra Modi governments flagship scheme unveiled last year to ensure farmers get federally determined minimum prices, which didnt help raise rates for crops grown during the previous kharif or summer harvest.
PM-AASHA was devised to shore up income of farmers, who received negative returns in many commodities during 2017-18 ( meaning they sold produce below their cost of production), triggering an agrarian crisis which threatened to hurt the the National Democratic Alliances chances of re-election in this summers parliamentary elections.
For instance, in the Ganj Basauda mandi of Madhya Pradeshs Vidisha district, urad (black lentils) sold for Rs 2,800 a quintal (100 kg) on September 13, 2018, compared to last years MSP of Rs 5400 and the current MSP of Rs 5600, according data from agmarknet the governments website that records wholesale prices across the country.
The scheme will be tested again when the rabi or winter-sown harvest starts in April, just around the time the 2019 general election is due.
The agriculture ministry has asked the National Agricultural Co-operative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED), the governments main food-trading arm, to anchor the conference on PM-AASHA on February 18.
Nearly all the top bureaucrats overseeing agricultural policy under the Modi government will be present at the brainstorm.
The keynote address will be delivered by Ramesh Chand, who oversees agricultural policy at the state-run think-tank NITI Aayog. Other speakers include agriculture secretary Sanjay Agarwal and joint secretary Abhilash Likhi, who will present an overview of PM-AASHA.
Ashok Dalwai, a key bureaucrat who headed the committee on doubling of farm incomes, will also participate. Rajesh Rajora, the principal secretary of agriculture, Madhya Pradesh, will make a presentation on Bhavantar, or the price deficiency scheme, which is part of PM-AASHA. Under this, farmers are paid the difference between minimum support prices (MSP) and average market prices.
MSPs are federally fixed benchmark profitable prices. The government raised MSPs of summer crops at least 1.5 times over production costs. Madam Speaker, our hard working farmers were not getting the full value of their produce.our Government, for the first time in history has fixed the minimum support price (MSP) of all 22 crops at minimum 50% more than the cost, finance minister Piyush Goyal said in his budget speech.
PM-AASHA is an acronym for Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan (prime ministers farmers income protection drive), under which state governments essentially have two main options. States can go in for procurement, a traditional mechanism under which the government buys produce from farmers at minimum support prices or MSPs. States also have the option of going for the more innovative price deficiency payment mode involving direct cash payouts to farmers to bridge the gap between actual prices they receive and official MSPs.
Initial norms set for PM-AASHA said states could buy up to 25% of the total quantity of oilseeds, pulses or coarse cereals produced until prices came up to MSP levels.
It is always good to review any schemes performance to see how it can be made effective because the government is funding it. For remunerative prices for farmers, ultimately, the markets have to deliver and not be in a dysfunctional state, said economist K Mani of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.
Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar reached the CBI office in Shillong on Saturday for questioning in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam, days after a standoff between the Mamata Banerjee government and the Centre.
Kumar arrived in Meghalaya capital Shillong on Friday for the questioning as per Supreme Court orders that had also made it clear that Kumar cannot be arrested by the CBI.
Kumar, who headed a special investigation team that looked into the ponzi case and is accused of destroying evidence to allegedly protect the accused, sent a letter to CBI director Rishi Kumar Shukla and offered himself for questioning in Shillong.
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In an unprecedented turn of events on Sunday night, a CBI team was detained by the Kolkata police after they reached Kumars residence in connection with the probe.
They were released three hours later after the Union home ministry worked the phones, but the incident led to a standoff between the West Bengal government and the Centre, with chief minister Mamata Banerjee launching a protest and accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah of plotting a coup and using the CBI and government agencies to threaten political opponents.
Read here: All you need to know about the Saradha scam
She called off the protest which drew the support of several regional party leaders planning a grand alliance against the BJP 45 hours later on the third day following the Supreme Courts intervention.
The CBI has meanwhile dispatched a team of 10 officers to the Bengal capital to help the local unit headed by joint director Pankaj Srivastava to probe chit fund scam cases in the state.
The officers have been put at the disposal of Srivasatva, who is leading the CBI probe into chit fund scams, and will remain there till February 20.
The Congress on Saturday accused the BJPs gang of three -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party chief Amit Shah and senior leader BS Yeddyurappa -- of trying to topple a democratically elected government in Karnataka.
BJPs gang of three is trying to topple the Karnataka government. This gang of PM Modi, Amit Shah and Yeddyurappa is using the Karnataka governor as a puppet to topple the elected government of the state Congresss Randeep Singh Surjewala said in New Delhi.
On Friday, Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy had accused the BJP of trying to topple the state government as he released two audio clips purportedly of opposition leader BS Yeddyurappa trying to allegedly bribe JD(S) legislator Naganagouda Kandkur with Rs 25 crore and a promise of a ministerial berth.
The president of the Bharatiya Janata Partys state unit BS Yeddyurappa, on his part, dismissed the audio clips as fake and a concocted story.
HD Kumaraswamy released the clips at a hurriedly called press conference and claimed Yeddyurappa called Naganagoudas son Sharangouda Kandkur early on Friday attempting to entice his father, who is an MLA from Gurmitkal.
The clips feature conversations allegedly between BS Yeddyurappa and Sharangouda Kandkur. The other was allegedly between Sharangouda and Pritam Gowda, the BJP MLA from Hassan.
Kumaraswamy also hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, saying the oppositions campaign, termed Operation Lotus, was being carried out with their permission. Without the knowledge of the prime minister, is it possible to do all this? he asked.
The ruling coalition partners Congress and JD(S) have been accusing the BJP of trying to topple their nine-month-old government with various offers, including bribe in cash and ministerial berths, a charge the opposition party has rejected.
Yeddyurappa told reporters in the state capital that Kumaraswamy had concocted the story to hide his failures and inability to keep the JD(S) and Congress flock together. It is fake audio... I have not met anyone. Kumaraswamy is trying to hide his failures. This is a drama, Yeddyurappa said.
India is expected to focus on the violation of Kulbhushan Jadhavs rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the denial of a fair trial when his case comes up at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) during February 18-21, people familiar with developments said on condition of anonymity.
The International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, stayed Jadhavs execution in a unanimous order in May 2017 after it was approached by New Delhi, and India and Pakistan submitted several memorials or written pleadings last year.
Jadhav, a former Indian Navy officer, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April 2017 after a secret trial.
He was charged with alleged involvement in espionage and subversive activities after Pakistani authorities said he was arrested in Balochistan in March 2016.
India has denied these charges and accused Pakistani operatives of kidnapping Jadhav, 48, from the Iranian port of Chabahar, where he was running a business.
India has said he was denied a fair trial and an opportunity to defend himself.
In the initial phase at ICJ, our focus was on interim arrangements for justice and the fear that he could be executed. ICJ put off the execution pending a final decision in the case because it found there were sufficient grounds in Indias submission, said a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
When the case comes up for public oral hearings at ICJ, the Indian side will focus on the denial of consular access to Jadhav, which New Delhi contends is a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963, and the denial of a fair trial with access to proper legal representation, the people quoted above said.
During public hearings from February 18 to 21, India and Pakistan will be allowed to make two rounds of oral arguments each over the four days.
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Pakistan has rejected Indias repeated demands for consular access to Jadhav, claiming that he an spy and that the Vienna Convention didnt apply to him.
Sanjay Hegde, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India, said if ICJ makes a declaration in Indias favour, it would be up to Pakistan to again conduct Jadhavs trial. The problem is there is no enforcement mechanism for ICJ judgements though states are expected to comply with them, he said.
The Andhra Pradesh government has hired two special trains to ferry people to New Delhi for Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidus protest against the Centre on February 11, officials said in Amravati on Saturday.
The General Administration Department has released Rs 1.12 crore to hire the trains with 20 compartments each from the South Central Railway.
According to the orders issued by the Department, the trains from Ananthapur and Srikakulam will transport leaders of political parties, organisations, NGOs and associations to the national capital to enable them to participate in the one-day Deeksha protest.
Both the trains would reach New Delhi by 10 am on Sunday.
The protest is against the Centres refusal to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh and also its failure to fulfil other commitments made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014. Naidu, also the president of Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has appealed to all, including opposition parties, to make the protest a success.
Leaders of non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parties are also expected to join Naidu in the sit-in.
The TDP had pulled out of the BJP-led NDA government last year.
As many as 40,392 students skipped the ongoing UP Board examinations that entered its second day on Friday. The figure includes 20,674 students who did not turn up to write their paper on the first day, according to the statistics released by UP Madhamik Siksha Parishad on Friday evening.
Around 40,392 candidates did not turn up to write their examinations. This is the number that we have tabulated after compiling students attendance on the completion of first two days of the exams. We cant say exactly if it is due to strict measures put in place to put an end to copying, said Neena Srivastava, secretary, UP Board.
Last year, a record 10,44,619 students nearly 15% of all those who had registered had skipped the UP Board exams.
Like last year, the Special Task Force (STF) has been tasked with keeping copying mafia away from the examination centres.Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, in a video conferencing on Saturday, had asked all district magistrates and district inspector of schools to remain vigilant against copying mafia.
On Friday, agriculture paper was held for high school students and music for intermediate students, said Mukesh Kumar Singh, district inspector of schools, Lucknow. He visited Gandhi Inter college in Alambagh area and other centres for inspection during the exam.
Strict measures, including heavy deployment of police, have been put in place. Invigilation staff has been instructed to ensure that unfair means are not used. We are trying for the first time to hold examinations in 16 working days, which should be a record in itself. Sector and zonal magistrates at exam centres have also been deputed to check any untoward incident, said Srivastava.
A total of 58,06,922 students were registered for high school and intermediate examinations. Of these 31,95,603 were for high school and 26,11,319 for intermediate exams.
Last year, a record 10,44,619 lakh students nearly 15% of all those who had registered had skipped the UP Board exams.
Due to strictness last year, registrations for 2019 examinations witnessed a sharp fall of about 9 lakh students as compared to last year.
Even for people who have not studied there, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has always symbolised politics, protests, posters, and round-the-clock dhabas. Among their academic peers, JNU wallas were known for their love for debates. It was an almost open campus, where outsiders were never stopped at the gate to show their identity cards.
This changed on February 9, 2016, when, during an event organised on the campus, anti-national slogans were allegedly raised and three students Kanhaiya Kumar, Omar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were booked by the Delhi Police.
Now, the battle between the students, professors and the administration has reached the courts, the 24X7 eateries are shut at 11pm, visitors are greeted by security guards, protests are recorded on video, and the politics itself has changed from the intricate Left vs Left to a stark combined Left vs Right. Besides campus regulars Marx, Lenin, Mandela, and Che the walls depict spiritual gurus.
This, say current and former students, is a major cultural shift for the university.
When 37-year-old Vijay, who works as researcher with a private firm in Kochi, returned to his alma mater after four years, he found the campus in a different shape.
The universitys administrative block was barricaded by iron grilles. Most of the dhabhas, which used to be open till 4.30am, shut well before midnight. Some students told me that the door to the library through which private books were allowed inside has been shut, he said.
In November 2018, the JNU administration said that the universitys executive council (EC) wanted to check the feasibility of establishing food courts on the campus because the dhabas were violating rules and regulations.
The popular 24x7 eatery now wears a deserted look now. JNU has always been known for its dhabas, where students used to sit and engage in debates through the night. If they are removed, JNU will never be the same again, said Sharad, 26, an MPhil student, sitting in the afternoon at Ganga Dhaba, one of the famous campus spots located near its main gate.
Mehak, who came to JNU from Chhattisgarh in 2014, said, It was like a dream. Coming from a small town, I was in awe of the freedom enjoyed by the students on campus. There were no restrictions in the hostels and on the campus. Now we have to give details and purpose of the visit every time we go to the boys hostel. Surprise checks are often conducted in our hostels, she said.
Last September, the residents of Ganga hostel raised the issue when they alleged that authorities conduct door-to-door checking in their hostel rooms. Provost Rajnish Mishra denies the charge. These are all routine. If students have issues, they can meet their wardens and discuss it, he said.
Some students say they have now started feeling uncomfortable at gatherings and protests. There is always one or more security personnel recording the events on video. It feels as if we are under surveillance all the time, said Rohit, who is pursuing a Masters degree in international relations.
The JNU students union last year alleged an 80% cut in the library budget led to several e-journals not being subscribed by the university in the 2018-19 academic session. However, the universitys financial officer, Heeraman Tiwari, says this is not true. There is no fund cut. The university has requested the UGC [University Grants Commission] to release additional funds to meet the increasing requirements for the library, he said.
The administration has also received criticism for replacing the anti-harassment panel, GSCASH (Gender Sensitisaiton Committee Against Sexual Harassment) with an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC). Students and some teachers allege that the ICC members were handpicked by the administration, raising questions over its transparency.
Remembering his days as a JNUSU president in 1992-93, Shakeel Ahmed Khan, Congress MLA from Bihar, said, It was the time when Babri Masjid was demolished, and we were protesting against it - both inside and outside the campus. We protested against the visit of the then finance minister [Manmohan Singh] and did not allow him to enter the campus. We blocked the roads. Once we observed a hunger strike, demanding facilities on the campus. But, we were never issued any notice or faced any action. Everything was resolved by discussion because we used to have cordial relation with the vice chancellor and the other officials.
Current JNUSU president N Sai Balaji said three disciplinary inquires are pending against him.
Last August, around 48 faculty members, including the office bearers of the JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA), were issued show- cause notices for participating in a protest against the decision-making process at the university. In December, 27 teachers were issued notices.
Two years ago, the JNU administration banned any protest and gathering within 100 metres of the administrative block, known as freedom square. Last February, the Delhi high court extended the ban.
The idea is just to kill the space for dissent, said Surajit Mazumdar, professor at the School of Social Sciences. Mazumdar was JNUSU president in 1988-89. He joined JNU as faculty member in 2014.
I have personally faced more disciplinary action as a professor in the university, specifically in the last three years, than as the JNUSU leader, he said.
But JNU registrar Pramod Kumar said disciplinary action was always taken against those who violated rules.
We dont indiscriminately issue notices. We are always for dialogue and discussion. Even the vice chancellor (VC) meets students on the first Monday of every month without any appointment. But there are some elements who are not ready to talk, he said.
In 2017, JNU made 75 % attendance compulsory for all students. The move was followed by a spate of protests by students and teachers. They boycotted the attendance sheets and some students even moved Delhi high court against the decision. The matter is sub-juice.
Last March, the administration removed seven deans/chairpersons for not complying with mandatory attendance rule at their respective schools and centres.
In July last year, it extended the mandatory attendance to the teaching and non-teaching staff as well.
The decision was met with uproar. I received an email from the academic branch that the leave request may be considered only after the faculty member will confirm that he or she is signing the attendance and taking attendance of students, said Archana Prasad, professor at the centre for informal sector and labour studies.
Prasad moved the Delhi high court in January, seeking stay on the circular issued by the JNU administration making attendance compulsory for teachers. The court last month stayed the circular.
But not all the faculty members were averse to the decision. Amita Singh, professor at centre for study of law and governance, said: There is nothing wrong in marking attendance. Its just a way to ensure discipline at the campus. There are teachers who dont take classes.
In October 2017, a public inquiry instituted by teachers found the vice-chancellor guilty of violating statutory provisions and academic norms. I have never heard any such inquiry against a vice-chancellor in any other institution. Except for a day in five years of my tenure as the VC, there was never any strike by JNUTA. As and when there were any issues or demands, I used to have a meeting with them and resolve the matter. Any teacher could meet me and no one was ever denied an appointment, said Sudhir Kumar Sopory, former JNU vice chancellor.
Despite several attempts, VC Jagadesh Kumar and Rector 1 Chintamani Mahapatra did not respond to calls and messages for comments.
But administration officials said the university has been progressing despite these issues.
In 2017, we received the visitors award for academic excellence from former President Pranab Mukherjee. Last year, we were granted autonomy by the Union education ministry to open new courses and campuses. We have established a new school and a centre. We are soon going to open a satellite campus outside Delhi. There are people who just like to criticise, said a senior official, who asked not to be named.
Im not surprised the jobs and unemployment situation has hit the headlines two months before the elections. After all, if its as serious as the opposition and analysts claim, it will have a determining influence on the elections. Unfortunately, its also true we dont have a clear picture. Instead, what we have are two angry and polar-opposite viewpoints.
A leaked National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) report says in 2017-18, the unemployment rate was 6.1% and the highest in 45 years. The Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy, relying on its own surveys, says that by December 2018, the unemployment rate had shot up to 7.4%. If this data is correct, the situation is both worrying and steadily getting worse. This also explains why, when the railways last year advertised 89,400 jobs, over 23 million people applied. So do we have a real and growing hunger for jobs?
The government, of course, dismisses this analysis. If the situation is so bad, Arun Jaitley asks, how come we havent seen widespread social unrest? Indeed, if theres a catastrophic collapse of jobs, how come till December 2018, the BJP won an unprecedented 21 states including a sweeping victory in UP?
The government also claims that an economy cannot be growing at 7 and 8% whilst investment is declining and exports are stagnating without creating jobs unless theres a miraculous explosion in productivity, which clearly hasnt happened. So, to buttress the belief that enough jobs have been created, the finance minister, Piyush Goyal points towards a 2 crore increase in Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) membership and the fact that 15.56 lakh people have received Mudra loans totalling Rs 7.23 lakh crore, which have converted job seekers into job creators. The government also argues that the concept of employment has altered. Uber and Ola are two examples of the new types of job. So too are Amazon and Flipkart delivery boys.
Unfortunately, significant parts of the governments argument doesnt hold water. EPFO membership reflects formalisation of jobs, not the creation of new ones, whilst 90% of Mudra loans are of sums under Rs 50,000 and, therefore, can at best facilitate self-employment. They cant create many jobs. And whilst its true that we havent seen widespread social unrest, the agitation by the Marathas, Jats, Kapus and Patidars for reservations is a reflection of the fact that they cannot get jobs. Surely one reason is that those jobs dont exist?
Data suggests that the worst unemployment is faced by Indias youth. The Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University says it stood at 16% in 2018. The leaked NSSO report claims the unemployment rate for young rural males jumped over three times between 2011-12 and 2017-18, whilst that for young rural females increased nearly three times. These are truly astonishing findings and would suggest a huge measure of youth anger. But is that so?
Step back a bit and youll discover another truth. The unemployment rate has been steadily rising since 2011-12. At the same time, the labour force participation rate has been steadily falling since 2004-05. So the jobs and employment problem is a concern that stretches back over a long time. It was an issue even under the UPA. It didnt begin with Narendra Modi, although it seems to have exacerbated. But is that too academic a point in the present highly-charged polemical atmosphere? I would assume so.
So whats my conclusion? I can see this debate becoming increasingly feverish and contested as we near voting day. Perhaps it will only be decided by the results?
Karan Thapar is the author of Devils Advocate: The Untold Story
The views expressed are personal
It was after his son Viggo was born that Swedish photographer, Johan Bavman, then on parental leave, began looking for information about stay-at-home-dads. He found nothing. What he did find was a study that asked children who they turned to when they needed to be comforted. Their mums, said the children. Dads came at fifth place below the option of not going to anyone at all.
Sweden has among the worlds most generous parental leave policies 480 days with 90 days earmarked for each parent, and the balance of 300 days to be worked out between the parents. Yet, says Bavman, who took nine months off for Viggo, only 14% of Swedens fathers choose to equally share parental leave.
In India to inaugurate his photo project on Swedish dads, already exhibited in 50 countries and now in India along with portraits of Indian dads, Bavman said: I wanted to find out why these fathers had chosen to stay at home; what it had done for them and their relationship with their partners and children.
There is no country not even Sweden, which claims to have the worlds first feminist government where men and women equally share chores like cooking, cleaning and caring for children and the elderly. In India, found a July 2018 International Labour Organization (ILO) report on care work, the gap is nearly four hours with men spending just 31 minutes a day on this work.
All women work. Not all work is paid for. Quite obviously, the more time a woman spends on unpaid care work, the less she has for paid employment.
When women become mothers, employment becomes even more tough to negotiate. A 2017 World Bank paper by Maitreyi Bordia Das and Leva Zumbyte found a nearly 10% gap in India between women who have no children and those who have at least one below the age of six.
Social assumptions about Noble Mothers who sacrifice careers for their children are deeply ingrained. Often stereotypes about a womans role and function within the family are reinforced by government initiatives. The LPG subsidy scheme, for instance, shows only women cooking. And while the governments move to increase paid maternity leave to six months can only be welcomed, what does it tell us as a society about the responsibility and role of new fathers?
One way to challenge gender roles is to engage with boys, says Abhijit Das, director, Centre for Health and Social Justice. You have to change the mental map of men and their assumption that a womans place is in the home, he says. Getting men to share the housework and help with bringing up the baby helps them foster closer relationships with their wives and children challenging and changing the way masculinity is traditionally seen.
Taking extended leave when their babies were born, says Bavman, made men better partners and dads. It was an important step on the way towards a more equal society.
Namita Bhandare writes on social issues
The views expressed are personal
In 1932, a young Christian priest named Verrier Elwin was thrown out of his church. Educated at Oxford, Elwin made his home among the Gonds of central India. He sought to bring education and healthcare to the adivasis, but refused to take the gospel to them, out of respect for their own spiritual traditions. For this, he was expelled from the priesthood by his bishop.
Verrier Elwin knew and admired Mahatma Gandhi. When he wrote to him about his excommunication, Gandhi wrote back: Your pulpit is the whole earth. The blue sky is the roof of your own church. Gandhi consoled Elwin that the message of Jesus was, in any case, in the main denied by the churches, whether Roman or English.
A Christian did not need a grand or beautiful building in which to express his faith. Nor did men or women of other faiths. Gandhi called himself a devout Hindu, yet in the many years he lived in Ahmedabad, he did not go to any of the citys temples to demonstrate to himself (or to others) how deep or strong his Hinduism was. He prayed on the ground in front of his hut, facing the Sabarmati river. When he moved to Sevagram, he prayed in the open in that ashram too.
Gandhis Hinduism was syncretic rather than sectarian. He respected other religions, and conducted a lifelong campaign for interfaith harmony. Notably, though, the last words he uttered were of the Hindu deity, Ram. That particular deity was a particular favourite of his. He spoke of a just society as being a Ram Rajya, and corresponded with his spiritually inclined friends on the benefits of Ramanama, viz., uttering the name of Ram repeatedly, in harmony and with devotion.
Gandhis Hinduism was expressed in many ways and in many places. But almost never in temples. His faith did not require this. Besides, his own experiences with famous places of worship were not entirely pleasant. In 1902, on his first visit to Varanasi, Gandhi went to the Kashi Vishwanath temple, and was unimpressed. The swarming flies and the noise made by the shopkeepers and pilgrims were perfectly insufferable, he recalled, adding: Where one expected an atmosphere of meditation and communion, it was conspicuous by its absence. He walked through the entire temple, search[ing] for God but fail[ing] to find him in the dirt and the filth.
In 1916, after returning to India, Gandhi revisited the Kashi Vishwanath temple, to find it as dirty and degraded as before. These encounters in Varanasi confirmed for him that the gods of Hinduism were not to be found in the temples erected for them. Over the next three decades, Gandhi travelled all across the country, by train and on foot. In the course of these journeys he visited every town containing a major Hindu shrine. But while he saw these ancient temples from outside, he never sought to go within, with one exception (to which we will return).
Gandhis lack of interest in worshipping inside temples stemmed from two reasons. First, he believed that God resided in ones heart, and that trust in or love for God was realised through ones personal conduct; rather than in prayer, ritual, pilgrimage, or ceremony. Second, he saw that the message of gender and caste equality was denied by Hindu temples, which had discriminated harshly against women and savagely against Dalits.
After his early and chastening experiences with the Kashi Vishwanath temple, Gandhi never went back there, although he visited Varanasi often. Gandhi visited Puri, but he refused to enter the Jagannath temple. He spent time in Thanjavur, but declined to worship at the Brihadeeswara temple. However, when the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai admitted Dalits in 1946 following 20 years of sustained struggle Gandhi visited the temple, to signify approval of this belated departure from Hindu orthodoxy.
In 1921, Gandhi visited Ayodhya for the first and last time. He did not care to enter any of the towns many temples. However, while addressing a public meeting, Gandhi said he condemned violence most strongly and unequivocally, and said he considered it a sin against God and man. Several decades later, northern and western India experienced an orgy of violence committed by men speaking in the name of a God said to be born in Ayodhya.
Mahatma Gandhi would have been appalled by the hatred and bigotry spread in the name of Ram in the 1980s and 1990s. I say this as Gandhis biographer, but also as a citizen of the Republic, who lived through that violence, and studied it at first hand. I can testify to the shame and indignity it brought to Hindus, Hinduism, and India. Do we want a repeat, a rerun, of those years now?
In the 1990s, and since, several proposals were offered as alternatives to the polarising project of building a large temple to Ram in Ayodhya. They have included a hospital and a university, each committed to serving people of all faiths. The Mahatmas own grandson, the philosopher Ramchandra Gandhi, suggested the construction of a Ram-Rahim Chabootra to honour the oldest tradition of interreligious spirituality in the world.
Which of these proposals would have most met with Gandhis approval we cannot say. What we can say is that Gandhi was altogether opposed to the belief that a massive structure was in any way necessary to spiritual faith, or to national and civilisational pride. There can be absolutely no doubt that the Mahatma would have seen the movement for a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya as a tragic misdirection of the energies of Hindus and Hinduism.
Ramachandra Guha is the author of Gandhi: The Years That Changed The World
The views expressed are personal
Actor Aamir Khan has resumed work on his new project and is said to be losing weight for it, according to a new report. After the debacle of his big budget film Thugs of Hindostan, the actor has reportedly returned to play the lead in the Gulshan Kumar biopic. The film is titled Mogul and will be made under the banner of T Series, produced by the music moguls son Bhushan Kumar. According to a report in Cineblitz, the casting process of the film is in its final stages and Bhushan Kumar is looking for a new director to helm the project.
The actor had walked out of the film after #MeToo allegations surfaced against director Subhash Kapoor. A source is quoted as saying, Aamir on his part too was keen to play the music mogul and so they have now once again decided to collaborate. Of course, they will now rope in a new director and they are on the lookout. The film will roll as soon as they can finalise the director.
Actor Geetika Tyagi had accused Subhash of molestation and abuse in April 2014. The allegations again resurfaced as part of Indias #MeToo movement. Aamir and wife Kiran had then issued a statement that read, At Aamir Khan Productions we have always had a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual misconduct and predatory behaviour of any kind... Two weeks ago, when traumatic #MeToo stories began emerging, it was brought to our attention that someone we were about to begin work with has been accused of sexual misconduct. Without casting any aspersions on anyone involved in this case, and without coming to any conclusions about these specific allegations, we have decided to step away from this film.
Also read: Inside pics from Soundarya Rajinikanth and Vishagan Vanangamudi pre-wedding reception
Also read: Lata Mangeshkar reacts to Sonakshi Sinhas Mungda, says no one seeks our consent before using our songs
Aamir is also said to be working on his dream project, Mahabharata. While the actor himself is yet to confirm the news, Shah Rukh Khan had dropped major hints that Aamir is making efforts to revive the project. On being asked about what kind of role he would like to play during a chat with DNA, Shah Rukh had replied Krishna from Mahabharata but went on to add Krishna from Mahabharata has already been taken by Aamir so I will not be able to do that.
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Days after Kangana Ranaut lashed out at the film industry for not supporting her during the release of her film Manikarnika, actor Anupam Kher has stood up for her and called her a rockstar. The actor, who was last seen in The Accidental Prime Minister, was requested by a fan to support Kangana. A user asked Anupam during his fan interaction on Twitter, nobody from bollywood is supporting Kaganas Mankarnika movie. Can you please tweet in her support?
The actor replied, #KanganaRanaut is a ROCKSTAR. She is brilliant. I applaud her courage and performances. She is also the real example of #WomenEmpowerment.:).
I am on a flight to Atlanta. 33000 feet above the ground. I think it is a good time to do a brief Q&A. Please use #AskAnupam hashtag. Go for it.:) Anupam Kher (@AnupamPKher) February 9, 2019
In a recent interview, Kangana had said that while she attended preview screenings of Dangal, Secret Superstar and Raazi, Aamir Khan and Alia Bhatt did not do the same for her. When Alia was asked about the same at a press meet, she said that if she has upset Kangana, she will apologise to her on a personal level. Alia told PTI, I have always said that I have admired her a lot as an actor and a person. She is very outspoken and it takes courage to be that way.
Kangana had claimed in an explosive video interview that the industry had ganged up against her for her nepotism comments but she was not afraid. She said, one thing is for sure, Im not going to spare anyone. Main inki waat laga dungi, ek ek ko expose karungi (I will make their lives hell, and I will expose every single one of them).
Also read: Kangana Ranaut calls Alia Bhatt, tells her to grow a spine: I dont consider you successful if you are Karan Johars puppet
Also read: Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Zoya Akhtar take Gully Boy global. See pics from Berlin Film Festival
Continuing with the promotions of the film, Kangana had told Pinkvilla that she called up Alia and asked her to grow a spine. Talking about their conversation, she said, I reached out to Alia and asked her what makes her think Manikarnika is my personal controversy, its a film whole nation is talking about and wondering why Bollywood is keeping quiet on such a relevant work......I asked her if I can be courteous and gracious to acknowledge her requests for encouraging relevant work that she does, why is she so scared to see my film.
She recalled telling her to support an important film about women empowerment and nationalism and saying that if she doesnt have a voice of her own and her existence is all about being Karan Johars puppet, she cannot consider her successful.
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All Saints should come together for establishing Hindu Rashtra ! Sadguru (Dr.) Charudatta Pingale
Prayagraj : Hindus are not given any respect at Constitutional level in this country under the existing secular democratic system. Under article 28 and 29, there is provision for imparting religious education to minority communities; but there is no provision for imparting knowledge of Sanatan Vedic Dharma. There is Minority Commission to stop their oppression; but there is no Commission for Hindus forming majority population. If such discrimination is to be removed, word secular should be removed from Indian Constitution. When this word secular is removed, Bharat will become Hindu Rashtra. Then, it will be possible to protect all revered things like cow, Ganga, temples etc in Bharat. All Saints and devout Hindu activists need to come together for the same, stated Sadguru (Dr.) Charudatta Pingale, national Guide of Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS).
One-day Hindu Rashtra Convention was held at Bhuma Niketan Pendal in Kumbhkshetra, Prayagraj by Sant-samaj and pro-Hindu organizations for establishing Hindu Rashtra and Sadguru (Dr.) Pingale was the main speaker. Saints from different States, from various aakhadaas, Mahants, Mahamandaleshwars and representatives of pro-Hindu organizations attended the Convention; including dignitaries like H.B.P. Shyam Maharaj Rathod of Warkari Sampradaya, Mahamandaleshwar Swami Radhadevji Maharaj, Mahamandaleshwar Janardana Harigiriji Maharaj, Mahant Bhagirathiji Maharaj, Mahant Ramdnyaniji Maharaj, Swami Rajaram Maharaj, Omkar Agnivanshi Maharaj and Swami Ramabaliji Maharaj. Total 90 persons including Saints, Mahants, Sadhus and devout Hindu activists attended the Convention. Batu Adarsh Tiwari and Abhishek kumar Pande, students of Shri Dharmasangh Shiksha Mandals Vedapathashala of Varanasi recited Veda-mantras in the beginning of this Convention.
Resolutions passed in Convention !
1. Word secular should be replaced with the word Hindu Rashtra in Constitution so as to declare Bharat as a Hindu Rashtra at Constitutional level. Nepal, which was a Hindu Rashtra till the year 2006, may also be declared as Hindu Rashtra by Parliament of that country.
2. Displaced 7.5 lakh Hindus from Kashmir valley should be rehabilitated with full security in Kashmir. Union Government should create a territory for them in the name of Panun Kashmir.
3. Law should be passed by Union Government for protection of revered things like Goumata, Ganga, pilgrimage places etc of Hindus.
4. This Convention condemns State Governments of Kerala and Maharashtra for breaking religious traditions followed at Sabarimala Devasthan and ShaniShinganapur Devasthan respectively. Union Government should immediately pass a law in this respect for protection of Hindus religious traditions.
5. In the ongoing session of Parliament, the Union Government should issue an ordinance for construction of huge Ram-Mandir on Ram Janmabhoomi, paying due respect to Hindus religious sentiments.
Highlights of the Convention
1. Saints commended Sanatan Sanstha and HJS for organizing Convention on the issue of Hindu Rashtra
Most of the Saints commended Sanatan Sanstha and HJS for organizing one-day Convention on the issue of establishing Hindu Rashtra. Advocate Arunkumar Gupta said while praising these two organizations, that Sanatan and HJS have started with one drop of nectar through this one-day Convention during Kumbh for establishing Hindu Rashtra.
2. Confluence of Saints from all Sects like Shaiva, Vaishnava and regions thro Convention
In one-day Convention held for the mission of establishing Hindu Rashtra, Saints-Mahants, Sadhus from Shaiva, Vaishnava and other Sects, so also various regions participated in large number; similar to the Triveni-sangam of Rivers Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati at this place. Sanatan Sanstha and HJS brought Saints on the same platform irrespective of their Sects and regions; for which all Saints expressed their satisfaction and bestowed blessings over Sanatan and HJS for future activities; including establishing Hindu Rashtra.
3. First Convention during Kumbh Mela of political parties of all ideologies !
One-day Convention for establishing Hindu Rashtra was successfully held in Kumbh-Mela by Sanatan Sanstha and HJS which was all-encompassing ideologies of all political parties.
4. Shri. Ravindra Pundit, the Founder of Seva Sharda Peetha gave information on his efforts to open Hindus Sharda-peetha located in PoK. Yogi Hansanath and other Saints-Mahants also gave guidance.
Participating Saints and other dignitaries
Pujya Rajaramji Maharaj of Ramanuja Sampradaya from Satna, Madhya Pradesh; Swami Santoshacharya Sagar Maharaj, Pujya Baiju (Kerala); P. Ramabalidasji Maharaj from Shri Digambar Aakhadaa, Gujarat; Vaishnava Sampradayas Rajlalan Tripathi Shri. Hansnathji Maharaj, Satna, Madhya Pradesh; Ramanujaswami, Madhya Pradesh; Shri. Omnathji Maharaj of Yogi Gorakshanath Sampradaya in Rajasthan; Pujya Mahant Shri Shri 108 Sundardasji Maharaj of Digambar Aakhadaa, Vaishnav Sampradaya from MP; Pujya Swami Sadanandagiriji Maharaj from Akhand Mahayoga Sampradaya; Pujya Mahant Nareshgiri Maharaj of Shiva-Mandir and Gou-seva Sampradaya from Mevant, Haryana; Sadhvi Jyotsna Kusumgiri from Sanatan Dharma Juna Aakhadaa, Jammu-Kashmir; Sadhvi Dolly Kusumgiri from Sanatan Dharma Juna Aakhadaa, Jharkhand; Shri Shri 1008 Mahant Gopaladasji Maharaj; Shri Mahant Swami Shivamurtydas Shastri Maharaj from Shriram Mantra Sadhanapeetha, Ujjain Khalsa.
Shri Shri 108 Shri Shri Mahant Swami Shivamurtydas Maharaj of Shriram Mantra Sadhanapeetha, Ujjain Khalsa had sent his best wishes from Hindu Convention.
But the great promise of America is that we believe in principles that every generation has to strive for. Then you empower them. You show them the heroes and heroines. President Barack Obama. Martin Luther King Jr. Ida B. Wells. And talk about how she, for example, went in the face of white supremacy and she became a superhero. You tell them that, in this world, it's not just about her being a good person; it's what do you do to create a better world. That's why I wouldn't start with slavery and segregation. Those were public policies that grew out of white supremacy. Then you are playing whack-a-mole - and someone can say, "Well we got rid of slavery." What's deeper is this country was built on philosophy where - for some - whiteness had a higher value, and every generation is trying to deconstruct that.
A man who died in the parking of lot of the Walmart Supercenter on U.S. 70 in September died of pulmonary embolism, according to his autopsy.
The website webmd.com describes a pulmonary embolism as when a blood clot gets caught in one of the arteries that go from the heart to the lungs. The website notes if the clot is big or the artery is clogged by many smaller clots, a pulmonary embolism can be fatal.
Jon David Brantley, 54, was declared dead at the scene in the Walmart parking lot when Catawba County EMS found him on the afternoon of Sept. 18, 2018.
There are conflicting accounts of Brantleys place of residence at his time of death.
Brantley was initially identified as a Charlotte resident in a Hickory police report. The autopsy gives Brantleys address as Hickory, but does not reference a specific address in the city.
An online obituary for Brantley said he was a South Carolina resident at the time of his death.
Kevin Griffin is the City of Hickory reporter at the Hickory Daily Record.
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Who killed more: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao? As we mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Great Leap Forward, Ian Johnson takes another look https://t.co/7DhfyuJVZn
The million Uighur Muslims whom China is detaining until they renounce Islam and their ethnicity, they must be happy, right? During a staged visit, they were forced to sing, in English, If Youre Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands. End of story. https://t.co/AGtASV4msG pic.twitter.com/O6YjdaZAFY
Dan Dearth
ddearth@herald-mail.com
A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a Waynesboro, Pa., man to 25 years in prison on multiple narcotics and weapons charges.
A jury convicted Anthony Michael Cobb, 49, of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, powder cocaine and heroin, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
He also was convicted of three counts of unlawful possession of five separate firearms and of being a previously convicted felon who was not permitted to possess firearms.
In addition to the 25-year prison term, U.S. District Judge Sylvia H. Rambo ordered Cobb to six years of supervised probation upon his release.
The investigation was conducted by the Waynesboro Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys James T. Clancy and Carlo D. Marchioli prosecuted the case.
The sentence must run concurrently with a 41- to 100-year sentence Cobb received after he was convicted in June of attempted murder, solicitation to commit murder and other counts.
Those charges stemmed from a melee in downtown Waynesboro on April 20, 2016, when Cobb shot at someone he believed had stabbed him during the fight.
Cobb, who lived in Waynesboro at the time, also was convicted of three counts of intimidation of witnesses for letters he wrote.
Dan Dearth
ddearth@herald-mail.com
BLUE RIDGE SUMMIT, Pa. Pennsylvania State Police are continuing to investigate the deaths of two men found in a home Thursday afternoon near Blue Ridge Summit.
Police issued a news release early Friday identifying the men as Roger Lee Gilland, 61, and Jesse Earl Bennaka, 35, both of Washington Township. Police said troopers were called at about 5 p.m. Thursday for a death investigation at 14876 Buchanan Trail East in Washington Township.
Investigators confirmed Friday that Gilland was discovered in a bedroom. Police said they believe Bennaka died by suicide in the garage.
Police did not respond later Friday to requests for an update on the investigation, but they said earlier that no foul play was observed at the scene. They have not revealed details of how the men died.
In early January, Bennaka and Gilland were in a vehicle that crashed into a utility pole in the Mechanicsburg area of Cumberland County, Pa., according to a report on the Upper Allen Police Department website.
Police said Bennaka was driving and was charged with driving under the influence. Gilland was a passenger and was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, the police report said.
Bennaka and Gilland were both arrested at the scene of the 5:45 a.m. Jan. 5 crash and taken to Cumberland County Prison for processing. Its unclear in court records if the men spent any time in the lockup or the circumstances of bail.
According to online court records, Gilland was scheduled for a March 18 preliminary hearing on the misdemeanor charge. Bennaka faced five separate DUI and drug paraphernalia charges and was scheduled for a preliminary hearing on April 12.
Police said early Friday that an autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death for Gilland. When contacted by email Friday evening, Franklin County Coroner Jeff Conner said all information on the case would come from state police.
Joyce F. Nowell
jnowell@herald-mail.com
McCONNELLSBURG, Pa. A $1 million road to the future of health care in Fulton County officially opened Friday.
Washabaugh Drive, connecting Lincoln Way West and Peach Orchard Road, was dedicated by Fulton County and regional officials who touted the stretch of asphalt as a way to open up development possibilities for senior housing and a wellness center.
An $800,000 Appalachian Regional Commission grant and another $200,000 from the adjacent Fulton County Medical Center funded the project, which took six months to complete.
Mike Makosky, the centers president and CEO, said the thoroughfare is key to its mission to improve the condition of the communitys health.
We want to further develop this land to help us accomplish that mission, he said. This road is a critical part of accomplishing that.
We dont know exactly how yet, but we are going to start some planning on how we can use the 99 acres we have here. Were kicking around ideas about senior living, cottages or apartments, maybe a wellness center. We are open to other ideas, as well. We look forward to developing this land in the future.
In the meantime, Makosky said the road is improving access for ambulances and delivery trucks to the medical center.
Brandon Peters, a transportation program manager for the ARC Southern Alleghenies Planning and Development Commission, said the project provides critical access to the areas medical facility and opens up developable areas on the west side of the campus.
That may be paramount, because theres the potential for senior housing and to add a whole lot of different components to this project and thats what ARC is all about the economic development and making the lives better for the folks that live in Appalachia, Peters said.
Pennsylvania counties get about $3 million in ARC grants each year; Fulton County received about a third of the 2017 allocation.
Makosky sees lots of potential for the future of the campus.
We want to find someone to lease land to and let them build the right thing for our needs, he said. The community is very receptive. The township, county and citizens support the hospital and we want to bring the services to them instead of them having to go out of the area to get the services. Thats our goal.
People want to stay in this area. Theyve lived here all their life and they dont want to go away in their last years. Hopefully, we can get something off the ground with that in the next few years. It takes time and we want to find the right partner to help us make it work.
Alexis Fitzpatrick
afitzpatrick@herald-mail.com
CASCADE The Fort Ritchie Community Center will host two informational meetings for teens and parents to learn more about its job skills program.
The meetings will run from 6 to 7 p.m. Monday and Wednesday at the Community Center at 14421 Lake Royer Drive in Cascade.
The program serves youths between ages 12 and 17 to develop soft skills that local employers desire from their employees, such as interaction and communication. It is offered through a partnership with the Rural Maryland Council.
Weekly instructional sessions are held at the Community Center and feature a wide range of topics, including careers, financial responsibility, networking, goal setting and communication. The program is free and provides stipends for participants who attend instructional sessions and complete work sessions each week at the Community Center.
Participants currently enrolled in the program will be available, along with staff, to share their experiences and thoughts on the program at the informational meetings.
For more information, visit thefrcc.org or email Director of Operations Connor Brown at cbrown@thefrcc.org.
Alexis Fitzpatrick
The Herald-Mail
ANNAPOLIS Sen. Andrew Serafini, R-Washington, is finding recovery from knee surgery more difficult than he bargained for.
Serafini had surgery shortly before Christmas, hoping hed be in better shape by the time the Maryland General Assembly convened last month.
But he missed the first few weeks, and though he returned with plans to continue therapy in Annapolis, further complications sent him back home.
Serafini told Herald-Mail Media on Thursday that he hopes to be back in Annapolis later this month.
Senate President Mike Miller announced Friday that Serafini was excused because of a setback, adding, It will be a while before he gets back with us.
Tamela Baker
C.J. Lovelace
cj.lovelace@herald-mail.com
SHARPSBURG A scenic 8-mile drive around Antietam National Battlefield offers visitors a different perspective about the bloodiest single day in American history.
This is an opportunity to get a different perspective on the battlefield through the lives of the people who lived here, specifically the African-Americans, who lived in and around the battlefield, said Ranger Keith Snyder, chief of interpretation at Antietam.
Free self-guided tour booklets for Contradictions and Divided Loyalties Slavery on the Antietam Battleground are available at the battlefields Visitors Center along Dunker Church Road, just off Md. 65 near Sharpsburg.
During February, the Antietam tour is one of many activities the National Park Service is promoting at various sites during Black History Month. The tour has been around for about five years.
The tour guides visitors to five regular stops around the 3,230-acre battlefield, including four historic farmsteads. The booklet documents the lives of people who lived at each location.
One example is the story of Nancy Camel, a former slave who lived and worked on the Roulette Farm. Camel was later freed, but always carried her manumission paper to prove she was free.
While many freed slaves left the area, Camel stayed and worked as an employee on the farm the rest of her life.
At the time of the battle on Sept. 17, 1862, free and enslaved African-Americans were about equal in number, around 1,500 each, in Washington County, Snyder said.
A great irony following the war, he said, was that the most important outcome President Abraham Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single Maryland slave.
That document, because it was a War Powers Act, the president only had the authority in states of rebellion. Maryland was not a state of rebellion, Snyder said. Maryland slaves were not freed until the new Maryland constitution in 1864. Its ironic and interesting that the enslaved of this community, where this terrible battle was fought ... it did not impact them directly.
One of the first Civil War engagements in Union territory, the Battle of Antietam left 23,110 men dead, wounded or missing when the armies of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan fought on the rolling farmland around Sharpsburg.
Snyder said its important to remember the battle did not take place in a vacuum.
It happened in a community in a very interesting and diverse community, he said. We want to tell a broader story that includes not only the soldiers, the leaders, but also the impact of the battle on people that lived here.
Sherry Greenfield
sgreenfield@herald-mail.com
SHARPSBURG Amelia Naeff Marker and her husband, James Marker, both of whom died in the 1880s, are buried in the centuries-old abandoned Methodist cemetery in Sharpsburg.
Amelia died in 1881. For years, the headstone for her grave has been leaning 15 degrees off center. The headstone marking the grave of James, who died two years later, leans a little less, at just 2 degrees off center.
Thanks to the Sharpsburg Historical Society and its contractor, Mosko Cemetery Monument Services, both headstones are being raised and reset.
They are resetting the stones, so they can be level, said Vernell Doyle, president of the historical society. They will also clean the stones with just water and a soft brush.
Another 103 crumbling and deteriorating gravestones sit in the Methodist church cemetery on North Hall Street in Sharpsburg.
The historical society has undertaken a project to preserve all 103 stones.
Contractors started with the two Marker gravestones on Jan. 1.
Cold winter weather halted the work. It will resume in the spring and is expected to be finished this summer.
We anticipate being finished by August, Doyle said. We may rededicate it. Somehow, we will celebrate this preservation effort.
Doyle said this is not a restoration project it would be impossible for the cemetery to look like it did when it was the burial grounds for the First Methodist Church of Sharpsburg from 1828 to 1931.
Its a preservation effort, she said. Were not trying to restore it to what it was.
Doyle said the historical society has the names of 300 people buried in the cemetery. However, only 103 headstones are standing.
Last summer, the historical society, with help from the community, mapped out the cemetery grounds. Rope, measuring tape and spikes were used to mark the location of the graves.
The mapping was the first step in the preservation efforts.
It is unclear whether any remaining headstones mark the burial sites for the Markers eight children.
We havent found the markers for them yet, Doyle said.
The project will cost $23,725, with much of the money coming from local grants and private donations.
Doyle said the organization has received some grant funding. Contributors include the Rotary Club of Hagerstown, the Trader Foundation for Maryland Burial Sites, Preservation Maryland, Washington County Gives, Visit Hagerstown and the Washington County Gaming Commission.
Doyle said preserving a historic cemetery is important.
Not just because there are families here, but because its a valuable resource, she said. Names cut in stone doesnt mean forever. Preserving cemeteries is of value. Its bigger than the individual families.
The Herald-Mail
ANNAPOLIS Tensions over how and whether Marylands alcohol regulations should be reformed and who should regulate them have been brewing for a couple of years now. And new legislation on the question pending in the Maryland General Assembly has Comptroller Peter Franchot hopping mad.
The bills, introduced by Sen. Ben Kramer, D-Montgomery, would take authority for regulating the alcohol and motor fuel and tobacco industries from the comptrollers office, where it now resides, and create a separate agency for that; and would prohibit regulators from accepting contributions of $100 or more from anyone associated with any of those industries.
They result from the recommendations of a task force, headed by Hagerstown attorney and former delegate Bruce Poole, that looked into the states regulation of alcohol and alcohols effect on health and safety. The task force was created through legislation Kramer sponsored last year.
Franchot, who has for the past few years been leading a campaign to lift some restrictions on Marylands craft beer brewers, has been leading another campaign all week to cripple the new bills even before their scheduled hearing later this month.
The bills were introduced Monday. On Tuesday, Franchot issued a news release calling the bills an unprecedented and unsubstantiated political maneuver by Kramer, and accusing Kramer of having a controlled monopoly on liquor distribution in Montgomery County.
And on Tuesday afternoon, he paid a personal visit to statehouse reporters to press the point.
Franchot said the legislation was motivated by petty retaliation against me for being an advocate for craft beer, which is opposed by the big out-of-state corporate beer interest.
As Pooles task force deliberated last fall, Franchot said, not a single complaint was registered about the enforcement of my agency of the laws. Nothing was mentioned about petroleum or the other areas of jurisdiction. And as a result, the main conclusion is that this recommendation is a recrimination against me for being an advocate for small family-owned craft brewers in Maryland.
He said there were many connections between the out-of-state alcohol industry and leadership of the General Assembly. Theyve opened up Pandoras box here with this legislation.
But Poole, who recommended authority be taken from the comptrollers office, insisted Friday that recrimination wasnt the motive at all.
Wheres the focus?
Poole said he recommended the change for a couple of reasons. One was that after hearing testimony from Franchots head of enforcement, task force members were concerned that the number of enforcers hadnt kept up with the number of new alcohol outlets, including the number of new brew pubs.
The other issue, he said, is that he hasnt seen any effort in the comptrollers office to educate the public about the dangers of alcohol, such as the rise in liver failure among millennials and breast cancer among women. Illnesses, he said, that are tied to higher alcohol content in some beers and wines.
For me, I just couldnt help but conclude the comptroller wasnt interested in that, he said, but was focused more on issues between craft brewers and major distributors.
What is the impact? Poole asked. Whos looking into that?
Del. Warren Miller, R-Howard/Carroll, served on the task force and made a strong point, Poole added. He said we make decisions every (legislative) session about who gets power and its all about whos going to make money. But officials need to be asking what its doing to the population, he said. We really need somebody paying attention to this, Poole said. The comptrollers a tax collector.
Poole currently is representing Washington County, the city of Hagerstown and other local governments in a suit against drug manufacturers in an effort to deal with opioid addiction.
Its not just opioids, he said. Were at a point where people are under enormous stress and anxiety and turn to substances, including alcohol, to try to cope. Poole predicted anticipated debate about recreational marijuana in the General Assembly this year is not gonna be about public health its gonna be about the money people in Annapolis who are talking about other states are doing it? Its about the tax revenues.
But was there collusion?
Franchot also spoke about Kramers bill during Wednesdays Board of Public Works meeting, saying the bill sheds light on the very darkest motivations of the Annapolis machine.
He said the bill would compromise the states ability to enforce the tax laws of our state, and claiming there had been no justification anywhere for taking regulatory power out of his office.
And he reiterated his belief that the directive for the bill had come from the leadership of the General Assembly. All of this apparently comes back to my effort to reform Marylands terrible craft beer laws, he said.
But Poole said the leadership hadnt tried to influence the task force. Researchers who addressed the task force spoke about the public impact of alcohol, he said.
I didnt have a bunch of lobbyists come up and give me a high-five and say thanks, he said.
House Speaker Mike Busch asked him to chair the task force, he added, and at no time did Busch say go take out the comptroller.
House Economic Matters Committee Chairman Dereck Davis, D-Prince Georges, has declined to introduce Franchots Reform on Tap legislation this year, which usually is done as a courtesy. Davis said it was because this is a partnership, and the comptroller has been anything but a partner in this.
But Poole said Davis hadnt attempted to sway him, either. He said just do the right thing, Poole said.
The politics involved and the concern about revenues, he said, is way off focus. We have a serious problem with addiction.
I like the people in the statehouse, but Im struck by how different their perspective is from the rest of us, he added. The real issue, he said, is young people and the impact of substance abuse.
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Dan Dearth
ddearth@herald-mail.com
On Oct. 12, 2000, Boonsboro resident Tom Wibberley received news that no parent ever wants to hear.
Wibberley said two sailors came to his home and told him that his 19-year-old son, Craig Wibberley, was one of 17 sailors who was killed earlier that day in a terrorist attack on the USS Cole.
He said he believed many Americans and the politicians who represent them forgot about that tragic day. That was until a few weeks ago when he was invited to represent the families of the Cole victims during President Donald Trumps State of the Union address.
Its been almost 20 years, and this is the first time weve had a president who recognized the Cole, Wibberley said after the presidents Tuesday night speech. ... For Craig to be honored and remembered in this way its just amazing.
Trump lauded the Coles crew and acknowledged Craig and Tom Wibberley by name toward the end of the 82-minute speech.
Above all, friend and foe alike must never doubt this nations power and will to defend our people, the president said. Eighteen years ago, terrorists attacked the USS Cole and last month American forces killed one of the leaders of the attack. We are honored to be joined tonight by Tom Wibberley, whose son, Navy Seaman Craig Wibberley, was one of the 17 sailors we tragically lost. Tom, we vow to always remember the heroes of the USS Cole.
The 70-year-old Wibberley then waved to Congress as its members gave him a standing ovation.
Wibberley said the Military Commissions Office recommended that he and his wife, Patty, attend the address because they actively have been following the court cases of the Cole terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
He said he and Patty left for Washington, D.C., a few days before Tuesdays speech because he was required to attend several photo sessions. On Tuesday, the Wibberleys visited the White House, he said, where they met with the president and posed with him for pictures in the Oval Office.
He was sitting at his desk, and they told us where to stand, he said, adding the president seemed very nice.
The Wibberleys then met First Lady Melania Trump before they were introduced to Vice President Mike Pence, who spent a good bit of time talking to them about the Cole.
Wibberley said the vice president was an engaged listener as they spoke about the stalled court proceedings in Cuba.
Last February, Wibberley told Herald-Mail Media that he took a chartered flight to Guantanamo Bay to attend a portion of the trial of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the man accused of masterminding the attack on the Cole.
The former judge in the case, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, ruled at the time to halt the trial primarily because of the actions of al-Nashiris attorneys.
According to the unofficial and unauthenticated transcript from the Department of Defenses Office of Military Commissions website, Spath said his frustration with the defense was apparent over the course of the trial.
They dont follow orders, Spath said of the defense lawyers in the transcript. They dont follow direction. They dont obey commission regulations, or rules or subpoenas.
Spath also complained about the defenses contemptuous behavior, saying in the transcript that one of the lawyers scoffed at his authority and others appeared in court wearing short-sleeved shirts without ties.
Spath also questioned why the Department of Defense employees were permitted to ignore subpoenas and said the overall situation shows how infected the process is and how far it goes within the Department of Defense.
As a result, he ruled to postpone the proceedings.
Since then, the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review ruled for the trial to resume.
Wibberley said he is still waiting for that to happen.
They havent done anything in almost a year, he said. They dont even have a (new) judge.
In addition to meeting the upper echelon of the Trump administration, Wibberley said he was honored to cross paths with some of the other people who were invited to the address.
He said some of those people included former astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Pittsburgh police Officer Timothy Matson, who was shot seven times inside the Tree of Life Synagogue during an Oct. 27 mass shooting that left 11 people dead and seven wounded.
He also met Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans who participated in the invasion of Western Europe on June 6, 1944.
Wibberley said one of the most interesting people he encountered was the little girl he sat beside, 10-year-old Grace Eline.
Last year, Grace was diagnosed with brain cancer, the president said in his speech. Immediately, she began radiation treatment. At the same time, she rallied her community and raised more than $40,000 dollars for the fight against cancer. When Grace completed treatment last fall, her doctors and nurses cheered, they love her, they still love her, with tears in their eyes as she hung up a poster that read: Last day of chemo. Thank you very much, Grace. You are a great inspiration to everyone in this room.
Wibberley said he listened closely to Trumps address and agreed with much of it, including the presidents support of the military, and his opposition to socialism and illegal immigration.
I just cant believe there are people out there who elect those people to office, he said of far-left-leaning Democrats, such as former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Wibberley said he has formed bonds with some of his sons shipmates and called a few of them to talk after the speech. One of them was Kirk S. Lippold, who was the commander of the Cole on that fateful day.
He said Lippold joked and called him Mr. Wibberley because of his newfound fame.
Kirk thanked me, Wibberley said on a more serious note. He was very happy ... It was such an honor to be picked to do this. Its something Ill remember for the rest of my life.
Craig Wibberley was one of two sailors who was killed aboard the Cole with ties to Washington County.
The other was Fireman Patrick Roy. A former Keedysville resident, Roy was 19 at the time of the attack.
CASSIE YOST
Penn State Extension dairy educator
CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. After the excessive amounts of rain that fell across Franklin County, Pa., in 2018, many farmers have been facing unprecedented challenges with their crops.
This years Penn State Extension Crops/Dairy Day, co-sponsored by AgChoice Farm Credit, offered some insight into some of the issues found in harvested corn and soybeans.
Disease identification in soybeans was discussed, as well as mycotoxins in corn as a result of ear rot. Participants were educated on the weed-control options for the 2019 season and were given insight into the use of cover crops.
Financial-management topics were offered to those in attendance, focusing on the factors affecting renting land and facilities, as well as determining the cost of production for farms. A session on capital expenditure planning was also provided.
There were a few new faces joining this years event. Core credits were offered by Penn State Extension educator Heidi Reed. She joined the agronomy team in York County, Pa., replacing the recently retired John Rowell. Another new face at the Franklin County event was Brittany Clark, the recently hired agronomy educator. Prior to moving to Pennsylvania, she completed her undergraduate work at Iowa State University. Most recently, she completed her masters degree at the University of Georgia, where she worked for the Extension service in Clarke County.
Clarks expertise includes managing insect, weed and disease pests in row-cropping operations. Reed and Clark provide service and assistance to those outside the counties in which they are based.
After the morning sessions at Crops/Dairy Day, the sponsors at the meeting introduced themselves and shared information about their businesses. For the next 45 minutes, those in attendance were given free time to mingle with the sponsors and learn more about their services.
Penn State Extension is grateful to all of the agribusinesses who support the annual event. In turn, its goal is to provide opportunities for networking and establishment of new contacts.
Also at this years event, local producer Leslie Bowman of Chambersburg was awarded for being the top producer of the Central Region in the 2018 Five Acre Corn Club contest. Bowman won the region with a yield of 251.3 bushels per acre (bu/A) using the variety Pioneer 1197AM. The average yield for contest participants in the last growing season was just below 250 bu/A.
The Pennsylvania Five Acre Corn Club is a collaboration between Penn State Extension and the Pennsylvania Corn Growers Association. It aims to provide opportunities for corn producers and professionals to share information about corn products in the state of Pennsylvania and recognize those who have achieved the highest yields annually.
More information about the club can be found at extension.psu.edu or by calling the Franklin County Extension office at 717-263-9226.
Bowman also received first place for the Central Region in the 2018 Pennsylvania Soybean Yield Contest with 88.75 bu/A, planting Pioneer P39T28X. The average yield for the contest participants was 79.15 bu/A. The contest is a collaborative effort between the Pennsylvania Soybean Board and Penn State Extension, both of which invite all producers to participate in the annual contest focusing on yield and quality. The deadline to register for the 2019 contest is Sept. 1. More information is available at pasoybean.org or by calling 717-270-4319.
Penn State Extension has partnered with Ag Choice Farm Credit for the past two years to bring the Crops/Dairy Day to those in Franklin County.
This year will likely offer new challenges. The Penn State Extension office continues to offer assistance to those in the dairy industry, and has an excellent agronomy educator for all of your planting and harvesting questions and concerns.
Dan Dearth
ddearth@herald-mail.com
Maryland State Police are investigating a report of a possible shooting early Friday on U.S. 40 near Stottlemeyer Road.
The incident happened shortly after 2 a.m., when a woman said she saw the driver of a westbound Ford pickup truck lean out the window and fire a shot at a pedestrian, according to a news release from state police.
Troopers said the woman told investigators that the pedestrian fell to the ground. The Ford then turned south on Md. 66 toward Boonsboro.
Neither the victim nor evidence was found during a search of the area.
Troopers said they notified local hospitals in Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia about the incident.
The pickup was described as an older model Ford. It was dark blue or dark green.
Anyone with information may call state police at 301-766-3811.
Provo, UT (84601)
Today
A mix of clouds and sun. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. High 91F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..
Tonight
A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Overcast. Low near 65F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
All of which is disgusting. To their credit, none of them buckled.
And, as Trump biographer Tim OBrien, head of Bloomberg Opinion, put it Friday, AMI has now really picked the wrong person to try to bully:
Bezos is the worlds richest man, he has ample resources and a spine, and hes willing to put his own reputation in play before the Enquirer does in order to make a point and to discover how the publication got his texts and photos.
As Bezos put it in his blog post, he wouldnt be blackmailed over threats to publish a below the belt selfie, or accede to AMIs demand that he explicitly state that the publisher had no political agenda in publishing its investigation of his extramarital affair last month.
I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out, he wrote.
Whether the revelations about AMIs extortion efforts amount to criminality the kind of criminality that could put Peckers immunity agreement in jeopardy isnt clear at the moment. AMI said Friday it fervently believes it was acting lawfully and in good faith with Bezos, but that its board will take another look.
BRISTOL, Va. The first day of a two-day job fair brought a steady stream of job seekers to American Merchant on Friday, as the advanced manufacturer tries to secure its first round of production employees.
Weve gotten a lot of candidates. The response has been so good that were going to have another session; were planning it on March 1-2. We want to be fair we dont really want to make it first-come, first-served, said company Chairman Robert Burton. Well continue the process, have some interviews on the first and second and make some decisions after that.
The company set up a website for people to register for a time slot for an interview on Monday, and all of this weeks slots were filled by Tuesday. People who just walked in were allowed to leave resumes or applications and contact numbers for the March session.
We dont want to discourage people from coming in and applying, Burton said. Over the course of the next two weeks, well be interviewing and looking at candidates.
Next Thursday, sweethearts across the region will be swept off their feet by candy, cards and champagne as couples celebrate Valentines Day.
With the age-old holiday just around the corner, significant others everywhere will look for the perfect gift for their better halves.
In 1984, the Bristol Herald Courier advertised a number of sweet and sentimental treats in the weeks before the holiday some for the love in your life and others for those who love you.
The most advertised gift from 35 years ago comes as no surprise. Jewelry store ads filled the pages of the newspaper, showcasing an array of shining, beautiful baubles.
La Mon Jewelers in Bristol, Tennessee, advertised solitaires, seven-diamond clusters and wedding bands at steep discounts. If you purchased a special I.D. bracelet, it came with a free heart.
Valentines specials at the Four Cs, which had multiple locations across the Tri-Cities, included unique bracelet charms, diamond earrings and gold chains.
Jewelry from Zales ran from $49.95-$1,300, depending on the type of gem.
Another hot commodity up for grabs in the weeks leading up to Valentines Day in 1984 was the ever-popular gift of flowers.
CHILHOWIE, Va. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam will attend a fallen Chilhowie troopers funeral Saturday his first appearance since controversy broke last week over an old yearbook photo.
Northam, a Democrat, will visit the town of Chilhowie for Virginia State Police Trooper Lucas Dowells funeral. Dowell died from gunshot wounds Monday night in Cumberland County as authorities attempted to execute a search warrant at a residence.
The funeral, which begins at 11 a.m., is being held at Chilhowie Christian Church.
Northam has been in the national spotlight over the last week after the surfacing of his yearbook page from the 1980s, which features a photo of a person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe. Northam, who initially apologized for the photo then said it wasnt him, has rejected widespread calls for his resignation.
In recent days, other top state Democrats, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring, have also been caught in their own scandals.
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More than 100 charges have been filed against two men accused of stealing peoples credit card information using skimmers at gas pumps and spending thousands of dollars after creating fake cards.
Uvar Alexander Valera Esquenazi, age unknown, of Sarasota, Florida, and Renier Ramirez Rodriguez, 20, of Louisville, Kentucky, have each been charged with 77 felony charges and 41 misdemeanor charges by the Bristol Virginia Police Department. They face charges of credit/debit card forgery, credit/debit card fraud, obtaining money by false pretense and conspiracy to commit a felony.
The White Pine Police Department in Tennessee arrested the men on Wednesday after a gas station clerk recognized them, authorities said. The pair has been wanted in multiple jurisdictions, including Bristol, Virginia; Bristol, Tennessee; Washington County, Virginia; Knoxville, Tennessee; and White Pine, Tennessee.
Beginning on Jan. 24, Bristol, Virginia, detectives began to investigate debit card fraud incidents reported by 18 different victims. In all of the Bristol incidents, the victims received notice of the fraud while still in possession of their debit cards.
Detectives said the men charged apparently placed skimmers on the pumps at different gas stations in the city.
BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. The engineering firm for the West Ridge High School project debunked rumors that there are sinkholes on the construction site of the future school in Blountville.
During a Sullivan County Board of Education called work session on Thursday, GEOServices Senior Geotechnical Engineer Russ Ashburn said there are construction-induced dropouts caused by digging and grading, which arent the same as sinkholes and are normal during construction.
We deal with this all the time, Ashburn said. We cant predict how many there are, but what we can do is we fix them when we find them. Once you get everything put back together and everything gets stabilized again, then, typically, you dont have that much issue.
He explained that sinkholes develop underground up to the surface because over time underground storm sewers fill with rainwater and as the water moves it depletes soil. So when construction crews grade and dig, dropouts occur. Sinkholes, Ashburn added, are normal in East Tennessee because its common for karst landscapes to form underground from the dissolution of soluble rock.
If You Go What: Black Heritage Night Who: Pastor Ricardo Dorcean When: Sunday, Feb. 17 at 4 p.m. Where: Lee Street Baptist Church, 1 W. Mary St., Bristol, Virginia. Admission: Free Info: 276-669-2760 Web: http://leestreetbaptistchurch.org
Moses ushered Jewish people from the clutches of slavery, as told in Exodus.
Martin Luther King Jr. led black America through the ravages of segregation during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Multiple comparisons exist between the two movements. In recognition of the Black History Month of February, several local church leaders chimed in on the similarities of the plights of Jewish people in Exodus and African-Americans of the past 60 or so years.
Martin Luther King Jr. was called, said the Rev. W. A. Johnson, longtime pastor of Lee Street Baptist Church in Bristol, Virginia. He had a calling on his life to be their leader, sort of a divine appointment from God.
King, a native of Atlanta, first stepped forth to preach in 1947 at the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. From 1954 through 1960, he served as the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
Early in the Bible, Moses preaches to the Israelites in the book of Deuteronomy. He essentially outlines an ethical guideline by which to follow. The hand of God upon him seems obvious.
Moses had a divine calling from God, Johnson said. Same thing as Martin Luther King Jr. They could get their jobs done.
Ricardo Dorcean, pastor of The Fathers Kingdom Christian Center in Kingsport, will speak during Black Heritage Night at Bristols Lee Street Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 17. Perhaps he will touch upon such historical similarities as those between Moses and King.
Moses guided Jews out of the Sinai Desert and enslavement in Egypt, as related early in the Bible. Along the way, they overcame seemingly insurmountable impediments, including the crossing of the Red Sea.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, as told in Exodus 14:21, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
They traveled on in search of better lives. En route to freedom and the promised land of Canaan, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Much later, Moses provided inspiration for those enslaved in America.
Old Negro spirituals make reference to it, that freedom from enslavement thats in Exodus, said Rabbi Arthur Rutberg of BNai Sholom Congregation in Bristol, Tennessee.
King championed as equals black Americans several generations beyond emancipation. Their ancestors were literally bound by slavery. However, African-Americans of the 1950s and 60s were in many ways far from free.
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We werent free, Johnson, who attended college in Richmond during the 1950s, said. We had chains to throw off.
Per Gods wishes, Moses led his Hebrew brethren from literal slavery.
He was faithful to God, Rutberg said.
Per Gods word, King led his black brothers and sisters from figurative slavery. Both were extraordinarily real.
In Exodus, of course, Jewish people were coming out of Egypt. They were coming out of slavery, Johnson said. The Civil Rights Movement was throwing some of the chains off that were still on.
Indeed, during his famous I Have a Dream speech in Washington in 1963, King spoke eloquently though urgently of the historically slow pace toward actual freedom. Many restaurants and motels were still exclusive to whites. Even churches featured a separation of the races.
Segregation lived and seethed in 1963 a direct affront to God who deems all of his children equal.
But 100 years later the Negro still is not free, King spoke on Aug. 28, 1963. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still badly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
King called upon people to the core of their being. He appealed to their sense of Christian right versus the evils of wrong.
Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of Gods children, King said in the famous speech.
King, like Moses, sought a route for a better life for his people. When an entire race of people are bound like animals in a zoo or held back and treated as if they were not citizens, then God frowns.
We should all stand as equals.
When we allow freedom to ring, King said, when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of Gods children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, Free at last, free at last, great God a-mighty, we are free at last.
Jews werent just Moses people. Blacks werent just Kings people. As with everyone else who walks the Earth they were, are, and will always be children of God.
God made us all, all of mankind, Johnson said. Were all sons of God, images of God. Were brothers, sisters, made in the same image. Out of one blood, God made all of mankind.
Tom Netherland is a freelance writer. He may be reached at features@bristolnews.com.
Dean Farrell admitted to a garda he was not insured to drive
An uninsured driver foolishly borrowed his partner's car as he was rushing to get to work, a court has heard.
Dean Farrell (27) admitted to the garda who stopped him that he should not have been driving the car.
Judge Miriam Walsh fined Farrell 800, disqualified him from driving for two years and imposed a three-month suspended sentence.
The defendant, of Hampton Wood Road, Finglas, admitted driving without insurance or a driving licence at Stockhole Lane, Cloghran, on October 19, 2018.
Garda Mark Gandola told Swords District Court that he was on mobile patrol when he stopped Farrell driving a white vehicle.
Gda Gandola said Farrell admitted he was not insured to drive.
Recklessly
The court heard that the defendant had 12 previous convictions, including one for uninsured driving.
Defence lawyer Deirdre Flannery said that Farrell was heading to work when he was stopped by gardai.
He was running late and he "stupidly and recklessly" borrowed his partner's car.
Ms Flannery said Farrell completed his Junior Certificate but he later developed addiction issues and was homeless.
Farrell sought treatment in 2016 and has since been clean. However, he has had mental health difficulties from time to time.
Ms Flannery said Farrell had one son, and was due to start a new job shortly.
She also said the defendant had never had a driving licence, and therefore in his defence he was not driving while disqualified.
Ms Flannery further said that Farrell was living in hostel accommodation and was looking to get a permanent home.
Doves are released at the funeral of Sarah Jane Brazil
A young mother who died after being found unresponsive at her sick child's bedside has been described by her devastated family as a "beautiful person" who was "full of life".
Mum-of-two Sarah Jane Brazil (32) is understood to have been attending her young son, who was being treated at Children's Health Ireland, near her home in Tallaght, when tragedy struck last weekend.
Applause
At her funeral mass yesterday morning in the Church of the Sacred Heart, Killinarden, emotional friends and family wore white shirts with a photo of Sarah Jane on the front.
A family member read out a eulogy on behalf of Sarah Jane's daughter, Caitlin, which received a round of applause from mourners who gathered to pay their respects.
"Never in my life did I think I would be writing something like this," it said.
"You were so young and beautiful. You'd do anything for your family.
"It just breaks my heart that you're gone and it is horrible thinking I'll never see you again.
"You were someone I could tell everything to. You weren't only my mam, you were my best friend. I just miss you so much.
"I hope you're looking down on me. Your family is in bits. We're trying to be strong and stick together.
"You always knew what to do and I just want you to know that I love you so much.
"I miss you. It's nearly a week, but you're in a better place up there. Until we meet again, rest in peace my beautiful mam."
Parish priest Fr Fintan O'Driscoll spoke of the family's grief at losing their loved one and having already lost her siblings Derek and Maureen.
"Losing Sarah Jane at a very young age, life can seem very cruel and unfair," he said.
"The family have described Sarah Jane as a great mother who lived for her children, full of life and would give you her last cent.
"An angel and a saint, a beautiful person inside and out and always positive - a loyal, loyal person.
"It's obvious that hearts are broken and will be broken for a long time to come. I'm sure we can't really understand why this has happened. We have lots of different emotions".
At the end of the ceremony, doves were released by friends in memory of Sarah Jane, and there was another round of applause for the much-loved mum before the coffin was removed for cremation.
Government departments are scrambling this weekend to find savings to fund the National Children's Hospital.
Ministers have been told to draw up lists of projects that can be scaled back or delayed in order to divert 100m to the increasingly expensive health centre this year.
The black hole has been described as "manageable" by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar - but is likely to cause a frantic battle among ministers to protect their own resources.
Apology
The Herald has learned that a memo will be brought before the Cabinet by the Department of Finance next week, which will make significant changes to capital budget allocations due to the hospital's rising costs.
Fine Gael has decided to stand by Health Minister Simon Harris, despite calls for him to resign over his handling of the costly landmark construction.
It appears he will likely be saved from losing his position at Cabinet if he makes a public apology.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin has called for the embattled minister to make an apology to the Dail, claiming he misled it.
This has been rejected by a spokesperson for Mr Harris.
But the Taoiseach appeared to leave the option of an apology on the table while defending the situation yesterday.
He added that he had "total confidence" in Mr Harris.
A spokesperson for Mr Harris said he has been "upfront and transparent" about the overrun, noting his hours before committee and his release of all documents sent to him.
"The minister has never shirked from his duties to the Oireachtas," a spokeswoman said.
Sinn Fein has said it will consider tabling a motion of no confidence if it can get the backing of Fianna Fail TDs, but with Brexit looming Fianna Fail believe that it must keep propping up the Fine Gael-led Government despite the current controversy.
Dublin's Lord Mayor Nial Ring has managed to save his home from a bank sale after raising more than 1m to pay off debts he owes Bank Of Ireland Mortgage Bank, the Circuit Civil Court heard yesterday.
Barrister Kate Conneely told the court that the three-mortgage debt owed by Mr Ring and his wife, who was also named in proceedings, which amounted to 903,420, could now be struck out by both parties' consent, as well as the bank's undisclosed legal costs.
Funds capable of meeting all the outstanding debt owed to bank were now ready to be transferred to Bank of Ireland Mortgage Bank, and had been lodged with Mr Ring's solicitors, the barrister added.
Slip-up
But there was mystery over the source of Mr Ring's million-euro financial boost, as Ms Conneely - appearing with Business and Commercial Solicitors - told Judge Jacqueline Linnane that the extent of the money, as well as where and how it had been raised, could not be divulged on the basis it may breach data protection legislation.
Judge Linnane said she did not think the proceedings should be struck out until confirmation was received that the funds had been transferred to the bank, just in case of any slip-up.
Eithne Corry, counsel for the bank, confirmed that the bank accepted it was to be put in funds for settlement of outstanding debts and the bank's costs which, it had been suggested, could be measured by Judge Linnane.
The judge said that on May 24, 2017, she had made an order for possession of the Ring family home at St Lawrence Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3.
The Civil Bill had outlined three loans for 234,000, 380,000 and 486,000 (totalling 1.1m) with a stay on her order for six months on the basis that 10,000 a month would be paid off for the duration of the stay.
It was part of her order that on default of any 10,000 payment, the stay would be automatically lifted.
The judge said her order had been appealed and had come before the High Court on March 15, 2018.
The appeal had been withdrawn and a consent order had been made again on grounds of a stay of 11 months on the basis that 10,000 a month would be paid over that period, again with a stipulation that the stay would be lifted in default of a single monthly payment.
Judge Linnane said that according to papers in the proceedings no 10,000 monthly payments had been made and only one payment of 5,000 had been paid over to the bank which had moved to execute the order and send in the sheriff.
The Rings had then obtained a High Court ex parte injunction restraining the sheriff from acting on behalf of the bank.
The Rings had given the bank an undertaking as to damages which, Judge Linnane said, she thought would not be worth very much bearing in mind the extent of their outstanding debts, which included mortgage arrears of 527,000.
Talks
When Judge Linnane suggested postponing any order to strike out the proceedings until the funds had been transferred from the Rings' solicitor's account, both parties asked for a brief adjournment to facilitate talks.
Shortly afterwards the court was told the funds had been transferred to the bank but confirmation of the transfer may take a day.
Judge Linnane put the matter in for mention again on Monday and was told there would be no need for the court to measure the bank's legal costs.
Mr and Mrs Ring did not have to attend court for mention of the settlement and will not have to attend on Monday.
A Game Of Thrones actor who drove his wife's car while disqualified has been warned by a court that he will go to jail if he continues to drive.
Joseph Purcell, aka Joe Purcell, has starred as the Riverlands Traveller in Game Of Thrones and is a noted stage actor.
He made headlines in October 2012 when he rang RTE's Liveline after a temporary problem with the family's child benefit payments forced him to steal groceries.
Banned
Purcell (64), of Donomore Park, Tallaght, admitted driving without insurance or a driving licence at Belgard Road, Tallaght, last January 2.
Sergeant Michael Ahern said Purcell had 21 previous convictions, many of which were for no insurance.
He said that on October 9, 2017, Purcell had received a three-year ban for having no insurance and a three-month suspended sentence.
Judge Patricia McNamara commented that Purcell is banned from driving until October 2020.
Purcell's defence lawyer, Eddie O'Connor, said Purcell had driven his wife's car to go to the shops as he had a chest infection at the time.
Judge McNamara said: "The gardai are doing a great job. They always stop people when they are on their way to the shops. This seems to happen a lot."
She told Purcell: "You know you should not be driving at all. You will end up going to jail."
Purcell said: "I was just driving up to the shops."
Judge McNamara sentenced Purcell to five months in jail, suspended for 12 months, imposed a six-year driving ban and fined him 450.
There is growing support at EU level for the vision of Brexit being presented by the UK's leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.
Long derided as a Eurosceptic and unelectable by many European leaders, Mr Corbyn is now being looked to as the man who could crack the Brexit impasse.
His proposal includes keeping the UK in a customs unions with the EU, a move that would help ensure no return to a hard border on the island of Ireland.
However, Prime Minister Theresa May, who was in Dublin for dinner with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar last night, has made leaving the customs union a red-line issue.
The one-on-one came at the request of the British government at the end of a week where Mrs May has travelled to both Belfast and Brussels.
Her team were warned in advance by Irish officials that while they were happy to host her, any Brexit discussions could only interpreted as 'talk' - because Ireland negotiates its position through the EU taskforce led by Michel Barnier.
Mr Varadkar said the meeting was an opportunity "to share our perspectives and for us to listen to each other".
"There is much more that unites us than divides us and time is running short," he said.
Mrs May has still to outline exactly what 'alternative arrangements' she wants to the backstop that she already agreed with the EU.
The prime minister is believed to have used last night's meeting to explain her desire for legally binding changes to the Brexit deal. This has been repeatedly ruled out in recent days by Mr Varadkar and a series of key EU leaders.
Mrs May argues that without some tangible changes she will not be able to get a deal through the House of Commons.
After a gruelling week of rejections, her position is now being further undermined by EU diplomats privately discussing the virtues of proposals tabled by her rival Jeremy Corbyn.
Support
The Labour leader has written to the prime minister with five demands that he believes would help get a majority of MPs behind a deal.
Sources believe that if any deal is to get through the UK parliament it will require need cross-party support.
Meanwhile, former UKIP leader and Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage has announced he will stand as a candidate for a new "Brexit Party" to contest European Parliament elections if Britain has not left the EU.
"The party was founded with my support and with the intention of fighting the European elections on May 23 if Brexit has not been delivered," he said.
The last book written by the late author Emma Hannigan is now ready to hit bookshops.
The popular, award-winning novelist, who had written 12 novels and two memoirs, died on March 3 last year after a very public 11-year battle with breast cancer.
Shortly before, the Wicklow native had written a heart-wrenching social media post to bid farewell to her fans.
Almost a year on from that post, her husband Cian wrote on her official Facebook page yesterday with news of her final, posthumous novel.
"The Gift Of Friends arrived to us. A very proud yet sad time as we know it is her last," he wrote.
Cian said that if his wife were still alive she would so "excited" with the latest book.
Fancy
"At this time, Emma would be getting all excited and nervous. She would be in a frenzy of baking chocolate brownies and wrapping them up in fancy baskets with bows and glitter, they would be everywhere.
"She would then travel the country signing books and sweetening up the bookshop staff with treats as only she could. We really hope you enjoy her last gift to you - her friends. As it really is something special."
The Gift Of Friends will be in bookshops from February 28.
Thousands of people reacted positively to the news.
"I can't wait to get my hands on a copy... mind you I haven't managed to bring myself to read [her previous novel] Letters To My Daughters... I've been saving it for a rainy day," wrote one fan.
"Now I will have two of her precious books! I think of you all often, Cian, and miss Emma's posts."
Another added: "Well that's what Emma left us. The Gift Of Friends and that is to be treasured. Friendship is wonderful, just like Emma was."
Emma had a double mastectomy, as well as surgery to remove her ovaries, in 2006 after discovering that she carried the BRCA1 gene that significantly increased her risk of developing cancer.
Despite the surgery, she was diagnosed with breast cancer the following year.
She became an ambassador for Breast Cancer Ireland and, after announcing her illness was terminal, started an appeal which raised 126,000.
CHARLESTON Cabell County is not likely to welcome a proposed charter school pilot program after it was suggested in the West Virginia House of Delegates late Thursday that it, along with Kanawha County, may be candidates for the state's first charter schools.
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Jerusalem | Progress Theatre, Reading | Tuesday, February 5
SINCE its first performance back in 2009, Jez Butterworths Jerusalem has quickly established itself as a modern classic, so its exciting to see it appear on the Progress stage.
The play rises as a comic masterpiece from a welter of myth, folklore and country custom and director John Goodman is intent on bringing the humour to the fore in this lively and colourful production.
We are transported to a spring day in a Wiltshire village. Johnny Rooster Byron (Matt Tully) is threatened with eviction on the orders of Kennet and Avon Council, but we soon learn from Roosters comic antics that he has no intention of complying.
We also hear of the disappearance of a local girl, Phaedra (Sophie Maybury). Her friends Pea (Imogen Pike) and Tanya (Natasha Hall) claim not to know where she is, but Phaedras stepfather Troy (Peter Cook) suspects that Rooster knows more than he is saying.
Attention to detail in the set design by Tony Travis vividly evokes Roosters hedonistic existence in a dilapidated caravan. Theres the clutter of a life given over to leisure bottles, board games, a dart board. But theres also plenty of leafy greenery, reminding us that, though Rooster is perched on the edge of a new development, he belongs to an older way of life that is rooted in the English countryside.
The character of Rooster is an enigma: do we like him, loathe him, pity him or fear him?
Matt Tully plays Rooster as possessing a fierce inner strength. Hes a hell-raising maverick, born and bred in the countryside and always ready to stand his ground especially against the forces of officialdom.
However, many might dislike Rooster for his shabby, noisy, irresponsible lifestyle on the margins of society and outside the law.
Tullys edgy Rooster is in many ways something of a curmudgeon. Im nobodys friend, he tells Ginger.
Well done to the whole cast, who take on Butterworths rich and sometimes raw language with relish and bring to life an extraordinary collection of characters and oddballs.
Laurence Maguire is engaging and believable as the would-be roamer Lee and well matched as a comic duo with the lively and likeable Rex Rayner as Davey Dean. Alison Hill is delightful as the eccentric and visionary Professor. John Turner as Wesley, the Morris-dancing pub landlord, is wonderfully funny. Joseph Morbey as Ginger provides a deadpan foil to Rooster.
Conflict is at the heart of the play. In many ways we are attracted as an audience to Roosters counter-cultural stance. But he falls out with almost everyone and the clashing scenes with estranged wife Dawn (Steph Gunner-Lucas) are heartbreaking, not least because of the wrangles over small son Marky (played by brothers Dexter and Oz Kingsnorth-Page).
Jerusalem is set on St Georges Day, the day of the Flintock Fair. But the fun of the fair turns sour as Rooster is held to account from a number of directions.
What begins as a bucolic, alcoholic frolic turns into a searing drama of personal identity, as the beaten but unbowed Rooster continues to assert his claim to the land that bears his name Roosters Wood. The final scene, in which Tully stands alone on stage to deliver Roosters incantatory curse, is truly memorable.
Dont miss the chance to see this remarkable drama.
Booking until Saturday (February 16).
Susan Creed
Haiti - News : Zapping...
VERITE wants the indictment of the Head of State
The VERITE Party, which supports Thursday's protests, is encouraging as part of the PetroCaribe case, the indictment of President Jovenel Moise into the waste of PetroCaribe funds through the Agritrans and Cophener firms owned by the head of the State.
See also :
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26812-haiti-flash-the-court-of-auditors-delivers-its-first-report-on-the-management-of-petrocaribe-funds.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26848-haiti-flash-the-state-filed-a-complaint-in-the-petrocaribe-file.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26121-haiti-flash-everything-you-need-to-know-about-using-the-petrocaribe-fund.html
Andre Michel above the Constitution
On Friday, Andre Michel, one of the leaders of the radical opposition, fierce opponent of the PHTK, said that talks are underway to propose a "consensual alternative" to the population in the near future. Asked on a radio of the capital, on the constitutionality of this proposal Me Michel replied "nothing is above the will of the people" an indirect way not to say that this proposal will be outside of the Constitution...
CBD not willing to make loans to Haiti
Thursday, at the annual conference of the Caribbean Development Bank (CBD), William Warren the President of that Bank, while recognizing the potential and prospects in Haiti (member country for more than 10 years) said despite that "[...] we are not yet ready to grant loans to Haiti". See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25610-haiti-economy-official-opening-of-the-national-office-of-the-cbd-in-haiti.html
Bahamas Sinking : Schedule of Funerals
The Embassy of Haiti in the Bahamas informs that the arrangement of the funeral for the victims of the recent sinking of 2 February 2019 in Abaco has been paid by the Government of the Republic of Haiti. The funeral service will be held on Sunday, February 10, 2019 at 2:00 pm at the Enock Backford Auditorium, located on Garmichael Road in Nasseau. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26866-haiti-shipwreck-in-the-bahamas-message-of-pope-francis-to-the-families-and-the-haitian-people.html
Call for calm of the Senate Speaker
"I call on the Government to be calm and accountable for the problems and challenges of the day. The sovereign people have the right to protest against the evils of the country, but I urge you to demonstrate peacefully according to the prescribed of the constitution. I deplore the loss of lives throughout the country, especially in Artibonite after these two days of demonstrations. I invite the PNH to be professional and stand out from all forms of violence that would lead to casualties among the civilian population," declared Senator Carl Murat Cantave, Speaker of the Senate. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26885-haiti-flash-2nd-day-of-violent-demonstrations-at-least-3-dead-and-many-injured.html and https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26875-haiti-flash-important-damage-at-least-4-dead-and-21-wounded-during-the-demonstrations.html
Chancellor Edmond meets Deputy Assistant Secretary Kierscht
Deputy Assistant Secretary Kierscht met with Chancellor Bocchit Edmond today to discuss bilateral relations between the United States and Haiti, collaboration for economic growth, stability, the rule of law and support regional efforts to restore democracy in Venezuela.
HL/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - FLASH : 2nd day of violent demonstrations at least 3 dead and many injured...
In the aftermath of the Thursday protests across the country https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26875-haiti-flash-important-damage-at-least-4-dead-and-21-wounded-during-the-demonstrations.html the socio-political crisis seems to be gaining momentum in several cities of the country where many demonstrations have been reported. Most of the activities were largely paralyzed in the metropolitan area and in several provincial towns, the government's call Thursday night for the resumption of activities was clearly not followed. Despite the police presence, the government seems to no longer have control of the situation or civil disobedience seems to be the word of some protesters and breakers.
Partial assessment of the situation :
Port au Prince :
On Friday there was a timid resumption of economic activities (formal and informal) in the capital where barricades of burning tires had been erected at various places, particularly at the corner of St-Honore and Oswald Durant streets, and a burst of arms automatic was heard not far from the National Palace. Protesters had tok again the streets to continue to demand the resignation of the Head of State. The situation remained tense all day, some commercial banks opened their doors, and some gas stations were working and public transportation was scarce and schools closed.
Petion-ville :
In Petion-ville barricades of burning tires were reported, and the police tried to control the protesters and prevent some individuals from attacking businesses and super markets.
Gonaives :
Protesters in the city of Gonaives threatened private banks and the police station of the PNH and tried to burn several other buildings.
Cap Haitien :
Economic activities remained stalled in the country's second largest city. No school was opened and public transportation did not work. Flaming tires and barricades everywhere in the city. At least 1 death and a dozen wounded, according to Senator Yuori Latortue.
Petit-Goave :
Demonstrations are reported in Petit-Goave where the city has been paralyzed since Thursday. At least 3 people were injured, 2 vehicles and a house burned.
Human balance sheet :
In the city of Gonaives, 2 young demonstrators reportedly died and 5 wounded were reported by the hospital. In Petit-Goave 3 wounded. In Les Cayes 2 injured police officers. In Cap-Haitien 1 dead and a dozen wounded
Moreover, the city of Jacmel was paralyzed by demonstrations, Carrefour leaves, sporadic shooting was reported by residents in Miragoane, burning tires and groups of protesters were noticed. The road linking Artibonite and the North has been temporarily blocked.
See also :
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26881-haiti-demonstrations-message-from-the-director-general-of-the-pnh.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26877-haiti-politic-the-radical-opposition-inspired-by-the-venezuelan-example.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26875-haiti-flash-important-damage-at-least-4-dead-and-21-wounded-during-the-demonstrations.html
SL/ TB/ S/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - NOTICE : Cancellation of pre-carnival activities
Faced with the deterioration of the situation in the country, several communal administration have announced the cancellation of pre-carnival activities scheduled this weekend.
Port-au-Prince :
"The Town Hall of Port-au-Prince in the spirit of contributing to the protection of the citizens of the capital, after consultations with entities on the safety of Port-au-Princiens, we ook the wise decision to defer activities pre-carnavalesques these saturday 9th and sunday the 10th of February 2019. The Town Hall asks everyone to observe these measures which are in the sense of the common good. We will keep the public informed for further pre-carnival activities."
Croix-des-Bouquets :
"The Town Council of Croix-des-Bouquets informs the public and the press in general, and the population crucienne in particular that, taking into account the socio-political situation of the country, pre-carnival activities in the Commune are canceled until at new order. Patriotic greeting. Rony Colin Mayor of Croix-des-Bouquets."
Petion-ville :
"The Municipal Council, together with the Heads of the Commissariat of Petion-ville informs the public, that the pre-carnival activities planned for this Sunday, February 10, 2019 are canceled, given the current situation that rages through the whole area. country. This decision will be maintained until further notice."
HL/ HaitiLibre
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The Nokia 2's software fate is a bit odd - the entry-level smartphone launched in 2017 on Nougat, and with just 1GB of RAM on board, it was deemed problematic to boot the more demanding Oreo once it was time for update. So Nokia came up with the idea to make the update optional - you either stay on Nougat for faster user experience, or you go Oreo and lose some UI snappiness.
Well, the Oreo build is now apparently almost ready for release. Members of the beta program have received emails that the testing phase has concluded and the update is close to being official. It'll bring Android 8.1 to the Nokia 2, and it will be proper Android, not Android Go, since the switch from one to the other isn't really possible, as HMD CPO Juho Sarvikas previously clarified.
When exactly the update will arrive is unclear, but it does say 'soon' in the emails.
Via
STAMFORD A former Stamford police intern, who was kicked out of the program several years ago for telling people he was a cop, will now have to go to prison for more that two years for pretending to be a police officer as an adult.
Ashwin Mathur, 24, of Fieldstone Terrace, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of impersonating an police officer and first-degree unlawful restraint. Assistant States Attorney Daniel Cummings took the pleas from Mathur and Judge John Blawie presided over Mondays hearing.
According to his plea agreement, when Mathur returns to court in May, he will be sentenced to six years in prison, which will be suspended after he serves 30 months, though he is required to spend the next five years on probation. The split sentence allows authorities to send Mathur back to jail and serve out all or part of his suspended three-year, six-month suspended sentence if he violates his probation.
Ashwin doesnt have a mean bone in his body but he suffers fro cognitive and emotional challenges, which caused or contributed to inappropriate behavior, said Mathurs attorney Michael Corsello. Since his transgressions, hes made extraordinary efforts and sacrifices to get the help he needs to ensure no further misbehavior on his part. I anticipate that his sentence will reflect understanding of the challenges he had faced and give appropriate consideration to the efforts and progress he has made.
Mathur first got into trouble in July 2015, just two weeks after he was washed out of the police intern program. Police said a couple in Mathurs neighborhood complained when Mathur represented himself as a cop and was talking to them about car break-ins in the area. Two days later, the same woman rolled through a stop sign and a car with a blue strobe light pulled up behind her.
The woman, who had a funny feeling and called police after her first encounter with the man, immediately recognized him as he walked up to her car. Right after she was let go with a warning because the cop told her he wasnt on duty, she contacted police and identified Mathur in a photo line up.
Mathur, however, was accepted into a court diversionary program for those with psychological problems, which would have erased the two counts of impersonating an officer from his record.
But Mathur was arrested in Westport in September 2017 when police said a woman claimed she was sexually assaulted by a man she met online who pretended to be a cop. Mathur was kicked out of the diversionary program and charged with third-degree sexual assault, second-degree unlawful restraint and was slapped with a third impersonation charge.
Then in May 2018, federal authorities raided Mathurs home following an incident in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., where police said he told his girlfriend he was a U.S. Marshals deputy. He was charged with impersonation of an officer or employee of the United States.
Finally, in September 2018, Mathur pretended to be a New York Police Department detective in order to get out of paying a $118 motel bill in Stamford, for which he was charged with impersonating a police officer and sixth-degree larceny.
The current court proceedings are for the charges stemming from the Westport and Stamford incidents.
jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com
Greenwichs new shiny jewel, the 62,000-square-feet, $37.3 million New Lebanon School, is set to open its doors a week from Monday as students return from winter break.
At least five of the 21 pristine classrooms will sit empty; the elementary school designed to house 425 students will be lucky to see a population of 300.
To get beyond the 300 mark, the district will have to empty classrooms in other schools, adding to the towns significant surplus of instructional space and incurring all the costs of maintaining more space than the district needs. Not to mention sapping money and resources from other educational programs.
The school board and administrators have started an extensive campaign to justify building the oversized school at a time when district enrollment is expected to remain flat and possibly decline.
Part of that campaign was to be a new magnet curriculum that would attract students from all parts of town, which would, it was hoped, bring the New Lebanon student populations racial mix in line with the districts ethnic profile. That was part of the argument that helped the town secure construction funding from the state.
The town even incorporated a process for developing that magnet theme into the new buildings educational specifications. To achieve desired enrollment, the plan said, the design of the magnet application/assignment policy and procedures for New Lebanon School must be concurrent with facility design.
But no such curriculum design (or re-design) ever happened. New Lebanon still offers the magnet program it first employed years ago: the International Baccalaureate method, similar to the magnet curriculum at the International School at Dundee. The different approach espoused by the IB program worked to bring students to Dundee, but that school was re-opened to solve an overcrowding problem at Old Greenwich, Riverside and North Mianus schools. IB has not worked to convince parents from eastern and central Greenwich to send their children across town to New Lebanon.
There is no reason to suspect that a new building will change parents attitudes toward crosstown commuting for elementary students. With all credit to Barbara Riccio, New Lebanon principal, who said the lack of a new facility had made marketing the curriculum difficult, selling the IB method will not be easier with a new building. Western Middle School, the school New Lebanon graduates attend, wants to drop its IB program.
It is hard to suss out why the district has not spent more time and money exploring the best way to close the achievement gap at New Lebanon as it promised it would in its application for state funds. But, it is not surprising that a district that has had four superintendents in four years, with a new one beginning in July, has administrators who have learned how to navigate around the board and whoever is passing through the superintendents seat. Or perhaps everyone just forgot. But sticking with an IB curriculum that is not integrated throughout the next two levels of a students education has proven to be a failure.
Another pillar of the New Lebanon sales/marketing effort is the presence of three, full-day pre-Kindergarten classrooms. The old school had two sections until almost 10 years ago when they were moved elsewhere to alleviate overcrowding in the old building.
New Lebanons pre-K gain is Parkways loss. The backcountry school will likely offer just one section of 15 students in pre-K instead of two, according to Mary Forde, Greenwichs chief pupil personnel services officer (yes, you read that title correctly).
Now, if the town were really committed to closing the achievement gap at New Lebanon and Hamilton Avenue schools, it would look into offering universal pre-K. Those programs have had some success elsewhere, and certainly more success than a new building might. But that would require the school board to open a conversation about public pre-K in all town elementary schools, and that would be a tough sell. If the town were to use the empty classrooms at New Lebanon for special resources aimed at improving education, then the school would be a crown jewel instead of the Potemkin Village it is likely to become.
Bob Horton can be reached at bobhorton@yahoo.com.
GREENWICH A week after First Selectman Peter Tesei announced he would not be seeking re-election this fall, Selectman John Toner has said he will not be running for a new term, either.
Toner, who is in his fourth year on the board, sent a letter to the Republican Town Committee this week saying he would not go for a third term. In the 2017 election, Toner was the top vote-getter on the Board of Selectman, even outdistancing Tesei.
But that crowning moment will be the last political one for the longtime Republican. On Friday, Toner, who is retired from the financial services industry and previously served on the Representative Town Meeting, said that he simply felt it was time to move on.
Ive been thinking about it for a couple of months now, and I just decided that for everyone there is a time, Toner said.
He was appointed to the Board of Selectman in January 2015 after the sudden death of Selectman David Theis in December 2014. Toner successfully ran for the seat in 2015 and for re-election in 2017.
He has been a stalwart ally for Tesei in his time on the board. On Friday, TOnder said that Teseis decision not to run for re-electon was a factor in his decision.
Peter has been a very good partner, Toner said.
In his letter, Toner said that his time on the Board of Selectmen has been exceptionally rewarding.
I have met so many of our fellow citizens and worked on so many projects to keep Greenwich first, Toner said in the letter. He pledged to continue to work hard to assure victory for the Republican ticket in the 2019 municipal elections.
The announcements from Toner and Tesei mean that at least two of the three seats on the Board of Selectmen will be filled by new members in December when the board is sworn in.
Democratic Selectman Sandy Litvack, who is in his first term, has not yet announced whether he will seek re-election or run for first selectman again, which he first did in 2017. On Friday, Litvack said that Toners decision was not a surprise.
Litvack said he expected to make an announcement about his own plans by the end of March, if not sooner.
Board of Estimate and Taxation member Michael Mason, a former chair of the finance board, has said he will seek the Republican nomination for first selectman. On Friday, Mason formally filed his papers with the Town Clerk to set up a campaign committee and made his run official.
State Rep. Fred Camillo, R-151, is also expected to seek the Republican nomination. Former Tax Collector Tod Laudonia has said he is interested in the position, too.
On Friday, Republican Town Committee Chair Richard DiPreta said others have expressed an interest in running to succeed Toner as selectman and thanked him for his service to the town. He said Toner informed him of his decision last week shortly after Teseis announcement.
John has been an exemplary leader and citizen for the town, DiPreta said.
kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
GREENWICH As he presented a budget focused on spending dollars wisely, the head of the towns Department of Human Services also outlined his hope to expand a popular program in Greenwichs schools.
On Friday morning, town Commissioner of Human Services Alan Barry outlined his departments $3.9 million proposed budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year to the Board of Estimate and Taxations Budget Committee. The spending increase of 0.3 percent over this years budget is within the BETs guidelines.
Barry made a push for the Teen Talk program at the towns three public middle schools, which provides individual counseling services for teens. Kids in Crisis started the program, but when the funding from a foundation ran out, the town took over.
This is something we would like to expand into the elementary schools because we think it is important to start this earlier and earlier, Barry said. By the time some of these kids are reaching high school, they will have had more support. I think its critical to be establishing these kids of liaison programs between agencies within the community and the schools. Teen Talk is a very important program were seeing a lot of progress with and wed like to expand it.
Theres too much pressure on the towns schools to provide mental health services, Barry said, when there are excellent resources in the community. Teen Talk and other initiatives, such as the YWCAs domestic abuse education and outreach, help connect kids in need of help with vital services, he said.
We think this is the future of the way programs are developed, Barry said.
The cost of an expansion for Teen Talk is not included in the 2019-20 budget request. Budget Committee Chair Leslie Moriarty asked Barry what the rollout might cost in a future year, and Barry said he would provide that information.
The $3,936,485 budget drew few objections from committee members. The proposed budget reflects the loss of two part-time case managers. In the budget, Barry proposed replacing those two jobs with one full-time position, which drew no immediate objection from the BET.
That change would be both cost-effective and cost-efficient, Barry said. It will allow for better coverage for clients and also reduces our budget.
The departments goal is to streamline operations while still meeting the needs of the clients, he said.
A lot of that has to do with developing effective case management services, which accurately assess what the needs are of the clients and then aligning them with the appropriate services, Barry said. We spend a lot of time with our community partners.
The department has also received requests for funding from community partners for a total of $1,179,360, he said. That amount was pared down to what Barry said was essentially a flat budget of $873,958 for those partners.
Board of Human Services members Barbara Nolan, who is the chair, and Winston Robinson accompanied Barry. Moriarty asked them whether the requests from outside groups were increasing due to problems with funding from state and federal sources.
Those groups are turning more to private donations and foundations, Barry said, as well as fundraising.
Budget Committee member Michael Mason said a long-term vision would benefit the department and the outside groups. Funding also goes to the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich, Neighbor to Neighbor, Catholic Charities, Community Centers Inc. and Liberation Programs.
The town must stop thinking about a budget as an individual year, Mason told Barry. You need to think about five- or 10-year blocks.
The Department of Human Services budget also includes $35,000 to support the YWCA Greenwichs domestic abuse services, which includes a free 24/7 hotline, shelter and counseling services for victims and families. That is not an increase over the current year, but there is an increase in the amount of money for the YWCAs outreach into the high school and middle schools for its domestic abuse education and awareness programs.
The budget request for that program for 2019-20 is $180,000, up from the $120,000 in the current year. The funding is a priority for First Selectman Peter Tesei, and the YWCA said it has been a successful in running education programs like the Girls Circle at the middle schools and YNet for GHS.
These programs are based around providing and developing education to prevent this kind of violence, Barry said. Its a model for how things should be developed between community agencies and the school system.
Barry stressed the importance of the program in the aftermath of the discovery in Greenwich of the body of 24-year-old New Rochelle resident Valerie Reyes. A homicide investigation is ongoing.
With the recent tragedy that just occurred, the issue of violence, especially violence against women has really been highlighted, Barry said.
kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
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Until her coverage started under the expanded Medicaid program on Jan. 1, Danville resident Jean Jackson, 63, had been without insurance for nearly a year and a half.
She had retired early from her job in July of 2017 at age 62, plagued with cataracts that made it dangerous for her to drive in the dark on her commute home. With her retirement, she lost her insurance coverage.
While she usually went to a Piedmont Access to Health Service clinic for her health care needs, there was one day where illness hit her so fast that she went the emergency room instead uninsured.
I stayed about five hours, and they tested me for everything, said Jackson. The hospital staff diagnosed with the flu and gave her medicine. That five-hour visit cost her $6,000 with no help from insurance. The hospital still sends her bills reminding her of the debt.
I havent done anything about it, she said. There wasnt anything I could do.
For hospitals, Jacksons $6,000 debt is nothing out of the ordinary. By federal mandate, they arent allowed to turn people away from the emergency room who dont have insurance which results in millions of dollars worth of uncompensated care each year.
RALEIGH A school safety committee formed by Gov. Roy Cooper after the Parkland school massacre says North Carolina needs to be proactive and provide money to have an armed police officer at every school in the state.
Questions about how to make schools safer have intensified since 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., last February. The report presented Thursday by the Governors Crime Commission Special Committee on School Shootings says its time to discuss providing permanent funding for school resource officer positions in every school.
The report says the recommendation to have an officer at every school reflects a desire to be proactive and preventive rather than reactionary.
All the schools should have a police officer in them to protect the kids from harm, Gaston County Sheriff Alan Cloninger, co-chairman of the committee, said in an interview Thursday.
The report says that if permanent funding for an SRO at every school isnt deemed viable then the state should push the issue of SROs in elementary schools. Even if an SRO cant be placed at every elementary school, the report said it would help to have an officer for every three or four elementary schools.
Winston-Salem police arrested a teenager Friday at Carver High School after officers accused the teen of carrying a gun under his clothes, authorities said.
Ja'lyn Rahshard Washington, 16, of Quail Drive was charged with possession of a handgun on educational property, possession of a handgun by a minor and carrying a concealed gun, police said.
The incident happened at 12:25 p.m. when detectives and a school-resource officer were speaking with Washington at the school on an matter unrelated to weapons' charges, police said.
The detectives then seized a handgun from Washington, police said.
Washington also was charged with robbery with a dangerous weapon, possession of a stolen automobile and first-degree burglary, police said. Washington was being held Friday in the Forsyth County Jail with his bond set at $100,000, police said.
Washington is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 28.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call Winston-Salem police at 336-773-7700 or Crime Stoppers at 336-727-2800. Crime Stoppers is also on Facebook.
Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) and Toyota Central R&D Labs, Inc. released Version 6 of the Total Human Model for Safety (THUMS) virtual crash dummy software.
Researched and developed for more than 20 years by the two companies, THUMS simulates detailed computer analysis of human body injuries caused by vehicle collisions. The new software features internal organ modeling and a new muscle model that simulates a variety of occupant postures, including braced and relaxed, permitting a more detailed analysis by anticipating various occupant postures as the widespread deployment of automated vehicles continues to advance.
Evolution of THUMS.
THUMS is available for purchase through the JSOL Corporation (Tokyo) and ESI Group (Tokyo). The software has been used in vehicle safety technology research by Toyota as well as automobile manufacturers, parts manufacturers, universities, research institutions, and the like, both in Japan and overseas.
THUMS Version 5 simulates changes in occupant posture by considering occupants pre-collision muscular states, while THUMS Version 4 accurately analyzes injuries sustained to bones and internal organs at the point of collision.
Previously, injury researchers aiming to both simulate pre-collision changes in occupant posture and to analyze occupant injuries sustained at the point of collision were required to combine Versions 4 and 5 of the software.
The newly developed THUMS Version 6 allows researchers to analyze both changes in pre-collision occupant posture and injuries sustained at the point of collision with a high degree of accuracy and, since there is no longer any need to switch between different THUMS versions, will also contribute to improved work efficiency.
THUMS Version 6 braced posture (top) and relaxed posture (bottom).
As preventive safety equipment becomes more widespread in tandem with the deployment of automated driving technologies, occupants are anticipated to assume a wider variety of postures at the point of collision than previously; in particular, driving support functions may result in drivers assuming a more relaxed posture. Toyota expects that THUMS Version 6 will be used in the development of safety technologies that help protect occupants in a variety of different conditions.
Moving forward, in addition to developing preventive safety and automated driving technologies, Toyota intends to research and develop technologies that help protect occupants in the event of a collision by utilizing THUMS, and provide safety and security to its customers under a diverse range of conditions.
The CBI on Friday approached the Delhi High Court seeking enhancing of additional security from Rs. 2 crore to Rs. 6 crore which controversial meat exporter Moin Akhtar Qureshi, accused in a cheating and corruption case, has been asked to furnish to travel to UAE and Pakistan.
The matter has been listed for February 11.
Recently, Moin Akhtar Qureshi was allowed by a trial court to travel to the UAE from February 15-23 for attending the Gulf Food Festival and from March 6-20 to Pakistan to attend his niece's wedding.
The trial court had directed Moin Akhtar Qureshi to furnish an additional security of Rs. 2 crore in the form of bank guarantee and warned that in case of violation of any of the conditions imposed, the amount would be forfeited.
He was also asked to surrender his passport within 24 hours of his arrival in the country.
However, the CBI moved the high court urging that the security amount be raised from the Rs. 2 crore amount to Rs. 6 crore on the grounds that earlier the trial court had permitted a co-accused to go abroad on furnishing FDR or bank guarantee for Rs. six crore.
The CBI claimed the trial court order was "non-speaking" and added that even after taking note of December 18, 2018 order relating to a co-accused, the lower court reduced the condition by directing Moin Akhtar Qureshi to furnish FDR/ bank guarantee for a sum of Rs. 2 crore instead of Rs. 6 crore. In a ''non-speaking'' order, the reasons are not given.
The ED and CBI had opposed before the lower court Moin Akhtar Qureshi's plea to travel abroad on the apprehension that he may not return to face the trial.
The trial court had said it was not disputed that the accused has travelled abroad in the past on many occasions with the permission of the court and except for the "apprehension" of the ED and the CBI that Moin Akhtar Qureshi may not return to face the trial or join investigation, there is "no serious contest" to his applications.
The CBI had urged the court that stringent security conditions be put as has been put by the Delhi High Court.
In the application, Moin Akhtar Qureshi had sought permission of the court to travel to UAE from February 9-24 to meet buyers and attend the Gulf Food Festival for purposes of promoting and growing his business and to Lahore and Karachi in March to attend a relative's wedding and to permit him to retain his passport between the trips to obtain visa for Pakistan.
The plea had said that the visit to Karachi and Lahore was essential for his family ties.
The court had in 2017 granted him bail in a case in which the ED had alleged that Moin Akhtar Qureshi was involved in hawala transactions through Delhi-based hawala operators Parvez Ali of Turkman Gate and M/s South Delhi Money Changer (DAMINI) in Greater Kailash-1.
The ED has challenged the bail order in the high court which is pending.
The CBI had lodged a case against him after the ED and Income Tax department's probe into money laundering allegations against Qureshi, in which ongoing investigations have allegedly revealed involvement of senior public servants.
The probe agency had earlier alleged that money has been sent abroad by the accused from one of the witnesses in the investigation through hawala channels in exchange for help provided to him in a CBI case.
-PTI
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- BAIC Group sold 2.402 million vehicles throughout 2018, the automaker announced in recent days. Besides, it earned RMB480.74 billion in annual revenues with a year-on-year growth of 2.2% and RMB30.13 billion in full-year net profits, an increase of 7.3%.
Apart from the sales and profit performance, Gasgoo hereby summarizes the automaker's significant events that happened in 2018, helping you review what progresses the automaker made during the past year.
DNRC permits Daimler to acquire stake in BAIC BJEV
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) released a reply on Feb. 7, permitting Daimler Greater China Ltd. to acquire a certain stake of BAIC BJEV owned by Shenzhen Jinggangshan New Energy Investment Management Co., Ltd.
To prevent the state-owned assets from loss, stake transfer must be conducted in accordance with some relevant regulations. After the stake transfer, Chinese party should take up no less than 50% of the stake in BAIC BJEV.
BAIC, Daimler invest RMB 11.9 billion for production expansion
On February 25, BAIC Motor revealed its latest investment cooperation with the German automaker.
BAIC and Daimler planned to invest over RMB 11.9 billion (about 1.5 million euros) to expand the local production scale of Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicles and meet the demands of the largest auto market in the world. The announcement said that the money would be used for the establishment of Beijing Benz's new factory to produce several Mercedes-Benz models, including the electric models.
BAIC BJEV sets up new company to expand production of electric powertrains
BIAC BJEV planned to establish a subsidiary dubbed Blue Valley Power Company at its existing production base in Caiyu, Beijing, Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said in late February. The first phase of the new power company would achieve an annual production capacity of 100,000 sets of electric vehicle driving system. After it finished construction, the new power company would provide power for the second-gen Senova D70, D50 and X55.
With deliveries of 103,199 units in 2017, BAIC BJEV led the pack in the pure electric vehicle segment for five consecutive years, up 97% over the previous year. To meet the increasing market demands, BAIC BJEV not only built a production base in Beijing, but also cooperated with Changzhou, Laixi city of Qiangdao, Shandong Province and Kunming to set up new NEV production bases.
Didi, BAIC Group sign strategic agreement to promote carsharing operation
On March 7th, Didi, a China's ride-hailing giant, announced that it signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the state-owned automaker BAIC Group to jointly extend businesses in such areas as operation of new energy vehicle (NEV), application of big data, mobility service and tailored vehicle and electric charging, etc.
Didi would wield its technology and big data advantages in mobile travelling realm to help automakers obtain large-scale and refined operation capabilities in ridesharing area.
BAIC, Magna sign strategic agreement on developing new-gen intelligent BEV models
On Apr. 8, in the presence of both Chinese and Austrian governmental leaders, BAIC Group and Magna signed a strategic cooperation agreement, saying both parties would make a commitment to developing new-gen intelligent pure electric vehicle models.
This was the first cooperation project between Magna and BAIC Group in electric vehicle area. The move also indicated that Magna achieved great progress for its strategy in China. Guenther Apfalter, president of Magna International Europe AG stated that it was a great honor for Magna to jointly develop new-gen advanced and intelligent pure electric vehicle models with BAIC Group.
BAIC Motor launches new brand strategy, teams up with Tencent
BAIC Motor launched its all-new brand strategy named new driving enjoyment ecosystem on April 23. Meanwhile, the company signed cooperation agreements with Tencent, Peking University, J.D.Power, Modernsky and BAIC Mobility as its first batch of eco-partners.
In addition, BAIC Motor showcased three mass-produced models at the strategy launching ceremony, including the new-generation BAIC Senova X55, BJ40 PLUS and BJ80 EVERST, which were all expected to go on sale this year and unveiled the all-new concept model OFFSPACE SUIT as well.
Singulato teams up with BAIC BJEV to develop intelligent vehicles, announces RMB 3 billion C-round funding
At Auto China 2018 on Apr. 25, Singulato Motor announced that it would conduct overall strategic cooperation with BAIC BJEV in technology development, construction of battery charging and swapping facility, sharing of dealership network and manufacturing resources.
BAIC Huansu releases new brand strategy at Auto China 2018
On Apr. 25, BAIC Huansu, a four-year Chinese self-owned vehicle brand, showcased two new models at Auto China 2018 and also grandly released its new brand strategy in Beijing.
As consumption upgraded, BAIC Huansu put forward a new-era strategy based on its own development and upgrades, insisting on intelligent new energy strategy under the concept of double-V strategy to improve its competitiveness in PV and NEV markets.
BAIC BJEV launches Darwin System at Auto China 2018
BAIC BJEV launched the vehicle artificial intelligent (AI) system, Darwin System, at Auto China 2018 on Apr. 25. The premium system not only can liberate and please human, but also can be self-developed. Besides, the EU5 equipped with the Darwin System started presale with price range between RMB 129,900 and RMB 161,900, after eliminating the NEV subsidies.
The Darwin System is a self-learning system, which can conduct deep self-learning to meet customers' demands. It even can provide considerate services for customers. For instance, the premium system enables the air conditioning system to be automatically turned on before the car owners or passengers enter into the car. What's more, the intelligent cabin system which can realize various application scenarios will be deployed in all the models to be launched during 2018 and 2020.
Beijing gives green light to BAIC BJEV autonomous driving road tests
BAIC BJEV announced that the company had received Beijing's license to conduct road tests for its autonomous vehicle the LITE on April 26. Along with the Chinese EV (electric vehicle) startup NIO, BAIC BJEV was also included in the first batch of automakers that obtained Beijing's road test license.
At Auto China 2018 in Beijing, BAIC BJEV unveiled its AI (artificial intelligence) vehicle system dubbed Darwin System on which the AI sedan EU5 based. Meanwhile, the autonomous model LITE was also showcased at the same time.
BAIC BJEV approved to be listed on stock market in June or July by back-door listing
On June 1, SST Qianfeng announced that it had been approved by China Security Regulatory Commission to issue stock shares to acquire 100% stake of BAIC BJEV. This signified that BAIC BJEV's back-door listing had been approved by China Security Regulatory Commission, and would be China's first listed pure electric vehicle maker soon.
According to the approved files, SST Qianfeng would replace its whole assets and debts to BAIC BJEV, issue stock shares to buy 100% stake of BAIC BJEV, and raise supporting funds worth of RMB 2 billion. Specifically, BAIC BJEV would inject RMB 28.85 billion in SST Qianfeng. After exempting the RMB 187 million worth of SST Qianfeng's total assets and debts, BAIC BJEV only needs to inject RMB 28.669 billion to SST Qianfeng. SST Qianfeng would issue 761 million shares with each share of RMB 37.66 to 35 BAIC BJEV's shareholders, including BAIC Group.
SST Qiangfeng changes name, new progress for BAIC BJEV to be listed on A-share market
On June 12, SST Qianfeng had officially changed its name as BeiJing QianFeng Electronic Co.Ltd and settled in China Blue Valley (Lan Gu" in Chinese) of Beijing Economic Technological Development Area, where the BAIC BJEV headquarters. At the same time, relevant procedures like the changing of company's name, registered address and business scope have already been approved by governmental departments.
BAIC, Magna plan to form new JV to build premium intelligent electric vehicles
BAIC BJEV and Canada auto parts supplier Magna signed a cooperation agreement on June 18 in Nanjing, saying that both parties plan to establish two new joint ventures to build open and sharing R&D and manufacturing centers of intelligent premium electric vehicles.
According to the agreement, both parties would jointly set up joint ventures to conduct R&D on premium and intelligent electric vehicle sharing platform, customize vehicles based on customers' demands, and provide engineering services of new energy vehicles (NEV). In the meantime, both parties negotiated to carry out intelligent transformation and upgrading on the existing BAIC manufacturing facility in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province to manufacture high-end intelligent electric vehicles. Moreover, models from ARCFOX, BAIC BJEV's high-end vehicle brand, would be manufactured first in the plant.
BAIC, Brilliance cooperate in NEV and car-hailing fields
BAIC Group and Brilliance Auto Group signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement at the 10th APEC Small & Medium Enterprises Technology Conference and Fair on June 27.
In accordance with the agreement, BAIC and Brilliance would cooperate in such areas as new-energy official vehicles, taxies, ride-hailing cars, private cars, express logistics vehicles and car sharing, to jointly promote the popularization of new energy vehicles (NEV) in Shenyang and other Northeastern cities, and further expand their businesses to the whole Chinese market.
BAIC BJEV launches new business mode to separate values of EVs, batteries
On July 5, BAIC BJEV officially launched a private market-oriented new business mode that separates batteries value from the value of electric vehicles (EV). The business mode was considered as a big move of China's NEV industry in sharing economy area. Compared with fuel-powered vehicles, the business mode that separates batteries value from EV value boasts great cost advantages.
Under the business mode of separating batteries value from EV value, battery management companies will repurchase the property rights of batteries and consumers can use the batteries by leasing, after consumers bought the pure electric vehicles.
BAIC Group, Great Wall Motor forge partnership, said to share auto parts resources
BAIC Group and Great Wall Motor inked a strategic cooperation agreement on August 7. The two automakers were going to forge an in-depth partnership in various areas like sharing auto parts resources.
In May, a source revealed that Xu Heyi, chairman of BAIC Group, visited Great Wall Motor's headquarters in Baoding, Heibei province and its assembly plant in Xushui District in the company of Wei Jianjun, who chairs Great Wall Motor. It was said that the aim of Xu's visit was to facilitate BAIC Group's purchase of engines and gearboxes from Great Wall Motor.
New BAIC EC 3 officially launched, priced from RMB 65,800
On August 31, BAIC BJEV, the electric vehicle unit of BAIC Group, officially launched the EC 3, an economic battery electric vehicle at the Chengdu Motor Show 2018. With a range of 261 kilometers, the EC3 offers two variants, priced from RMB 65,800 after subsidies.
CATL supplies power battery for the model, paired with the battery management system and charging technologies developed by BAIC BJEV itself. The model can be started and charged normally at minus 30 degrees Celsius.
BAIC BJEV goes public in Shanghai
BAIC BJEV saw its A shares listed on Shanghai stock market on September 27 through a back-door listing, making it China's first publicly-listed NEV maker.
BAIC BluePark New Energy Technology Co.,Ltd, the shell company for BAIC BJEV going public, announced on September 25 that its stock short name would be changed to BAIC BluePark from S BluePark with the stock code 600733 remaining unchanged. The decision came into effect on September 27.
BAIC BJEV announces mid-long term technology development planning
On October 18, BAIC BJEV announced its 2025 mid-long term technology development planning and also elaborated on its artificial intelligence auto system, the Darwin System.
Under the plan, 3 platforms would cover the automaker's product line by 2021. In battery system, BAIC BJEV would promote the development of battery platform in line with the complete vehicle platform and planned to finish the matching between complete vehicle platform and battery pack.
The company planned to increase the battery density to 350Wh/kg by 2025 and the battery is expected to be charged to 80% in 10 minutes. In autonomous vehicle segment, BAIC BJEV aimed to launch L2.5 autonomous vehicles by 2022 and L4 vehicles by 2025.
BAIC Group allies with 12 companies to develop ICV busiensses
BAIC Group inked strategic cooperation agreements with 12 companies at the closing ceremony of the World Autonomous Vehicle Ecosystem Conference on October 21 to jointly develop intelligent-connected vehicle (ICV) businesses. Partners involve such companies as ZF Group, Bosch, Hella, Panasonic, iFlytek and Baidu, etc.
Under the newly-signed agreements, BAIC Group and 12 partners would extend in-depth cooperation on autonomous driving, IoV (Internet of Vehicles) service and operation system, human-vehicle interaction, speech-based intelligence, cloud platform, the optimization of mobility services and customers' experience.
BAIC Group sets up IT joint venture with four subsidiaries
BAIC Group, BAIC Motor Corporation Limited (BAIC Motor), BAIC BJEV, BAIC ROCAR and BAIC Mobility agreed to build a joint venture focusing on IT (information technology) businesses, according to an announcement released by BAIC Motor on October 30. The new joint venture (JV) was said to be named BAIC BluePark Information Technology Co.,Ltd.
Under the agreement, the registered capital for the new JV would be RMB330 million in total. The parent company BAIC Group would take a 39.4% stake in the JV with a contribution of RMB130 million. The remaining RMB200 million registered capital should be equally devoted by the four subsidiaries.
BAIC BJEV, Huawei cement partnership for next-generation ICV
On November 5, BAIC BJEV and Huawei inked a cooperation framework agreement in Beijing that cements the partnership between two companies. The new agreement said Huawei would offer its advantage on ICT (Information Communications Technology) to help the EV maker build its next-generation intelligent-connected EVs.
Both parties previously formed the partnership on September 27, 2017 to jointly work on technology R&D and product innovation, involving such areas as cloud computing, IoV (Internet of Vehicles) and energy network, etc. The newly-agreed cooperation would allow them to make joint layouts in industrial Internet, intelligent park as well as ICT infrastructures, etc.
BAIC Group, Suning.com agree cooperation on smart automobile retail
BAIC Group and Suning.com, a Chinese leading online-to-offline smart retail company owned by Suning Holdings Group Co. Ltd, reached a consensus on cooperation of smart automobile retail during Suning Holdings chairman Zhang Jindong's visit to the automaker's headquarters on November 26, according to BAIC BJEV's official WeChat account.
According to the agreement, BAIC Group's Beijing Benz, Beijing Hyundai, Foton Motor and BAIC BJEV will involve the collaboration with Suning.com.
BAIC BJEV, ROHM Semiconductor jointly build SiC-focused lab
On November 30, BAIC BJEV inked an agreement with ROHM Semiconductor, a Japanese electronic parts manufacturer for a joint laboratory that focuses on SiC (silicon carbide)-related products and technologies. The joint lab was unveiling at the same time.
The building of the joint lab can be regarded as part of efforts for BAIC BJEV to fortify the strength of technology independent development. Using the lab, the EV maker will make pre-research over new technologies like SiC and be devoted to developing relevant new products together with its Japanese partner.
BAIC Mobility upgrades car-sharing business by integrating another BAIC-owned mobility brand
BAIC Group announced on December 26 that the hourly car rental business operated by its new energy car-sharing platform QingXiang Technology had been formally integrated into MOREFUN, a car sharing platform of BAIC Mobility.
BAIC Group possesses several mobility service brands like BJ. TRAVEL, BAIC Mobility, GreenGo and QingXiang. All of them were initially built for some specific purpose. For instant, BJ. TRAVEL was founded to reform governmental mobility service system and QingXiang was launched to cultivate users' acceptance over new energy vehicles (NEVs) and unlock the sales channels of NEV market.
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Photo: Facebook Derek Flowers-Johnson
A community is mourning the tragic loss of a young man.
Friday morning, just before 6:30 a.m., 18-year-old Derek Flowers-Johnson was killed when his Toyota Corolla collided with a semi truck on Highway 97, just south of UBC Okanagan.
The young man grew up in Oyama and graduated from George Elliot Secondary in 2018.
He was a youth councillor with Lake Country City Council and also participated in Lake Country's youth firefighting program.
He was currently attending Kelowna's Okanagan College, enrolled in the welding program there.
Bayley Hurdle, a friend of the Flowers-Johnson family, says the young man was a very happy kid who had a very bright future ahead of him.
He was a very funny guy, always a jokester and kept a smile on everyone's faces, Hurdle said.
Derek won tons of awards after high school he won five bursaries and he was on the honour roll and all that.
She says his whole family is very close, and they're all amazing people.
Derek's sister Alexis posted to Facebook Friday: You are my best friend. I love you. I'll miss you forever.
Saturday morning, Rider Ventures Wildfire and Flood Protection, which offers firefighting training programs, took to Facebook to remember Derek.
Yesterday we lost a member of our Rider Ventures family, the post reads. Derek Flowers-Johnson was humble, driven, determined, and inspiring. We will miss Dereks ability to make us laugh, big smile and even bigger heart. His passing will deeply affect us all.
"He was a great young man always smiling, laughing, cheerful, very hard working and humble," another person added to Rider Ventures' post. "If you were having a bad day he would brighten your day."
Hurdle has set up a GoFundMe page for Derek's family during this time.
I started the GoFundMe page because I don't want them to even have to worry or think about their expenses right now, she said, adding the family owns and operates the Cattlemen's Club restaurant at Vernon's O'Keefe Ranch.
They're just trying to process the news from yesterday.
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In was in June of 1991 that my family and I moved to Szeged, Hungary, to serve as representatives of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.
We were among the first American missionaries to live in the former Soviet Unions satellite country of Hungary. It was a time of change for our family as we left our familiar culture, adjusted to a different culture and learned to speak another language. It also was a time of change for the people of Eastern Europe who had lived for decades under communist control.
Of course, we planned to attend and work through the local Baptist church in that city. It was a big surprise for us to discover that the formal name of this church was the Martin Luther King Jr. Baptist Memorial Chapel. There is an explanation about why this church in Szeged, half a world away, would name itself after an American icon, but Ill get to that in a minute.
On the outside of the church, next to the entrance, there is a plaque inscribed in Hungarian with the words, In memorial to the deceased Martin Luther King (Jr.) 1929-1968, the Baptist Pastor Nobel Peace Prize recipient who died a martyrs death. The memorial building was constructed in 1972, and is a reminder of Jesus words in John 15:13 that: There is no greater love than this; that someone lay down his life for his brothers.
Inside the foyer of the church is a bronze plaque of Martin Luther King Jr.s face, and the Hungarian words which translate as: Though dead, he still speaks.
One might ask how Martin Luther King Jr., who never traveled to Szeged, Hungary, would end up with a church named after him, and the words Though dead, he still speaks on the wall for every person entering the building to see.
To understand this, one needs to remember that at the time the building was built, Hungary was occupied by Soviet forces and the population was living under communist control. They could not get a building permit to build a church in that communist, anti-God society. But God gave someone the insight to realize that it might be possible to get a permit to build a memorial building to a famous person.
The Baptists considered who they could choose who was a world-famous Baptist that they could commemorate by building a memorial building to honor that person.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham were the only two famous Baptists of the day who were known behind the Iron Curtain, but Billy Graham was still alive in 1972.
So they determined to build a memorial building, large enough for a congregation to gather and worship in, in honor of the famous African-American Baptist pastor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He also had been recognized as a person of peace via the Nobel peace prize, so it would be hard for the communists to not authorize the building permit. The building was finished in 1972, and today is still called the Martin Luther King Baptist Church.
For Christians living under communism, life was indeed difficult, and many sacrifices for the faith were made by believers. Christians could be refused permission to attend college, or closed out of jobs because they did not subscribe to the cultural scripting. Children were not allowed to study the Bible in Sunday schools, and each Sunday adults would come to church, at the risk of their standing in society, their prospect for jobs and good housing, and many other things that we take for granted.
But at church they would be comforted with the truth that love wins in the end. They were inspired to persevere until the day of equal standing before the government would arrive for Christians. So the root of Jesus words about the greatest kind of love being willing to give up ones own life to make a better life for others, resonated with Hungarian Baptists.
At the heart of this story is that the lives of those who sacrifice for equal freedom and dignity for others will continue to speak even after they have died. Standing with the truth is always the better choice in how to spend ones life.
The writers of the words in the Bible have all died, and yet God continues to speak through what they recorded.
Billy Graham has died, and yet what God did through his life continues to speak.
Martin Luther King Jr.s dream and accomplishments of non-violent resistance live on, and still speaks, even though he has been dead for decades.
What are you communicating through your life today that will live on when you die? We should all live with the expectation that even when we are gone, what we did and said will outlive us, and inspire others to become all that can become.
Though dead, we can still speak!
Award-winning columnist Jordan is pastor of Gwynns Island Baptist Church, Gwynn. He can be reached at szent.edward@gmail.com.
During the Christmas festivities, Frank Scott gathered his four grandchildren in the living room around a dark navy jacket encased in glass.
Embroidered on the jacket were the words, NASCAR Hall of Fame.
This is your great-grandfathers, he explained. He is the first and only African-American to have a jacket like this.
You have a tremendous reputation to carry on, he told them. You have to keep going, keep pushing. You cant be deterred.
Despite a bombardment of discrimination and threats throughout his career, their great-grandfather and Danville native Wendell Oliver Scott Sr. used his innate mechanical abilities and natural racing talent to become the first African-American to win a race in the Grand National Series NASCARs highest level of competition at age 46.
Twenty-five years after his death, NASCAR inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2015.
However, while Wendell Scotts struggle as a driver earned him national acclaim, family members say Wendell Scotts humanitarian nature and perseverance are his true legacy.
He was more than a racer, said Frank Scott, sitting in an armchair in his living room. His impact on society looms.
Slowly, recognition of Wendell Scotts achievements have resulted in hall of fame inductions, historic markers and, most recently, the renaming of a portion of U.S. 29 in his honor.
But the family views the Wendell Scott Foundation founded by his grandson Warrick Scott and his wife as the culmination of his true aspirations had he been given the sponsoring and wealth a racer of his caliber deserved were it not for his skin color.
Warrick Scott said his grandfathers legacy reaches far beyond his racing prowess.
If his legacy is used for anything, itll be used for supporting the youth of the commonwealth, he said.
***
Wendell Scott was born with a love for speed and a passion for all things mechanical.
A speed demon, Frank Scott called him.
The other neighborhood kids would bring their bikes around to his house to be fixed; he had a deep understanding for how to make a bike zip through the streets as smoothly as possible.
A risk taker by nature, Wendell Scott was always looking for his next challenge. Growing up as an African-American during the Jim Crow era, he never had to look very far.
After returning to Danville from a stint in the Army, Wendell Scott opened up his own car shop and started to drive in the minor circuits around the area. From the beginning, he hit roadblocks boosters wouldnt pay him after races, other drivers purposefully wrecked his car and segregated gas stations denied him fuel.
But quitting was never in the plans.
The more you tried to stop him, said Frank Scott. The more you motivated him.
At some point, promoters started using Wendell Scott as a way to fill seats hoping the novelty of a colored driver would pull in more spectators. As Scotts skill shone through, he began to rise through the standings and gain a larger fan following. Eventually, his rank earned him spots in the most competitive circuits all taking place in the deep South.
The discrimination didnt stop. Frank Scott said some raceways would refuse to allow his father to enter because of the color of his skin. It took a long time before major track Darlington Heights raceway permitted his father to race.
Other racers would sabotage his car. In one instance, Frank Scott said theyd left their race car with the others in a warehouse provided by a track in Savannah, Georgia after the initial race was canceled and rescheduled for the next weekend.
When they drove down, Wendell Scott had his sons check his tires to find thin slashes made near the rims just enough to cause a blow out once he was a few laps in had he not checked.
That was an example of his wisdom to check his car, said Frank Scott.
Threats of violence and death were constant. At one point, the Scott men had to take a detour home after receiving a tip that an angry mob awaited them down a different road.
That was our Birmingham, recalled Frank Scott.
There was nothing they could do but remain resolute.
We were black men in a white mans world, said Frank Scott.
Nevertheless, on Dec. 1, 1963 in a car of lower quality than the sponsored racers, Wendell Scott became the first African-American to win a Grand National race in Jacksonville, Florida.
Three laps ahead of the rest of the drivers, Wendell Scott drove over the line. The checkered flag didnt drop.
It wasnt until two other drivers passed the line that Scott was counted as finishing in third place after driving two extra laps. Another driver received the fan fare in the winners circle and touted the trophy and Wendell Scott just watched from afar.
Hes still the only man who ever drove more laps than was designated, said Frank Scott.
After many of the racers and spectators had cleared away, the race officials walked over to Wendell Scott five hours later and told him hed won the race after a counting error but the trophy was already gone. After giving him the winnings, they walked away.
To this day, neither Wendell Scott nor his family members received the trophy from that race only a replica designed to reminiscent of the style at that time.
But Wendell Scott continued to race until a crash in 1973 in Talladega benched him from competing in more than promotional races. By that point, he had earned 20 top-five finishes and 147 top-10 finishes in his NASCAR career.
In interviews years after the crash, Wendell Scott held onto hope that he would still be able to take the racetrack competitively again.
He was always hoping to get that big break that he was so deserving of, Frank Scott said.
His career was plagued by what Wendell Scott would call sand castles promises made, but never kept. Theyd sound nice, but couldnt withstand the pull of the tide.
***
Up until his grandfather died when Warrick Scott was 13, he always treasured his time with the man who was cherished by his family.
His grandfather would drop him off at school and in that time, talk with him about life while embodying a spirit of humility.
People just knew who he was, Warrick Scott remembered while sitting in his office at the Wendell Scott Foundation. But he was very responsible with that notoriety.
I remember him picking people up on the side of the street, he said. Giving people rides to work whenever he was asked, giving them jobs in the shop.
His grandparents instilled in Warrick Scott the idea that everybody as the same heart.
His spirit runs through the essence of the foundation, said Scott.
The Wendell Scott Foundations mission is to help provide children opportunities through educational and mentoring programs like with STEM-based camps or afterschool programs.
Frank Scott said the foundation bearing his fathers name was foreshadowed by a conversation they had in a diner when he was still a child.
He remembers his father staring out the window to watch children, running around and playing carelessly. None of them had shoes, and some were shirtless.
I asked him, Dad, what are you looking at? said Frank Scott.
His father doubted that any of those children had eaten breakfast.
Wendell Scott told him, If I ever get rich doing what Im doing, Im going to build homes across the South for children.
Warrick Scott said Danvilles prosperity will partially be tied to the continued growth and promotion of Wendell Scotts legacy.
From movie deals to museums, the foundations eyes are set on big things to solidify Wendell Scott as the household name he deserves to be.
Warrick said its hard to constantly relive and represent the legacy of a person who he still misses dearly every single day, but he views it as his responsibility. He shares a name with his grandfather.
I want to be a good steward with that, he said.
He added, The Wendell Scott Foundation means that weve been able to crystallize what he stood for.
Purchase a copy of SoVa Living for $3 at the Register & Bee from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday. The office is at 700 Monument St.
Nearly 100 years ago this year, a star was born in Danville by the name of Camilla Williams.
According to those who know her legacy and career, it is because she had her foundation in Danville that she reached the heights and acclaim she did.
Even Williams herself knew she was destined for greatness. Her mother, Fannie Carey Williams, once reported to a Norfolk Virginian-Pilot writer in 1955 that she recalled hearing her daughter remark Singing is my calling. Some day youll be reading about me.
Beyond her career success on major opera stages in roles for Madame Butterfly, Aida, La Boheme and more, Williams performed at the March on Washington in 1963 and a year later sang for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. She also spent time performing internationally as the United States ambassador for the U.S. Department of State.
Without even acknowledging the cruel and arduous path she took to overcome being a non-white entity amongst a racist and classist population, Williams soared to great heights. However there is no way to tell Williams experience without respecting that major thread.
Williams, who was the daughter of chauffeur Cornelius Williams and housekeeper Fannie Williams, broke the color barrier as the first black American female to perform in a major American opera house with her debut at the New York City Opera in 1946 as the title role of Madame Butterfly. She is the first to have received a major performance contract from that level of an opera company.
Her talent was unquestionable yet regularly earmarked as being good for her race. One German publication described her in the 1950s as possessing the negros special fascinating intensity of expression. Yet in Danville, she cultivated support from both blacks and whites.
Despite the major success, her performance days were often marked with the stain of racism. For instance transportation to performances meant she would ride in the back in the colored section while her accompanist sat in the front. Even performing in major venues, she likely would be prohibited from entering through the main entrance. While traveling, she would have to eat only in the hotel where she stayed as eating establishments would likely not serve her.
Ethel Haughton, who is a professor of music at Virginia State University where Williams graduated with a bachelors degree, commented that Williams was a woman of grace and class but developed a hardiness that helped her push through the abuse of racism.
She had a hard surface, Haughton stated, comparing her to the brilliance of a diamond. She was not going to be destroyed.
Somehow in a divided era, Williams voice brought together both whites and blacks who saw that she had talent. A pivotal force in her career trajectory was Welsh music teacher Raymond Aubrey, who taught primarily a white population in the area girls schools.
Defying social norms, Aubrey noted her talent that had been developed through her family church Calvary Baptist on Holbrook Avenue, which she joined at age 9. He started a class for non-white students and enrolled Williams in it. It was at this young age she first encountered the music of Madame Butterfly, which she admitted was too advanced for her level then. Years later she would obtain her claim to fame through that same music.
By the time she made it to Virginia State University, she was making a reputation for herself amongst the student population. Haughton recounts Williams participated in a school talent show and insisted on performing a spiritual, which did not fit in with any other category on the schedule.
Everyone else was performing popular music, and she was wanting to sing a spiritual. So they put her at the end, Haughton explained. It was a good thing they did because no one could have followed her. She brought the house down.
She sang in the university choir and obtained a great deal of exposure being invited as a soloist performer with the university,
Sometimes people would invite the choir to perform because they really wanted to hear her, Haughton said.
Despite the obvious talent that Williams was developing, there was a consistent sense of humility. Haughton speculates this may trace back to her fathers upbringing of Williams.
She said that when she was still in Danville and maybe when she was still very young, her father told her one day I need you to bring me a rake, Haughton recounted.
Williams even as a small child felt a sense of dignity that could be destroyed by such a lowly act. She protested.
I cant be seen carrying a rake through the streets of Danville. He insisted I need this rake. He didnt really need the rake. He wanted her to stay grounded. Haughton concluded.
That self-respect of her talent thus was tempered by humility and acknowledgment of where she started.
She had obtained a significant level of fame but she remained true to her roots. She always maintained a contact with Danville, Haughton said. No matter how great you become, dont forget who you are, give back to the community as she did when she went back during the civil rights movement.
In 1963, Williams did return to perform to raise money to assist the release of multiple jailed demonstrators. Her husband, Danville native Charles Beavers, was an accomplished civil rights attorney most recognized for his famous client Malcolm X. He accompanied her and worked with a coalition of lawyers to litigate on behalf of those individuals in Danville.
I think Danville and the people in her time were very important to her and she understood that and wanted to continue to let the people know that it was the people in the Danville area that actually nursed her and moved her into the other arena, local historian Fred Motley commented.
The support in Danville was uncharacteristically coming from both blacks and whites. Without question, it was her black community that planted the seed for a love of the musical arts.
She alluded to the fact that particularly in the black community there was always music, Motley stated. Once you are in that environment it sort of takes hold of you if theres always music and singing in your family and if thats what your true love is.
Her deep calling to perform helped her resist the pushback from racism in the South.
She came up during a time when the city was segregated, but she with her family and with her friends and her determination didnt let that be a barrier to her, Motley commented. I think that speaks to the resilience of the African-American people that if theres a barrier they are able to get over that barrier.
In Motleys eyes, Williams story of success is an incentive to have pride in the incubator that Danville can be when everyone unites for the common good.
It shows just the power of both races working and understanding that everybody is equal that she was able to demonstrate that, Motley said. I think of it as being inspiration and encouragement for everybody that grows up in Danville.
Williams herself once commented It hasnt been an easy life to withstand some of the blocks that have been put in your path. Ive overcome them and I know some things I deserved more than another person and it didnt come but God is good and he knows what I needed and whatever I need I know he will supply as long as I am alive.
Williams long lasting affection for Danville is seen in the fact that when she died at age 92 in January 2012 she left behind a portion of her belongings to the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History. The museums Visitor Services Coordinator C.B. Maddox was one of two representatives sent to retrieve items from her Indiana apartment, where she was residing at the time of her death.
Maddox describes a luxurious apartment with tremendous closet spaces filled to the brim with her sophisticated and elegant clothing pieces, some of which were taken back to Danville.
She was quite famous for her headgear. We probably have eight or 10, maybe a dozen hats that she owned, Maddox stated. We have quite a few of the awards she received, and in some instances we actually have a photograph of her receiving the award and we also have some of the clothes she wore when she received those awards, Maddox said.
The volume of material is quite large and the museum is still making its way through to archive all the contents.
We are in the process of taking pictures of all the artifacts in our collection, Maddox stated.
Maddox says that a slate of activities are being planned for the fall to coincide with her 100th birthday and culminate in an extended exhibit in 2020. Details have not been released at the time of publication.
The museum, which is collaborating with Motley and others, hopes the exhibit will remind area residents of the glimmering diamond that was Camilla Williams who overcame racism to be a shining beacon of talent and Danville pride.
In the R&B article, a legal aid workers supervisor said the programs so-called low wages and no benefits are some form of discrimination for guest workers. I can speak loudly for the 12 guest workers whom I employ that those thoughts are totally not true. Im sure they would all gladly accept a monetary raise of any sort, but they want to return yearly and gratefully accept the wages that our industries can afford to pay.
If anyone from the local board of supervisors all the way to President Trumps office can tell me how I can profitably run my company without the guest workers, I will surely listen. I can also state that, from my 16-year-work tenure with the same migrant workers, they are the finest people on Earth. They happen to be family: father, sons, brothers and brothers-in-law. These men are away from their families for nine months to make a living that is not achievable in their home country. They have missed the births of their own children, family deaths and family crisis in order to provide. These guest workers pay their appointed tax requirements on all state and federal levels and are insured through workers comp. They also go through background and criminal searches in order to cross the border to work.
Watson is calling for Fairfax to resign. So is Del. Lee Carter, D-Manassas.
In light of the multiple credible allegations against Lt. Gov. Fairfax, I hereby call for his immediate resignation, Carter said in a statement.
Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe also called for Fairfax's resignation.
In his statement, Fairfax said, "I will not resign.
Full Watson statement:
We serve as counsel for Meredith Watson, who was raped by Justin Fairfax in 2000, while they were both students at Duke University. Mr. Fairfaxs attack was premeditated and aggressive. The two were friends but never dated or had any romantic relationship.
Ms. Watson shared her account of the rape with friends in a series of emails and Facebook messages that are now in our possession. Additionally, we have statements from former classmates corroborating that Ms. Watson immediately told friends that Mr. Fairfax had raped her.
Ms. Watson was upset to learn that Mr. Fairfax raped at least one other woman after he attacked her. The details of Ms. Watsons attack are similar to those described by Dr. Vanessa Tyson.
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Photo: The Canadian Press
Ivanka Trump says her father, President Donald Trump, did not play a role in granting security clearances to her or to her husband, Jared Kushner.
Ivanka Trump a senior White House adviser discussed the process during an interview on ABC's "The View" Friday. She says "the president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband's clearance."
The House Oversight and Reform Committee is starting an investigation into the handling of security clearances by Trump's White House and presidential transition.
Kushner worked without a full security clearance for the first year of the administration. He was granted a full clearance in the spring of 2018 after a lengthy background check.
Trump recently told The New York Times he was not involved in issuing Kushner's clearance.
'Minor Player': New Report Sounds the Death Knell for Britain's Arms Market
Sputnik News
15:44 08.02.2019(updated 16:46 08.02.2019)
A barrage of reports have been released over the past few years documenting the crumbling state of Britain's military. In April 2018 a National Audit Office report delivered the doom-laden finding that the UK was experiencing the "largest gap in a decade" in military personnel numbers.
The UK is slated to become a "minor player" in the global defence export market by 2024, according to a new report by marketing firm IHS Markit.
The report explains the change which underscores a perennial concern among military enthusiasts about the country's dwindling military prowess by pointing to "planning and investment failures in its [UK's] domestic industry," which it says are likely to be worsened by an impending Brexit.
"Based on existing orders and import backlog the UK is now set to become a net defence importer at a system level by 2024 for the first time since the English civil war," writes author of the report, Ben Moores.
The report points to the UK government's preference for trying to strike a balance between retaining robust military capabilities while slashing manufacturing budgets and pursuing purchases of cheaper military hardware from abroad. It warns that, "this policy led to the end of the vehicle industry over the past decade and is now set to see the UK's aviation sector lose large segments through lack of domestic offset from foreign manufacturers. Brexit will accelerate this trend."
UK defence manufacturers BAE Systems and Babcock International have for a long time been two of the largest producers of aircrafts warships & tanks to the British military and beyond.
Moreover, the report's author raises concerns about the stability of the UK's domestic defence manufacturing as the country becomes increasingly reliant on foreign imports.
"As the UK moves away from its domestic defence manufacturing industrial base, it is becoming an increasingly more important market for exporters. The UK is set to become the fifth largest market for defence imports, despite being traditionally outside the top 10 importers."
Yes, it is true. France, Russia and US are the main powers in this market. Israel is also making in roads.
However, the unprecedented regression of the UK as a globally significant player in the arms industry is not the only surprising point documented by the new research. It also finds that Qatar, which has sat "outside the top 20 global markets for defence imports since at least 2009," has now rocketed to eighth place. The report says that this sudden massive acquisition of weapons by Doha is "primarily driven by its political disputes with Saudi Arabia."
Mr Moores also notes that France is due to became the second largest global exporter of arms by 2020.
Sputnik
SDF Prepares for Final Push Against Daesh-Held Territory in Syria - Report
Sputnik News
01:16 09.02.2019(updated 01:21 09.02.2019)
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are preparing for their final offensive against Daesh, which is cornered in a tiny sliver of territory along the Syrian border with Iraq.
Daesh lost its last town of any importance, the town of Hajin, back in November, and on Thursday, the SDF captured two Daesh-controlled villages east of the Euphrates River: al-Marashidah and Arqoub, al-Masdar News reported. With that, the so-called "caliphate" ruled by Daesh was reduced to a couple of square miles around the town of al-Baghuz Fawqani.
Now, after weeks of slow and steady advance, the SDF has halted its assault.
"Currently, the SDF is advancing very cautiously to ensure the safety of civilians that ISIS [Daesh] is using as human shields," an SDF spokesperson told AFP Friday.
With the final push on Daesh's last stronghold only days away, the Kurds are looking to the future. US forces will leave Syria for good by the end of April, Sputnik reported Friday, noting the last pullout spot would be at-Tanf, a base very far from the Euphrates Valley and the SDF.
"We are seeking a political solution in Syria, which requires an agreement with the government in Damascus. We have chosen a political agreement with Damascus because we don't want secession from Syria," senior Kurdish official Badran Jia Kurdi told AFP.
Following the December announcement by US President Donald Trump of the US withdrawal from Syria, Kurdish leaders flew to Damascus to bury the hatchet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as the twin problems of the continuing war against Daesh and a threatened invasion by Turkey hung over their heads. Afterward, Assad's Syrian Arab Army forces began occupying Kurdish positions near the Turkish border, such as the city of Manbij, and the SDF turned its forces eastward for the final push against their mutual enemy: Daesh.
Addressing the ministers of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS on Wednesday, Trump boasted of the imminent defeat of the terror group, saying, "It should be formally announced sometime, probably next week, that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate."
However, just because Daesh has lost control of its territory doesn't mean the threat it poses is gone.
AFP warns that the group maintains sleeper cells in cities it once ruled across eastern Syria and northern Iraq.
According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the SDF arrested at least 48 suspected members of Daesh in Raqqa, a city that served as the de facto Daesh capital at the height of the proto-state's power several years ago.
As tens of thousands of refugees have fled from the war zone, the SDF has set up screening centers to process them and to catch the Daesh militants attempting to escape the Syrian-SDF assault.
SOfHR reports that at least 3,200 of the 37,000 refugees have been militants, and the SDF has several hundred Daesh fighters in captivity. The US State Department announced on February 4 it intended to repatriate those roughly 900 prisoners, and if it couldn't, it was weighing the option of sending them to its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Sputnik reported.
"They are attempting to escape through intermixing with the innocent women and children attempting to flee the fighting," SDF deputy commander Major General Christopher Ghika told AFP on Thursday.
Sputnik
Syrians, Foreigners Flee as US-backed Forces Move on IS
By Rikar Hussein February 08, 2019
More than 23,000 Syrian civilians and foreign nationals have fled eastern Syria this week as the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces move on the last Islamic State pockets in Deir el-Zour governorate, according to local officials and activists.
The displaced residents, mostly women and children, have been placed in the Kurdish al-Hol camp in al-Hasakah governorate in Syria's northeast.
The administrator of the camp, Nabil Hassan, told VOA that many of the women and children in the new wave of displacement this week are foreign nationals and family members of IS.
"Most of the new arrivals are Iraqis and some of them are Syrians. They are mostly wives and children of [IS] thugs," Hassan told VOA.
An estimated 1,000 foreign nationals from Europe and Central and East Asia have also arrived at the camp since the escalation of clashes in mid-December, according to Hassan.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has decided to withdraw American troops from Syria following IS's defeat, predicted Wednesday that all the IS territory would be cleared in the coming days as the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) drew closer to ousting the jihadist group, which still controls tiny pockets of the countryside near Deir el-Zour.
"It should be formally announced sometime, probably next week, that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate," Trump said during a meeting with representatives of the 79-member U.S.-led coalition fighting against IS.
The SDF, backed by coalition airstrikes, was fighting IS in a 4-square-kilometer area consisting of the Baghouz and As Safafinah villages near the Iraqi border.
SDF officials estimated there were about 3,000 IS jihadists, mostly foreigners, who were determined to fight to the death.
Heavy clashes between the SDF and the IS fighters Thursday left 15 jihadists dead and large numbers of their weapons seized, according to an SDF statement. Coalition jets assisted with 22 airstrikes against IS positions.
SDF commanders said they thought many of the foreign fighters would end up being captured in the coming days, adding to about 1,000 foreign jihadists from over 40 countries currently in the Kurdish detention centers in northeast Syria.
The Kurdish self-administration complained that their detention facilities were already overwhelmed and criticized the relevant countries for not repatriating their nationals.
U.S. officials have echoed the call of their Kurdish partners.
"The United States calls upon other nations to repatriate and prosecute their citizens detained by the SDF and commends the continued efforts of the SDF to return these foreign terrorist fighters to their countries of origin," U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said in a statement Monday.
Guantanamo Option
The U.S. State Department said Thursday that the fighters could be transported to the detention center on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, if they could not be repatriated.
Last month, the SDF handed over five IS fighters, along with 11 wives and 30 children of IS fighters, from Kazakhstan to Kazakh authorities following months of preparation. Other countries have been less willing to follow suit because of the difficulty of prosecuting suspected IS fighters based on evidence collected from the battlefield.
Local officials fear the new wave of arrested fighters and displaced residents could also spark disease outbreaks, as many new arrivals suffer from illnesses because of a lack of access to medical services in the besieged IS areas.
Masoud Ramo, head of the Kurdish Red Cross, told VOA that many displaced residents arrived at al-Hol camp suffering from malnutrition, lung diseases and contagious viruses. He said many fleeing residents, especially children, die on the way or suffer injuries requiring amputations because of land mines.
"Many of the new arrivals are injured from land mines and need urgent surgeries. Some others need treatment for previous conditions. There is honestly a heavy pressure on us," Ramo said.
Human shields
Civilians interviewed by VOA at the al-Hol camp said they were able to leave their homes only after the SDF entered their areas. They said IS fighters had prevented them from escaping, using them instead as human shields to prevent airstrikes.
"There are now displaced civilians in areas under IS and Syrian Democratic Forces" control, said Sheikh Abdulbasid Ali, the head of al-Shuaitat tribe, who fled with his family to the al-Hol camp after years of living under IS control.
"We are grateful to the Syrian Democratic Forces for bringing civilians from IS areas to refugee camps," he told VOA.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees last week reported that more than 35 children and infants had died from hypothermia and malnourishment since December on the journey to or while at the camp.
Daesh Leader Barely Escapes Death as His Foreign Fighters Turn on Him Report
Sputnik News
16:55 08.02.2019
The terrorist group has been rapidly losing territory over the last two years due to efforts by Russian and Syrian forces, as well as the US and its allies. The group has lost most of its forces and resources, leading it to go into hiding.
Daesh* leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was reportedly attacked in a village near Hajin by some of the terrorist organisation's foreign fighters in an apparent coup attempt, The Guardian reported, citing anonymous intelligence sources. Baghdadi reportedly survived the alleged coup attempt, with his bodyguards taking him into hiding in the nearby desert.
Soon after the attack, which allegedly took place on 10 January, Daesh* placed a bounty on the head of one of its veteran militants Abu Muath al-Jazairi. While the bounty doesn't explicitly reveal the reason why the veteran foreign terrorist fighter has fallen in disfavour, intelligence officials, cited by The Guardian, suggest that he led the unsuccessful coup attempt aimed against the leader.
"They got wind of it just in time. There was a clash and two people were killed. This was the foreign fighter element, some of his most trusted people", the intelligence source reportedly said.
Over the course of the last two years, Daesh* has lost most of its territory in Syria and Iraq, resorting to hunkering in hideouts located in the remaining territories under its control. In December 2017, Iraq officially declared the end of the war against Daesh*, and one year later US President Donald Trump announced that American troops had managed to defeat the terrorist organisation, noting that its remnants could be cleared out by regional forces.
At the same time, Turkey and Damascus are still planning to conduct operations against the remaining terrorist forces in Syria.
*Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia
Sputnik
Daesh leader survives coup attempt by own militants: Report
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 11:03AM
The ringleader of the Daesh terrorist outfit has escaped a failed coup launched by his own militants in his hideout in eastern Syrian, British daily The Guardian has reported, citing intelligence officials.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi fled the coup attempt which took place last month in a village near the Syrian city of Hajin, where the terrorist group is believed to have its last redoubt, the report said.
Takfiri militants have lost much of the territory they once held in Syria amid sweeping gains by government forces on the ground, but they are still in control of some parts in the eastern bank of the Euphrates, where the US runs military bases.
The Takfiri group's senior leaders and their families are pinned down in the last pocket of land held by them.
According to regional intelligence officials, foreign fighters and the bodyguards of the fugitive leader exchanged fire while Baghdadi was spirited off to nearby deserts, the newspaper said.
Last month, Daesh put a bounty on the head of Abu Muath al-Jazairi, one of its veteran foreign militants, refusing to accuse him directly.
Intelligence officials, however, consider offering a reward for killing a senior member unusual and believe Jazairi is the mastermind behind the coup attempt.
Iran FM says situation in Syria's Idlib 'very dangerous'
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 11:33AM
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has warned about the current situation in the militant-held Idlib province in northwestern Syria, describing it as "very dangerous".
"The situation in the Syrian province [of Idlib] is very dangerous, and the Nusra Front terrorist group which is not part of a de-escalation zone is controlling a majority of the province's regions," Zarif said in an exclusive interview with RT Arabic Thursday.
He said the situation of Idlib is to be discussed during the upcoming meeting between the leaders and foreign ministers of Iran, Russia, and Turkey in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi on February 14.
The tripartite summit, whose main purpose is to provide further coordination among the three countries, will be held before the 12th round of Astana talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Thursday demanded Turkey do more to tackle militants in Idlib and fulfill promises it made as part of a deal with Moscow last year.
Turkey and Russia brokered a deal in September to create a demilitarized zone in Idlib that would be evacuated of all heavy weapons and militants.
Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Zakharova said the situation there was rapidly deteriorating and that militant fighters were trying to seize control of the entire de-escalation zone.
"Given the extremely difficult situation in the Idlib de-escalation zone, we expect our Turkish partners to activate their efforts to ultimately turn the tide and to fully carry out the obligations they took upon themselves," she said.
The militants "continue stockpiling toxic chemicals along the entire line of contact with the Syrian armed forces. We noted media reports that militants of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham recently delivered several tanks with chlorine from Jisr ash-Shugur to Khan Shaykhun in the south of Idlib Province," she said.
"It is reported that in transporting toxic chemicals the terrorists again relied on the help of the notorious White Helmets, whose activists kindly provided their ambulances this time," she added.
Iran, Russia on 'perfect' terms
In his press conference, Zakharova referred to Moscow's relations with Tehran, and said "Russia has perfect relations with Iran, and the Iranians well know it."
She made the comments in reaction to a January report by CNN which quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov as saying that Iran was not an ally of Russia, and Moscow's priority was the security of Israel. Zakharova said CNN had distorted Ryabkov's remarks in that interview.
In his Thursday interview, the Iranian foreign minister also declared that Iran and Russia have no disagreement over the political trend in Syria, and will continue their cooperation within the framework of Astana Process to bring back peace to the Arab country.
Late last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Astana peace talks would be attended by Russia, Iran, and Turkey, as well as observers from Jordan and the United Nations.
Since January 2017, Moscow, Tehran, and Ankara have been mediating peace negotiations between representatives from the Damascus government and opposition groups in a series of rounds held in Astana and other places. The talks are collectively referred to as the Astana peace process.
The first round of the Astana talks commenced a month after the three guarantors joined efforts and brought about an all-Syria ceasefire. The three states act as the guarantors of that truce.
Arab League chief to visit Beirut for talks on Syria's return to bloc
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 02:54PM
Secretary-General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit is reportedly going to pay an official visit early next week to Lebanon, where he will discuss the restoration of Syria's membership in the regional organization with high-ranking Lebanese government officials.
The 76-year-old diplomat will arrive in Beirut next Monday, and will hold talks about the new national unity government in Lebanon as well as mutual issues of interests, including Syria's return to the Arab League, with Lebanese authorities, Lebanon's Arabic-language al-Joumhouria daily newspaper reported on Friday.
Earlier this week, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said his country will eventually return to the Arab League, stressing that the Damascus government will never surrender to blackmail or accept conditions for the restoration of its membership to the regional organization.
"Those who are trying to ignore Syria or to impose conditions for its return to the Arab League will not succeed, since Syria will not surrender to blackmail and is not primarily concerned with anything other than its domestic problems," Mekdad said.
He added that certain anti-Syria decisions are being made by some Arab states on the instructions of extra-regional powers.
The Arab League suspended Syria's membership in November 2011, citing alleged crackdown by Damascus on opposition protests. Syria denounced the move as "illegal and a violation of the organization's charter."
On January 26, Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui called on the Arab League to restore Syria's membership, saying the "natural place" of the country is within the 22-member regional organization. Tunisia is scheduled to host the 30th annual summit of the Arab League in March.
The issue of possible restoration of Syria's membership to the Arab League comes especially after a recent move by some Arab countries to re-open their embassies in Damascus.
Bahrain's Foreign Ministry announced in a statement on December 28, 2018 that work at the kingdom's embassy "in the Syrian Arab Republic was going on whilst the Embassy of the Syrian Arab Republic to the Kingdom of Bahrain was carrying out its duties and flights connecting the two countries were operational without interruption."
This came a day after the United Arab Emirates officially reopened its embassy in Damascus.
The Emirati Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation said the reopening of its embassy "reaffirms the keenness of the United Arab Emirates to restore relations between the two friendly countries to their normal course."
Russia objects to 'arbitrary' Israeli airstrikes on Syria
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 05:50PM
Russia's Foreign Ministry objects to Israel's airstrikes on Syria, calling for an end to the "arbitrary" Israeli attacks on the country.
"As for recent Israeli strikes, we have stated that such arbitrary attacks on a sovereign state must stop," said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin, apparently referring to Israeli airstrikes against Syria in January, Russia's TASS news agency reported on Friday.
"Any attacks additionally worsen the situation," the Russian diplomat said, adding that, "No one's actions in Syria can go beyond the fight against terrorists."
Israel often claims that it conducts airstrikes targeting "Iranian assets" in Syria. Iran and Russia are both Syrian government allies but merely have military advisers in the Arab country to help it fight a terrorist campaign that is largely subdued. Russia has also conducted aerial bombings of terrorist positions.
In mid-January, the chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) also said Iran would protect its advisers in Syria.
Last September, a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down and all the 15 servicemen on board were killed during Israeli airstrikes in the northwestern Syrian province of Latakia.
Moscow said the Tel Aviv regime was fully responsible for the incident and started procuring Russian S-300 missile defense systems for Syria.
The comments by Vershinin, the Russian deputy foreign minister, echoed statements made earlier by Russia's Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov.
An Israeli satellite imaging company recently indicated that the Russian S-300 missiles in Syria had become operational.
Landmine blast kills 7, injures 1 in western Syria
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Tehran, Feb 8, IRNA -- Explosion of a military landmine resulted in killing 7 civilians and injured 1 more in Rasm al-Ahmar village, Hama Province, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.
Syrian Army and the Resistance forces liberated Rasm al-Ahmar village and some other villages from Al-Nusra Front terrorists last year.
Under the pretext of fighting the terrorist group Daesh (ISIS), US together with some allies have established a so-called international coalition out of the framework of the United Nations since August 2014.
The innocent Syrian civilians have so far been killed in Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, Al-Hasakah and Aleppo.
The coalition has also destroyed Raqqa almost completely.
The United Nations Security Council has so far taken no firm action against such attacks.
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Trump Administration May Miss Khashoggi Report Deadline
By VOA News February 08, 2019
The Trump administration signaled Friday that it might not meet a deadline to tell Congress whether it intended to sanction anyone for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Last fall, the Senate gave President Donald Trump 120 days until the end of the day Friday, Feb. 8 to determine who was responsible for the death of Khashoggi, who entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October and wasn't seen again.
A senior administration official said Friday that the president has the ability to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate.
The official said the State Department regularly updates Congress on the status of actions related to Khashoggi's killing and noted that the United States had already levied sanctions against Saudi officials.
The department noted Thursday that it had revoked the visas of nearly two dozen Saudi officials and had frozen the assets of 17 others.
Khashoggi was a Washington Post columnist who wrote critically about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. His remains have still not been found.
After denying for several weeks that Khashoggi had been killed in the Saudi Consulate, Saudi Arabia later admitted the journalist had been killed by Saudi agents, and it indicted 11 people in his death.
Reported remark by prince
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the Saudi crown prince said in 2017 that he would use "a bullet" on Khashoggi if the journalist did not return home and stop writing critically about the Saudi government.
Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir declined to comment on the Times story Friday, but told reporters in Washington that the prince did not order Khashoggi's killing. Al-Jubeir has been meeting with members of Congress and also met Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The Trump administration has said that it has no compelling evidence that the Saudi crown prince was directly involved in the killing of Khashoggi. However, the Senate, which is controlled by Trump's Republican Party, unanimously adopted a resolution in December naming the crown prince as "responsible" for the slaying.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday that a U.N. investigation into the killing of Khashoggi was needed. The comments came a day after a U.N. human rights expert, Agnes Callamard, said Saudi Arabia had undermined Turkey's efforts to investigate the death.
VOA White House bureau chief Steve Herman contributed to this report.
Photo: CTV News
B.C.'s house leaders in the legislature say they will thoroughly consider written responses by two officials to a report that alleged they had engaged in flagrant overspending and questionable expenses.
Sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz and clerk of the house Craig James submitted their responses to the report by Speaker Darryl Plecas on Thursday and denied any wrongdoing in statements to the media.
New Democrat House Leader Mike Farnworth, Liberal House Leader Mary Polak and Green House Leader Sonia Furstenau issued a brief joint statement on Friday confirming they had received the responses.
"The house leaders will review the written responses with thorough consideration of their contents," they said.
"Any decisions with respect to their release or the status of the two permanent officers will be made after careful consideration of the information provided, and in accordance with legal advice received."
The house leaders added they will not be making any further comment at this time.
The leaders all sit on the Legislative Assembly Management Committee, which is chaired by the Speaker.
The committee is responsible for the financial accounting of the legislature.
Plecas said Friday that the committee will decide whether to publicly release the two officials' written responses to his report and members are working on scheduling a meeting next week.
Lenz and James have said they want the responses to be made public.
The officials were placed on administrative leave in November after members of the legislature learned of an ongoing RCMP investigation.
Two special prosecutors have been appointed to assist the RCMP in the investigation.
Plecas said he could not say how many people are the target of the police probe.
The RCMP said in a statement that details of the investigation are not shared outside of the police team and will be part of the findings provided to the special prosecutors for charge assessment.
Dawn Roberts, director in charge of B.C. RCMP communications, said police were not in the position to confirm any details in the active investigation.
"We have no timeline with respect to the conclusion of our investigation," she added.
The B.C. Public Prosecution Service said it had no comment.
The Speaker's report released Jan. 21 alleges the two officials claimed expenses for luxurious overseas trips and personal purchases, and that they received inappropriate payouts of cash in lieu of vacation in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
James said in his statement on Thursday he has not done anything wrong that justifies the actions taking against him, or the "unfair and prejudicial manner" in which the actions have been taken.
Lenz said he responded to each and every allegation contained in the report by Plecas.
"I have maintained from the day when I was publicly removed from my position and the legislative buildings under police escort that I have committed no wrongdoing,'' he said in his statement.
"The negative impact this has had on me and my family is immeasurable."
Lenz said he still hopes to resume his duties at the legislature and be "quickly exonerated.''
When the committee voted to release the Speaker's report last month, it also agreed to launch an audit of legislature financial issues, conduct a workplace review and submit that report to an auditor from outside of B.C.
On Tuesday, the government said it will implement accountability reforms at the legislature after three independent watchdogs called for sweeping changes to restore public confidence.
Solicitor General Mike Farnworth said the government will work with the information and privacy commissioner, merit commissioner and ombudsperson to ensure new rules to monitor the legislature and its officials are enacted.
Auditor general Carol Bellringer has also started an audit and said last week she has concerns about why a rigorous system already in place did not pick up on the alleged irregularities outlined by Plecas.
Saudi Prince Said to Use 'Bullet' on Khashoggi Year Before Murder - Reports
Sputnik News
07:40 08.02.2019
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud said in a conversation with one of his aides that he would go after journalist Jamal Khashoggi, killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, "with a bullet" a year prior to the murder, media have reported, citing US and foreign officials familiar with intelligence reports.
The New York Times reported late on Thursday that in the conversation, which took place in September 2017, the prince told his aide Turki Aldakhil that if Khashoggi did not return or was not brought by force to Saudi Arabia from the United States and did not stop criticizing the Saudi authorities, the prince would use a bullet on him.
US intelligence analysists reportedly concluded that Prince Mohammed had likely used the phrase a metaphor, expressing his intention to kill the journalists unless he returned to Saudi Arabia.
The conversation, which was intercepted and transcribed by the US intelligence, took place during the period when Riyadh's concerns about Khashoggi's criticism were growing and amid the prince's moves to tighten his grip on power in Saudi Arabia, the newspaper noted.
The outlet added that the conversation took place the same month as Khashoggi began writing his articles, criticizing the Saudi authorities, for The Washington Post.
The newspaper continued by citing another part of the intelligence report. It reportedly read that prior to his conversation with Aldakhil, the Saudi crown prince had complained to his other adviser, Saud Qahtani, about Khashoggi's growing influence as his materials were undermining the prince's image of a reformer. As Qahtani reportedly warned the prince any action against Khashoggi would create an international outrage, the prince said that Riyadh should not care about international reaction to its actions toward its own citizens, adding he was against "half-measures."
The New York Times noted that the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies were analyzing years of intercepted conversations of the Saudi prince in a bid to learn who was behind the murder of Khashoggi.
While the NSA declined to comment to the New York Times on the matter, Aldakhil called the claims outlined by the newspaper "categorically false."
"They appear to be a continuation of various efforts by different parties to connect His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to this horrific crime. These efforts will prove futile," the official told the outlet.
Khashoggi went missing on October 2 after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Riyadh initially denied any knowledge of the journalist's whereabouts but later admitted that Khashoggi had been killed with a drug injection and his body had been dismembered and taken out of the consulate. Saudi authorities have since charged 11 people with Khashoggi's murder.
Notably, Qahtani, whom the US intelligence agencies see as the main person in the operation that killed Khashoggi, was dismissed in the course of the Saudi investigation into the incident. However, it is still unknown if the authorities had implicated him in the murder.
The killing of Khashoggi did result in an international uproar and criticism of Riyadh. Western media have repeatedly suggested that the Saudi prince had a role in the operation, something which has repeatedly been denied by the Saudi Foreign Ministry.
Sputnik
Saudi FM Assures That 'We Know That Crown Prince Didn't Order Khashoggi Killing'
Sputnik News
19:17 08.02.2019(updated 20:12 08.02.2019)
The statement comes after a New York Times report, based on anonymous sources, claiming that the Saudi crown prince had threatened to use a "bullet" on Khashoggi if he did not return to Saudi Arabia willingly or by force. The kingdom has repeatedly denied prince's involvement into the killing.
Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir has refused to comment on the recent publication in The New York Times about the murder of the Saudi journalist, as it was based on anonymous sources, but noted that officials of the kingdom know that the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud was not behind Jamal Khashoggi's killing.
"We know that this was not an authorized operation. There was no order given to conduct this operation," the minister said.
Al-Jubeir further vowed to bring those responsible for committing the crime to justice.
The New York Times reported late on 8 February, citing US and foreign officials, that in a conversation in September 2017, the prince had allegedly told his aide Turki Aldakhil that if Khashoggi did not return, or was not brought by force to Saudi Arabia, and did not stop criticizing the Saudi authorities, the prince would use a bullet on him.
The newspaper claimed that the conversation, which was allegedly intercepted and transcribed by US intelligence, took place during a period when Riyadh's concern over Khashoggi's criticism was growing.
Khashoggi went missing on 2 October after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Riyadh initially denied any knowledge of the journalist's whereabouts, but later admitted that Khashoggi had been killed in a "rogue operation", with his body being dismembered and taken out of the consulate. Saudi authorities have since charged 11 people with Khashoggi's murder, with some of them facing the death penalty.
Sputnik
US lawmakers revive push for sanctions against Saudi over Yemen war, Khashoggi
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 03:23AM
A group of US lawmakers have revived a push to punish Saudi Arabia for launching war on Yemen and for the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic senators introduced legislation on Thursday to bar some arms sales against Riyadh and impose sanctions on those responsible for Khashoggi's murder.
The bill aims to cut off weapons sales to Saudi Arabia including tanks, long-range fighter jets and ordnance for automatic weapons.
The bill would also require sanctions against anyone involved in Khashoggi's murder while calling for State Department reports on human rights violations in the kingdom as well as the war on Yemen.
Use 'bullet' on Khashoggi
A year before Khashoggi was killed and his body dismembered by a hit squad inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told an aide that he would use "a bullet" on the journalist if he did not return home and end his criticism of the government, according to The New York Times.
The comments were made well before Khashoggi's murder, the Times said, citing unnamed US intelligence sources.
Riyadh, which initially denied knowledge of Khashoggi's fate before admitting to his murder, continues to deny that MBS was involved in the brutal murder. However, US intelligence agencies believe the crown prince ordered the operation to kill the Washington Post columnist who was once a royal insider.
US President Donald Trump has said that despite the news of Khashoggi's murder, he still supports MBS and wants his arms deals with Riyadh to remain in place.
"Seeing as the Trump administration has no intention of insisting on full accountability for Mr. Khashoggi's murderers, it is time for Congress to step in and impose real consequences to fundamentally re-examine our relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and with the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen," said Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Senate already voted in December to end support for the bloody Saudi-led war on Yemen.
The move is likely to pass the new Democratic-led House of Representatives after a hearing on legislation Wednesday, although Trump could exercise his veto.
"While Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, the behavior of the crown prince - in multiple ways - has shown disrespect for the relationship and made him, in my view, beyond toxic," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said.
"It is not in our national security interests to look the other way when it comes to the brutal murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi," he insisted.
Meanwhile, millions of Yemenis are on the brink of starvation in what the United Nations has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
The Saudi-led coalition invaded Yemen in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall Riyadh's ousted ally President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who had resigned and fled the country amid unrest
The aggression started with numerous airstrikes but was later coupled with a naval and aerial blockade as well as the deployment of ground forces to the impoverished country.
EU plans to blacklist Saudi Arabia for failure in fighting money laundering: FT
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 09:26AM
The European Commission is planning to name Saudi Arabia in a list of countries that have failed to fight against terrorist financing and money laundering, a report says.
Brussels is in the final stages of adopting the list, which will include 23 countries and jurisdictions who failed to combat "dirty money," the Financial Times cited European Union officials as saying Friday.
The list, which is the first of its kind from Brussels, accuses the kingdom of "strategic deficiencies" in its efforts to fight illicit cash flows.
Under the EU law, Europe's banks will have to carry out "enhanced" checks on funds coming from these countries.
Banks would be required to act on suspicions by steering clear of dubious transactions and passing any concerns onto the authorities.
The commission is taking the measure against Riyadh despite resistance from Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the Financial Times reported.
This could increase tensions between the kingdom and the EU, which has already called on its member states to halt arms sales to Riyadh over the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.
The EU also passed a resolution late last year, calling for an urgent halt to arms sales to Saudi Arabia over its ferocious war on Yemen.
The Saudis have already been blacklisted by the EU for "strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism regimes that pose significant threats to the financial system of the Union."
The list includes 16 countries based on criteria used by the Paris-based the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
MbS told aide he would use 'bullet' on Khashoggi, intel gathered by US shows
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 03:17PM
American intelligence agencies have revived communication originally intercepted in 2017 between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and a close aide in which Mohammed says he would use "a bullet" on Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi if he did not return to Saudi Arabia or stop criticizing the prince.
The intelligence, part of voice and text communication routinely intercepted and stored by US spy agencies, has come to light only lately, amid attempts by those agencies to find out who was behind the murder of Khashoggi, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing current and former American and foreign officials.
Once a devoted member of the Saudi court, Khashoggi became critical of Mohammed as the prince started to amass power and grew increasingly repressive. Khashoggi then traveled to the United States and began writing an opinion column for The Washington Post, before he was ultimately lured into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and brutally murdered by Saudi agents in October 2018.
The conversation recently revived from US intelligence storage took place between Mohammed and Turki Aldakhil, his aide, in September 2017. The Times said it was when Saudi officials were growing uncomfortable about Khashoggi's rising reach as a critic of Mohammed's policies.
"In the conversation, Prince Mohammed said that if Mr. Khashoggi could not be enticed back to Saudi Arabia, then he should be returned by force. If neither of those methods worked, the crown prince said, then he would go after Mr. Khashoggi 'with a bullet,'" the US daily wrote.
Days before that conversation, Mohammed "complained to another aide Saud al-Qahtani that Mr. Khashoggi had grown too influential," and that his critical articles and Twitter posts "were tarnishing the crown prince's image," according to the report.
Qahtani then told Mohammed that any move against Khashoggi would be too risky, but the prince then "scolded" him, saying he "did not like half-measures he never liked them and did not believe in them."
Like his boss, Qahtani has been largely implicated in Khashoggi's state-sponsored murder.
Turkey, which said it was in possession of audio evidence of Khashoggi's murder soon after he failed to exit the consulate, has indirectly suggested that Mohammed ordered his killing. The Washington Post reported in November last year that the CIA had also concluded that Mohammed ordered his killing.
Saudi Arabia initially denied that Khashoggi had been murdered in the consulate. Weeks later, however, and as international pressure largely spearheaded by Turkey mounted, the Riyadh regime acknowledged the murder but has since then attempted to shift the blame to Mohammed's underlings including Qahtani and away from the prince himself.
International suspicion, however, remains largely directed at Mohammed.
Turkey complains about lack of Saudi transparency
Separately, an aide to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described the "complete lack of transparency" from Saudi officials on the investigation into the killing of Khashoggi as a matter of great concern.
Fahrettin Altun, the director of communications at the Turkish Presidency, told Reuters that the series of "false denials" from Saudi officials had raised doubts about a range of issues related to the case.
"Over the past four months, the Saudi authorities have been less-than-forthcoming in their dealings with their Turkish counterparts and the international community," Altun said in a written statement issued to Reuters.
On Thursday, a United Nations-led probe into Khashoggi's murder concluded that the Saudi dissident had been the victim of a "brutal and premeditated killing" planned and perpetrated by Saudi officials.
"Saudi authorities must extradite Mr. Khashoggi's killers to Turkey, where they committed a premeditated murder, as proof of their willingness to serve the cause of justice," Altun said.
Agnes Callamard, the lead UN investigator in the case, has said that Saudi officials had "seriously undermined" and delayed Turkey's efforts to investigate the crime scene, the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, in October last year.
"The world is watching. Turkey, along with all nations that believe in democracy and freedom, seeks justice and the truth," Altun, the Turkish presidential aide, said.
Putin Dismisses Nine Russian Generals
By RFE/RL February 08, 2019
Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed nearly a dozen senior military officers holding government positions.
A decree made public on February 8 said Putin had replaced nine generals and two colonels who held high-level positions in the Investigative Committee and the interior and emergency ministries.
The dismissed officials included General Sergei Solopov, the chief of the directorate to prevent corruption in Moscow's police force, and General Irina Zeibert, a senior aide to the chief of the Investigative Committee.
None of the officers who were dismissed was publicly prominent, and no reason was given for their sackings.
Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-dismisses-nine -russian-generals/29759641.html
Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
Russia demands US destroy missiles in Romania, strike drones
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 05:49AM
Russia has demanded the US destroy its weapons banned under a Cold War-era arms control treaty and return to compliance with the agreement which Washington renounced recently.
Russian defense ministry said on Thursday it summoned the US embassy's military attache the day earlier to hand him a note containing the Kremlin's demand from Washington to "return to strict compliance" with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).
President Donald Trump announced last week that the US would suspend the deal for 180 days and fully withdraw from it later if Moscow did not stop what he called "violations."
Russia denies the allegation, saying it is the US that has broken the pact. Moscow says Washington is using false allegations as a pretext to withdraw from an agreement it never wanted to be part of.
Russian defense ministry told the US diplomat that Washington has, for years, been in breach of the treaty.
According to the note, Moscow called on Washington first to destroy the land-based universal launch systems MK-41 deployed in Romania to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The ministry told the US diplomat that Washington should destroy "target missiles that are characteristically similar to short and intermediate range land-based ballistic missiles."
It also demanded the destruction of "unmanned fighting vehicles that characteristically fall under the definition laid out in the agreement as ground-based cruise missile."
In the wake of the US suspension of the Cold War-era nuclear pact, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the Kremlin had also suspended its obligations under the treaty.
Putin authorized the defense ministry to push ahead with development of new missiles, including supersonic ones.
Moscow to step up security in face of US pullout
Regarding the US withdrawal of the nuclear deal, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that Moscow will take comprehensive measures to ensure its security.
Ryabkov said at a press conference that Moscow is open to negotiation if Washington returns to the compliance with the INF.
The INF was signed in 1987 to ease a crisis in which US and Soviet missiles were placed within the range of European capitals.
Under the treaty, both sides were banned from creating ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers and led to the elimination of nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles.
Ryabkov said Moscow has done its utmost to engage the administration of President Donald Trump in conversation and offer concrete initiatives to find a solution.
All Russia's efforts, however, were ignored or blocked by Washington, he said.
The Russian president has already warned that the collapse of the agreement would spark an arms race. He said Moscow will not deploy any new missiles unless Washington does so, because Russia does not want to enter a new arms race with the US.
Indian PM Modi's Office had Parallel Negotiations with Rafale Team - Reports
Sputnik News
18:27 08.02.2019
The Indian Defence Ministry set up a seven-member negotiation committee for the purchase of 36 Rafale jets from France under the government to government contract. However, The Hindu, an Indian English-language daily, has revealed that there were parallel negotiations for the same deal by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office.
New Delhi (Sputnik) India's Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 2015 objected to "parallel negotiations" conducted by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) with France when the two countries were discussing the Rafale jet deal.
The ministry officials, in a note dated 24 November 2015, had sought to alert the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar of the parallel negotiations, a report by Indian news daily The Hindu reveals.
"We may advise PMO that any officers who are not part of the Indian negotiating team may refrain from having parallel parlays [parleys] with the officers of the French Government", a note said, going on to suggest that "in case the PMO is not confident about the outcome of negotiations being carried out by the MoD, a revised modality of negotiations to be led by PMO at appropriate level may be adopted in the case", excerpts of the note read, as published by The Hindu.
The MoD note also indicates that officials of the ministry came to know of the parallel negotiations by the PMO after General Stephen Reb, the head of the French Negotiating Team, in a letter to the ministry "made mention of a telephonic conversation between Shri Jawed Ashraf, Joint Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office and Mr. Luis Vassy, Diplomatic Adviser to the French Minister of Defence, which took place on 20.10.2015".
Reacting to the development, the opposition Congress Party has demanded an investigation into the matter by a joint parliamentary committee.
"We have been saying this for more than a year that the Prime Minister is directly involved in the Rafale scamIt is absolutely black and white that the Prime Minister himself had been carrying a parallel negotiation with the French", Rahul Gandhi, president of the Congress Party, said while addressing the media on Friday morning.
Rubbishing the opposition's claims, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the French official was only referring to "periodic enquiries" by the PMO on the deal.
"They are flogging a dead horse. Periodical enquiries by the PMO cannot be construed as interference", Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a suo-motu statement in parliament on Friday at noon.
She charged the opposition with playing into the hands of multinational companies and vested interests and not working in the interests of the Indian Air Force. The delivery of the Rafale fighter jet is scheduled to begin from September this year.
Sputnik
DHS Issues Waiver to Expedite Secondary Fence Replacement Project in San Diego
Release Date: February 8, 2019
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a waiver to ensure the expeditious construction and replacement of approximately 12.5 miles of secondary wall near the international border in the state of California. The waiver was published in the Federal Register on February 7, 2019.
This waiver is pursuant to authority granted to the Secretary of Homeland Security by Congress. Congress has provided the Secretary of Homeland Security with a number of authorities necessary to carry out DHS's border security mission. One of these authorities is found in section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, as amended ("IIRIRA"). Section 102(a) of IIRIRA provides that the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take such actions as may be necessary to install additional physical walls and roads near the United States border to deter illegal crossings in areas of high illegal entry into the United States. In section 102(b) of IIRIRA, Congress has called for the installation of additional fencing, walls, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors on the southwest border. Finally, in section 102(c) of IIRIRA, Congress granted to the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive all legal requirements that the Secretary, in Secretary's sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure the expeditious construction of the walls and roads authorized by section 102 of IIRIRA.
The approximately 14-mile bollard style wall project in San Diego that was awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on December 20, 2018, will include an area that begins near the eastern end of Border Field State Park and extends east to where the existing primary pedestrian fence ends.
Tactical infrastructure, when combined with the appropriate technology and personnel, significantly reduces the amount of illegal border entries and enhances the Border Patrol's ability to secure the border. San Diego Sector was the busiest sector in the nation during the early 1990s. The construction of infrastructure has reduced illegal entries; however, more work remains to be done. In Fiscal Year 2018, there were over 38,000 apprehensions in the San Diego Sector by Border Patrol. In this Fiscal Year to date San Diego Sector has apprehended over 18,500 illegal immigrants, a more than 69 percent increase of the apprehensions for same period last fiscal year.
DHS remains committed to environmental stewardship. DHS has been consulting, and intends to continue doing so, with stakeholders including other federal and state resource agencies. Such consultation facilitates DHS's assessment of potential impacts and informs its efforts to minimize, to the extent possible, potential impacts to the environment, wildlife, and cultural and historic resources.
The Department of Homeland Security continues to implement President Trump's Executive Order 13767 - also known as Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements and continues to take steps to immediately plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border, using appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve complete operational control of the southern border.
# # #
Airstrike Efficiency in Somalia Questioned by US AFRICOM Chief
Sputnik News
00:43 09.02.2019(updated 00:45 09.02.2019)
The US military's onslaught of airstrikes in Somalia "aren't going to defeat al-Shabab," the head of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) told the Senate on Thursday.
Al-Shabab, a jihadist terror group that has pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda, ultimately will not be defeated by airstrikes, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser said in comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, under US President Donald Trump, the Pentagon has tripled the number of airstrikes it carries out in Somalia on an annual basis, The Nation reported Thursday.
The strikes are "causing problems" for the group, but the Somali military should expand in size and efficiency if the militant group is to be thwarted, the general noted. Still, it remains an "open question" whether the strikes go far in deterring the group, the Marine general said.
That airstrikes will not wipe out al-Shabab does not imply the US is letting up on the tactic. AFRICOM has carried out two airstrikes in the past 48 hours, the command announced Friday. The airstrike Wednesday killed 11 militants, while the Thursday strike neutralized four militants, combining for a total of 15 dead. AFRICOM also claimed that "it was assessed no civilians were injured or killed in either airstrike."
On a curious note, Sputnik News previously carried part of a January 24 report by the Associated Press that said AFRICOM was ending the practice of announcing how many militants were killed by US airstrikes. At the time, an AFRICOM spokesman told the outlet that only the Somali government would release this information. AFRICOM's practice of releasing enemy casualty data has evidently resumed.
AFRICOM said in a Friday release that it plans to keep working "with its partners to transfer the responsibility for the long-term security in Somalia from AMISOM to the Federal Government of Somalia and its Member States." AMISOM refers to the African Union Mission in Somalia, which started in 2007.
Sputnik
Photo: Nicholas Johansen The first BC Cannabis Store opened in Kamloops in October.
While the province has yet to approve any cannabis retail stores in the Okanagan, several have recently been approved across the rest of the province.
The province has just approved a new private cannabis retail store in Invermere, following approvals last month of stores in Castlegar, Port Hardy and Tumbler Ridge.
Prior to these recent approvals, two had been approved in Kimberley, three in Vancouver, one in Pouce Coupe and one in Trail, in addition to the government-run BC Cannabis Store that opened in Kamloops on Oct. 17.
The province has been approving prospective cannabis retailers on a first-come-first-serve basis.
In the Okanagan, Lake Country's Starbuds is awaiting provincial licensing after Lake Country council gave its approval in December. Just over three weeks ago, Starbuds president Dave Martyn said he hoped the approval would be coming within days, rather than weeks or months.
Green Gaia Cannabis Co. in Summerland is in a similar situation.
In Kelowna, 15 prospective cannabis retailers cleared the first hurdle through city council this week. These applications are expected to go before council early next month. The city has sent those applications to the province for licensing.
Currently, there are 424 complete applications before the province, along with another 112 incomplete applications.
While there are no provincially approved stores in the Okanagan at this time, Lake Country's Indigenous Bloom, which doesn't have approval from the province, is currently operating on Okanagan Indian Band land.
Analysts: Most of Venezuela's Russian Oil Clients Bailed Last Year
By Pete Cobus, Olga Pavlova February 08, 2019
As numerous European clients of Venezuela's state-owned PDVSA petroleum company freeze crude purchases in the face of mounting international sanctions, analysts in Moscow say all of Venezuela's Russian customers with the exception of Rosneft had begun suspending or liquidating contracts in mid-to-late 2018.
Caracas-based "Diario2001Online" news outlet reported last week that PDVSA had announced that one of its largest Russia contractors, Moscow-headquartered Lukoil, had suddenly frozen its contracts in Venezuela for fear of being subjected to U.S. financial system restrictions resulting from the rapidly unfolding political turmoil.
Moscow-based energy economist Mikhail Subbotin told VOA that in June a PDVSA official had notified eight of its international clients, including Lukoil, that it would be unable to meet its production commitments.
Lukoil forewarned
PDVSA had forewarned Lukoil in particular, Subbotin said, that its diluted crude oil deliveries would fall short by more than 100,000 barrels, suggesting Lukoil officials may have been mulling a termination of their Venezuela contracts as early as summer 2018.
Independent Russian defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer reiterated that point, explaining that, with the exception of Russia's state-run Rosneft, an exodus of private Russian firms was underway before 2019.
"It wasn't only Lukoil, but other [Russian] companies as well," he told VOA, adding that Lukoil in particular had suspended or sold its contracts to Rosneft following last June's especially dim PDVSA production forecast.
"As far as I know, all the companies left," Felgenhauer said. "It happened quite some time ago, and I have to look for it online to figure out a precise date but, as I remember, it happened earlier. It is solely Rosneft that remains there. There are no more fools."
Last week's reports of a sudden Lukoil suspension of contracts relied almost exclusively on a Jan. 29 Tweet by Wall Street Journal correspondent Anatoly Kurmanaev, who said an industry supply official had confirmed Lukoil's decision, which "threatens to leave [PDVSA] without gasoline and diluent (diluting agent) to process its crude."
Kurmanaev, who has since joined The New York Times, also tweeted:
Lukoil officials have not responded to multiple inquiries about the timing of contract suspensions.
Oil exports crucial
PDVSA brings in almost all of Venezuela's income and is run by the military. A December investigation by Reuters called the company poorly run and unusually vulnerable to collapse if faced with U.S. sanctions.
Venezuela depends almost entirely on oil exports for hard currency, so the new U.S. sanctions against Venezuela's state-run oil company mean that the country will be able to purchase even fewer imports, including food.
Last month, the leader of Venezuela's National Assembly, Juan Guaido, declared himself interim president in a direct challenge to the power of socialist leader Nicolas Maduro, who had been sworn in to a second term in office only two weeks before.
U.S. President Donald Trump officially recognized Guaido as the legitimate interim president of Venezuela just minutes after Guaido said he was taking over as acting president.
Russia, China prop up Venezuela
Trump's comments infuriated Russia, which views Maduro as Venezuela's legitimate leader, and called the street anti-Maduro protests in Venezuela the result of a Western plot.
Russia and China are Venezuela's biggest creditors, providing loans to help Maduro's government prop up the country's imploding economy.
Kremlin officials, Subbotin said, would likely be dismayed by a Lukoil pullout from the region, as such a move would only exacerbate circumstances on the ground in Caracas and undermine their efforts to resolve an entrenched political crisis unfolding in a key client state.
But Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, said many of Russia's private investors have been shaky on Venezuela for some time.
"To start with, it's quite far away, so it's quite complicated for small- and medium-sized businesses to conduct affairs there," he told VOA, adding that some Russian investors had anticipated that Venezuela's sustained economic downturn could culminate in political repercussions.
"Private businesses just afraid to get involved there," he said. "Many [Russians] just don't believe in the stability of this regime."
US Officials Tout Good Ties with Cameroon Despite Aid Cut
By VOA News February 08, 2019
Despite announcing plans to trim military support for Cameroon's government over its alleged human rights violations, key U.S. officials say the United States will continue partnering on security efforts. But a Cameroon official contends the cutback could jeopardize the fight against extremism in the region.
U.S. Ambassador Peter Henry Barlerin assured that the U.S. was "not going to stop security cooperation with Cameroon," the Associated Press reported him saying, after he met Thursday with Cameroon government spokesman Rene Emmanuel Sadi.
"Relations between Cameroon and the United States are excellent and longstanding," Barlerin said, "and we aim to continue that relationship."
His comments in Yaounde, the capital, came after it was reported Wednesday that the U.S. government was cutting about $17 million in military aid to the government of President Paul Biya.
Also Thursday, the head of U.S. Africa Command, Marine Corps General Thomas Waldhauser, said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington that Cameroon has "been a good partner with us counterterrorism-wise, but you can't neglect the fact that there are alleged atrocities," The Washington Post reported.
Waldhauser also told the committee that Africa Command would sustain its mission "to train the counterterrorism forces in Cameroon that deal with Boko Haram," the Islamist militant group.
The Pentagon has roughly 300 U.S. troops engaged in training and aiding Cameroonian security forces.
The State Department and Pentagon "recently assessed our security relationship with Cameroon," according to a State Department email sent to VOA Thursday (and shared a day earlier with The Washington Post.)
Despite "the great cooperation" in fighting Boko Haram and "in restoring maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea," the email said, the U.S. government has "terminated" funding for four defender-class boats, nine armored vehicles, a radar system and helicopter training, among other things.
"We do not take these measures lightly, but we will not shirk from reducing assistance further if evolving conditions require it," the State Department email said.
It added that the measure was intended to press Cameroon "to show greater transparency in investigating credible allegations of gross violations of human rights security forces, particularly in the northwest, southwest and far north regions."
Cameroonian security forces grappling with Boko Haram in the far north and the Ambazonian separatist movement in two English-speaking regions in the west have been accused of committing serious violations against citizens.
"Cameroonian security forces have indiscriminately killed, arrested and tortured people, firing on crowds, displacing thousands of civilians, and destroying entire villages with impunity," Adotei Akwei, an official with Amnesty International USA, said Thursday in a statement responding to the U.S. decision.
Cameroon's government, in a statement Thursday, said it "strongly denies accusations that U.S. military assistance has been used to commit human rights violations. While we have acknowledged instances of human rights violations, they have been investigated and prosecuted through proper judicial channels."
Last year, Cameroon's government rejected a report by Amnesty International, saying its accounts of torture at the hands of security forces amounted to "a web of false allegations."
The current Amnesty International statement urged the Trump administration to "press other donors of security assistance to review their programs and insist on accountability and reform within the Cameroonian security forces."
France announced Thursday that it would maintain its support.
"France is bound by a defense partnership agreement that it conducts according to the international standards," French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll told reporters at a daily briefing, Reuters news service reported.
A spokesman for the Ambazonian separatist movement also praised the U.S. move and encouraged other Western countries to pull back support, too.
"What the U.S. has done, it came a little bit late but we appreciate it and we hope that every European nation [and] Canada will follow suit," Chris Anu, the movement's secretary of state, told VOA. "Because if that is not done, the regime in French Cameroon will decimate everything that is in southern Cameroon before the world comes to know about it."
VOA's National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin, State Department Correspondent Cindy Saine and English to Africa Reporter James Butty contributed to this report.
US Military Airstrikes Target Al-Shabab in Somalia
By Mohamed Olad Hassan February 08, 2019
The U.S. military says it launched two precision airstrikes against the al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia this week, killing 15 militants.
A statement released Friday by U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, said the strikes took place Wednesday and Thursday in Somalia's Lower Shabelle region. Military officials say no civilians were killed.
Word of the strikes comes one day after former Somali defense minister General Abdulkadir Ali Dini said al-Shabab cannot be defeated through war alone. Dini said the army cannot defeat al-Shabab without the help of the Somali people and politicians.
"The military is doing its part. It keeps losing top generals and soldiers in the war against the militants, but they lack the actual support of Somali people and committed politicians," Dini said in an interview with VOA.
Dini was responding to a comment from a top U.S. military general who hinted that the continued U.S. air campaigns against al-Shabab were unlikely to yield much without support from the local army.
"At the end of the day, these strikes are not going to defeat al-Shabab," the U.S. military's Africa Command head, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington.
"But the bottom line is the Somali National Army needs to grow, it needs to step up, and it needs to take responsibility for their own security," he said.
Since early 2017, the U.S. has increased the number of strikes it conducts in Somalia.
According to Somali military officials, the U.S. hit the militants about 35 times in 2017, compared to 47 times last year and about a dozen times so far this year.
In one strike last month, Africa Command said it killed 52 Somali militants.
In December, the U.S. military said it had killed 62 al-Shabab militants in six airstrikes in the Horn of Africa nation. Waldhauser questioned how effective the air campaign can be.
"We know that [the airstrikes] are causing problems; we know that they are deterring. It is an open question as to how much," he said.
Push for talks
Separately, Somali Security Minister Abdirizak Omar Mohamed said in an interview with VOA that fighting the militants, coupled with U.S. airstrikes, can never lead to the group's ultimate elimination. Al-Shabab has been fighting to overthrow the Somali government and impose a strict version of Sharia, or Islamic law.
"We know the group has long been spreading a poisonous ideology in the minds of the young, the mentally retarded and the susceptible Somalis. To effectively eliminate this would require the start of talks with the group's leaders," said Mohamed. "Only war cannot defeat al-Shabab."
As the security minister in the government of former president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Mohamed was among top government officials and advisers who started unsuccessful behind-the-scenes talks with al-Shabab's leadership.
"During my time as security minister, I helped the start of talks with al-Shabab but my government left office while we were in the early stages of the communication with the group. Now, I think is the right time to resume," Mohamed said.
Mohamed says starting talks does not mean giving up the fight against the insurgents as long as they keep terrorizing and carrying out attacks, but that testing an approach of negotiating with them has always been possible.
"You know there are signs of progress and hope created by the recent peace talks between the United States and the Taliban. If that is possible, I think the current Somali government can set the stage for a negotiation with al-Shabab," Mohamed said, drawing a comparison to the Afghan Taliban.
The military front
More than 20,000 African troops under the African Union Mission (AMISOM) and thousands of Somali army and pro-government militias, supported by U.S. airstrikes, have been trying to remove thousands of al-Shabab fighters and assassins from Somalia, but all these efforts have not stopped the groups' threat in Somalia and beyond.
Last Monday, in a powerful car bomb explosion at a shopping mall in the capital, Mogadishu, the group killed at least 11 people, including a top military official.
The same day al-Shabab gunmen shot and killed the manager of a Dubai-owned port in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region.
Last month, al-Shabab claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on the DusitD2 hotel and office complex in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, leaving at least 21 people dead. Al-Shabab has been linked to previous attacks in Kenya. Al-Shabab has targeted Kenya in retribution for Kenya sending troops to Somalia.
US Negotiator: Afghan Peace Possible Before July Elections
By VOA News February 08, 2019
The top U.S. negotiator in peace talks with Afghanistan's Taliban leaders says he hopes a peace agreement can be achieved before Afghanistan's next set of elections just five months away.
Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, spoke Friday to an audience at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, apologizing for his scratchy voice.
"This is what 42 hours of talking with the Taliban can do to you," he joked.
Khalilzad said he was hopeful a peace deal could be finalized before Afghanistan's presidential elections in July, but warned that there remained "a lot of work" to do.
"We are at the early stages of a protracted process," he said.
Working toward intra-Afghan talks
In Moscow Wednesday, two days of talks between the Taliban and Afghan political leaders ended, although no representatives from the current government of President Ashraf Ghani were in attendance, sparking anger in Kabul. The Taliban consider the Kabul government a Western puppet and has so far refused to directly negotiate with it.
The 10-member Taliban delegation has instead been meeting with almost 50 influential Afghans, including politicians, former jihadi leaders, civil society activists and former President Hamid Karzai.
The final statement issued after the talks in Moscow declared that a complete withdrawal of U.S.-led foreign forces from Afghanistan is the key to lasting peace in Afghanistan.
Khalilzad said the Russia-backed talks were positive as long as they helped facilitate intra-Afghan talks, not if they "polarize Afghans further."
"I'm not seeking to monopolize" the Afghan peace process, Khalilzad said, adding that regional countries should play a role in the process.
Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said Friday that the Taliban and Afghan government leaders must "sit across the table from each other and come to an agreement about the future of their country."
He said there were indications that the Taliban could sit down with government representatives in a "multiparty format."
Next Qatar talks in two weeks
Khalilzad attended a six-day meeting with Taliban leaders in Qatar last month and afterward reported "significant progress" in the negotiations, which culminated in a basic framework for a peace agreement. It called for the Taliban to prevent international terrorist groups from basing themselves in Afghanistan and for the United States to withdraw its forces from the country.
The Taliban have yet to make concessions on two key U.S. demands: implementing a cease-fire and agreeing to negotiate directly with Afghan government representatives as part of an Afghan-led, intra-Afghan peace process.
He and his team are scheduled to meet with the Taliban again in Qatar on Feb. 25 for more discussions.
"All sides have learned lessons from the past. So the time has come, they say, for an inclusive dialogue leading to an inclusive peace. That will not be easy. ... But it's for the Afghans to negotiate with each other and accept each other," he added.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty contributed to this report.
UN ready to rise above political fray and help Venezuelans based 'on need, and need alone'
8 February 2019 - The situation for ordinary Venezuelans is increasingly critical but the United Nations remains committed to providing humanitarian support, based on "need, and need alone", said a senior aid official on Friday.
Speaking to journalists in Geneva, the UN's aid coordinating branch, OCHA, underlined that it was observing developments at Venezuela's border with Colombia, where an aid convoy arrived on Thursday.
"On the situation at the border, the UN is monitoring that situation closely," said Jens Laerke from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). "The ideal scenario is that humanitarian aid is provided, independent of any political or other considerations than the pure humanitarian, and that is based on need and need alone."
'People were coming, starving' to Colombia
At the border, the World Food Programme (WFP) confirmed that needs are at "crisis"-like levels inside Venezuela, where opposition politician Juan Guaido declared himself interim President last month, amid deepening economic and political uncertainty.
"How can we know if people are starving or not? Just stay at the border with Colombia, and look who is coming into Colombia," said WFP senior spokesperson Herve Verhoosel. He said 1.2 million people had come, "starving, in Colombia with no money, no food, no medicineYes of course there's a crisis in the country."
WFP has been providing emergency food assistance at the Colombian border since early 2018.
From April to December last year, the agency provided emergency food assistance to 290,000 people in the country's border departments of Arauca, La Guajira, Norte de Santander and Narino.
Venezuelan migrants, Colombian returnees and host communities have been assisted, Mr Verhoosel explained, adding that the flow of migrants into Colombia is expected to rise.
Several resident UN agencies work inside Venezuela including UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with the Pan-American health Organization, UNAIDS, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
In a bid to help 3.6m Venezuelans including two million children, OCHA has appealed for nearly $110 million.
Help for local institutions in Venezuela
The UN has already helped local institutions by providing medical kits for women and children, and aid teams are also delivering 100,000 treatments for severe acute malnutrition. Six temporary shelters have also been set up in the western border states to house 1,600 people and offer them protection and information, as well as family kits containing food and clothing.
"Since November, UN agencies have been scaling up existing activities inside Venezuela to meet urgent health, nutrition and protection needs," Mr Laerke said. "This highly prioritized plan requires $109.5 million. Up to now we only $49.1 million received against that plan."
Tackling measles and diptheria
Also in Geneva, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that it is continuing to work with the authorities through the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), notably to prevent and control communicable and non-communicable diseases.
In 2018, around 50 tons of medicines and supplies were delivered to Venezuela by PAHO, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said.
Since measles was first reported in July 2017, there have been 6,395 confirmed cases, including 76 deaths as of December 2018.
This led to the re-launch of the vaccination campaign in August 2018, with coverage rate reaching 95 per cent of children aged up to 15. Reported cases of measles appear to be declining, Mr Jasarevic explained.
Immunization campaigns have also been launched to successfully halt a diphtheria outbreak which began in July 2016 and has claimed 270 lives to date.
Although reported diphtheria cases have been declining among children under 15 years of age, transmission among adults persists, WHO warned.
'Ongoing harassment' of 60 parliamentarians
In addition to food and medical shortages inside the oil-rich country, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) noted that dozens of opposition politicians continue to face ongoing harassment there.
"The most information that we have is on the situation of the speaker of the National Assembly Mr Guaido," said Rogier Huizenga, Human Rights Manager and Secretary of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians.
"We also know for instance that Ms. Delsa Solorzano, also a prominent member of opposition in Parliament in Venezuela, has been accused of having been involved in some kind of incitement to violence," he added, "through what appears to be a doctored WhatsApp exchange. So she is accused as a result of that, she had to go into hiding for a couple of days."
The IPU official explained that its human rights panel had looked at cases of 60 opposition Members of Parliament in Venezuela who are facing "different kinds of intimidation".
More than 40 MPs had faced physical attacks and six had fled abroad, he said, noting also that the former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly was still sheltering in the Chilean embassy in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.
In Tanzania, UN refugee chief praises 'regional peacemaker' role, and efforts to welcome neighbours on the run
8 February 2019 - The head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has praised Tanzania for the long-standing welcome it offers hundreds of thousands of refugees, describing it as a "regional peacemaker" in an unstable part of Africa, that deserves more international support.
Speaking at the end of a four-day visit to the east African nation, Filippo Grandi called for greater investment in the north-west region of Tanzania, where some 300,000 refugees are being hosted, and pledged to mobilize more support for humanitarian efforts, local community development, improved camp security, and environmental projects.
In a meeting with Tanzanian President John Joseph Magafuli, Mr. Grandi commended the country's tradition of welcoming refugees fleeing conflict and persecution in neighbouring countries, and said Tanzania deserved greater international recognition for its role as "one of the most important refugee asylum countries in Africa."
However, Mr. Grandi also impressed upon government officials the importance of not forcing refugees to go back to their countries of origin. Over 57,000 refugees from Burundi have been assisted to voluntarily leave Tanzania and return home in the last two years, but some refugees report their decision was partly based on perceived pressure from the authorities, restrictions on freedom of movement and a lack of access to jobs, so they can support themselves.
"It is important that nobody is forced back, that repatriation remains a voluntary exercise," Mr. Grandi told reporters, after visiting the Nyarugusu Refugee Camp in Kasulu, home to around 15,000 Burundian and Congolese refugees. He noted that some refugees are volunteering to go back to their countries of origin, despite uncertain conditions in both the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Burundi, and said that sustainable refugee return happens when refugees feel confident that it is safe to go back, and receive the necessary support to do so. Nearly three-quarters of Tanzania's refugees are from Burundi, and the other 26 per cent are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC.
Mr. Grandi praised Tanzania for supporting the UN's Global Compact on Refugees, which calls for greater international support to host countries and more refugee self-reliance which, he said, stimulates local economies and provides opportunities for host communities.
Maduro Accuses US of Using Humanitarian Crisis as Cover for Military Plans
Sputnik News
07:30 08.02.2019(updated 09:03 08.02.2019)
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday joined a campaign to collect signatures for a letter to US President Donald Trump against a possible US intervention in Venezuela, as aired by Maduro's Periscope channel.
The United States has declared a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela to create a cover for its military plans, President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro stated while speaking at the Plaza Bolivar in the centre of Caracas during a campaign to collect signatures against a US intervention in the country.
"The humanitarian crisis is only a cover for the military plans of the Trump government. The whole crisis in Venezuela is that the United States imposed sanctions and imposed a financial blockade", he stated.
Maduro came to the Plaza Bolivar in Caracas on 7 February, where one of the signature collection centres had been set up, accompanied by his spouse Cilia Flores. Both put their signatures on the letter to Trump.
The campaign aims to collect at least 10,000 signatures against US intervention in Venezuela.
The statement comes after Trump said on 3 February that a military intervention aimed at settling the current political conflict in Venezuela was an "option". Maduro has lashed out at his US counterpart suggesting that Washington is seeking to appropriate Venezuela's oil assets. The campaign to collect signatures was launched on Wednesday and the letter is expected to be sent to the White House.
On 4 February, a number of EU member states individually recognised Guaido as Venezuela's acting president after the country's authorities failed to organise a new presidential election in the country within an eight-day period set by the EU. EU countries were later expected to recognise Guaido in a joint statement, but Italy vetoed the motion.
In January, Juan Guaido, the speaker of Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly, proclaimed himself Venezuela's interim president, contesting Maduro's re-election last year. The opposition leader was recognised by the United States and some other countries. Russia and China, as well as several other nations, have backed Maduro as the country's legitimate president and demanded the principle of non-interference in Venezuela's internal affairs be respected.
Sputnik
Venezuela Did Not Request Russian Military Assistance Amid Crisis - Moscow
Sputnik News
10:47 08.02.2019(updated 10:50 08.02.2019)
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Caracas did not send to Moscow a request for Russian military assistance, Alexander Shchetinin, head of the Latin American department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in an interview with Sputnik.
We consider and analyse requests from our strategic partners very carefully. We did not receive a request on this issue", Shchetinin said, answering the question whether Caracas asked Moscow for Russian military assistance to Venezuela amid the current political crisis in the Latin American country.
Russia is open to dialogue with all Venezuelan politicians who are ready for a constructive discussion of the situation in Venezuela, Shchetinin noted.
"As for Venezuelan politicians, we are open to dialogue with everyone who has a constructive approach [to the situation], who is primarily concerned about the interests of Venezuelan people and the country's socioeconomic development, and speaks for the establishment of an inclusive political dialogue to this end", Shchetinin said.
Commenting on the financing partnership, he stated that Russian-Venezuelan investment cooperation is based on legal agreements that must be respected by any responsible government in the country.
"Our economic and investment cooperation [with Venezuela] is based on a well-developed legal and contractual framework; it is in the interest of both countries, including in the interests of the Venezuelan economy and people. These legal agreements must be respected by every responsible government driven by real economic priorities rather than ideological ones", the diplomat said in an interview.
He also stated that international consultations on the situation in Venezuela must not turn into a "dialogue on capitulation" but should be aimed at the reconciliation of opposing political forces in the country.
"What does Russia propose in the context of what is happening in Venezuela? To respect [Venezuela's] sovereignty. To prevent a destructive, including forceful, foreign intervention. To establish a dialogue. If international assistance is needed to do this, we support it. Therefore, we welcome the initiative of Mexico, Uruguay, and the CARICOM [Caribbean Community] countries. However, we believe that this cannot and must not be a 'dialogue' on some kind of capitulation. This should be a dialogue on reconciling [political forces in Venezuela] and overcoming the crisis", Shchetinin stressed.
Venezuela continues to be locked in the midst of a political crisis after National Assembly leader Guaido announced on January 23 that he was now interim president, citing the alleged illegitimacy of last year's presidential election as grounds for his declaration.
Although being dismissed by the Maduro administration in Caracas, Guaido has found ample backing internationally, with Trump's open support soon being followed by a multitude of nations, including sizeable European powers such as the United Kingdom, France and Austria.
Sputnik
Afghan Airstrike in Helmand Province Kills Taliban Intelligence Chief - Reports
Sputnik News
17:16 08.02.2019
MOSCOW (Sputnik) An airstrike, carried out by the Afghan Air Force in the southwestern Afghan province of Helmand left three Taliban militants killed, including the movement's intelligence chief Mullah Ahmad, the TOLOnews broadcaster reported on Friday.
Ahmad, along with two other militants, was killed on Wednesday when the airstrike hit their vehicle in Helmand's Nawzad district, TOLOnews reported, citing army officials.
According to them, Ahmad was responsible for planning and staging attacks in the Helmand province and his death will weaken the Islamist movement's positions in the region.
Taliban has not commented on the reports on Ahmad's death yet.
In late January, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani vowed to try to remove all foreign troops from the country. In addition, an agreement on the possible withdrawal of the US forces from Afghanistan was reportedly reached during recent talks between the United States and the Taliban in Qatar.
The clashes between the movement and the Afghan government, however, still continue. According to army officials, at least 19 Taliban militants have been killed in Helmand by the Afghan security forces during recent operations.
Sputnik
Maduro: Venezuela's Independence Being Destroyed Under Cloak of Humanitarian Aid
Sputnik News
19:10 08.02.2019(updated 21:23 08.02.2019)
Maduro earlier dismissed the US promise to send relief aid to the crisis-hit South American country as a "political stunt" and a pretext for invasion, as Washington has refused to recognise the legitimate government of Venezuela, also imposing sanctions on Caracas.
"They are trying to destroy the independence and sovereignty of the country under the pretext of delivering humanitarian aid. They are trying to destabilise our country, but this has not brought [them] any success", the Venezuelan president stressed
"Venezuela will not allow the show of humanitarian aid because we do not beg from anyone", he told reporters. "Venezuela is not suffering the humanitarian crisis fabricated by Washington over the last four years to justify intervening in our country."
The president also stated that Venezuela planed to increase oil production by 1 million barrels per day in 2019.
"We are coping well with difficulties, our oil industry will move forward, despite the aggression, there are enough oil markets in the world for oil produced by Venezuela," Maduro said at a press conference broadcast in his Twitter blog.
Maduro confirmed that he is ready to hold early parliamentary elections in the country in order to end the ongoing political crisis. According to him, at least 2 million people have signed letter demanding that the US stop interfering in Venezuela's internal affairs.
"I propose early elections to the National Assembly, and I will ratify them," Maduro told reporters, adding that he would like to "see people voting for a new National Assembly that will help the country and contribute to its stabilisation."
He also said that Caracas is ready to support the "Montevideo mechanism" or any other initiative aimed at contributing to dialogue in Venezuela. Maduro rejected, however, the EU-backed contact groups as biased, stating that the bloc is "deaf", as it would not listen to Venezuela.
According to him, Western countries want to destroy Venezuela in order to exploit its natural resources.
"The plan for Venezuela is more or less similar to what they did with Libya in order to seize its natural resources [] a fifth column was planted inside the country, but here they could not achieve what they managed to do in Syria and Libya". "We will not allow them to form terrorist groups in Venezuela", he concluded.
On 4 February, the administration of Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed interim president of Venezuela, said that they would hold an international conference in Washington on February 14 to seek emergency humanitarian assistance.
Guaido proclaimed himself Venezuela's interim president on January 23. Maduro has in the meantime called him a US "puppet" and accused Washington, which has stated that it has all options on the table with regard to a response to the crisis, of organizing a coup
Sputnik
Photo: The Canadian Press Sarah Hoffman, Alberta Minister of Health
The Alberta government has created a working group to determine the most effective way to ban conversion therapy.
Health Minister Sarah Hoffman says the practice is both damaging and hateful and she looks forward to acting on the group's recommendations.
The committee, to be co-chaired by NDP Edmonton legislature member Nicole Goehring, will meet with stakeholders over the next five months, then draft recommendations.
Goehring has already been working on a private member's bill to outlaw conversion therapy, which has been previously banned in Manitoba and Ontario.
Conversion therapy refers to any treatment, counselling or behaviour modification to change someone's sexual orientation or gender identity.
The working group is to include representatives from the health and legal professions, faith leaders and the LGBTQ community.
Goehring says the recommendations need to be a broad-based effort.
"I've heard from Albertans and community leaders that any ban on conversion therapy must be community-driven and can't let anyone fall through the cracks," said Goehring in a statement Friday.
Alberta Liberal Leader David Khan accused the NDP of playing politics with the issue and said the government should ban the practice immediately.
"Albertas youth cannot wait another five months for an NDP committee to reach the conclusion that is obvious to most people in this province. What further input is needed to convince this government?" said Khan in a statement.
"The NDP are willing to delay any meaningful decision in a desperate attempt to turn this into an election issue. This could put vulnerable children at risk.
Voters will go to the polls this spring in a general election, which by law can be called any time now but must be over by the end of May.
Goehring had been expected to bring forward her private member's bill this past fall, possibly with the support of the government, but that never materialized.
United Conservative Opposition Leader Jason Kenney said at the time he couldn't comment on legislation he hasn't seen, but said he would keep an open mind on whether to support such a bill.
US Admiral Wants To 'Push First' Against Russian Ships - Reports
Sputnik News
19:58 08.02.2019
Washington has sent several ships to the Black Sea following an incident in the Kerch Strait, when Russian border patrol boats forcibly stopped several Ukrainian military vessels that had violated the Russian maritime border and refused to follow the patrol's orders.
The commander of the US Navy, Admiral John Michael Richardson, has come up with an unexpected suggestion in terms of proactive measures to counter Russia in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, Newsweek reported. When asked at the Atlantic Council in Washington on 6 February about the strategy against "perceived aggressions" from Russia, Richardson reportedly suggested that instead of responding to Moscow's actions, the US should actually "push first" in a number of areas.
"It would be great if we could get folks, Russians, some of these competitors to respond to our first move", the admiral said.
Richardson also reportedly noted that the US would gain an advantage by "playing the white side of the board" and thus making the first move. It's unclear whether the Atlantic Council will take his suggestions into consideration.
The council is a US think tank working for NATO and hosting a discussion platform for politicians, experts and members of the military.
The admiral's words come amid an increasing US military presence in the Black Sea. Following the Kerch incident between Russian and Ukrainian ships, Washington in January deployed the missile destroyer USS Donald Cook to the region.
The Russian national defence control centre vowed to monitor the USS Donald Cook's movements and noted that Russian ships would act in a "professional" manner when interacting with their American counterpart.
On 25 November 2018, three ships of the Ukrainian Navy breached the Russian maritime border, entered Russian territorial waters that were temporarily closed, and began moving toward the Kerch Strait, which serves as the entrance to the Azov Sea. The Ukrainian vessels were forcibly stopped by Russian ships, and their crew was detained by Russian authorities after failing to respond to a lawful demand to stop.
Sputnik
US to Use All Tools to Stop President Maduro's Revenue Streams - Bolton
Sputnik News
20:21 08.02.2019(updated 22:50 08.02.2019)
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States will continue to use all measures available to stop Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's revenue streams, National Security Advisor John Bolton said in a statement on Friday.
"The US will continue to use all tools to separate Maduro [and] his cronies from money that rightfully belongs to the people of Venezuela", Bolton said via Twitter. "Those who continue to plunder the resources of Venezuela & stand against its people will not be forgotten".
He also called on Russia and other nations to recognise Juan Guaido as Venezuelan President.
Bolton added that countries and companies buying Venezuelan oil must take steps to ensure that President Nicolas Maduro and his government cannot access and divert the payments for their own use.
"We encourage all nations that import Venezuelan oil to take appropriate steps to ensure that any payments are made into accounts not subject to plundering by Maduro and his cronies," Bolton tweeted. "Venezuela's ample natural resources must benefit the people of Venezuela!"
In late January, the United States blocked all assets of Venezuela's state energy giant PDVSA in its jurisdiction and imposed a ban on deals with the company. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin explained the United States was taking care of the PDVSA in the interests of the Venezuelan people and also protecting its own market.
On January 23, opposition leader Juan Guaido proclaimed himself interim president of Venezuela after the opposition-controlled National Assembly claimed Maduro has usurped power. The United States and some of its allies have recognised Guaido as interim president.
Russia, China, Mexico and several other countries have said they recognise Maduro as Venezuela's only legitimate president.
Maduro has accused the United States of orchestrating a coup and informed the US of his decision to sever diplomatic relations. Washington, however, has refused to withdraw its diplomatic mission personnel from the Latin American country.
Sputnik
Karzai on 'Intra-Afghan' Summit: Talks in Moscow Exceeded All Our Expectations
Sputnik News
20:38 08.02.2019(updated 20:39 08.02.2019)
In an exclusive interview with Sputnik, former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai summed up a two-day "intra-Afghan" summit in Moscow (5-6 Feb), gave his assessment of the US negotiations with the Taliban and spoke of Russia's role in advancing the peace process in Afghanistan.
Sputnik: What topics were discussed during the "intra-Afghan" dialogue? What are your impressions from this summit? What are the results?
H. Karzai: For us, the people of Afghanistan, peace is something we've wished for a very long time. We express our deep gratitude to the Russian government for the conditions created for having an "intra-Afghan" meeting in Moscow. It is an honour for us to hold the first "intra-Afghan" dialogue in such a big and great country like Russia.
Once again, I express my deep gratitude to Russia on behalf of all the Afghan people, as well as from the Taliban. This two-day meeting exceeded all our expectations. We hope that the talks in Moscow, as well as the decisions that have been made here, will bring long-awaited peace, national sovereignty, and progress to the Afghan people.
We discussed all the issues important to the Afghan people. Peace in Afghanistan will not prevail unless a cease-fire is declared and bloodshed isn't stopped. At the first meeting, we addressed issues relating to an independent, free Afghanistan, where Afghans will govern, where women can enjoy their full rights. We will discuss the remaining questions at the next summit, which will be held in Doha.
Sputnik: How do you assess the talks between the Taliban and US Special Representative on Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad? Should these negotiations be continued?
H. Karzai: As positive. We highlighted the US efforts in all our meetings and speeches. All Afghans would like for the "Intra-Afghan Dialogue" to strengthen mutual understanding and cooperation between Russia and the United States. This [cooperation between Russia and the United States on Afghanistan] is one of the best ways to achieve our goal a lasting peace in Afghanistan.
Sputnik: In the joint statement following the negotiations, one of the points is about creating conditions for a complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. How long will it take to create these conditions, and what are they?
H. Karzai: Of course, we want this to happen as soon as possible. However, this is a complex process. We must be careful, because it is necessary to make sure that the foreign contingent leaves Afghanistan, and that Afghanistan is stable and calm. Afghanistan must also establish good relations with neighbouring countries and major powers, as well as with the United States.
Sputnik: What effective help, in your opinion, can be provided by regional players and major powers in establishing lasting peace in Afghanistan?
H. Karzai: Regional players can provide great assistance to Afghanistan. Russian initiative and assistance are the first important steps in this direction. Afghanistan's neighbours, such as Iran, Pakistan, as well as other nations in the region, such as India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, should be part of a large-scale process with the end goal being the establishment of lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan, as a result of which our country can achieve prosperity and progress, and our people will be able to return to a tranquil life.
Sputnik: You said that Russia took the first important step towards restoring peace in Afghanistan. What do you mean: the Moscow format consultations on Afghanistan or the two-day "Intra-Afghan" dialogue?
H. Karzai: The conference in Moscow in November [Moscow format consultations on Afghanistan] was certainly an important step. However, the steps that Russia has taken these days, creating the conditions to hold such a large-scale event for the Afghan people on a national scale as the "Intra-Afghan Dialogue", and welcomed us in its country, is a historic step. In the future, this will only benefit Russia. We really hope that Russia will continue to assist us in advancing the peace process in Afghanistan.
Sputnik: So you can say that Russia has played a certain role in establishing a peaceful dialogue between the warring sides?
H. Karzai: Russia plays (its role), and, does it excellently. It is undertaking very effective and efficient steps. We really want Russia to keep this up until Afghanistan gets back on its feet.
Sputnik: The sixth point of the joint statement says that "Afghanistan is the home of all Afghans". Will and should any steps be taken to return refugees to Afghanistan?
H. Karzai: Certainly. They are citizens of Afghanistan and must work in their homeland and for the good of their homeland. It will be necessary to create the conditions for their return.
Sputnik: One of the most important points of the joint statement is that "Afghanistan will maintain neutrality in regional and world conflicts". At the same time, in Afghanistan, throughout the entire period of its existence, the interests of different countries have clashed. How will Afghanistan be able to resist the intrigues, confrontation of regional and world powers after peace is established there, will it be able to cope?
H. Karzai: This is a very important question. Our neighbours are major world powers, such as Russia, China, India, and regional players Iran, Pakistan, Turkey. Afghanistan is very appealing to global powers. However, the establishment of conditions for mutual understanding and cooperation with major players depends on the Afghans themselves. It is important that countries satisfy their interests in Afghanistan by means of mutually beneficial cooperation, and not unilaterally.
Sputnik: The participants of the talks confirmed that Afghanistan guarantees the absence of threats from its territory. How exactly? For example, one of the global community's most serious concerns is the threat of IS.
H. Karzai: We will resort to all effective measures. The people of Afghanistan are responsible for ensuring that their neighbours and the international community are free from threats emanating from its territory. In Afghanistan, there will be no extremism, no terrorist groups, no subversive activity and, thus, it won't go beyond the country's borders.
The fight against IS terrorists will be carried out by national security forces, the people and the government of the country, together with the support of regional and world powers.
Sputnik: What type of assistance can other countries provide for the restoration of Afghanistan?
H. Karzai: The rebuilding of Afghanistan is the responsibility of the Afghan people, and we must rely on our strength to achieve this. If a country wants to contribute to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, we will only welcome such efforts. Russia is our neighbour, our long-time friend, one of the largest world powers. Its role will be very important for us both in establishing close trade and bilateral economic relations and in building infrastructure, as well as attracting the assistance of other countries to Afghanistan.
Sputnik: The participants of the talks agreed that delisting the Taliban from the UN blacklist, as well as official recognition of the Taliban office in Qatar are prerequisites for peace negotiations. What will be the next step? Will the participants of this dialogue address the UN on this?
H. Karzai: We have done this before. During my presidency, we asked the UN to remove the Taliban from the "blacklist". We will do so again now. At yesterday's meeting, it was especially noted that in order to establish peace, it is necessary to remove the Taliban from the list.
Sputnik: Earlier, you repeatedly insisted on convening a Loya Jirga (grand assembly of Afghan elders, elected from ethnic-tribal groups to deal with crisis situations Sputnik). Do you think that after the results achieved during the "Intra-Afghan Dialogue" all the necessary conditions for holding a national assembly are there? Will you now make efforts to convene the Loya Jirga after the Moscow talks?
H. Karzai: Yes, definitely. All the necessary conditions for convening the Loya Jirga, which is the main all-Afghan council where decisions are made in emergency situations are there. And the position in which Afghanistan is now in, holding the Loya Jirga is the best way to resolve all its problems. Of course, it is necessary to determine the time and place of the assembly, as well as to make all the necessary preparations. The decisions that will be made at the Jirga will be recognised by all Afghans and will be made official.
Sputnik: Is it necessary to preserve military bases in Afghanistan, as the Americans want, or is Afghanistan able to protect its borders and ensure its own security?
H. Karzai: It is our responsibility to protect our borders and ourselves. No foreigners can do it. We have already realised that this is impossible. The question of maintaining US military bases in Afghanistan, the Americans must leave to the Afghans. This decision must be made by the people of Afghanistan at the Loya Jirga.
Sputnik: So you believe that the US mission in Afghanistan has failed?
H. Karzai: That's absolutely true. Unfortunately, it's led to so many people suffering from them (the Americans).
Sputnik: And the last question, do you read Sputnik?
H. Karzai: Of course, I read it. I get news every day (from Sputnik). I really like it. It's great (the site).
Sputnik
Mexican President Urges to Provide Aid to Venezuela Without Political Intentions
Sputnik News
20:51 08.02.2019
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called on Friday on the international community to provide Venezuela with humanitarian aid without any "political intentions."
"The humanitarian aid must not be confused with political issues and if there is a wish to resolve the situation around the humanitarian aid, let the United Nations intervene and distribute the humanitarian aid without any political intentions We do not want violence, we want peace and dialogue," Lopez Obrador said during a press conference.
On Monday, the press office for Carlos Vecchio, opposition leader Juan Guaido's envoy to the United States, said that the opposition would conduct an international conference in Washington, DC, on February 14 to seek emergency humanitarian assistance.
Venezuela has been suffering from political and economic crisis triggered by the fall of global oil prices, with the opposition actively using the deteriorating humanitarian situation in its rhetoric.
The crisis took a new turn on January 23 when the speaker of the opposition-led Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaido, declared himself interim president amid ongoing anti-government protests. The next day, the United States, which swiftly recognized Guaido, said that it was ready to provide the country with more than $20 million in humanitarian assistance.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who accuses Washington of staging a coup in the Latin American country, is still recognized by Russia, China, Mexico and some other countries as Venezuela's only legitimate president.
Sputnik
Paris, Berlin Take First Step Toward Jet That Will Replace Rafale, Eurofighters
Sputnik News
20:52 08.02.2019(updated 20:58 08.02.2019)
Paris and Berlin, which have pushed the idea of creating a joint European army, unveiled their ambitious goal to design the new Future Combat Air System (FCAS), including a fighter and associated weapons in July 2017. It has taken them almost two years to proceed to taking concrete steps.
French Defence Minister Florence Parly and her German counterpart Ursula von der Leyen announced the first part of their programme, which aims to create a next-generation warplane of their own and weapons for it, as they presented a two-year contract worth 65 million euros.
The fighter jet intended to eventually replace France's Rafale and Germany's Eurofighters is to become operational by 2040, while the first demonstration flights are expected in 2025. The contractors entrusted with the mission, funded by France and Germany equally, are Paris-based Dassault Aviation and Airbus, with its headquarters in Leiden, the Netherlands.
Airbus Defence and Space researchers work during the presentation of the satellite Eutelsat 172B, the first entirely electric European satellite, at the Airbus Defence and Space Headquarters in Toulouse on March 15, 2017, prior to its departure to Kourou where it will be launched in April 2017
The ministers made an announcement at the Safran Aircraft Engines facility in Gennevilliers near Paris, which will design the new fighter's engine together with German aviation producer MTU Aero Engines. Representatives of the two companies signed the deal in the presence of von der Leyen and Parly.
The French minister branded the contract "ambitious" and "the very first brick of a stupendous building". The number of participants in the programme is expected to grow, as von der Leyen revealed that they will have Spain join "within the coming weeks and months".
Additionally, future collaborators of the project include French electronics company Thales and European missile manufacturer MBDA.
The preparatory work for the milestone signing has taken nearly two years, as plans to design the next-generation Future Combat Air System (FCAS) comprising a new fighter jet and accessory weapons were announced by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in July 2017.
In a friendly gesture to France, the German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr, decided against buying Lockheed Martin's F-35 stealth combat aircraft, capable of performing both ground-attacks and air missions, in spite of earlier plans. It will now choose between US-based Boeing's F/A-18 jets or Airbus' Eurofighters for a $3.4 billion contract. Paris earlier warned that opting for the F-35 could hamper the development of the new Franco-German warplane.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel signed a new bilateral agreement aimed at boosting bilateral foreign policy, economic, defence, security, culture, and climate cooperation on 22 January.
Both leaders have pushed the idea of a joint European army for the bloc, something that would be part of the wider transatlantic NATO alliance, for the past year. In early November 2018, Macron called for the creation of what he touted as a "true European army", which he said would protect the interests of the bloc a notion that was vocally supported by Merkel.
However, EU foreign policy and defence chief Federica Mogherini rejected the idea in November, just as NATO head Jens Stoltenberg warned that EU efforts should not compete with the alliance, which he called the bedrock of European security. Washington-Brussels tensions over an EU army followed multiple statements made by US President Donald Trump, who has accused NATO members of freeloading off the United States.
Sputnik
China Sent 95 Ships to Intimidate Philippines' Projects in South China Sea
Sputnik News
22:00 08.02.2019
China has reportedly deployed a fleet of nearly 100 ships to the Thitu Island, one of several disputed islands in the South China Sea, in an effort to stop ongoing construction work being carried out by the Philippine government.
According to a Wednesday report published by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), a think tank run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Beijing recently began dispatching vessels from the Subi Reef, which lies roughly 12 nautical miles from Thitu.
On December 3, 2018, with construction days away from beginning on Thitu, China deployed at least 24 vessels to the disputed island, the report notes. Construction had previously been halted due to poor weather and rough seas.
For the remainder of the month, and going into January 2019, the size of the Chinese fleet, composed of vessels with the People's Liberation Army-Navy, China's Coast Guard and various fishing ships, fluctuated as they stationed themselves near the contested island as construction commenced.
Ships transiting from Subi Reef to Thitu Island, Dec 20 2018
"The fishing boats have mostly been anchored between 2 and 5.5 nautical miles west of Thitu, while the naval and coast guard ships operate slightly farther away to the south and west," the report explains.
"This deployment is consistent with prior examples of China's 'cabbage strategy,' which employs concentric layers of fishing, law enforcement and naval vessels around contested areas."
On December 20, 2018, satellite imagery showed 95 Chinese vessels near the island, before many were recalled, leaving the overall tally at 42 ships by January 26, 2019. Two of the vessels spotted during December 20 observations were identified by AMTI as a PLAN Type 053H1G frigate and a CCG Type 818 cutter.
"The drop in the number of government vessels, mirroring the reduction of the militia presence, suggests Chinese forces have settled into a pattern of monitoring and intimidation after their initial large deployment failed to convince Manila to halt construction," the report concluded.
According to the Philippine Star, "Chinese coast guard vessels and militia fishing boats" have also been spotted near Sandy Cay, a shoal located some 2.5 nautical miles from Thitu Island. Also known as Pag-asa Island, it is claimed by the Philippines, China, Taiwan and Vietnam and is the second largest of the Spratly Islands.
The Philippine government's plan to build a beaching ramp on Thitu to allow Filipino ships to better transport repair materials and to lengthen the island's runway to accommodate larger planes was initially announced in April 2017.
Earlier this week, the AMTI report was criticized by Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana over its claims that ongoing construction efforts would also include land reclamation, the Manila Bulletin reported.
"As of now, only the beaching ramp is being undertaken. Next is the concreting of the runway. The third phase is the lengthening of the runway, which will entail the reclamation of about 300 meters," Lorenzana explained to reporters on Thursday.
"Reclamation means there is land before, and you are reclaiming the land back. Since there is no land, but the water, we call it filling up the space with stones, gravel and soil."
Lorenzana issued a statement on the presence of Chinese vessels on Friday, stressing that building efforts would continue and that other claimants in the disputed water should "respect Philippine sovereignty" and behave in a "civilized manner befitting members of the global community."
"Having undergone careful planning and consideration, with full respect to international law and rules-based order governing civilized states, implementing these improvements is a legitimate undertaking and well within our rights as a sovereign nation," Lorenzana said in the statement.
The Philippine Star reported that aside from the focus on the runway, the government will also be working on constructing better barracks for soldiers, sewage disposal systems, storage facilities for fishermen and lighthouses, among other projects.
Sputnik
'Case Study' In How Not to Innovate: US Admiral on Electromagnetic Rail Gun
Sputnik News
22:11 08.02.2019(updated 00:33 09.02.2019)
The US Navy's chief of naval operations says the fledgling electromagnetic railgun designed for surface ships is a "case study" in how not to develop a weapons system.
"I would say that railgun is kind of the case study that would say, 'This is how innovation maybe shouldn't happen,'" US Adm. John M. Richardson said at the Atlantic Council on Wednesday in Washington.
The US Navy has spent at least $500 million developing the weapon, which would shoot projectiles farther and faster using electromagnetic currents instead of chemical explosives. One of the ideas behind the weapon is that it could shoot projectiles at hypersonic speeds such that the projectile's kinetic impact alone would render explosives-based railgun projectiles redundant.
"It's been around, I think, for about 15 years, maybe 20. So, 'rapid' doesn't come to mind when you're talking about timeframes like that," the admiral said at the Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
More time and more money won't suffice to fix the railgun's engineering problems, since the project has had plenty of both and yet still faces challenges. "The engineering of building something like that, that can handle that much electromagnetic energy and not just explode, is challenging," said Richardson.
Sputnik News warned in May of 2017 that the "game changer" weapon system was on the verge of being permanently shelved as the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office sought to starve the railgun of funds. "People at SCO don't want to fund the railgun because they're simply not buying it," a Capitol Hill staffer said at the time.
The head of naval operations is holding out hope for a turnaround anyway. "So, we're going to continue after this, right? We're going to install this thing. We're going to continue to develop it, test it it's too great a weapon system, so it's going somewhere, hopefully."
Meanwhile, images of a railgun mounted onto the bow of a Chinese Type 072II-class landing ship last month prompted informed speculation the ship was heading out for sea trials, Sputnik reported.
The railgun was once intended for the US Navy's Zumwalt-class stealth warship program, but that program has been a virtual failure, according to watchdogs. "If the US war in Afghanistan were a ship, it would be a Navy Zumwalt-class destroyer," the Project on Government Oversight says of the US Navy's 'Titanium Tin Cans.' Alas, "inside a Pentagon spending nearly $2 billion a day, it's easy to lose sight of truly wasteful programs," POGO noted in a report last month.
Sputnik
U.S. Plans 'Full Pullout' From Syria By End Of April
February 08, 2019
The Pentagon plans to pull all U.S. troops out of Syria by the end of April, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
The report published on February 7 said the withdrawal was due to take place even though the U.S. administration has yet to develop plans to protect allied Kurdish fighters from attack when they leave.
The report cited unidentified current and former U.S. officials.
In response to the report, a State Department official said the United States had "no set timetable for withdrawal of military forces" from Syria. The Defense Department declined to comment.
President Donald Trump surprised U.S. lawmakers and international allies in December by announcing he intended to withdraw all 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, where they are assisting an Arab and Kurdish alliance fighting in some of the last areas held by Islamic State (IS) militants.
Critics have said that the vacuum left by the departure of U.S. troops from Syria could result in a resurgence of IS and Al-Qaeda in the country or neighboring Iraq.
The Wall Street Journal reported that unless the U.S. administration changes course, the military plans to withdraw a significant portion of its forces by mid-March. A full pullout would come by the end of April, the report said.
U.S. officials have been made little progress in reaching agreement with Turkish forces to prevent Kurdish fighters from being attacked, the report said. Ankara accuses Kurds in Syria of having links to Kurdish insurgents in Turkey.
The Wall Street Journal said U.S. officials began briefing European allies on the pullout this week in Washington when they gathered for a conference to discuss future efforts in the fight against IS.
Based on reporting by The Wall Street Journal
Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-plans-full-pullout-from- syria-by-end-of-april/29758744.html
Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
Military invasion among US options against Venezuela government: Russia
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 02:51AM
Russia has warned that the United States is considering a range of options against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, including a direct military invasion of the Latin American country, which has been engulfed in political unrest over the past weeks.
"There are still signs coming from Washington about the possibility of using force in order to overthrow the legal authorities, including through direct military invasion," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a weekly briefing in Moscow on Thursday. "This is actually being spoken about openly in the White House."
Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have thronged the streets of Venezuela, holding rallies in support and against Maduro, who began his second six-year term in office last month.
The clashes began after Juan Guaido, the opposition leader in the country's National Assembly, proclaimed himself as "interim president" and urged Maduro to resign.
The US rushed to support Guaido, announcing sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry. Other US officials have also doubled down on the possibility of military action, reiterating President Donald Trump's stance that "all options are on the table."
In an interview with CBS on Sunday, Trump said military action against Maduro remained "an option."
Zakharova said Thursday that Washington had already made up its mind about a military action and "everything else is nothing more than a covering operation." The Russian diplomat said such threats violated the Charter of the United Nations.
She criticized American officials for threatening Caracas with more economic sanctions while calling on the military to defect the legal government of Maduro.
"Washington has turned to direct threats of sanctions to the Venezuelan military, which remains loyal to the legitimate government. That is just a different, new reading of the 'carrot and stick' approach. On the one hand, they threaten a potential punishment. On the other hand, they promise a potential reward", Zakharova noted.
"I would like to recall that this kind of statement from the mouth of American officials is a direct violation of Article 2 Par. 4 of the UN Charter, ordering all UN members to refrain from the threat or use of force in international relations", she said at the briefing.
On Wednesday, US National Security Adviser John Bolton said Washington was ready to exempt Venezuelan military commanders from sanctions if they joined Guaido.
Earlier, he had called on Venezuela's military forces and other government officials to use Guaido's "amnesty" and pledge allegiance to him.
Guaido has been in talks with military officials in Venezuela to convince them to defect. He has published an open letter, calling on the military to withdraw their support from Maduro.
Venezuelan authorities said Wednesday they had seized a large shipment of US-made weapons aboard a cargo plane that had taken off from Miami, Florida.
EU, LatAm countries call for peaceful resolution of crisis
On Thursday, ministers from over a dozen European and Latin American countries called for "free, transparent and credible presidential elections" in Venezuela to resolve the ongoing crisis.
The International Contact Group (GCI) said all sides needed to find a "peaceful, democratic" way out of the situation "without the use of force."
Besides the US, other major Western powers such as the UK, France, Spain and Germany have recognized Guaido as president.
Russia, China, Iran and Turkey are some of the countries that have thrown their support behind Maduro.
Maduro: US pushes military plans under humanitarian cover-up
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 08:14AM
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says US President Donald Trump is using Venezuela's humanitarian crisis as a cover-up for his military plans in the country.
"The humanitarian crisis is nothing but a cover-up for military plans of the Trump government," said Maduro at a rally gathering signatures against US interference in the country's domestic affairs.
The Venezuelan president vowed to "defeat the US coup attempt," saying Venezuelans are united in the face of American attempts to undermine the country's sovereignty.
"I have just signed the petition supporting the peace, the sacred sovereignty of Venezuela, the right to independence and self-determination of the Venezuelan people. Empire, hands off Venezuela! Venezuela deserves respect," said Maduro.
The Venezuelan president also lashed out at Trump for trying to hamper a peaceful settlement of the crisis.
"President Donald Trump has been trying to destroy the noble initiative of dialogue, suggested by Uruguay and Mexico with the support of the Caribbean Community, aimed at peaceful solution and launch of dialogue in Venezuela," he said.
Earlier on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed Washington's military ambitions in Venezuela, saying the US has illegitimately called for mutiny among the Latin American country's military.
The US has staunchly backed Venezuela's self-proclaimed "interim president" Juan Guaido after Maduro was sworn in for a second term in January after winning an election boycotted by the opposition.
Guaido, the head of the National Assembly, declared himself president on January 23.
Washington has threatened to use military force in the country, with US officials saying "all options are on the table" against Caracas.
Speaking on Thursday, Washington's special envoy on Venezuela Elliott Abrams said the time for dialogue with Maduro had "long passed" and that no talks would be accepted other than for his "departure".
The US has since confiscated Venezuelan state assets in America, including a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company, to channel them to Guaido.
'Peaceful settlement'
On Thursday, representatives from more than 10 European and Latin American countries held a meeting in Uruguayan capital of Montevideo to seek a solution to the crisis.
At a joint presser, European Union Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini and Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa stressed that the Venezuelan issue should be settled in a peaceful way instead of using violence.
Outside the venue of the meeting, a protest rally was held by local residents opposing foreign interference in Venezuela's internal affairs. The protesters said Venezuelan people have the right to decide their future.
Earlier, Uruguay and Mexico unveiled a four-step proposal, the "Montevideo Mechanism", to bring Venezuela's disputing parties closer to the negotiating table.
The first step calls for immediate dialogue to create conditions for direct contact between President Maduro and the right-wing opposition led by Guaido.
Photo: Contributed
B.C. bats are threatened by disease, and researchers are asking the public for help.
White Nose Syndrome, a fungal disease responsible for the death of millions of bats in eastern North America, has moved to the West Coast.
The disease reportedly has near 100 per cent mortality for some species of bats exposed to the fungus. WNS does not affect humans.
The B.C. Community Bat Program and provincial government are seeking the publics help in monitoring the spread of this disease.
We believe that our bats hibernate in relatively small groups across the province said Paula Rodriguez de la Vega, Okanagan program co-ordinator with the B.C. Community Bat Program.
Detecting WNS in our province will require many eyes on the ground."
The typical first sign of the disease is bats flying during the winter, when they should be hibernating.
If you find a dead bat, report it to the CBP (1-855-922-2287 ext. 13 or [email protected] as soon as possible.
Never touch a dead bat with your bare hands. If you or your pet has been in direct contact with the bat, you will need further information regarding the risk of rabies.
Senior pro-Hadi commander slain in clashes with Houthi fighters near Saudi border
Iran Press TV
Fri Feb 8, 2019 02:25PM
A senior Yemeni military commander loyal to Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, the former president, has been killed during heavy clashes with army soldiers and allied fighters from the Houthi Ansaullah movement in the country's northwestern province of Hajjah.
Colonel Ahmed Abu Hadi, commander of the First Division of the pro-Hadi Special Forces Brigade, was killed along with dozens of Hadi loyalists on Thursday as Yemeni troops and their allies launched a surprise attack east of Harad district in the province.
The Special Forces Brigade is one of the brigades that Saudi-sponsored and pro-Hadi militiamen established in 2015 near Saudi Arabia's southern border regions in a bid to mount attacks against the Yemeni northern provinces of Hajjah, Sa'ada and al-Jawf, which are controlled by the Ansarullah movement.
Thursday's deadly attack was the latest by Yemeni army soldiers and Houthi fighters against Hadi loyalists.
On January 10, Yemeni forces and Popular Committees fighters attacked Saudi Arabia's mercenaries at Anad Air Base in the country's southwestern province of Lahij with the new domestically-developed Qasef K2 (Striker K2) combat drone.
Speaking during a press conference in the capital Sana'a on the same day, spokesman for Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the unmanned aerial vehicle could strike its designated targets from 20 meters away.
On January 13, Chief of Yemen's pro-Hadi military intelligence agency, Brigadier General Saleh Tamah, succumbed to injuries he had sustained in the same drone strike.
Pro-Hadi deputy chief of staff, General Saleh Zindani, died of his wounds at a hospital in the United Arab Emirates on February 3.
He was among several senior Saudi-sponsored commanders, who were injured in the Yemeni aerial assault.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing Hadi's government back to power and crushing Ansarullah.
According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of around 56,000 Yemenis.
The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country's infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN has already said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
A number of Western countries, the US and Britain in particular, are also accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.
Seabees Proud to Serve People of Tinian as DSCA Support Comes to Close
Navy News Service
Story Number: NNS190208-04
Release Date: 2/8/2019 10:21:00 AM
By MCC Matthew R. White and MC2 Kelsey J. Hockenberger,
SANTA RITA, Guam (NNS) -- Civilian and military dignitaries gathered in Tinian, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), to offer praise and thanks to the Seabees for their efforts supporting the island following the devastation wrought by Super Typhoon Yutu.
"To our men and women in uniform today, I salute you," said Tinian Mayor Edwin Aldan at an event Feb. 7. "In rebuilding our homes, you have helped restore certainty in our community and the confidence that we need to keep moving forward."
Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 1 and NMCB 3, alongside other units from the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command region, repaired 184 roofs, installed 196 temporary tents for families whose homes were damaged and unlivable immediately following the typhoon, produced more than 54,000 gallons of potable drinking water, cleared debris from 64 miles of road, and translocated 10,036 cubic yards of debris.
"As the storm passed over the island, we had prepared and we know that you had prepared as you always do for these storms," said Rear Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, commander Joint Region Marianas. "The devastation here had struck me so profoundly, and the survivors of this storm have been on my mind every day since then. It has been a great honor of mine to lead the Department of Defense mission here."
The Seabees deployed to Tinian immediately following Super Typhoon Yutu to support the Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) mission following Yutu, which was the second-strongest storm to hit U.S. territory in recorded history. They were part of Task Force-West, which was the Indo-Pacific Command response to Yutu, initially divided into Task Group Tinian and Task Group Saipan, eventually rolled into Task Group Engineer and included units from the Navy, Marines, Air Force, Army, and Coast Guard.
"Without our Department of Defense and the many components of it and FEMA, these islands would have not been able to recover in the short period of time that we have," said CNMI Lt. Governor Arnold Palacios. "So you have in this corner of the nation, in this commonwealth, a grateful community, a really grateful community. To all the men and women in FEMA and all the branches of the Department of Defense who were here to help us pick up our lives. Are we back to normalcy? No. But we are almost there and it is because of your hard work every day, day in and day out." Palacios added "Know this that you have a grateful American community in Tinian and Saipan and the rest of the Commonwealth. Not only are we grateful, but we are proud of our Department of Defense. We are very proud of every man and woman in our Department of Defense. Now, we really see what our Department of Defense is all about. Thank you very much. Thank you for everything that you've done for us."
With the close of Department of Defense support to DSCA, FEMA and civilian authorities will continue to provide support to essential services on Tinian and Saipan.
"It has been an honor for the U.S. Military is to serve our brothers and sisters in the CNMI to support civil and local authorities as they continue recovery efforts in the wake of Typhoon Yutu," said Chatfield. "Service members from Joint Region Marianas and Indo-Pacific Command worked with FEMA and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands' civil and local officials to deliver water, fuel, housing, transportation, medical support, electricity and food across the affected regions in Guam and the Marianas Islands. Going forward, the DoD remains ready to support FEMA and local and civilian authorities as needed with forces in Joint Region Marianas."
LPD 17 Class Flight II Program Moves the Navy Forward with Common Rail Fuel Injection
Navy News Service
Story Number: NNS190208-08
Release Date: 2/8/2019 11:46:00 AM
From Team Ships Public Affairs
WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The next generation LPD 17 Flight II Class amphibious transport dock ships are moving forward in Main Propulsion Diesel Engine (MPDE) efficiency by installing the common rail fuel injection system on the ship's Pielstick-Colt 2.5V Sequentially Turbocharged (STC) engine. This technically advanced system replaces the existing mechanical fuel delivery
system and is expected to yield significant lifecycle cost savings due to reduced fuel usage and maintenance costs.
"We made the right decision to incorporate reduced fuel consumption, reduced emissions, less maintenance, and improved reliability into our next generation of amphibious ships," said Capt. Brian Metcalf, LPD 17 class program manager for Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships. "Innovation should be driven into all levels of design, and this is just one example of NAVSEA's culture of affordability mission."
The project began in 2015 with discussions between PEO Ships, NAVSEA's engineering and ship lifecycle management directorates, and Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD), who is serving as technical lead for the contract. Fairbanks Morse engineers collaborated with MAN Diesel and NSWCPD to develop the prototype, which was tested on a future USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD-28) engine.
Upon completion of testing, the common rail fuel injection components were removed, and the mechanical fuel injection components were re-installed and retested prior to shipment. Prototype testing on the factory engines demonstrated fuel savings across the Navy operating envelope, and an emission-reducing engine operating profile was also developed.
The future USS Richard M. McCool Jr. (LPD 29), currently under construction at Huntington Ingalls Industries Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, will be the first of many amphibious ships delivered to the Navy with common rail fuel injection MPDEs.
As one of the Defense Department's largest acquisition organizations, PEO Ships is responsible for executing the development and procurement of all destroyers, amphibious ships, special mission and support ships, boats and craft.
USS Green Bay, 31st MEU Arrive in Thailand for Cobra Gold
Navy News Service
Story Number: NNS190208-12
Release Date: 2/8/2019 1:25:00 PM
By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Anaid Banuelos Rodriguez, USS Green Bay (LPD 20) Public Affairs
SATTAHIP, Thailand (NNS) -- Forward-deployed amphibious transport dock USS Green Bay (LPD 20), with the embarked 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), arrived in Sattahip, Thailand, Feb. 7 to participate in exercise Cobra Gold 2019.
Cobra Gold is the largest theater security cooperation exercise in the Indo-Pacific region and is designed to bringing together a robust, multinational force to address shared goals and security commitments.
"It is really great to be back in Thailand and participating in Cobra Gold", said Capt. Tom Shultz, Green Bay's commanding officer. "The ship was last here in 2017, so we're all happy to be back and look forward to building our capacity and interoperability with Thailand and other partners from the region. The crew is focused on the exercise and ready for the complex and realistic multinational and task force operations."
During the visit, the Green Bay crew will participate in two volunteer service opportunities interacting with more than 600 Thailand youth and staff members.
"We're incredibly grateful for the hospitality and welcome we've received in Thailand," said Lt. Danny Cho, Green Bay's command chaplain. "Our community service events are ways for our crew to express our thanks and continue building on the positive relations we've had with our host nation."
The crew will also get the chance to participate in a variety of trips offered by Green Bay's Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) department.
"The goal of our MWR team is to give Sailors and Marines the opportunity to get the most out of their port visit and make memories that will last a lifetime," said Ensign Michael Vassallo, Green Bay's afloat recreation officer. "Many have not been to Thailand before and we want to make sure they experience the country's rich culture and landscape."
Cobra Gold 19, in its 38th iteration, will be held from Feb. 12-23 with up to 29 nations participating including Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, and Singapore. The exercise emphasizes coordination on civic action, such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, seeking to expand regional cooperation and collaboration in these vital areas.
Green Bay, a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship, was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 2009. The ship is forward deployed to Sasebo, Japan as part of Commander, Amphibious Force 7th Fleet and is operating in the Indo-Pacific region to enhance interoperability with partners and serve as a ready-response force for any type of contingency.
Feb. 8, 2019
News
By David Vergun
Defense.gov
Service Secretaries Link Reform to Greater Lethality
WASHINGTON -- Army Secretary Mark T. Esper, Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson spoke about reform today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here.
"Reform is the means by which we free up time, money and manpower to do modernization and readiness better," Esper said. Modernization has to do with producing more lethally effective weapons and equipment, and readiness includes such things as training and exercises between the services and with the nation's allies and partners.
The Army last year stood up Army Futures Command, the biggest organization in the Army in 45 years, Esper said. The command, he explained, will focus on the Army's six modernization priorities: long-range precision fires; a next-generation combat vehicle; future vertical lift; network, air and missile defense; and soldier lethality.
Those are areas needed to counter high-end threats from nations such as Russia and China, he said. The reform aspect had to do with eliminating, downsizing or delaying other programs that, while important, didn't directly contribute to the six focus areas, he added.
Wilson said the Air Force equivalent of the Army Futures Command is its Warfighting Integration Center. Spencer said the Navy is collaborating with both and also is reviewing every plane, ship, submarine, weapon and piece of equipment it designs or turns out to ensure they're closely aligned to the high-end fight.
In the last 18 months, naval officials have met with industry leaders to assure them that "we're partners in solution providing," Spencer said.
"Their response to us was, 'You have to be a responsible client,' he continued. "I get it. I have to be clear on what I need and what I can provide. The biggest thing I can provide is consistent funding to allow our partners in the private sector to spend the [research and development] dollars to provide us the solutions that we need."
Defense Department Audit
Last year was the first year the entire military was audited. All three secretaries had praise for the audit and said it will continue to be an important tool of reform in coming years.
The audit enables the Navy to see exactly where it is putting its resources and the expected return on investment in its programs, Spencer said. "We actually have a credible tool to come back to Congress and say, 'Thank you for the money. Here's the output metrics of how we're getting after national security," he added.
For example, he said, the audit showed that the Navy has 700 distribution centers. Amazon does it with just 25. "There's room for improvement," the Navy secretary said.
Reforming the Culture
Esper acknowledged that risk aversion exists within the modernization enterprise for the Army and said the same probably is true in the other services as well. "At the end of the day, you have to shift the culture so folks are focused on the outcome, and not the process, so they feel empowered to take and manage risk in their programs and less focused on checklists. It takes time, but we're getting there."
"It's a leadership issue," Spencer said. "We have the tools we need, and now it's up to leadership to say, 'Pick up the tool and bang it around,'" referring to a willingness to experiment and to go after cutting-edge developments in such things as hypersonics, rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing.
While reform in the military is important, so is legislative reform as it relates to the services, the secretaries said.
Each year, the military gets money from Congress to operate and pay its personnel. For many years, those dollars were inadequate, and Congress was late in approving those budgets. The secretaries all agreed that in the last few years, particularly fiscal year 2019, the budget was adequate and on time.
Esper cited an example of how adequate and timely funding directly contributes to readiness.
At the end of 2016, the Army had 18 brigade combat teams the main fighting formations that go into combat -- in the top readiness tier, he said. Today, he said, there are 28.
Having a budget and authorization bill on time this year has been a tremendous benefit to the Air Force as well, Wilson said, but she added that the size of the Air Force today is still too small and the services' planes are showing their age.
Lt. Gen. Cavoli visits Tennessee troops deployed to Ukraine
By 1st Lt. Kealy Moriarty February 8, 2019
YAVORIV, Ukraine -- U.S. Army Europe Commanding Officer, Lt. Gen. Christopher Cavoli visits U.S. Troops and multinational Soldiers deployed to the Yavoriv Combat Training Center, Feb. 8.
During his visit, Cavoli met with Ukrainian General Pavel Tkachuk, visited new training facilities, toured the new base improvements and met with multinational Soldiers.
The tour began with visiting the Ukrainian Military Operation and Urban Terrain site, which is a newly developed and modernized form of training at the YCTC. The MOUT site is the latest training development at the YCTC and is currently being used to train Ukrainian rotational units in urban warfare.
After visiting training sites, Cavoli toured some of the new base improvements, which included newly renovated living quarters, gym and MWR amenities.
Cavoli then dined with multiple Soldiers in the base dining facility.
"It was an outstanding experience for our younger Soldiers to be able and have lunch with a general," stated Cpt. Teri Calvert. "It demonstrates true compassion, caring, and interest not only in the welfare and morale of the Soldiers here but it also shows genuine caring by the General."
Cavoli seemed to leave a great impact not only on the multinational Soldiers but also on the U.S. troops who have been deployed to Ukraine since last summer.
"As a younger enlisted Soldier, it is always a great feeling when your hard work and effort is noticed," said Spc. Justin Smith. "He emphasized how great of a job we all as a unit are doing with this mission and to me, it was a great feeling too ."
Cavoli assumed command in January 2018 and is the 39th commanding general for U.S. Army Europe.
"The visit and lunch boosted morale when the general expressed his appreciation for a job well done and the positive impact the Tennessee National Guard has made while here at JMTG-U," Calvert said.
Media Claims UK Police Investigating Total of 5 Russians in Salisbury Case
Sputnik News
08:55 08.02.2019(updated 09:13 08.02.2019)
MOSCOW (Sputnik) The UK police have identified two more Russian nationals suspected of involvement in the Salisbury poisoning incident, bringing the total number of suspects to five, local media reported, citing senior security sources.
The Daily Mail newspaper reported late on Thursday that the two newly identified suspects in the attack on Russian ex-intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia got a UK tourist visas last March and were believed to already be back in Russia.
The police were expected to inform government officials on the evidence against the two individuals "within weeks", the reports added.
The outlet noted that the pair was not believed to have arrived in the United Kingdom together with Petrov and Boshirov, adding that the role of the two new suspects in the incident was much smaller.
Earlier this week, The Telegraph reported that a third Russian suspect in the Salisbury poisoning attack had cancelled his flight back to Moscow and could still be staying in the United Kingdom. The newspaper suggested that the alleged Russian security officer, using the name Sergey Fedotov, arrived in the country on the same day as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, the two suspects originally accused by London of having a role in the poisoning attack. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called these claims an unfounded hoax.
London has blamed the Salisbury poisoning incident on Moscow but Russia has denied any involvement in the incident, noting that no proof of its role has been provided.
Moreover, the UK Porton Down laboratory has said it was unable to confirm that the substance used in the Salisbury attack was produced in Russia.
Moscow has said that it sent dozens of requests to London asking that it be granted access to the investigation into the poisoning incident. Moscow has also offered to work together with London and carry out a joint investigation into the attack. London did not respond to these proposals, instead claiming that Russia rejected its calls for cooperation.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that the Salisbury poisoning case was falling apart due to the lack of proof of Russia's involvement in the attack on the Skripals.
The UK authorities subsequently said that Petrov and Boshirov were the suspected perpetrators of the attack on the Skripals and UK police officer Nick Bailey, who was also critically exposed to the nerve agent. However, London has not provided any evidence of these individuals' involvement in the case. The UK authorities argued that the Russian military intelligence service, also referred to as the GRU, was behind the poisoning.
Petrov and Boshirov have said in an interview with the RT broadcaster that they visited Salisbury on the day of the attack for tourism purposes and worked in the fitness industry. They also denied any involvement with Russian military intelligence.
Sputnik
Trump Accuses House Intel Chief of Collusion With Creators of Russia 'Dossier'
Sputnik News
18:19 08.02.2019
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff colluded with the creators of a controversial dossier published during the 2016 presidential campaign Fusion GPS and the company's founder Glenn Simpson, President Donald Trump charged in a series of Twitter messages on Friday.
"Now we find out that Adam Schiff was spending time together in Aspen with Glenn Simpson of GPS Fusion, who wrote the fake and discredited Dossier," Trump said. The unverified dossier accused Trump of licentious behaviour during a trip to Moscow as a private citizen.
Trump based his accusations on a report in The Hill disclosing a photograph of Schiff and Simpson talking at the Aspen Security Forum last July. Both Schiff and Simpson told the publication that they only spoke briefly.
The US president has also accused the mainstream news media of ignoring comments by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, who said in an interview on Thursday that after two years of investigation, his panel found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Throughout the investigation, Trump has called Mueller's probe a "witch hunt."
Russia has repeatedly denied interfering in the election, saying the allegations were made up to excuse the defeat of Trump's campaign opponent as well as deflect public attention from actual instances of electoral fraud and corruption. The claims of collusion have also been repeatedly dismissed by Moscow.
Sputnik
Mystery In Sofia: Did 'Third Russian Agent' In Skripal Poisoning Target Bulgarian Businessman?
By Tony Wesolowsky February 08, 2019
A third suspect in the 2018 nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain was also in Bulgaria three years earlier at the time of another suspicious poisoning, according to the open-source investigative organization Bellingcat.
In a fresh report released on February 7 along with its Russian partner, The Insider, Bellingcat said the Russian security agent arrived in Bulgaria in April 2015 -- just days before a local entrepreneur and his son became seriously ill after being poisoned by an unidentified substance.
The company of businessman Emilian Gebrev had contracts to deliver military equipment to Ukraine, whose relations with Russia sunk after Moscow's annexation of its Crimean Peninsula and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Bellingcat said the 45-year-old man, who traveled under the alias Sergei Vyacheslavovich Fedotov, had been "conclusively identified as an agent of Russian military intelligence," known as the GRU.
RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service quoted Bulgarian government sources as saying a foreign intelligence service had suspicions at the time that Fedotov traveled to Bulgaria and contacted their counterparts in Sofia.
The Kremlin immediately cast doubt on the findings of the new Bellingcat investigation and earlier reports of a third suspect in the alleged Novichok poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, in March 2018.
"There's only one question: how is it possible that the use of some chemical warfare agent in Europe goes unnoticed in 2015? Why did we find this out only now?" Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on February 8, referring to the Bulgarian case, while not completely denying it.
According to Bellingcat, Fedotov flew from Moscow to Burgas, a resort on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, on April 24, 2015.
He was due to return on April 30 from Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, to Moscow, but did not board that flight.
Instead, late on April 28, he was at Istanbul's Ataturk airport and bought a last-minute ticket for a flight to Moscow.
Earlier on April 28, Gebrev was hospitalized after collapsing at a reception in Sofia. His son, Hristo, and an executive at his company, Valentin Tachchiev also fell ill. All three were hospitalized with suspected poisoning.
Gebrev's condition improved, and he was released from the hospital about a month later. But by late May he was back in the hospital after becoming sick again.
It was at this time, Bellingcat discovered, that Fedotov had returned to Bulgaria, flying on a direct flight from Moscow to Sofia on May 24, 2015.
Modus Operandi?
As with his last known visit to Bulgaria, Fedotov missed his booked return flight on May 28, 2015. Bellingcat said that two days later he took a flight from neighboring Serbia to Moscow.
Bulgarian government sources told RFE/RL that Bulgaria's intelligence service had been tipped off by a foreign intelligence service about Fedotov's possible travel to their country. That service, according to sources, was seeking confirmation of those suspicions.
Skipping booked flights appears to be part of Fedotov's modus operandi.
The British news outlet The Telegraph reported on February 6 that Fedotov had been in Salisbury at the time of the Skripal poisoning, but failed to board his scheduled flight back to Moscow along with the two suspected prime suspects, Anatoly Chepiga and Aleksandr Mishkin.
Peskov questioned whether the findings could be trusted.
"We don't know what they based their [Bellingcat] report on. We don't know whether they are competent, who they are and, moreover, whether it's true," Peskov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.
According to Bellingcat, Fedotov's identity was created in 2010 at the same time as the Skripal suspects, Mishkin and Chepiga, who traveled under documents with the names Aleksandr Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
Bellingcat said it was able to track Fedotov's travels from 2010 until his last trip to London in March 2018. It said over these eight years Fedotov traveled widely through Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, "often appearing in hot spots just days before news-making events."
Fedotov's true identity is still unknown -- as is his exact role in the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a nerve agent known as Novichok.
It's also unknown what chemical agent might have been used against Gebrev. According to Bulgarian media reports, lab tests conducted in Finland were able to identify a strong pesticide in Gebrev's urine, possibly the banned Amiton (known in Russia as Tetram).
Bellingcat suggested Gebrev may have been targeted because his company had exported military equipment to Ukraine or because of possible Russian interest in a Bulgarian arms plant he owned.
Gebrev reportedly insisted after the Skripal poisonings in March 2018 that Bulgarian authorities reopen an investigation into his 2015 poisoning.
With reporting by RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service
Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/mystery-in-sofia -did-third-russian-agent-in-skripal-poisoning-target- bulgarian-businessman-/29759839.html
Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
Google new job listing hints towards a possible smartwatch News oi-Vishal Kawadkar Google might be working on a smartwatch.
Android Wear announcement sparked rumors about Google making its own smartwatch for the platform. There were reports about a Pixel Watch doing rounds in mid-2018, however, Google said that it shouldn't be expected anytime soon.
Well, a new job listing from Google suggests that the company might be on to something. A new job listing on Google's Careers page is seeking a Vice President of Hardware Engineers for Wearables.
The company has the Pixel Buds in its wearable portfolio, and it seems unlikely that the company would hire a new vice president for another earbud product. The company has another job listing for 'Wearable Design Manager' but the description doesn't give away much.
The job listing reads: "As the Design Manager of the Wearables design team within the award-winning Google Hardware Design organization, you will be a critical leader and contributor to guide the efforts in defining and evolving what it means to hold 'Google in your hand'."
Google also acquired wearable technology from Fossil last month. It wasn't clear if the company still has plans to launch its own products, but the new job listing hints that the company has something planned something for this segment.
The wearable market is said to take flight in the coming years. Worldwide shipments of wearable devices will reach 225 million in 2019, an increase of 25.8 percent from 2018, market research firm Gartner said.
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12 Dishes That Will Make You Addicted to Georgian Cuisine - GeorgianJournal
The main market for such a system is the Comprehensive Nuclear-Ban Treaty Organization, an international agency based in Vienna, Austria, but Czyz said the design "could be adjusted and modified to fit other applications.
Amalesh Jana, a native of India who is seeking his Ph.D. in civil and construction engineering, also took on a big challenge.
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Knowing the possible damage from a major quake in the Cascadia subduction zone and knowing the importance Portland International Airport would play in relief efforts, Jana aimed to examine soil conditions to find the best way to keep the runways from failing.
Those runways are a lifeline and we need to stabilize them. Jana said.
Jana pulled out an aerial map of the airport and pointed out land west of the runway system that was used to drill cores of varying depths. Explosives were inserted explosives and detonated, with the project team measuring the amount of soil liquefaction that followed. The goal, Jana said, is to be able to use the data to help design a runway that can withstand a 9.0 magnitude quake.
A Sweet Home woman charged with weapons and other violations in Benton County Circuit Court has been picked up again on similar allegations.
Alanna Nicole Partin, 38, was pulled over for an alleged equipment violation by an Oregon State Police trooper shortly before 10:30 p.m. Thursday near the intersection of Northwest Third Street and Harrison Boulevard, according to an incident report.
The trooper observed a handgun on the dashboard of Partins black Chevy C-1500 pickup truck and did a records check, which showed Partin had a suspended drivers license and a prior felony conviction. She was taken to the Benton County Jail, where she was cited and released on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and driving while suspended.
After a Nov. 7 traffic stop in the same block, Partin was arrested by Benton County sheriffs deputies and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, interfering with a police officer and failure to carry or present a drivers license. The firearms charge carries a potential penalty of five years in prison.
For example, his district, which serves three counties, used Medicaid money to work with Lines for Life to focus on youth suicide prevention.
We dont need a (full time employee) in every county, Novotney said. What we do need is individuals who can help broker those relationships between county mental health, school districts in their region and have expertise in rolling out larger, regional programs to focus on youth suicide prevention and mental wellness.
Helt said in an interview that she wanted legislators to reach out to counties and see what they and school districts feel is the most effective way to serve kids who need help.
This is a very serious choice, to me, of how we move forward and lay out the system, Helt said. We dont have a chance to make a mistake.
Helt feels the state tip line should include a text option, such as the app that Bend-La Pine Schools offers, and that schools could use more trained mental health professionals and services to support students.
Bahais in the United States recite a prayer for America written by Abdul-Baha more than 100 years ago. Abdul-Baha is the Bahai leader who visited North America in 1912 (my essay on Abdul-Baha appeared in Interfaith Voices, Sept. 15, 2015).
That prayer appeals to God to Let this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees, and render this just government victorious. Confirm this revered nation to upraise the standard of the oneness of humanity, to promulgate the Most Great Peace, to become thereby most glorious and praiseworthy among all the nations of the world.
This prayer does not praise America for its accomplishments but it calls on Americans instead to raise their awareness of the oneness of humanity and to promulgate world peace. By so doing, America will become glorious and praiseworthy. Some would say that our country, steeped as it was in racism and undemocratic practices, needed this encouragement more than did others. This prayer is about hope.
When Bahais began reciting these words in the early years of the 20th century, the laws protecting freed slaves following the Civil War had been replaced by Jim Crow laws that would deny African-Americans the rights of citizens. These laws lasted well into the 1960s.
A former Oregon State University employee who was convicted of raping a student employee on a date was sentenced to 100 months of incarceration Friday in Benton County Circuit Court.
Jose Gabriel Gonzalez-Merwin, 49, was found guilty Monday afternoon of first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy, first-degree unlawful sexual penetration, first-degree sex abuse and second-degree sex abuse after a five-day trial last week.
Gonzalez-Merwins accuser did not appear in court for the sentencing.
Amie Matusko, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case, said the jury did not believe Gonzalez-Merwins story that his sexual encounter with his accuser was consensual. But she added that Gonzalez-Merwin believed his own story, which meant he didnt understand what he did was rape.
That makes him a dangerous offender, in the states view, she said.
Gonzalez-Merwin chose not to speak when given the chance to address the judge.
Judge David Connell said the five-day trial was difficult for the victim, who had to testify for seven hours about the April 2017 incident.
That night in question, he said to Gonzalez-Merwin, you took something that is not easy to replaced from her: her trust in other people and her trust in herself. The sentence is certainly appropriate in that light.
Anthony Rimel covers weekend events, education, courts and crime and can be reached at anthony.rimel@lee.net, 541-758-9526, or via Twitter @anthonyrimel.
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Story Highlights Global challenges and opportunities are growing for many companies
Leaders with a global mindset are in increasing demand yet decreasing supply
Gallup found four strategies to help organizations develop more leaders with a global mindset
As leadership development experts, we regularly have conversations with senior executives around the world about the key experiences that are required for leaders to grow in their roles.
The topic of developing a global mindset and exposing leaders to multicountry and multicultural experiences is gaining increasing interest.
Indeed, as Thomas Friedman asserted in his 2005 book on globalization, The World Is Flat, it's a flat world and getting increasingly flatter. Tech advances have shortened the distance between countries, businesses and employees. The expansion of economic and intellectual power has led to the need for truly global leaders.
The future will belong to millennial leaders -- who tend to be increasingly globally oriented and eager to explore the world -- and millennials' inclination to identify themselves as global citizens will further the push for a global viewpoint. A perspective that is unrestricted and unimpeded by a local economy or a local government.
But few businesses are offering emerging leaders the scope of experience they'll soon need.
According to a study by the American Management Association, 48% of organizations consider developing global capabilities in their leaders to be a top priority. What's worrisome, is that only 18% of multinational companies say they have the strong global leadership pipeline necessary to meet their future business challenges.
This is exacerbated by the fact that, in an increasingly protectionist era, some countries seem to want to "go it alone" -- notably, the U.S. and the U.K. However, globalization -- a trend that started in the late 15th century through the expansion of global trade and then gained significant momentum in the early 2000s -- is an undying force.
A growing number of tech unicorns (privately held startup companies valued at over $1 billion) are sprouting from China and India -- and in many other countries as well. The effect of these emerging startups is more multimillion dollar, multinational companies than ever before.
In fact, China's Belt & Road initiative is tying their burgeoning economy to new markets and new business partners by investing in the ancient Silk Road, linking it with Europe and Africa.
These megatrends are likely to create a deficit in the pool of leaders who have global experience and a true global mindset. And while multicultural training and cultural sensitivity courses for leaders are readily available, they tend to be a poor substitute for actual on-the-ground experience.
To expand the pipeline of effective global leaders, Gallup Analytics has isolated four specific strategies that companies can adopt to develop global leadership.
1. Start early.
Early multicountry and multicultural experiences are essential.
A recent report based on a study by Gallup in Southeast Asia showed that C-suite executives attributed early international assignments as a critical factor that impacted their development and growth as leaders.
Still, emerging leaders may resist a foreign stint. Leaders may be reluctant to leave their families (or bring them along).
Some might fear failure early in their careers, which can happen in a stretch assignment in a foreign office. Some are concerned about navigating cultural adversity -- racism, sexism and the like.
And while multicultural training and cultural sensitivity courses for leaders are readily available, they tend to be a poor substitute for actual on-the-ground experience.
So, a good leadership development process should account for these barriers and encourage and empower top talents to take the plunge.
Embedding multicultural and global perspectives into leadership development practice will prove to be a definitive competitive advantage in the future, even if your organization is not global yet.
Take Alibaba -- China's premiere e-retailing and technology company. It considers developing global leaders as crucial to their growth, and the Alibaba Global Talent Development program outlines some key leadership expectations, including "open-minded" among them. Specifically, Alibaba says successful candidates will be open-minded toward differences in culture, perspective and ways of doing business.
When the time comes to expand, Alibaba can boast of a battle-ready core of leaders who are truly global in outlook, skills and temperament.
2. Cultivate curiosity.
Experience and knowledge are the key takeaways of a foreign posting, but emerging leaders must be genuinely curious about other cultures to obtain real experience. Not fully understanding local markets, trends and deep-rooted social and cultural nuances can lead to failure.
A prime example is Campbell Soup Co.'s botched attempt to build a lucrative market in one of the largest soup-consuming countries in the world, Russia.
The company was unable to foresee that Russians already have a rich tradition of soup consumption and replacing homemade borscht with canned minestrone was an uphill battle.
Four years after making key investments in the market, Campbell exited Russia.
An immersive multicultural -- emphasis on the culture part -- experience is enriching, but to gain actual knowledge executives must venture out. And out doesn't just mean eating local food and shopping at local markets.
An international assignment should not be a CV filler. To learn and grow, people need a real challenge.
It means a deep dive into the social drivers, market realities, economic pressures, and customer needs and expectations unique to specific countries, cultures, and customer types.
3. Be intentional.
An international assignment should not be a CV filler. To learn and grow, people need a real challenge.
Expats need to face real problems and create good solutions because that educational experience is vital to future success. An international assignment must be associated with a specific business or operational challenge, not just checking a box of time served.
You'll need to define learning goals that link to development for the assignment to have an impact .
A leader's perceptiveness to the culture, the business and the market can enhance that intentionality and lead to better business outcomes.
It's worth noting the resulting business outcomes aren't always the what the company expects. A Gallup client sent an executive to an important overseas posting to help with several product recalls. He quickly realized that was only one of the urgent issues he needed to address -- he also spotted regulatory challenges, brand re-positioning, and finding and developing his successor as top priorities.
If the executive had been too narrowly focused on his assignment, he might not have noticed the other challenges.
4. Celebrate diversity.
It goes without saying that bigotry, nationalism and chauvinism can be ruinous to developing leaders. People should think closely and carefully about their biases before they leave home.
Objectivity is required for understanding the opportunities and challenges leaders find in new cultures, but a genuine enthusiasm for diversity is necessary to understanding new cultures at all.
Companies should teach global competencies and cultural assimilation. That helps people adapt to, value and make the most of an international experience. After all, if you can't truly celebrate diversity, if you don't have the appetite for a bigger world view, why leave home?
To create a workplace environment that encourages celebrating diversity, the company's focus has to be on individuals, their values and their aspirations.
It helps to expose leaders and teams to their true strengths, especially as people assimilate into new work teams. Gallup's CliftonStrengths gives leaders knowledge of their own and their team members' strengths -- individuals' innate patterns of thought, feeling and behavior that can be rank ordered and applied to the job. Providing leaders with this knowledge gives them an immediate, thorough grasp of the talents and motivations of the people they work with, even before they're proficient in the new language and culture.
As the world gets flatter it also gets less homogenous. The world economy is already demanding leaders with an evolved understanding and appreciation of the true diversity that comprises the modern world. The demand for a global mindset will only grow.
In the real future of work, one's nationality, ethnicity and background will mean less in a leader and to a leader.
The leaders who can leverage the best that a globalized world can offer will be the leaders who create value for their businesses, and in any place those businesses and leaders are located.
The technology has been in use for years but was enhanced after the Rahaf affair. If a woman tries to evade her guardians control, a text message is sent. Every year, about a thousand try to leave the country. Most are captured and risk being killed by the family. A few succeed, like Shahad al-Mohaimeed.
Riyadh (AsiaNews) Saudi Arabia has created an immense electronic database on the country's women to enable their male relatives - father, husband, son - to track their movements and prevent them from fleeing.
Technology is thus used to crack down on women fighting for their freedom and the rights. For human rights groups, the monitoring system, whose existence came to light thanks to an investigative report by Insider, is simply an extension of the extant male guardianship system.
In fact, the database has existed for years and was recently reinforced, following the case of 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, who fled her family after abandoning Islam, for fear of being killed.
Stuck for days in Thailand waiting for a visa to Australia, her story became frontpage news all over the world. After a while, the United Nations intervened granting her refugee status and Canada accepted to take her, angering Saudi Arabia.
In the kingdom, women continue to be repressed for their activism, despite the limited "reforms" of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS), like lifting the ban on women drivers.
Male guardianship is a form of gender apartheid, which binds women to a male guardian. It applies to what women do online and in social media, as well as in real life.
The digitised guardianship system works thanks to the use of a mobile app called Absher, Arabic for preacher, which also allows people to pay fines or renew licenses, interacting directly with the Ministry of the Interior.
The system little known among Western media contains a registry of the countrys women and the means to ban them from travelling abroad or seize them should they try to escape.
The countrys borders are in fact integrated with the Absher alert system. Whenever a passport is used (authorised or not), a text message is sent.
This way male guardians can determine when, from which airports and for how long women travel, giving them the means to trap women in Saudi Arabia if they wish.
At least a thousand women try to flee Saudi Arabia every year. experts told Insider that text alerts have enabled many men to catch family members before they make it out.
One of the many stories cited by Insider is that of Shahad al-Mohaimeed who took advantage of a family holiday at a Turkish tourist resort on the Black Sea to flee.
The young woman left the hotel in the middle of the night, after taking her relatives and guardians' cell phones to avoid being discovered.
Today she lives in Tbilisi, Georgia. "When we decide to leave," she explained, "we decide to put our lives on the line. Because if we don't succeed, our families are going to kill us. It's shameful to have a daughter leave."
"There is no support for the beaten," she added, "even when it's reported, police are always on the man's side."
A celebration of life for Barabra Zackery, 79, of Gainesville, will be held at a later date. A full obituary will be published when service times have been scheduled. Barbara passed away on June 15, 2021 in Gainesville. You may sign the online registry at www.geojcarroll.com.
Have any questions? Please give us a call at 907-352-2250
It's not quite six weeks into 2019, and it's already looking like it will be another banner year for measles in the United States. An outbreak in the Pacific Northwest that began in late January continues to spread, with more than 50 cases now being reported. Meanwhile, Texas health officials on Tuesday confirmed five cases of measles in the Houston areafour of them in children under 2. And health officials in New York are still dealing with an outbreak of measles from late 2018 among orthodox Jews who apparently brought the virus back from Israel.
The global measles picture is even gloomier. A large and ongoing measles outbreak in the Philippines has killed at least 50 people, and may have spread to Australia. Nearly 12,000 measles cases have been reported in the Ukraine in the first month of 2019. And more than 28,000 cases have been reported in Madagascar since 2018. New cases are popping up all the time. For example, last week authorities in Manchester, England, urged residents to get vaccinated after a local case of measles was confirmed.
All in all, in just the last few years there has been a 30 percent increase in measles worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
If youre driving in Virginia, you better start learning to keep your hands off the cellphone. In a refreshingly wise move, the Virginia General Assembly passed a bill this week to make that bit of wisdom a state law. We hope the governorwhoever that might bewill sign this commonsense bill as soon as possible.
The new law would make it a violation to drive while holding a cellphone. It would also make it illegal to browse the internet or post to Facebook while zipping along on an interstate highway. (The fact that its currently legal for drivers to do so is terrifying.) As Virginia law stands now, a driver can only be pulled over for texting while driving. But police officers say that distinction is hard to enforce and as a result, they rarely ticket anyone for doing it.
If the bill becomes law, as it certainly should, drivers will no longer be able to use their phones GPS while drivingbut the legislation does allow for use of dashboard touchscreens that connect wirelessly to cellphones, as well as voice-activated and hands-free devices. Other exceptions include using a cellphone for reporting or responding to an emergency. The law also doesnt apply to CB and amateur radio users.
The bill includes a $125 fine and a traffic violation citation for offenders. Subsequent offenses would cost drivers $250.
The press is after you from day one, the opposing party (both parties if you are an independent) will dig into every aspect of your background and your own party will turn its back on you at the slightest hint of trouble.
None of us are perfect. There is something in all our backgrounds of which we are not proud. All our closets contain skeletons.
Some of those skeletons, however, were not skeletons when they occurred. Times change and what was acceptable 50 years ago is not politically correct today. But that fact is never taken into consideration in todays society. We just dig up dirt and scatter it around. And we convict without a trial.
Whoever put out the Northam photo probably had it in his political pocket for awhile. He (or she) was just waiting for the most opportune moment to make sure the yearbook page would do the most damage. And Northams recent abortion statements apparently triggered the release.
When that photo hit the internet, all but a couple of the governors friends headed for the hills. Friendship? Standing by a fellow party member? That all went out the window. Ive got to protect myself, my political reputation. Sorry, buddy, but youre on your own.
If Fairfax were to resign, Northam could appoint a temporary lieutenant governor who would serve until a special election could be held in November, according to experts who have studied the unprecedented constitutional scenario. Sen. Steve Newman, RLynchburg, the president pro tempore of the state Senate, would preside over the chamber temporarily if a vacancy occurs.
If Northam were to resign after appointing a new lieutenant governor, that appointee would become governor.
A week ago, it appeared Fairfax would be elevated to governor as Gov. Ralph Northam was engulfed in a shocking scandal over a racist yearbook photo that appeared in his 1984 medical school yearbook and his admission that he appeared in blackface for a Michael Jackson dance contest that same year.
Attorney General Mark Herring, who is second in line to become governor, called for Northam to resign and signaled his strong support for Fairfax. On Wednesday morning, Herring became embroiled in a scandal of his own after he acknowledged he wore blackface to dress as a rapper while at the University of Virginia. The attorney general said he would think over his future and whether he can remain in office, but no elected Democrats have gone so far as to call for his resignation.
The $25,000 estimate includes demolition, removal of possible asbestos and hauling away the debris.
Hudson said the county doesnt have any legal obligation to shred papers inside the building, but supervisors asked him to make sure they were properly destroyed.
As part of the ordinance, the county will put a lien on the property to recoup the cost of demolition.
BOARD TO LOOK ONLY
AT BIGGER SUBDIVISIONS
When it comes to subdivisions, the supervisors only want to see the big onespreliminary plats for developments with 51 lots or more. With smaller subdivisions, the Planning Commission will become the approving body as part of a change to King Georges zoning ordinance.
King George officials changed the ordinance because their regulations had become out of date with the Virginia code. Also, at a joint meeting last summer between supervisors and planners, the boards discussed that having an applicant present plats to county staff, the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors can be burdensome and costly for all parties, according to a presentation from the Community Development Office.
The ordinance change says applicants do not have to submit preliminary plats, provided that no public improvements or right-of-way dedication are involved for: rearranging property lines; family and minor subdivisions; acquisition or dedication of land for public purposes where no new lots are created; partitioning of land among co-owners after a death; and when 50 or fewer lots are being divided.
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Antioch Baptist Church in King George County held a celebration last fall to honor the 25th anniversary of its pastor, the Rev. Dr. Larry Finch Sr. (seated), and his wife, the Rev. LaVerne Finch (standing in green), for their devotion and faithful service. After a worship service on Oct. 21, the congregation held a fellowship dinner attended by other members of the pastors family.
Twenty-five Holy Cross Academy students along with chaperones boarded the Virginia Railway Express to join marchers from around the country at the 46th annual March for Life, held Jan. 18 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
On Monday, Feb. 11, National Park Ranger, historian and author Frank O'Reilly will speak on "Tale of Two Councils of War: The Army of the Potomac at War with Itself," during the Rappahannock Valley Civil War Roundtable's monthly dinner meeting at Brocks Riverside Grill on Sophia Street in Fredericksburg.
Social time begins at 5:45 p.m.; dinner at 6:45 p.m.; speaker at 7:45 p.m. The talk is free, and the public is invited. Reservations are required for dinner: $30 for members, $35 for nonmembers. For dinner reservations, email cwrtdinner@yahoo.com or call 540/399-1702.
Additional information about the group, which is marking its 30th anniversary, can be found online at rvcwrt.simdif.com or facebook.com/rvcwrt.
ATLANTA (CBS46) -- A Juneteenth menu is serving up controversy at the Atlanta based IKEA store, after employees said fried chicken and watermelon, were just a some items selected to honor Juneteenth.
WAYNESVILLE, NC (FOX Carolina)- The Waynesville Police Department says that it is searching for a suspect accused of robbing a Waffle House in the early hours of Friday morning, according to a post on the department's official Facebook page.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) -- Las Vegas Metropolitan police said two men were arrested in connection to a home invasion that turned into a shootout in the southwest valley on Feb. 1.
Devin Taft, 23, and Michael Moore, 24, were booked in absentia from the hospital, where police initially said they were in critical condition. Taft was later released from the hospital and booked into the Clark County Detention Center.
Moore and Taft face multiple charges, including attempted murder, discharging a gun into an occupied structure, conspiracy to murder, battery with the use of a deadly weapon, battery to commit mayhem, conspiracy to commit robbery, robbery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit home invasion, mayhem with a deadly weapon, grand larceny of a gun, and home invasion with a deadly weapon.
Officers were called to the 9200 block of Starcross Lane, near Fort Apache Road and Twain Avenue, at around 9:46 a.m. Metro Police dispatch received a 911 call from a man, identified in Taft's arrest report as Nam, who said he had been shot in the thigh during an attempted home invasion, the report said.
Suspects arrested in southwest valley home invasion, shootout Two men were arrested after being shot while invading a man's home in the southwest valley on Friday, police said.
Once Nam was safely removed from the residence, police swept the scene for any additional suspects, according to the police report. During their sweep, officers noticed multiple shell casings, bullet impacts in the walls and front door, blood splatter and a sliding glass door that had been shattered.
Las Vegas police also noticed a blood trail that started from the bedroom closet and lead to the garage, indicating someone may have been dragged, the report said. A bloody footprint that matched the shoes Taft had been wearing the day of the break in was also discovered.
Nam was taken to University Medical Center for treatment, the report said. Aside from the gunshot wound in his thigh, Las Vegas police noticed he had "deep lacerations to the top of his head." Nam told police one of the suspects had "pistol whipped" him after they exchanged gunfire.
According to Nam, he had been asleep when Taft and Moore broke into his home, the police report said. He told police the sound of glass shattering had woken him up, but he assumed it was someone who lived in the house with him, identified only as "Lieu" in the report. Nam explained to police he heard "rustling and further noise" inside the house, he started to believe it was not Lieu making the noise.
Nam grabbed his Glock 17 9mm and attempted to investigate what was making the noise, according to the police report. He saw two men, wearing all black and yellow reflective vests; one of the men was armed with a black revolver. The suspects tried to get the front door open, but were unable to. Police later determined the suspects, Taft and Moore, broke the sliding glass door to get inside the residence.
"[Nam] communicated that he feared for his life and believed the males intended to do him harm," the police report said.
Although it was not clear who shot who first, Nam said either Taft or Moore shot him in the leg and Nam returned fire, striking both suspects, the report said. One of the suspects, after running out of ammunition, began hitting Nam on the head using the handle of the revolver. Nam was also struck on the head with his own gun by one of the suspects.
Taft and Moore fled the scene, the report said. Nam had to receive surgery as the bullet broke his femur and was lodged in his hip bone. He is expected to recover.
Las Vegas police were able to locate Taft and Moore at Southern Hills Hospital almost 10 minutes later, the report said. A woman named Tanesha in the police report confirmed Moore and Taft's identities to police. Both suspects were dropped off by another man in a 2016 Nissan Sentra and were suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. The police report said Moore seemed to have been shot in the stomach.
During their investigation, police determined the Sentra was registered under Moore's name. It was also the same vehicle both suspects used to escape after the shootout, according to the report.
Police said they believe Taft and Moore were casing the neighborhood after reviewing surveillance video that showed the Nissan driving past the home almost 20 minutes before the break in. A third suspect was seen in the video helping carry either Moore or Taft into the vehicle before driving off.
Moore remained hospitalized as of Friday afternoon, according to Las Vegas police.
A preliminary hearing for Moore and Taft is scheduled for March 8 at 10 a.m. at Las Vegas Justice Court.
An Illinois state legislator has proposed a measure that would require police to screen the social media profiles of potential gun buyers.
(CNN) -- A second woman has come forward to say that she was raped by Democratic Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax when they attended Duke University in 2000.
CNN has reached out to the law firm representing the woman, who issued the statement as well as Fairfax's office.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
MOBILE, Ala. -- Two victims were shot at a shopping center in Crichton late Saturday morning, and a short time later police apprehended four suspects who led them on a chase to the area of the Mobile Downtown Airport at Brookley Field.
Officers from the Mobile Police Department responded to the Cash America location at 3054 Springhill Ave., which is at the Crichton Shopping Center, after being notified that shots had been fired. Upon their arrival, officers discovered that two males had been shot, according to LaDerrick DuBose, MPD public information officer.
"Both victims were transported to the hospital. Their condition is unknown at this time," DuBose wrote in an email to news media just after 1 p.m.
DuBose said the suspects involved in the shooting were spotted by police as they fled the scene in a vehicle. That vehicle led police on a pursuit to the area of Perimeter Road at Avenue O, near the Mobile Downtown Airport.
"I was riding Saturday morning down I-10 when a lot of police officers got off at Michigan Avenue, so we pulled off and watched them, and they were going into Brookley Field," said Jimmy Carter.
Officers apprehended the four suspects within moments, DuBose said.
"The line of police cars, there must have been at least a dozen," Carter said. "They got out of their cars, and pretty quickly they came out of the bushes with one or two people. I couldn't tell because you couldn't get that close."
Chris Curry, president of the Mobile Airport Authority, said the shooting suspects led police on a pursuit down Michigan Avenue. He said multiple suspects exited a vehicle and jumped a fence into Brookley Field before they were apprehended by police.
Curry said the incident did not impact airport operations.
DuBose said the investigation into the matter is continuing.
The U.S. Marshals-led Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force is currently searching for a man wanted for the murder of his mother in DeKalb County, Georgia, after removing an ankle monitor and failing to appear and surrender himself to authorities for a previous conviction in Cobb County.
Officials say 44-year-old Richard V. Merritt, a disbarred attorney, was being monitored by law enforcement via an ankle monitor and was scheduled to surrender Feb. 1 after being sentenced to 30 years in jail in Cobb County, where he had been convicted of stealing money from clients and elder abuse.
According to authorities, on Feb. 2, Merritt's elderly mother was found dead, having been violently killed. Her vehicle was missing and Merritts vehicle was recovered at the scene.
They say Merritt may be traveling in a 2009 silver Lexus RX350, bearing a Georgia tag CBV 6004. He may have shaved his head or otherwise changed his appearance, and should be considered armed and dangerous.
Officials say citizens should not try to engage him.
If you see this suspect, please contact law enforcement immediately.
For further information please contact the Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force at (770) 508-2500. Tip information may also be called in to the U.S. Marshals at 1-877-Wanted-2 (1-877-926-8332) or email usms.wanted@usdoj.gov
Alabama Department of Corrections officials are searching for an inmate who escaped from the Red Eagle Community Work Center in Montgomery the afternoon of Friday, February 8.
According to officials, 36-year-old Christopher Shun Hamby left his assigned job around 3:15 p.m. The work center is located at 1290 Red Eagle Road, which is north of Montgomery.
Hamby, who is 611 and weighs 167 pounds, was sentenced for trafficking methamphetamine in 2013.
If you have any information about Hambys whereabouts, call authorities.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development today awarded $1.5 million to support 13 new homeless programs across Alabama. View a complete list of all the state and local homeless projects awarded funding.
Last month, HUD announced nearly $15.5 million in grants to renew funding to 40 local homeless assistance programs throughout Alabama. Combined, this funding represents a record investment to support state and local efforts across the nation to reduce and end homelessness.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson made the announcement in Akron, Ohio today during a visit to the Battered Women's Shelter, a HUD-assisted local program that houses domestic violence victims who are at risk of homelessness.
Today we make another critical investment to those persons and families living in our shelters and on our streets, said HUD Secretary Ben Carson. These new programs will join those already on the front lines in their communities working to end homelessness.
HUD grants support a broad array of interventions designed to assist individuals and families experiencing homelessness, particularly those living in places not meant for habitation, located in sheltering programs, or at imminent risk of becoming homeless. Each year, HUD serves more than a million people through emergency shelter, transitional, and permanent housing programs.
HUD continues to challenge state and local planning organizations called Continuums of Care to support their highest performing local programs that have proven most effective in meeting the needs of persons experiencing homelessness in their communities. Many of these state and local planners also embraced HUDs call to shift funds from existing underperforming projects to create new ones that are based on best practices that will further their efforts to prevent and end homelessness.
Descendants of the 110 slaves illegally brought over to the United States on the Clotilda, the last known U.S. slave ship, are gearing up for a celebration tomorrow.
It's called the Spirit of our Ancestors festival.
The plan is to remember the survivors of the Clotilda and honor their families. Organizers also want to educate the public on the community the survivors built when they were freed.
It's a small area with a long history.
"I want people to be more informed of the survivors of the Clotilda," said Joycelyn Davis, the event organizer.
The roots of it all start with 110 brave people who were enslaved and illegal brought to the area from Africa aboard the Clotilda.
The survivors built their own place to settle a historic community just north of downtown Mobile called Africatown.
In a town that bleeds with so much history, there are still many stories that are left untold. That's one of the reasons for the event.
"I know a lot of people know about Kudjoe Lewis, but I want people to know more about Charlie Lewis, Pollee Allen, Orsa Keeby and Peter Lee," Davis said.
Some of the places they built have been preserved and still stand today. One of which will hold the festival.
"Mobile County Training School, I think its befitting to have it right in the heart of Africatown," Davis explained.
There's a plethora of information and history all packed into one little town. Organizers hope the even will shine some light on what's been hidden in plain sight for so long.
"I want people to come out and have a good time and become more educated like the other descendants," Davis said. "Just to feel the spirit become more knowledgeable of Africatown. This little town is getting a buzz,
Quote: Saluki_guy Originally Posted by These motors are not the motors of 15 years ago...or for that matter 50 years ago. You cannot run them for 200 hours straight without shutting them off. They need to cycle on and off.
I would contact FoMoCo before you go and take your exhaust system off simply because that's an expensive gamble to be taking.
But it's your truck to do with as you see fit. Hope you don't get pulled over by the state police of public safety. Here in GA they give you a massive fine and make you deposit $5000 into an account that the dealership accesses to put on a new factory spec exhaust system.
good luck
Here in Canada you don't have the cop issue. And i never let my truck run for 200 hours lol. I drive them like any other daily driver except a little extra warm up/cool down. I farm and work in the oilfield so I'm familiar with diesel engines. My work truck is a duramax and is straight piped turbo back and chipped. I don't abuse it, never had 1 issue. Well that's a lie, I had several with the exhaust emissions before I removed it. There are quite a few new diesels around here that are piped and chipped and it doesn't cause any problems. On the other hand there are lots of stock diesels that have lots of issues when it gets extremely cold out. For that reason only I'd like to remove it on this new truck.
Marijuana stocks are soaring because of recent changes to how hemp is regulated in the United States. That's got everyone asking: What are the top marijuana stocks to buy in 2019? In order to understand the impact from hemp deregulation on marijuana companies, it's useful to understand how marijuana and hemp are different.
Same but different
Marijuana is the dried flower of the female cannabis plant, and it can come from either the cannabis indica or cannabis sativa species. Hemp is only a member of the cannabis sativa family.
Although marijuana and hemp can both come from the cannabis sativa family, they're distinctly different. Marijuana is bushier with broader leaves, while hemp is leaner with shinier leaves.
It's differences in their chemical composition that really set them apart, though.
More than 100 chemical cannabinoids are found in cannabis, but the amount of these cannabinoids differs dramatically between hemp and marijuana.
Marijuana's most common cannabinoid is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) -- the chemical cannabinoid associated with the plant's psychoactive effect. In marijuana, THC levels can reach 30%, depending on the strain, but THC levels in hemp are less than 0.3%.
The low levels of THC in hemp mean that, unlike marijuana, it has historically been used for industrial purposes. Hemp's rapid growth and strong fibers made it ideal for crafting durable rope, clothing, sail, and paper.
Although hemp won't get you high, it does contain significant amounts of another cannabinoid, cannabidiol (CBD), which is also found in marijuana. CBD is a nonpsychoactive cannabinoid, and its interaction with receptors in the central nervous system and immune system can offer medicinal benefits, making hemp-CBD concentrates popular ingredients.
Why it matters
Medical and recreational marijuana use is legal nationwide in Canada, so it's home to the largest publicly traded cannabis companies.
In the past, those companies were unable to do business in the U.S. because of restrictions placed upon them by the major stock exchanges. In order to maintain their listing, they can't conduct business in countries where the sale of marijuana is prohibited at the federal level.
In 1970, the Controlled Substances Act classified all cannabis, including hemp, as a schedule 1 drug. As a result, hemp cultivation was tightly controlled and limited for industrial and research purposes.
That's no longer true. The U.S. Farm Bill that passed in December contains language distinguishing hemp from marijuana for the first time. It allows states and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create a licensing program supporting the widespread cultivation of hemp with THC levels below 0.3%.
The shift in federal classification of hemp has already led to Canada's biggest cannabis company, Canopy Growth (NASDAQ:CGC), announcing plans to enter the U.S. market. After receiving a license to process hemp in New York state, Canopy Growth plans to invest up to $150 million there on a hemp-focused industrial park where it can develop products containing hemp-derived CBD.
Check out the latest Canopy Growth earnings call transcript.
Will hemp move the revenue needle for marijuana stocks?
Including black-market sales, the Canadian marijuana market is worth about $6 billion annually, according to Statistics Canada. Canada's recreational market only opened last October, so it's too early to know exactly how much of those black-market sales will migrate to legal shops selling products made by Canopy Growth and its competitors.
Nevertheless, the size of Canada's marijuana market dwarfs the current size of the CBD products market in America. Spending on CBD products in the U.S. only totals in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
The U.S. CBD market could grow significantly, though, if companies create increasingly valuable consumer products that they're allowed to distribute widely. The potential associated with CBD edibles, beverages, and other products has some industry experts thinking CBD-product sales could total exceed $20 billion someday. That's a heady forecast, but even if the CBD market only grows to a few billion dollars annually, it would still be a big tailwind for marijuana stocks, including Canopy Growth. After all, Canopy Growth's sales over the past 12 months totaled just $73 million. Given the size of the potential opportunity relative to sales today, it's little wonder that hemp's potential has investors excited about pot stocks.
Weighing in with just a $13.2 billion market cap, Textron (NYSE:TXT) has always been a sort of second-string defense contractor, overshadowed by giants like General Dynamics ($50 billion market capitalization) on the ground, and Lockheed Martin and Boeing (NYSE:BA), valued at $85 billion and $224 billion, respectively, in the air.
In 2013, Textron made a bold move to break into the fighter jets market and challenge those last two companies -- building a "Scorpion" fighter jet on its own dime and using off-the-shelf parts -- but to date, Textron has failed to sell a single one. One place where Textron found success, though, was with its early entry into the drone wars, where its Shadow unmanned aerial vehicle found quick acceptance from the U.S. Army and has racked up "over one million flight hours" in service with the militaries of the United States, Australia, Sweden, and Italy.
Soon, though, Textron could find itself kicked out of this market as well.
Looking for a new drone
First introduced into service nearly two decades ago, Shadow is beginning to show its age. Earlier this week, multiple news outlets, including Aviation Week and Janes, reported that the U.S. Army is dissatisfied with the Textron RQ-7 Shadow's size (requiring C-130 transport planes to carry it), its need for a runway (to land), and -- perhaps most importantly, its noisiness. AW in particular noted Army complaints that Shadow is "a bit noisy over the target," which can alert targets to the drone's presence, neutralizing its effectiveness.
To remedy these perceived faults, Janes reports that the U.S. Army is planning to "downselect" three potential replacements for the RQ-7 Shadow. The Army will be seeking a new solution that's small enough to transport on a Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter but large enough to carry weapons, a drone that can operate without runways, and one with "a lower acoustic signature" than the Shadow.
To date, the Army has not disclosed which companies will be submitting UAVs for consideration to become the Army's new go-to drone. AW did note, though, that when faced with a similar decision last year, the U.S. Marine Corps traded in its Shadows for RQ-21A Blackjacks built by Boeing subsidiary Insitu.
Will Boeing's drone replace Textron's...again?
Despite sporting a wider wingspan than the Shadow, Boeing's Blackjack is about 27% shorter and weighs half as much, allowing the Boeing drone to be launched from a mechanical launcher, without the need for a runway. At present, it's not known if Blackjack can carry weapons, although Boeing is said to be working with the Marines to modify Blackjack to carry "various payloads" -- which may or may not include weapons.
Ultimately, I suspect the Army will have to make a decision to choose a drone that's small enough to launch mechanically and small enough to be helicopter-transportable, or one large enough to carry weapons -- because you can't always get everything you want.
Check out the latest Boeing and Textron earnings call transcripts.
What comes next?
As I said, it's not certain which UAV that will be. Once the Army has selected its three finalists, each will be asked to submit two sample UAVs for the Army to experiment with before making a decision -- a process dubbed "try-decide-buy."
AW notes that the Army is currently only looking at existing drone systems to replace Textron's Shadow, which probably limits the number of potential bidders. Given its success with the USMC last year, Boeing will almost certainly bid on this contract. Textron, meanwhile, might bid its smaller Aerosonde UAV to replace the Shadow. Potentially, this contract might even give Northrop Grumman a chance to bid the new Tern UAV that it's developing for the Navy, for use by land forces. At 40 feet, triangular, Tern is considerably larger than Shadow, but the new drone boasts a vertical take-off and landing capability and is being designed to carry as much as 600 pounds of ordnance, ticking two of the boxes on the Army's wishlist.
Whoever ultimately wins the contract can expect a big payday. ArmyTechnology.com reports that, through 2010, U.S. ground forces alone had purchased nearly 500 Shadow UAVs over the course of less than a decade. Depending on the price tag of the drone picked to replace it, someone could end up winning contracts worth $2 billion -- or more.
Over the last couple of years, the momentum in the marijuana industry has been virtually unstoppable. To our north, Canada has become the first industrialized country in the world to legalize recreational marijuana, opening the door to billions of dollars in added annual sales and, more importantly, providing validation to an industry that's been often touted as taboo by the business world.
To our south, Mexico legalized medical cannabis in 2017 and, following numerous Supreme Court rulings, is seriously considering moving forward with a recreational weed legalization plan.
In the U.S., two-thirds of all states have given the green light to medical pot in some capacity, with 10 of those states also allowing adult consumption. Further, two out of three Americans now favor legalizing marijuana, up from just a third of all Americans back in 2005, according to Gallup.
Things have been almost perfect for the legal cannabis industry...almost.
Marijuana's Schedule I classification is causing a host of problems
In the United States, which would easily be the world's largest market for cannabis on a nominal sales basis, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug at the federal level. In layman's terms, this means it's entirely illegal, prone to abuse, and not recognized as having any medical benefits based on its classification. Sure, the federal government has been relatively accommodative with state-level implementation, but this Schedule I status comes with a number of other negative impacts.
For instance, profitable cannabis-based businesses are subjected to Section 280E of the U.S. tax code. Implemented in 1982 to primarily stick it to cocaine and heroin drug dealers, it disallows businesses that sell a federally illicit substance from taking normal corporate business deductions, save for cost of goods sold. For pot companies, cost of goods sold tends to be a relatively small percentage of revenue, often leading to effective income tax rates that can approach 70% to 90%. In short, in makes hiring for and expanding a cannabis-based business very difficult.
Additionally, pot businesses in the U.S. have little or no access to basic banking services. Even though the Obama administration outlined a loose set of regulations that would allow banks to offer services such as loans and lines of credit to companies in the marijuana industry, the vast majority of banks have kept their distance. In some cases, this leaves cannabis companies entirely reliant on cash and unable to grow quickly due to financing issues.
On occasion, lawmakers have attempted to tackle marijuana banking reform but found an underwhelming reception from their colleagues. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) has repeatedly tried attaching a marijuana banking reform amendment to a federal spending bill or criminal reform bill, only to either pull the amendment due to lack of support or have it outright excluded by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). As a reminder, Republicans tend to have a less favorable view of cannabis than Democrats or Independents.
Cannabis banking reform legislation is (supposedly) on its way
However, the long string of failures in passing marijuana banking reform may soon come to an end. As reported by Politico on Monday, Feb. 4, the House Financial Services Committee was planning a hearing on cannabis banking reform that would, reportedly, be scheduled on Feb. 13. Note that Politico cited sources familiar with the matter, suggesting that nothing was officially set in stone as of yet.
Additionally, online publication Marijuana Moment reports that "preparations are now well under way for a full committee markup in the coming months on legislation to clear the way for cannabis businesses to gain access to banking services."
Should lawmakers pursue cannabis banking reform, it would be game changing for a number of reasons. First, with Democrats retaking the House for the first time in eight years and having much higher favorability for legalizing marijuana than Republicans, it would give their party a real opportunity to advance weed reform measures. It's unclear if a marijuana banking reform measure would have a chance to pass the Senate, with Mitch McConnell unsupportive of cannabis legalization, but it would nevertheless move banking reform legislation further along than ever before.
Secondly, it would be the first time that a cannabis banking reform measure was to be presented as a stand-alone bill rather than an amendment that was attached to a larger bill.
Third and finally, it could open the door to additional sources of revenue generation for U.S. banks while also providing ample nondilutive financing options for public and private cannabis businesses. This would, more than likely, help with order processing, business expansion, industry consolidation, and hiring.
This has big implications
We've already witnessed the possible implications of what opening the door to banks can do for this industry by looking north.
Although Canadian banks are still somewhat leery of lending to Canadian pot businesses, we have seen a few major convertible note financings, including a 600-million-Canadian-dollar offering by Canopy Growth (NASDAQ:CGC) in June. Understandably, Canopy Growth wound up netting itself an even bigger bounty in November when a $4 billion equity investment in the company from Constellation Brands was completed. But had this equity investment not come about, Canopy Growth's convertible note financing was going to serve as a means to expand internationally, diversify its product line into hemp, and help fund complementary acquisitions.
Check out the latest Canopy Growth earnings call transcript.
Something similar can be said of Aurora Cannabis (NASDAQ:ACB), which, last month, completed a CA$345 million senior convertible note offering due in 2024. Though convertible notes can be dilutive if converted, Aurora Cannabis' management team believes that it'll primarily be repaid with cash on hand, presumably from strong operating cash flow in due time. Since Aurora Cannabis still has plenty of work to do on the capacity-expansion front and has been an active acquirer since 2018 began, this injection of capital gives it even more breathing room to execute on its business strategy.
What happens next in the U.S. remains to be seen. But the pathway appears to be clear for banking reform measures to finally get the time of day from lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this month will be held in Hanoi.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump said on Twitter.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said.
(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by David Alexander)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration signalled on Friday it was unlikely to meet a deadline to report to Congress on whether it intends to impose sanctions on those responsible for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, prompting an angry backlash on Capitol Hill. Republican and Democratic lawmakers triggered a provision of the Global Magnitsky human rights act in October, giving the administration 120 days until Feb. 8 to report on who was responsible for the death of Khashoggi and whether the United States would impose sanctions on that person or persons.
By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration signalled on Friday it was unlikely to meet a deadline to report to Congress on whether it intends to impose sanctions on those responsible for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, prompting an angry backlash on Capitol Hill.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers triggered a provision of the Global Magnitsky human rights act in October, giving the administration 120 days until Feb. 8 to report on who was responsible for the death of Khashoggi and whether the United States would impose sanctions on that person or persons.
Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who wrote for The Washington Post, was killed at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in early October, sparking global outrage. In Saudi Arabia, 11 suspects have been indicted in the murder, and officials have rejected accusations that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing.
Congressional aides said they had not received a report from the White House by early evening on Friday. Some said they still hoped to receive it by early next week, but the administration said President Donald Trump did not feel the need to send one.
"The President maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate," a senior administration official said in an emailed statement. "The U.S. Government will continue to consult with Congress and work to hold accountable those responsible for Jamal Khashoggi's killing."
Some lawmakers responded angrily and said they intended to punish whoever was responsible.
"The administration's refusal to deal with this issue and keep Congress informed underscores the need to get to the bottom of what is motivating the Trump foreign policy," Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the Saudi crown prince had said a year before Kashoggi's death that he would use "a bullet" on Khashoggi if he did not return home and end his criticism of the government.
Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir told reporters on Friday the prince did not order Khashoggi's killing but declined comment on the Times story.
Al-Jubeir said he wanted Congress to let the Saudi legal process conclude before taking action on sanctions. "We are doing what we need to do in terms of acknowledging the mistake, investigating, charging and holding people accountable," he said.
Al-Jubeir said he believed some congressional criticism was "driven by politics."
'THE LAW IS CLEAR'
Juan Pachon, a spokesman for Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Trump was breaking the law by failing to send the report.
"The law is clear," Pachon said. "It requires a determination and report in response to the letter we sent with (former Foreign Relations Chairman Bob) Corker. The president has no discretion here. He's either complying with the law or breaking it."
Members of Congress, including many of Trump's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, have clamoured for a strong response to Khashoggi's murder as well as the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Ahead of the deadline, a group of Republican and Democratic senators on Thursday renewed their push to penalize Saudi Arabia, unveiled legislation to bar some arms sales and impose sanctions on those responsible for Khashoggi's death.
Trump has resisted such legislative efforts, viewing weapons sales as an important source of U.S. jobs and standing by the Saudi crown prince. He is also reluctant to disturb the strategic relationship with the kingdom, seen as an important regional counterbalance to Iran.
Senator Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he expected more legislation would be introduced.
Risch also said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote to him on Friday, describing the Trump administration's past sanctions on those involved in Khashoggi's murder and adding that he expected "a more detailed briefing" later.
The United States imposed economic sanctions on 17 Saudi officials - not including the crown prince - in November for their role in Khashoggi's killing.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; additional reporting by Jonathan Landay and Arshad Mohammed; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Cynthia Osterman)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Thai Raksa Chart political party will obey a command from King Maha Vajiralongkorn and block the candidacy of Princess Ubolratana for prime minister, in a dramatic reversal only a day after putting her forward for the position.
Bangkok: A Thai political party will obey a command from the king and block the candidacy of a princess for prime minister, it said in a statement Saturday, in a dramatic reversal only a day after putting her forward for the position.
"Thai Raksa Chart party complies with the royal command," it said in a message to reporters over the communications portal LINE.
The statement added that the party is ready to do its duty with respect to the "tradition and royal customs" under Thailand's constitutional monarchy.
The announcement effectively invalidates Princess Ubolratana's unprecedented bid for prime minister in March elections and comes after an extraordinary rebuke of her candidacy by her younger brother Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
Thai Raksa Chart announced the princess as their candidate Friday morning in a move that looked to rattle the status quo and threaten the ambitions of the junta that has ruled Thailand since it toppled the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra in a 2014 coup.
But the Thai king torpedoed the bid in a sharply worded statement later the same day that said bringing senior royal family members into politics is against tradition, national culture and "highly inappropriate."
Thailand has some of the most severe lese majeste laws in the world and the king's word is considered final.
Analysts had already forewarned that the palace statement had scuttled the princess' chances.
"The palace disapproval invalidates her candidacy," said Puangthong Pawakapan, professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University, before the Thai Raksa Chart announcement.
Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has not had a royal run for frontline office since 1932.
The 67-year-old princess did not address the royal rebuke head-on Saturday morning, when she thanked supporters on her widely followed Instagram account and said vaguely that she wanted Thailand to "move forward".
Junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha, the leader of the coup that toppled the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra, also said he would stand for the top post Friday.
Ubolratana's move briefly threw his fortunes into disarray but the palace action made it clear it does not endorse her run.
The king did not criticise the princess directly and seemed to focus blame on political party members who brought her on board.
Thai Raksa Chart is aligned with Yingluck and her brother Thaksin, who was ousted by the army in 2006.
Analysts assumed Thaksin and the party would not make such a move without royal approval.
There was still some hard work to be done ahead of the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a Washington envoy said Saturday after three days of talks in Pyongyang.
Seoul: There was still some hard work to be done ahead of the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a Washington envoy said Saturday after three days of talks in Pyongyang.
Stephen Biegun, the US Special Representative for North Korea, said preparatory talks had been productive, but more dialogue was needed ahead of the summit scheduled for Vietnam from 27-28 February.
Biegun on Saturday briefed South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on his Pyongyang visit, shortly after Trump revealed the summit would take place in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
"We have some hard work to do with the DPRK between now and then," Biegun told Kang, adding: "I'm confident that if both sides stay committed we can make real progress here.
Trump announced Hanoi as the location on Twitter, hailing as "very productive" the preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said.
The State Department said talks during Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula".
It also confirmed Biegun had agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the summit.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with the top brass of the Korean People's Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernize the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
- Ending the Korean War? -
Attention will now focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward denuclearization.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war."
The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South.
Experts say the most likely scenario in Vietnam is that the concerned parties -- North and South Korea, the US, and China -- to declare a formal end to the war as a political statement.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula".
But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV."
On Friday Trump tweeted that North Korea will become a "great Economic Powerhouse" under Kim.
"He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is," said Trump.
But Park Won-gon, a professor at South Korea's Handong University, said Trump's remarks may not align with Pyongyang's current agenda.
"What Pyongyang wants now, more than anything, is the lifting of the existing sanctions," Park told AFP.
"The idea of being an economic powerhouse may sound too vague and even unrealistic for them at this moment."
North Korea, which holds most of the peninsula's mineral resources, was once wealthier than the South, but decades of mismanagement and the demise of its former paymaster the Soviet Union have left it deeply impoverished.
In 2017 the UN Security Council banned the North's main exports, coal and other mineral resources, fisheries and textile products, to cut off its access to hard currency in response to Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
By Luc Cohen, Matt Spetalnick and Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is holding direct communications with members of Venezuela's military urging them to abandon President Nicolas Maduro and is also preparing new sanctions aimed at increasing pressure on him, a senior White House official said. The Trump administration expects further military defections from Maduro's side, the official told Reuters in an interview, despite only a few senior officers having done so since opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president last month, earning the recognition of the United States and dozens of other countries
By Luc Cohen, Matt Spetalnick and Roberta Rampton
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is holding direct communications with members of Venezuela's military urging them to abandon President Nicolas Maduro and is also preparing new sanctions aimed at increasing pressure on him, a senior White House official said.
The Trump administration expects further military defections from Maduro's side, the official told Reuters in an interview, despite only a few senior officers having done so since opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president last month, earning the recognition of the United States and dozens of other countries.
"We believe these to be those first couple pebbles before we start really seeing bigger rocks rolling down the hill," the official said this week, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We're still having conversations with members of the former Maduro regime, with military members, although those conversations are very, very limited."
The official declined to provide details on the discussions or the level at which they are being held, and it was unclear whether such contacts could create cracks in the Venezuelan socialist leader's support from the military, which is pivotal to his grip on power.
With the Venezuelan military still apparently loyal to Maduro, a source in Washington close to the opposition expressed doubts whether the Trump administration has laid enough groundwork to spur a wider mutiny in the ranks where many officers are suspected of benefiting from corruption and drug trafficking.
Members of the South American country's security forces fear they or their families could be targeted by Maduro if they defect, so the U.S. would need to offer them something that could outweigh those concerns, said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas think tank in Washington.
"It depends on what they're offering," Farnsworth said. "Are there incentives built into these contacts that will at least cause people to question their loyalty to the regime?"
Guaido says the May 2018 vote in which Maduro won a second term as president was a sham and on Jan. 23 invoked a constitutional provision to declare himself president, promising free and fair elections.
VENEZUELAN ASSETS
The U.S. government also sees European allies as likely to do more to prevent Maduro from transferring or hiding Venezuela government assets held outside the country, the U.S. official said.
Major European countries have joined the United States in backing Guaido but they have stopped short of the sweeping oil sanctions and financial measures that Washington has imposed.[nL5N1ZZ27P]
At the same time, the Trump administration is readying further possible sanctions on Venezuela, the official said.
Previous rounds have targeted dozens of Venezuelan military and government officials, including Maduro himself, and last month finally hit the OPEC member's vital oil sector. But the administration has stopped short of imposing so-called "secondary" sanctions, which would punish non-U.S. companies for doing business with the Venezuela government or the state oil monopoly PDVSA.
The U.S. official said that Washington had every tool available to apply pressure on Maduro and his associates "to accept a legitimate democratic transition."
The U.S. government is also weighing possible sanctions on Cuban military and intelligence officials whom it says are helping Maduro remain in power, a second U.S. official and person familiar with the deliberations have told Reuters. [nL2N1XW1J7]
Maduro's government has accused Guaido, who has galvanized Venezuela's opposition, of attempting to stage a U.S.-directed coup.
General Francisco Yanez of the air force's high command became the first active Venezuelan general to recognise Guaido, but he is one of about 2,000 generals. Venezuela's chief military attache to the United States also said he was defecting late last month.
Guaido has actively courted members of the military with promises of amnesty and preferential legal treatment if they disavow Maduro and disobey his orders, and Washington this week raised the prospect of dropping sanctions on senior Venezuelan officers if they recognise Guaido.
Maduro still has the support of the military high command, and now routinely appears in pre-recorded events at military bases where officers stand behind him and chant triumphal slogans such as "Loyal always, traitors never."
(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick, Luc Cohen and Roberta Rampton; additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Caracas; Editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
China is a close ally of Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro, to whom it has lent billions to help shore up his embattled regime. Over the last decade, China has given Venezuela $65 billion in loans, cash and investment.
Beijing: China insists that peaceful dialogue and political means are the "only way" toward enduring peace in Venezuela, the foreign ministry said, adding that it backs multinational efforts to reach such an outcome.
Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying's statement came in response to a question about a meeting on Thursday of an "International Contact Group" led by Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez and attended by leaders of 14 countries, including Spain, Italy, Portugal and Sweden.
China is a close ally of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, to whom it has lent billions to help shore up his embattled regime.
Hua said China "believes that Venezuela's affairs should be resolved by the Venezuelan people under the framework of its constitution and laws and through peaceful dialogue and political means. This is the only way toward enduring peace in the country."
However, she added that "China supports the efforts by the international community to this end and hopes that all sides will continue to play a constructive role in the peaceful resolution of the Venezuela issue."
Late last month, the ministry issued a statement in Hua's name saying China "opposes external intervention in Venezuela," in a rebuke to calls in the US for military action to remove Maduro.
Over the last decade, China has given Venezuela $65 billion in loans, cash and investment. Venezuela owes more than $20 billion.
China's only hope of being repaid appears to lie in Venezuela ramping up oil production, although low petroleum prices and the country's crashing economy bode poorly for such a possibility.
Two dozen nations, including the US and some of Latin America's biggest countries, have recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's interim president, while China and Russia are backing Maduro.
Reuters
New laws on foreign investment in the UK will block Chinese firm Huawei from sensitive UK tech projects, The Sun newspaper reported on Friday.
Many are concerned that allowing Huawei an inside track on the rollout of the 5G mobile network in the UK would let China spy on private lives and hack UK companies, The Sun said.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson are among those concerned about the Chinese firms reach, the report said.
In more news related to Huawei, Germanys federal cybersecurity agency is investigating whether the company could be a security threat after warnings from other countries, the Funke group of newspapers reported on 8 February, citing Economy Minister Peter Altmaier.
The government currently has no own information on whether the Chinese company could be a security threat, Altmaier was quoted as saying, adding that the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) had been activated.
Press Trust of India
Faced with allegations of being politically biased in India, Twitter on Friday said it believes in impartiality and does not take any actions, such as blocking of accounts, based on political views.
Twitter, which has been accused of political bias, said "abuse and hateful conduct comes from accounts across the ideological spectrum" and it will continue to take action when rules are broken.
Explaining how trending topics on Twitter work, the US-based microblogging platform said the velocity or the number of tweets in a given time period and not the total number of tweets decides what is trending.
The statement by Twitter comes days before its representatives are set to appear before a Parliamentary panel on information technology, which is perceived to have issued the summons to it as a reaction to concerns of supporters of the ruling dispensation.
There has been a lot of discussion about Twitter and political partisanship in India in recent weeks and we would like to take a moment to set the record straight. https://t.co/EHl1xbRpMl Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) February 8, 2019
The committee head and BJP MP Anurag Thakur on February 5 had tweeted about the agenda of the February 11 meeting as examining the issue of "safeguarding citizens'' rights on social/online news media platforms".
Members of Youth for Social Media Democracy, a right-wing group, had protested outside its office alleging that Twitter has acquired an "anti-right-wing attitude" and has been blocking their accounts.
In its statement on Friday, Twitter asserted that the company "does not take any actions based upon political views or viewpoints", neither does it use political ideology to rank content on its service.
"There has been a lot of discussion about Twitter and political bias in India in recent weeks and the global real time communication platform today set the record straight... Twitter is a platform where voices from across the spectrum can be seen and heard. It is committed to the principles of openness, transparency, and impartiality," it added.
The US-based company argued that the content that appears in users'' timelines or the manner in which the company enforces its policies are impartial, and that it is "committed to remain unbiased with public interest in mind".
"Twitter's product and policies are never developed nor evolved on the basis of political ideology... Abuse and hateful conduct comes from accounts across the ideological spectrum and Twitter will continue to take action when its rules are broken," it added.
Twitter, which counts India among its biggest markets, said it has a specialised, global team that enforces its rules with impartiality and that its India employees do not make enforcement decisions which "by design" ensures fairness and objectivity.
"Twitter does not review, prioritise, or enforce its policies on the basis of political ideology. Every Tweet and every account is treated impartially. We apply our policies fairly and judiciously for all.
"If there are ''false positive'' decisions, these are not political statements of intent; they are the basic human error rate of running the fastest, most open conversational tool in history," Twitter Global VP (Public Policy) Colin Crowell said.
The company also stated that the public verification process on its platform is currently closed.
Twitter said it is working with Indian political parties to verify candidates, elected officials, and relevant party officials whose accounts will be active in the public conversation.
"To be clear, the parties themselves select the accounts for verification and then Twitter reviews these accounts to ensure they meet the company''s verification standards," it said.
Twitter emphasised that it verifies these accounts to "empower healthy election conversations" and to "provide confidence that these public figures are whom they claim to be".
"India is the world's largest democracy, and one of our fastest-growing audience markets globally. Twitter's real-time and open nature facilitates robust civic engagement on topics of national and local interest during elections. We are committed to surfacing all sides of the conversation as we enter the election season in this extraordinarily diverse cultural, political and social climate," Mr Crowell said.
He added that the company endeavours to be "even more transparent in how we develop and enforce our policies to dispel conspiracy theories and mistrust".
With ensuing general elections, the Indian government had warned social media platforms of strong action if any attempt was made to influence the country''s electoral process through undesirable means.
The government is also proposing to amend IT rules, wherein social media, online platforms and messaging apps will be made more accountable and be mandated to deploy tools to identify and curb unlawful content as well as follow stricter due diligence practices.
Over the last few months, social media players like Facebook, Twitter and Google have promised to infuse more transparency into political advertisements on their platform, and have since announced a slew of measures as part of election integrity efforts.
tech2 News Staff
The Redmi Note 7 at this time could be considered as the most hotly anticipated phone in the Indian market. This will be the very first device that comes under the Redmi brand of products which separated from Xiaomi in January. The Chinese smartphone maker knocked out Samsung from the top of the budget smartphone market and the latter has come out to reclaim its spot with the M-series budget smartphones. However, Redmi is having none of it.
Redmi India has mocked the Galaxy M-series in a tweet just says "The 'M'ic drop moment when you realise #W8 will outperform! #MiPowerd". The "M'ic" is obviously a smart dig at the M-series smartphone from Samsung. The graph in the tweet depicts a graph which shows the AnTuTu scores of #48MP Redmi Note 7 and an unknown device. The Note 7 has an AnTuTu score of 14300 while the unknown phone has a score of 12,300. The letter M underneath the lower score shows that the phone in question is likely the Galaxy M20.
The 'M'ic drop moment when you realise #W8 will outperform! #MiPowerd
RT if you agree! pic.twitter.com/3UeljTl7nX Redmi India (@RedmiIndia) February 5, 2019
The Redmi Note 7, already announced in China, runs on the Snapdragon 660 SoC while the M20 runs on the 1.8GHz Exynos 7904 processor. While on paper the Snapdragon 660 does look to be the faster chipset, we will reserve our judgement till we review both the device. On a related note, smartphone makers are known to cheat on benchmarks so it is best to make a choice once you have used the phone. The Redmi Note 7 is likely making its way to India soon.
tech2 News Staff
Only a few weeks are left for Nokia to unveil its upcoming phone, expected to be the Nokia 9 PureView, at MWC 2019 that is set in Barcelona on 24 February.
The Nokia 9 PureView has been leaked many a time showing the phone in its full glory via renders, but now the phone has been leaked as live images by Nokiapoweruser.
The images give us a glimpse of how the phone might look in real-life.
The Nokia 9 PureView looks beautiful in the live images showing off its penta-camera setup on the black coloured smooth, glass back.
The picture is giving us an idea of the size of the phone and how it might feel while holding the phone.
The Nokia 9, as per the rumours is said to feature a 5.99-inch display, 2K resolution display with HDR10 support, in-display fingerprint reader and powered by Snapdragon 845 chipset along with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB internal storage.
Reports also suggest that Nokia is planning to announce a 5G-compatible variant of the same model in the future.
Reuters
Germanys federal cybersecurity agency is investigating whether Chinas Huawei Technologies could be a security threat after warnings from other countries, the Funke group of newspapers reported on 8 February, citing Economy Minister Peter Altmaier.
The government currently has no own information on whether the Chinese company could be a security threat, Altmaier was quoted as saying, adding that the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) had been activated.
Altmaier told Funke that talks on security standards for the mobile network were ongoing, adding that Germany needed to protect itself in all sensitive areas, from hospitals to telecommunication.
His comments appeared to push back against reports that Berlin had reached a consensus not to exclude Huawei from building next-generation 5G networks, deciding instead to impose tougher compliance rules on foreign vendors.
Huawei, the global networks market leader with annual sales exceeding $100 billion, faces international scrutiny over its ties to the Chinese government and suspicion Beijing could use its technology for spying. The company denies this.
Nowadays, the people of Bengal want to hear news about jobs and are loath to follow the antics of the CBI, Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
In its best days, the office of the Commissioner of Police of Calcutta, now Kolkata, was the engine room of colonial efficiency. Sir Stuart Hogg, one of its early occupants, after whom the citys New Market was named, spawned the feared detective department. In the later, and much more troubled, years, Sir Charles Tegart, demon to the freedom fighters, survived six attempts on his life, yet he drove around in hood-open car with his bull terrier lazing on the bonnet. Post-Independence, in the 70s, Ranjit Gupta, the scholarly chief, made his mark as the scourge of Naxalites with the help of his favourite encounter specialists.
Breezily indifferent to their political masters passing whims, these men proudly did all they thought were within their remit, leaving moral judgment of their acts only in the hands of future historians.
This past sits ill with the vaudeville show that began at their latest successor Rajeev Kumars official residence on Loudon Street last Sunday evening. For over a month till then, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had been trying to approach him. But hed not give an appointment. On February 3, the CBI ran out of patience and sent a posse of its officers to his residence.
Kumar couldnt have played a gracious host as he knew what the CBI team was looking for. As head of the Special Investigation Team that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had set up to look into a multi-billion-rupee Ponzi scheme scam in 2013, Kumar had access to hard evidence of the inflow and outflow of funds collected from the public on false promise of sky-high returns.
To the CBI, the evidence that could be particularly alluring was a red diary containing the details of transactions with politicians, reportedly obtained from Sudipta Sen, chief of Saradha, the largest of the rogue chit funds, and the call detail records (CDR) of Sen and his associates.
The CBI had a hunch that Kumar had been guarding a pile of evidence on behalf of Banerjee, as, if disclosed, it could expose the inner working of a so-called party of the poor, its wheels greased with cash reportedly amounting to Rs 40,000 crore obtained by hoodwinking the gullible masses. Kumar was therefore playing hooky with the CBI ever since the latter sought clarification.
Banerjee was surprisingly quick in responding to the noisome developments on Loudon Street. Local cops under her control were out in large numbers to save their Commissioner from CBIs clutches. In two hours flat, a 620-square-foot platform was up near Chowringhee crossing. Called metro channel, it had been popularised by none other than Mamata Banerjee more than a decade ago when she sat in dharna there for weeks together to rouse public anger against the erstwhile Left Front governments Singur land acquisition. It brought her a rich dividend by bringing her to power, for nine years now.
Once on the stage, the lady was in her element, striding up and down and often switching on the mike to announce that hers was not a political campaign but a platform to save the constitution. Save Democracy read the festoon above the stage. Opposition leaders across the country were connected. Next day, on stage with her were Tejashwi Yadav of RJD and Kanimozhi of DMK.
At a meeting on Monday in NCP leader Sharad Pawars residence in New Delhi, the focus was on support to Mamata in the attack launched by the Narendra Modi administration on her government. What happened to Mamataji also happened in Delhi, said Pawar, (Arvind) Kejriwalji faced similar issues. Its echo reached Parliament instantly, with the proceedings of the Budget Session stalled in the ruckus by lawmakers sympathetic to Banerjees cause.
However, the show on January 19 had to fizzle out anyway as the Supreme Court took a tough stand on Kumars obduracy, ordering him to meet the CBI team at a neutral place. Banerjee promptly declared it as her moral victory. But she could not order the winding up of the street show without considerable trepidation. Her political allies also got the message from minister Arun Jaitleys blog, describing them as a kleptocrats club.
However, having long earned its notoriety as politicians caged parrot, the CBI too was following the whistle of its master, the BJP. In 2014, the year of Modis election, the Supreme Court ordered the West Bengal SIT to hand over the investigation to CBI. But the bureau would wake up only when a big election is around. In 2015, on the eve of the 2016 West Bengal Assembly elections, it summoned Mukul Roy, TMC general secretary with the reputation of being one of the partys cash-handlers. Banerjee was not amused, as suspicion arose that hed spill the beans.
She was right as Roy indeed cut a deal with the BJP, which he joined in 2017.
The party seems to have inducted Roy to use him as a strategist. It had worked in 2014 when the CBI raided Assam Congress leader Himanta Biswa Sarma on the charge of his involvement with the same chit fund scam. Soon after, Sarma joined the BJP and played his new partys divisive card with such dexterity that the credit of the BJP-led alliance capturing Assam in the 2016 election went solely to him. Similarly, it was thought that Roy too would have a card up his sleeve.
That card could well be advice from Roy to target four IPS officers in the state. It circulated from an audio clip of a voice strongly resembling that of Roy telling BJP general secretary in charge of West Bengal Kailash Vijayvargiya to get two Income Tax officers moved into the state to scare the four IPS officers. Police Commissioner Kumar could be one of the four. Last weeks events follow from this script. The plan runs like this: use Kumar to share incriminating evidence with CBI; drag TMC leaders to court on that basis; once the CBI gets Banerjee by the short and curlies, West Bengal, with its 42 Lok Sabha constituencies, gives BJP a valuable cushion against possible Lok Sabha election losses in the Hindi-speaking states.
However, the party is an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which, in its imagined history, has a key place for Bengal. The Hindu Mahasabha, RSSs erstwhile political wing, took the leading role in the 1947 partition of Bengal.
On 11 April 1947, Bengal Governor Sir Frederick Burrows sent a secret report to Viceroy that partitionists mean business, with the Mahasabha authorising Shyama Prasad Mookerjee to form a volunteer force to secure a homeland for Hindus in Bengal. The truncated Bengal has since then become, to the Sangh followers, the fount of emotion as in the psalm By the rivers of Babylon for Jews. The states 30 per cent Muslim population also offers to the BJPs Hindu-first politicians the adrenaline-pumping challenge of confronting a home-made Gaza.
Banerjees mis-steps made such dreams look realisable to the BJP. On assuming office, she launched a brazen policy of coddling the Muslims. From the state treasury, allowances were given to the clerics and even to the town-criers of mosques. There were unwritten fiats to the police making it reluctant to take a complaint if the accused were Muslim. The rule of motor bikers wearing a helmet were not applicable as long as they had a religious skull cap on the head. In low grade government jobs, the TMC administration made some effort, quite justifiably, to design recruitment policy for redressal of the inadequate Muslim representation. A
ll these moves had turned her into an all-out hate object of the BJP trolls, who began calling her Mamata begum.
The politically motivated fake-news industry has now spread the venom not only to the genteel society of Kolkatas clubs and drawing rooms in leafy areas. It has percolated down to the mofussils, causing astonishing levels of communal divide in places where the two communities lived without rancour till recently. Its blowback on the majority society is felt not only in rising levels of Islamophobia but in growing rigidity along the Hindu caste boundaries. At Birati in Kolkatas northern suburbs, Satirtha Club, an association of the locals, has suddenly introduced the service of offering free the ritual of wearing the sacred thread by Brahmin boys.
Banerjee has understood shed moved too close to the edge of the communal precipice, that too in a state with the minority population tightly clustered in just a few of the 23 districts. As Shutapa Paul quotes Banerjee in her effusive but informative recent book, Didi: The Untold Mamata Banerjee, I am very confident of seeing four things done by the government of West Bengal... holidays for a large number of pujas,... quiz competitions on Hindu dharma,... Varanasi-like aarti in Kolkata, and 2-3 places like the Ayodhya Ram mandir..... Sadly for her, Twitter trolls have carried her old pictures wearing the hijab.
Banerjee tripped over into the communal crevice as she came to power through street protest. Her followers were a legacy from the leftist past, a rapacious army of violent, poorly educated and extortionist youngsters. They had no patience for job-creating factories to grow; instead theyd force the factory manager to buy from them inferior construction material, at twice the market price. While Banerjee captured power by stalling Tatas Nano plant, it ruined her image forever, with investors all smiles to her but their cheque books firmly sequestered.
Nowadays, the people of Bengal want to hear, more than quiz competition on Hindu dharma, any news about jobs. With even an auto rickshaw route permit costing Rs 8 lakh, thanks to politically connected unions, they run to every political rally to gauge who could bring them jobs. Modi. Marx. Mamata. Who?
(Sumit Mitra is a senior journalist)
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram claimed that Ayodhya's Ram Janmabhoomi is not an issue of custom, whereas Sabarimala is one and said the Madhya Pradesh Congress government's use of the National Security Act after the arrest of three people for cow slaughter was wrongful.
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Friday claimed that Ayodhya's Ram Janmabhoomi is not an issue of custom, whereas Sabarimala is one.
Speaking at an event at the national capital, he said, "Use of NSA in Madhya Pradesh (against three persons arrested on charges of cow slaughter) was wrong. That has been pointed out to the government in Madhya Pradesh. So if a mistake has been committed, that mistake has been pointed out by the leadership."
The former finance minister said, "Ayodhya is not an issue of custom. Do not mix up faith and custom. In Sabarimala, the issue is a custom opposed to modern constitutional values. Ayodhya is a matter of faith that this is the birthplace of Lord Ram. Because of that faith, a group of people are claiming the land."
Substantiating his stance on the Sabarimala issue, he said, "I am not a very religious person. We are not saying that the Supreme Court should not resolve what is amenable to judicial resolution. I accept the Supreme Court judgement, but how can I stop ordinary men, women and party workers from expressing their views."
Elaborating his views on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, he added, "Others are saying a mosque existed several hundred years ago. The question is whether the Supreme Court would resolve issues framed by the Allahabad High Court. Many of those issues are amenable to judicial resolution. But I do not think we can mix the issue of custom and faith."
Facing what it knows will be a tough election, the Sangh has stepped up its efforts to retain and expand support among the Dalits of UP
A year ago, a pole was dug deep into the muddy vastness of Meeruts Jagriti Vihar, a huge ground in this crowded western Uttar Pradesh city. One giant saffron flag went up at 101 feet. In its shadow were nearly 350,000 people, most of them uniformed in brown and white, breaking into military-style salutes.
Rashtriya Uday was touted as the biggest-ever congregation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Sunil Kumar Singh, 35, a Jatav and resident of Modipuram, on the northern fringes of Meerut, was one of the key organisers.
The Jatav community, to which the Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati belongs, accounts for nearly 55 per cent of the Dalit population in Uttar Pradesh. They are also Behenjis core voters. The Jatavs are more politically active than other Dalit sub-castes, have had a history of Sanskritisation and are considered to be against the upper-caste leanings of the RSS.
On behalf of the RSS, Sunil invited supporters of the Ravidas ashram in Pavli Khas, close to his home. Ravidasis are another Dalit sub-caste.
Vijay Das, a teacher at the ashram, says RSS footsoldiers are the ones they turn to for municipal issues and basics such as medicines and school textbooks.
Vans of Sewa Bharti, the community service wing of the RSS, ferry medicines to Dalit colonies and that is probably why many Ravidasis campaigned for Sangeet Som. A Thakur, Som is the BJP MLA from Sardhana.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJPs vote share among Dalits increased by 12 percentage points and the BSPs dipped by six.
A resident of Meerut Cantonment, Raju says he supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi because he built toilets and provided LPG cylinders which replaced smoky stoves in poor households. Nearly 5,000 Jatavs like him live in the cantonment, which elected the BJPs Satya Prakash Agarwal to the Assembly with 1,32,518 votes.
There is an economically weaker section within the Jatavs that seeks vikas, the mainstay of the BJP campaign. Voters dont change allegiances overnight, but the RSS has lodged itself in peoples memory over time and is making inroads. Proof of this are hundreds of people like Sunil who graduated from RSS-run schools and hold views different from that of the cadre-ised BSP voter, who shares a near familial bond with party founder Kanshi Ram and Mayawati.
How did this happen?
In the 2017 Assembly elections, the BJP fielded Jatav candidates in only 21 of the 85 constituencies that are set aside for Scheduled Castes. It left 49 seats for other Dalit communities such as the Paswan, Dhobi, Kori, Valmiki and Khateek.
One of the reasons for the BJP losing out on the intelligentsia and the more radicalised Jatav Dalits such as the Ambedkarites is its lack of strong Dalit leaders. Of its two prominent Dalits, former party president Bangaru Laxman didnt catapult into a leader of national appeal and President Ram Nath Kovinds SC status was seen as incidental.
The RSS might also have failed to stem radicalisation among Dalits, which is why the BJP has also focussed on the non-Jatavs, who account for 14 per cent of the states total Dalit voters. But, in and around Meerut, a section of the Jatavs seems to be veering away from the BSP. Modis glowing utterances about BR Ambedkar, the architect of the Constitution, have not gone unnoticed. On February 19, the RSS will host events on Ravidas Jayanti in Jatav-dominated areas.
There are 850 seva karyas, or centres, in western Uttar Pradesh and 500 of them are in Dalit-dominated areas, says Ajay Mittal, the regions RSS prachar pramukh. From stitching to computer training, these centres that the RSS runs with an affiliate called Sewa Bharti are imparting skills that can help the young to earn a livelihood.
Of the 2,200 shakhas in his district, not one lacks Dalit participation, says Seva Das, the RSS pramukh from Muzaffarnagar.
The BJP plays the Dalit card strategically, says Rajneesh Sharma, whose organisation Analog International conducts market research for political parties. BJP Dalit leaders bring upper caste leaders to the homes of Valmikis and Jatavs for sehbhoj, a community meal, says Sharma, who has studied voting patterns in and around Meerut.
The broader question to the Jatav/non-Jatav dynamics is how the BJP versus gathbandhan (alliance) battle will play out in western Uttar Pradesh. Since the alliance isnt a national one, the local voter wont want instability at the Centre, says Sharma. The transfer of votes within the gathbandhan isnt a givena Muslim candidate fielded by the Samajwadi Party on a BSP turf may not appeal to the Jatavs.
Last year, protests against alleged dilution of a law protecting Dalits turned violent in Shobhapur, near Meerut. Jai Kant Singh and Manish, both Jatavs, were arrested for inciting violence and spent eight months in jail. Our problem with the BJP is that the local administration is suspicious of us, but even the BSP did not help us get out of jail, says Jai.
Gopi Paria, a resident of Sobhapur and part of Dalit activist Chandrashekhar Ravans Bhim Army, was murdered during the violence. His mother doesnt know which Dalit leader to supportno one has helped her fight for justice. The silence of the BSP could cost it dear. The BJP may be reaching out to Jatavs
but the scope for identity assertion within the larger machine of the party is limited and the Jatavs know that, says Joginder Kumar, Meerut chief of the BSPs Dakshin Vidhan Sabha.
How much fruit the RSSs efforts will yield remains to be seen. But as the forces of Hindutva catalyse new shifts in the political and social landscape of Uttar Pradesh, it could make a dent in Mayawatis long-tended flock of faithful.
Congress leader Manish Tewari on Saturday published on Twitter what is allegedly the first page of the dissent note that the defence ministry had sent in 2015 to the Prime Minister's Office, expressing reservations to the latter holding 'parallel discussions' in negotiating the Rafale fighter jets deal with France.
Congress leader Manish Tewari on Saturday published on Twitter what is allegedly the first page of the dissent note that the defence ministry had sent in 2015 to the Prime Minister's Office, expressing reservations to the latter holding "parallel discussions" in negotiating the Rafale fighter jets deal with France. The portion tweeted by Tewari contains a straightforward assertion by the defence ministry that the PMO's involvement had "weakened the position taken by the Indian Negotiating Team."
Controversy surrounding the note raged through Friday as a report on The Hindu published the last page of the 2015 letter. Armed with the report, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi had organised a press conference slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Later in the day, ANI tweeted what was allegedly a "complete" version of the same letter, containing then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's acknowledgement that the "PMO and French President's office (were) monitoring the progress of the issue".
While questions arose on why the newspaper had cropped the original letter, focus failed to shift from the fact that even Parrikar's note did not deny that the PMO had indeed been playing a role in the negotiations.
Tewari on Saturday sought to train eyes firmly back to the letter and highlighted the fact that on its first page was the assertion that the "parallel negotiations" were detrimental to Indian interests.
"Page one of note Nirmala Sitharaman did not put out through Poodle Media. Read first seven lines of paragraph four. Ministry of Defence says discussions between French President's Diplomatic Adviser and Javed Ashraf, joint secretary to the PMO, are parallel negotiations that are detrimental to our Interests? Whose interests was PMO fronting for? Not India's," says Tewari's tweet.
He ostensibly referred to ANI as "poodle media", probably for publishing the full letter on Friday. The Congress party has earlier questioned the news agency's credibility, with Rahul calling its group editor "pliable" over her interview with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The "first seven lines of paragraph four" that Tewari highlights, read, "The discussions between Diplomatic Adviser to the French Defence Minister and Joint Secretary to PM tantamount to parallel negotiations while the Indian Negotiating Team constituted by the Ministry of Defence is undertaking the process of formal negotiations with the French side. Such parallel negotiations may be detrimental to our interests as the French side may take advantage of same by interpreting such discussions to their benefit and weakening the position taken by Indian Negotiating Team. This has precisely happened in this case." The highlighted portions are those that were underlined by Tewari.
Tewari also asked on Twitter whether Manohar Parrikar's note at the bottom of the letter was "a lie". "Read paragraph four and noting together. If the PMO and French President's office were only monitoring negotiations, how come in the final deal, sovereign bank guarantee became comfort letter...Exactly what (had) PMO promised French?" he wrote.
Was @manoharparrikar s noting a lie? Read Para 4 ing together.If PMO&French Press office were only MONT.NEGS. how come in final deal sovereign bank guarantee became comfort letter&IMP court for ARBT. AWARD did not remain specifically Indian. Exactly whatPMO promised French? pic.twitter.com/bWw4r5Fe2K Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) February 9, 2019
On Friday, then defence secretary G Mohan Kumar, who was one of the signatories of the letter, had said that the ministry had only issued the dissent note over the sovereign guarantee aspect of the negotiations. Speaking to ANI, Kumar sought to clarify that the dissent had nothing to do with the pricing of the fighter jets.
However, even that became a bone of contention as experts and Opposition questioned the government as to why it did not insist on a sovereign guarantee from France, rather than settling for a letter of intent.
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday debunked all the claims of the Prime Minister's intervention in negotiating prices and said the monitoring activities of the PMO could not be considered interference.
There was both an intended and unintended consequence of Mamata Banerjees curious dharna against the CBIs attempt to question the Kolkata Police Commissioner in connection with the Saradha scam.
There was both an intended and unintended consequence of Mamata Banerjees curious dharna against the CBIs attempt to question the Kolkata Police Commissioner in connection with the Saradha scam.
What the West Bengal Chief Minister had hoped for, and successfully managed, was to be at the centre of a national storm that would bolster her credentials as an unrelenting opponent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Regardless of the fact that the dharna fizzled out after the Supreme Courts not-too-favourable order, Banerjee did strengthen her gains from the 24-party rally in Kolkata on January 19.
The unintended effect of the chief minister overplaying her hand and even equating her dharna with the freedom struggle was the acknowledgment that the BJP was now her foremost rival in West Bengal. When BJP president Amit Shah proclaimed six months ago that the BJP was targeting 22 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state, it was greeted with scepticism. Today, after Modis two very successful rallies in Thakurnagar and Durgapurno one will dismiss Shahs assertion as an empty boast. The BJPs challenge to the Trinamool Congress is real.
For the BJP, the strategic importance of West Bengal should not be underestimated. There is, of course, the emotional appeal of re-establishing the party in the province of Jana Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. However, more important is the necessity of the BJP bringing in a big haul of Lok Sabha seats from the four states of Assam, Tripura, Odisha and West Bengal to compensate for likely losses in northern and central India.
Yet, despite the determination and efficiency of the electoral machine that the BJP has built, winning West Bengal is certain to be exceptionally difficult.
To begin with, Banerjee has built a political organisation that replicates the old Communist penetration of every locality and every institution in the state. Just as the Left allowed no space for alternatives, the Trinamool Congress has pursued a policy of absolute hegemony. Additionally, the political culture of West Bengal has remained faithful to the violent norms that have been in existence since the mid-1960s.
Some 50 BJP activists have been killed in political violence since last summers violent Panchayat polls in which some 30 per cent of the seats were won by the TMC without a contest. Any effective BJP campaign for the 2019 general election will be disproportionately dependant on a strong-willed Election Commission.
Politically, the BJPs organisational penetration is still weak and patchy. Its ability to ensure a cadre presence in all the booths is in doubt. The partys central leadership, however, believes that ground-level deficiencies will be ironed out if the BJP is perceived as the real alternative to the TMC. In that event, it believes, the spontaneous resentment of people against the TMCs high-handedness will manifest itself.
At present, the odds favour Banerjee. The TMC has begun its election campaign with the reassurance that the states Muslims population will be firm in its opposition to the BJP. On its part, the BJP is equally optimistic that Banerjees perceived pro-Muslim tilt will trigger a Hindu backlash.
To offset this possibility, the chief minister is setting the stage for a campaign that will project the BJP as a party of Hindi-speaking outsiders. That may help the TMC in the short run but it could ruin Mamatas national prospects in the event of a hung Lok Sabha.
In short, all indications are that West Bengal will see the fiercest battles of the 2019 election: a mahayudh involving Narendra Modi and Mamata Banerjee.
(Swapan Dasgupta is a Rajya Sabha MP and a resident commentator for CNN-News18)
A day after Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy released two audio clips allegedly of Bharatiya Janata Party's BS Yeddyurappa trying to lure Janata Dal (Secular) MLA Nagan Gouda into the party, Congress leaders KC Venugopal and Randeep Singh Surjewala on Saturday launched a scathing attack on Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Yeddyurappa for trying to topple the coalition state government.
Congress leaders KC Venugopal and Randeep Singh Surjewala on Saturday launched a scathing attack on Narendra Modi and Amit Shah for trying to topple the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in Karnataka using money power. The attack on the BJP top brass comes a day after Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy released two audio clips, allegedly of Bharatiya Janata Party's state unit president BS Yeddyurappa, trying to lure Janata Dal (Secular) MLA Nagan Gouda to quit his party.
Randeep Surjewala on audio clips released by Karnataka CM y'day: In what capacity is BJP Karnataka President & former CM discussing approaching SC judges to get the case right? Have Narendra Modi & Amit Shah given them such assurances? Has the SC become a 'jebi dukaan' of BJP? pic.twitter.com/rZRNIFVRVj ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019
The Congress and the JD(S) jointly rule Karnataka, where Yeddyurappa is said to be leading an ''operation lotus'' in an effort to poach MLAs from the two parties and destabilise the government. In the drama that has sustained over alleged poaching attempts by both sides, the BJP had to quarantine its MLAs in Gurugram and the Congress housed its legislators in a Bengaluru resort after four of its MLAs gave the miss to a party meet. Friday's development came hours before the presentation of the state budget at the Assembly, when JD(S) scion Kumaraswamy called a hurried press conference and claimed that Yeddyurappa had called Gouda's son Sharan to try and convince him to ditch his party. Kumaraswamy further claimed that the entire operation was run with tacit support from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah.
However, the Karnataka chief minister played only a section of the said audio clip at the press conference, reported NDTV. In the clip, a male voice is heard offering money and ministerial berth, besides assuring the JD(S) legislator's son that both the Assembly speaker and the judges will be "taken care of" in case the anti-defection law is invoked against them. Yeddyurappa has claimed that the clip is "fake", however, the audio quality was too poor to make out for certain.
Using Kumaraswamy's "revelations" to sharpen attack on the BJP, Congress general secretary and state in-charge Venugopal and party communications in-charge Surjewala lashed out at the BJP leadership that had purportedly orchestrated the poaching.
"BJPs gang of three is trying to topple the Karnataka government. This gang of Prime Minister Modi, Amit Shah and Yeddyurappa is using the Karnataka governor as a puppet to topple the elected government of the state," Hindustan Times quoted Surjewala as saying.
Surjewala said the Karnataka government has filed a "case" but did not reveal where, against whom and in what capacity it was filed. "The released audio clips also prove that the BJP leaders have access to the Supreme Court judgments and they could try to meddle in cases to turn them in their favour," said Surjewala. It is not known as to which part of the audio clips prove Surjewala's claim.
"In what capacity is the BJP Karnataka president Yeddyurappa discussing approaching Supreme Court judges to get the case right? Have Narendra Modi and Amit Shah given them such assurances? Has the Supreme Court become a jebi dukaan of the BJP?" ANI reported Surjewala as having further said.
"The line goes straight to the doors of Amit Shah," he said, adding, "This is not limited to a state anymore. This is about the country. So, this case should be probed thoroughly. The CBI should probe this case."
Venugopal, too, questioned the source of the money that the BJP was purportedly promising to the MLAs. "The audio clips states that BS Yeddyurappa is offering Rs 10 crore per MLA and in his deliberation, it's clear there are 18 MLAs. Therefore it comes at the rate of around Rs 200 crore. Hes offering 12 MLAs ministerial posts, six were offered chairman posts in different boards. It should be investigated as to who is giving money to the BJP to bribe these MLAs," he said.
The Congress leaders also emphasised that party chief Rahul Gandhi "will do anything to expose BJP's lies."
Satyajit Biswas Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA from Krishnaganj in West Bengal's Nadia district was shot dead by unidentified assailants.
Satyajit Biswas Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA from Krishnaganj in West Bengal's Nadia district was shot dead by unidentified assailants on Saturday evening.
News18 reported that Biswas was shot dead after he got off the stage during a Saraswati Puja celebration in Nadia.
India Today reported that he was rushed to the Shaktinagar district hospital after the incident, where he was declared dead, according to the police.
He was shot dead by miscreants. We are investigating (the incident)," The Indian Express quoted a police official as saying. The report also said that a huge police force has now been deployed in the area.
Biswas was a respected leader among the Matua community, which is politically sensitive for both TMC and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP had recently made inroads in the district of Nadia, which borders Bangladesh.
A political row has already begun on Biswas' killing, as Nadia TMC president Gourishankar Dutta has blamed BJP and followers of saffron party leader Mukul Roy for the murder.
"It is planned murder by the BJP. Minister Ratna Ghosh, Satyajit and I were invited as guests for the programme. On a personal level, he was like a son to me, he had recently gotten married. He was also a part of Matua Sangha and BJP were not able to attract Matua voters because of him. We will not let his death go in vain," The Indian Express quoted Dutta as saying.
On the other hand, BJP leader Dilip Ghosh has denied the charges and has blamed infighting in TMC for the murder.
Neither the Quran nor the Prophet give the Arabs superiority over their brethren, but the Arabs have imposed the language and dress code on Islam worldwide.
A Turkish lawmaker, Ozturk Ylmaz, has proposed that the Muslims in Turkey be called to prayer in Turkish, and not Arabic. His Republican Peoples Party threw him out for the demand, though when the party, which now leads the Opposition, was in power, the azaan was in Turkish.
Not just azaan, even namaz was offered in Turkish during 1932-1950. But the Arab colonisation of Muslim minds was so comprehensive that it was a very unpopular decision, and was rolled back when the party lost the election in 1950.
The first time prayers were said in Turkish in an Istanbul mosque was on 19 March, 1926 the first Friday of Ramzan that year. Cemaleddin Efendi, who was leading the prayer, noticed that most of the people left without completing their prayers.
The issue of prayers in local languages came up the moment Islam crossed the Arabian Peninsula into the Sasanian Empire. In the second half of the seventh century CE, Islam was spreading in what is today Iran and the proud Persians asked for prayers in their language.
Language barrier
This was fair and in consonance with instructions in the Quran that prayers be said in the language people understood. The Quran says gods messengers went to different parts of the world, conveying His message in local languages. God showed no preference for Arab hegemony. Jurists, too, weighed in. Imam Malik ibn Anas, Imam Muhammad al-Shafii, and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, all Arab jurists, opposed the idea.
A senior jurist of Persian origin, Imam Abu Hanifa, the founder of Hanafi jurisprudence, favoured the change but several of his followers didnt agree with him.
Officially adopted by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century, the Hanafi School is followed by many in West Asia, South Asia and the Far East. And yet, the idea of prayers in local languages has not taken off.
The push for languages arose from two sources: a pride in local culture and a desire to have a closer connection to god.
Not only god in the Quran, even Prophet Mohammad in his final sermon made clear that the Arabs dont have superiority over others.
But the Arabs, who used Arabic to further imperialistic ambitions, have not only sought to impose the language but also their dress code, architecture and other cultural identity-markers. The result is that some of the respected clerics in India feel honoured to call themselves slaves (ghulam) and even dogs (kalb) of Arab spiritual masters.
Talk to me
Does this mean that Islam does not have a regional colour? No. Indian Islam has features that the Arabs would not be able to identify with. For instance, our caste-system, the practice of dowry and married women wearing sindoor and bindi. But clerics have made every effort to obscure the syncretism of Indian Islam.
The word used for worship in the translation of the Quran by Shah Rafiuddin is pujna, associated with the Hindu ritual. In the 18th century, both the indigenous puja and the Arabic ibada were permissible substitutes. It was only a century later, when the boundaries of Muslim identity began to tighten, that the Arabic word became mandatory.
The worlds largest movement for preaching Islamic uniformity and exclusivism, Tablighi Jamaat, was started by Deobandi scholar Maulana Ilyas Kandhlawi in 1927 after he noticed that Muslims in Mewat continued to be well integrated with their original Hindu culture.
Tablighi efforts have been aided by an injection of Saudi petrodollars. The familiar Muslim greeting of Khuda Hafiz is now Allah Hafiz. It is no longer unusual to see a Muslim woman in a hijab or a man dressed in an abaya or sporting a keffiyeh. Its all right in West Asia, where these clothes protect from sun, dust and sandstorms, but in Kolkata, Jakarta, London, Paris or Boston? It is nothing but a sign of a colonised Muslim mind.
Transition to local languages has not been easy for other religions too. A certain holiness does attach itself to some languages. Vedic Sanskrit, for instance, is sacred for Hindus, Hebrew for Jews. Christianitys struggle to retain the Bible in Latin and Greek was intense and bloody, with a powerful Church putting up a stiff resistance. Eventually, the Bible did speak to the people in their language.
The Ulema in India refuse to accept as Quran an Urdu or English translation of the holy book. Mosques, too, do not display translated copies of the Quran, but in Europe and the US they do. In fact, much of Islamic literature is now easily available in translation on the Net.
In South Asia, there has never been a call for azaan or namaz in local languages. How can Muslims come close to Allah if they dont understand the language they are praying in? Maybe the debate in Turkey will open our hearts and minds.
(Sultan Shahin is the founder-editor of a Delhi-based progressive Islamic website, NewAgeIslam.com)
Guns or roses, what should the governments strategy be against the nettlesome Maoist insurgency?
Guns or roses, what should the governments strategy be against the nettlesome Maoist insurgency? A vast body of incoherent literature on armed conflict has sought to push the idea that such struggles in general, and more emphatically the Left-wing or Naxalite rebellion, is not just another law and order problem. That there are root causes and political issues, which must necessarily be addressed before a solution can be achieved, and that consequently the use of force by the state is a counterproductive strategy of response.
The first difficulty with this perspective is the dyadic construction of the problem as if the root causes and law and order approaches are unique and mutually exclusive. Insurgent conflict is enormously complex and goes through a wide range of stages, each of which requires a granular approach based on the prevailing dynamic. Violence is a necessary component of this dynamic (otherwise, we would not be speaking of insurgency or rebellion), but does not exhaust the spectrum of actions and reactions that constitute both provocation and the policy of response. The degree to which violence prevails, moreover, is the measure in which the use of force as a counter will dominate responses. This is the inevitable consequence of the brute reality that, absent security and order, nothing else can work. We may talk of political and developmental solutions till we are blue in the face, but these can hardly be implemented where Maoist disruptive dominance is at levels that exclude any civilian presence of the state and its agencies. It is only after a degree of dominance has been secured through law and order measures that restoring civil governance and a wide range of non-violent interventions can be applied.
Secondly, it is necessary to understand that the Maoists have enormously exploited the root causes argument to paralyse policymakers and even security forces from addressing crucial issues of law and order. Indeed, the Maoists derive a great deal of popular legitimacy because they harness a number of important and valid issues to their movement. What is little understood, however, is that this is essentially a strategy of grievance harvesting rather than any committed effort to address such grievances. The Maoist choice of violence is not entrenched in broadly recognised root causes. It is ideologically dictated: an irreducible class conflict that can end only with the destruction of one class and the imposition of the dictatorship of the proletarian. As the Communist Party of India (Maoist) Political and Organisational Review states explicitly, in the context of the United Front activities that focus on mass mobilisation, all this activity should serve to intensify and extend our armed struggle. Any joint activity or tactical alliances which do not serve the cause of the peoples war will be a futile exercise.
It is significant, moreover, that both the Centre and governments in Maoist-afflicted states have long recognised the importance of instrumentalities beyond the use of force in addressing the insurgency. Every official document and approach emphasises holistic or multi-pronged solutions, and there are numberless programmes for development, improved governance and relief to underprivileged sections of the population, as well as generous surrender and rehabilitation policies for those who are willing to give up the gun (though their implementation may in some cases be dubious). The state has also engaged in efforts to secure negotiated settlement with insurgent groups in various theatres, and this has included cycles of dilution or suspension of operations against, and talks with, the Maoists. Historically, these alternative approaches come into play when the use of force has pushed insurgents into a situation where their survival is under threat, or where they have come to accept violence can yield no possible advantage. As one commentator notes, violence may be 10 per cent of the problem or 90 per cent of the problem, but it is the first 10 per cent, or the first 90 per cent. Our best intentions notwithstanding, law and order will continue to precede all other approaches for this reason alone.
(Ajai Sahni is the executive director of Institute for Conflict Management)
A Delhi court has ordered registration of an FIR against news channel Republic TV and its editor Arnab Goswami on a complaint of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor alleging theft of confidential documents
New Delhi: A Delhi court has ordered registration of an FIR against news channel Republic TV and its editor Arnab Goswami on a complaint of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor alleging theft of confidential documents pertaining to the probe into his wife Sunanda Pushakar's death.
Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmender Singh, in his 21 January order that was uploaded on Friday, directed the SHO concerned to lodge the FIR and investigate the matter which required a probe as it is not clear how the material came in the possession of the accused persons.
"This court is of the considered view that in view of allegations levelled by Tharoor and material produced on record in the form of RTI replies and other material, matter discloses commission of cognisable offence and in view of this court, matter requires investigation by police as it is not clear how said material came in the possession of proposed accused persons.
"This court is of the further view that number of persons are to be examined in this matter. In these circumstances, SHO concerned is directed to register FIR in this matter and investigate the same as per law," the court said and posted the matter for further hearing on 4 April," the court said.
Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa, appearing for Tharoor, had told the court that during the investigation of the death case, police collected a number of items or materials of the deceased and recorded statement of complainant and one of his aides Narain Singh. All those documents and materials were part of confidential record and within the sole possession of the investigation team.
It added that the accused persons "in an attempt to increase the viewership of their news channel deliberately made malicious and defamatory remarks against complainant".
The court noted that Tharoor has already started legal action against the news channel and Goswami before the Delhi High Court for alleged defamatory accusation.
"It is alleged that during several broadcast on said news channel, which was conducted by proposed accused persons, certain documents were shown on news channel which were stated to be documents related to investigation of the death of complainant's wife.
"Such documents are a copy of internal file notings of Delhi Police, copy of statement of complainant given to Delhi Police, copy of statement of complainant's aide Narain Singh, pictures of deceased which were taken during autopsy," the complaint said. It alleged that these confidential documents were "illegally accessed" and "shown/broadcast on their news channel".
"It is alleged that accused persons accessed the complainant's email account without his authority or consent and shared the personal emails on their news channel. It is submitted that accused persons even filed said materials/ documents as part of their reply in civil suit before high court," the complaint said.
The complainant cited the RTI queries received from the Delhi Police, which said "it is not permissible to share the information/ documents related to any investigation to any public member/media till the case is pending investigation."
"It is submitted that above said RTI replies by Public Information Officer of Police authorities clearly shows that proposed accused persons accessed the above mentioned documents illegally. It is submitted that complainant filed the complaint with police regarding theft of those documents/ materials and regarding hacking of his e-mail account.
"However, no action has been taken by police. So, present application was filed with request to pass direction for registration of FIR and investigation of this matter," the complaint said.
Tharoor, former Union minister and Pushkar's husband, has been charged under sections 498-A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty) and 306 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), but has not been arrested in the case.
Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a luxury hotel in the city on the night of 17 January, 2014. The couple were staying in the hotel as the official bungalow of Tharoor was being renovated at that time.
The secretive organisation set up by hypnotherapist Jayant Balaji Athavale has been accused of serious crimes like murder and bomb blasts but remains popular among the youth for its ideology
Sandeep Karnik saw his two young sisters staring at an empty carton, chanting mantras for hours. We are transferring our negative energies into the box, the women told Karnik.
That was five years ago. Karniks sisters, then 22 and 26, left home to be part of the Sanatan Sanstha, a Hindu spiritual organisation, in 2014 and never returned.
Kapil Kupekar witnessed a similar mind-boggling scene 19 years ago. His doctor sister walked up to the family altar in their Pune home, collected the ashes of incense sticks, added them to water and drank the mix. It will protect me from evil powers, then-24-year-old Neha told him. Kupekar, also a doctor, says the strange rituals started after Neha began attending discourses of the Sanstha. She was sucked so deep into its ideology that she could have killed in the name of religion, says Kupekar, who found a dagger in Nehas belongings.
In their dimly lit home in Satara, a middle-aged couples wait for their daughter and son continues. The two left home in 2012 to join the Sanstha and went incommunicado. They only got back in touch with their parents last year brief phone calls twice a month. The Sanatan people are everywhere. If they see you here, they will tell our children and the phone calls will stop, their mother Rita Takle told Firstpost, her husband Sachin seated next to her.
There are several such families across Maharashtra, where the young and bright have cut off all ties to turn footsoldiers of the Sanstha and to revive Hinduism. It is hard to say how many sadhaks, or followers, the Sanstha has, but a rough figure would be 450 devotees who live in its two ashrams in Maharashtras Thane and Panvel, and another one in Ponda, Goa. More than 2,000 full-time sadhaks live outside the ashrams, says Sanjiv Punalekar, advocate and secretary of the Hindu Vidhidnya Parishad (HVP), a lawyers body that works with the Sanstha. Besides, there are people who give occasional service. Its a flexible number, says Punalekar.
This secretive and shadowy outfit, which hides behind a maze of affiliates, is accused of serious crimes, including links to the murder of four rationalists and several low-intensity bomb blasts. But its popularity remains intact, as do its methods to reach out to the young. In the five districts Firstpost visited, families said that Sansthas stalls can still be seen at religious fairs, its in-house daily Sanatan Prabhat is dropped off at doorsteps, and satsangs are held every week. Word of mouth, though, remains the most effective tool.
The Sanstha
Registered as a charitable trust, the Sanatan Sanstha was set up in 1999 by hypnotherapist Dr Jayant Balaji Athavale and his wife Dr Kunda Athavale, to propagate spirituality. Nine years of rallies and public meetings across Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa have gone into the making of the Sanstha.
The outfit gained notoriety for allegedly disrupting public speeches in Maharashtra in the early 2000s but was never named in any case. Its first link with serious crime surfaced in 2008 when two sadhaks were sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment for a blast in Thane and planting a bomb in Vashi. They were also fined for their role in a blast in Panvel. In 2009, the Sanstha was in the news again: two sadhaks were killed, allegedly when a bomb they were carrying in a scooter went off in Goas Margao, the police say.
Initiation, indoctrination
The Sanstha is careful in picking recruits. For the first few months, recruits are reintroduced to Hindu traditions such as the meaning of folding hands and reason for wearing a tilak, which strike a chord, says Karnik.
On its website, the Sanstha projects itself as a religious and spiritual organisation, listing 16 chants for tasks as varied as eating, climbing a mountain or even waging a war. The tasks are linked to the larger good of Hindu religion and society.
People are looking beyond their routine life to find meaning, says Hamid Dabholkar, a psychiatrist and son of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, who was gunned down in 2013, allegedly by people with links to the Sanstha. Based in Satara, Dabholkar has seen the influence that the Sanstha has come to wield on middle-class Hindu families. It offers them identity and purposethey feel they are doing something for the Hindu society. This is a justified psychological need for everybody, he says.
And the Sanstha knows it.
Jobs or education define the life of most such families. The Karnik sisters were graduates, but their lives revolved around household chores and helping their mother with her shop. As part of the Sanstha, they travelled to different states for social service. Similarly, Ritas daughter was upset because she didnt make it to the merit list of her ayurvedic medicine exams. She saw the Sanstha as the only route out of the depression, Rita read in her daughters journal. When her son moved to a different city to study engineering, outside the classroom, satsangs became his social life. Neha had started chanting to beat anxiety after a girl in her hostel introduced her to satsangs.
The Sanstha, Dabholkar explains, identifies such vulnerable, lonely individuals and families. Association with fringe religious organisations aligns an individuals identity with a group identity, granting greater self-esteem and empowerment, Farhaan Wahi of the University of Wales writes in a paper studying how Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic group in the UK, indoctrinates and radicalises the youth.
The new perspective offered by such religious outfits may contradict the established culture, arousing a sense of conflict with it, says Wahi. The families in Maharashtra experienced something similar. Their children, they say, started associating with their new Hindu identities and felt that Western ideas had weakened Hinduism. They saw it as their duty, as Hindus, to revive forgotten rituals and practices, and chanting was a weapon against a common enemythe evil powers that reside in all those who oppose or question Hinduism.
The indoctrination is subtle. Once the new sadhaks become regulars, they are absorbed in a closed group where they are told about atrocities against the Hindus, says Rita, who attended a few satsangs with her children. Sachin noticed that soon after joining the Sanstha, his son started talking along communal lines. Sadhaks are told that communal riots, terrorism, spread of disease and natural and man-made calamities are signs of apocalypse, Karnik says. They instil fear in people. They tell them that religious war is going to begin. God is going to come to earth in the form of a human avatar to protect; that avatar is (Jayant) Athavale, he says.
When the world didnt end in 2008 or in 2012, as predicted, the sadhaks were told that Guruji (Athavale) had prevented the catastrophe, say the families.
But the Sanstha rubbishes these claims. Sansthas spokesperson Chetan Rajhans says Athavale has never claimed to be God. He (Athavale) tells people that he is getting old; he is a patient. How can he be God? He has even published this in Sanatan Prabhat, he says.
The hypnotic grip
There is a complete mental breakdown. The sadhaks are told that the only one who can save them is Guruji. So, they should come to the ashram, says Kupekar. At a loss to understand their abandonment by their loved ones, families are convinced that their children have been hypnotised. In 2011, Lonavala-based scientist Vijay Rokde, whose wife was a Sanstha sadhika, filed a public interest litigation in Bombay High Court with three other families, saying the Sanstha was using the science of hypnotherapy to control people. He read up on hypnosis and found that those in deep hallucinatory state could be manipulated into committing crimes. Athavale is manipulating hypnosis techniques and applying them on the sadhaks, his plea says.
Rajhans dismisses the allegations as baseless. Hypnotherapy, he says, can only be done with a persons consent. It cannot be done on a group and Athavale stopped practising when he set up the Sanstha.
Professor Shyam Manav, a hypnotherapist who was close to Athavale before the Sanstha was launched, explains that giving suggestion during meditation can put people into deep trance. He claims that is what the Sanstha is practising. Athavale knows the science of this really well, he says. Devotees share spiritual experiences with sadhaks, who then zero in on people who go into deep trance. People who go into deep trance are then asked to do more so that they attain nirvana. Then you can feed anything to these people, says Manav. They are then told it is okay to kill in the name of religion, he alleges. Its Gods work.
Dabholkar doesnt buy the hypnosis or the brainwashing theory. They have used principles of hypnosis and religious fundamentalism and made a deadly concoctionwhich is the Sanstha, he alleges. It amounts to abuse of mental health knowledge. The Sanstha is careful. Anyone who has an inquisitive mind and believes in questioning is screened out, Dabholkar claims. Is there no getting away from the Sanstha? In the West, there are de-radicalisation programmes but the results are doubtful, he says.
What lies ahead
4Will its alleged crimes bring down the Sanstha? Since 2008the first time it was linked to serious crimethe Sanstha has not been named in even a single chargesheet. So, where does the question of banning it arise? Rajhans asks. In the rationalists murders, 700 sadhaks were questioned; not one was named in any FIR. It is an intellectual war, Rajhans says. Those who are opposing the Sanstha are anti-Hindu; they are communist party people.
The families have gone to the police, pleaded with sadhaks and hurled stones at the ashrams, only to be handed out legal documents signed by their children saying they had chosen to be sadhaks. HVP has sued many families for defamation. Unable to take on the Sansthas legal might, many have given up.
For years, Kupekar tried to bring Neha out of the Sansthas practices even when his parents wanted to give up. But he wont tell Firstpost where she is. She has had long spells of psychiatric treatment, and reminding her of the past could act as a trigger and she may go back to being a sadhika, he fears. All he is willing to share is that Neha is out of the ashram, goes to work and practises meditation at home.
Others arent that lucky. Sachin is pinning his hopes on a ban on the Sanstha. Even if it is banned, we dont know whether our children will come back to us, he says, resignedly.
The names of some individuals have been changed to protect their identities
In the midst of the Maoist killing fields, the government built a skill city, an education hub, a multispeciality hospital and also set up a call centre. A one-time Maoist stronghold, Palnar turned into a digital village, hooked up to the world.
The road was paved with bullets. Stretching from Konta to Sukma, across Chhattisgarhs Maoist heartland, it was the centrepiece of the Indian governments efforts to transform the lives of the regions adivasis and break their links with the insurgents. Local contractors refused to take on the work, fearing for their lives and the protection-rackets run by the Maoists. For 15 years, the Central Reserve Police Force stood along the road, braving ambushes and attacks on guard workers.
In the midst of the Maoist killing fields, the government built a skill city, an education hub, a multispeciality hospital and also set up a call centre. A one-time Maoist stronghold, Palnar turned into a digital village, hooked up to the world.
But Novembers elections to the Chhattisgarh assembly have called into question the governments clear-hold-and-build counter-insurgency paradigm that involves taking back an area from insurgents, keeping them away from it and winning the confidence of the locals.
The Bharatiya Janata Party made development works the main plank of its campaignbut of the 12 seats in the adivasi-dominated Bastar, the BJP won one, and lost all 14 in Surguja. The lesson is clear: New Delhi needs to think hard about its counter-insurgency model. Part of the problem is that what passes for development hasnt done a lot for adivasis, despite the huge sums of money that have been spent. Roads have been built to connect districts and blocks, which only helps the villages within a periphery of 10km or so from the local headquarters. While there is an education hub and a call-centre at Jawanga village in Geedam block, other villages such as Turmrigunda, Cherpal and Kaurgaon remain inaccessible.
Its widely known that road-building businesses are the big beneficiaries of New Delhis open-handed spending: a recent Comptroller and Auditor General report found 4,600-crore irregularities in e-tendering for work contracts. For Bastars adivasis, development hasnt translated into a better life. In towns such as Jagdalpur and Dantewada, government spending has sparked something of a construction boom---magnificent new homes and commercial buildings have mushroomed over the years. In its third term, the Raman Singh government initiated large-scale development and infrastructure works. It also offered rice at Re 1 a kg to the tribal communities. The measures, however, didnt reach the adivasis in Bastar, fanning resentment against the ruling BJP. Maoists cashed-in on the anger to win over the local youth.
Tribals want development," says BPS Netam, the president of the Chhattisgarh Sarv Adivasi Samaj, but instead theyre getting construction." What about basic amenities? Unemployment and lack of education are pushing tribal youth towards Maoism, but if an adivasi complains, he is branded a Maoist. In the villages, schools are without teachers and hospitals without doctors. In 2015, the state government closed 2,918 schools, including 782 in Bastar, under a school rationalisation programmea byproduct of a chronic shortage of teachers. Students who walked four kilometres to school now trek up to 12km in the state where public transport is missing in rural areas.
The 15th Sarv Siksha Abhiyaans review report says 58.3% adivasi children remain out of school, which means they have little chance of capitalising on the new opportunities in the towns.
Several Bastar villages do not have primary health centres either. From Dudepalli and Kerpe in the Bhopalpatnam block, the nearest medical help is 10km away.
In a report auditing healthcare system for the 2012-17 period, CAG found the state was 89% short of its sanctioned strength of doctors and 34% short of nurses. Even basic medicines were in short supply, says the report tabled in the assembly in January 2019. Four of 10 children in the Kuwakonda and Katekalyan blocks, government data show, are malnourishedperhaps the most graphic illustration of how the governments development drive has failed Chhattisgarhs adivasis.
Maoist hubs, such as Basaguda, Jagargunda and Chintalnar villages, still dont have access to clean drinking water or electricity, let alone education or healthcare. Adivasis defied a Maoist election boycott to participate in the assembly election. Bastar voter turnout was 83.64%, against 76.35% for the state, making it clear that the adivasis want to participate in policy-making. But the development blueprint rarely acknowledges their concerns: forests have severely degraded, hurting incomes; land is incapable of sustaining agriculture; water sources that have depleted and the lack of basic government services. British anthropologist Verrier Elwin, an authority on the Gonds and Baigas of Central India, warned that forcing improvement on very simple people without at the same time having an adequate programme of development to make their lives fuller, richer and happier can be disastrous.
For the most part, Indians are unaware of the long history of adivasi resistance to the appropriation of their resources, both the colonial era and after independence. Pravir Chandra Bhanj Deo, Bastars hereditary raja, wanted a different model of development. His ideas became immensely popular with adivasis, but drew the wrath of the government. In March, 1966, 36year-old Deo was killed in his Jagdalpur palace by the Indian police for waging war against the state. That battle, in some senses, is going onwith the Kalashnikov replacing traditional adivasi weapons.
Even today, adivasis resist big infrastructure development projects, arguing that their land is taken away but they dont benefit. Farms and water in villages adjoining the Bailadila mines, for example, have been contaminated with effluents and red oxide turning the land barren. Land is taken away in the name of development and acquired without the consent of gram sabhas, says Netam. There is a gap between the type of development the government has done and the kind the tribals need, says Archana Prasad, a professor with Jawaharlal Nehru Universitys School of Social Sciences. Development should be democratic and shouldnt be thrust upon tribals.
Our choices are cherished because they are ours. Social endorsement for personal choices is not the basis for recognizing them. The Constitution of India guards personal liberty from censure.
On 4 February, the musical legend AR Rahman performed on stage at Dharavi to commemorate ten years of Slumdog Millionaire, the Danny Boyle movie for which he had won two Oscars. The Mozart of Madras was soon embroiled in a hate campaign because of his daughter expressing her right to choose.
During the performance, Khatija had come up on stage to speak a few words of admiration for him. As soon as the video appeared on social media, people began to troll them.
Social media users were quick to assume that Rahman had forced his daughter to dress conservatively. He tried to shut down the trolls by sharing a photograph of his wife and two daughters posing along with Nita Ambani accompanied by the hashtag #freedomtochoose. In the photograph, Khatija can be seen wearing a niqaab, while her sister and mother do no wear one.
The precious ladies of my family Khatija ,Raheema and Sairaa with NitaAmbaniji #freedomtochoose pic.twitter.com/H2DZePYOtA A.R.Rahman (@arrahman) February 6, 2019
This image has saddened me.. In India little girls or for that matter any girl does not need to cover her face like this. Really sad... pic.twitter.com/ni7veXeAkT Sunanda Vashisht (@sunandavashisht) February 6, 2019
Some women have freedom to choose burqa, the symbol of oppression. Of course, some women have freedom to choose the life of a sex object,or a slave, or a child bearing machine. #FreedomToChoose taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) February 7, 2019
Khatija explained on her Instagram page that no one has forced her to cover her face, The veil has been my choice with complete acceptance and honour. Im a sane mature adult who knows to make my choices in life. She further added that people should not judge without completely understanding the situation.
When I saw the photograph, my reaction was that in a sense, it encapsulates the beauty of our country. The strength of our nation lies in acceptance and plurality of our culture. Every woman of India is a microcosm of its diversity and they all have a meticulous dressing style; it could be all-black, preppy, gender neutral, girly or conservative. What matters is that she should feel empowered and liberated in what she wears even if it is a hijab without having to explain her choice.
Quran, Islam, and Hijab
The term hijab is a catchall for any type of Muslim veil. Khatija wore a niqab, which is a type of veil that covers the face while leaving a slit for the eyes. In Islam, like most other religions, modesty is an important virtue of faith. When the Quran addresses the issue of hijab, it first puts the responsibility of hijab on the believing men asking them not to stare at women and not to be promiscuous, Say to the believing men that they restrain their eyes and guard their private parts. That is purer for them. Surely, Allah is well aware of what they do. The verse tears down rape culture for it orders men to first reform themselves and demolishes the oft-heard grumble that a woman was too provocative. A person, who accepts Islam, accepts the hijab, be chaste yourselves, and women will be chaste as well. Only when the Quran has commanded men to be modest, does it address the women. Even then, it makes clear that in Islam men are not permitted to force hijab on women. For a practicing Muslim, this is an important issue and was emphasised by Khatija, There were certain comments which said that this attire is being forced by my dad and that he has double standards. I would like to say that the attire I wear or the choices I make in my life does not have anything to do with my parents.
India and Right to Freedom of Religion
In India, the rights of members of any religion to practice, profess, and propagate is absolute except when it is contrary to public order, health and mortality. The right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the Articles 25, 26, 27 and 28 of the Indian constitution. Khatijas choice is her right to freedom that is both a constitutional and human right.
To deprive her of that right is impermissible. For a person, faith is intrinsic to their meaningful existence and a part of their individuality. The realisation of this right can help any woman put a stop to any sort of patriarchal supremacy or patriarchal choice she may be subject to. This individual faith and expression of choice are fundamental for the fructification of the right to freedom.
Hijab equals oppression
The social media reaction reinforces an omnipresent stereotype she must be oppressed and would have been forced to do so by a man. The problem with this simplistic understanding is that it assumes that a woman can be free only in what we call in India, a western outfit. The point is it is true that many women are forced to dress modestly but much of that oppression comes from lack of access to education, employment opportunities, and the right to exercise political power. In other words, modesty does not oppress women even if women in such free communities started wearing modern clothes they would still be oppressed, because let us not forget that self-proclaimed guardians of morality were equally outraged about Sania Mirzas skirt or Priyanka Chopras dress.
When you tell a woman she is oppressed because of her choice, you are assigning a belief system and robbing her of her agency. When you assume modesty is not a choice, you demote a woman from being a thinking individual and strengthen stereotypes that have held women back.
Hijab is not feminism
Feminism is a belief that women and men should have the same political, economic, personal, and social rights. It also means that a woman can show her body like a man without judgment or criticism. Furthermore, it means that a woman alone should have a right to wear hijab or shorts.
Clothes are not a reflection of her intellect, promiscuity, political inclination, or sexual preferences. The choice to wear a saree is just as empowering as the choice to wear jeans. What matters is her right to assert control and ownership of her body and to demand that she be judged by her actions and not by her appearance.
Sexuality and Modesty
A woman who dresses in a hijab is as much a sexual person as a woman who flaunts a bikini. A conservative dress does not imply that she does not believe in love or self-care. All it means that she chooses to separate her public and private expressions of sexuality.
Lessons from the fiasco
The only take away from this incident should be that the way a woman dresses shouldn't be imposed on her. A womans dress should not limit her from pursuing or achieving her dreams. Historically, modesty has different connotations but that should not obscure its appeal and relevance for the modern woman. The photograph shared by AR Rahman is a reflection of this choice.
This picture sums up Muslim women of India AR Rahmans wife, Sairaa covers her head with a dupatta His elder daughter, Khatija wears niqaab, and other daughter, Raheema does not do either. #DoNotStereotype#FreedomToChoose https://t.co/tlVjgEvXla Sanobar (@SanobarFatma) February 7, 2019
An individuals choice should be respected because it is theirs alone. Social approval for personal choices is not the basis for recognition. An adult can live life as she pleases. Even the constitution protects personal liberty from critique and judgment. To tell Khatija how she should dress is an insult to the women of India, for it takes away their right to think for themselves. Expression of choice in accordance with law is the acceptance of individual identity. By trolling, insulting and name calling the right and trying to mold it in accordance with society would only destroy the individuality of a person. How Khatija lives, her life is entirely a matter of her choice.
Sanobar Fatma is an academician based in New Delhi. She writes extensively about polity, law and films while remaining involved in her parent discipline the medieval Indian history. She tweets at @SanobarFatma
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Saturday make a whirlwind tour of the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Tripura during which he will lay the foundation stone of the new Greenfield airport and Sela tunnel, launch the DD Arun Prabha channel and will unveil various other development projects.
As Narendra Modi starts a whirlwind tour to the North East India, in what is being deemed a pre-election visit, reports suggest that the prime minister might witness embarrassing protests on the way against his government's move to bring the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
Modi, who will visit Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Tripura on Saturday, is expected to launch/ inaugurate myriad developmental projects in these states, including laying the foundation of a new Greenfield airport and Sela tunnel, launch the DD Arun Prabha channel.
However, the protests against the prime minister already seems to have started. Assam's student unions groups raised slogans against the proposed legislation and waved black flags in protest as Modi arrived in Guwahati on Friday evening. This is the prime minister's first visit to Assam eversince massive protests erupted against the controversial legislation.
Protests in Assam over Modi's visit
The All Assam Students Union (AASU) members shouted slogans against the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill and waved black flags at the prime minister as he arrived in Guwahati on Friday.
A large number of AASU members were seen waving black flags to the prime minister and shouting slogans as his convoy crossed the gates of the Gauhati University at around 6.30 pm and a few minutes later as he crossed the premises of the AASU headquarters on MG Road.
Slogans like 'Modi go back', 'Scrap Citizenship Amendment Bill', 'Joi Aai Asom (Glory to Mother Assam)' were heard. The demonstrators were restricted as the gates to the AASU office was locked by the police, the students union's chief advisor Sammujal Bhattacharya claimed.
"The government with its machinery can show its power and strength...No matter how much the government tries to quell the protests, the agitation against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will continue. The government has proven that it is a protector of the Bangladeshi infiltrators and is against the indigenous people of Assam," he said.
Modi arrived on Friday at the Guwahati airport from Jalpaiguri in West Bengal in a special Indian Air Force plane and was received by Governor Jagdish Mukhi, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and senior government officials.
"The pain of the indigenous people will be seen across Assam tomorrow...Effigies of the prime minister will be burnt in every corner of the state," said AASU president Dipanka Nath. Peasant organisation Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) too showed black flag to the prime minister at Adabari and Fancy Bazar areas of the city which fell on his route.
KMSS chief Akhil Gogoi said on Friday that Modi "will be shown" black flags by 70 organisations protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Bill on Saturday. "Modi has come here to seek votes from the people of Assam. The Bill has been brought in to give citizenship to Hindu Bengalis from Bangladesh and get their votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls," he alleged.
Three Tripura CPM MPs to boycott prime minister's visit
Three MPs of the Opposition CPM in Tripura will boycott the programme of Modi to protest and express solidarity with the movement against the citizenship bill. In a signed joint press statement issued by the only Lok Sabha MPs from the state, Jitendra Chowdhury, Shankar Prasad Datta and Rajya Sabha MP Jharna Das Baidya said "We the three MPs of Tripura have taken a conscious decision to boycott the functions at Agartala to be attended by the Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi tomorrow on 9 February, 2019."
If the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is enacted in Parliament, it would grossly harm the cause of the North East region in the long run and harm the secular fabric of the country. "The bill is against the spirit of our Constitution," the statement said.
The Bill has already been passed in the Lok Sabha. "We appeal before the Honble Prime Minister and his Government to immediately withdraw the Bill from the Rajya Sabha, honoring the genuine sentiments and anguish of the people of this country in general and the North East in particular," it added.
Modi's itinerary full of developmental projects for North East
However, unfazed with any such protests, the prime minister is expected to lay the foundation stone of northeast gas grid foundation in Guwahati, and inaugurate the Garjee-Belonia railway line in Tripura. As per the Prime Minister's Office, Modi will reach Itanagar from Guwahati on Saturday morning and will unveil a series of development projects at IG Park in Itanagar.
As part of his outreach to the North East region ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, Modi will lay the foundation stone for the construction of Greenfield airport at Hollongi. At present, the nearest airport to Itanagar is at Lilabari in Assam at a distance of 80 kilometres. The airport is likely to have various sustainability features like a green belt along approach road to act as a noise barrier, rainwater harvesting, use of energy efficient equipment, and so on.
Modi will also lay the foundation stone of Sela tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh, which will provide all-weather connectivity to Tawang Valley for civilians as well as security forces. The tunnel is expected to reduce travel time to Tawang by an hour, ANI reported.
A new dedicated DD Channel for Arunachal Pradesh DD Arun Prabha will be launched by Modi at IG Park, Itanagar. The channel will be the 24th channel operated by Doordarshan. He will also dedicate 110 megawatt Pare Hydroelectric Plant in Arunachal Pradesh to the nation.
The foundation stone for permanent campus of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) at Jote, Arunachal Pradesh will also be laid by Modi on this occasion. It will cater to film students, especially those from the North Eastern states.
In Tripura, Modi is scheduled to unveil the statue of state's last ruler Birbikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur at the airport, address a public rally at Swami Vivekananda Maidan, inaugurate a new block of Indian Institute of Information technology (IIT) at the premises of Tripura Institute of Technology (TIT) and a 23-kilometre-long railway track between Garjee in Gomati district and Belonia in South Tripura, BJP sources said.'
With inputs from agencies
While speaking to TDP leaders through a teleconference, Chandrababu Naidu said: 'Tomorrow is a dark day. Narendra Modi is coming to witness the injustice that was done to Andhra Pradesh by him.'
Amravati: Andhra Pradesh chief minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday called on workers to hold Gandhian protests during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the state on Sunday.
While speaking to Telegu Desam Party (TDP) leaders through a teleconference, Naidu said: "Tomorrow is a dark day. Prime Minister Modi is coming to witness the injustice that was done to Andhra Pradesh by him. Modi is weakening the states and constitutional institutions. PMO's intervention in Rafale is disrespect to the nation. We will do peaceful Gandhian protests with yellow and black shirts and balloons."
The TDP national president also accused YSR Congress party president Jagan Mohan Reddy of being in collusion with the prime minister and said, "Opposition leader in the state YS Jagan Mohan Reddy won't speak a word against Prime Minister Modi. This proves their collusion."
On 5 February, TDP leaders and workers of Srikakulam district in Palasa protested against BJP president Amit Shah's tour to the state.
They held a protest at NTR statue and raised slogans against Shah asking him to go back. The TDP workers also tried to set ablaze the effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi but the police prevented them.
The workers shouted slogans demanding implementation of special category status for Andhra Pradesh. (ANI)
Early on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's official Twitter account asked users to post photographs from their visits to the North East using the hashtag #MagnificentNortheast, resulting in a series of photographs streaming in on social media.
It is not unusual to see a flurry of hashtags each time Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits a specific region in India, but this one was slightly different.
Early on Friday, Modi's official Twitter account asked users to post photographs from their visits to the North East using the hashtag #MagnificentNortheast.
"The beauty of the Northeast is spectacular. Do you have pictures of your own Northeast visits or glimpses of the spectacular natural beauty of the region? Share them on Instagram using # MagnificentNortheast. I will share some of the posts on my page too!" he tweeted.
The tweet was timed to precede Modi's visits to the capitals of three northeastern states, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura on Saturday.
By the time the prime minister had travelled to the region, social media had delivered a fantastic curation of the natural variety of the region.
One of the first to respond was Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju, who pitched in with a video of his and Modi's helicopter ride through a dense Arunachal forest.
"This forest in Arunachal Pradesh is so dense that sunlight never reaches the ground. My mobile phone captured this video on the way to Koloriang from Ziro. Narendra Modi ji requests all to share pictures of their North-East visit on Instagram using # MagnificentNortheast," Rijiju tweeted.
Soon, responses started pouring in as social media users noted how the mesmerising beauty of the North East had left a deep impression on them. From crystal clear lakes to unchartered snowy passes, the photographs captured the region in all its diversity.
#MagnificentNortheast Heres a picturesque glimpse of sunrise near Chungthang valley and Gurudongmar lake road. pic.twitter.com/3tDpoGStta Shashikant Pathak (@pathakshashik) February 8, 2019
Sir, last year I went on a trip to Meghalaya, the beauty it has is mesmerizing and the cleanliness it has embedded in its culture is commendable. Here is one pic of the famous double root bridge of cherapunjee along with local children.#MagnificentNortheast pic.twitter.com/xPnRMeI3Hc Kaushal Rajput (@kaushality) February 8, 2019
The unique photographs made visible by the hashtag and the light it threw on one of the most ignored parts of the country drew the attention of Nagaland chief minister Neiphiu Rio as well.
"I thank Hon'ble PM Narendra Modi for keeping # NorthEastIndia in the spotlight by coming up with the innovative idea of sharing photos of the # NorthEast on # Instagram using # MagnificentNortheast. This will help boost tourism in the region, which is an untouched paradise," Rio tweeted.
Assam finance minister and BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma also wrote in, appreciating Modi's social media effort. "Honourable PM Narendra Modi, Your ideas & good words always inspire. The plenty of beauty of the # NorthEast is truly mesmerising. I am soon sharing some of my own pictures of # MagnificentNortheast on my Instagram handle ~ himantabiswasarma ~ and encourage others to do it as well," Himanta said on Twitter.
Early on Saturday, the prime minister's official Instagram account gathered some of the photographs and uploaded them in the form of an Instagram Story.
At Arunachal's Itanagar, Modi inaugurated and laid foundation stones for projects in Arunachal Pradesh worth over Rs 4,000 crore and said his government was giving a lot of importance to improve connectivity in the sensitive border state. He then addressed a rally at Amingaon in Assam before proceeding to the Tripura capital of Agartala.
The Sangam city is all set to host the third 'shaahi snaan' of the ongoing Kumbh on Basant Panchami, falling on Sunday, during which more than two crore devotees are expected to take a holy dip.
Allahabad: The Sangam city is all set to host the third 'shaahi snaan' of the ongoing Kumbh on Basant Panchami, falling on Sunday, during which more than two crore devotees are expected to take a holy dip. Devotees from different parts of the state and country arrived in the city to participate in the bath.
Kumbh Mela Adhikari Vijay Kiran Anand told PTI on Saturday that more than two crore people from different walks of life are likely to arrive to take a dip on the occasion of Basant Panchami on Sunday.
Security personnel, including Uttar Pradesh Police and central paramilitary forces, were deployed at different crossings and parts of the city. Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP) president Narendra Giri said, "There are three shahi snaans (royal baths) and three 'parv snaans' during the Kumbh Mela."
The Mela commenced on 15 January on Makar Sankranti, the first bathing day, and the Mahashivratri on 4 March will mark its last bathing day. The royal baths are the central highlights of the Kumbh Mela and the most important part of the celebration. It is only after it completion that people are allowed to take the holy dip, he said.
Prior to Basant Panchami, the special baths were held on Makar Sankranti on 15 January and Mauni Amawasya on 4 February.
Allahabad Mayor Abhilasha Gupta Nandi told PTI, "Basant Panchami is the third and the last shaahi snaan of the Kumbh. By taking three dips on this day, a devotee gets the blessings of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers. Hence, it holds tremendous significance for devotees."
The Uttar Pradesh police too has geared up for a seamless and incident-free Kumbh, spread over 3,200-hectare land in the Sangam City. Security arrangements will be three-tier in the Kumbh mela region, in Allahabad and in the adjacent districts.
"The whole region has been demarcated into nine zones and 20 sectors with the deployment of over 20,000 police personnel, 6,000 homeguards, 40 police stations, 58 outposts, 40 fire stations, 80 companies of central force and 20 companies of PAC," Uttar Pradeshs Director General of Police (DGP) OP Singh had earlier told PTI.
Besides, there would be three police lines, one traffic police line, three women police stations and 317 police response vehicles to tackle an emergency situation with a response time of less than 10 minutes, he said, adding that mounted police would also be there.
With a view to counter any terrorist activity, Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) commandoes, anti-sabotage commandoes with snipers, bomb disposal units, sniffer dog squads and intelligence units have also been pressed into service, Singh said.
Jayalalithaa death probe: As the latest move in the 'cat and mouse game' between Chennai's Apollo hospital and the A Arumugasamy Commission, the former moved the Madras High Court on Saturday seeking an order to restrain the panel probing former Tamil Nadu chief minister's death
Chennai's Apollo hospital moved Madras High Court on Saturday seeking an order to restrain the one-man commission from further investigating the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa. The hospital, where the AIADMK chief was admitted before she died, has been demanding a medical board to also be instituted in the case.
According to reports, the hospital sought to restrain the A Arumugasamy Commission's investigation into the "correctness, adequacy or inadequacy" of the treatment given to Jayalalithaa before she died. The Apollo hospital has asked for the setting up of a medical board to be able to "understand medical jargon", CNN-News18 reported.
#NewsAlert -- Apollo Hospital moves Madras High Court over Jayalalithaa death probe | @nimumurali with more details pic.twitter.com/m3sSYZI3Cn News18 (@CNNnews18) February 9, 2019
On 28 December, Apollo hospital had demanded the constitution of a medical board comprising doctors and medical professionals to examine Jayalalithaa's medical records. In an affidavit filed to the A Arumugasamy Commission, the hospital raised the demand citing that errors crept in due to the inability of the typist to comprehend and type correct medical terms.
Apollo Hospital further said that words like 'intubation' were recorded as 'incubation' and such fatal errors raised doubts over the commission's understanding of facts about her treatment.
However, in the last week of January, the Arumughaswamy Commission rejected the hospital's plea claiming that it enrolled doctores from state-run hospitals to make sense of the technicalities of the case. The commission also questioned Apollo hospital's intent behind filing such a plea.
Citing the assistance provided by government in deciphering the medical records, the Commission of Inquiry dismissed Apollo Hospitals' application saying it could examine any number of doctors on their (Apollo) side.
Specialists, including a cardiothoracic surgeon and a biochemist from Madras Medical College and Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital in Chennai, scrutinised the medical records of Apollo Hospitals on the late leader's treatment, the commission said.
Affirming that it alone can analyse the evidence, the commission said, "This duty can be discharged only by the commission, not by the panel of doctors." It added that even if a panel of doctors is appointed, its opinion has to be weighed with the evidence of the doctors who were already appointed by the commission.
"This application is highly belated...it is an attempt by the Apollo Hospitals to scrap the evidence already recorded by the commission..that is the reason the applicant has come forward with this application at the last stage of evidence," the commission of inquiry said.
However, timing of the decision has lead to fears that the BJP was trying to erode the electoral foothold of Kashmir Valley, of which Ladakh was a part till now
Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik's decision to create a separate administrative division for the arid Ladakh region is being seen as a political gimmick by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections.
However, with this move, what the Centre has done is trifurcate the this border state with Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir as separate administrative divisions, each of which will have their own divisional commissioners and police chiefs, besides heads of various state departments.
However, Ladakh one of the most sparsely populated regions in Jammu and Kashmir and the highest plateau in the state is geographically isolated. It remains landlocked for nearly six months in a year.
According to an official government spokesperson, the region is "riddled with insurmountable problems with respect to delivery of developmental schemes, redressal of public grievances, conduct of administrative affairs and governance as such."
"The people of Ladakh have, for a long time, been demanding effective local institutional arrangements which can help promote and accelerate the pace of development and equitable all-round growth and development having regard to its peculiar geo-climatic and topographic conditions, stimulate and seek fullest participation of the local community in the decision-making process, the spokesperson said.
However, the speed with which the decision has been taken has lend credence to the fears that the BJP-led Centre, with Governor Malik in its stead in the state, was attempting to further erode the electoral foothold of Kashmir Valley, of which Ladakh was a part before the decision was taken.
"It is a timely move to earn more votes. If the BJP was truly concerned about development in Ladakh, why would the government stop work on Zojila tunnel? After facing major setbacks over the past year, the party is trying to win back people's confidence and the move will benefit the region to some extent," Noor Mohammad Baba, a political commentator based in Srinagar, said.
State's former chief minister and erstwhile BJP ally Mehbooba Mufti also welcomed the creation of Ladakh as third administrative division, however, she added that ignoring regions like Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal will raise doubts about the intentions of New Delhi.
"Creation of a separate administrative division for Leh (sic) is a welcome step. However, ignoring Pir Panjal and Chenab Valley raises questions about the Centres intention. Seems like Governor saab is peddling BJP's agenda by ignoring other equally deserving regions," Mehbooba tweeted.
According to political commentators, the move to grant Ladakh a separate administrative status is the last ditch attempt by the BJP to entice voters after losing the recently held local body elections in the arid region. Another reason behind this move could be BJP Lok Sabha MP from Ladakh, Thupstan Chhewang from Ladakah quitting the party in November; he accused the party of making "false" promises and taking unwise decisions jeopardising the welfare of the region.
The BJP failed to open its account in the region with the Congress bagging all the 13 seats in Leh municipal committee of the total 26 wards in this region, and also five wards in the neighbouring Kargil district. Six seats in the region were won by independent candidates.
The party also faced a major setback in last years elections to the powerful Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Kargil where it managed to secure only one seat.
This was followed by resignation of five elected councillors of the party in the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh, in January due to which the party lost even the simple majority in the 30-member council. The resignations came after Chhewang quit the party and Lok Sabha on 14 November last year.
With BJP in deep crisis in the Ladakh region, political parties are seeing an opportunity in the Governors decision to draw battle-lines in other two divisions as well, ahead of the upcoming election.
Former chief minister Omar Abdullah said his party will grant division status to Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal regions if they are voted to power in upcoming state Assembly elections. In a series of tweets, Omar said granting division status to these regions was already laid in their regional autonomy promise. Omar also said his government will take care of regional and sub-regional aspirations.
We will take care of regional & sub-regional aspirations. We wont adopt the pick & choose approach of the Governor but will instead take a holistic view & address the wider problems. Our regional autonomy document will be our template. Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) February 8, 2019
Jumping into the bandwagon, Mehbooba too demanded that the administrative headquarters of Ladakh should not be fixed at Leh, but should be shifted between Leh and Kargil districts, apparently in a bid to appeal to the Muslim voters in Kargil district.
"Keeping HQ permanently at one place is total discrimination with the other area , so the best option is to keep the HQ at both Leh and Kargil on rotational basis," she said in a tweet.
However, for the people of Ladakh, the decision by Governor Malik may be an attempt to address the long pending demand of the region which remains cut off from mainland for six months in a year. This is not to say that the timing of the move is not suspicious.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday assured the people of Assam and the North East that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will in no way cause harm to their interest. He was addressing a public rally in Changsari in the Assembly constituency of Assam health minister and BJP-led NEDA convener Himata Biswa Sarma.
Changsari: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday assured the people of Assam and the North East that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will in no way cause harm to their interest. He was addressing a public rally in Changsari in the Assembly constituency of Assam health minister and BJP-led NEDA convener Himata Biswa Sarma.
"It is a national commitment to the people of the North East that they will not be harmed in any way and citizenship will be only granted after due investigation and recommendation of the state governments," Modi said.
It must be understood that there is a difference between those who forcefully entered the country and those who were "forced to flee their homes to save their lives due to their faith. Both are not the same", he said.
"We have committed to provide shelter to those who are minorities in neighbouring countries and had to leave everything due to the atrocities inflicted on them. They have come to our country and embraced the idea and ethos of Mother India," he said.
The BJP is committed to implement the 36-year old Assam Accord and a committee set up on the implementation of its Clause 6 is a step in that direction, Modi said. The BJP-led NDA government is committed to protect the language, culture, resources, hopes and aspirations of the people of Assam and North East, he said.
The prime minister also said the BJP government was committed to make Assam the oil and gas hub of the country and in the last four years projects worth Rs 14,000 crore have been completed.
Chairman of The Hindu Group N Ram, who wrote about the then Defence Secretary Mohan Kumar's dissent note on Rafale fighter jet deal negotiation issue, said on Friday that the government was trying to 'cover up' on the matter and asserted that he does not require any certificate from Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman about his ethics of journalism.
Bengaluru: Chairman of The Hindu Group N Ram, who wrote about the then Defence Secretary Mohan Kumar's dissent note on Rafale fighter jet deal negotiation issue, said on Friday that the government was trying to "cover up" on the matter and asserted that he does not require any certificate from Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman about his ethics of journalism.
"The story is complete in itself because we had not dealt with then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's role in the Rafale deal negotiations and that needs investigation. There is no other side," Ram told ANI.
He was responding when asked to comment on Sitharaman's remarks which suggested that the story published by Ram was not complete.
"A newspaper published a file noting written by (then) Defence Secretary. If a newspaper publishes a noting, then the ethics of journalism will demand that the newspaper publishes the then Defence Ministers reply as well," Sitharaman said earlier in the day.
Responding to her comments, Ram said, "They are now in deep trouble and trying to cover-up. My advice to her (Sitharaman) would be that you are not involved in the transactions. Why do you take upon yourself the burden of justifying the indefensible?"
He added, "Manohar Parrikars role has to be separately investigated further, whether he was consulted on it. He (Parrikar) clarifies that he has been in touch. But he is not taking any stand."
Citing the letter, the veteran journalist said, "He (Parrikar) does not say they are monitoring. It appears that the Prime Minister's Office and the French President's office are monitoring. This is not monitoring, but parallel negotiations conducted behind the back of the Indian negotiating team."
Asserting that the newspaper's intention is to bring out the truth, Ram said, "Our story was on a particular aspect. No story is complete. Our previous story was focusing on the price. We did not look at the benchmark price. We looked at the price per aircraft. We did not look at the offset arrangements. Our story was on defence ministry's objections to parallel negotiations, as nobody knew about this."
Ram further said that the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) not only undermined the position of the Indian negotiators, but also the Ministry of Law and Justice which had made the point on sovereign guarantee during the negotiations.
Ram claimed that the finances of French aerospace major Dassault Aviation "are not very secure and they are very fragile." He said three members of the Indian negotiating team had raised the issue earlier as well.
The report published by him said that the Defence Ministry officials had raised concerns over the direct involvement of PMO in the Rafale deal, saying "parallel discussion by the PMO had weakened the negotiating position of MoD (Ministry of Defence) and Indian Negotiating Team."
However, Parrikar, in the same file, had noted at the end, "It appears that PMO and French President office are monitoring the progress of the issue which was an outcome of the summit meeting. Para 5 appears to be an overreaction."
Parrikar had tasked Kumar to resolve the matter in consultation with Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday displayed the file noting at a press conference to suggest that all was not well in the government during the Rafale deal negotiations.
Earlier, speaking in the Lok Sabha, Sitharaman said: "Then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar ji replied to that MoD note that remain calm, nothing to worry, everything is going alright. Now, what do you call the NAC led by Sonia Gandhi's interference in earlier PMO? What was that?"
The Congress and other opposition parties have been attacking the government on the Rafale deal issue of not taking a sovereign guarantee from the French side.
The tragic and inglorious end of Jim Jones Peoples Temple, Oshos Rajneeshpuram, Japans Aum Shinrikyo and other such associations across the world by no means implies that cults are a thing of the past
Cults, religious sects, call them what you want, mock them as much as you want, but they are here to stay. The tragic and inglorious end of Jim Jones Peoples Temple, Oshos Rajneeshpuram, Japans Aum Shinrikyo and other such associations across the world by no means implies that cults are a thing of the past.
By the early 1980s, research on cults had branched out to almost all fields. The researchers were trying to understand what led to the boom of these so-called religious sects in the 1960s and 70s. From digging the social, financial and emotional background of those who joined cults to accounts of grieving parents, ex-cult members and de-programmers, studies were assessing if cults provided a meaningful alternative to those looking to break free from conventional religions.
In India, the ashrams of Rajneesh better known as Osho continue to thrive 28 years after his death. The Peoples Temple, which started as a charitable organisation and ended with mass suicide, continues to be a hot topic as former members relive it in the media through their stories, books, movies and interviews.
In July 2018, the founder and 12 other leaders of Aum Shinrikyo, the Doomsday cult that released Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, were executed. But the cult lives on in the form of multiple splinter organisations that recruit close to 200 youth every year, writes Rohan Gunaratna, head of International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Singapore.
Unlike street corners and obscure towns, professional associations, academic institutions and the Internet are the favoured hunting grounds of new-age cults emerging with similar agendas and new names, writes Janja Lalich on her website Cult Research.
A few fundamentals remain unchanged. The cults offer a liberating, revolutionary path to religion, often through spirituality, and project their utopian communes as a haven from a conflicted, troubled and an unequal society. They provide a new perspective with which to view the social world and attract the lonely, anxious, troubled youth who feel trapped in orthodox social constructs.
People join these cults willingly, firmly believing in the idea to which they choose to submit. The feeling that they matter and are devoting their lives to the larger good under a divine, charismatic leader is a promising start.
Once concretised, these sects create a moral panic with its basis in reality, say James Richardson and Massimo Introvigne in their 2001 paper on Journal for the Scientific Study on Religions. They add that a sect is then integrated by providing a common enemy. And to defeat that enemy, the cults have been linked with serious crime and even radicalisation of its members. For instance, Rajneeshs personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela was charged and sentenced for attempting to kill US government officials, poisoning salad bars in Oregon and attempting to meddle with elections.
Similarly, Aum Shinrikyo used murders and kidnappings against their opponents and made several failed attempts after 1995 by using chemical gasses for attacks in railway stations in Japan.
Indias cults are no stranger to controversy. Gurmeet Ram Rahim, the head of Haryana-based Dera Sacha Sauda, was sentenced to life imprisonment just weeks ago in a 2002 murder case of a journalist, while Asaram Bapu is serving a life sentence for raping a minor girl in 2013.
And late last month, Chinas police (ministry of public security) warned its citizens that spiritual courses offered by some Indian religious schools are mired in sexual assault cases, after Taiwanese actress Yi Nengjing, aka Annie Yi, promoted a spiritual course offered by south India-based Oneness University.
China in 2017 started a website, China Anti-Cult Network, to spread awareness about preventative measures and policies that China has for tackling cults.
Warnings notwithstanding, cults have sustained over centuries and will thrive with new names, evolving recruiting fields, modified agendas and no dearth of followers. The continuing popularity of movements whose leaders are in jail, bears eloquent testimony to this truth.
The Congress said on Saturday that it will not 'unwarrantedly interfere' in the functioning of the Madhya Pradesh government on the issue of imposition of the stringent NSA against five people on charges of cow slaughter and illegal transportation of cattle. The party said law and order is the domain of the chief minister and police.
New Delhi: The Congress said on Saturday that it will not "unwarrantedly interfere" in the functioning of the Madhya Pradesh government on the issue of imposition of the stringent NSA against five people on charges of cow slaughter and illegal transportation of cattle. The party said law and order is the domain of the chief minister and police.
"Kamal Nathji has categorically said the law will take its own course. Nobody who is innocent will be persecuted or punished in any manner and nobody who is guilty will be spared," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told reporters.
"He is experienced and seasoned enough to see if any officer of the police has made any overreach at the instance of somebody who is previously embedded on behalf of the BJP regime," Surjewala said. The senior leader said the Congress does not decide on these issues based on the prism of caste or religion.
"Kamal Nathji is also competent enough to see whether the particular offence provides what kind of punishment under the law and I think we should leave it to his seasoned wisdom," Surjewala said.
He said the party will not "unwarrantedly interfere" in the functioning of the state government because that is not the working style of the Congress or its president Rahul Gandhi.
"We will only ensure that no one is unjustifiably persecuted under a law it may not be applicable. We will also ensure that anyone who is guilty is not let off in any manner whatsoever and is given strictest punishment," he said.
On Friday, authorities in Agar Malwa district of Madhya Pradesh booked two men under the National Security Act (NSA) for alleged illegal transportation of cattle and disruption of public peace.
The Kamal Nath-led government in Madhya Pradesh had earlier slapped the NSA against three men accused of killing a cow at Khandwa district.
The question whether the Supreme Court collegium should be dropped as a mechanism for appointing higher court judges has become redundant. Every day that passes points to this opaque process being completely incongruous with the democratic ideals of transparency and accountability that India aspires to.
Editor's note: In this debate, we ask the question 'Is it time to rid the Supreme Court of its collegium?' Arguing for the motion is Sumathi Chandrashekaran, a policy lawyer with interests in legislative, regulatory and judicial reforms. Read the counterpoint to his debate by Prateek Chadha here.
The question whether the Supreme Court collegium should be dropped as a mechanism for appointing higher court judges has become redundant. Every day that passes points to this opaque process being completely incongruous with the democratic ideals of transparency and accountability that India aspires to.
During the constitutional challenge posed by the National Judicial Appointments Commission in 2014-15, several concerns were raised about the collegium process. However progressive the idea of the commission was, it was not surprising that a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court rejected the law for the commissions composition as impinging on the judiciarys independence.
In the months following the decision, one felt the judiciary would move towards transparency in its appointments. This was when the executive and the judiciary parleyed over a memorandum of procedure (MoP) for judicial appointments after the court (unusually) asked for public comments. Today, hundreds of comments on, there is no sign of the MoP coming to life.
One small concession in process was made: collegium resolutions are now available on the Supreme Court website. While this is a positive step, only the final resolutions are available. There is no information on how these resolutions came about, or what the meeting agenda was, or why certain individuals were identified for elevation or transfer. Are individuals selected on grounds of regional representation, or merit, or seniority, or something else entirely?
The absence of a clearly defined MoP means appointments, elevations and transfers of judges remain arbitrary, ad hoc and subjective. There is also no guarantee that the collegiums decisions are final, as demonstrated by a recent reversal of a decision.
The design of the collegium causes the judiciary to run the risk of cronyism and a similarity bias i.e., judges may prefer to recruit those known to them, or are just like them.
There is sufficient data to point to cronyism in the judiciary. The prevalence of a similarity bias is less tested, but can be especially dangerous. The temptation of selecting candidates that are like yourself, whether in terms of gender, class, education, or other socio-economic factors, is very high for any recruiter in any field of work. It can mean valuable criteria such as merit and diversity are disregarded. More problematically, we can also end up having an institution that is highly homogenous. Even if it is sought to be mitigated, an unintended outcome of a similarity bias is it can get embedded in perpetuity.
Judges who are picked by judges like themselves may continue to do the same. This can further impact how judges think about adjudication itself.
For example, it may well be that a shared socio-economic background has led to Indian judges becoming inclined to decide in favour of one group of litigants over another in certain kinds of cases. This has not been proven conclusively as yet. But anyone concerned about the health of the judiciary will agree that implicit biases are not a good thing.
As noted earlier, the question whether the Supreme Court collegium should go is superfluous. The better, more relevant, question is, when will the collegium be relegated to the history books? Who will undertake this task? And what form will the selection process of judges take?
The two other arms of the State have made attempts at effecting change. The legislature tried to enact, but failed to retain, a constitutional amendment to set up a judicial appointments commission. The executive tried to work with the judiciary to redraft and finalise the MoP. While seemingly assuming the role of cooperator, the executive has also pushed back on many recommendations made by the collegium and delayed selection of judges.
Even within the judiciary, individuals have tried to protest, notably Justice Jasti Chelameshwar, who walked out of the collegium reportedly because he was unhappy with the non-transparent manner of proceedings. His experience shows a solitary challenger can shake things up. Institutions, like people, evolve. We just have to be patient and wait. Change will come.
China on Saturday 'firmly opposed' Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh.
Beijing: China on Saturday "firmly opposed" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, asserting that it has never recognised the sensitive border state and the Indian leadership should refrain from any action that may "complicate the boundary question".
Prime Minister Modi on Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation stone of projects in Arunachal Pradesh worth over Rs 4,000 crore and said his government was giving a lot of importance to improve connectivity in the border state.
Modi said his government was giving importance to improve the highway, railway, airway and power situation in Arunachal Pradesh, which was neglected by the previous governments.
In New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs reacted sharply to China's remarks, saying the state of Arunachal Pradesh is an "integral and inalienable part" of India.
"Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions," the MEA spokesperson said in a statement.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in response to a question on Modi's visit said, "China's position on the China-India boundary question is consistent and clear-cut. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh' and is firmly opposed to the Indian leader's visit to the East Section of the China-India boundary."
China urges the Indian side to bear in mind the common interests of the two countries, respect the interests and concerns of the Chinese side, cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral relations, and refrain from any action that may lead to the escalation of disputes or complicate the boundary question," she said in her reaction posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website.
China claims the north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet. India and China have so far held 21 rounds of talks to resolve the border dispute.
The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC). China routinely objects to Indian leaders visiting Arunachal Pradesh to highlight its stand.
Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, his counsel Biswajit Deb and senior IPS officers Javed Shamim and Murlidhar Sharma arrived at the CBI office in Shillong at 11 am.
Shillong: The CBI began questioning Kolkata Police chief Rajeev Kumar on Saturday at the agency's office in Shillong, in connection with chit fund scam cases, officials said.
Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, his counsel Biswajit Deb and senior IPS officers Javed Shamim and Murlidhar Sharma arrived at the probe agency's office at 11 am, they said. Kumar's counsel and the two IPS officers were asked to leave the CBI office within 30 minutes, they said.
Meghalaya: CBI team from Delhi arrives at the CBI office in Shillong. Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar will be questioned here today in connection with Saradha chit fund scam. pic.twitter.com/Lz8tYXyyhw ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019
He is being interrogated at the highly secured CBI office at Oakland area in the Meghalaya capital where three senior CBI sleuths from Delhi reached on Friday.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday had directed the Kolkata Police chief to appear before the CBI and "faithfully" cooperate in the investigation of cases arising out of the Saradha chit fund scam, while making it clear that he will not be arrested.
The CBI had alleged in the Supreme Court that Kumar, who was leading the SIT probe into Saradha chit fund scam, tampered with the electronic evidence and handed over documents to the agency, some of which were "doctored".
The apex court directed him to appear before the investigating agency at a neutral place in Shillong "to avoid all unnecessary controversy".
CBI officials had gone to Kumar's residence in Kolkata to question him on 3 January but their attempt was thwarted by the police, following which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee staged a three-day dharna.
Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla and his supporters on Friday began a sit-in on the rail tracks in Rajasthan's Sawai Madhopur district, forcing authorities to divert trains.
Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla and his supporters on Friday began a sit-in protest on rail tracks in Rajasthan's Sawai Madhopur district, forcing authorities to divert trains. The protesters are demanding five percent reservation for Gujjars, Raika-Rebari, Gadia Luhar, Banjara and Gadaria communities in government jobs and educational institutions.
According to reports, four trains have been diverted and 14 cancelled. ANI tweeted that the diversions and cancellations were all "between Sawai Madhopur to Bayana section and Nimoda to Malarna block section in Kota Division of Western Central Railway." Initially, five trains had been cancelled in the Kota division, while one had been diverted.
Sources said that the protesters also blocked a section of the Delhi-Mumbai route. Reportedly, trains going to Delhi were diverted via Mathura and Bharatpur and the state government has also postponed exams for Anganwadi and agriculture supervisors.
Rajasthan: Visuals from Malarna Dungar station in Maksudanpura village of Sawai Madhopur dist as reservation movement by Gujjar community in the state continues today.7 trains in Kota Division of Western Central Railway diverted, 1 cancelled, 3 short originated&1 short terminated pic.twitter.com/AAtdMFCJNl ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019
Abhay Sharma, chief public relations officer of the North Western Railway, was also quoted by PTI as having noted that train movement had been affected in the area due to the protests. He added that seven of the 14 cancellations were in the Sawai Madhopur to Bayana section.
As the dharna continued at Malarna Doongar around 125 kilometres southeast of Jaipur Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot appealed to the people to maintain peace and that his government was ready to hold talks. "The government is serious in resolving the issue. The Congress government had heard the issues in the previous tenure and made efforts at the state level. I appeal to people to maintain peace," he added.
Congress sources said a committee, comprising Health Minister Raghu Sharma, Tourism Minister Vishvendra Singh, Social Justice Minister Master Bhanwar Lal and senior government officials, had been constituted to hold talks with the agitators.
Members of Gujjar community sitting on railway track in Maksudanpura of Sawai Madhopur in protest as part of reservation movement say "We have good CM&a good PM. We want that they listen to the demands of Gujjar community. It isn't an uphill task for them to provide reservation." pic.twitter.com/lM4TDF7WRh ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2019
Additional forces have been deployed in the Bharatpur police range within which Sawai Madhopur falls to tackle any law-and-order situations that might arise. "Seventeen RAC (Rajasthan Armed Constabulary) companies, including a special task force, have been deployed in the range," Bhupendra Sahu, inspector general of Bharatpur Range, said.
"Senior police officers, who have the experience of working in the area, have been assigned duties. The situation is completely under control," Sahu added.
Bainsla, who heads the Gujjar Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti, told reporters that he was compelled to organise the protest as "things are changing fast". "I have not come here (on his own volition), but the crowd has brought me to the railway tracks. People cannot be fooled all the time. It is a fight to do or die. The state government should stand on its promise. It will be a peaceful protest. I will lead the protest and the youths will support," he said.
Bainsla had last month gave a 20-day ultimatum to the state government to clear its stand over the reservation demand, failing which he threatened to revive the quota agitation. As the deadline lapsed on Friday, Bainsla held a "maha panchayat" at Malarna Doongar and started the sit-in. At present, five communities get a one percent reservation due to their inclusion in the most-backward category in addition to the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota.
With inputs from agencies and 101 Reporters
A lesser known episode involving India Police Service (IPS) officers in the infamous Saradha scam comes from Assam.
A lesser known episode involving India Police Service (IPS) officers in the infamous Saradha scam comes from Assam where the case was recently shut by the government after a probe was ordered almost four years ago.
After the ponzi bubble went bust early in 2013, two IPS officers came under the scanner following a complaint from a person who identified himself as 'Advocate Ranjan Das'. The government decided to hand over the case to the directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption, which subsequently submitted a report to the state home and political department.
What happened thereafter, in a long sequence of events, has not only raised eyebrows among a large section of officials but has also left many questions unanswered.
In a reply to an RTI application, the directorate said that an inquiry was initiated against the officers but the government had kept it in abeyance based on the representation submitted by them. Subsequently, it adds, the regular inquiry was closed on 12 December last year through a notification [PLA(V)327/2014/ECF-63381/158] based on available records. And afterwards, it was found that the complaint was pseudonymous.
The application had also requested for copies of the complaint, inquiry report and comments on the file which were refused by the directorate on the ground it was exempted under Section 8(1)(g)(h) of RTI Act 2005.
The clause says that there shall be no obligation to share information if the disclosure would endanger the life or physical safety of any person or identify the source of information or assistance given in confidence for law enforcement or security purposes or information which would impede the process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders.
One of the two officers named in the complaint superannuated last year and the other is an additional director general of police currently posted in Assam.
Reluctance to share information
There was no reply from the home and political department of Assam government when the first RTI application was submitted in 2017 seeking information on the probe. It was again reluctant to share information when another application was submitted last year. It was only after the appellate authority was informed and the state public information officer reminded verbally that a reply was given which said that the application had been transferred to the police headquarters.
The time frame prescribed in the RTI Act 2005 for providing replies is not followed by many departments in the Assam government. The directorate, too, had sent the reply long after the stipulated period of thirty days was over.
The scam had affected lakhs of people in Assam from the lower income strata who found their investments wiped out. The network was laid and funds gathered through a network of agents, fake companies and the alleged assistance of some police officers.
The former Congress-led government in Assam forwarded the case to the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption after being intimated by the ministry of home affairs. Besides the directorate, the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate had also launched their own investigations to nab the kingpins and recover investments.
Some officials have expressed surprise over the sudden closure of the file which they claim is unlawful since the government had ordered a probe. Under normal circumstances, the next step ought to have been the submission of chargesheets by the directorate.
That many officials were involved in the episode is evident from the sequence of events. Is it not surprising that the file remained hidden for two years in the office of the chief secretary after it was sent from the home and political department? said a senior police who did not wish to be named. He identified another police official who had recently completed deputation with a central agency as playing a key role in the cover-up.
File kept pending in Chief Secretarys Office
What the RTI replies from the directorate and home and political department do not disclose is the suppression of the file on the involvement of the two IPS officers in the scam for close to two years by former Chief Secretary VK Pipersenia.
An official of the home and political department claimed that the file was forwarded to the chief secretarys office for further action on the case.
The matter came to light after RTI activist Dulal Bora approached the Information Commission after being denied information on the incident by the office of the chief secretary and home and political department.
On 19 March last year, the state public information officer in chief secretarys office informed the commission that the file had been kept pending by mistake and it resurfaced on account of cleaning of Chief Secretary chambers (sic) prior to his superannuation.
Incidentally, the file was found by Pipersenia on the very last day of his term in office which was then transferred to the home and political department. He has clarified that it was not intentional and that he never suggested putting a halt to the inquiry.
However, the Assam Information Commission was convinced that deliberate attempts were being made to hold back the file and avoid disclosing information on the subject to the applicant. It did not believe that either Pipersenia or officials of the home and political department were unaware about the file bearing substantial public importance. The commissions order, among other recommendations, also directed the incumbent chief secretary Alok Kumar to launch an investigation into the non-availability of the file for almost two years.
(Rajeev Bhattacharyya is a senior journalist in Guwahati and author of Rendezvous With Rebels: Journey To Meet Indias Most Wanted Men)
While there can be no getting away from the truth of these criticisms, the question we need to ask ourselves is whether they mean that the collegium system should be done away with?
Editor's note: In this debate, we ask the question 'Is it time to rid the Supreme Court of its collegium?' Arguing against the motion is Prateek Chadha, an advocate in the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court. Read the counterpoint to his debate by Sumathi Chandrashekaran here.
If you are having problems in your marriage, you have two options: try and fix the issues, or get a divorce and bet you will find a better partner. Just like marriages, no system is perfect and there can be no question that the Supreme Courts collegium formula of judges appointing judges has many shortcomings. The critics of the setup are quick to point out that it suffers from nepotism and a lack of transparency. While there can be no getting away from the truth of these criticisms, the question we need to ask ourselves is whether they mean that the collegium system should be done away with?
I would argue that the answer to this question is clearly no.
To understand why, we need to appreciate the reason behind the collegiums creation. The fact is that the system came about as a last-ditch attempt by the judiciary to preserve its independence after decades of executive interference. The years before the collegium came into being were marked by numerous instances of governments refusing to appoint deserving candidates whose political beliefs were inconvenient to them. There were even instances of judges being denied the opportunity to become Chief Justice of India on account of the fact that they had decided important cases against the Central government.
All of this had created an atmosphere in which the judiciary completely failed the people of India during Emergency and in the infamous ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla (1976) case, some judges went as far as to say that an ordinary citizen did not even have the right to life during a state of emergency.
Consequently, it was felt that there was a need to insulate the judiciary from the pernicious influence of the government.
As a result of the insulation of the courts from government influence by way of the collegium system, our judiciary routinely decides important cases against governments of the day. This can be seen from the decisions in politically significant cases such as those relating to the dissolution of the Uttarakhand Assembly and the turf tussle between the Centre and Delhi government.
By making judges solely responsible for the appointment of their successors, the collegium system has created a set of stakeholders with interests that will always be distinct from those of the government of the day. And while it can be persuasively argued that the interests of the judges are not always calibrated to ensure that only the most suitable candidates are elevated, the mere existence of the collegium means that the single-largest litigant in India does not decide who will be hearing its cases.
Another argument that is often made is that the collegium needs to be done away with as it is inherently undemocratic and means that judges who do not enjoy any popular support at all are given tremendous powers over the lives of ordinary citizens. However, this argument ignores that the Constitution has deliberately created such a situation as judges are often required to make hard decisions that may well require ignoring the demands of the majority of citizens to secure the fundamental rights of all citizens. Any attempt to make the courts more amenable to the democratic will of the people will inevitably result in an India that has less regard for the rights of minorities and is, therefore, to be avoided. Our courts have a proud history of being able to buck the popular will and do what is correct. Decisions such as those in the Shah Bano, Kaushal and Sabarimala cases would never have emanated from a more overtly political judiciary.
None of the proposed alternatives to the system are guaranteed to ensure that only the most suitable candidates are appointed. Whoever is given the power in an alternative system will inevitably appoint judges that suit their own interests. Take the National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill that was struck down by the Supreme Court, for example. The provisions for selection of judges in it meant that the central law minister of the day and some prominent members of the Supreme Court Bar would have had a significant say in the appointment of judges.
There has been increased scrutiny of the decisions made by the collegium and, hopefully, over time, this will lead to an improvement in the quality of appointments made by it.
Till that happens, however, the flaws of the collegium system will just have to be understood as the cost we pay for an independent judiciary.
By Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior administration official said on Friday that U.S. national security depends on affordable energy, and slammed cartels when asked if President Donald Trump would support a bill targeting the OPEC production group's oil supply cuts
By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior administration official said on Friday that U.S. national security depends on affordable energy, and slammed cartels when asked if President Donald Trump would support a bill targeting the OPEC production group's oil supply cuts.
"The United States is firmly committed to open, fair and competitive markets for global energy trade," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We do not support market-distorting behaviour, including cartels.
The House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously passed the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels, or NOPEC, bill, but it was uncertain whether it would get a vote in the full House.
The legislation would change U.S. antitrust law to revoke the sovereign immunity that has long protected OPEC members from U.S. lawsuits. It allows the U.S. attorney general to sue the oil producers group, any of its members and countries it works with, on grounds of collusion.
A similar bill was introduced in the Senate on Thursday by Senators Chuck Grassley, a Republican backer of the corn-based motor fuel ethanol, and Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who is expected to announce on Sunday that she is running for president in 2020.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas has opposed NOPEC in the past. Other Texas lawmakers were also unlikely to support the bill as Motiva Enterprises LLC a subsidiary of Saudi state oil company Saudi Aramco, operates a large refinery in the state, a policy analyst said.
The Vienna-based Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which includes the world's top crude exporter Saudi Arabia, says it is not a cartel but rather a production group.
Trump has criticized the group for cutting supplies and urged it to produce more to lower global oil prices. But Trump has taken no action on Saudi Arabia, a major buyer of U.S. weapons, even after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year.
The bill has appeared in Congress in various forms over the last 20 years and today's oil prices are low compared to 2008, when the bill passed the House. Oil traded in New York fell 6 cents to $52.58 per barrel on Friday and was down about 4.9 percent for the week, the steepest decline this year, pulled down by worries about a global economic slowdown.
The senior official's comments were the furthest the Trump administration has gone in commenting on the bill, which also passed the House committee last year, but did not come up for a vote in the full chamber. Access to affordable and reliable energy underpins global economic growth and U.S. national security, the official added.
Trump supported NOPEC in the book "Time to Get Tough" published in 2011, before he became president, but he has not publicly commented on the bill while in office.
NO LONGER HELD HOSTAGE
Last summer, OPEC cooperated with non-OPEC producer Russia to boost output before Trump reimposed sanctions on oil exports from Iran, Saudi Arabia's archenemy. But OPEC's output fell in January by the largest amount in two years as its Gulf members over-delivered on a supply cutting plan to boost prices.
The American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for U.S. oil and gas drilling, has opposed the NOPEC bill, saying it could expose diplomatic, business and military interests to retaliatory action.
API President and CEO Mike Sommers said in an interview the bill was "populist" and the group would work with the leadership of the House and Senate to tell them that the U.S. shale oil revolution, which has helped make the country the world's top oil producer, has helped combat OPEC. "We are no longer held hostage by the oil cartel in Vienna," Sommers said.
Barclays analyst Michael Cohen said in a research note that the appetite to advance the bill was likely subdued while oil prices were low. But if it did pass, the bill would threaten the sustainability of coordinated supply actions by OPEC, and OPEC plus Russia, and add more volatility to the market.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici; editing by David Gregorio and Phil Berlowitz)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Lesley Wroughton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.
By Lesley Wroughton
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will voice concerns about the growing presence of China's Huawei Technologies in central Europe when he visits Hungary, Slovakia and Poland next week, a senior U.S. official said on Friday as Washington tries to bolster ties with a region it acknowledges it has neglected.
Pompeo's visit will be the first by a U.S. secretary of State to Slovakia in two decades, while the last top American diplomat to travel to Hungary was Hillary Clinton in 2011.
In Hungary and Slovakia, Pompeo will also discuss ways to bolster security relationships with both countries, including clinching deals on defence cooperation, a senior administration official said in a briefing to reporters about the trip.
Pompeo will travel to Warsaw from Feb. 12 to 14 for official talks and to attend a U.S. conference on the Middle East as it tries to build a coalition against Iran and develop a peace plan between the Israelis and Palestinians.
"In Hungary, the Secretary will give particular focus to the role of China in central Europe, and express our concerns about the growing presence of Huawei in Hungary," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He will "urge regional leaders to heed the warnings of countries from Asia-Pacific who have found themselves in difficult straits as a result of working too closely with the Chinese," the official said.
Huawei Technologies plans to create a European logistics centre in Hungary and boost production capacity there this year. It has also offered to build a cyber security centre in Poland, where last month a Chinese employee of Huawei and a former Polish security official were arrested on spying charges.
The U.S. is trying to persuade countries to avoid Huawei, which is under scrutiny from Western intelligence agencies for its perceived ties to China's government and the possibility its equipment could be used for espionage.
Huawei has repeatedly denied engaging in intelligence work for any government.
The United States was particularly worried about Huawei's influence in small eastern and central European countries where it was easy for China to penetrate state systems, the U.S. official said.
He said China "sees relatively small countries with a recent history of communism, with significant pathways of corruption, that lend themselves more readily to state penetration in key sectors, and then they have a springboard to operate within EU fora."
China and Russia's growing influence in central Europe occurred in part because of a lack of robust U.S. engagement in the past decade, the official said.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Susan Thomas and Grant McCool)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Teis Jensen COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The European Union needs tougher anti-fraud controls including a central body able to enforce laws against money laundering, European lawmakers said on Friday, describing financial crime as a security problem for the continent. Curbs should be more uniform across the EU and its framework for swapping financial intelligence is inadequate and must improve, the European Parliament's tax crime committee added. Europe has been hit by money laundering scandals in recent months, including a major one at Danske Bank's, the collapse of Latvia's ABLV Bank, the closure of Malta's Pilatus Bank and a 775 million euro fine imposed on Dutch lender ING
By Teis Jensen
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The European Union needs tougher anti-fraud controls including a central body able to enforce laws against money laundering, European lawmakers said on Friday, describing financial crime as a security problem for the continent.
Curbs should be more uniform across the EU and its framework for swapping financial intelligence is inadequate and must improve, the European Parliament's tax crime committee added.
Europe has been hit by money laundering scandals in recent months, including a major one at Danske Bank's, the collapse of Latvia's ABLV Bank, the closure of Malta's Pilatus Bank and a 775 million euro fine imposed on Dutch lender ING.
The Financial Intelligence Units of many EU member states are "clearly not up to the task", committee chairman Petr Jezek told a news conference in Copenhagen.
"They do not have enough personnel or resources. In some countries their independence is also in question. This (proposed change) will certainly improve the situation," he said.
The committee has been in Estonia and Denmark this week to meet regulators, prosecutors and Danske Bank's new management to gather material for a report with proposals for new EU legislation to combat financial crime.
There has in the past been resistance from some member states against tougher and more centralised fraud controls, especially from those states that have worked as tax havens.
The recent scandals could however mean that those times are over, said committee spokesman Jeppe Kofod.
"Something is starting to happen," Kofod told Reuters on the sidelines of the news conference.
"Because everyone can see that, contrary to the United States, Europe has become the first destination for laundered crime money from Russia and other former Soviet Union states, and that is a problem for our security in Europe," he said.
Danske Bank is being investigated in Denmark, Estonia, Britain, United States, and from Thursday also France, over suspicious payments totalling 200 billion euros ($228 billion) made through its tiny Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.
The committee called for more direct EU regulation, instead of the current model where a so-called EU directive is implemented in each member state's own laws, with many different local practices as a consequence.
The lawmakers will also propose setting up a central EU body with powers to enforce anti money-laundering legislation in cooperation with national authorities.
EU governments reached a preliminary deal in December to clamp down on money laundering by strengthening bank supervision through the European Banking Authority (EBA).
(Reporting by Teis Jensen, Editing by William Maclean)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
The finance minister said Gujarat and Maharashtra are the two states to furnish details of the farmers who would be benefited by the proposed scheme.
Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday said the measures announced in the Interim Budget 2019 were not taken keeping in mind the upcoming Lok Sabha election.
"The Budget was not election-oriented, there were 100 things on the table...Issues of need and urgency could not wait," Goyal said at a CII event.
To address the distress in the farm sector, the government in the Budget announced to provide Rs 6,000 per year to farmers in three instalments under a scheme to be fully funded by the Central government
Defending the move, Goyal said the support for small farmers announced in the Budget were not a dole but was the government's duty towards them.
Goyal said: "The farmer support was an outcome of taxes garnered and in that journey there has been a huge role of small farmers. We thought it was a good gesture for farmers and this is not a favour but a duty."
The finance minister said Gujarat and Maharashtra are the two states to furnish details of the farmers who would be benefited by the proposed scheme.
A day after the RBI made it clear that it is not having a relook at a contentious circular about recognising of bad assets, Goyal said: Law cannot be a blind, wherein in 90 days artithmetically it becomes an NPA (non-performing asset). We will also discuss this and we hope to resolve it quickly."
Goyal had presented the Budget in the Lok Sabha on 1 February.
(With inputs from agencies)
SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 9, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Sunhak Peace Prize Committee held the 2019 Sunhak Peace Prize Award Ceremony on Feb. 9, 10 am, at Jamsil Lotte Hotel World.
The Sunhak Peace Prize 2019 was awarded to Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group and to Waris Dirie, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) human rights activist.
The Committee acknowledges Dr. Adesina's achievements in improving Africa's economy by promoting Good Governance and in leading agricultural innovation. His achievements contributed to food security in Africa, aimed at improving the lives of millions living in poverty in Africa.
The Committee awarded Waris Dirie in recognition of her tireless advocacy for the rights of girls and women, and her call for a worldwide resolution for the eradication of FGM, thereby protecting girls who are at the risk of FGM.
At the Ceremony, each laureate received a prize of US$500,000, along with a medal and plaque, presented by founder, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, and Committee Chair, Dr. Il Sik Hong.
The ceremony was attended by more than 1,000 delegates, including current and former presidents, vice presidents, leaders and entrepreneurs from Africa and others representing various governments, academia, businesses, media, and religions.
Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, gave Congratulatory Address stating: the two Laureates truly will bring a distinct focus on uplifting Human Rights and Human Development in Africa.
Through his acceptance speech, Dr. Adesina asserted that, there cannot be peace in a world that is hungry and the prize is a call to do more for those least privileged around the world and especially in Africa.
Waris asserted that FGM must be eradiated in our time and she will continue to fight for girls and women's rights until we build a society where their rights can be respected.
Chairman Hong asserted the importance of the vision One Family Under God, and the theme Human Rights and Human Development in Africa. His Welcome Address emphasized that peace can be achieved only when everyone's human rights are protected and how laureates' devotion can bring humanity one step closer to opening a new chapter of world peace.
The Prize honors individuals and organizations who made significant contributions to the peace and human development of the future generations.
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Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - February 8, 2019) - Drew Malcolm ("Malcolm" or the "Nominating Shareholder"), on behalf of a group of concerned shareholders (the "Concerned Shareholders") controlling approximately 44.8% of the outstanding common shares of Ascent Industries Corp. (CSE: ASNT) ("Ascent" or the "Corporation"), announced today that it will be requisitioning the Ascent Board of Directors (the "Board") to call a special meeting of shareholders (the "Meeting") for the purposes of, among other things, reconstituting the Board with the removal of three incumbent directors and the election of seven new independent directors. The new independent directors would constitute the entire Board.
The Concerned Shareholders believe that the incumbent Board has undertaken, or is imminently contemplating, unauthorised and potentially value destructive decisions that may put the very existence of the Corporation at risk. They are concerned that the management decision-making process has been coloured by external issues that are not relevant to the Corporation's best interests.
The Concerned Shareholders believe that the current directors, a majority of whom has not been elected at a meeting of shareholders, are not representative of the shareholders. As such, the current directors do not have the mandate or authority to make decisions or enter into transactions which may significantly affect the shareholders' interests.
The independent nominees (the "Nominating Shareholder Nominees") to be put forward by the Nominating Shareholder have the leadership skills and background necessary to enable the Corporation to enhance shareholder value. A brief biography for each of the Nominating Shareholder Nominees is set out below.
Paul Dillman - Mr. Dillman previously served as the Executive VP of Marketing, Sales & Operations at Emerald Health Therapeutics Inc. Mr. Dillman has over 30 years of global multi-national company experience, having served in senior positions at Philip Morris, AB InBev, and Coca-Cola. In the past 10 years, Mr. Dillman has successfully led the growth of a number of start-up companies, including founding and acting as President of Electronic Cigarettes International Group.
Mark Lotz - Mr. Lotz is a Chartered Professional Accountant practicing publicly through his firm Lotz CPA Inc. Having qualified in 1994, Mr. Lotz brings a wealth of experience in business, tax and consulting. Formerly a Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer in the brokerage industry, he also has senior management experience in the mining, manufacturing, cannabis and digital media sectors. He provides strategic tax and business planning and is a sought-after expert for complex contractual issues and financial quantification. His public company experience is extensive, including Candente Copper Corp., Handa Mining and Specialty Liquid Transportation Corp.
David Hurford - Mr. Hurford has over 20 years of experience working in senior roles with federal, provincial and municipal governments, crown corporations, non-profit organizations and a top 40 global university.
Sophie Mas - Ms. Mas has over 20 years of experience working in the public safety, regulatory and compliance sector for the Province of British Columbia. Ms. Mas is the former Director of the Government of British Columbia Cannabis Legalization and Regulation Secretariat. Ms. Mas is a Project Manager Professional (PMP) who has led and managed high profile projects such as security planning for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, the creation of the British Columbia Independent Investigation Office, and the BC Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General's response to the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.
Barinder Rasode - Ms. Rasode is currently the CEO and a director of Grow Tech Labs and the CEO of the National Institute for Cannabis Health & Education, an independent, not-for-profit organization that provides impartial and evidence-based research about cannabis production and use in Canada. Prior to that, Ms. Rasode acted as Editor-in-Chief of BotanIQ and served two terms as an elected Councilor for the City of Surrey.
Jaspreet Rehal - Mr. Rehal is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CMA) with over 15 years of experience leading organizations in finance, budgeting, accounting, human resources and business management within the Public Sector, alongside relevant hands on experience leading politically sensitive regulatory/enforcement regimes. He is also a Governor on the Board of Governors for the Notary Foundation of British-Columbia.
Mahony Cai - Mr. Cai brings over 20 years of business experience in manufacturing industry and TSX-V listed company. He served as director of Kaiser America Inc., a multinational apparel manufacturer, for seven years. In addition to his career with Kaiser America Inc., Mr. Cai held a variety of senior roles in finance, accounting and strategy in various multinational companies. Being a Chartered Professional Accountant and Certified General Accountant, Mr. Cai also holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Simon Fraser University and a Master of Business Administration from Hong Kong Baptist University.
Information Concerning the Nominating Shareholder Nominees
The table below sets out, in respect of each Nominating Shareholder Nominee, his or her name, province or state and country of residence, his or her principal occupation, business or employment within the five preceding years, and the number of common shares of Ascent beneficially owned, or controlled or directed, directly or indirectly, by such Nominating Shareholder Nominee.
Name, Province or State and Country of Residence Present Principal Occupation, Business or Employment and Principal Occupation, Business or Employment During the Preceding Five Years Number of Common Shares Beneficially Owned or Controlled or Directed (Directly or Indirectly) Paul Dillman
British Columbia, Canada Present: Consultant, Independent Contractor Nil Past: Executive VP of marketing, sales & operations at Emerald Health Therapeutics (2018); President, Resilient Management (2017); VP Sales & Marketing, Premium Labs (2016-17); Board Member, MediaCity (2009-19) Mark Lotz
British Columbia, Canada Present: Chief Financial Officer & Director, Crest Resources Inc. Nil Past: President, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, World Mahjong Limited (2017-18); Advisor, Commander Resources Ltd. (2016-18); Chief Financial Officer and Director, New Point Exploration Corp. (2017-18) David Hurford
British Columbia, Canada Present: CEO, Three Links Care Society (December 2016 - present), Special Advisor, Grow Tech Labs (November 2018 - Present) Nil Past: Executive Director, Safe Care BC (September 2015 - December 2016), Executive Director for the office of the President, UBC (July 2014 - August 2015), Director of Communications, Community Living BC (September 2012 - July 2014), Board of Directors, Safe Care BC (2017 - Present), Board of Directors, BC Care Providers Association (2017 - present) Sophie Mas
British Columbia, Canada Present: CEO, Somas Consulting Inc., (2018 - present); Program Manager, PMO, Supply Chain, BC Hydro (2018 - Present); Instructor, Justice Institute of British Columbia (2016 - Present); President, STAND Foundation (2006 - Present) Nil Past: Project Director, Cannabis Legalization and Regulation Secretariat, Government of British Columbia (2016-18); and Senior Project Manager, Ministry of Justice, Policing and Security Branch (2011-15) Barinder Rasode
British Columbia, Canada Present: CEO & Director, Grow Tech Labs; and Founder, National Institute for Cannabis Health & Education (NICHE) 13,300 Past: Editor-in-Chief, BotanIQ (2017-18); Director, Fraser Health Authority (2015-17); Director of Social Responsibility, Resource Works (2015-17) Jaspreet Rehal
British Columbia, Canada Present: CFO, Grow Tech Labs; and Governor, Board of Governors, Notary Foundation of BC Nil Past: Director of Public Safety Operation, City of Surrey (2012-19), Regional Director of Integrated Business Management Services, Canadian Coast Guard Agency (2003-12) Mahony Cai
British Columbia, Canada Present: Controller, Quintet Ventures Inc. 252,500
Common Shares
116,667
Warrants Past: Director, Kaiser America Inc. Chartered Professional Accountant; Certified General Accountant; Controller, Empower Technologies (2014-15)
To the knowledge of the Nominating Shareholder, no Nominating Shareholder Nominee is, at the date hereof, or has been, within ten (10) years before the date hereof: (a) a director, chief executive officer or chief financial officer of any corporation that (i) was subject to a cease trade order, an order similar to a cease trade order or an order that denied the relevant corporation access to any exemption under securities legislation that was in effect for a period of more than thirty (30) consecutive days (each, an "order"), in each case that was issued while the Nominating Shareholder Nominee was acting in the capacity as director, chief executive officer or chief financial officer, or (ii) was subject to an order that was issued after the Nominating Shareholder Nominee ceased to be a director, chief executive officer or chief financial officer and which resulted from an event that occurred while that person was acting in the capacity as director, chief executive officer or chief financial officer; (b) a director or executive officer of any corporation that, while such Nominating Shareholder Nominee was acting in that capacity, or within one (1) year of such Nominating Shareholder Nominee ceasing to act in that capacity, became bankrupt, made a proposal under any legislation relating to bankruptcy or insolvency or was subject to or instituted any proceedings, arrangement or compromise with creditors or had a receiver, receiver manager or trustee appointed to hold its assets; or (c) someone who became bankrupt, made a proposal under any legislation relating to bankruptcy or insolvency, or became subject to or instituted any proceedings, arrangement or compromise with creditors, or had a receiver, receiver manager or trustee appointed to hold the assets of such Nominating Shareholder Nominee.
To the knowledge of the Nominating Shareholder as at the date hereof, no Nominating Shareholder Nominee has been subject to: (a) any penalties or sanctions imposed by a court relating to securities legislation, or by a securities regulatory authority, or has entered into a settlement agreement with a securities regulatory authority; or (b) any other penalties or sanctions imposed by a court or regulatory body that would likely be considered important to a reasonable securityholder in deciding whether to vote for a Nominating Shareholder Nominee.
To the knowledge of the Nominating Shareholder, none of the Nominating Shareholder, any associates or affiliates of the Nominating Shareholder, any of the Nominating Shareholder Nominees or their respective associates or affiliates, has: (a) any material interest, direct or indirect, in any transaction since the commencement of Ascent's most recently completed financial year or in any proposed transaction which has materially affected or will materially affect Ascent or any of its subsidiaries; or (b) any material interest, direct or indirect, by way of beneficial ownership of securities or otherwise, in any matter proposed to be acted on at the Meeting, other than the election of directors.
Additional Information
The information contained in this press release does not and is not meant to constitute a solicitation of a proxy within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Although the Nominating Shareholder, on behalf of the Concerned Shareholders, has requisitioned the Meeting, there is currently no record or meeting date set for such Meeting and shareholders are not being asked at this time to execute a proxy in favour of the Nominating Shareholder Nominees or any other resolution set forth in the Requisition. In connection with the Meeting, the Nominating Shareholder may file a dissident information circular (the "Information Circular") in due course in compliance with applicable securities laws.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Nominating Shareholder is voluntarily providing the disclosure required under sections 9.2(4) and 9.2(6) of National Instrument 51-102 - Continuous Disclosure Obligations in accordance with securities laws applicable to public broadcast solicitations.
This press release and any solicitation made by the Nominating Shareholder in advance of the Meeting is, or will be, as applicable, made by the Nominating Shareholder, and not by or on behalf of the management of Ascent. All costs incurred for any solicitation will be borne by the Nominating Shareholder, provided that, subject to applicable law, the Nominating Shareholder may seek reimbursement from Ascent of the Nominating Shareholder's out-of-pocket expenses, including proxy solicitation expenses and legal fees, incurred in connection with a successful reconstitution of the Board.
The Nominating Shareholder is not soliciting proxies in connection with the Meeting at this time, and shareholders are not being asked at this time to execute proxies in favour of the Nominating Shareholder Nominees (in respect of the Meeting) or any other resolution set forth in the Requisition. The Nominating Shareholder may solicit proxies pursuant to the Information Circular sent to shareholders of Ascent after which solicitations may be made by or on behalf of the Nominating Shareholder, by mail, telephone, fax, email or other electronic means, and in person by the Nominating Shareholder or any agent or proxy advisor that the Nominating Shareholder may retain or by the Nominating Shareholder Nominees.
The Nominating Shareholder may also solicit proxies in reliance upon the public broadcast exemption to the solicitation requirements under applicable Canadian corporate and securities laws, conveyed by way of public broadcast, including through press releases, speeches or publications, and by any other manner permitted under applicable Canadian laws. The Nominating Shareholder may engage the services of one or more agents and authorize other persons to assist in soliciting proxies on behalf of the Nominating Shareholder.
Any proxies solicited by the Nominating Shareholder in connection with the Meeting may be revoked by instrument in writing by the shareholder giving the proxy or by its duly authorized officer or attorney, or in any other manner permitted by law and the articles of Ascent. None of the Nominating Shareholder or, to its knowledge, any of its associates or affiliates, has any material interest, direct or indirect, by way of beneficial ownership of securities or otherwise, in any matter proposed to be acted on at the Meeting, other than the election of directors to the Board.
Ascent's principal business office is 22529 Lougheed Highway, Suite 260, Maple Ridge, British Columbia V2X 0T5. A copy of this press release may be obtained on Ascent's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.
Contact Information for the Nominating Shareholder:
Drew Malcolm
778-819-6451
To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/42740
Sara Ali Khan Is All Smiles After Her Gym Session
Sara Ali Khan is committed to her fitness regime as she is one of the celebs who we see heading to the gym on the regular. Today, Sara was all smiles as she caught up with some friends when snapped post her work out session. Sara looked radiant as she stepped out carrying dumbbells. She sported a grey t-shirt and blue shorts for her gym look today. Sara made a fantastic entry into Bollywood with two back to back movies. She debuted in Kedarnath in December and had the blockbuster Simmba release just a few weeks after.
Sonakshi Also Spotted At The Same Gym
Sonakshi Sinha was also spotted at the same gym as Sara today. She waved to the cameras as she brushed past to her gym. Sona was wearing an all black gym look. On the work front, Sonakshi will be seen in Karan Johar's multi starrer, Kalank, which also stars, Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Madhuri Dixit, Kunal Kemmu, Aditya Roy Kapur and Sanjay Dutt in lead roles. The film is scheduled for release on April 19th, 2019.
Malaika Slays The Boss Lady Look At The Airport
Malaika Arora is a legit fashionista and no one can deny it. We can expect her to slay any outfit she chooses. Today, Malaika killed her boss lady look at the airport when she returned to Mumbai. Malaika was wearing a plaid grey pant suit with a white t-shirt. She gave the look a glamorous twist with a glittery black trench coat. She sported ankle length boots to go with her outfit. Just yesterday, Malaika was snapped slaying the same look as she stepped out of a salon in Bandra.
Vidya Balan Also Snapped At The Airport
Vidya Balan smiled to the cameras as she prepared to jet off somewhere from the airport today. Vidya looked chic in a black maxi dress, a grey cardigan, black oxfords and a large brown tote bag. It has been a while since we saw Vidya on the big screen in Bollywood, although she has been working in a lot of Telugu and Tamil films.
Shilpa Shetty & Her Family Enjoy A Quiet Saturday At A Cafe
Shilpa Shetty, her husband Raj Kundra and their son Viaan Raj Kundra were enjoying a quiet Saturday at a cafe in Bandra when they were snapped by the paparazzi. Shilpa sported a casual chic look in a grey t-shirt and high waisted denims. Her hubby Raj, on the other hand, wore a camouflage sweatshirt and denims. Viaan looked cute in a stripped white and green t-shirt, and denims.
Former Yorkshire journalist Steve Parsley has joined the Fethiye Times as an associate editor and reporter.
The 57-year-old writer also a qualified photographer worked a series of regional titles in the north of England including the well-respected Northern Echo, the Yorkshire Post and the Yorkshire Evening Post. He also worked in broadcasting, both as a presenter and head of news in commercial radio as well as a regular contributor to BBC programmes.
After 20 years of full-time journalism, Steve switched to corporate public relations in 2004, working as a media adviser for Yorkshire Water before joining the communications company founded by wife Rebecca in 2010.
The couple moved to Turkey with teenage daughter Emma in 2014 but continue to run their agency online, working with clients both in the UK and Europe, Rebecca also working as a contributing editor for Kinbox an international online magazine focusing on issues relating to families and parents ( www.kinbox.com ).
Steve has already contributed to Fethiye Times, writing an occasional series on his exploits walking family dog Dillon in the forests around Kayakoy, as well as travel pieces from around the Mugla region.
Although I left journalism some time ago, its still an itch that needs scratching, he said. After almost five years here, I felt I had enough experience to contribute something to the community in the Fethiye area and that perhaps it was time to get to know it a little better too.
Hopefully, writing for Fethiye Times provides an opportunity to do both. Im certainly looking forward to meeting a few more people and to getting back into old writing habits which I hope are not entirely forgotten.
Fethiye Times owner and editor Lyn Ward said Steve will be contributing to both the Fethiye Times website as well as its social media accounts.
Were delighted to have another set of experienced hands on board both in terms of writing and photography. Were confident Steves knowledge of journalism will be a valuable asset and hope that, by working with us, he can achieve his ambition to become more integrated into the Fethiye community in the months to come.
The 23rd of April is a unique and a very special international celebration. The founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, dedicated this day to the children of the country to emphasize that they are the future of the new nation.
National Sovereignty and Childrens Day (Ulusal Egemenlik ve Cocuk Bayram) commemorates the inauguration of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara on 23 April 1920.
In 1921, to mark the event, 23 April was proclaimed a national holiday.
In 1979 the day started to be called International Childrens Day and since its first year, Turkey has hosted thousands of children from 150 different countries over 40 years.
Celebrations in Fethiye
To mark National Sovereignty and Childrens Day, the children of Fethiye took part in celebrations, organised by FETAV, held at the town square, Beskaza.
Fethiye Times went along to enjoy the celebrations and capture some of the moments from the day.
Wreath setting and a parade
The celebrations started with a wreath-setting ceremony in front of the Ataturk monument in Beskaza Square.
Fethiye Mayor, Alim Karaca, children and parents, accompanied by the Fethiye Municipality Band, then marched from Ozgecan Park, along the kordon, to Beskaza Meydan (Fethiye Town Square).
On reaching Beskaza, there were activities by children and for children
In photos: A celebration of children
The FETAV Cocuk Korusu (FETAV Childrens Choir) led the National Anthem, Istiklal Mars
The FETAV Cocuk Korusu (FETAV Childrens Choir) led the National Anthem, Istiklal Mars
Fethiye Mayor, Alim Karaca and the Dalaman Governor were among the Protokol who attended the celebration
We hope you enjoyed Childrens Day, whatever were doing
A final word from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
Little ladies, little gentlemen,
You are all the roses, the stars and the sparkling joy of our future, the ones who will elevate the nation.
Always be aware of your value and significance!
And work hard
We have great expectations from you.
2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Fauquier community has proven resilient. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning --
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Sociedad QuAmica y Minera de Chile S.A. produces and distributes specialty plant nutrients, iodine and its derivatives, lithium and its derivatives, potassium chloride and sulfate, industrial chemicals, and other products and services worldwide. The company offers specialty plant nutrients, including potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate, sodium potassium nitrate, specialty blends, and other specialty fertilizers for crops, such as vegetables, fruits, and industrial crops. It also provides iodine and its derivatives for use in medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial applications comprising x-ray contrast media, polarizing films for LCD and LED, antiseptics, biocides and disinfectants, pharmaceutical synthesis, electronics, pigments, and dye components. In addition, the company offers lithium carbonates for various applications that include electrochemical materials for batteries, frits for the ceramic and enamel industries, heat-resistant glass, air conditioning chemicals, continuous casting powder for steel extrusion, primary aluminum smelting process, pharmaceuticals, and lithium derivatives. Further, it supplies lithium hydroxide for the lubricating greases industry, as well as cathodes for batteries. Additionally, it offers potassium chloride and potassium sulfate for various crops, including corn, rice, sugar, soybean, and wheat; industrial chemicals, including sodium nitrate, potassium nitrate, potassium chloride, and solar salts; and other fertilizers and blends. The company was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Santiago, Chile.
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Edwards Lifesciences Corporation provides products and technologies for structural heart disease, and critical care and surgical monitoring in the United States, Europe, Japan, and internationally. It offers transcatheter heart valve replacement products for the minimally invasive replacement of heart valves; and transcatheter heart valve repair and replacement products to treat mitral and tricuspid valve diseases. The company also provides surgical heart valve therapy products, such as pericardial valves for aortic and mitral surgical valve replacement; aortic heart valves; annuloplasty rings; cardiac cannula devices; beating heart mitral valve repair system for the treatment of degenerative mitral regurgitation, as well as various procedure-enabling platforms to advance minimally invasive surgery. In addition, it offers critical care products, such as hemodynamic monitoring systems to measure a patient's heart function and fluid status in surgical and intensive care settings; pulmonary artery catheters; arterial pressure monitoring products, oximetry central venous catheters, as well as monitoring platforms that display a patient's physiological information; and Acumen Hypotension Prediction Index, which alerts clinicians in advance of a patient developing low blood pressure. The company distributes its products through a direct sales force and independent distributors. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation was founded in 1958 and is headquartered in Irvine, California.
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Banco Santander-Chile, together with its subsidiaries, provides commercial and retail banking products and services in Chile. It operates through Retail Banking, Middle-Market, and Corporate Investment Banking segments. The company offers debit and credit cards, checking accounts, and savings products; consumer, automobile, commercial, mortgage, and government-guaranteed loans; and Chilean peso and foreign currency denominated loans to finance various commercial transactions, trade, foreign currency forward contracts, and credit lines. It also provides mutual funds, insurance and stock brokerage, foreign exchange, leasing, factoring, financial consulting, investment management, foreign trade and mortgage financing, treasury, and transactional services, as well as specialized services to finance projects for the real estate industry. In addition, the company offers short-term financing and fund raising, and brokerage services, as well as derivatives, securitization, and other tailor-made products. It serves individuals, small to middle-sized entities, companies, and large corporations, as well as universities, government entities, and local and regional governments. As of December 31, 2020, the company operated 358 branches, which include 220 under the Santander brand name, 19 under the Select brand name, 32 specialized branches for the middle market, and 28 as auxiliary and payment centers, as well as 1,199 ATMs. Banco Santander-Chile was incorporated in 1977 and is headquartered in Santiago, Chile.
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Nomura Holdings, Inc. provides various financial services to individuals, corporations, financial institutions, governments, and governmental agencies worldwide. It operates through three segments: Retail, Asset Management, and Wholesale. The Retail segment offers various financial products and investment services for individuals and corporations. As of March 31, 2020, this segment operated a network of 128 branches. The Asset Management segment engages in the development and management of investment trusts; and provision of investment advisory services for pension funds and other institutional clients. The Wholesale segment is involved in the research, sale, trading, agency execution, and market-making of fixed income and equity-related products. It also engages in underwriting various securities and other financial instruments, such as various classes of shares, convertible and exchangeable securities, investment grade and high yield debts, sovereign and emerging market debts, structured securities, and other securities; arranging private placements, as well as other capital raising activities; and the provision of financial advisory services on business transactions comprising mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, spin-offs, capital structuring, corporate defense activities, leveraged buyouts, and risk solutions. In addition, this segment offers various financial instruments. The company was formerly known as The Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. and changed its name to Nomura Holdings, Inc. in October 2001. Nomura Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1925 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
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The following companies are subsidiares of Laboratory Co. of America: 1957285 Ontario Inc. dba Quality Underwriting Services, 2089729 Ontario Inc., 2248848 Ontario Inc., 3065619 Nova Scotia Company, 3257959 Nova Scotia Company, 896988 Ontario Limited, 9279-3280 Quebec Inc., Accupath Diagnostic Laboratories Inc., Alpha Medical Laboratory LLC, Assets of Pathology Inc, Beacon LBS IPA Inc., Beacon Laboratory Benefit Solutions Inc., CannAmm GP Inc., CannAmm Limited Partnership, Center for Disease Detection International, Center for Disease Detection LLC, Centrex Clinical Laboratories Inc., Clearstone Central Laboratories (U.S.) Inc., Clearstone Holdings (International) Ltd., Clipper Holdings Inc., Colorado Coagulation Consultants Inc., Colorado Laboratory Services LLC, Correlagen Diagnostics Inc., Covance Inc., Curalab Inc., Cytometry Associates Inc., Czura Thornton (Hong Kong) Limited, DCL Acquisition Inc., DCL Medical Laboratories LLC (DE), DCL Medical Laboratories LLC (FL), DCL Sub LLC, DIANON Systems Inc., DL Holdings Limited Partnership, Decision Diagnostics L.L.C. (aka DaVinici/Medicorp LLC), Diagnostic Services Inc., DynaLifeDX, Dynacare - Gamma Laboratory Partnership, Dynacare Company, Dynacare G.P. Inc., Dynacare Holdco LLC, Dynacare Laboratories Inc., Dynacare Laboratories Limited Partnership, Dynacare Northwest Inc., Dynacare Realty Inc., DynalifeDX Infrastructure Inc., Endocrine Sciences Inc., Esoterix Genetic Counseling LLC, Esoterix Genetic Laboratories LLC, Esoterix Inc., Execmed Health Services Inc., FirstSource Laboratory Solutions Inc., GDML Medical Laboratories Inc, Gamma Dynacare Central Medical Laboratories GP Inc., Gamma Dynacare Central Medical Laboratory Limited Partnership, HHLA Lab-In-An-Envelope LLC, Health Trans Services Inc., Home Healthcare Laboratory of America LLC, IDX Pathology Inc., Impact Genetics Corp, Impact Genetics Inc., Kaleida LabCorp LLC, Lab Delivery Service of New York City Inc., LabCorp BVBA, LabCorp Belgium Holdings Inc., LabCorp Central Laboratories (Canada) Inc., LabCorp Central Laboratories (China) Inc., LabCorp Central Laboratories (Singapore) Pte., LabCorp Development Company, LabCorp Employer Services Inc., LabCorp Health System Diagnostics LLC, LabCorp Indiana Inc., LabCorp Japan G.K., LabCorp Limited, LabCorp Michigan Inc., LabCorp Nebraska Inc., LabCorp Neon Ltd., LabCorp Neon Switzerland S.a.r.l., LabCorp Specialty Testing Billing Service Inc., LabCorp Specialty Testing Group Inc., LabCorp Staffing Solutions Inc., LabCorp Tennessee LLC, LabCorp UK Holdings Ltd., LabWest Inc., Laboratoire Bio-Medic Inc., Laboratory Corporation of America, Lifecodes Corporation, LipoScience Inc., Litholink Corporation, MEDTOX Scientific Inc., Medical Neurogenitics LLC, Medtox Diagnostics Inc., Medtox Laboratories Inc., Monogram Biosciences Inc., Monogram Biosciences UK Limited, NWT Inc., National Genetics Institute, New Brighton Business Center LLC, New Imaging Diagnostics LLC, New Molecular Diagnostics Ventures LLC, Orchid Cellmark Ltd., Orchid Cellmark ULC, PA Labs Inc., Path Lab Incorporated, Pathology Associates Medical Lab LLC, Pee Dee Pathology Associates Inc., Persys Technology Inc., Pixel by LabCorp, Princeton Diagnostic Laboratories of America Inc., Protedyne Corporation, ReliaGene Technologies Inc., SW/DL LLC, Saint Josephs-PAML LLC, Sequenom Biosciences (India) Pvt. Ltd., Sequenom Center for Molecular Medicine LLC, Sequenom Inc, Sequenom Inc., Southern Idaho Regional Laboratory, Tandem Labs Inc., The LabCorp Charitable Foundation, Tri-Cities Laboratory LLC, Viro-Med Laboratories Inc., and Yakima Medical Arts Inc..
Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc., an offshore energy services company, provides specialty services to the offshore energy industry primarily in Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, the Asia Pacific, and West Africa regions. The company operates through three segments: Well Intervention, Robotics, and Production Facilities. The company engineers, manages, and conducts well intervention operations that include production enhancement and abandonment, and construction in water depths ranging from 200 to 10,000 feet; and offers remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), trenchers, and ROVDrills for offshore construction and well intervention services. It also provides intervention engineering; inspection, repair, and maintenance of production structures, trees, jumpers, risers, pipelines, subsea equipment, and related support services. In addition, the company offers reclamation and remediation services; well plug and abandonment services; pipeline abandonment services; and site inspections. Further, it engages in the installation of flowlines, control umbilicals, and manifold assemblies and risers; trenching and burial of pipelines; installation and tie-in of riser and manifold assembly; commissioning, testing, and inspection activities; and provision of cable and umbilical lay, and connection services. Additionally, the company offers oil and natural gas processing facilities and services to oil and gas companies; and fast response system. It serves independent oil and gas producers and suppliers, pipeline transmission companies, renewable energy companies, and offshore engineering and construction firms. The company was formerly known as Cal Dive International, Inc. and changed its name to Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. in March 2006. Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. was incorporated in 1979 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
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Hundreds of students, alumni, faculty members, community leaders and residents turned out Friday, Feb. 8, at a wake in the schhol gym for Rev. William Sangiovanni, president emeritus of the school, a long-time teacher, principal and mentor to thousands of students over several decades.
Following the wake, a vigil Mass was held, prior to funeral services Saturday, Feb. 9, at St. Thomas Church in Fairfield.
Sangiovanni known as Father Bill to generations of Notre Dame students, died Monday morning after being in declining health for several years. He was 77.
Bridgeport Diocese Bishop Frank J. Caggiano said, the overwhelming sense of loss that many are feeling upon his death is a tribute to his vitality and vision, and the gift of his friendship experienced by so many people in our diocese and beyond.
Father Bill knew how to create community and how to use his considerable political and social gifts to inspire charitable service and bring out the best in others. As a priest, educator and natural leader, he had an impact on the lives of generations of young people and their families.
Born in Brooklyn, Sangiovanni came to the Bridgeport diocese when he enrolled at Fairfield University, where he graduated in 1962 with a degree in history. He earned a master's from Fairfield University in education and arts. He went on to teach at Fairfields Assumption School. Then, from there, he went to Our Lady of Angels Seminary at Niagara University in New York.
After four years or religious training, in 1969, he decided to leave.
Instead, Sangiovanni served as special assistant to the Minority Leader of the Connecticut General Assembly, and as assistant to U.S. Congressman Steward McKinney from 1969 to 1975.
Sangiovanni went to Hartford as a research assistant to Stewart McKinney in 1969. At the time, McKinney was the Minority Leader of the Connecticut House of Representatives. The following year, McKinney was elected to Congress and Sangiovanni became the district representative, running the Bridgeport and Fairfield offices.
Sangiovanni continued to support McKinney through a difficult re-election in 1974. But shortly after, he left McKinneys staff.
People in Fairfield started to call for Sangiovanni to run as a bipartisan candidate for the towns position of First Selectman, but he turned them down.
In the spring of 1975, he became a deacon and left Fairfield for Kentucky. He soon became a full-time teacher and assistant chaplain in the Frenchburg State Prison. When he came back to Connecticut, he requested an assignment counseling prisoners at the Bridgeport Correctional Center.
Beginning in 1980, Sangiovanni was a faculty member, chaplain, department chair, assistant principal, principal and president of the Fairfield school on Jefferson street.
It is with heavy hearts that we make this post. The Notre Dame community is mourning the loss of Rev. William Father Bill' Sangiovanni, who passed away this morning, Notre Dame principal Christopher Cipriano announced Monday on the schools Facebook page.
Father Bills passing is a tremendous loss to all of us who knew him so well, Cipriano said.
Please try to keep happy memories of Father Bill at the front of your mind, Cipriano said. Whether they include cheering on a team from the sidelines, passionately teaching his AP Government class, shaking hands and greeting everyone by name at Open House since he seemingly knew everyone, wearing his GarlicFest hat so proudly or celebrating Mass with a tremendous homily for the ND community, he certainly left us with many, many fond memories.
For several years during his time as school principal in the mid-90s, Sangiovanni coordinated a GarlicFest under a big tent adjacent to the school. A major fundraiser for the school, the event attracted thousands of garlic lovers and vendors from throughout the area.
On the occasion of Notre Dames 60th anniversary Gala celebration in March 2017, the Diocese of Bridgeport mentioned Sangiovannis then 37 years with Notre Dame and his massive impact on the school.
Sangiovanni was ordained in St. Patrick Church in Bridgeport on March 19, 1977. After serving first as parochial vicar at St. Patrick's, he was named to the faculty of Notre Dame in 1980 and became the school's spiritual director the following year.
In 1991, he was appointed to the State of Connecticut's Ethics Commission, and later became vice chair. Father Sangiovanni also served as a part-time chaplain at the Bridgeport Correctional Center for 11 years.
Father Sangiovanni was named president of Notre Dame in 2010.
As one reads the lay commissions report and its conclusions about the sexual abuse claims against the archdiocese, an important component appears to be missing: the specific role of bishops who enabled repeat offenders to commit these atrocities against children, and then covered them up.
Healing will be impossible until the behavior of these men is fully brought to light.
Allen Kosub
Punish the rich?
Re: Taxing the rich would not be easy, Business, Saturday:
Several Democratic presidential candidates are promoting different plans to tax the rich, ranging from very high income tax rates to a wealth tax.
Not only would these plans be difficult to effectively implement, theres not enough income or wealth in this tiny percentage of the population to make a significant difference in tax revenue.
These policies are not really about increasing revenue. Nor will they improve the plight of the poor. They are about envy and punishing the most economically successful among us. Is that really where we want our politics to go?
J. David Trawick
The H-E-B way
Re: H-E-B unit shows how to respect, not rip off, consumers, Business, Saturday:
I remember that when H-E-B came to Floresville, people looked forward to it, in contrast to their feelings about other large retailers.
What was the difference? In addition to quality products at good prices, there is an adequate number of employees, and they are unfailingly friendly and helpful.
I recall one situation when the checkout system went down and lines were growing long. Employees were in the different lines sympathizing and offering reassurances that the system would be back up soon and, in doing so, changed what could have been an ugly situation into something more like a bonding experience.
We have numerous examples of the harm caused by greed in the corporate world, but the example of H-E-B is reassuring as an illustration that the free enterprise system can work to the benefit of everyone by doing the right thing.
Ed Farmer, Floresville
The refocused attention on family violence cases at both the felony and misdemeanor level by new Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales is a welcome change.
Under the realignment, the Family Violence Unit once again will be a stand-alone unit and will operate under the direction of Angelica Powers, a long-tenured prosecutor with expertise in this area of the law. Under the previous administration, family violences cases were handled by the White Collar Crime Unit.
Gonzales is also allocating more resources to handle family violence cases by increasing the units staff from 22 to 35 lawyers. That includes an increase in the number of lawyers reviewing cases as they come in and the addition of a prosecutor to each of the 10 felony courts. Each now will have three family violence prosecutors to handle domestic violence and child abuse cases.
In addition, the unit has two prosecutors devoted to human-trafficking cases.
Family violences cases are handled a bit differently at the misdemeanor level, making it a more difficult to implement drastic changes. Bexar County has 15 courts-at-law. Two of the courts are designated to preside over family law cases, two hear civil cases, and the rest preside over criminal law cases.
Judges are not limited to hearing only the type of cases that have been designated for their court. Judges often volunteer to hear other types of cases when they have court time available. Gonzales hopes to capitalize on that.
He plans to seek volunteer judges to help move more family cases through the courts. Together, the two misdemeanor family violence courts have about 2,900 cases on their dockets. The other misdemeanor court average about 1,100 cases because there are more of them to share the caseload.
The new judges in the family violence courts County Court-at-Law No. 7 Judge Michael de Leon and Country Court-at-Law No. 13 Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez said they welcome assistance from other judges in bringing down the caseloads. We encourage a team effort on this.
With only two designated courts to handle the large volume of family law cases, only a limited number can go to trial any given week. Delays are inevitable.
Family violence cases are highly emotional and difficult to prosecute. By the time the cases get a court date, the parties have often reconciled and witnesses are reluctant. But even when witnesses are cooperative, the cases sometimes become a matter of he said, she said. No one benefits when cases languish in the system.
Juanita Vazquez-Gardner, the new misdemeanor trial chief, has plans to increase training in this area for all prosecutors assigned to the misdemeanor courts. Many law-school graduates with freshly minted bar cards launch their legal careers in the misdemeanor section of a district attorneys office.
Filing a family violence complaint is a difficult step for most victims, who often feel overwhelmed by the system.
Allocating more resources at the prosecutorial and judicial levels to bring family violence cases to court in a timely manner will help ensure justice is served.
On Monday, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, or CBP, planners will be in Laredo to begin assessing where to place a wall in our community.
At a State of the Border address on Feb. 1, Felix Chavez, interim chief for the U.S. Border Patrols Laredo sector, presented information to justify the 150 river miles of wall construction requested for Webb and Zapata counties. CBP believes that a permanent, impermeable barrier is necessary to meet its goal of operational control.
To our dismay, we learned that CBP wants to specifically target Laredos middle reach as a top funding priority for the wall. This is a position with which we fiercely disagree.
This area represents the heart of Laredos urban center. It includes downtown, the Laredo College campus, densely populated middle- and low-income residential areas, and prime parks, trails and habitat for recreation, kayaking and birding, which have made Laredo and the lower Rio Grande Valley a major destination for eco-tourists.
Historical data on illegal apprehensions clearly indicate that there is no urgent, or even impending, border crisis. The data shows that in 2017, apprehensions for Laredo and the entire Southwest border were at an all-time low, similar to the early 1970s. The 2018 numbers were at one-fourth of their peak in 2000. As for illegal drug seizures, BP data show that more than 90 percent occur at ports of entry.
Meanwhile, our government has waived every regulation for wall construction on our biodiverse river floodplain, dismantling protections that directly impact the security of Laredos only source of drinking water, which we share with 6 million people up and down the Rio Grande.
In waiving the Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, Solid Waste Disposal Act and at least 20 other environmental laws, the Trump administration threatens the health and safety of millions of Americans and Mexicans who live along the banks of this river.
Todays border situation is complicated by the changing demographics of immigration. In the past, migrants were overwhelmingly single males from Mexico. Today, 78 percent are from countries other than Mexico, and families and unaccompanied minors now make up 60 percent of illegal apprehensions.
Contributing factors include violence and poverty in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which are propelling migrants northward to legally seek asylum; an overloaded court system; and detention policies that complicate crossings at legal points of entry, creating incentives to cross between the ports.
A wall does not address these deeper-rooted factors and therefore will not resolve the migrant situation at the border. Therefore, we urge our congressional leaders to budget zero dollars toward the wall so that security funds are better spent on more urgent and pressing measures increasing staff and upgrading technology at ports of entry and between the ports of entry.
We urge them to:
Restore all environmental laws, which are vital to protect the health and welfare of all of us who live on the border.
Budget for southbound interdiction to intercept cash and guns flowing into Mexico, which embolden the drug cartels with greater resources.
Propose policy changes to help resolve the factors that drive migrants from their countries.
Constructing a wall in Laredos urban center would devastate our landscape, ecology, cultural heritage and quality of life.
Flooding could significantly increase in our lower-lying sister city, creating a wreckage whose risk will not be addressed because of the dismissal of construction regulations. Hundreds of species of wildlife rely on river access for their survival. Relocating millions of dollars worth of city infrastructure now near the rivers edge illustrates real-world costs of implementation.
Laredo is a historic community in the South Texas borderlands. Its lifeblood, the Rio Grande, has been its No. 1 asset since our communitys founding in 1755. We cannot support this wall, especially when the Border Patrols own data contradict the reason for its conception.
The Rio Grande continues to rank as one of the 10 most endangered rivers in the world. Every effort must be made by our federal government to protect and preserve it not to destroy it and the wildlife, drinking water and dynamic communities that it sustains.
Melissa R. Cigarroa is board president and Tricia Cortez is executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center, an environmental advocacy group based in Laredo.
If we really want to honor Southern heritage today, more of us should heed the words of the most famous of all Confederate heroes, Robert E. Lee. In his great wisdom, he argued against Civil War monuments, saying that these kept open the sores of war.
My journey to greater understanding began many years ago in Louisiana when this now-old Yankee married a charming daughter of the Confederacy. She is a big part of the reason I fell in love with the South and remain enchanted with much of its culture.
Embracing my new life, I mounted a large Confederate battle flag in our living room. I thought it looked cool and was a lot cheaper than other art we couldnt afford.
With respect to Southern credentials, my Cajun wife is a descendant of Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard. For those of you not well-versed in Civil War history, Beauregard was not just a big part of the Civil War, he commanded the Rebel army that took the first shots at Fort Sumter.
Also of interest, and most indicative of the complexity of all humans, is that after the Civil War, Beauregard became a vocal proponent of voting rights for blacks and the abolition of segregation in public schools.
Irrespective of Beauregards evolution from slaveholder to civil rights activist and in blind denial of his numerous military, political and social contributions to not just Louisiana but our entire country the statue of him in New Orleans was removed a few years ago under the cover of night for fear of community conflict.
Still, many stood by to watch the statue come down at 3 a.m.
Its an unmitigated disaster and for what? an observer said as the statue was hauled away for storage in some dark warehouse.
For what? deserves an answer, one Lee understood but many who say they revere him still apparently do not.
Over the years, we made many friends who are black and brown-skinned. We would no sooner hurt or offend these friends and neighbors as we would our own family, and we cant begin to count the many kindnesses and acts of compassion shown to us by people who arent Anglo.
One afternoon years ago, as I left the high school where I worked in San Antonio with a black colleague and friend, she looked over at a student wearing a cap with the Confederate battle flag patch. This is an icon Beauregard had much to do with making a symbol most of us instantly recognize today, but one that sparks many different reactions.
Dont you know how offensive I find that hat? she said to the student, which prompted a look of confusion on the part of not only the student but me as well. Upon explanation, I got it, but Im not so sure about the student.
What I got was that its long past the time we come to the realization that no matter how we sift and sort the facts, Confederate symbols and public reverence of leaders like Beauregard and much more popular historical figures such as Lee are deeply offensive to many good Americans.
Yes, Lee and many, many others who served at his side had an abundance of admirable qualities and made countless positive contributions, but they will always be inextricably linked to the great sin of slavery and, equally valid, deserve to be so identified.
The same goes for the Confederate battle flag.
But thats not how I replied to my wife when she criticized the removal of Beauregards statue. I knew her kind and sensitive Southern heart as well as I knew with absolutely certainty she has not a single bone of racism in her body.
We have to remember a lot of people we know and love are unfairly disturbed by these statues, I reminded my wife, knowing that shed see this instantly and understand. Mary has lived her life thinking about others feelings and needs before her own; its a big reason why I fell in love with her, so I knew just how to phrase my argument.
Oh, she answered. Youre right. I hadnt thought about that.
I had an instant convert. This is not to say my wife should forget a most important part of her family tree and not honor her connection to it. Still, you wont see us fly a Confederate flag today. We have too much respect and concern for others to do that.
As a former history teacher, I understand the importance of retaining and understanding past events and the people involved. I also respect paying tribute to people who lived honorable lives and died protecting this honor.
This is what history books and museums should do, and if my wife decided to put Beauregards photo on the mantle along with other family photos shes collected, I think this would be appropriate.
Lee also thought it appropriate to keep and maintain the gravesites of fallen Confederate soldiers, and this seems only right for anyone who gave his life courageously, even if the cause we all know now was deeply wrong.
However, forcing a black kid to go to a school named after a proponent of slavery does no one honor and disrespects humanity. The same goes for Confederate displays in public places that we jointly own together.
Sure, there are times we have no choice but to take an unpopular stand against the opinions of others we care about because we believe its important and the right thing to do.
On this issue, however, the deep pain many share overrides any benefit gained by forcing symbols and names from the past on those who are disturbed by them for very good reasons. This sort of discretion and reserve is a hallmark of Southern civil and polite behavior, one of many things I learned much more about south of the Mason-Dixon Line than I did from my previous Yankee life.
There are many ways to honor heritage. One of the best is showing compassion and concern for those we might not agree with as an example of the higher ideals we claim to cherish.
I know from living in the South for almost 40 years and marrying my own very special part of it that there is so much to honor here.
We have almost countless ways to celebrate the South together that do not separate, and there are many other flags we can fly that show who we are and why were proud to remain here. Lets use them instead of Confederate symbols, and remember when in public what common decency really means.
Dont do this for me. Do it for Robert E. Lee.
Mike Brown writes a blog at oldhippierants.com and is a retired San Antonio Independent School District teacher.
Three Rs have guided a yearlong San Antonio project to honor German Americans and German Latin Americans interned in U.S. camps during World War II: reckoning, reunion and recognition.
Theyve helped St. Marys University history professor Teresa Van Hoy and student Nicole Johnson plan Year of Remembrance activities here, in Ellis Island and a New Jersey pier.
Next week, events at the latter will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the MS Gripsholms voyage, which sent more than 1,100 internees, including U.S. children born behind barbed wire, into war zones in Germany and Japan.
Survivors and their families will face the New York City skyline and remember a lost chapter in U.S. history, one that a group of St. Marys students want recognized by the federal government, similar to recognitions afforded to Japanese Americans and Italian Americans interned in WWII camps.
Van Hoy says she has asked Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro to introduce such a bill. Its not the first time she has taken matters into her own hands. A few years ago, the intrepid scholar led a group of San Antonio students to an Illinois museum to ask that it repatriate a prosthetic leg belonging to Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to Mexico.
The history of internment has been a far more painful, even surprising subject. St. Marys students like Zaraly Frasquillo have wondered how her history books could mention Japanese internment, but skip over others, like German Americans.
Hearing this makes me angry, she said.
Van Hoy and her students have found modern parallels to internment in the detention of Central American migrant children removed from their parents. Thousands remain separated by a Trump administration that had no tracking system in place and now cant reunite them.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a political goal in creating a pool of hostages labeled enemy aliens. He exchanged them for prisoners of war, diplomats, missionaries and others trapped behind enemy lines.
Year of Remembrance ceremonies will strive to bring some sort of closure to that past by bringing together the youngest of those internees. Van Hoy and Johnson also have invited descendants of people who worked in internment camps, families of the POWs exchanged, of the ships crew, historians and the public.
Karin Peters, 75, will be among them. The 12th baby born in the Crystal City internment camp spoke to Van Hoys students this week after visiting the camps ruins.
She told her familys story of being deported from Costa Rica to the United States and being charged with illegal entry, thus made eligible for detention. Her father, an immigrant to Costa Rica in the late 1800s, was labeled a danger to the peace of the United Nations. His property was confiscated.
Despite being a U.S. citizen with a U.S. passport, Peters was deported with her family to Germany during the war. She spent her earliest years in and out of bomb shelters.
Like other children of internment, Peters didnt hear much about it from her parents. They signed documents never to speak of detention or deportation. Eventually, they went back to Costa Rica.
Peters daughter, writer Ana Morse, has pieced together a family story that will be told in a forthcoming book. San Antonio author Jan Jarboe Russells 2015 book The Train to Crystal City examined the period and FDRs prisoner exchange program.
In Austin, Peters and Morse also helped open an exhibit on German American internment at the Bullock Museum.
The museums website showcases a film about Johnsons research, which started in the eighth grade and led to the Year of Remembrance project.
There were many German internees who didnt give up on their country, she says in the film. If thats not a true American, I dont know what is.
Van Hoy appears in it, too, and says theres a lot at stake when we dont know our history, or worse, repress it. Talking about it, owning it, learning from it, has a great power to heal.
While in New York, the Year of Remembrance agenda lists a session for calls and letters to Congress. Internees, their descendants and ordinary people who care will ask their congressional representatives for their support.
Like the bills that finally got Japanese and Italians recognized, Van Hoy said, It only take one legislator to make a change.
That gives her hope.
It also gives her pause.
Imagine the pain that children today are still going to feel in 75 years, she said. We have to recognize the magnitude. It doesnt go away.
eayala@express-news.net | @ElaineAyala
It might be argued that the late Aline B. Carter was the antithesis of Marie Kondo, the TV decluttering queen. Carters life proved the virtue of keeping objects that might spark joy for future generations.
The San Antonio poet lived in a three-story, turreted limestone house tucked away on a tiny downtown street for most of her adult life, from her marriage to its owner, H.C. Carter, in 1916 until her death in 1972. It was designed by Alfred Giles, noted courthouse architect, and completed in 1893 for William Harvey Maverick, who passed the house on to his son Robert, who sold it in 1914 to H.C. Carter, an attorney.
Carters first wife, Ella, died the same year. In 1916, he married Aline Badger, a lifelong San Antonian who made her debut as a Fiesta duchess only months before her wedding to Carter, who was more than 30 years older than her.
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Despite their age difference, they grew into comparable eminence he as president of the Texas Bar Association, she as the states poet laureate. A polymath who studied at Wellesley College as well as at a music conservatory and an art school, her interests ranged throughout the arts and sciences, and she eventually shared them all from her home base at 119 Taylor St.
The couple reared three sons at the house; perhaps because they were busy with their children and their respective careers, they made only a few changes to it. Occupied continuously by only two families, its now a cultural arts venue known as the Maverick Carter House and still is owned by the Carters descendants.
During Aline Carters long life there, she and her family filled its 22 rooms with Victorian furniture, family photos dating back to the daguerreotype and all the everyday items that might be collected by a well-connected family with plenty of space and sentiment. Her harp and sheet music are still there, as are her husbands law books, mirrors and a stove left by the Mavericks, a letter to an ancestor from Sam Houston, her typewriter, her hats and, for a long time, an unlabeled piece of somebodys wedding cake that only recently was tossed, according to her granddaughter Marline Carter Lawson.
Structurally, the house hasnt changed much since the Mavericks moved in. Around 1925, the elder Carters added an observatory for the telescope bought for Alines study of astronomy; a ground-floor library was turned into a private chapel for her devotions. Furnished with pieces handed down by family, the house was comfortable but not fashionable. They didnt redecorate every few years, Lawson said.
Nor did they keep it to themselves. Through Carters lifetime, the house frequently was opened to the public at yearly Christmas parties for children from the Protestant Orphans Home, stargazing sessions for students of her Witte Museum astronomy courses, and poetry readings and workshops where she and others taught techniques of traditional poetry.
For a federally funded adult education program, she hosted a series of talks on controversial topics such as evolution and the effects of social conditions on education. One of the lecturers was a Nobel Prize winner, French surgeon Alexis Carrel, whose work on vascular suturing helped make transplant surgery possible.
When H.C. Carter bought the house, it was one of many in a then-fashionable residential area on the northern edge of the city center. Slowly, the houses gave way to businesses, apartment buildings and parking lots. Carter family members continued to live there during the years after Aline Carters death in 1972, but the current owners wanted to return it to something like the role it had played in her day: a locus of cultural community, just steps away from whats now the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts.
For the past few years, Lawsons son Carter Brown worked on a thorough restoration of the house, coping with foundation cracks and rising damp, replacing scarily outdated electrical wiring and a plumbing system of original clay pipes. With online and library research, the family found vendors to replace slate roof tiles, Victorian-correct paint colors and wall coverings, and birds-eye maple to repair woodwork. The intent, Brown said, was to return the house as closely as possible to its original condition.
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A restoration of the telescope, fresh landscaping and unobtrusive modern conveniences contemporary appliances share kitchen space with antiques helped prepare the house for the next phase of its life. Its now an event venue, welcoming music recitals, poetry readings, cultural talks and spiritual gatherings, all in tune with the essence of Aline, Lawson said. Event fees are earmarked for ongoing preservation of her house.
Its not hard to imagine the rooftop observatory inspiring her poem, Blue Reach of Space, which concludes with the lines, Give me the blue reach of spaces where the winds are lilting by,/Where the earth looks up and faces/The light of a boundless sky.
Besides her other interests, Carter was a devout member of St. Marks Episcopal Church, an activist against capital punishment and an advocate for developing parks and planting trees in public spaces.
Poetry, however, might have been her greatest passion. Carter published books of poetry and co-founded a state Poetry Day still celebrated by the Poetry Society of Texas on Oct. 15. And she was the namesake of the Societys Aline B. Carter Peace Prize. She was a member of the local chapter of the Avalon National Poetry Shrine, which met frequently in where else? her home.
This year, her name is on a new honor, the Aline B. Carter Poetry Prize for Young Poets, sponsored by the Maverick Carter House and Gemini Ink. Submissions from 11th- and 12th-graders on the theme of San Antonio, My City are now accepted. Poems in any style are welcome; deadline is March 15.
Winners will receive cash prizes and will be invited to a celebratory reading April 20 in the Maverick Carter House. For guidelines, visit geminiink.org.
UPDATE: 12:53 p.m., Sunday
According to Bexar County Sheriff's Department, Beatrice Sampayo has been released from the Bexar County Adult Detention Center after posting a $50,000 bond.
ORIGINAL STORY CONTINUES:
To believe prosecutors, Beatrice Sampayo is a scheming, habitual liar who covered for her son after his 8-month-old baby, King Jay Davila, died of blunt-force trauma.
Her defense lawyers say, to the contrary, the 64-year-old grandmother is innocent and largely confined to her bed as she battles terminal cancer.
At a hearing Friday in which Sampayo, accused of tampering with evidence, made her first court appearance, she was granted a lower bail, $50,000, making it likely shell go home after nearly a month in jail since her arrest Jan. 10.
But first, prosecutor Samantha DiMaio called Sampayo a danger to society and urged Magistrate Judge Andrew Carruthers to reject the lower bail. She introduced evidence, including several videos, to counter Sampayos claim she is gravely ill and to show that Sampayo has previously concealed a crime by her son, Christopher Davila.
What we have is a pattern of behavior by this defendant of basically being a liar and using her lies to cover up crimes, DiMaio said.
Melissa Lesniak, Sampayos court-appointed lawyer, said Sampayo has ovarian and bone cancer and, prior to her incarceration, received hospice care. As the matriarch of a large family four children, 33 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren she is not a flight risk, Lesniak said. Sampayo was in a wheelchair throughout the hearing Friday.
In the end, Carruthers lowered Sampayos bail from $250,000 to $50,000 and required that she get regular drug and alcohol testing while awaiting trial.
According to San Antonio police, Sampayo helped her 34-year-old son stage the theft of his car on Jan. 4 to make it look like King Jay, who purportedly was in a car seat inside the vehicle, had been abducted and was missing.
Police saw through the scheme quickly and confronted him. Within days, police said Davila took them to a field on the Northwest Side where they found King Jays body, wrapped in a blanket and placed inside a backpack, buried in the ground.
Police have charged Davila with injury to a child, child endangerment, tampering with evidence, possession of a controlled substance and felon in possession of a firearm. He remains in jail in lieu of a $1.25 million bond.
Police say Davilas cousin, Angie Torres, 45, also helped stage the car theft and kidnapping and is accused of tampering with evidence.
Davila now says King Jay died after he fell off a bed while in his car seat. He says he did not call 911 because he panicked.
Police officials have hinted that they do not believe Davilas latest account, and the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office concluded, based on King Jays autopsy, that his death was a homicide.
On ExpressNews.com: Asked about missing child, grandfather says Only God knows
During the hearing, Jorge Luna, a social worker from Trinity Hospice San Antonio, testified that Sampayo was accepted into hospice care in June after a doctor diagnosed her with ovarian and bone cancer and determined that the diagnosis was terminal.
Since then, Luna said he visited Sampayo at her West Side home about 20 times to provide emotional and spiritual support. During his visits, Luna said Sampayo stayed in bed and reported having a lot of pain.
During cross examination, DiMaio asked Luna whether he would be surprised to learn that Sampayo was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and that she was capable of driving and grocery shopping.
That would be a surprise, Luna said.
DiMaio also asked Luna whether he was aware that members of Sampayos family many of whom live with her or visit regularly were drug addicts who attempted to get access to Sampayos medication.
He said he was aware of that concern and that nurses with Hospice San Antonio kept Sampayos prescriptions including fentanyl, methadone and morphine in a locked container. He said only Sampayo had the key.
We took precautions because that was a suspicion, he said. For a time, that was a concern.
She lied
After Lunas testimony, DiMaio showed videos from Jan. 4, the day Davila reported that King Jay had been kidnapped.
According to DiMaio, Sampayo is seen driving a car to a donation drop-off bin on Acme Road, opening the rear passenger door and removing a car seat.
In a second video, Sampayo can be seen returning to the donation station moments later, picking up the car seat and driving away, DiMaio said. Police later found the car seat three blocks away.
DNA results ruled the car seat belonged to King Jay, DiMaio said.
On ExpressNews.com: King Jays death is tearing family apart
She showed more videos in which Sampayo enters a convenience store, buys gas and picks up groceries, including a large bottle of soda. She is not using a wheelchair, cane or walker for assistance.
DiMaio said the images prove that Sampayo is not as ill as she claims. To Lesniak, the videos merely show that Sampayo is mobile.
DiMaio continued her case against Sampayo by drawing on criminal records.
In June 1998, DiMaio said, Sampayo was arrested for theft after she attempted to sell a computer that Davila had stolen from Judson Independent School District. Officials also suspected that Davila had tried to set fire to the school.
She lied at that time, saying to some witnesses that he committed the fire and to other witnesses that, Oh, he was at the hospital with me, DiMaio said. Even then, she was using her medical condition to cover up the crimes that he committed.
In May 1999, Davila was convicted of arson and incarcerated in a juvenile correctional facility, records show. The theft case against Sampayo was dismissed.
About that same time, Sampayo was charged with obtaining prescriptions by fraud. She pleaded guilty and was put on probation.
She was lying, and she was committing fraud, DiMaio said. And she has graduated from lying for her son for theft and burglary and arson to now homicide.
Lesniak acknowledged that Sampayo had a short criminal record but no convictions recently.
The accuseds physical condition is deteriorating rapidly, she wrote in a motion to reduce bail. The more time that elapses, the less likely she will be able to make any recovery, if that is even possible at this time.
Sampayo said little during the hearing. At one point, she turned around to acknowledge her husband, Mario Davila, and her daughters, Amy Davila Ozuna and Christina Sampayo Davila.
As Sampayo was led out of court, Davila Ozuna yelled across the courtroom: I love you, Mom.
Emilie Eaton is a criminal justice reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton
MISSION The new Customs and Border Protection chief in the Rio Grande Valley supports a border wall in the region, saying the flow of immigrants crossing the river can overwhelm a community.
The Rio Grande Valley possesses many challenges that are amplified by a lack of technology and infrastructure in one of the busiest corridors in the country, Rodolfo Karisch told Border Patrol agents, land owners, local officials and nonprofit leaders Friday in his first State of the Border address.
He described the border as a place that provides opportunity for trade and travel and for a malicious element, such as drugs, crime and human smuggling.
Heavy machinery arrived this week along a levee in Mission, where construction soon will start on six of 33 miles of new bollard fencing that Congress funded last year.
Two national wildlife refuges, land around the historic La Lomita Chapel, the National Butterfly Center and Bentsen State Park are in the likely path of the wall, which already has been staked out by surveyors. A judge Thursday granted the government access to survey land near the 170-year-old chapel.
Another 8-mile segment of the wall is under contract near a historic cemetery, where protesters from Carrizo-Comecrudo tribe have camped out for more than three weeks.
We all know we have seen some challenging times in our RGV area, and especially in our border, Mission Mayor Armando OCana said. We need both parties for us to execute our shared mission. Our shared mission is exceptional customer service to our community.
The government put on a large production for Karischs appearance. On display outside the building were a gunboat, a Border Patrol motorcycle and an armored, military-style vehicle fitted with radar and sensors.
Action-flick-style music overlaid videos of Border Patrol agents riding down rough terrain with weapons in hand, handcuffing immigrants to a house and agents sending a dog after a migrant who was running away.
In his address, Karisch acknowledged preparations for building a border wall are under way in some parts of the Rio Grande Valley. But he did not give any specifics about when and where the wall will be built.
Though Rio Grande Valley communities are some of the safest in the nation - with layers of municipal, county, state and federal law enforcement concentrated at the border Karisch focused on threats to the region and the nation if the border is not secured.
Some people do have a false sense of hope that theres nothing going on down here, he said at one point, after noting immigrant apprehensions have increased 84 percent in recent months compared to the previous year. Annual arrests, however, have plunged since peaking in 2000.
While the majority of our drugs do cross into our country at the land ports of entry, it is important you understand we also receive drugs being smuggled between them, he said.
Federal data show the amount of drugs smuggled between ports of entry is low. In fiscal year 2018, 47,945 pounds of cocaine were seized at ports of entry, compared to 6,423 pounds between the ports.
Cecilia Roy, a Brownsville-based member of ACLU Texas, asked if the agency had plans to require Border Patrol agents to wear body cameras.
Karisch said the agency still was testing them, hadnt figured out how it would store the video and was not prepared to roll those out yet.
Scott Nicol, a local Sierra Club member and leader of its borderland team, called the event insignificant for not giving the community members additional specifics about the wall.
Not only do they need to provide those affected with more information, they need to be engaged with community members and stakeholders when theyre making the plans, he said.
Nicol wants to know what the plan is for the animals whose habitat will be affected, and how the government will erect a wall in Starr Countys floodplain without exacerbating flooding.
Karisch said that sometimes, the communitys missions conflict with one another, but that hes committed to being transparent with the public.
We have been adding infrastructure at critical areas of the border for decades, he said. I also recognize there are citizens with protected lands on our border that we will have to seek alternative solutions, while still providing border security.
Silvia Foster-Frau is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | sfosterfrau@express-news.net | Twitter: @SilviaElenaFF
Voters on the West and Northwest sides of San Antonio will head to the polls Tuesday to pick their next state representative in a special election that will likely see dismally low turnout.
Four Democrats activist Steve Huerta, former City Councilman Ray Lopez, school coordinator Coda Rayo-Garza, former legislator Art Reyna and Republican business owner Fred Rangel are vying for Texas House District 125, which spans from Zarzamora Street to Loop 1604.
Bexar County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez vacated the seat when he accepted his new post. He has not endorsed a candidate.
On ExpressNews.com: County Judge names state legislator to late Elizondos seat
In Bexar Countys most recent special election in September, 4.22 percent of registered voters cast ballots. The turnout level rose to 7.22 percent in that elections runoff.
The rate will likely be similarly low in this race. When the last day of early voting closed Friday, Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen reported that 3,354 voters had cast their ballots. Friday was the busiest day of the two-week early voting period with 591 going to the polls that day.
That total is less than 4 percent of the about 101,000 people registered to vote in the district.
Election day is Tuesday. The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Voters can verify registration and find polling sites bexar.org/elections.
Political observers have said the size of the field makes it likely there will be a runoff election, which is triggered when no candidates gets 50 percent of the vote. That would further delay filling the seat, potentially taking another month or more to determine a winner.
If thats the case, the new representative will likely miss the March deadline to file their own bills, hindering their ability to pass fresh legislation.
San Antonio Rep. Ina Minjarez, who represents the adjacent District 124, won a special election 2015 and joined the 84th Legislative Session in late April that year. She said new lawmakers in that position can still make a difference, but it is not guaranteed.
Its a matter of how hungry you are, Minjarez said. Youve got to be hungry, and youve got to be aggressive to get it done.
On many issues, the candidates hold similar views. They all agree that the state needs to increase funding for public schools, but they offered different revenue sources to do so.
On ExpressNews.com: Candidates agree schools need more money but they differ on how to do it
The Democrats agree that public finance must be addressed before the property tax cap is lowered, and that the state shouldnt provide vouchers to send kids to private schools.
Rangel supports the governors plan to cap property tax increases, and he supports vouchers. He is hoping to become the first Republican to represent the district since it was redrawn to include more West Side voters in 1992.
One candidate has faced scrutiny about whether he is able to run. State election officials say a 1999 felony drug conviction means Huerta would not be allowed to take office if he wins. Huerta says he is eligible, and his name is on the ballot.
On ExpressNews.com: Felon disputes claim that he's ineligible for special election to fill San Antonio's open seat in Texas House
An Express-News investigation last month also raised questions about whether Huerta fulfills the residency requirement to run. He listed an address outside the district when running for a separate position last year, and state law requires candidate to live within the district for at least a year before they run.
Rep. Trey Martinez-Fischer, the dean of the countys delegation, said San Antonios representatives are in a good position to cover for the absence until its filled, but it will help when they get back to full strength.
In a session where you have a closely divided house every vote is critical, Martinez Fischer said. The more votes we have on the floor, the more chance we have to advance our policy positions.
Here are the candidates:
Steve Huerta
Affiliation: Democrat
Age: 50
Occupation: Social justice policy adviser
Experience: Activist with civil rights group All of Us or None
School finance: Says the state has to be careful about increasing its investment in schools without overburdening wealthier neighborhoods. He said the state can focus on bolstering economies in lower-income communities.
Fundraising: Has raised $5,000 and spent $9,000 on his campaign, as of Feb. 2. Most contributions came in the form of compensated office space, print expenses and marketing.
Closing argument: Huerta said his background as an activist would allow him to use the seat to influence communities and conversations beyond mere legislation.
Ray Lopez
Affiilation: Democrat
Age: 69
Occupation: Retired AT&T executive; currently works for the San Antonio Mobility Coalition
Experience: Served on San Antonio City Council for the maximum 8 years, ending in 2017. Chairman of the Northside Independent School District board of trustees and Metropolitan Planning Organization. Endorsed by several local law enforcement unions.
School finance: Recommends continuing to devote money from oil revenues to transportation to free up more general revenue dollars for education, but he cautions there wont be a single-stream solution. Believes reforming school finance would provide taxpayers with more relief than a cap on property tax increases.
Fundraising: Raised $93,000 more than his four competitors combined and has spent $49,000, as of Feb. 2. NuStar Energys political action committee and executives gave him $11,000; Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC chipped in $5,000.
Closing argument: Lopez says he has the necessary relationships with and respect of power brokers in Austin to effect change as a lawmaker.
Fred Rangel
Affiliation: Republican
Age: 63
Occupation: Business owner, Adco Master Builders and Adco Professional Services
Experience: Active in the local Republican party and various community groups. Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed him; also the National Rifle Association and Texas Right to Life, among others.
School finance: Says the formula the state uses to allocate funding must be made more equitable, and he also proposes cutting overhead administrative costs. Supports vouchers; supports 2.5 percent cap on property tax increases.
Fundraising: Raised $13,000 and spent $18,000, as of Feb. 4. Greatest benefactors were Texas Right to Life, which spent $3,000 phone banking, and the Republican Party of Texas, which gave $1,500.
Closing argument: Rangel says he would bring a business perspective that would allow him to reduce costs and make government more efficient.
Coda Rayo-Garza
Affiliation: Democrat
Age: 33
Occupation: Senior coordinator, San Antonio Independent School District
Experience: Policy analyst for City Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales and then-City Councilman Ron Nirenberg. Worked for education nonprofit before joining SAISD. Endorsements include the Texas Organizing Project, Annies List and Planned Parenthood of Texas.
School finance: Has proposed using more revenue from the Texas Lottery to pay for public school. She has also pitched ending the Dark Store legal theory, which allows businesses to cut their property tax bills. Doesnt support vouchers; says charter schools should get less funding.
Fundraising: Raised $20,000 and spent $9,000, as of Feb. 2. Largest benefactors were Annies List, $2,500; and Haynes & Boone law firm, $1,825 from four employees.
Closing argument: Rayo-Garza says her experience working in a school system, along with her policy expertise, will allow her to do right by the district in Austin.
Art Reyna
Affiliation: Democrat
Age: 62
Occupation: Attorney
Experience: Held this Texas House seat from 1996-2002 and also served on the Leon Valley City Council. Endorsed by several local chapters of the American Federation of Teachers, an education union.
School finance: Says the state should close corporate tax loopholes to help pay for education. Doesnt support vouchers; sees a role for charter schools.
Fundraising: Raised about $15,000 and spent $48,000, as of Feb. 2. Hes invested $35,000 of his own money; largest benefactor was the Texas Association of Realtors PAC, $2,500.
Closing argument: Reyna says his six years of legislative experience and seniority put him in a better position to further the districts interests than the other candidates.
Dylan McGuinness covers local politics and the Bexar County government for the Express-News. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | dylan.mcguinness@express-news.net | Twitter: @DylMcGuinness
Two months after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro visited his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, a mysterious company called Sardes sprang into existence.
The firm started business with a bang in January of 2018, when it imported about $41 million worth of gold from Venezuela, the first such transaction between the two countries in records that go back 50 years. The next month its volume more than doubled, with Sardes transporting almost $100 million worth to Turkey.
By November, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order authorizing sanctions on Venezuelan gold -- after sending an envoy to warn Turkey off the trade, Sardes had shuttled $900 million of the precious metal out of the country. Not bad for a company with just $1 million in capital, according to regulatory filings in Istanbul.
It's not the first time that Turkey has positioned itself as a work-around for countries facing U.S. sanctions, potentially undermining Washington's efforts to isolate governments it considers hostile or corrupt. Ankara has often tested the boundaries of U.S. tolerance, and the alliance between the key NATO members is now essentially broken, according to two senior U.S. officials.
Long one of America's most valued partners in a region straddling Europe and the Middle East, Turkey has increasingly found common interests with authoritarian countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela. When National Assembly leader Juan Guaido declared himself Venezuela's rightful president last month, the U.S. and many other Western countries rushed to declare their support for him. Turkey aligned itself with those behind Maduro.
It's unclear what underpins Turkey's support for Maduro beyond a general opposition to U.S. meddling and efforts to overthrow nominally-democratic governments. Erdogan faced a coup attempt in 2016 and has fashioned himself as a champion of elected leaders everywhere, even where votes were widely considered neither free nor fair. Economic ties between the two nations are barely a factor: Venezuela doesn't rank among the top 20 trading partners for Turkey, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Gold Refining
But that doesn't mean Erdogan can't use Turkey's $850 billion economy, the largest in the Middle East, to help friends in need. While Sardes's gold corridor appears to have closed in November, there are other avenues. A Sardes spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Erdogan traveled to Caracas in December to introduce the Venezuelan leader to Ahmet Ahlatci, chairman of one of Turkey's largest gold refiners. The next month, Maduro's close ally Tareck El Aissami reciprocated with a visit to an Ahlatci refiner in the central Turkish city of Corum. Turkey's pro-government media reported that Venezuelan gold would be processed there.
That never materialized because Ahlatci was wary of falling foul of U.S. sanctions, according to a person with direct knowledge of the visit. Instead, El Aissami surveyed refining technology to try and replicate it back home, the person said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
An Ahlatci executive was among business leaders who met Marshall Billingslea, an assistant secretary at the U.S. Treasury responsible for combating terrorist financing, who was in Turkey on a twice-yearly visit, according to a participant in the meetings. Billingslea warned the group to avoid dealing with what he called El Aissami's "blood gold," the person said, asking not to be identified discussing a private meeting.
Ahlatci did not return calls by Bloomberg. His son, Ahmet Metin, said by phone the company "won't comment."
Billingslea's priority in Turkey wasn't Venezuela, but compliance with sanctions on Iran, according to two people familiar with the matter. Some U.S. officials have said they're concerned there could be a connection between the two, though no evidence has been presented so far to suggest there is.
Under the sanctions regime, Iran sells billions of dollars of fuel to Turkey every year, but then finds most of its money trapped in Turkish bank accounts because of international restrictions on wiring the money back to Tehran. Elaborate schemes entailing the use of physical gold have in the past allowed the Islamic Republic to finance its foreign trade.
Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the former head of international banking at Turkish state-owned lender Turkiye Halk Bankasi, was convicted last year in a New York court of participation in such a scheme. Turkey says the case relied on fabricated evidence and denies wrongdoing. It also says it's not obliged to abide by unilateral U.S. sanctions that block its ability to trade with neighbors and other economic partners.
Official data make it impossible to know where the Venezuelan gold ended up after it landed in Turkey. The Turkish government did not disclose the whereabouts of the gold.
Turkey's financial assistance to U.S. enemies is only one of the issues souring once-close relations. Turkey has also been threatening to send its military, the second-largest in NATO, to attack Kurdish forces in Syria that the U.S. backs. And the Turkish cleric that Turkey blames for the 2016 coup attempt, Fethullah Gulen, lives in Pennsylvania. The U.S. has so far rebuffed Turkish attempts to get him extradited.
That bad blood means the nations can no longer be considered friends, leaving them to negotiate purely on a transactional basis, according to the two U.S. officials, who asked not to be identified discussing such matters. While Trump has at times taken a hard line on getting Turkey into line with U.S. goals -- he said last month that any action against the Kurds would "devastate Turkey economically" -- other U.S. officials are taking a more measured approach.
"President Trump has expressed his interest in expanding the trade relationship between the United States and Turkey, an avenue considerably more profitable than anything Maduro might have to offer," White House National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said.
That ranking of foreign policy and trade priorities isn't lost on Ankara, according to Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, head of the German Marshall Fund of the United States office in the Turkish capital. When a showdown with the U.S. over its continued detention of an American pastor led to U.S. sanctions against two Turkish ministers last summer, the Turkish lira went into a tailspin and brought the economy to the brink of collapse. The crash probably pushed Turkey into its first recession in a decade.
"Turkey actually has no strategic interests in Venezuela. While it may be profiting from the gold trade, the returns of this are not likely to justify additional political risk that could hurt the Turkish economy," Unluhisarcikli said. "In short, Turkey doesn't have a dog in this fight and will refrain from escalation with the U.S. over Venezuela."
A San Antonio nonprofit could get about $5.7 million in local incentives to help it transform a former industrial site on the East Side into a hub for bioscience startups and research.
The Texas Research and Technology Foundation (TRTF) plans to build a military medical research facility, commercial lab and office space, a business incubator, a hotel and a food hall at the vacant Merchants Ice complex on East Houston Street.
The $227 million redevelopment, called the Innovation District, will take place in four phases over 10 years.
The City Council will vote Thursday on whether to approve a grant of up to $750,000 over five years for the expansion of VelocityTXs programming at the site.
VelocityTX, a subsidiary of the foundation, has several initiatives connecting entrepreneurs and business owners with capital and mentors.
Under the grant agreement, the organization would be required to maintain seven jobs at the site and host a workforce summit for East Side businesses and entrepreneurs, according to city staff.
On ExpressNews.com: Latin American tech startups hope to stay in San Antonio
Council members also will consider a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) agreement for up to $5 million over seven years to offset public-improvement expenses at the site.
The Inner City TIRZ board will vote on the development agreement Feb. 27.
Bexar County officials are evaluating the redevelopment plans but have not yet extended an incentives offer, said David Marquez, the countys executive director of economic and community development. Its a fantastic project, he said.
The foundation was launched in the 1980s to boost San Antonios bio- and life-sciences industries. TRTF owns Texas Research Park on the West Side, and bought the Merchants Ice property and a vacant lot across the street in 2017 for an undisclosed sum, announcing its plans for the site shortly thereafter.
The goal of the Innovation District is to fill a significant gap in San Antonio, said Randy Harig, the foundations CEO and president. TRTF works with universities and other institutions to help commercialize their intellectual property.
The Merchants Ice redevelopment could deliver economic benefits totaling about $737 million over five years, according to an analysis by the foundation and local economist Steve Nivin. Its expected to support about 665 jobs with salaries and benefits totaling more than $78 million annually, and the foundation plans to recruit for positions on the East Side.
They expect to announce an anchor tenant at the site later this month.
madison.iszler@express-news.net
When Mary Copelands Northeast Side home landed in foreclosure in spring 2017 after she fell behind on the mortgage payments, she turned to a company that buys houses as is for a quick sale.
Organized in New Mexico but doing business in San Antonio, Texas Homes 247 agreed to buy Copelands home for the roughly $92,000 owed on the mortgage loan and $2,000 to cover her moving expenses, she said.
My friend had sold her house when she got a divorce, Copeland recalled. It was WeBuyUglyHouses.com. She left with her mortgage paid for and $20,000 in her pocket. I kind of thought this was the same thing.
As part a series of peculiar even farcical transactions, Copeland transferred the house to a trust affiliated with Texas Homes 247 only to later learn she was still on the hook for the loan payments.
Today, Copeland, 52, finds herself in the same predicament she had sought to avoid when she sold the house in April 2017. Its again in foreclosure, set to be sold at auction March 5.
Now I cant even sell the house because Im not listed as the owner, she lamented. And shes facing a big hit to her credit score, making it harder for her to rent an apartment or get a car loan.
Copeland last month sued Texas Homes 247 and its principals, Francisco Frank Vasquez Jr. and Christopher M. Gutierrez, for as much as $1 million. She has alleged they made various false representations and engaged in deceptive trade practices in acquiring the house.
Vasquez had not seen the lawsuit but denied doing anything improper.
Ill see if my attorney can return your call there and maybe explain it to you, but theres nothing out of the ordinary with that, he said. Maybe its not typical, but (its) nothing illegal or out of the ordinary.
Vasquez and Gutierrez are well-intentioned with what they do, attorney Gregory Van Cleave said. The lawyer had not had a chance to review the lawsuit but denied any wrongdoing by the pair.
Laura Choi, a lawyer for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which represents Copeland, said foreclosure rescue schemes are common, but this one is different.
This exact type of scam, especially with the trust element to it, is unusual, Choi said. The suit refers to the trust as a sham.
We were all very surprised when we saw the trust documents, Choi added. Unfortunately, there are a lot of these they tend to be smaller entities that are trying to get something for nothing, or something for less. (They) are really taking advantage of people when they are in distress.
First foreclosure posting
Copeland has lived in the two-story brick-facade house at 6172 Jackies Farm since 2003.
Fed up with her job at a dialysis treatment center, Copeland quit a couple years ago. She figured shed just get another in the health care field, but she said she didnt find work right away and fell behind on her mortgage.
After Wells Fargo posted the house for foreclosure in spring 2017, Copeland received various offers for her house including from Texas Homes 247. Vasquez gave her a business card bearing a telephone number and the website Ibuy210houses.com. Today, that web address redirects visitors to FreedomSoft.com, a company that sells software for real estate investors.
Vasquez told Copeland that Texas Homes 247 buys houses in any condition and that she wouldnt have to do anything, according to her lawsuit, filed Jan. 24 in Bexar County District Court. She could remain as a tenant or the company could arrange to hire a moving truck for her.
After learning Copeland still owed about $92,000 on the mortgage loan to Wells Fargo, Vasquez and Gutierrez offered to purchase the house for the payoff amount and $2,000 for her moving costs.
The fair market value of the house was at least $130,000 and is currently $144,000 to $149,000, the lawsuit says. Given the equity in the property, Texas Homes 247 stood to make a nice profit if it chose to flip it.
The pair returned to Copelands house with a notary on April 29, 2917, to close on the sale. Copeland didnt know what was in the documents she was told to sign, Choi said.
She trusted the folks at Texas Homes 247 and did not review (the documents) as she was signing, Choi said. They were also pushing her to sign quickly you know, Lets get this done, lets hurry it up.
Rather than have Texas Homes 247 take title, Vasquez and Gutierrez had Copeland deed the property to 2476172 Jackies Trust. Texas Homes 247 is listed as the trustee of the trust.
A trust agreement Copeland signed named her and Texas Homes 247 as 50 percent beneficiaries of the trust. But another document dated the same day shows Copeland sold her interest in the trust to Texas Homes 247 for $10,700.
Choi, Copelands lawyer, said she was a little mystified by the bizarre paperwork.
Still, Choi said theres nothing wrong with Texas Homes 247 being both the trustee and a beneficiary.
But the second you become the trustee of the trust, you have, legally, important responsibilities to the beneficiaries, she said. A trustee has a duty to refrain from self-dealing (and) to be honest and transparent with the beneficiaries. So they, perhaps unknowingly, assumed those duties when they made themselves trustee.
Choi believes $8,700 was paid to Wells Fargo to bring the mortgage loan current. The remaining $2,000 was supposed to go to Copeland when she surrendered possession of the property.
Texas Homes 247 also had Copeland sign a three-year lease for the property. The document, though, lists her as the landlord and Texas Homes 247 as the tenant.
It just makes no sense, Choi said of the lease. The best we can figure out is that they made a mistake in drafting that document.
Van Cleave countered that after Copeland transferred title, she told Vasquez and Gutierrez that she had nowhere to live. So the pair allowed her to stay in the house on the condition she make the monthly mortgage payments.
Copeland didnt abide by the agreement, Van Cleave said, so shes essentially been allowed to live in the house rent-free.
They trusted her to pay the mortgage in lieu of rent, but they had no way to verify she was making the payments, Van Cleave said. They chose a way where they couldnt verify she wasnt keeping her word. Thats the problem.
Choi denied Copeland was given the option of staying in the house if she paid the mortgage.
Calling the authorities
Choi said she has alerted the Texas attorney generals office about Texas Homes 247 but has not received a response.
The Texas attorney generals office and federal agencies warn sellers never to deed a property unless theyre working with their mortgage company. Thats because a new owner can simply rent out the property and pocket the proceeds until the lender forecloses, the Federal Trade Commission says on its website.
Alerting desperate homeowners to specific companies that prey on them is difficult, said Jason Meza, the Better Business Bureaus regional director in San Antonio.
Theyre migrating emails and phone numbers all the time, so for us to go after a certain business is tough, Meza said.
Not long after Copeland sold her house, around mid-June 2017, Wells Fargo notified her the mortgage payment for that month had not been made. Copeland attempted to contact Texas Homes 247 but got no response, Choi said.
Believing she still owned the home, Choi said Copeland resumed making the loan payments.
At the beginning of 2018, however, Copeland was again struggling to make the payments and contacted a real estate agent to sell the house. Thats when she was informed she couldnt sell the property because shes not the owner, her suit says.
Copeland then tried to get her loan modified but was turned down possibly because she doesnt hold title.
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Tymika Morrison said she could not comment on the relationship between Copeland and Texas Homes 247.
It should be noted that we have worked with Ms. Copeland directly for more than six years to identify payment assistance options that would allow her to retain the home, including two modifications under which she failed to maintain the payments, Morrison said. As there are no retention options remaining, we must regrettably move forward with the foreclosure sale next month.
In May, about a year after acquiring the property, Texas Homes 247 sued to evict Copeland for not paying rent. The case was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
The company sued to evict her again in July. Copeland, now represented by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, a nonprofit that provides legal services to those who cant afford to hire an attorney, sought to have the case dismissed.
Copeland argued she is the rightful owner of the property because Texas Homes 247 used deceptive or fraudulent representations to convince her to transfer legal title for less than one-tenth of the homes value.
With the cockeyed lease in hand, Copeland also argued she couldnt be evicted because the document identified her as the landlord.
The case was dismissed, but Texas Homes 247 in November appealed the Justice of the Peace Court ruling to a Bexar County court, where the case is pending. Its not clear if the company will proceed with the eviction given next months scheduled foreclosure sale. Copeland is in the process of moving out.
Vasquez wondered why Copeland was alleging she was scammed. When told Copeland gave up title to the property but still is responsible for repaying the roughly $92,000 mortgage loan, he replied, Oh, but I dont understand why she continued to live there if she sold her home.
Sophisticated actors
Copelands lawsuit describes Vasquez and Gutierrez as sophisticated actors who represent themselves as having purchased many homes throughout Bexar County.
Property records show they are connected to at least eight other Bexar County residential properties purchased either through trusts or limited liability companies.
The properties assessed values range from about $48,000 to about $181,400, according to the Bexar Appraisal Districts website.
Spring lawyer Rick Guerra represents two clients who have sued Vasquez and Gutierrez over a property on Clower Street in San Antonio. At the time of a late 2015 sale to Guerras clients, the property was conveyed to them as trustee for a trust rather than to them individually, according to the suit.
After a payment dispute, the suit says, Guerras clients were told they could keep the property by executing new documents. In 2017, the property was conveyed to Gutierrez, who then transferred it back to Guerras clients with a new deed of trust.
Four days later, the suit says, an eviction case was filed against Guerras clients even though no landlord-tenant relationship exists.
Gutierrez, who is representing himself, denies the allegations. Vasquez also disputes the claims, though his lawyer withdrew from the case three months ago and has not been replaced.
If they knew what they were doing, they would find out that a trust has no benefit unless its an irrevocable trust, which is not the case in any of these, Guerra said.
The litigation essentially is at a standstill.
The transactions should serve as lessons for other buyers and sellers, Guerra said.
It might sound like a self-serving statement, but, really, you should not buy or sell real estate without an attorney or title company, he said. Its just that simple.
Patrick Danner is a San Antonio-based staff writer covering banking and civil courts. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | pdanner@express-news.net | Twitter: @AlamoPD
Less than two months after news that San Antonios Acelity may make a return to the stock market, the wound-care company announced Friday it was slashing about 260 jobs.
About 200 positions are being eliminated in San Antonio, with the remaining cuts coming at its operations in Charlotte, N.C., Acelity disclosed Friday. The cuts will occur in the coming months.
Affected employees primarily are in customer service and billing, Acelity spokeswoman Maggie Fairchild said.
While this decision is difficult, it is necessary as we expand our commitment to improving our customers experience, Fairchild added.
Aceility, formerly known as Kinetic Concepts Inc. will continue to employ more than 1,000 workers at its San Antonio offices, Fairchild said. She could not immediately provide an overall employment figure.
About 30 people in Charlotte will continue to work from home for the company.
The company will offer employee assistance, career counseling and outplacement services to those losing their jobs, she said.
Bloomberg reported in December that London-based private equity firm Apax Partners, which led a group that bought Acelity in 2011, was considering an initial public offering for the company as early as the first half of this year.
On ExpressNews.com: Report: Acelity may go public again
While we always are reviewing the strategic options available to our company, our policy is not to comment on such matters, Fairchild said at the time. On Friday, she said she had no update on the the possibility of Acelity going public.
An IPO could give Acelity a valuation of $5 billion, although sources told Bloomberg no final decisions had been made.
The Apax-led group paid more than $6 billion in a leverage buyout for the company, which was then known as Kinetic Concepts, or KCI. The corporate name was changed to Acelity in 2014.
Acelity is known for its negative-pressure wound-therapy, used in wound healing and surgical management.
Patrick Danner is a San Antonio-based staff writer covering banking and civil courts. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | pdanner@express-news.net | Twitter: @AlamoPD
Americans for the first time will contend with the massive overhaul of U.S. tax laws that Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed at the end of 2017. Expect some big changes.
Seven out of 10 American will see their taxes decline, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, but they may not get there without a little heartburn. The standard deduction has nearly doubled. The write-offs for state and local taxes have shrunk. The personal exemption is gone. Even the tax forms have changed.
It will be a year of confusion, said David Donnelly, a partner at accounting firm Carr, Riggs & Ingram in Houston.
Heres a look at some of those changes and what taxpayers might consider as they navigate them.
Form 1040
The 2018 Form 1040 has been completely redesigned and simplified. There is now only one form for all taxpayers to use. All others, such as the 1040EZ or 1040A forms, have been eliminated. The new 1040 Form has been reduced from 79 lines to 23 and is said to be postcard-sized, which is a bit of an exaggeration as it still takes up a half an 8.5 by 11 piece of printer paper, front and back.
The lines removed from the form are in six schedules or attachments, which taxpayers can add to their 1040 Form depending on their individual needs. For example, additional schedules can be selected for those who need to report capital gains or self-employment taxes.
Tax facts The filing deadline to submit 2018 tax returns is Monday, April 15, 2019. More than 150 million individual tax returns are expected to be filed for the 2018 tax year. About 90 percent of returns are expected to be filed electronically. Taxpayers who can't pay the full amount of federal taxes they owe should file their tax return on time and pay as much as possible. This will help reduce penalties and interest The Internal Revenue Service cautions taxpayers to be alert for scam artists impersonating IRS agents on the phone. If the IRS wants to reach you, it's typically by mail. The federal income tax was adopted in 1913. Tax rates in 1913 ranged from 1 percent to 7 percent on incomes above $3,000. The average annual U.S. income then was $800. See More Collapse
About 90 percent of the 150 million tax-paying Americans now e-file using tax software such as TurboTax or TaxSlayer, which ask questions about income and other financial matters, does the math and fills out the form automatically.
Income tax rates
The new law keeps seven tax brackets, but lowered the rates in some of those brackets. For example, a married couple filing jointly with an income of $175,000 had a marginal tax rate of 28 percent in 2017. In 2018, that rate falls to 24 percent. On the lower end of the scale, a single taxpayer making $50,000 was in the 25 percent bracket in 2017. In 2018, the rate slipped to 22 percent.
The biggest changes came at the top of the income scale. The top marginal tax rate fell to 37 percent from 39.6 percent. The amount that brings taxpayers into the top tier was also raised. For example, a married couple filing jointly would have to earn at least $600,000 to get into the top tax bracket, up from $470,700 in 2017.
Thats why its deemed that the wealthy got a break on this, said Jan Meade, an accounting professor at the University of Houstons Bauer College of Business.
Standard deductions
The tax overhaul nearly doubled the deduction, which means that for many taxpayers it will no longer be worth it to itemize deductions such as mortgage interest or charitable donations.. In fact, the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the number of households choosing to itemize deductions will drop from 46.5 million in 2017 to 18 million in 2018.
The standard deduction for single filers is $12,000 (up from $6,350 in 2017). For married couples who file jointly its $24,000 ($12,700 in 2017). That means a married couple filing jointly and claimed itemized deductions of $15,000 in 2017 will benefit by claiming the standard deduction
Not only is it a time-saver, but they will be able to deduct an additional $9,000.
Meade said those with modest incomes will come out ahead by using the higher standard deduction. But not everyone benefits: Married couples who own big houses and have high property taxes could lose on deductions.
Changes to state and local tax deductions
Among the most controversial changes adopted by Congress were limits on deductions on state and local property taxes, now capped at $10,000. And that means itemizers who own big houses with big property tax bills could take a hit.
Take, for instance, a married couple filing jointly who paid property taxes on their home of $20,000 and contributed $8,000 to qualifying charities in 2017. Their itemized deductions are $28,000. In 2018, they again pay property taxes of $20,000 plus $8,000 of qualifying charitable contributions. But because the tax deduction is capped at $10,000, their itemized deductions are limited to $18,000 and they claim a standard deduction of $24,000 instead $4,000 less than in 2017.
It gets worse, too, when you consider that Congress eliminated the personal exemption of $4,050. For this married couple, its another $8,100 that theyll be unable to use to lower their taxes, meaning their deductions and exemptions would shrink from about $36,000 to $24,000.
The losers in the deduction world are those that have property and sales tax in excess of $10,000, Donnelly said. Also, if you had any miscellaneous itemized deductions, such as attorney fees, investment expenses, or employee business expenses and these caused your itemized deductions to exceed $24,000, you would be a loser.
Family tax credits
For 2018, the maximum credit increased from $1,000 to $2,000 per qualifying child, but to claim the credit, the child must have a Social Security number issued before the due date of the tax return, including extensions.
Also, the income threshold at which the child tax credit starts to phase out has been increased to $200,000 for single and head of household filers or $400,000 for married filing jointly. Before the new tax law went into effect, those limits were $75,000 and $110,000 respectively.
Suspension of miscellaneous itemized deductions
New for the 2018 tax year is the suspension of a deduction for job-related expenses listed under miscellaneous itemized deductions. Previously, an employee who was not reimbursed by their employer for certain business expenses could deduct those costs in their taxes if they exceeded 2 percent of a taxpayers adjusted gross income. Those deductions ranged from uniforms, union dues, and business-related meals, to entertainment and travel. Now, none of those deductions are accepted. Accountants advise employees to make sure they get reimbursed by their employers.
john.roper@chron.com
India is the seventh biggest market for WPP; this year India is expected to be the fifth biggest economy, and there is tremendous potential for WPP to grow, says WPP Chief Executive Officer Mark Read in an interview to exchange4media on Wednesday during his maiden visit to the country after taking on the CEO position. He was in Jaipur to attend WPPs annual event Stream that was held from February 6 to 8.
Emphasising on the need to grow internally, Read stressed on the importance of organic growth to break out of any business. Id rather grow things internally than make acquisitions. Weve made a large number of acquisitions in India over the last five years, most recently The Glitch. There are times when business moves outside and there are times when it comes back. Its not my job to be happy with where we are so Id like us to do even more.
With Piyush Pandey taking on a global creative role at Ogilvy, Read said India has an important role to play for WPP creatively. Theres also the growth of Indian multinationals outside the UK. India has a really important role to play creatively. Piyush Pandey taking on a global creative role at Ogilvy I think thats fantastic. As we grow, if our traditional business is in communications, there are other areas of experience like e-commerce and technology, where I think we can help clients particularly on the commerce front. And I call it commerce, not e-commerce. Thats an area where traditionally weve been focused on marketing, where we can help our clients with sales. With sales and marketing becoming more integrated since they take place on the same devices, theres big opportunity for us.
Regarding Pandeys role within WPP, Read said every CCO has a different approach and that would generally depend on their personality. I think Piyush will bring a great sense of creative energy to Ogilvy, help rejuvenate the creative culture and be a role model that will attract talent to the business.
On Pandeys involvement in running the various aspects of the creative business across the world, Read said they all shared the equal responsibility of making the organisation great. I think hes going to chair Ogilvys creative council and help them collectively direct Ogilvys efforts.
Talking about WPP Country Manager India, CVL Srinivass role and responsibilities as the operational head of WPP in India, Read said having someone like Srinivas in the market will make a lot of these things easier.
Srini will do in India what we are doing globally for WPP. He has a really valuable role to play in making WPP collectively extremely successful in India. Its about making sure that we have the best leadership. Having someone like Srini in the market will make a lot of these things easier. I have been talking to many of our bigger multinational clients, and they want us to coordinate activities in India and resolve inevitable issues that may come up.
On the possibility of bringing in a structure where the WPP country head is also the operational head of all units, Read said he didnt want to go that far. I think both having a strong WPP and having strong grounds, strong cultures is very important in this context. We said we want our culture to be open, optimistic and extraordinary. We focus on the word open, meaning we should partner with our clients, with our partners and with each other. So, if we have a culture of people working collaboratively, there is no conflict.
Read said that along with strong leadership teams present in India across units, Srinivas as WPP head has a key role in helping WPP find best people, help attract talent into WPP and make people in the rest of WPP, outside of India, know whats going on.
He said WPP aimed to bring technology back at the heart of WPP. We have tremendous technology assets and Srini will help make those visible, Read added.
Bringing Sameer Singh as the head of GroupM, Read said, was a valuable move in the direction to have people with experiences of areas where the growth is. You typically find people who have a lot of management experience, but Id rather have someone who has an understanding of the future and growth. You give them the opportunity, I think thats a good thing to do.
When asked about the prospects of furthering the already successful run of GroupM, the media agency business of WPP, in the country, Read said that despite WPP having a strong business there were areas where growth could still be achieved. Weve taken important steps, but we havent taken as much advantage of the various technology skills that we have in India MSC, Hogarth, our production centre in Chennai, Ogilvy, PennyWisewhen we think of India as a technology base for the world, like others have done. Thats a big opportunity to grow our business in India.
Instead of duplicating resources, Read said WPP would look to work over the next year or so in order to have one platform that supports all WPP companies globally.
We have a strong Digital business and the one thing were trying to get rid of, here at WPP, is this word Digital because I dont think it is helpful to understand the world. We dont have analogue consumers and Digital consumers, he said.
Read said WPP was attempting to bring businesses together. I think ideas have to go across analogue and digital. Were trying to bring businesses together, such as JW Thompson and Wunderman. Its to integrate the solutions so they dont need to go to a certain digital agency. If they go to a so-called digital agency, then who will do the so-called analogue marketing? So the world has become much more integrated and consumer experiences move from analogue to digital very quickly, and the time has come to bring those two worlds together. Eliminating the word digital is a good way of getting them to think about how they should be much more integrated.
Read further said, I want to have a strong WPP, and strong brands inside WPP, strong Ogilvy, and a strong GroupM. Maybe we need to have fewer brands like we had in the past, but we need to have strong brands inside WPP.
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There are two kinds of problems with rumour spread over WhatsApp: one is disinformation and the other is incitement to violence. Why the rumours leading to the lynchings are more appropriately treated as incitement to violence is explained here. The significance of WhatsApp in this context, and whether the changes made by WhatsApp in reaction to the public criticism and government pressure are likely to put a stop to the lynchings are also examined.
Technology offers new, lightning-fast paths for rumours to travel. It lends new meaning to that old chestnut: a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting its shoes on. India is no stranger to the rumour. Technology may have changed how rumour travels, but rumour is an old phenomenon. Rumours relationship to violence has already been explored by Indian scholars in the context of the violence against Sikhs in 1984 (Das 1998). The literature on this relationship continues to be relevant even though rumour now travels in new vehicles. In short, the idea that rumour can trigger violence is older than WhatsApp, and digital communication. The question we should ask is not whether WhatsApp causes violence, but whether (and how far) WhatsApp may have exacerbated the proliferation of lynchings in India.
In the last decade, India has seen multiple rounds of communal violence in which rumour and information technology played a role. This is clear if one notes that the North-eastern exodus in 2012, the violence in Muzaffarnagar in 2013, and the lynchings from 2014 onwards, were all attributed to digital technology. The North-eastern exodus was said to be caused by text messages circulating rumours of upcoming violence against people of north-eastern origin. It resulted in the first documented government shutdown of communication, in this case, texting. Next, the Muzaffarnagar violence was attributed to Facebook. In 2014, the lynching of Mohsin Shaikh by a mob was also attributed to the social media (Narrain 2017). It should, therefore, come as no surprise that, in 2018, WhatsApp is held responsible for lynchings across India. The big change in 2018 is that WhatsApp is modifying its practices in response to pressure from the Indian government.
The origin of desperate politics is in the acute desire of a party that wants to retain or come back to power.
Every development leading to solidarity among opposition parties in the electoral politics is perceived by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as an imminent threat to its own electoral prospects. The question that arises is: What kind of political means is the BJP adopting to meet this challenge? The means that it has been resorting to in order to neutralise the oppositions impact are both subtle and blatantly morally offensive. It seems to be using these against those who are raising legitimate questions about the governments failure in core areas of public life. These include unwarranted populism that is inherent in the interim budget, maintaining secret files containing delicate details of its opponents and using them as and when they are needed, the extraordinary use of regulatory bodies such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at unusual times and in unusual contexts, and finally, verbally assaulting its political opponents. The political use of such means, however, appears desperate. This has to be understood primarily in reference to the lack of any worthwhile ground that would have enabled the BJP to make its position stronger than that of its opponents. The party does not seem to have much to bank upon in its performance in the last four and a half years. The confidence gained by its 2014 electoral victory was punctured by its defeats in assembly elections that were recently held in five states. It is self-evident that the central government and the BJP are making an intelligent rather than diligent use of political means to brighten their electoral prospects. In view of the absence of a creditworthy record, the BJP is quite desperate to resort to a discrete method of engaging with its opponents.
More specifically, the desperation to retain power involves the indiscrete use of political means that are deployed in order to overcome the possible electoral threat. Its desperation is evident at three levels. First, the spokespersons of the government are already projecting the deportation of a bank defaulter from London as its achievement. However, this claim carries an inherent problem because the efforts that go into successfully seeking the deportation of a defaulter hide failure more than they reveal success. Such production of an event highlights only the end result and not the process that involves the role of the government in contributing to the production of such bank defaulters. Put differently, the government does not want to acknowledge the paradox of providing a solution to the problem that has been aggravated by the very government that is taking the credit for its solution. It is the end product and not the beginning that counts in the politics of aggregation to the point where the government would like to insulate itself from its own failure in controlling the fraudulent activity. It is similar to first driving farmers to destitution and then offering them a respite. It does not realise that giving a meagre subsidy of 6,000 to farmers violates their right to lead a life of dignity. It is also similar to some of the industrialists who first create environmental hazards and then offer mitigating solutions to the hazard. The politics of producing an event or eventalisation is to make it more spectacular in its presentation with the intention of deflecting the critical attention of voters away from structural failures like unemployment and neglect of the agricultural sector.
Serbia is ready to construct TurkStream section
Construction to begin in late March or early April, with completion by Dec.15: Serbian national gas company Srbijagas head.
Serbia is ready to begin the construction of its section of the TurkStream natural gas pipeline running from the Bulgarian border to Hungary, Dusan Bajatovic, director general of national gas company Srbijagas said, according to Russian news agency TASS on Friday.
CONSTRUCTION WILL BEGIN IN LATE MARCH
Speaking at a session of the Parliamentary Committee on the economy, regional development, trade, tourism and energy on Thursday, Bajatovic said, "Serbia is ready for the construction of this project, the first 300 million has already been secured, the construction is to begin in late March or early April." Construction will be completed by Dec.15 providing the energy community does not put obstacles in the way, he said.
Earlier on Oct. 26, 2018, Aleksandar Antic, Serbia's minister of mines and energy, said that joining the project would provide a great opportunity to improve energy security for both the nation and the region. Serbia is ready for this opportunity, but will need its neighbors of Bulgaria and Hungary to cooperate, he said.
The TurkStream natural gas pipeline has a total capacity of 31.5 billion cubic meters, out of which the first line will carry a capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Turkish consumers. The second line will carry another 15.75 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe via Turkey.
The second line of the project to transfer Russian gas to Europe is expected to route through Bulgaria following transmission via Turkey. TurkStream gas plans to run from Turkey to Bulgaria, then Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia.
Not everyone agrees with all the viewpoints we publish, but we do not censor points of view on the Opinion page. We edit for grammar and style and allow issue-oriented criticism that avoids personal attacks.
"Jerrys been exonerated, finally. In regard to the felony case, he's done. I want to the people of Enid to know that Jerry was innocent." Gary James, attorney for suspended Sheriff Jerry Niles
Mainly Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province & Ringing Trips to Bahrain
John Timothy Hudson, 62, of Elkmont, Alabama, died Monday, June 21, 2021, at his residence. Visitation is from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Friday at Spry Funeral Home in Athens. There will be a private graveside service at Limestone Memorial Gardens. Mr. Hudson was born July 3, 1958, in Decatur, Al
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Mexico City, Feb 8 (epa-efe).- Soap opera star and former first lady Angelica Rivera said Friday that she made the "painful" decision to divorce Enrique Pena Nieto, who was president of Mexico from 2012 to 2018.
"I deeply regret this situation, which is so painful for me and our children. That is why I decided to get a divorce," the actress wrote on Facebook, without mentioning the status of the legal proceedings.
Rivera said that she always lovingly dedicated "time and effort to fulfill the roles of wife, companion and mother."
The actress, known as "La Gaviota" (Seagull) for a character she played in a 2007 telenovela, said she will strive to "remain a good mother" as she goes about recovering her life and career.
"I appreciate respect to maintain the emotional stability that our children deserve," Rivera said a day after HOLA! magazine reported on the end of the marriage.
"Enrique Pena Nieto and Angelica Rivera separated in December. As confirmed to HOLA! by sources close to the couple," the magazine said in an online teaser for its forthcoming issue.
The news item appeared hours after the publication of a photograph showing Pena Nieto with Mexican model Tania Ruiz among a group of people strolling on the streets of Madrid.
EFE journalists have spotted Rivera attending theater premieres and other cultural events in Mexico on her own in the months since the end of the Pena Nieto presidency.
Pena Nieto, 52, lives in Mexico with his three children, while the 49-year-old Rivera moved to the United States to be near her children from her first marriage, according to the magazine story.
Their 2010 nuptials, a second marriage for both bride and groom, captured enormous attention as the union of the then-governor of the state of Mexico and one of the leading telenovela stars.
In late 2014, a scandal erupted over Rivera's ownership of a mansion in the Mexican capital's upscale Lomas de Chapultepec district.
The house, worth an estimated $7 million, was built between 2010 and 2012 by Grupo Higa, which was the recipient of several public works contracts during Pena Nieto's tenure as governor of Mexico state.
Rivera purchased the Casa Blanca (white house) property with money she earned during her successful career as a soap opera actress, government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said in November 2014.
The then-first lady ultimately sold the residence.
Pena Nieto, who fathered two children out of wedlock during his first marriage, has long had the reputation of being a lady's man.
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(Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP/Pool) President Donald Trump gives his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress this week, as Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi listen.
Courtesy photoThomas Cosma, 80, and June Cosma, 79, died Monday of blunt force trauma to the head, according to an autopsy by the New Hampshire medical examiner. The man suspected of the killings, Zachary Gloudemans, 34, was found dead in an apparent suicide in Andover.
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Representatives of Signum University visited the New Hampshire Department of Education in 2018, as part of the schools review and approval process. Pictured from left to right are: Michael Seidel, director of the Division of Educator Support and Higher Learning, Laurie Alden, classroom organizer and student support for Signum, Corey Olsen, president of Signum, Frank Edelblut, the commissioner of the NH DOE, and Jessica Robinson, student support and records for Signum.
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Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) welcomed Holocaust Survivor, Tomi Reichental to campus this week to meet with students and staff and discuss his experience in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War 2.
The visit was organised by the School of Informatics & Creative Arts and included students form the BA (Hons) in Film and Television Production who are exploring how Holocaust memory is mediated over time and are analysing the mechanisms at play between film, collective memory and historical representation.
Tomi is one of three survivors of the Holocaust residing in Ireland and is renowned for his talks about his wartime experiences. He has spoken extensively about atrocities committed during the Holocaust including his book I Was a Boy in Belsen and three documentaries; Close To Evil, Til the Tenth Generationand Condemned to Remember. Tomi is currently in the process writing his second book.
During his lecture, Tomi spoke about why he feels it is important to speak to young people on the atrocities that he survived. He said,
The reason that my work is so important is because we have to educate the young people of the world of our previous mistakes so that we may never repeat them. I see the world today and I can draw similarities to the events of the 30s and 40s. There are so many right-wing political organisations gaining power and its important that people do not chose hate. I see the struggles that refugees are going through today and it is comparable to that of what happened when the Jewish people tried to seek refuge in foreign countries during the Holocaust. We must remember to never become the bystander.
Tomi visited the campus in conjunction with the new module on Holocaust Film and Popular Culture which is delivered in semester 2 of third year on the Film and TV Production programme. His guest lecture was attended by DkIT staff and students and touched on topics such as activism, ethnic discrimination, acceptance and racism. The theatre was packed to capacity with a significant group of students and staff waiting outside to meet Tomi.
Organiser and lecturer in the Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music, Dr. Ingrid Lewis noted,
It was an honour to welcome Tomi to our campus today and there was huge interest from students and staff across the college with more than 200 students and staff in attendance. The Holocaust is considered as an educational imperative that encourages young people to explore the complexities of the past and to construct meaning from this watershed event. It engages young people into a deep learning process while developing a critical mindset that challenges stereotypes, prejudice and misconceptions. It is wonderful for me as an educator to see how much the students are engaging with this topic and how eager they are to know, to reflect and to discuss about the Holocaust. Tomi definitely captivated our students today and I am certain that his words will resonate with them for years to come.
Third year Film and TV production student Martin Brady was in the audience and shared his thoughts on his experience. He added,
When I shook Tomi's hand afterwards I really had no words, no way of conveying how much his experience had touched me. We are among the last generations that will be able to talk to a holocaust survivor so it meant a lot to have this privilege. What struck me most was Tomi's insistence that we do not see the Holocaust simply as a tragic event. It can also be a powerful educational tool to ensure that such an event never happens again.
Fire Stone Wood Fired Pizza and Grill will remain under the guidance of the buildings owner at least until a trial commences to determine permanent ownership.
Circuit Judge John John Steensland on Friday converted a temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction after four hours of testimony and debate. The temporary restraining order filed late last week allowed Nancy Johnson and her company, South Oates Holdings, to take ownership of the popular Dothan restaurant from her daughter and son-in-law, Nicole and Kevin Taylor, after Steensland determined the couple had failed to satisfy a loan agreement between the parties.
Johnson has owned the building at 250 South Oates St. since 2004, and the Taylors agreed to use the restaurants existing equipment and other amenities as collateral for the loan. Johnson argues the Taylors owe her more than $2.1 million on the loan agreement.
On Friday, Pres Register, attorney for defendants Kevin and Nicole Taylor, questioned how much Johnson had actually loaned the Taylors as part of the signed agreement. The agreement included a section of past debt stemming from the investment Johnson and her late husband Dennis made in the restaurant before effectively transferring ownership of the business to the Taylors.
Swoope relied on his experience in economic development he served in the Rick Scott Administration as Secretary of Commerce and president and CEO of the states principal economic development organization, Enterprise Florida, and worked as Executive Director of the Mississippi Development Authority under then-Gov. Haley Barbour and his time in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina to speak to Jackson and surrounding counties about the path forward following a devastating storm. The message revolved around three key steps recover, restore and renew with an emphasis on staying focused on the day-to-day tasks at hand while not losing sight of what the post-Michael future might bring.
And it is that hopefully bright future that was on the mind of incoming Chamber Chairman Tyler Lipford Thursday night. He accepted the gavel from Martin Leon and asked those in attendance to help Re-Imagine Jackson by actively participating in and contributing to the community, which, four months after Michael, is still working through daily recovery efforts while formulating long-term plans for what Jackson County could be in the decades to come.
Garling returned to thank attendees and bring the years banquet to a close, advising guests to take a table centerpiece seedlings planted in glass jars when they leave, to help repopulate area pine trees, adding a note of tongue-in-cheek advice:
The Enterprise Police Department Narcotics Unit conducted a traffic stop Friday at 1:40 p.m. on a vehicle near the intersection of Park Avenue and Geneva Highway. During the traffic stop, EPD Narcotics Officers conducted a probable cause search of the vehicle. Narcotics Officers recovered three firearms and six ounces of marijuana from the vehicle.
EPD Narcotics Officers arrested and charged Calvin Vanquez Cooper, 21, of Enterprise, and Quentez Rahmi Hooks, 26, of Enterprise, with Unlawful Possession of Marijuana 1st. Diquan Lakeith Holloway, 25, of Enterprise, was arrested and charged with Unlawful Possession of Marijuana 2nd.
Hooks and Cooper were transported to the Coffee County Jail after arrest. Additional charges may be pending. The Enterprise Police Department would like to thank the Daleville Police Department for their assistance during this traffic stop.
Fianna Fail TD for Sligo-Leitrim Marc MacSharry has called on the Minister for Health to detail a timeline for the delivery of a CAT lab at Sligo University Hospital (SUH) which offers patient cover to part of south Donegal.
Deputy MacSharry said: The Minister for Health could not detail when or even if Sligo University Hospital will receive approval for a permanent CAT lab. Waterford have revived finding approval for an additional CAT lab while the people of the North West continue to be ignored.
At the moment patients suffering a cardiac arrest are forced to travel to Galway despite the fact that best practice dictates that these people need to be admitted to hospital within a 90-minute window if they are to get the best outcome. Fine Gael continues to ignore our communities in the North West.
Every year over 550 people are transported to Galway for critical cardiac treatment. Since 2001 this has cost more than 10.6 million. Meanwhile, the rental costs for the mobile unit mounted on a truck that comes in two days a week has been 3.6 million. If we were to bank roll the project, it would be much more economical to provide a permanent unit. Instead, Fine Gael have employed delay tactics by way of a 1.5-year review before they even acknowledge that the people of the North West are entitled to, and need the lab.
I have a serious concern as to delays to other capital projects announced too much political fanfare and photo calls including the new 80 bed block at SUH, the new mental health unit, the commenced of construction of the new St Patricks Hospital in Carrick On Shannon and The Shiel Hospital in Ballyshannon.
Existing delays are intolerable and arising from the calamitous management of the costs of the Childrens Hospital there are genuine fears that these critical projects will be pushed out even further. We need leadership from the Minister and the Taoiseach, not the auto pilot and commentary we have seen up to now, said Deputy MacSharry.
Xem them
...
Tin bai cuoi cung
Khong con du lieu e load
Tejon Ranch Co. operates as a diversified real estate development and agribusiness company. It operates through five segments: Commercial/Industrial Real Estate Development, Resort/Residential Real Estate Development, Mineral Resources, Farming, and Ranch Operations. The Commercial/Industrial Real Estate Development segment engages in the planning and permitting of land for development; construction of infrastructure projects, pre-leased buildings, and buildings to be leased or sold; and sale of land to third parties for their own development. It is also involved in the activities related to communications leases, and landscape maintenance. This segment leases land to two auto service stations with convenience stores, 13 fast-food operations, a full-service restaurants, a motel, an antique shop, and a post office; various microwave repeater locations, radio and cellular transmitter sites, and fiber optic cable routes; and 32 acres of land for an electric power plant. The Resort/Residential Real Estate Development segment engages in land entitlement, planning, pre-construction engineering, stewardship, and conservation activities. The Mineral Resources segment includes oil and gas royalties, rock and aggregate royalties, and royalties from a cement operation leased to National Cement Company of California, Inc.; and the management of water assets and infrastructure projects. The Farming segment farms permanent crops, such as wine grapes in 835 acres, almonds in 2,281 acres, and pistachios in 1,053 acres. It also manages the farming of alfalfa and forage mix on 626 acres in the Antelope Valley; and leases 720 acres of land for growing vegetables, as well as almonds. The Ranch Operations segment provides game management and ancillary land services comprising grazing leases and filming, as well as various guided hunts. The company was founded in 1843 and is headquartered in Lebec, California.
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Manx Quilting from the Isle of Man
Have you heard of Manx quilting? I learned about it in the funnest way this past fall and Ive been wanting to get around to writing this post forever.
Before we talk about Manx Quilting, Im assuming we need to talk about what the term Manx means. It is the name of the native Celtic people from the Isle of Man with additional Norse (Viking) and English influences. The Isle of Man is an island located in the middle of the Irish Sea between England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The Isle of Man is a separate country with its own laws and government though it does have a crown-appointed royal Governor and some protection from Great Britain. (Im probably not explaining that well, but thats the gist.)
You may remember I shared about my trip to England last fall. While over there, I also flew to the Isle of Man for a very brief (and soggy), but wonderful weekend visit. We were able to get an inexpensive flight direct from London on one of the European budget carriers.
I lived on the Isle of Man for 6 months when I was 21 years old while serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and fell in love with the place.
Ive only been back to visit twice since then 4 years ago with our family, and this past October. This time I went with friends who were flatmates when we lived in London 25 years ago, and I was SO excited to introduce them to this place that still holds a piece of my heart. Here I am in front of the flat (3rd floor) that I lived in in 1995.
(Notice the authentic windswept look Im sporting in the picture on the right no spray bottle or fan required!)
Well, turns out we arrived for the very soggiest of Saturdays. But this also turned out to be serendipitous. Here we are in front of Harry Kellys cottage. (And, you now you have great travel friends when they wear plaid pants.)
One of our planned stops was Cregneash Folk Village a Manx National Heritage site with historic homes and other buildings including this beautiful church (and post box from Queen Victorias time!) Id been to Cregneash and walked through the village, but never actually gone inside any of the buildings because the setting and the view of the sea from the village was charming enough. (No sea view this day though!)
Well, as I mentioned, because of the rain we actually went inside some of the homes. Dont you love this scene with the cozy fire in the hearth and a real Manx cat? (Manx cats are famous for having no tail.) The setting reminds me of a scene from a Beatrix Potter illustration. And do you spy a quilt?!
Wait, first heres a close-up of the Manx cat for all you cat lovers.
And now a close-up of the quilt!
Turns out this farm home was hosting a demonstration on Manx Quilting. In my love of all things Manx, I had no idea there even was such a thing as Manx Quilting! It was meant to be.
At first glance these blocks look like traditional log cabin quilt blocks. But their construction is different, in a foundation-pieced quilt-as-you-go method.
This method is ingenious-ly resourceful for a group of people with minimal access to supplies because of their remote location. The traditional block they came up with is simple and inexpensive and did not require any fancy notions only what was had on hand: scraps of fabric from worn-out clothing and bedding, a needle and thread. No batting, no rulers, no rotary cutters, and often no scissors!
Heres one of the volunteers at Cregneash Village sharing what makes Manx quilting unique. (One of these days I will remember to video horizontally.)
Ever since seeing the demonstration Ive been wanting to try this method, so I broke out some Gretel scraps to give it a whirl. I thought Id just make one block for the experience, but I loved it so much, that now I want to make more! (And I mean, how cute is Gretel in this log cabin design?!) Its a fun handwork project to carry around.
Want to make your own Manx Quilt Block? I walk you through the steps I learned to make your own Manx quilt block HERE!
A few last pictures from the Isle of Man. Because its a beautiful spot. This is the Calf of Man (a small island at the southern tip of the main island).
For years it was expensive to get to the Isle of Man either flying or by ferry but with the creation of the budget airlines like Ryan Air and EasyJet, its relatively inexpensive. If youre ever visiting the UK and want a charming island experience, than I say go! You can find more pictures and information about the Isle of Man here.
The town of Peel home to an almost 1,000 year-old castle built by the Vikings and Snugglebunny Cottage. (Personally, I think Id prefer to live in Snugglebunny Cottage.)
Click here for Part 2 How to make a Manx Quilt Block!
Ireland announces a commitment to increase funding to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria
Press release
The Minister of Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone T.D., will announce Irelands renewed commitment to ending the global epidemics of AIDS, TB and Malaria through the partnership between the Government of Ireland and the Global Fund by increasing their current annual contribution to the fund by 50%.
Ireland is one of the founding members of the Global Fund and since its inception in 2002 has contributed over 213 million. This support has contributed to 27 million lives saved, a reduction of one third in the number of deaths caused by AIDS, TB and Malaria and the strengthening of health systems worldwide.
Minister of State, Ciaran Cannon, speaking at the Fr. Michael Kelly Lecture in December 2018 remarked that while there has been progress, the battle against AIDS, TB and malaria is not over, we have still not got to the bottom of this public health challenge.
Minister Zappone will make the announcement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where she is attending the African Leadership Meeting - Investing in Health as part of the 32nd Assembly Summit of the African Union.
While in Addis, the Minister will also make a key note speech at the roundtable discussion on forced displacement as part of the African Unions work under the theme of the year Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced persons. Over one third of the worlds forcibly displaced people are in Africa, including 14.5million IDPs. The thematic focus is intended to increase co-operation among African states to address the underlying causes and find long term solutions to the issue of forced displacement. Ireland is a significant contributor to the humanitarian response to displacement across the continent of Africa and this year will provide funding support to the African Union for work on gender, peace and security.
Speaking ahead of her visit, Minister Zappone said:
"I am delighted to be visiting Addis Ababa for this hugely important meeting where I will have the opportunity to speak with leaders in the field of Global Health. Irelands work on global health and on ending communicable diseases AIDS, TB and Malaria reflects our deep understanding from our own experience that poverty and poor health are closely linked. The human toll of these epidemics is unacceptable; nearly 1,000 adolescent girls and young women become infected with AIDS every day, a child still dies every two minutes from malaria and TB is now the worlds leading killer among infectious diseases. This is unacceptable when we know how to prevent these diseases.
I am looking forward to reaffirming Irelands commitment to working with regional institutions on the African Continent. We know from our own national experience how important it is to have a strong regional co-operation and it is heartening to see the level of commitment to address significant problems linked to health and displacement on a continental basis.
ENDS
Press Office
9 February 2019
Notes to Editors:
Ireland currently contributes 30 million to the Global Fund for the period 2017-2019.
This new contribution amounts to a 50% increase in funding.
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SALT LAKE CITY A controversial bill on federal designations before a Utah legislative committee stoked some lively debate Friday, but lawmakers ran out of time before they could take any action.
Instead, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environmental Quality, Rep. Keven Stratton, R-Orem, said the public would get more chances to weigh in at the group's next meeting.
HB78, sponsored by Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, would require political subdivisions of the state of Utah to shop a sought-after federal designation before the Utah Legislature first, and get members' buy-in.
Testimony Friday touched on disagreement that arose over the Emery County Lands Bill before Congress by Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, with a proposed new wilderness designation that would impact Wayne County.
Wayne County Commissioner Newell Harward said his county was never contacted about the wilderness proposal, which borders Wayne County and would have far-reaching effects.
Off-road enthusiasts also objected to the idea that a three-member commission can pursue federal land changes that impact 500,000 people in Utah who enjoy riding all-terrain vehicles, particularly in that area of Utah.
"This lands bill puts all of that in jeopardy," said Steve Hawkins, president of the Utah ATV Association. "It is a disaster for Wayne County and a disaster for the state of Utah."
But some lawmakers wondered aloud if the bill, if passed, would hamstring important efforts to highlight and protect local areas, as well as chilling free speech.
Rep. Joel Ferry, R-Brigham City, said an important feat for northern Utah to accomplish is the transformation of the Golden Spike National Historic Site to a national historic park. He wondered if this bill would hamper that.
Willie Grayeyes, a member of the Navajo Nation and newly elected San Juan County commissioner, spoke against the bill and said it is wrong for Utah lawmakers to impose their will on local residents.
"Top to bottom rarely work," he said.
Others who testified complained about sweeping designations that affect not only those jurisdictions who favor the set-aside, but the entire state.
George Chapman pointed to the pursuit of a federal designation for the Wasatch Canyons that he said has been wrongly characterized as consensus-driven.
He noted there were few people from the west side of the Salt Lake Valley participating in the push for the designation, which he contends impacts all of Utah because of the popularity of the canyons.
SALT LAKE CITY The State School Board on Friday updated its rule on the use of privately owned cell phones and other electronic devices at school, requiring districts and charters to establish policies and conduct schoolwide trainings.
The board action comes days after a legislative committee hearing during which educators, parents and lawmakers said students with private data plans are accessing pornography on their cell phones or tablets at school or spending time watching videos or texting when they should be tending to their studies.
Still others said classes are frequently disrupted by parents communicating with their children.
What we're really trying to do is help kids be safe at school. Rep. Susan Pulsipher, R-South Jordan
During the Utah State School Board of Education's deliberations Friday, board member Scott Neilson, who is a high school teacher, said one of his students told him that he is on social media six to eight hours a day, "five of that at school."
"I was blown away and you would be, too," Neilson said.
Neilson said his classroom policy is that he will take students' phones away for the class period if they are used improperly. Parents are advised of the policy at the start of the school year in disclosures.
"I've never had a problem because parents already know," he said.
But there are inconsistent policies classroom to classroom, which it makes it difficult for educators to enforce rules, he said.
Still, something's got to give, he said.
"Schools should be for school, not five hours of social media," he said.
Earlier this week, the House Education Committee considered HB237, sponsored by Rep. Susan Pulsipher, R-South Jordan, a former local school board member.
Pulsipher said she sponsored the legislation out of concern that "neither kids or parents know what the policies are," nor do school officials.
One school teacher told lawmakers adults are some of the worst offenders, which tells her they ignore the policies.
"Honestly, nine times out of 10, it's a parent contacting a student in my class," said Chelsie Acosta, who teaches at Glendale Middle School.
Others testified that some teachers collect phones before tests to prevent cheating.
Pulsipher said she was personally aware of a fourth grader who was exposed to pornography at school "and didn't know what to do about it."
"What we're really trying to do is help kids be safe at school," she said.
While the legislative committee conducted a full hearing on HB237, it took no action, which gave the State School Board the opportunity to address the issue in a board rule.
The State School Board rule also covers electronic devices lent to students by schools.
The revised rule requires schools conduct trainings with students and staff within 45 days of the start of the school year. The trainings will spell out the policy, stress the importance of digital citizenship and possible discipline.
District and charter board policies must conform with state board rules, but the updates give them the flexibility to allow use of personal electronic devices for educational purposes while still setting restrictions.
SALT LAKE CITY After a total of three hours of discussion and debate, the Utah State Board of Education granted reprieves Friday to two schools facing sanctions after standardized tests showed worsening academic performance.
The board's vote means Midvale Elementary School and Entheos Academy, a charter school in Magna, have two years to improve outcomes and performance or face more rigorous sanctions.
Entheos Academy must report back to the board within a year on its progress and it is also required to meet with the State Charter School Board regarding earlier changes ordered by that board such as rotating out the longest-tenured members of the school's board of directors. The charter board authorized the school's charter.
Midvale Elementary, which is in Canyons School District, and Entheos Academy were part of a cohort of schools identified for school turnaround in 2015. Neither exited that status within three years, meaning their school grades either did not improve or worsened.
Turnaround schools are those in the lowest 3 percent of student achievement statewide as measured by end-of-year tests in math, language arts and science.
Schools identified as a state's lowest performing receive grants and assistance from experts intended to increase student achievement. A school forms a turnaround committee that includes parents, educators, a school administrator and the local school board representative.
Midvale Elementary School Principal Chip Watts told the board that he became principal of the school about a year before it was identified for turnaround.
"It's been an interesting few years to be honest with you, we've definitely learned a lot and overcome a lot of obstacles, but we haven't exited turnaround," he said.
After trying many approaches to improve the school's performance, Watts said the school has landed on a restructuring program that is showing promising results.
"We believe we've figured it out and we know how to do this," he said.
As evidence of the school's recent progress, Watts pointed to the school's DIBEL or Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills winter benchmarks.
Midvale's scores in math and English language arts "exceed any growth achieved by Midvale students in the last three years," according to a letter from the Canyons School Board to the Utah State Board of Education.
"The math data we're seeing, it completely blows me away," Watts said.
While the board was generally supportive of Midvale Elementary, board member Laura Belnap said she was reluctant to offer extensions to schools that have already had three years to turn around their school grade.
"It feels to me we're building the dam after the water is spilling over," Belnap said.
According to a State School Board news release, nearly 90 percent of 26 schools that entered Utah's school turnaround program in 2015 met exit criteria or qualified for an extension.
With respect to Midvale Elementary, board member Scott Neilson, who is a teacher, lauded the school's effort despite steep odds. The community has a high poverty rate, a third of the student body is experiencing homelessness and nearly half of its students are English language learners.
"I don't look at this like it's a failing school. I feel like we're dealing with something very special here with the clientele you have. Each one of these kids is one of Heavenly Father's children," he said, choking back emotion.
A state review panel's recommendations for Midvale Elementary and Entheos Academy, which were adopted by the board, called on the schools to undergo new comprehensive needs assessments and root cause analyses, and update their respective school improvement plans.
In Entheos Academy's case, school closure remains a possibility if it does not sufficiently improve in two years, according to the review panel's recommendations adopted by the state school board.
Board member Linda Hansen questioned leaders of Entheos Academy about high rates of bullying at the school, an issue that had been raised by parents, she said.
School director Brian Storrs attributed the problem to some students excelling and some not improving at all. "It was very polarizing," he said.
As the school has worked through its turnaround process, the school has experienced "a lot of changes in the last couple of years in "structure, culture, teacher retention and student retention."
Board member Jennifer Graviet remarked on the teacher salaries at the charter school and asked the school's administrator and directors what administrators were paid. The information was not immediately available, officials said.
Granite School District's Oquirrh Hills Elementary School was also among the 2015 cohort of turnaround schools. Last month, the Granite School District Board voted to close it.
The state review panel that recommended extensions for both Midvale and Entheos Academy's Magna location made no recommendations regarding Oquirrh Hills since its closure rendered the conditions of the turnaround program moot.
Earlier in the day, Kearns Metro Township Mayor Kelly Bush addressed the board noting that since the school closure was announced in December "there has been a wake of deception and destruction that has gone on."
School turnaround legislation "was written to hold schools accountable in providing the best education for our children, and Granite used it to cover up the real purpose of the closure of the school. They abused it," Bush said.
SALT LAKE CITY A federal judge on Friday ordered Jacob and Isaiah Kingston to remain in jail while awaiting trial.
The Washakie Renewable Energy executives are charged in an alleged billion-dollar renewable fuel tax credit scheme.
Federal Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells previously declined Isaiah Kingston's request to be released in August.
According to Friday's new order denying the Kingstons' release ahead of their May trial, reasons Isaiah Kingston provided in his request for release included "new information."
"He simply argues he does not have access to money or genuine ownership in Washakie. But at the prior hearings, the government provided strong evidence that Isaiah is CFO and 50 percent owner of Washakie and that he initiated wire transfers totaling $52 million to Turkish banks," according to court documents.
Meanwhile, "The crux of Jacob's request for pre-trial release is that he is not a flight risk or danger to the community," the order states.
According to court documents, Jacob Kingston said that "he was not fleeing to Turkey when he was arrested because he had purchased two-way tickets, he and his wife were accompanying his son and daughter-in-law on their honeymoon," according to the order.
"The government also argues Jacob's explanation for the timing and reason for his last trip to Turkey are peculiar. The court acknowledges it would be unusual for parents and siblings to accompany a couple on their honeymoon to a country considered dangerous by the State Department," the order states.
A grand jury in January returned a second superseding indictment charging Washakie Renewable Energy CEO Jacob Kingston and Chief Financial Officer Isaiah Kingston, along with California businessman Lev Dermen, with at total of 46 counts of mail fraud, money laundering, filing false tax returns and destroying records.
The Kingstons members of the Davis County Cooperative Society or the Kingston Order, which practices polygamy are charged in U.S. District Court with conspiring to launder the proceeds in hundreds of financial transactions between the accounts of various entities totaling $3.2 billion to make it look like Washakie was buying, selling and processing renewable fuel.
The Kingston brothers and Dermen were originally charged in August with a total of 15 counts of money laundering and filing false tax returns. Prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding more charges in November. They have pleaded not guilty.
HILL AIR FORCE BASE A new building at Hill Air Force Base is expected to help in the nation's military defense efforts.
The new $35 million software support facility will house the 309th Software Maintenance Group, whose software support mission is a top priority for the base, according to a news release from the base.
"This building offers state-of-the-art engineering labs and an agile work environment for our scientist and engineer workforce," Tracy Stauder, 309th Software Maintenance Group deputy director, said in the release. "It will be a great asset to the Air Force."
Hill leaders expressed gratitude Friday during a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The official move-in date is anticipated to be in mid-April.
Due to the increasing software-intensive nature of weapons systems, a new software facility was necessary to sustain responsibilities for the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the integrated networks for battlefield command and other long-term Department of Defense programs, explained Maj. Gen. Stacey Hawkins, Commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Complex at Hill Air Force Base.
"It's a secure facility so it's well-postured to receive our fifth-generation aircraft workloads," he said. "In the future, the replacement for the intercontinental ballistic missile the ground-based strategic deterrent will also be housed here."
Because the latest generation of military fighter jets is so computer-advanced, being able to properly maintain the technology used to power them is an especially high priority, he added.
"Having a software engineering facility to sustain the software and to develop software for emerging threats is vitally important," Hawkins said. "This is the center of gravity for the F-35 weapons system."
He said the building will accommodate about 350 workstations and includes 15,300 square feet of laboratory space that will help support the growth of the Software Maintenance Group. The unit has hired almost 400 personnel over the past three years and is expected to expand from approximately 1,600 personnel currently on staff to more than 3,000 people over the next decade, he added.
"We're trying to build a software campus, and that is a big part of that growth and will help us attract STEM professionals who we feel will be attracted to the work being done in that facility," Stauder said.
Stauder noted that software development is a dynamic and ever-changing environment, so having a state-of-the-art facility designed with open space is a "big leap forward" and will allow the Air Force to be more competitive and better able to attract top software developers as well as engineers from the Beehive State and around the country, he said.
Construction of the facility was made possible by the state of Utah under the enhanced use lease program, explained David Williamsen, program manager for the Enhanced Use Lease Management Office at Hill Air Force Base. The Utah Legislature appropriated $21.5 million to the Military Installation Development Authority, a political entity established in 2007 to facilitate the development of under-utilized military land, to help fund the building.
He said facilities like the new building are necessary to support the work being done currently for military defense as well as into the future.
"The new weapons systems have an amazing amount of software compared to what older weapons systems had," he said. "This project has been really good for the state because we have a lot of software engineers that are hired on because of the continued growth we've had with all the demand for that type of expertise."
Gary Harter, executive director of the Utah Office of Veterans and Military Affairs, said the facility will accommodate the growth and need for software specialists for years to come and is also a significant investment in the country's efforts to enhance military readiness and defense.
"They will be at the leading edge of everything the Air Force does for their advanced weapons systems," he said. "It'll be a great boon to the economic development of the communities around the base in northern Utah."
SALT LAKE CITY Andrea Brandley, who currently works as an elementary theater teacher, said the idea of searching for affordable housing is "very daunting."
Brandley said she and her husband spent a year living with family, trying to save money for a down payment and working with a real estate agent to run the numbers on what kind of mortgage they would be able to qualify for.
But ultimately, Brandley said they settled on renting because they just couldn't find anything they could afford to buy in the area where they wanted to live.
So Friday, speaking at a news conference at the state Capitol, Brandley said she was "thrilled" to hear a Utah homebuilder was doing something to help teachers like her afford to achieve the American dream.
"More than just providing these affordable housing opportunities, I'm grateful for the value that they place on public service employees," Brandley said. "It makes us feel a little bit more valued and important, and I'm grateful for that."
As top state officials, business leaders and housing experts gathered on Capitol Hill to rally the troops for more affordable housing solutions, Utah's largest homebuilder unveiled a new program Friday to help a special group of Utahns afford home ownership.
It's not just for schoolteachers. It's also for police officers, firefighters, veterans, construction workers, nurses, as well as first-time homebuyers earning less than $70,000 a year.
Clark Ivory, CEO of Ivory Homes, announced Friday that his company is launching the Utah Workforce Housing Priority initiative, a program to reserve homes at more affordable price points and give preference to Utahns who are struggling to buy homes in today's hot real estate market.
Those public service employees are Utah's workforce "that deserves it most," Ivory said.
In a climate of increasing housing prices and affordability challenges, we have a duty to those serving our communities and to assist them in becoming homeowners, he said. We are committed to helping address Utahs housing affordability challenges by supporting our educators, public safety professionals, veterans, members of our military, and the construction tradespeople that build our homes.
Ivory said his company has reserved more than 150 lots in areas across the Wasatch Front that will become available to purchase this year at prices between $200,000 and $350,000. More information about the program can be found at ivoryhomes.com.
Those areas so far include Holbrook Farms in Lehi, Broadview Shores in Provo, Overland in Eagle Mountain, Sagewood in Stansbury Park, Monterey Estates in Syracuse, and Haven Parkway in West Haven.
"These heroes teach our kids, police our streets, protect our country, build our homes," Ivory said. "Or they are our kids or grandkids, simply looking for a foot in the door of home ownership. They deserve our priority."
Ivory pledged his company is "going to do all we can to help these people qualify" for homeownership through the new program whether it's helping clean up their credit or work with them to help save up for a down payment.
"Ivory Homes is committed to be a leader in addressing this critical issue of housing affordability," Ivory said. "This is an emerging issue in our state, and left unaddressed it poses a real threat to our states economic vitality."
Gov. Gary Herbert and Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, joined Friday's announcement, applauding Ivory for efforts to create housing solutions during a time when home prices continue to skyrocket, fueled by historically low housing vacancy rates.
"It's nice to see the private sector once again stepping up," Herbert said. "I'm a free market guy, and I think there are niches in the market for affordable housing."
Ivory Homes' new program announcement came the same day local business leaders and housing policy experts gathered at the Capitol to discuss solutions to Utah's ever-growing housing crisis.
The Salt Lake Chamber's Housing Gap Coalition hosted a panel of national experts, including Kent Colton, former executive director of the National Home Builders Association; Chris Hebert, managing director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies; Laurie Goodman, vice president at the Urban Institute and co-director of its Housing Finance Policy Center; and Natalie Gochnour, director of the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
Jim Wood, a senior fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, gave an update on the state's current housing numbers, and there wasn't any good news.
"The gap persists," he said, noting that while Utah didn't lose ground in 2018, it "didn't make any headway" either. Still, Utah has about a 45,000 statewide shortage of housing.
The panel's main message: Utah's housing shortage will continue to persist if all stakeholders don't come together to provide a variety of solutions including both the private sector and the public sector.
Gochnour, asked to give advice to those hoping to close the housing gap, answered with two words.
"Act now," she said.
SALT LAKE CITY An 18-year-old man was charged Friday with robbing a 13-year-old boy at gunpoint with a BB gun.
Julian Romero, of West Jordan, is charged in 3rd District Court with aggravated robbery, a first-degree felony.
On Nov. 17, a 13-year-old boy was at his friend's house when police say he was approached by Romero and two juveniles, ages 14 and 15. Romero demanded the boy "give him everything in his pockets" and then pinned the boy down while the two juveniles punched him in the mouth, the charging documents state.
Romero then held a BB gun to the 13-year-old boy's head before shooting him in the leg, according to the charges.
Romero told the boy that if he told anyone anyone about what had happened, "he would shoot up his house," the charges state.
SALT LAKE CITY A massage therapist already facing charges of inappropriately touching a client and who surrendered his license to practice more than two years ago has been charged again.
Francisco Fernandez, 41, of Salt Lake City, was charged Friday in 3rd District Court with two counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony.
On July 7, a woman said she saw Fernandez, who was at Deep Tissue and Structural Healing, 561 W. 200 South, to be treated for a neck injury, according to charging documents. But during her massage, Fernandez touched the woman's chest, the charges state.
The woman "spoke up and told Fernandez that no one had ever massaged her (chest)," according to court documents.
Fernandez then had the woman flip over and inappropriately touched her again while massaging one of her legs, the charges state. After the woman said something again, Fernandez ended the woman's session 15 minutes early and told her it was "on the house," according to court documents.
The incident is very similar to another reported incident from 2017. Fernandez was charged in that case with two counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony, for two alleged incidents with a woman in 2015 and 2016.
In 2015, the woman said Fernandez inappropriately touched her during a massage, then left the room for a minute, returned and told her, "This one's on the house," according to charging documents.
In 2016, the woman returned to be treated for a neck injury. Fernandez had the woman completely undress and touched her genitals during the massage, the charges state. Fernandez surrendered his license to practice massage therapy shortly after that incident, according to charging documents.
A pretrial conference for that case is scheduled for March 1.
Hate is one of the most destructive attitudes in any society. It raises tensions and can polarize and divide neighborhoods, towns and cities. While we all have the right to freely think and believe as we wish, we also have an obligation to protect each other from criminal acts, especially those motivated by prejudice. Targeting a crime victim because of hate for a group of people sends a message to that whole community that their very existence is not worthy of protection, respect or dignity. It always pushes our society further apart. Sadly, these kinds of crimes are on the rise both in the U.S. and in Utah.
Hate crimes are especially heinous. They send a message that You dont belong, and you may be next. These types of crimes can plant seeds of terrorism in our country. They impact whole communities, not just one individual. The impact of a hate crime lingers and extends beyond the specific victim. Hate crimes can cause members of targeted communities to become angry, suspicious and fearful. Often, they can be too fearful to even report the crime to the police. All but five other states in the U.S. have laws protecting people against these kinds of crimes. Yet Utah still fails to have an effective law.
The law we have was enacted about 25 years ago, yet since it first passed not a single successful case has been prosecuted because it was so poorly written. It is unenforceable. Salt Lake Countys district attorney recently called (it) worthless" after authorities were unable to bring hate crime charges against a man who allegedly attacked a Latino father and son while yelling that he wanted to kill Mexicans. When these crimes cannot be prosecuted due to inadequate laws, it often makes people who have already experienced extreme trauma to feel re-victimized. Our wholly inadequate law prevents our local authorities from doing their job. The only way for Utah to handle these types of crimes is to try and get the FBI involved in our local issues. According to the ACLU, Prosecutors consider it unenforceable because it is vague and does not include the commonly listed protected classes. ... In a court challenge, the Utah Court of Appeals said the law lacked clear legislative intent and noted it was not a true hate crimes law because of its lack of classifications.
While a few other laws exist that protect some categories of people such as the elderly, military members and peace officers such as police and firefighters, most of us remain unprotected. Sen. Daniel Thatcher (R-West Valley City) has a current bill proposal for Section 76-3-203.14 of the Utah Code which is SB103. This bill, if passed, will provide protection to all Utahns in a crime when it is proven that the victim is targeted for personal attributes such as race, religion, ethnicity, etc. No group is favored over another. It would be immoral and cruel to have a law that doesnt apply to everyone equally. A healthy society is dependent on connection and belonging. Crimes that are fueled by hatred drive disconnection, insecurity, worthlessness and fear. Suicidal ideation is linked to thwarted belonging. We have a great need to do better in this area as our Utah suicide rates continue to climb at an alarming rate. Compared with other recent crime victims ... hate-crime survivors manifested significantly more symptoms of depression, anger, anxiety and posttraumatic stress," reads a study in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. "They also displayed significantly more crime-related fears and beliefs, lower sense of mastery, and more attributions of their personal setbacks.
In Utah we need an effective victim targeting bill. We need to stand against bullying of all kinds, not just in our school yards. The assertion that all men are created equal is one of the most important ideals in our Declaration of Independence. Just as important is the statement that all have certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. A right not to feel threatened is fundamental to these freedoms.
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Update on county push to get new assessments done on historic Woodbourne Mansion
An academician in Pakistan was arrested on Saturday after police raided his house for participating in an anti-state protest following the death of an ethnic Pashtun leader earlier this month, police said.
Ammar Ali Jan, associated with Lahore-situated Forman Christian college, was arrested from his residence and taken to the Gulberg police station.
He was later released on bail.
Police arrested lecturer Dr Ammar Ali Jan of Forman Christian (FC) College from his residence Saturday morning in connection with an FIR registered against him for taking part in a protest in Lahores Liberty Chowk this week in which anti-state slogans were chanted, Muhammad Hammad, Lahore police spokesman, said.
Jan was part of the protest that was held against the death of Arman Loni from the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), a social campaign for Pashtun human rights based in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
Loni died on February 2 after baton charge by the police to disperse protesters of PTM while holding a peaceful protest against the terrorist attacks on security forces in Loralai in country's Balochistan province.
In the FIR, Jan has been accused of leading a group of 100-150 people which was blocking the roads.
"The gathering was blocking roads and Jan along with some others were chanting slogans against state institutions and intelligence agencies," the paper reported, quoting the FIR.
Hammad said Jan remained in police custody for few hours as he was later in the day was granted bail by the local magistrate.
Jan said that his house was raided prior to the arrest.
"There is an FIR against me for participating at the protest in Liberty against the killing of Professor Arman Loni. I was taken into custody at 4 am which is when "the police raided my house," he said in a Facebook post.
In April 2018, Jan was removed from the visiting faculty post at the Punjab University, for what the administration says, "failing to meet contract requirements", according to the report.
It was however alleged that Jan was sacked over his political views and activism.
Washington: US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for a second much-anticipated summit in Hanoi, as preparations kick into high gear for the peace talks.
Trump announced the exact location on Twitter only the country, Vietnam, was previously known for the follow-on to the leaders' summit in Singapore last year as he hailed very productive preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries.
My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un, Trump said.
It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace! The US State Department said the special US envoy for North Korea will meet again with Pyongyang officials ahead of the Trump-Kim talks.
While in Texas, the FBI charged a teenager with using social media to recruit people on behalf of the LeT. (Representational Image)
Washington: In a dangerous sign that Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) has expanded its tentacles in the United States, federal prosecutors on Friday announced to have arrested a New Yorker who was about to catch a flight to Pakistan to join the terror group.
While in Texas, the FBI charged a teenager with using social media to recruit people on behalf of the LeT.
Jesus Wilfredo Encarnacion (29), was arrested on Thursday night at John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK Airport) as he was about to board an international flight with Pakistan being his final destination.
Encarnacion allegedly attempted to travel to Pakistan to join a foreign terrorist organization and conspired with another individual to provide that organization with material support, said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.
Encarnacion, a.k.a. Jihadistsoldgier, Ji- hadinhear, Jihad- inheart and Lionofthegood, plotted to travel to Pakistan to join and train with LeT, which is infamous around the world for perpetrating the lethal 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and other atrocities, said US Attorney Geoffrey Berman.
A Manhattan resident, Encarnacion not only express a desire to execute and behead people, he scheduled travel and almost boarded a plane so he could go learn how to become a terrorist, FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney Jr.
In the southern state of Texas, Michael Kyle Sewell, 18, was charged by the FBI with using social media to recruit people on behalf of LeT and send them to Pakistan for terrorist training.
The arrest of the New Yorker and the charges against the Texas teenager who do not appear to be of South Asian origin as has been the case in previous such arrests has set the alarm bells ringing among the law enforcement agencies in the US.
The arrests have thrown the spotlight on issues of homegrown terrorism and radicalisation of American youths, a situation that authorities have dreaded post Mumbai-terrorist attack.
Based out of Pakistan, the LeT is a UN and US designated global terrorist organisation and has carried out several terrorist attacks inside India.
Negotiators are working towards an agreement before the 90-day tariff truce expires March 1. (File Photo)
Washington: US officials will be in Beijing February 14-15 for the third round of talks aimed at heading off an escalation of the ongoing trade war with China, the White House announced Friday.
Negotiators are working towards an agreement before the 90-day tariff truce expires March 1, after which the US is set to more than double punitive duties on 200 billion dollars in Chinese goods.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will lead the delegation, which also includes David Malpass, who President Donald Trump has nominated to be president of the World Bank, according to the statement.
However, strident White House China critic Peter Navarro was not listed as part of the US team. While officials seemed optimistic after talks last week in Washington, more recent comments have jarred financial markets, amplifying concerns about how the dispute will impact global growth.
US President Donald Trump said Thursday he did not expect to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping before a March 1 deadline for the two economic superpowers to reach a deal.
Trump had said final resolution of the trade dispute would depend on the meeting with Xi "in the near future," but told reporters it had not yet been arranged. And top White House economist Larry Kudlow said Thursday that while Trump was "optimistic" about prospects for a deal, there remained a "sizeable distance" separating the two sides.
Washington is demanding far-reaching changes from China to address unfair practices it says are deeply unfair, including theft of American intellectual property and the massive Chinese trade surplus.
The White House said there will be a preparatory meeting of senior officials beginning February 11, and the talks will include officials from the Agriculture, Energy and Commerce Departments.
Bangladesh is not some Scandinavian heaven. It is poor and overpopulated, undereducated and corrupt, frequented by natural catastrophes, experiences occasional terrorism, and the farcical nature of its democracy was exposed in the December 2018 elections. But the earlier caricature of a country on life support disappeared years ago. Today, some economists say it shall be the next Asian tiger. Its growth rate last year (7.8 per cent) put it at par with India (8.0 per cent) and well above Pakistan (5.8 per cent).
Much of this growth owes to exports which zoomed from zero in 1971 to $35.8 billion in 2018 (Pakistans is $24.8 billion). The IMF calculates Bangladeshs economy growing from $180 billion presently to $322 billion by 2021. This means that the average Bangladeshi today is almost as wealthy as the average Pakistani and, if the rupee depreciates further, will be technically wealthier by 2020.
Other indicators are equally stunning. East Pakistans population in the 1951 census was 42 million, while West Pakistans was 33.7m. But today Bangladesh has far fewer people than Pakistan 165 million versus 200 million. A sustained population planning campaign helped reduce fertility in Bangladesh. No such campaign or even its beginnings is visible today in Pakistan. The health sector is no less impressive far fewer babies die at birth in Bangladesh than in Pakistan. Immunisation is common and no one gets shot dead for administering polio drops. Life expectancy (72.5 years) is higher than Pakistans (66.5 years). According to the ILO, females are well ahead in employment (33.2 per cent) as compared to Pakistan (25.1 per cent).
How did West Pakistans poor cousin manage to upstage its richer relative by so much so fast? Its all the more puzzling because Bangladesh has no geostrategic assets saleable to America, China, or Saudi Arabia. It has no nuclear weapons, no army of significance, no wise men in uniform running the country from the shadows, and no large pool of competent professionals. At birth, East Pakistan had, in fact, no trained bureaucracy; it received just one member of the former Indian Civil Service.
None should be more surprised at these new developments than those West Pakistanis like me who went to school during the 1950s and 1960s and grew up surrounded by unconcealed racism. Short and dark Bengalis were reputedly good only for growing jute and rice and catching fish. They were Muslims and Pakistanis, of course, but as children we were made to imagine that all good Muslims and real Pakistanis are tall, fair, and speak chaste Urdu. Wed laugh madly at the strange-sounding Bengali news broadcasts from Radio Pakistan. In our foolish macho world, they sounded terribly feminine.
But in a nutshell, Bangladesh and Pakistan are different countries today because they perceive their national interest very differently. Bangladesh sees its future in human development and economic growth. Goalposts are set at increasing exports, reducing unemployment, improving health, reducing dependence upon loans and aid, and further extending micro credit. Water and boundary disputes with India are serious and Bangladesh suffers bullying by its bigger neighbour on matters of illegal immigration, drugs, etc. But its basic priorities have not wavered.
For Pakistan, human development comes a distant second. The bulk of national energies remain focused upon checkmating India. Relations with Afghanistan and Iran are therefore troubled; Being more multicultural and liberal, Bangladeshs civil society has stopped armed groups from grabbing the reins of power. For Pakistan, these are lessons.
By arrangement with Dawn
So far Pakistan has had three constitutions. All three have one thing in common, and it is the dislike of interest and the modern banking system. The history of this is not particularly Islamic alone. The Old Testament book of Leviticus specifically says that interest should not be charged on loans. Jesus was very angry with money-changers and moneylenders and threw them out of the temple in Jerusalem.
Article 28 of Pakistans 1956 Constitution says that riba (which is the Arabic word for interest) should be eradicated as early as possible. This feature was carried in all later Constitutions, including those written in the terms of President Ayub Khan in the 1960s, Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto in the 1970s and then modified under President Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s and President Pervez Musharraf in the 2000s. In 1991, the Shariah Appellate Bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court decided that interest charged by banks in Pakistan was illegal. In 1999, the court decided it had to implement the order. Of course interest is at the root of the modern banking system and Pakistans economy would totally collapse if the order had been passed. But the idea that interest is something bad that god disapproves of runs strong in that society.
Pakistan was then under the rule of a dictator, Gen. Musharraf, and he was able to get the court to back off at that time. But the sentiment remains. In 2015, another Bill was prepared to do the same thing. As long as it remains in the Constitution, there will always be an attempt by someone to implement it.
India has the only non-majoritarian Constitution in South Asia, meaning it does not privilege the rights of any one religion or its followers.
Article 48 of our Constitution says: The State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.
There are two things to note here: First, the assumption that this is a scientific and economic endeavour and not a religious one. Second, that it is all milch cattle, including buffalo. Draught cattle means those that are used to pull ploughs.
The wording may be scientific and economic but, of course, this is a religious act. It has trapped India, just like Article 28 has trapped Pakistan.
On February 5, it was reported that three Muslim men in Madhya Pradesh had been arrested and booked under the National Security Act (NSA) for alleged cow slaughter. The NSA allows for preventive detention, meaning that the individuals can be kept in jail without any crime being committed and only on the suspicion that they will in future commit a crime. They can be jailed in this fashion without trial for one year.
Some Congress leaders were upset by this and asked if there was any difference between their party and the BJP. When Rahul Gandhi was asked about this, he avoided a direct response and said that the Congress would remove RSS people from positions of power.
On February 8, it was again reported from Madhya Pradesh that two men, one Hindu and one Muslim, had been arrested and jailed under the NSA, not for cattle slaughter but for its illegal transportation.
A few things should be understood here. First, that the Congress does not have full control over its administration and it will be difficult to do what Mr Gandhi is saying he will do. The laws exist and the officers will act. The fact that they are invoking extreme laws for relatively minor offences is incidental.
Once the Prime Minister and the chief ministers of Maharashtra and Haryana pushed for this in 2014 and 2015, we have been trapped in a cycle of violence that gives India a bad name around the world. It will be difficult to get out of this and we should all worry because we come across on this subject as unhinged and fanatical.
Most Indians, including judges, do not take the scientific and economic reading of Article 48. It is a religious reading and, therefore, prone to provoke religious sentiment and rioting and therefore worthy of the NSA.
We cannot use the argument that the scientific and economic principles have outlived themselves or that farmers themselves are suffering, as we are seeing with recent reports of stray cattle. Our judges have held that even old cows are economically productive because they give dung.
Just like in Pakistan, we will have to live with this element of extremism forever. For us it is the sword of vigilantism and state tyranny on the weak, while Pakistans sacred cow is a ban on bank interest.
On every grain of rice
Its eaters name is etched
But on each drop or draft of wine
No signature, not even mine
Can the hand of destiny entice
Wine to be a fatal canvas stretched.
From Tinder is the Night by Bachchoo
Most people give advice freely and no one takes any notice. Some follow professional advice because theyve paid for it but even then, its often said that if you dont like your lawyers advice, change your lawyer.
After an operation my British consultant surgeon advised me to drink in moderation. I asked him what in moderation meant and he said less than your doctor!.
My grandfather used to say Do everything, but do it in moderation. I dont think hed thought it through. His everything surely didnt extend to, for instance, sex with camels or moderate doses of heroin. His advice, if followed, might have led to certain degrees of contentment and a balanced existence but then lifes temptations, as Adam found out. are more compelling than even Gods injunctions.
I thought of old grandpappy (or Mamawaji as we called him in our Parsi household) when I read this week that Yoko Ono, the partner of the late John Lennon, had tweeted for some advice.
Tweets, I believe, though not being a subscriber to the service I may be wrong, can only be addressed to the number of people who access them from a particular person, the persons followers. In the case of people like Donald Trump or even Yoko Ono, however, their tweets get picked up by other social media and get a great deal of attention around the world.
I was somewhat surprised by the fact of Yoko asking for advice, because Id always thought of her as someone who dished it out freely, without a tinge of self-consciousness. Most of it is in the vein of All You Need is Love and other homilies and patently erroneous slogans, because apart from love I may need faith, hope, charity, sex and a good glass of Sauvignon Blanc.
Kher! I am sure she means well.
In this particular tweet she was asking her followers or the world to: give us some advice that will make our lives heal and shine.
I think her us was short for all humanity and not just, in the royal fashion, a plural for me.
She received a lot of varied responses, most of it good advice.
The veteran and sensible James OBrien, a radio commentator whose radio programme I often follow, told us to put a bit of fizzy water in our Yorkshire pudding dough in order, I suppose, to guarantee that it will rise in the oven. I quote that particular culinary hint because I believe it will work for naan bread as well. A dash of fizzy water or even soda, yaaron!
There were other handy tips for Londoners or visitors to London who were instructed on how to dodge circuitous journeys at a particular underground station by ignoring the directing signs and taking unmarked shortcuts. The reports of these were accompanied by the fact that Yoko is now 85 years old!
Sheesh! How time flies. I cant say I encountered her, but I was in the same room long years ago when, as a young freelance writer, I stood outside the London Hilton hotel with hundreds of reporters, photographers and TV crews waiting for the Beatles to turn up and go in to meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who awaited them there.
There was a heavy police cordon keeping us reptiles at bay as the Hilton had banned all journalists and crews. Or perhaps it was a request from the Beatles to have an unmolested darshan with their spiritual guru. The reptiles were restless and waiting for the Beatles limousine.
My photographer partner at the time, Andrew Whittuck, said at least we can get snaps of them as they get out of their cars and you can write about the crowds. But, gentle reader, we struck it lucky. At the time I adopted the costume of the late 1960s and was in a khadi kurta over jeans, had long black hair and a beard and a worthless necklace of beads. George Harrison, a purported devotee of all things Indian, got out of his limousine and spotting me in the differently-clad reporter-crowd, grabbed my wrist and pulled me through the police cordon. I in turn had grabbed Andrews wrist and the cops made way for us as part of Georges entourage. He asked us if we wanted to report on the meeting, and consequently we were the only reporters there, standing behind Yoko and John who garlanded the maharishi and talked in unmemorable platitudes about peace and love.
Yes, I wrote it up that night and reaped from the British press the harvest of exclusivity.
On reading Yokos request, I considered passing on my grandfathers advice but thought better of it. It sounded too much like something she might say. My advice for Yoko would be to buy a good book on elementary English grammar and usage. When she says give us advice that will make our lives heal and shine, she is at best mixing metaphors and at worst, talking characteristic nonsense. Very well, she sees our lives as bodies with wounds or sicknesses and asks for ways of healing them. Then she asks in addition that the lives shine.
I can see bodies shining after a good oil bath, but a life is each living things particular stretch of time and the acts that go into it. What advice can lead to these abstracts taking on a quality of intense light?
Yoko may mean that we should all work towards acquiring halos like angels. We shouldnt steal other peoples husbands. We shouldnt call our scribbles art or pretentious sounds music. And shouldnt read anything that Californian life-style charlatans write, taking our money to make our lives shine.
Bollywood in the 1980s was known for its melodramas. And we devoured them hit by hit. There was nothing called subtle. It was out there. Bad guys, good guys, vamps and villains. Martyrdom and sacrifice. Murder and mayhem. The formula didnt change. Only the costumes did. The political drama in India, as of now, needs better scriptwriters. The narrative is so damn tawdry, it is making avid political watchers a tad restless. Mamata Banerjee aced the super nautanki game with her changa-danga nonsense thank God she didnt add nanga.
Next came our Prime Ministers comical photo-op waving to non-existent crowds, deserted shikaras and water hyacinths floating on an empty Dal Lake in Srinagar. Rahul Gandhi has upped his agro antenna with the crude chor-chowkidar attack on Narendra Modi, adding darpok to his charges for good measure. He has also wondered aloud whether the PM suffers from schizophrenia (hope Rahul Baba knows how to spell it!). Whats with our leaders? Language issues? Staged photos that fool nobody? Hey Bhagwan!
What happens with their minders and those overpaid spin doctors who are supposed to take care of details and gaffes on this scale? If they are too scared of their bosses to advise them during this, the most critical period before a national election, they should be sacked. Spin doctors are supposed to be perception experts who know precisely which buttons to press and when. Last weeks fiasco (CBI vs Kolkata cops), was so darned ludicrous, we would have laughed out loud had the implications been innocuous. But they are anything but. What we are witnessing is a near-anarchic development which can only lead to chaos. How many cover-ups can a country handle without cracks in the system threatening its very stability. If cops are colluding with the State, and if the Centre is suspecting cops, what sort of security/safety can citizens depend on during a crisis?
Pre-election stunts are not new to India. But some of the recent antics take the cake. And to think it is netas like them who harbour ambitions of leading the country! Astonishing! The low level of political engagement and discourse is a matter of grave concern, given the limited choices in front of us. There is hardly any serious contender on the scene for the top job just a bunch of opportunists and wannabes. For starters, which one of them can be called educated? Take a look at some of the hopefuls from Mr Rahul Gandhi to Mayawati, we have politicians with ferocious appetites for seizing power, but with no formal education to help them negotiate this vast and tumultuous nation of ours. Ms Banerjees CV shows multiple degrees, but when she speaks, her words make one wonder. Education is not just about degrees. It is not even about which school or college one has attended. I know several duffers who proudly refer to their Oxford/Cambridge/Harvard/Princeton days but are they truly educated? Civilised? Open and receptive? Interested in matters of the world? Aware and informed?
It is worrying to think India may soon be dominated by semi-literate leaders and members of Parliament. People who are ignorant, stuck in a time-warp, stubborn in their views and rigid in their thinking. It is a recipe for disaster. Our bureaucrats and technocrats are amongst the sharpest on the planet. But what chance do they have to function efficiently in a hostile environment that does not recognise merit and only rewards chamchas? It is demoralising to see just how eager our babus are to please the establishment and kowtow to their political patrons. When asked, they shrug and say, Our careers and promotions depend on how we manage our ministers. Perhaps it was always this way. But it is far more in your face and blatant these days.
The most pathetic election stunt involves getting back our financial fugitives with a great deal of bombast and show. While I agree every such defaulter must be held accountable, as it happens across the world, what we are likely to witness in the case of Vijay Mallya looks like a dramatically staged tamasha to impress voters and prove a point. It will be a spectacle all right. Just as it is meant to be. The King of Good Times will be brought back to face a trial in India one wonders whether manacles and chains will be used to make the homecoming still more dramatic? The timing couldnt have been more cunningly calculated. Though how exactly achche din will be served through this theatrical stunt remains a mystery.
Come on. If the present government means business and is sincere about addressing such issues swiftly, why not start by cleaning its own stables? There are enough benami billionaires in Parliament to make the rest of the businessmen-crooks look like amateurs. Will anybody dare to name and prosecute some of the veteran politicians who have been amassing wealth for over five decades? Their names are known to all. The identity of their frontmen is also not a secret. But everyones lips are sealed, because money talks. Especially during an election year. Given the overall cynicism this time, money will be the winner. He/she who has it will sit on the kursi. Buying and selling of crucial seats will be the real game-changer eventually. In all this, who are we? Nobodies! We will sit dumbly on the sidelines and watch our future being traded for a few pieces of gold. And yes, the uneducated will tell us whats good for us.
And we will go on pretending we are still a democracy. An unwieldy, ungovernable democracy soon to be led by a bunch of semi-literates. Welcome to an unlettered future, folks! And yes, Mr Gandhi go ahead and build the temple, if you win. It will be the single most dishonest act coming from you but as in love, war and politics, the winner takes it all! The only losers in Elections 2019 will be us idiots the citizens.
Convey to the Dear One, the craving of His devotees for Him.
Without Thee the luxury of downy beds is painful like a malady;
Life in a palace is like dwelling amid serpents;
Without Thee, pleasant beverages are no better than a sharp poniard.
Without Thee these comforts are killing like the butchers knife;
A pallet of straw is dearer to us, if the Dear One be there;
Palaces burn us like the infernal fire, if Thou be not with us, writes the Guru.
When in love a person sees the beloved everywhere. He sees Him everywhere in water, in land, in the mountains, above, below. The Guru, as if in a trance, writes, Jale Hari, thale Hari, ure Hari, bane Hari.....Tuhi Tuhi Tuhi Tuhi... Only You only You only You! No duality is left. The question of distinction or discrimination does not arise.
The Creator is not only universal and eternal but is present in each and every entity. The unity of mankind before the Creator is emphasised in Sikhism. A true Sikh is always imbued with the firm faith in the oneness of God (Ek-Onkar). The Guru says men are one though they appear different. The Creator is in the temple as He is in the mosque. He is in the Hindus worship as He is in the Muslims prayer. He says a person should rise above narrow sectarian views in order to realise the Supreme Being. A person in love does not believe in any kind of distinction.
A true Sikh, full of devotion and love, has no faith in false rituals and superstitions. Guru Gobind Singh asks, ...So what if you worshipped statues, monuments or pictures? Worshipping these, your soul has been tired but you have not found anything... The whole world is busy in such false performances without knowing the secret mystery of God.
What is the path of realisation? It is only through love and love only. Sach kahon sun leho sabai, jin prem kio tin hee prabh paio I speak verily; hear me all God is realised only through love, proclaims the Guru. It is difficult to win the grace of God by any other means.
In Sikh scripture, the Almighty, Wahiguru, is addressed by different names like Mita, Saion, Mittar, Sajan, Dost, Beli. It emphasises a close, friendly and trustworthy bond between the Guru and the Sikh. O Lord! If you are my friend then dont separate yourself from me even for a minute is inscribed in the Guru Granth Sahib.
But love requires courage. It requires sacrifice. Real love consists in open exhibition and indulgence. The Guru writes, You do not know what love is. He that experiences it, knows it. He alone can taste the fruit of love who is not only instinctively with it but would dare indulge in sports.
With contemplation on the Guru in the heart, with the tongue repeating the name of the Guru, with the eyes beholding the True Guru, with the ears hearing the name of the Guru, thus totally saturated with the love of the True Guru, one attains a place of honour in the Lords mansion, says the Guru.
It is election season again. As the states present their Budgets before the new fiscal year begins, the fear is that runaway populism could prove the biggest threat to finances. The national Budget had set the trend ahead of the general elections and the states seem to be competing with each other to offer freebies like gold and grants while also going out of the way to placate farmers who may have suffered the most in recent years from agricultural distress caused by falling prices of food grains, fruits and vegetables. While minimum support price and various other subsidy schemes from crop loans to crop insurance are already in place, the difficulty has lain in getting the benefits to the truly deserving like the share croppers and agricultural workers. The optics have become so important in being seen to be doing more for farmers that the states are competing to top up what the national Budget may have promised, like the Rs 6,000 per year to small farmers.
Any support to farmers should be welcome as they provide the country with food security. But states have electorates that go beyond the rural, urban and semi-urban voter are as big a constituency to political parties. The Karnataka Budget, besides addressing the 40-lakh strong farmer community, addresses the urban voter too. A better planned city infrastructure for Bengaluru the IT capital which is still the fastest growing city in India as it is a magnet for rural youth in search of jobs has been allocated a whopping Rs 1.2 lakh crore budgetary allocation for rail and road connectivity in a modern, multi-modal integrated transport system. The fluid political situation in the state with the JD(S)-Congress coalition having just sufficient numbers over the BJP to rule may have spurred certain adventurousness with the Budget for the rural-urban push.
The more expensive handouts like free gold worth Rs 38,000 crore to brides in Assam, besides free rice to about 20 lakh tea estate workers and grants to temples and mosques, mean finances will be stretched like never before. But ballooning deficits do not seem to have dissuaded most states from placing fiscal prudence above populist measures. Tamil Nadu might have been an exception but then, despite its desire to keep the deficit to within three per cent of Gross State Domestic Product, the state faces a debt burden in servicing debt close to Rs 3.79 lakh crore (including PF). The Uttar Pradesh Budget seems as concerned by the cow as voters to the extent that it has allocated Rs 600 crore for cow welfare. The huge economic cost of populism does not seem to deter governments from funding sops and freebies in poll year Budgets even though the voter is an unpredictable animal when it comes to which buttons he will press on the EVM. The point is all governments seem to wake up only after four years and promise the moon only in poll season.
The talks in Moscow earlier this week, on Tuesday and Wednesday, between the Taliban and a 42-member Afghan delegation of the nations key political players, led by former President Hamid Karzai, is indicative of the setting of a new stage in Afghanistans embattled recent history.
The question is what place India sees for itself in the new picture that is emerging as the result of US President Donald Trumps plans to withdraw his countrys troops from Afghanistan, where they have been for the past 17 years after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. This is a goal that could well be within grasp in the foreseeable future, and the process appears to be chaperoned by Washington and Moscow working in tandem.
As such, New Delhi will be dealing with friends if it chooses to play a part in the coming developments. India did send a small team of non-officials two retired ambassadors to Moscow last November as observers at the conference of key regional powers with the Taliban.
As the process of reconciliation with the Taliban gathered steam with US diplomacy being energetically deployed in Doha (Qatar), where the Taliban have a representative office for international contacts, the US sent Zalmay Khalizad, its special representative for the Taliban reconciliation talks, to New Delhi last month to keep India abreast of current developments. Mr Karzai had also been in the Indian capital about the same time.
So far, the Indian stance has been to align its position completely with that of the Afghan government. Since President Ashraf Ghani declined to send an official delegation to Moscow last November, India also sent a team of non-officials. Mr Ghanis guardedness is due to the fact that the Taliban dont recognise the Kabul government as being legitimate, while India along with the rest of the international community does. But, in time, it is to be expected that Taliban will engage with the authorities in Kabul.
Essentially, we might be at a stage when India will need to make up its mind to officially engage with the Taliban. It will be a surprise if unofficial contacts have not already been established, but these will need to be formalised.
As a part of the processes under way in respect of Afghan reconciliation, an interim government replacing the Ghani administration is being envisaged and is widely anticipated. The Taliban may be expected to not only participate in it but will likely seek to influence it in many ways. In the event, if a positive official veneer is not placed by India on its contacts with the Taliban, practical difficulties are likely to arise. The other leading regional powers Pakistan, Iran China and Turkey, besides the US and Russia have little difficulty recognising the Taliban officially. In order to pre-position itself, New Delhi would need to do the same.
Earlier this week, Union minister Smriti Irani said she would leave politics the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi hangs up his boots. Lest this be interpreted as her alluding to the possibility of a premature closure of a breathtaking political career, she exuded confidence that Mr Modi would be around for long years. But the moot point of her suo moto declaration is that she is active in politics and in the Bharatiya Janata Party chiefly because of personal loyalty and not out of commitment to an ideology or party programme. Another way of phrasing the declaration is that for Ms Irani, the leader is paramount over the party and what it stands for.
Fifteen years ago in December 2004, Ms Irani had threatened to fast unto death demanding the resignation of Mr Modi, then the chief minister of Gujarat. Although the protest, embarrassing for the party, was subsequently called off, it must be emphasised that she wished to embark on it on Christmas Day, which was also Atal Behari Vajpayees birthday, as a mark of respect to him. Despite Mr Modis homage, the political and personal divergence between him and Vajpayee has been well documented. When Ms Irani announced her protest, she was asked if permission had been taken from the party leadership: Why do you think you need permission to do what you think is right. The BJP is a democratic party. Not many BJP leaders would be able to make such an assertion now without risking their stature and position.
This story needed retelling not for the transformation of Ms Irani, her changing loyalties and Mr Modis spectacularly altered fortunes. These developments involving the same set of individuals, over a period of a decade and a half, underscores the partys transition. From being a party with a difference known for its ideology, loyalty towards its political fraternity and commitment to the partys programmes, the adhesive in the party is now focused mostly on an individual. From a time when party leaders used nationalist slogans as their battle cry, now, as recently seen in the Lok Sabha on Budget day, the name of a single leader has turned into the rallying point. Anyone who doesnt utter the incessant chant or who does not burst into a cackle of laughter when commanded, is pilloried recall how defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman was panned when she did not find the joke cracked at the expense of Renuka Chaudhury any bit amusing. The BJP now, like all non-Communist parties, has one presiding deity, and anyone not paying obeisance is most likely to be marginalised, if not actually labelled anti-national.
When the BJP distinguished itself as party where policies and programmes were more important than any individual, its leaders took pride in the collegiate style of the BJPs working, where internal charcha or discussion was mandatory
before major decisions. In the years when the party moved from the political periphery to the centrestage before 2014, the party cadre boasted that the
organisation had the ability to carry ek mayan mein do talwarein or two swords in one sheath indicating to the Atal Behari Vajpayee-L.K. Advani duo. The two were at one level, two ends of the Hindutva spectrum, and locked in ceaseless competition. Yet they remained ideological brothers, never failing to close ranks whenever danger arose from outside. Barring the two main Communist parties and the original Janata Dal, the BJP was the closest one could get to a democratic party in Indian politics. Other parties, from the Congress to various factions of the Janata Parivar, which later branched out into family enterprises, even ideological parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party, remain merely personal bastions of insecure yet ambitious leaders.
The BJP has its roots in the Jan Sangh, which was controlled by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, especially after Syama Prasad Mookerjees death. Deen Dayal Upadhyay, who fronted for the RSS, was, however, more of a Balasaheb Deoras loyalist than a blind admirer of M.S. Golwalkar. The two differed on the fundamental organisational credo Golwalkar practised the principle of Ek Chalak Anuvartitva or follow one leader, while Deoras stood for Sah Chalak Anuvartitva or follow multiple leaders. Till 2014, this remained the partys organisational principle. In November 2015, the four sidelined party veterans L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha and Shanta Kumar in a statement bemoaned the demise of this party tenet. They asked for a review of how the party is being forced to kowtow to a handful, and how its consensual character has been destroyed. Issues raised in that note have never been addressed and the page has been turned.
The danger of what has happened to the BJP, how the Congress reoriented itself as chiefly a family hegemonised organisation after 1967 and how other parties became proprietary units has always lurked. In his concluding speech in the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1941, Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar sounded three warnings for the emergent republic, of which the second is most pertinent in the context being discussed in this article. He quoted John Stuart Mill arguing that lawmakers and people must not lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enables him to subvert their institutions.
Further ahead, he read out the words of another great patriot, the Irish leader Daniel OConnel: No man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. Finally, he recalled that Bhakti was a part of Indias culture and religion for its capacity to be the road to salvation for many. However, in politics Bhakti or hero worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. There is little point in blaming anyone or pointing fingers at individuals responsible for the BJPs changed political values, but there is a need to be aware of this development and recall Ambedkars forewarning.
Sharad Pawar has no desire to contest the election, but he assured them that he will think about their demand. (File Photo)
Pune: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar said on Friday that some of his party colleagues are insisting that he contest Lok Sabha election from Madha in south-western Maharashtra this time.
He had no desire to contest election, but he assured them that he will think about their demand, Mr Pawar said.
The former Union minister was speaking to reporters after chairing a party meeting to take overview of constituencies ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
Asked about the speculation that he may contest from Madha again, Mr Pawar, currently a Rajya Sabha member, said, "During the meeting, some senior party leaders and the sitting MP from Madha insisted that I contest election (from Madha)."
The constituency which is in Solapur district is currently represented in the Lok Sabha by NCP's Vijaysinh Mohite Patil.
"I have not taken any decision so far and I have no desire (to contest election), but some party leaders clearly said that the way they obey my policy decisions, I too should respect their decision," he said.
He told them he would think about it, the NCP chief added. After representing Madha in the Lok Sabha during 2009 to 2014, Pawar had said he will not contest Lok Sabha elections anymore.
They are trying to form a majboor (weak) government in Delhi. They are worried about the present majboot (strong) government, said PM Modi at the rally in Agartala. (Photo: ANI)
Agartala: Facing sharp criticism from the opposition over issues like Rafale deal, farm distress and unemployment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday asserted at his Agartala rally in Tripura that his government in New Delhi works with good intention. He said the people of the country will teach the opposition parties a lesson for peddling lies.
He also said the main job of the 'mahamilawatwalas' is to deride him and it seems they were all competing in an Olympics of hurling abuses at him.
Calling the opposition a 'mahamilawat' (great adulteration) again, he said its leaders are only involved in "holding each other's hands in meetings in Delhi and Kolkata for photographs".
PM Modi lashed out at the Opposition parties uniting, reiterating his charge that this is a mahamilawat (highly adulterated) that favours middlemen in the government. They are trying to form a majboor (weak) government in Delhi. They are worried about the present majboot (strong) government, PM Modi said.
PM Modi outlined all the schemes his government had in place for the development and betterment of the poor, farmers and the middle class. At his Tripura rally, he also appreciated Biplab Deb and his work, representing BJP in the state as the chief minister.
The prime minister listed out central schemes including recently launched PM Kisan, Ayushman Bharat, Ujjwala Yojana for LPG connection and insurance for workers to counter the oppositions charge that the BJP-led governments policies are not benefiting the people. Tripura was deprived of development on the pretext of being a landlocked region. It is now being made gateway of the South East Asia under the BJP government, the prime minister said adding, I was surprised to know that for the first time in Tripura, paddy was procured at MSP (minimum support price).
Earlier, before reaching Agartala rally PM Modi laid foundation stones for a series of developmental projects in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.
Here in Agartala, he unveiled a statue of Tripuras last ruler Birbikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur, and inaugurated a 23-km long railway track.
The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh' and is firmly opposed to the Indian leader's visit to the East Section of the China-India boundary. (Photo: Twitter | @BJP4India)
Beijing/New Delhi: Chinas foreign ministry on Saturday condemned Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Arunachal Pradesh, also claimed by China, saying it firmly opposed activities of Indian leaders in the region, asserting that it has never recognised the sensitive border state and the Indian leadership should refrain from any action that may "complicate the boundary question."
In New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs reacted sharply to China's remarks, saying the state of Arunachal Pradesh is an "integral and inalienable part" of India. "Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions," the MEA spokesperson said in a statement.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in response to a question on Modi's visit said, "China's position on the China-India boundary question is consistent and clear-cut. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh' and is firmly opposed to the Indian leader's visit to the East Section of the China-India boundary."
China urges the Indian side to bear in mind the common interests of the two countries, respect the interests and concerns of the Chinese side, cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral relations, and refrain from any action that may lead to the escalation of disputes or complicate the boundary question," she said in her reaction posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website.
China claims the north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet. India and China have so far held 21 rounds of talks to resolve the border dispute.
The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC). China routinely objects to Indian leaders visiting Arunachal Pradesh to highlight its stand.
PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have met several times last year to give impetus to the trade discussions between the two countries. But progress, according to Indian government officials and representatives of various Indian trade bodies, has been extremely slow.
Hyderabad: MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi said on Saturday that he could not understand why certain comments on religion were made. He was reacting to a statement of yoga guru Baba Ramdev Lord Ram is the ancestor of not only Hindus but also Muslims.
Mr Owaisi said, We are not against anyones beliefs but the RSS and Sangh Parivar are spreading wrong propaganda. There is a continuous propaganda which is saying that Muslims were forced into conversion, which is not the case. Our forefathers were not forced to become Muslims. They embraced Islam voluntarily. What is the RSS going to get by saying these things? What is the message that they are trying to give, Mr Owaisi said.
Mr Owaisi who interacted with youth in the morning in the Old City said, Is the Constitution of India bigger or is it your thinking which must be honoured? The Constitution grants everyone the right to follow the religion they want.
Mr Owaisis speech in the Lok Sabha during the motion of thanks to the Presidents address stirred a controversy as he asked questions about the Bharat Ratna, the countrys highest honour. He has pointed out that most of the Bharat Ratna conferees were either Brahmins or belonged to the upper castes.
He said, It is high time there are norms and parameters for conferring the Bharat Ratna.
Hyderabad: The state government on Saturday suspended Vikarabad collector Syed Omar Jaleel following a direction from the Election Commission of India for his alleged involvement in opening 120 EVMs used for the Assembly elections even as a case was pending regarding the poll before the High Court.
The EC had on Friday directed Chief Secretary S.K. Joshi to place the official under suspension by the evening and initiate disciplinary proceedings as he had violated its orders. The EC had directed district election officers that EVMs and VVPATs be kept in safe custody in constituencies where election petitions had been filed till their final disposal by the High Court.
Accordingly, Mr Joshi issued orders suspending Mr Jaleel.
Ranga Reddy collector D.S. Lokesh Kumar has been given additional charge of the Vikarabad district.
Congress candidate G. Prasad, who faced defeat in the recent polls, had approached the HC alleging irregularities in the conduct of elections.
When it became known that the official had opened the strong rooms where the EVMs were stored, he and other Congress leaders met Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Sharma demanded action on Mr Jaleel.
The EC called for an explanation from the collector. He said he was not aware of the case in the High Court. The reply did not satisfy the EC.
After the ECs order, the Congress sought an inquiry into the alleged breaking of seals and removal of the VVPAT slips from EVMs in the Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency.
The Philippines Civil Aviation Airport Authorities (CAAP) and the army later carried out a search operation. (Representational image)
Bengaluru: A few days after they went missing, charred bodies of two Indian pilots Captain Naveen Nagaraj, who hails from Bengaluru, and his trainee pilot Kuldeep Singh, were found from the aircraft debris in Philippines.
The aircraft, a Cessna C-152, lost contact with the Plaridel Airport in Bulacan province during a training sortie and crashed.
The Philippines Civil Aviation Airport Authorities (CAAP) and the army later carried out a search operation.
However sources said the search operation began 24 hours after the aircraft crashed in the thick forest. As it was dense uninhabited, the rescue teams used drones and spotted the aircraft debris.
Later the teams entered the forest and reached the crash location.
While Naveen is a resident of Nandini Layout in Bengaluru, he worked as pilot instructor with the Fliteline Aviation School.
Naveens parents Nagaraj and Meena flew to the Philippines from Bengaluru as soon as they got the news on Tuesday. They accused the Philippines government of not initiating the search operation immediately after the crash and waited for 24 hours to pass.
The Aircraft Accident Investigation and Inquiry Board of Philippines is looking into the incident.
The forceps had been placed near the main artery to control the blood from oozing out, as is the practice, a microbiologist said.
Hyderabad: A city resident underwent emergency surgery on Saturday to remove forceps left behind in her abdomen by doctors during an earlier surgery at the Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences.
The forceps were left behind in the abdomen of Ms Maheshwari Chowdary, 33, during a hernia operation on November 2.
The forceps showed up in an X-ray she underwent at the hospital where she landed up complaining of severe pain and vomiting.
On February 8, Ms Chowdary complained of unbearable pain in the abdominal region and was rushed to the hospital. The X-ray revealed forceps in the external abdominal cavity. The radiology department was not willing to share the report, her husband Harshvardhan said.
A battery of tests were carried out and they told us they have to operate again to remove the forceps. It was the first time, we were told, the forceps had been forgotten inside the body.
Mr Chowdary, who came to the hospital with his brother and other relatives, protested against the negligence of the doctors. Ms Chowdary had been admitted to the hospital on October 31 and the surgery was performed on November 2. She was discharged on November 12.
There had been no complaints all these days and doctors did not make her undergo another X-ray as she was stable.
The forceps had been placed near the main artery to control the blood from oozing out, as is the practice, a microbiologist said.
A senior surgical gastroenterologist at NIMS said on condition of anonymity, Equipment taken in and brought out from the operation theatre is counted during surgery,
If any tool is damaged, the log book has to mention it. This is the work of the surgical nursing team that hands over these devices to the surgeons. If a medical device was left inside, it means the equipment was not counted after surgery. And if a count was taken, why was it not reported, the doctor asked. This is an unfortunate incident, NIMS director Dr K. Manohar said. A three-member committee of doctors from Osmania General Hospital will probe into this incident and submit a report.
Asked if the forceps would have rusted, being inside the body for three months, senior surgical gastroenterologist Dr Srivenu Itha said: Inert material is used in surgical devices, hence there will not be rusting. But it can cause pain or uncomfortable sensations and there is definitely a risk, as it is a foreign object inside the body. Once identified it must immediately be removed.
A police case was registered under Sections 336 (endangering life) and 337 (causing hurt) at Panjagutta police station based on a complaint from Mr Chowdary against the surgical gastroenterology team of NIMS Hospital.
While Vadra was grilled for the first time for about five-and-a-half hours, he was questioned the second time for about 9 hours. (Photo: AP | File)
New Delhi: Robert Vadra, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law, on Saturday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for the third time in connection with a probe into allegations of money laundering in purchase of assets abroad.
Vadra arrived at the central probe agency's office at Jamnagar House in central Delhi at about 10.45 am in his private vehicle.
Officials said the investigating officer (IO) of the case required Vadra to answer more questions in connection with the case and hence was asked to depose on Saturday, after his two sessions of questioning on February 6 and 7.
While Vadra was grilled for the first time for about five-and-a-half hours, he was questioned the second time for about 9 hours. It is understood that the last time Vadra was "confronted with" documents that the agency had obtained or seized as part of its probe in the case, including those linked to absconding defence dealer Sanjay Bhandari.
Vadra has also shared documents with the investigating officer of the case and has assured some more will be provided as and when he gets them, official sources had said.
The ED case against Vadra relates to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property located at 12, Bryanston Square worth 1.9 million GBP (British pounds), which is allegedly owned by him.
The agency has told a Delhi court that it has received information about various new properties in London which belong to Vadra. These include two houses, one worth 5 million GBP and the other valued at 4 million GBP, six other flats and more properties.
Vadra has denied the allegations of possessing illegal foreign assets and termed them a political witch hunt against him. He said he was being "hounded and harassed" to subserve political ends.
Sources said Vadra's statement is being recorded under Section 50 (powers of authorities regarding summons, production of documents and to give evidence) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, as was done the last two times.
His appearance before the ED acquired political overtones after his wife Priyanka Gandhi, recently appointed Congress general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, accompanied him to the investigating agency's office on Wednesday while she picked him up after questioning on Thursday.
Vadra is also expected to depose before the ED on February 12 in Jaipur in an another money-laundering case related to a land scam in Bikaner. The Rajasthan High Court has directed him to cooperate with the agency in the case.
As part of the reservation movement, the protesters occupied the tracks near Malarna Dungaar station in Maksudanpura village of Sawai Madhopur district. (Photo: ANI)
Sawai Madhopur: A section of the Gujjar community demanding reservation, have erected tents on railway tracks in protest, leading to the cancellation of several trains in the Kota division.
As part of the reservation movement, the protesters occupied the tracks near Malarna Dungaar station in Maksudanpura village of Sawai Madhopur district.
Following the protests, as many as four trains were diverted and 14 cancelled between Sawai Madhopur to Bayana section-Nimoda to Malarna block section in Kota Division of Western Central Railway.
One of the members of the protesting group said, "We have a good Chief Minister and a good Prime Minister. (But) We want that they listen to the demands of the Gujjar community. It isn't an uphill task for them to provide reservation."
Earlier on Friday, the Gujjars staged a 'rasta-roko' dharna at the railway tracks in Rajasthan's Swai Madhopur district, demanding implementation of the 5 per cent reservation that was promised to them by the state government.
The protest led by Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla of the Gujjar Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti (GASS) also affected the train movement on the Delhi-Mumbai line.
On October 26 last year, the Rajasthan government passed a bill which increased Other Backward Classes (OBC) quota from 21 per cent to 26 per cent.
In December 2018, the Rajasthan government also approved one per cent reservation for Gujjars and four OBCs. At present, these communities are getting one per cent separate reservation under the legal limit of 50 per cent reservation meant for the most-backwards category in addition to OBC reservation.
Chennai: Carrying on the 'party policy' of invoking Amma's name at all possible chances, Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam in his budget speech said she remains the "guiding beacon and a guardian" of the AIADMK government. He also took her name before commencing his budget presentation, saying he was "revering her visionary and able leadership and seeking her blessings to continue to fulfill her great legacy".
Picking a verse from Tirukkural, OPS said, "Only great persons endowed with noble qualities can achieve the zenith of perfection in the performance of great deeds." Amma was an "embodiment of this couplet, as she lived by her credo of 'I am by the people and for the people', committing herself entirely to the welfare of people and development of the state," said the Deputy CM to the thumping of benches by his party colleagues.
Amma will live forever in the hearts of the Tamil people as she remains the "catalyst of our inner consciousness", OPS said, adding that she has always been "an inspirational force to realise our potential and remains our guiding beacon and a guardian of the good governance regime established by her perseverance".
OPS also had a word of admiration for Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, declaring he was effectively following Amma's path "surmounting all challenges posed by adversaries".
Earlier, the AIADMK legislators accorded a grand welcome to Palaniswami and Panneerselvam by thumping their desks when they together entered the Assembly Hall for the budget presentation. OPS as finance minister carried the budget papers in a suitcase that a large picture of Jayalalithaa pasted on it-just as last year
The bench said seeking relaxation means the company is carrying out blasting in the prohibited area.
Hyderabad: The National Green Tribunal in New Delhi on Friday expressed displeasure at the Union ministry of forest and environments apathy in granting permission for open cast mining at Kakatiya Khani II in Jayashankar Bhupalapalli district.
The NGT bench headed by Justice Raghuvendra Singh Rathore was dealing with an application by Mr Nagavelli Rajalingamurthy, a resident of Bhupalapalli district, challenging inaction by authorities in taking precaution during open cast mining activity in Kakatiya Khani-II which is resulting in air, noise, water and land pollution, damaging fertile lands and depleting ground water in the vicinity of the mine.
The bench said it appeared that the ministry had not applied their mind while granting relaxation to the mining company. The bench asked Singareni Collieries Company Ltd why it had sought relaxation of the condition that bars mining within 500 m of residential areas adjacent to the mine, when the company had claimed it had not taken up blasting within 500m of prohibited areas. The bench said seeking relaxation means the company is carrying out blasting in the prohibited area.
When counsel requested the bench to conduct an inquiry through an independent agency to ascertain the fact, the bench asked what purpose such an inquiry would serve when the ministry had been giving false reports.
Mr K. Sravan Kumar, counsel for the petitioner, complained to the bench that the mining company was carrying out blasting close to the residential area. The bench said it would pass appropriate orders soon.
They rushed Prabhu to the Chromepet GH and were informed that he died of suffocation. (Representational Images)
Chennai: A taxi driver in the city was asphyxiated after sleeping in his car with the air conditioning turned on.
The incident occurred on Thursday night when Prabhu, 36, from Vedachandur in Dindigul had parked his car on a street in Srinivasapuram in Pammal, closed the windows, turned the AC and gone to sleep at around midnight on wednesday.
At around 5 am, residents grew suspicious and informed the police.
The Shankar Nagar police, who rushed to the spot knocked to no response from Prabhu. They then resorted to breaking a window open to see him lying motionless surrounded by alcohol bottles.
They rushed Prabhu to the Chromepet GH and were informed that he died of suffocation. Prabhus family in Dindigul was informes amd will reach Chennai on Thursday.
Meanwhile, police sources say that Prabhu had been seperated from his wife Sukanya a while ago. He had been living in Kamarajapuram, Anakaputhur in Pallavaram, they said.
'This time BJP govt cannot get away with manipulating factual information regarding the negotiations for their benefit,' he further added in another tweet. (Photo: ANI)
Amravati: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding an independent investigation into the Rafale deal.
Naidu wrote a series of tweets lashing out at the Prime Minister. "PM Narendra Modis silence on Rs 59,000 Cr Rafale deal and reports on the possibility of Indias Biggest Defence scam directly involving the PMO, speaks volumes of BJP govts destructive decisions. Modi ji, truth cannot be hidden for long when you cheat the nation, he tweeted.
Naidu also cited Defence Ministrys note on the deal and said, PMOs interference in the name of parallel negotiations, bypassing the Ministry of Defence in finalising Rafale deal, undermined the negotiating position of the Indian Negotiating Team. These revelations are shocking. They indicate a lack of integrity and regard within BJP government.
All latest developments in the Rafale Scam case have strengthened the suspicion over the deal and require to be investigated independently so that truth comes out. This time BJP govt cannot get away with manipulating factual information regarding the negotiations for their benefit, he further added in another tweet.
Earlier on Friday, a combative Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had termed as incomplete and distorted the news item published by a newspaper about parallel negotiations by the PMO in the Rafale fighter deal and wondered whether doubts were being deliberately created in the minds of people because of some corporate warfare.
PM Modi is on a two-day visit to Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura which began on Friday. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)
Guwahati: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation stones of several projescts worth over Rs 4,000 crore in Arunachal Pradesh. PM Modi is on a two-day visit to Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura which began on Friday. The visit comes amid protests in the region against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
I am happy to inaugurate and lay foundation stones for projects worth over Rs 4,000 crores. Besides this, work on projects worth Rs 13,000 crores is taking place at a fast pace in Arunachal Pradesh, the PM said at a meeting at Indira Gandhi park near state capital Itanagar.
PM Modi said the projects launched on Saturday would not just improve connectivity in the state but also strengthen the power sector, would boost health sector and help in promoting states culture.
Modi laid foundation stone for the Greenfield airport at Hollongi near Itanagar and inaugurated the retrofitted Teju airport in Lohit district.
He inaugurated a 110 MW hydro electric project at Pare, launched Arun Prabha a Doordarshan channel exclusively for Arunachal Pradesh and 50 health and wellness centres.
He laid foundation stone for a film and television institute at Jote, seven electric sub stations and the Sella Tunnel and its approach road in Tawang.
PM Modi said, Arunachal Pradesh is a strategically important state related to national security. But still not much focus was given by earlier government to improve facilities in this state. Our government made continuous efforts to change this.
The PM is slated to address a rally at Changsari near Guwahati and another at Agartala in Tripura later in the day before departing to New Delhi.
The nuns had received their transfer orders from the Missionaries of Jesus Congregation in March 2018, months after they had complained at several forums within the church against the Bishop Franco Mulakkal. (Photo: Twitter | ANI)
Kottayam: Four nuns from the Kuravilangad church in Kerala, who were transferred for allegedly campaigning against former Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal accused of sexually assaulting a nun in the state, don't need to move out of the convent where they are staying with the "survivor nun", the church said.
Bishop Angelo, Apostolic administrator in charge of congregation has written a letter to 5 sisters protesting against Franco Mulakkal. The letter reads, "There will be no move from Diocese of Jalandhar to oust you from Kuravilangad Church as long as you are needed for the court case."
The nuns had received their transfer orders from the Missionaries of Jesus Congregation in March 2018, months after they had complained at several forums within the church against the Bishop Franco Mulakkal. The nuns refused to accept the directives even after reminders.
However, the church revoked their transfer orders on Friday, a day before the nuns were to take to the streets for the second round of their protest.
The nuns announced the development at the protest venue in Kottayam as they demanded justice for the nun.
The nuns had earlier protested near Kerala High Court in September last year.
Bishop Franco Mulakkal is accused of raping a nun on 14 occasions from May 5, 2014, to May 6, 2016, at the St Francis Mission Home in Kuruvilangad.
Father Kuriakose Kattuthara their colleague was found dead at a church in Hoshiarpur's Dasuya in October last year, months after he deposed against the bishop in the rape case.
Lee's films have examined themes like race relations, colourism in the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime, poverty and other political issues. (Photo: AP)
Milan: Director Spike Lee said Friday he will no longer wear Gucci or Prada until the brands hire some black designers following a pair of blackface fashion fails from the major Italian fashion houses.
Lee said on Instagram that "It's Obvious To Da Peoples That They Don't Have A Clue When It Comes To Racist, Blackface Hateful Imagery. WAKE UP." Spike said the brands needed to have black designers "To Be In Da Room When It Happen."
His personal boycott in the midst of movie awards season was a powerful message to luxury fashion houses that are already suffering backlashes for designs evoking racist images. Lee donned Gucci on the Venice Film Festival red carpet last September, following up with a stop by the Prada womenswear preview show in Milan later in the month decked out in a black Prada suit.
Gucci this week apologised for a high-neck black wool sweater that featured bright red lips when pulled over the face, while Prada apologised for a monkey bag charm resembling blackface in December. Both brands withdrew the offending pieces from sale on both websites and stores.
Prada said it "abhors all forms of racism," while Gucci called it "a powerful learning moment for the Gucci team and beyond." The blackface images have particular resonance in the US at a time when the governor of Virginia and his attorney general have been caught up in a scandal over blackface incidents from their college days in the 1980s. The offensive depictions are reminiscent of travelling minstrels from the 19th century, who would paint their faces black to portray African characters in a ridiculous and mocking fashion.
Blackface hasn't been the only fashion faux pas in recent memory. Dolce & Gabbana faced a boycott in China, the luxury world's number one market by a long shot, after one of its designers insulted Chinese people in a private chat over promotional videos featuring a Chinese model struggling to eat Italian food with chopsticks, which was seen as culturally insensitive.
Commenting on the controversies during New York Fashion Week, model Cipriana Quann said the offending designs suggested a lack of diversity within the companies, not just in the design studios but also the board rooms and on the runways. Also in New York, Japanese-American designer Tadashi Shoji said that the brands appeared to be lacking in cultural sensitivity.
"What are they thinking as a designer in the business? That is what puzzles me. If you think about this simple, simple stuff, offending these customers, I think it's not good for business," Shoji said Thursday night.
London: For a man who spent nearly three decades in prison, the passage of time was no doubt important to Nelson Mandela. So it is perhaps fitting that an exhibition opening in London on Friday about his life and legacy features his watch, which was always kept on South African time wherever he travelled in the world as the countrys first black president.
The interactive exhibition takes a journey though Mandelas life including his upbringing in rural Eastern Cape as the son of a chief, his 27-year incarceration and the end of apartheid when he became president in 1994. Mandela died in 2013 aged 95.
It features previously unseen footage alongside more than 150 artefacts such as clothes, campaign posters and travel documents on loan from the family of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and museums and archives worldwide.
My grandfather, during his presidential years, he wore a watch, a Philippe Patek watch, and Ive made that watch available because he gave me that watch and I think because he was such a committed person and always on time. Even when he travelled abroad his watch remained on South African time, which we found hilarious as a family, but that watch is also here on display, grandson Mandla Mandela told Reuters.
London is the first city to host the touring show Mandela: The Official Exhibition before it is permanently mounted in Mandelas birthplace Mvezo. Its our generations responsibility to ensure that we record history for generations to come to understand the character and to understand the glorious human achievement of Nelson Mandela, Zelda La Grange, his personal presidential aide and the exhibitions guest curator, said.
Mumbai: Actor Shahid Kapoor says he has constantly gone out of his comfort zone--despite being advised to play "safe" and found success in choices that were unconventional and brave.
The actor, who has featured in films like "Kaminey", "Haider", "Udta Punjab", believes in trying new things, even if one is swimming against the tide.
"Everybody always wants you to make a safe choice because the profession in itself is so unpredictable. But I've always found success in choices that weren't safe. Answers came to me. You have to try with full conviction, no matter what the end result is," Shahid told PTI.
"Swimmers who swim against the tide would be stronger than the ones who swim with it. It's just about getting an equal shot sometimes and then you'll know who's the strongest swimmer," he added.
The actor was speaking at the launch of Marks & Spencer's new spring summer collection on Thursday night. Shahid walked the ramp for the brand, which has come out with a "Rethink" philosophy for style.
The actor, who started as a background dancer in films like "Dil Toh Paagal Hai", before making his debut in "Ishq Vishk", said he gradually discovered himself as an actor.
"I don't know how much I was thinking in the first few years of my career to say I had to 'rethink' at some point. But I discovered myself overtime. I backed myself to do content that personally excited me.
"The struggle always is to understand what people want to see and at the same time trying to cater to yourself as an artiste."
Shahid said the key to sustain in the industry as an actor is to only do work which one feels strongly about.
"The trick is to always delve within and find out what drives you. I don't think you can do great work for a long time if you're not driven. The work that you do has to enrich you. You don't grow otherwise.
"I do feel, today there's a thin line between what actors want to do and what people want to see, and that's overlapping. Which is very healthy," he added.
Shahid will next be seen in "Kabir Singh", remake of the Telugu blockbuster "Arjun Reddy".
The monthly contribution by the worker joining the scheme would be Rs 55, with matching contributions from the government.
New Delhi: All unorganised sector workers up to 40 years of age can subscribe to the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan (PMSYM) scheme, which entails a minimum monthly pension of Rs 3,000, from February 15, a Labour Ministry notification said.
The scheme, announced by Finance Minister Piyush Goyal in the Budget for 2019-20, is targeted at unorganised sector workers with monthly income of up to Rs 15,000.
Goyal had said it would benefit 10 crore workers in the next five years.
The scheme would provide them an assured pension of Rs 3,000 from the age of 60 years on a monthly contribution of a small amount during their working life.
"This Scheme may be called the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan, 2019. It shall come into force on the 15th day of February, 2019....the unorganised workers have option to become the members of the Scheme, on and from the 15th day of February, 2019," the notification issued by the Labour Ministry said.
The monthly contribution by the worker joining the scheme would be Rs 55, with matching contributions from the government.
The contributions would rise at higher age. The worker joining the scheme at the age of 40 years would contribute Rs 200, while workers at the age of 29 years would pay Rs 100.
The scheme will cover unorganised workers who are working or engaged as home based workers, street vendors, mid-day meal workers, head loaders, brick kiln workers, cobblers, rag pickers, domestic workers, washer men, rickshaw pullers, landless labourers, agricultural workers, construction workers, among others.
However, informal workers will not be eligible for the scheme if they are covered under the National Pension Scheme, the Employees' State Insurance Corporation Scheme or Employees' Provident Fund Scheme. Workers who are income-tax assessees are also not be eligible.
The unorganised sector worker who wishes to join the scheme shall be not less than 18 years of age and not exceeding 40 years, the notification said. The worker should also have a savings bank account in his/her name and an Aadhaar number.
The scheme has been brought under the Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act, 2008. The Central government will establish a pension fund to be administered for this scheme.
The scheme also provides that if a subscriber has given regular contributions and died due to any cause, his spouse shall be entitled to continue with the scheme subsequently by payment of regular contribution.
The spouse can also exit the scheme by receiving the share of contribution paid by deceased subscriber along with accumulated interest.
In case of permanent disablement of a subscriber, his or her spouse will be entitled to continue with the scheme or exit by receiving the share of contribution, with interest.
In case of death of a pensioner, his or her spouse shall be only entitled to receive 50 per cent of the pension.
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Emily Dunning Barringer, who has a road in Darien named for her, died in April of 1961.
Barringer was the worlds first female ambulance surgeon and the first woman to secure a surgical residency.
Emily Dunning was born in Scarsdale, New York to Edwin James Dunning and Frances Gore Lang in 1876. The well-to-do New York family fell on hard times when she was about ten years old, and her father left for Europe to try to recoup his fortune, leaving her mother with five children.
When a well-meaning friend of Dunnings mother suggested that the girl might become a milliners apprentice, her mother said That settles the question. You are going to go to college. Dr. Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi, a friend of the family, recommended Cornell Universitys medical preparatory course, and her uncle, Henry W. Sage, a founder of Cornell, agreed to pay her tuition. Other family friends also helped with expenses. Emily Dunning graduated in 1897 and decided to attend the College of Medicine of the New York Infirmary. During her sophomore year there, the college merged with the new Cornell University School of Medicine.
She earned her medical degree in 1901, then received the second highest grade in the qualifying exam for an internship at Gouverneur Hospital in New York City. The hospital denied her application. The next year she applied again, this time with the support from political and religious figures, and the hospital accepted herthe first woman ever accepted for post-graduate surgical training in service to a hospital.
Barringer Road in Darien was named for the glass ceiling breaker as she lived both in New Canaan and Darien in her life.
Her experiences as the first female ambulance surgeon were the basis for her autobiography, Bowery to Bellevue, published in 1950. Later made into the MGM film The Girl in White, it starred June Allyson as Emily and Arthur Kennedy as her husband, Dr. Ben Barringer.
Emily Barringer was inducted into the Connecticut Womens Hall of Fame in 2000.
The president listed the economic achievements of his administration, which Democrats will have a hard timing rebutting. These include record numbers of people working, low unemployment numbers for minorities and high employment numbers for women, which even the white-clad female congressional Democrats were forced to applaud.
The president also challenged the growing appeal of socialism among young people. He said he was "alarmed" by it and pronounced, "We were born free and we will stay free," adding that we should "renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country." Even Speaker Nancy Pelosi was forced to stand and applaud that line to the apparent consternation of democratic socialists Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York.
The president's use of guests in the balcony was the most effective since Ronald Reagan inaugurated the practice. From a Holocaust survivor to one of his liberators; from a first-responder hero of Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue shooting to a former inmate recently released under the new "first step" law designed to address the disparity in sentencing of nonviolent, non-dangerous offenders, the president chose life stories that no one could oppose.
House Appropriations Chairman Luke Torian, D-Prince William, predicted a surplus between $1.5 billion and $2 billion on Wednesday, but Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne quickly upped the ante to the top of the range, based on corporate income taxes received in the middle of this month.
Herring, who is second in line to become governor, on Saturday called for Northam to resign and signaled his strong support for Fairfax. On Wednesday morning, Herring became embroiled in a scandal of his own after he acknowledged he wore blackface to dress as a rapper while at the University of Virginia. The attorney general said he would think over his future and whether he can remain in office, but no elected Democrats have gone so far as to call for his resignation.
With Northam and Herring showing no signs of stepping down, Fairfax, the lone African-American elected to statewide office, finds himself in a worsening situation that has created an uneasy situation for Democrats who have adopted believe survivors as a mantra for the #MeToo movement.
A Duke classmate of Watson, Kaneedreck Adams, told The Washington Post in a story published Friday evening that Watson came to her crying in the spring of 2000. Adams, according to the Post, lived across from Watson in on-campus apartments while they attended Duke University.
She was upset, Adams told the Post. She told me she had been raped and she named Justin.
Adams told the Post that both women were friends with Fairfax and that the alleged attack happened at a fraternity house.
CHILHOWIE, Va. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam will attend a fallen Chilhowie troopers funeral Saturday, his first appearance since controversy broke last week over an old yearbook photo.
Northam, the states Democratic governor, will visit the town of Chilhowie for Virginia State Police Trooper Lucas Dowells funeral. Dowell died from gunshot wounds last week in Cumberland County as authorities attempted to execute a search warrant at a residence.
The funeral, which begins at 11 a.m., is being held at Chilhowie Christian Church.
Media have been reporting about Northam's yearbook page from the 1980s which features a photo of a person in blackface and a person in a KKK robe. Northam has since rejected requests to resign. Other top Democrats, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring, have also been caught in their own scandals this week.
Senate
Support of Israel, rebuke over troop withdrawals. Voting 77 for and 23 against, the Senate on Feb. 5 passed a bill (S 1) that would rebuke President Donald Trump over his planned troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan; authorize $3.3 billion annually in U.S. military aid to Israel over 10 years; expand economic sanctions on the Assad regime in Syria; require a probe of money laundering by the Syrian central bank; authorize military and humanitarian aid to Jordan; and support Jordans efforts to secure its borders and care for hundreds of thousands of refugees. In addition, the bill would give a federal stamp of approval to so-called anti-BDS laws enacted by state and local governments. Those laws deny contracts and other benefits to companies or individuals that support boycott, divestiture or sanctions against Israel in response to its treatment of Palestinians.
Embattled Gov. Ralph Northam emailed state employees Friday to tell them he was deeply sorry for causing distraction from your important work but that he would not resign.
I want to assure you that the business of the commonwealth and our duty as public servants will continue, Northam said in the email. You are doing that work well and I know that will not change. You have placed your trust in me to lead Virginia forward and I plan to do that.
Also Friday, a Democratic senator from Northern Virginia broke with his caucus and called for Northam to remain in office as the governor tries to survive a scandal that started with a racist photo in Northams medical school yearbook.
Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City, said in a news release he wont call for Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, Attorney General Mark Herring or anyone else to resign until it is obvious that they have committed a crime in office or their ability to serve is irredeemably compromised.
Petersen said the photo in Northams yearbook truly shocked the conscience, but said he chose to wait a week and talk to friends and constituents before making a statement about Northam. He held a town hall meeting at the largest African-American church in his district, First Baptist of Vienna.
With that type of surgery, she would have never had any kind of up/down or side-to-side motion in her neck, Amanda Petrylak said.
However, she said, Dr. Hasan Syed at the University of Virginia recommended a more recently available treatment that installed a halo-like brace that would allow Claire to heal without fusing her vertebrae.
The treatment worked, Petrylak said, but because Claire did not sustain permanent injury, the man who caused her harm could not be charged with more than a misdemeanor.
Seeing your 8-year-old lying in the middle of the road wrapped up in a strangers jacket leaves you feeling powerless, John Petrylak said at the Jan. 30 subcommittee hearing. Seeing the person who did this receive a menial charge leaves us feeling completely powerless.
According to Haislip, who also testified at the hearing, cases like this pop up occasionally in the commonwealth. Often, as in the case of the Petrylaks, these cases can be delayed for months until doctors can determine if the victims injuries will be permanent.
HB 1941 will allow the commonwealth to charge these drivers with a felony immediately, Haislip said in an interview after the hearing.
Watts said she is working with Norment and other legislative leaders to amend the compromise to retain a cap on total deductions of more than $313,000 that the federal tax law removes for the wealthiest taxpayers. Keeping the cap would save Virginia about $80 million a year, she said.
Norment acknowledged potential amendments and said, I am receptive to the changes its just a question of when in the process.
Democrats had blocked emergency legislation in the Senate a week ago and in the House on Monday. They objected to tying conformity of the tax codes to proposed changes in tax policy or sequestration of the additional revenues in a special fund until agreement was reached on returning the money to taxpayers.
Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne, who played a pivotal role in the agreement, attended both committee meetings to express the governors support.
Overshadowed amid scandals?
I am pleased we have reached an agreement on tax policy that is equitable for all Virginians and allows them to keep more of their paychecks, Northam said in a statement.
Prior to its committee hearing, Deeds said he expected the bill to fail but was frustrated by the current state of transportation, which he said has left some parts of the state to fend for themselves.
Few of the 15 bills filed by Del. R. Steven Landes, R-Weyers Cave, died and several have crossed over to the Senate.
On Feb. 5, HB 1615, which would change the date of primaries from the first Tuesday in June to the second Tuesday, was approved by the House. Landes said he filed the bill to improve school safety.
The fewer outsiders coming into the schools, the less the schools have to worry about the potential danger they pose, Landes said in January.
Landes bill to create an Interstate 81 improvement plan passed the House unanimously on Tuesday.
Landes HB 1729, which passed in the House and now will be considered by the Senate, would require school counselors in public elementary and secondary schools to spend at least 80 percent of their time counseling students.
School counselors often are saddled with administrative work in addition to their counseling duties, Landes said.
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The complaint, filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court on Nov. 27, seeks compensation for assault and battery, as well as punitive damages stemming from Loves death. The family has requested a trial by jury.
The family is seeking similar damages to its first lawsuit: $29.45 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.
Matthew Green, an attorney representing Huguely, filed a pleading late last year in an effort to clear up some issues with the filing. The defense asked the court to rule on three things: to dismiss assault as a cause of death; that plaintiffs cannot seek punitive damages as a separate cause of action; and that a state court cannot make factual findings related to federal bankruptcy law.
During arguments, Green clarified that part of the issue with assault being used as a cause of death was the phrasing of assault and/or battery, which could be taken to mean Love could have died from assault alone. Moore ruled a rephrasing was needed, and Stedman agreed to submit a new filing with the and/or changed.
Webster Financial Corporation operates as the bank holding company for Webster Bank, National Association that provides a range of banking, investment, and financial services to individuals, families, and businesses in the United States. It operates through three segments: Commercial Banking, HSA Bank, and Community Banking. The Commercial Banking segment provides lending, deposit, and cash management services to middle market companies; and commercial and industrial lending and leasing, commercial real estate lending, equipment financing, and asset-based lending, as well as treasury and payment services. This segment also offers asset management, financial planning and trust services, and deposit and loan products for high net worth clients, not-for-profit organizations, and business clients. The HSA Bank segment offers health savings accounts, health reimbursement accounts, flexible spending accounts, and other financial solutions to employers for the benefit of their employees and individuals. The Community Banking segment offers deposit and fee-based services, residential mortgages, home equity lines or loans, unsecured consumer loans, and credit cards to consumers, as well as investment and securities-related services, including brokerage and investment advice through a strategic partnership with LPL Financial Holdings Inc. This segment also provides credit, deposit, and cash flow management products to businesses and professional service firms. The company also offers online and mobile banking services. As of February 12, 2021, it operated 155 banking centers and 297 ATMs. Webster Financial Corporation was founded in 1935 and is headquartered in Waterbury, Connecticut.
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| June 23rd | 2021 5:00 AM
You Quit Your Job Good for You! But How Does that Impact Your Investments?
As companies make plans to return employees back to the office, millions of workers have made a decision not to go back at all. In fact, the number of people who quit their jobs increased to four million in April and increased 2.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The largest increases in employees leaving their jobs occurred in retail trade and professional and business services.
SociAtA GAnArale SociAtA anonyme provides financial services in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Oceania, Africa, and France. The company offers retail banking services, including deposits and loans, vehicles and asset management, corporate finance, insurance, payments, investment, and online brokerage and financial information services; Internet, mobile, telephone, and service platforms; and online banking to individual and professional customers, businesses, non-profit associations and local authorities under the Societe Generale, CrAdit du Nord, and Boursorama Banque brands. It also provides international retail banking and financial services, comprising of deposit and loan products; consumer finance and car finance; mortgage facilities; corporate and investment banking; infrastructure, renewable energies, and agribusiness financing; life, retirement savings, and personal protection insurance products; vehicle leasing and fleet management services; and vendor and equipment finance services to corporate and individual customers. In addition, the company offers capital market services, such as fixed income and currencies, equities, and securities services; mergers and acquisitions, advisory and other corporate finance advisory services, and corporate banking and investment banking, as well as capital raising solutions for debt or equity, financial engineering, and hedging for issuers; transaction and payment services, comprising of cash management, trade finance, cash clearing and correspondent banking, supply chain finance, and foreign exchange services; and export finance, aircraft finance, shipping finance, real estate finance, and structured solutions and leasing. Further, it provides financial engineering and wealth management solutions; structured products, hedge funds, mutual funds, private equity funds and real estate investment solutions; and asset management solutions. SociAtA GAnArale SociAtA anonyme was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Paris, France.
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Sempra Energy operates as an energy-services holding company in the United States and internationally. The company's San Diego Gas & Electric Company segment generates, transmits, and distributes electricity; and supplies natural gas. It offers electric services to approximately 3.7 million population and natural gas services to approximately 3.4 million population that covers 4,100 square miles. Its Southern California Gas Company segment owns and operates a natural gas distribution, transmission, and storage system that supplies natural gas to a population of approximately 22 million covering an area of 24,000 square miles. The company's Sempra Texas Utilities segment is involved in the regulated transmission and distribution of electricity serving 3.7 million homes and businesses, and operation of 139,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines. Its transmission system includes 18,127 circuit miles of transmission lines, 336 transmission stations, and 806 distribution substations; distribution system comprises 121,129 miles of overhead and underground lines; and 63 miles of electric transmission lines. Its Sempra Mexico segment develops, owns, operates, or holds interests in natural gas, electric, liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquid petroleum gas (LPG), ethane, and liquid fuels infrastructure; and purchases LNG, and purchases and sells natural gas. This segment operates natural-gas-fired, and wind and solar power generation facilities. Its assets/facilities consist of 1,850 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines, 15 compressor stations, and 139 miles of ethane pipelines; and 2,729 miles of natural gas distribution pipelines. The company's Sempra LNG segment develops and builds natural gas liquefaction export facilities; holds an interest in a facility for the export of LNG; owns and operates natural gas pipelines; and buys, sells, and transports natural gas. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.
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The following companies are subsidiares of Sealed Air: AFP (Shanghai) Limited, AFP Inc. (Branch), AFPTOH LTD, Aconcagua Distribuciones SRL, Air Ride Pallets Hong Kong Limited, Austin Foam Plastics Inc., Auto-C LLC, Automated Packaging Systems, B+ Equipment, B+ Equipment SAS, Beacon Holdings LLC, Biosphere Industries, BluPack (New Zealand), Blue Dot Packaging Pty Ltd., CPI Packaging Inc., CPI Packaging Systems Inc., Cactus (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Cactus Shanghai Trading Co. Ltd., Ciras C.V., Ciras C.V. - Luxembourg Branch, Ciras C.V. Luxembourg Branch, Cleanwise Inc., Cryovac (Malaysia) SDN. BHD, Cryovac (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Cryovac Brasil Ltda., Cryovac Chile Holdings LLC, Cryovac Holdings II LLC, Cryovac Inc., Cryovac International Holdings Inc., Cryovac LLC, Cryovac Leasing Corporation, Cryovac Londrina Ltda., Cryovac Packaging Portugal - Embalagens Ltda., Cryovac Packaging Portugal Embalagens Ltda, Cryovac Sweden AB, Cryovac-Sealed Air de Costa Rica S.R.L., DELTAPLAM Embalagens Industria e Comercio, Deltaplam Embalagens Industria e Comercio Ltda, Diversey, Diversey Australia Pty. Ltd., Diversey Austria Trading GmbH, Diversey B.V., Diversey Belgium BVBA, Diversey Brasil Industria Quimica Ltda., Diversey Canada Inc., Diversey Centroamerica S.A., Diversey Danmark ApS, Diversey Hungary Acting Off-shore Capital Management Limited Liability Company, Diversey J Trustee Limited, Diversey Trustee Limited, Diversey Ceska republika s.r.o. clen koncernu Diversey, Entapack Pty. Ltd., Fagerdala (Chengdu) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Chengdu) Packing Co. Ltd. (Chongqing Branch), Fagerdala (Chongqing) Packaging Co. Ltd. (Branch), Fagerdala (Huiyang) Packaging Co. Ltd, Fagerdala (Huiyang) Packaging Co. Ltd. (Branch), Fagerdala (Shanghai) Foams Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Shanghai) Polymer Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Shenzhen) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Suzhou) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Suzhou) Packing Co. Ltd. (Hefei Branch), Fagerdala (Thailand) Limited, Fagerdala (Xiamen) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala Leamchabung Limited, Fagerdala Leamchabung Ltd., Fagerdala Malaysia Sdn Bhd., Fagerdala Mexico S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Mexico S.A. de C.V. (Chihuahua Branch), Fagerdala Mexico Supply Chain S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Packaging Inc. (Indiana), Fagerdala Shanghai Foams Co. Ltd., Fagerdala Singapore Pte Ltd, Fagerdala Singapore Pte Ltd (Branch), Fagerdala Singapore Pte. Limited, Fagerdala Singapore Pte. Limited (Taiwan Branch), Fagerdala Singapore Pte. Ltd., Fagerdala Suzhou Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala Suzhou Packaging Co. Ltd. (Hefei Branch), Fagerdala Thailand Ltd., GEIE VES, Getpacking.com GmbH, Indonesian Rep Office of Sealed Air Hong Kong Limited, Invertol S. de R.L. de C.V., JCS Sealed Air Kaustik, JSC Sealed Air Kaustik, Kevothermal LLC, Kevothermal LLC, Kevothermal Limited, Nelipak Holdings, Pack-Tiger GmbH, Packaging C.V., ProAseptic Technologies S.L., Producembal - Producao de Embalagens Ltda., Proxy Biomedical Ltd., Reflectix Inc., SLD Air Packaging Paketleme Malzemeleri Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Saddle Brook Insurance Company, Sealed Air (Asia) Holdings B.V., Sealed Air (Barbados) S.R.L., Sealed Air (Canada) Co./CIE, Sealed Air (Canada) Holdings B.V., Sealed Air (China) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air (China) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air (China) Limited, Sealed Air (China) Ltd., Sealed Air (India) Limited, Sealed Air (Israel) Ltd., Sealed Air (Korea) Limited, Sealed Air (Latin America) Holdings II LLC, Sealed Air (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Sealed Air (New Zealand), Sealed Air (Philippines) Inc., Sealed Air (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Sealed Air (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Sealed Air (Thailand) Limited, Sealed Air (Ukraine) Limited, Sealed Air Africa (Proprietary) Limited, Sealed Air Africa (Pty.) Limited, Sealed Air Americas Manufacturing S. de R. L. de C. V., Sealed Air Argentina S.A., Sealed Air Australia (Holdings) Pty. Limited, Sealed Air Australia Pty Ltd., Sealed Air Australia Pty. Limited, Sealed Air B.V., Sealed Air Belgium N.V., Sealed Air Central America S.A., Sealed Air Chile S.P.A., Sealed Air Colombia Ltda., Sealed Air Corporation (US), Sealed Air Denmark A/S, Sealed Air Embalagens Ltda., Sealed Air Europe Holdings C.V., Sealed Air Europe Holdings LP, Sealed Air Finance B.V., Sealed Air Finance II LLC, Sealed Air Finance II LLC (Sucursal Mexico), Sealed Air Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, Sealed Air Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l. Luxembourg (L) Root Finance Branch, Sealed Air Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l. US Finance Branch, Sealed Air Funding Corporation, Sealed Air Funding LLC, Sealed Air General Trading LLC, Sealed Air Global Holdings C.V., Sealed Air Global Holdings I C.V., Sealed Air Global Holdings I LLC, Sealed Air GmbH, Sealed Air Hellas S.A., Sealed Air Holding France S.A.S., Sealed Air Holding France SAS, Sealed Air HoldingS I LLC, Sealed Air Holdings (New Zealand) Pty. Ltd., Sealed Air Holdings I C.V., Sealed Air Holdings LLC, Sealed Air Holdings South Africa Proprietary Limited, Sealed Air Hong Kong (Jakarta Indonesia Branch), Sealed Air Hong Kong Limited, Sealed Air Hungary Ltd., Sealed Air International Holdings LLC, Sealed Air International Holdings LLC , Sealed Air Investment and Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Investment and Management Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Japan G.K., Sealed Air Korea Limited, Sealed Air LLC, Sealed Air Limited, Sealed Air Luxembourg (I) S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Luxembourg (II) S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Management Holding Verwaltungs GmbH, Sealed Air Multiflex GmbH, Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) I B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) II B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) II B.V. - Deutsche Zweigniederlassung, Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) II B.V. - Deutsche Zweigniederlassung, Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) III B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) III B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands Holdings V B.V., Sealed Air Nevada Holdings Limited, Sealed Air Norge AS, Sealed Air OY, Sealed Air Packaging (India) Private Limited, Sealed Air Packaging (Shanghai) Co. Limited, Sealed Air Packaging (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Packaging LLC, Sealed Air Packaging Materials (India) LLP, Sealed Air Packaging Materials (India) LLP, Sealed Air Packaging S.L.U., Sealed Air Paketleme Malzemeleri Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Sealed Air Peru S.A.C., Sealed Air Polska Sp. Zoo, Sealed Air Pty Limited, Sealed Air S.A S., Sealed Air S.A.S., Sealed Air S.r.l., Sealed Air South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Sealed Air Svenska AB, Sealed Air Taiwan Limited, Sealed Air US Holdings (Thailand) LLC, Sealed Air Uruguay S.A., Sealed Air Venezuela Corporation, Sealed Air Verpackungen GmbH, Sealed Air de Mexico Operations S. de R.L. de C.V., Sealed Air de Venezuela S.A., Sealed Air s.r.o., Shanklin Corp, Shanklin Corporation, Soinpar Industrial Ltda., TART s.r.o., TART s.r.o. Joint Venture, TTS-Ciptec, TXAFP Asia Pacific Ltd., TXAFP GP LLC, TempTrip LLC, Trigon Industries, and Vietnamese Rep Office of Sealed Air Hong Kong Limited.
Drax Group plc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the generation and supply of electricity in the United Kingdom. The company operates through three segments: Generation, Customers, and, Pellet Production. It produces low carbon and renewable electricity; and provides system support services to the electricity grid. The company owns and operates Drax Power Station that produces electricity from biomass and coal with an installed capacity of 3,906 megawatts (MW) located in Selby, North Yorkshire; Cruachan Power Station, a pumped hydro storage station, with an installed capacity of 440 MW located in Argyll and Bute, western Scotland; and Lanark and Galloway hydro-electric power stations with an installed capacity of 126 MW located in southwest Scotland. It also owns and operates combined cycle gas turbine power stations, including Damhead Creek power station with an installed capacity of 805 MW; Rye House power station with an installed capacity of 715 MW; Shoreham power station with an installed capacity of 420 MW; and Blackburn power station with an installed capacity of 60 MW located in England. In addition, the company owns and operates Daldowie fuel plant that processes sludge from a wastewater treatment plant and converts it into dry and low-odour fuel pellets. Further, it manufactures and sells compressed wood pellets for use in electricity production; supplies and manages electricity and gas for large industrial and commercial sector customers, as well as small businesses; and provides debt recovery services. Drax Group plc was incorporated in 2005 and is based in Selby, the United Kingdom.
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Rogers Communications Inc. operates as a communications and media company in Canada. It operates through three segments: Wireless, Cable, and Media. The company offers mobile Internet access, wireless voice and enhanced voice, device and accessory financing, wireless home phone, device protection, text messaging, e-mail, global voice and data roaming, bridging landline, machine-to-machine and Internet of Things solutions, and advanced wireless solutions for businesses, as well as device delivery services; and postpaid and prepaid services under the Rogers, Fido, and chatr brands to approximately 10.9 million subscribers. It also provides Internet and WiFi services; smart home monitoring services, such as monitoring, security, automation, energy efficiency, and smart control through a smartphone app. In addition, the company offers local and network TV; on-demand television; cloud-based digital video recorders; voice-activated remote controls, and integrated apps; personal video recorders; linear and time-shifted programming; digital specialty channels; 4K television programming; and televised content on smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, as well as operates Ignite TV and Ignite TV app. Further, it provides residential and small business local telephony services; calling features, such as voicemail, call waiting, and long distance; voice, data networking, Internet protocol, and Ethernet services; private networking, Internet, IP voice, and cloud solutions; optical wave and multi-protocol label switching services; IT and network technologies; and cable access network services. The company also owns Toronto Blue Jays and the Rogers Centre event venue; and operates Sportsnet ONE, Sportsnet 360, Sportsnet World, Citytv, OMNI, FX (Canada), FXX (Canada), and OLN television networks, as well as 55 AM and FM radio stations. Rogers Communications Inc. was founded in 1960 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
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CoreLogic, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides property information, insight, analytics, and data-enabled solutions in North America, Western Europe, and the Asia Pacific. The company operates in two segments, Property Intelligence & Risk Management Solutions (PIRM) and Underwriting & Workflow Solutions (UWS). The PIRM segment combines property information, mortgage information, and consumer information to deliver housing market and property-level insights, predictive analytics, and risk management capabilities. It also offers proprietary technology and software platforms to access, automate, or track the information and assist its clients with decision-making and compliance tools in the real estate and insurance industries. This segment primarily serves commercial banks, mortgage lenders and brokers, investment banks, fixed-income investors, real estate agents, MLS companies, property and casualty insurance companies, title insurance companies, government agencies, and government-sponsored enterprises. The UWS segment combines property, mortgage, and consumer information to provide comprehensive mortgage origination and monitoring solutions, including underwriting-related solutions, and data-enabled valuations and appraisals. This segment also provides proprietary technology and software platforms to access, automate, or track the information and assist its clients with vetting and onboarding prospects, and meeting compliance regulations, as well as understanding, evaluating, monitoring property values. It primarily serves mortgage lenders and servicers, mortgage brokers, credit unions, commercial banks, fixed-income investors, government agencies, and property and casualty insurance companies. The company was formerly known as The First American Corporation and changed its name to CoreLogic, Inc. in June 2010. CoreLogic, Inc. was incorporated in 1894 and is headquartered in Irvine, California.
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Motorola Solutions, Inc. provides mission critical communications and analytics in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Products and Systems Integration, and Services and Software. The Products and Systems Integration segment offers a portfolio of infrastructure, devices, accessories, and video security devices and infrastructure, as well as the implementation, optimization, and integration of systems, devices, software, and applications for government, public safety and first-responder agencies, municipalities, and commercial and industrial customers. Its LMR and video security and analytics devices include two-way portable and vehicle-mounted radios, fixed and mobile video cameras, and accessories; radio network core and central processing software, base stations, consoles, and repeaters; and video analytics, network video management hardware and software, and access control solutions. The Services segment provides repair, technical support, and hardware maintenance services. This segment also offers monitoring, software updates, and cybersecurity services; and public safety and enterprise command center software, unified communications applications, and video software solutions. It serves for government, public safety, and commercial communication networks. The company was formerly known as Motorola, Inc. and changed its name to Motorola Solutions, Inc. in January 2011. Motorola Solutions, Inc. was founded in 1928 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
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Johnson & Johnson researches and develops, manufactures, and sells a range of products in the health care field worldwide. It operates through three segments: Consumer Health, Pharmaceutical, and Medical Devices. The Consumer Health segment offers baby care products under the JOHNSON'S and AVEENO Baby brands; oral care products under the LISTERINE brand; skin health/beauty products under the AVEENO, CLEAN & CLEAR, DR. CI:LABO, NEUTROGENA, and OGX brands; acetaminophen products under the TYLENOL brand; cold, flu, and allergy products under the SUDAFED brand; allergy products under the BENADRYL and ZYRTEC brands; ibuprofen products under the MOTRIN IB brand; smoking cessation products under the NICORETTE brand; and acid reflux products under the PEPCID brand. This segment also provides women's health products, such as sanitary pads and tampons under the STAYFREE, CAREFREE, and o.b. brands; wound care products comprising adhesive bandages under the BAND-AID brand; and first aid products under the NEOSPORIN brand. The Pharmaceutical segment offers products in various therapeutic areas, including immunology, infectious diseases, neuroscience, oncology, pulmonary hypertension, and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The Medical Devices segment provides electrophysiology products to treat cardiovascular diseases and neurovascular care products to treat hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke; orthopaedics products in support of hips, knees, trauma, spine, sports, and other; advanced and general surgery solutions that focus on breast aesthetics, ear, nose, and throat procedures; and disposable contact lenses and ophthalmic products related to cataract and laser refractive surgery under the ACUVUE brand. The company markets its products to general public, and retail outlets and distributors, as well as distributes directly to wholesalers, hospitals, and health care professionals for prescription use. Johnson & Johnson was founded in 1886 and is based in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
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Intu owns and manages some of the best shopping centres, in some of the strongest locations, in the UK and Spain. Our UK portfolio is made up of 17 centres, including eight of the top-20, and in Spain we own three of the country's top-10 centres, with advanced plans to build a fourth. We are passionate about creating compelling experiences, in centre and online, that make our customers smile and help our retailers flourish. We attract around 400 million customer visits and 26 million website visits a year offering a multichannel approach that truly supports retail strategies. Our strategic focus on prime, high-footfall flagship destinations, combined with the strength and popularity of our brand, means that intu offers enhanced footfall, dwell time and loyalty. This helps our tenants flourish, driving occupancy and income growth. We are committed to our local communities, with our centres supporting nearly 130,000 jobs (representing about 3 per cent of the total UK retail workforce), and to operating with environmental responsibility. We have already met or exceeded a significant number of our 2020 environmental targets.
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The following companies are subsidiares of TransDigm Group: ARA Deutschland GmbH, ARA Holding GmbH, Abbott Electronics Ltd., Acme Aerospace, Acme Aerospace Inc., Adams Rite Aerospace GmbH, Adams Rite Aerospace Inc., Advanced Inflatable Products Limited, Aero-Instruments, AeroControlex Group Inc., Aerosonic, Aerosonic LLC, Air-Sea Survival Equipment Trustee Limited, Airborne Acquisition Inc., Airborne Global Inc., Airborne Holdings Inc., Airborne Systems, Airborne Systems Canada Ltd., Airborne Systems Group Limited, Airborne Systems Holdings Limited, Airborne Systems Limited, Airborne Systems NA Inc., Airborne Systems North America Inc., Airborne Systems North America of CA Inc., Airborne Systems North America of NJ Inc., Airborne Systems Pension Trust Limited, Airborne UK Acquisition Limited, Airborne UK Parent Limited, Aircraft Materials Limited, AmSafe, AmSafe Aviation (Chongqing) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Private) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport Ltd., AmSafe Global Holdings Inc., AmSafe Global Services (Private) Limited, AmSafe Inc., Arkwin Industries, Arkwin Industries Inc., Aviation Technologies, Aviation Technologies Inc., Avionic Instruments, Avionics Instruments, Avionics Specialties Inc., AvtechTyee Inc., Beta Transformer Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Beta Transformer Technology Corporation, Beta Transformer Technology LLC, Breeze-Eastern Corporation, Breeze-Eastern LLC, Bridport Erie Aviation Inc., Bridport Holdings Inc., Bridport Ltd., Bridport-Air Carrier Inc., Bruce Aerospace Inc., Bruce Industries, CDA InterCorp, CEF Industries LLC, Champion Aerospace, DDC Electronics K.K., DDC Electronics Ltd., DDC Electronics Private Limited, DDC Electronique S.A.R.L., DDC Elektronik GmbH, DDL195 Limited, Data Device Corp., Data Device Corporation, Dukes Aerospace Inc., Edlaw Limited, Electromech Technologies LLC, Elektro-Metall Export GmbH, Elektro-Metall Paks KFT, Esterline, Extant Components Group Holdings Inc., Extant Components Group Intermediate Inc., GQ Parachutes Limited, HARCO LLC, Harco, Hartwell Corporation, ILC Holdings Inc., Irvin Aerospace Limited, IrvinGQ France SAA, IrvinGQ Limited, Johnson Liverpool LLC, Kirkhill Elastomers, Kirkhill Inc., Kunshan Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., MarathonNorco Aerospace Inc., McKechnie Aerospace, McKechnie Aerospace (Europe) Ltd., McKechnie Aerospace DE Inc., McKechnie Aerospace DE LP, McKechnie Aerospace Holdings Inc., McKechnie Aerospace US LLC, Mecanismos de Matamoros S.A. de C.V., Militair Aviation Ltd., Norco, Nordisk Asia Pacific Limited, Nordisk Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, Nordisk Aviation Products (Kunshan) Ltd., Nordisk Aviation Products AS, North Hills Signal Processing Corp., North Hills Signal Processing Overseas Corp., Pascall Electronics Limited, Pemberton 123 Ltd., Pexco Aerospace, Pexco Aerospace Inc., PneuDraulics, PneuDraulics Inc., Rancho TransTechnology Corporation, Retainers Inc., SSP Industries, Schneller, Schneller Asia Pte. Ltd., Schneller S.A.R.L., Schroth Safety Products, Semco Instruments, Semco Instruments Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., Signal Processing Matamoros S.A. de C.V., Skandia, Skandia Inc., Skurka Aerospace, Skurka Aerospace Inc., Symetrics, Symetrics Industries LLC, Symetrics Technology Group LLC, TDG Germany GmbH, TEAC Aerospace Holdings Inc., TEAC Aerospace Technologies Inc., TTERUSA Inc., Tactair Fluid Controls Inc., Takata Protection Systems, Technical Airborne Components Industries SPRL, Telair International, Telair International AB, Telair International GmbH, Telair International LLC, Telair International Services PTE Ltd (JV 70.5%), Telair US LLC, Texas Rotronics Inc., TransDigm (Barbados) SRL, TransDigm European Holdings Limited, TransDigm Ireland Ltd., TransDigm Receivables LLC, TransDigm UK Holdings plc, Transicoil (Malaysia) Sendirian Berhad, Transicoil LLC, Whippany Actuation Systems, Whippany Actuation Systems LLC, XCEL Power Systems Ltd., Young & Franklin, and Young & Franklin Inc..
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Suburban Propane Partners, L.P., through its subsidiaries, engages in the retail marketing and distribution of propane, fuel oil, and refined fuels. The company operates in four segments: Propane, Fuel Oil and Refined Fuels, Natural Gas and Electricity, and All Other. The Propane segment is involved in the retail distribution of propane to residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural customers, as well as in the wholesale distribution to industrial end users. It offers propane primarily for space heating, water heating, cooking, and clothes drying in the residential and commercial markets; for use as a motor fuel in internal combustion engines to power over-the-road vehicles, forklifts, and stationary engines, as well as to fire furnaces, as a cutting gas to the industrial customers, and in other process applications; and for tobacco curing, crop drying, poultry brooding, and weed control in the agricultural markets. The Fuel Oil and Refined Fuels segment engages in the retail distribution of fuel oil, diesel, kerosene, and gasoline to residential and commercial customers for use primarily as a source of heat in homes and buildings. The Natural Gas and Electricity segment markets natural gas and electricity to residential and commercial customers in the deregulated energy markets in New York and Pennsylvania. The All Other segment sells, installs, and services a range of home comfort equipment, including whole-house heating products, air cleaners, humidifiers, and space heaters. As of September 26, 2020, the company served approximately 1.0 million residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural customers through 700 locations in 41 states primarily in the east and west coast regions of the United States, as well as portions of the midwest region of the United States and Alaska. Suburban Energy Services Group LLC serves as a general partner of Suburban Propane Partners, L.P. The company was founded in 1945 and is headquartered in Whippany, New Jersey.
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Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P. engages in the transportation, storage, and distribution of refined petroleum products and crude oil in the United States. The company operates through Refined Products and Crude Oil segments. It operates refined products pipeline that transports gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, kerosene, and heating oil to refiners, wholesalers, retailers, traders, railroads, airlines, and regional farm cooperatives; and to end markets, including retail gasoline stations, truck stops, farm cooperatives, railroad fueling depots, military bases, and commercial airports. The company also provides pipeline capacity and tank storage services, as well as terminalling, ethanol and biodiesel unloading and loading, additive injection, custom blending, laboratory testing, and data services to shippers. In addition, Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P. owns and operates crude oil pipelines and storage facilities; and marine terminals located along coastal waterways that provide distribution, storage, blending, inventory management, and additive injection services for refiners, marketers, traders, and other end users of petroleum products. As of December 31, 2019, it had 9,800-mile refined products pipeline system with 54 terminals, as well as 25 independent terminals; approximately 2,200 miles of crude oil pipelines and storage facilities with an aggregate storage capacity of approximately 37 million barrels; and 2 marine terminals. Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P. was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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The Southern Company, through its subsidiaries, engages in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. It operates in four segments: Gas Distribution Operations, Gas Pipeline Investments, Wholesale Gas Services, and Gas Marketing Services. The company also constructs, acquires, owns, and manages power generation assets, including renewable energy and battery energy storage projects and sells electricity in the wholesale market; and distributes natural gas in Illinois, Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee, as well as provides gas marketing services, wholesale gas services, and gas pipeline investments operations. It owns and/or operates 30 hydroelectric generating stations, 24 fossil fuel generating stations, 3 nuclear generating stations, 13 combined cycle/cogeneration stations, 44 solar facilities, 13 wind facilities, 1 fuel cell facility, and 1 battery storage facility; and constructs, operates, and maintains 75,924 miles of natural gas pipelines and 14 storage facilities with total capacity of 157 Bcf to provide natural gas to residential, commercial, and industrial customers. The company serves approximately 8.6 million electric and gas utility customers. It also provides products and services in the areas of energy efficiency, and utility infrastructure. In addition, the company offers digital wireless communications and fiber optics services. The Southern Company was incorporated in 1945 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
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DCC plc provides sales, marketing, and support services worldwide. The company's DCC LPG segment sells and markets liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). This segment serves approximately 0.7 million customers. Its DCC Retail & Oil segment markets, sells, and retails transport and commercial fuels, heating oils, and related products and services; operates retail petrol stations; resells fuel cards; distributes oil; and provides inbound logistics, storage and filling, and outbound logistics services. This segment serves domestic, agricultural, commercial/industrial, forecourt, aviation, and marine customers. The company's DCC Healthcare segment offers products and services to healthcare providers, and health and beauty brand owners; outsourced contract manufacturing services to the health and beauty sector; nutrition products, such as vitamins and health supplements; beauty products; and product development, formulation, manufacturing, and packaging services. In addition, this segment procures and sells exempt medicinal products. Its DCC Technology segment distributes consumer technology products, including smart home products, gaming consoles, peripherals and software, wearable technology, and accessories; business and enterprise technology products, such as tablets, notebooks, and PCs; networking and security products; communication products comprising smartphones, feature phones, accessories, and unified communication products; and servers and storage products, audio visual products, printers, peripherals, cables and connectors, and consumables to retailers, resellers, and integrators. It also provides supply chain services. DCC plc was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.
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Chevron Corporation, through its subsidiaries, engages in integrated energy, chemicals, and petroleum operations worldwide. The company operates in two segments, Upstream and Downstream. The Upstream segment is involved in the exploration, development, and production of crude oil and natural gas; processing, liquefaction, transportation, and regasification associated with liquefied natural gas; transportation of crude oil through pipelines; and transportation, storage, and marketing of natural gas, as well as operates a gas-to-liquids plant. The Downstream segment engages in refining crude oil into petroleum products; marketing crude oil, refined products, and lubricants; transporting crude oil and refined products through pipeline, marine vessel, motor equipment, and rail car; and manufacturing and marketing commodity petrochemicals, and fuel and lubricant additives, as well as plastics for industrial uses. Chevron Corporation is also involved in the cash management and debt financing activities; insurance operations; real estate activities; and technology businesses. The company was formerly known as ChevronTexaco Corporation and changed its name to Chevron Corporation in 2005. Chevron Corporation was founded in 1879 and is headquartered in San Ramon, California.
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The following companies are subsidiares of TE Connectivity: 999 Arques Corp., ABB ENTRELEC terminal block business, ACC Telecommunications, ADC Chile Limitada, ADC Communications (SEA) Pte. Ltd., ADC Communications (UK) Holding Ltd., ADC Communications (UK) Ltd., ADC Communications Hong Kong Limited, ADC Telecommunications Equipment (Shanghai) Co., AMP Amermex, AMP Products Pacific Limited, AMP Taiwan B.V., AMP Trading B.V., AMP de Venezuela, Acalon Holdings Limited, Advanced Fiber Products LLC, Advanced Fiber Products Limited, Advanced Tube Technologies, AdvancedCath, AdvancedCath Technologies, Alpha Technics, American Sensor Technologies, Betatherm (R&D) Limited, Brantner Holding Company, Brantner and Associates, Butterfly Management SAS, C.S. Tyco Decisive Inc., C.S. Tyco Dependable Inc., C.S. Tyco Durable Inc., C.S. Tyco Reliance Inc., C.S. Tyco Resolute Inc., C.S. Tyco Responder Inc., CII Guardian International Limited, Cablotec GmbH, Carrier Kheops Bac SAS, Catheter and Disposable Technology, Celis Eletrocomponentes Ltda., Cima de Acuna S.A. de C.V., Clarebury Pty. Ltd., Codenoll Technology Corporation, Communication Expert International Investments Limited, Compagnie Deutsch Distribution SAS, Compagnie Deutsch SAS, Comtec Systeme GmbH, Connecteurs Electriques Deutsch SAS, Corcom, Corcom West Indies Limited, Cotsworks LLC, Creganna, Creganna Captial Holding Ireland Unlimited Company, Creganna Finance (US) LLC, Creganna Finance Ireland Limited, Creganna Luxembourg SARL, Creganna Medical Devices, Creganna Medical Pte. Limited, Creganna Medical Technology Unlimited, Creganna Medical s.r.l., Creganna Regulatory, Creganna Solutions Limited, Creganna Solutions Unlimited Company, Creganna Tactx Singapore Limited, Creganna Unlimited Company, Cregstar Bidco Limited, Critchley Group Limited, Crompton Instruments (South-East Asia) Pte. Ltd., Deutsch, Deutsch Connectors Hong Kong Limited, Deutsch Connectors Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co., Deutsch Connectors Trading (Shanghai) Co., Deutsch Finance SAS, Deutsch GB Limited, Deutsch Group SAS, Deutsch India Power Connectors (Pvt) Ltd, Deutsch Israel Ltd., Deutsch SAS, Deutsch Servicios S. de R.L. De C.V., Deutsch Subco Limited, Deutsch UK, F.A.I. Technology (Hong Kong) Limited, First Sensor, Grangehurst Enterprises Pty. Ltd., Hirschmann Car Communication, Hong Kong Sensors Technologies Limited, Howard A. Schaevitz Technologies, Intercontec Connector System (Shanghai) Co., Intercontec Produkt GmbH, Intercontect Pfeiffer Industrie-Steckverbindungen GmbH, Jaquet North America, Jaquet Technology Group AG, Kemex Holding Company, Kenabell Holding Limited, LADD Distribution LLC, LADD Distribution Limited, LSA, MEAS Asia Limited, MEAS Europe SAS, MEAS France SAS, MEAS Ireland (Betatherm) Limited, MEAS Norway AS, MEAS Shenzhen Limited, MEAS Switzerland S.a r.l., MEAS US Holding, MP&E, Measurement Specialties, Measurement Specialties (Chengdu) Ltd., Measurement Specialties (China) Ltd., Measurement Specialties (China) Ltd. Production Branch, Measurement Specialties Foreign Holdings LLC, Measurement Technology (Chengdu) Ltd., Medical Engineering & Design, MicroGroup, Morlynn Ceramics Pty. Ltd., Nikkiso-Therm Co., PT KRONE Indonesia, PT. Tyco Electronics Indonesia, Pfeiffer GmbH & Co KG, Pfeiffer Verwaltungs GmbH, Polamco, Polamco Limited, Potter & Brumfield de Mexico, Precision Interconnect LLC, Precision Subsea AS, Precision Wire Components, Precision Wire Holding Company, Produxx, RAYCHEM-RPG Private Limited, Raychem (HK) Limited, Raychem (Shanghai) Trading Ltd, Raychem China Limited, Raychem Dominicana S.A., Raychem Industries BVBA, Raychem International LLC, Raychem International Manufacturing LLC, Raychem Juarez, Raychem Limited, Raychem Ltd., Raychem Pacific Corporation, Raychem Saudi Arabia Limited, Raychem Shanghai Cable Accessories Ltd, Raychem Technologies Limited, Rochester Wire and Cable LLC, SEACON Advanced Products LLC, Seacon (Europe) Limited, Seacon Global Production, Seacon Produtos e Servicos Opticos e Eletricos Ltda., Sensitive Object, Servo Interconnect Limited, Shanghai CII Electronics Co., Shenzhen Century Man Communication Equipment Co., Sibas Electronics (Xiamen) Co., TCN Holding (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., TE Connectivity (Barbados) SRL, TE Connectivity (Denmark) ApS, TE Connectivity (HKZ) Holding Limited, TE Connectivity (Kunshan) Company Limited, TE Connectivity (Netherlands) Holding S.a r.l. - Irish Branch, TE Connectivity (Schweiz) Management AG, TE Connectivity (Suzhou) Co., TE Connectivity Argentina S.R.L., TE Connectivity Australia Pty Ltd, TE Connectivity Colombia S.A.S., TE Connectivity Connectors (Suzhou) Co., TE Connectivity Distribution (Thailand) Limited, TE Connectivity EMEA Holding GmbH, TE Connectivity Germany GmbH, TE Connectivity HK Limited, TE Connectivity Holding International II S.a r.l., TE Connectivity Holding International II S.a r.l. Luxembourg (LU) Schaffhausen E-Finance branch, TE Connectivity Holding International II S.a r.l. Luxembourg (LU) Schaffhausen branch, TE Connectivity Holding International II S.a r.l. (Ireland Branch), TE Connectivity Holding International S.A., TE Connectivity Inc., TE Connectivity India Private Limited, TE Connectivity Investments Holding S.A., TE Connectivity Investments Holding S.A. Luxembourg (LU) Schaffhausen branch, TE Connectivity Ireland Limited, TE Connectivity LATAM Holding S.a r.l., TE Connectivity LATAM I S.a r.l., TE Connectivity LATAM II S.a r.l., TE Connectivity Limited, TE Connectivity MOG Europe S.a r.l., TE Connectivity MOG Holding S.a r.l., TE Connectivity MOG Inc., TE Connectivity MOG Sales GmbH, TE Connectivity Manufacturing (Thailand) Company Limited, TE Connectivity Manufacturing Sdn. Bhd., TE Connectivity Morocco SARL, TE Connectivity Nederland B.V., TE Connectivity Netherlands (Poland II) Cooperatief U.A., TE Connectivity Netherlands (Turkey) B.V., TE Connectivity Netherlands Cooperatief U.A., TE Connectivity Phoenix Optix Inc., TE Connectivity Seacon Phoenix Inc., TE Connectivity Sensors Germany GmbH, TE Connectivity Services India Private Limited, TE Connectivity Solutions GmbH, TE Connectivity South Africa Proprietary Limited, TE Connectivity Spain, TE Connectivity SubCom S.L.U., TE Connectivity SubCom Spain Holding S.L.U., TE Connectivity Technology Solutions Limited, TE Connectivity Tunisia Sarl, TE Connectivity ULC, TE Connectivity US Group Holding Inc., TE Connectivity Vietnam Holding Company Limited, TYCO Electronics Polska Sp.z.o.o., TYCO SUBMARINE SYSTEMS INC., TacPro, Tactx Medical, Taicang Speed & Spin Sensors Co., Taliq Taiwan Limited, Tappat Engineering Pty Ltd, TechDevice Costa Rica Limitada, TechDevice Holdings, TechDevice LLC, The Whitaker LLC, Transoceanic Cable Ship Company LLC, TyCom Holdings II SA, TyCom Networks (Peru) S.A., Tyco Electronics (AMP Korea) Malta Limited, Tyco Electronics (Dongguan) Ltd, Tyco Electronics (Gibraltar) Holding Limited, Tyco Electronics (Gibraltar) Limited, Tyco Electronics (Korea) Malta Limited, Tyco Electronics (Kunshan) Ltd, Tyco Electronics (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Tyco Electronics (Qingdao) Ltd., Tyco Electronics (Schweiz) Holding II GmbH, Tyco Electronics (Shanghai) Co., Tyco Electronics (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Tyco Electronics (Suzhou) Ltd., Tyco Electronics (Zhuhai) Ltd, Tyco Electronics AMP Guangdong Ltd, Tyco Electronics AMP Italia Products S.R.L., Tyco Electronics AMP Italia S.R.L., Tyco Electronics AMP Korea Co., Tyco Electronics AMP Manufacturing (S) Pte Ltd, Tyco Electronics AMP Qingdao Ltd., Tyco Electronics AMP Shanghai Ltd., Tyco Electronics Austria GmbH, Tyco Electronics Belgium EC BVBA, Tyco Electronics Brasil Ltda., Tyco Electronics Canada ULC, Tyco Electronics China (Gibraltar) Limited, Tyco Electronics Componentes Electromecanicos Lda., Tyco Electronics Corby Limited, Tyco Electronics Corporation, Tyco Electronics Czech s.r.o., Tyco Electronics Del Peru S.A.C., Tyco Electronics EC Trutnov s.r.o., Tyco Electronics EC Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Tyco Electronics Eta Limited, Tyco Electronics Finance Alpha GmbH, Tyco Electronics Finance S.a r.l., Tyco Electronics Finland Oy, Tyco Electronics France SAS, Tyco Electronics Germany Holdings GmbH, Tyco Electronics Group S.A., Tyco Electronics Group S.A. (French Branch), Tyco Electronics Group S.A. (Ireland Branch), Tyco Electronics H.K. Limited, Tyco Electronics Hellas MEPE, Tyco Electronics Holding Corp., Tyco Electronics Holding France, Tyco Electronics Holding S.a r.l., Tyco Electronics Holdings (Bermuda) No. 7 Limited, Tyco Electronics Holdings (Bermuda) No. 7 Limited Taiwan Branch, Tyco Electronics Hong Kong Holdings No. 1 Limited, Tyco Electronics Hong Kong Holdings No. 2 Limited, Tyco Electronics Hong Kong Holdings No. 3 Limited, Tyco Electronics Hungary Termelo Kft, Tyco Electronics Idento, Tyco Electronics India (Gibraltar) Limited, Tyco Electronics Industrial Y Comercial Chile Limitada, Tyco Electronics Integrated Cable Systems LLC, Tyco Electronics Ireland Limited, Tyco Electronics Israel Ltd., Tyco Electronics Italia Holding S.r.l., Tyco Electronics Japan G.K., Tyco Electronics Lambda, Tyco Electronics Latin America Holding LLC, Tyco Electronics Manufacturing Singapore Pte Ltd, Tyco Electronics Mexico, Tyco Electronics Middle East FZE, Tyco Electronics Motors Ltd, Tyco Electronics NZ Limited, Tyco Electronics Netherlands (Germany Holding) S.a r.l., Tyco Electronics Netherlands (Gibraltar China) Cooperatief U.A., Tyco Electronics Netherlands (Gibraltar India) Cooperatief U.A., Tyco Electronics Netherlands (India) Cooperatief U.A., Tyco Electronics Netherlands Holding B.V., Tyco Electronics Norge AS, Tyco Electronics Philippines, Tyco Electronics Precision Engineering Ltd., Tyco Electronics Printed Circuit Group LP, Tyco Electronics RIMC Holding LLC, Tyco Electronics RUS OOO, Tyco Electronics Raychem GmbH, Tyco Electronics Raychem Korea Limited, Tyco Electronics SIMEL SAS, Tyco Electronics Saudi Arabia Limited, Tyco Electronics Services GmbH, Tyco Electronics Singapore Pte Ltd, Tyco Electronics Subsea Communications LLC, Tyco Electronics Svenska AB, Tyco Electronics Svenska Holdings AB, Tyco Electronics Technology (SIP) Co., Tyco Electronics Technology (SIP) Ltd., Tyco Electronics Tecnologias S. de R.L. de C.V., Tyco Electronics UK Holdings Ltd, Tyco Electronics UK Ltd., Tyco Electronics UK Ltd. (Kenya Branch), Tyco Electronics Ukraine Limited, Tyco Electronics Uruguay S.A., Tyco Electronics Verwaltungs GmbH, Tyco Electronics Wireless Systems B.V., Tyco Electronics de Venezuela, Tyco Elektronik AMP Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Tyco Global Networks Ltd., Tyco Iberia, Tyco International Services GmbH, Tyco Networks (Argentina) S.R.L., Tyco Networks (Italy) Srl, Tyco Networks (Netherlands) B.V., Tyco Networks Iberica, Tyco Submarine Systems, Tyco Submarine Systems C.A., Tyco Submarine Systems de Argentina S.A., Tyco Telecommunications Ltd., Wema Americas LLC, Wema Automotive System Private Limited, Wema Environmental Technologies (Shanghai) Co., Wema Environmental Technologies (Shenzhen) Co., Wema Environmental Technologies Ltd., Wema System AG, Wema System AS, Wema System Hong Kong Limited, Wema System Production and Distribution HK Limited, Xiamen Delixing Electric Equipment Businesss, and motec Montage GmbH.
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The following companies are subsidiares of Ball: 654647 N.B. Inc., AUK Holding Ltd., Aerocan, Aerosol Research Co (Great Britain) Limited, American Can (UK) Limited, American Can Holdings (UK) Limited, Archer Insurance Limited, Assetsteady Limited, B O Morris (Holdings) Limited, B-R Secretariat Limited, BD Print Limited, Ball, Ball (France) Holdings S.A.S., Ball (Luxembourg) Finance S.a.r.l., Ball (Swiss) Holding GmbH, Ball Advanced Aluminum Technologies Canada Inc. (f/k/a Neuman Aluminum Canada Inc.), Ball Advanced Aluminum Technologies Canada L.P. (f/k/a Neuman Aluminum Canada L.P.), Ball Advanced Aluminum Technologies Corp. (f/k/a Neuman USA Ltd.), Ball Advanced Aluminum Technologies Holding Canada Inc. (f/k/a Neuman Holding Canada Inc.), Ball Aerocan CZ s.r.o. (f/k/a Aerocan CZ s.r.o.), Ball Aerocan Europe S.A.S. (f/k/a Aerocan S.A.S.; Name Change on 6/28/13), Ball Aerocan France S.A.S (f/k/a Aerocan France S.A.S.), Ball Aerocan India Private Limited (f/k/a Metacan Manufacturing Private Limited; Name Change on 01/28/16), Ball Aerocan Mexico S.A. de C.V. (f/k/a Envases del Plata S.A. de C.V.), Ball Aerocan Operations S.a.r.l. (f/k/a Mendoza Investments S.a.r.l.; Name Change on 09/06/13), Ball Aerocan UK Limited (f/k/a Aerocan UK Ltd.; Name Change on 03/16/11), Ball Aerosol Packaging Argentina S.A. (f/k/a Formametal S.A.), Ball Aerosol and Specialty Container Holding Corporation (f/k/a U.S. Can Corporation; Name Change on 03/31/06 from Ball Aerosol and Specialty Container Corporation), Ball Aerosol and Specialty Container Inc. (f/k/a US Can Company; Name Change on 03/31/06), Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Ball America Holdings Inc. (f/k/a Rexam America Holdings Inc.), Ball America LLC (f/k/a Rexam America LLC), Ball Americas Holdings B.V., Ball Asia Pacific (Beijing) Metal Container Limited (f/k/a Beijing FTB Packaging Limited), Ball Asia Pacific (Foshan) Metal Container Limited (f/k/a Sanshui Jianlibao FTB Packing Limited), Ball Asia Pacific (Hubei) Metal Container Limited (f/k/a Hubei FTB Packaging Limited), Ball Asia Pacific (Nanning) Metal Container Limited, Ball Asia Pacific (Qingdao) Metal Container Limited, Ball Asia Pacific (Shenzhen) Metal Container Limited, Ball Asia Pacific (Yangon) Metal Container Limited, Ball Asia Pacific Investments Limited, Ball Asia Pacific Limited, Ball Asia Services Limited, Ball BP Holding Company (f/k/a Rexam BP Holding Company), Ball Beverage Can Americas Inc. (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Americas Inc.), Ball Beverage Can Delaware Company (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Delaware Company), Ball Beverage Can Overseas LLC (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Overseas LLC), Ball Beverage Can South America S.A. (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can South America SA), Ball Beverage Packaging (India) Private Limited (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can (India) Private Limited), Ball Beverage Packaging AMEA Limited (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can AMEA Limited), Ball Beverage Packaging Czech Republic sro (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Czech Republic sro), Ball Beverage Packaging Europe Limited (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Europe Limited), Ball Beverage Packaging Fosie AB (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Fosie AB), Ball Beverage Packaging France SAS (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can France SAS), Ball Beverage Packaging Fredericia A/S (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Fredericia A/S), Ball Beverage Packaging Iberica SL (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Iberica SL), Ball Beverage Packaging Italia SRL (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Italia SRL), Ball Beverage Packaging Ludesch GmbH (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Enzesfeld GmbH), Ball Beverage Packaging Mantsala Oy (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Mantsala Oy), Ball Beverage Packaging Naro-Fominsk LLC (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Naro-Fominsk LLC), Ball Beverage Packaging Oss BV (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Oss BV), Ball Beverage Packaging Recklinghausen GmbH (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Recklinghausen GmbH), Ball Beverage Packaging Rus LLC (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Rus LLC), Ball Beverage Packaging UK Limited (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can UK Limited), Ball Beverage Packaging Vsevolozhsk LLC (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Vsevolozhsk LLC), Ball Beverage Packaging Widnau GmbH (f/k/a Rexam Beverage Can Widnau GmbH), Ball Beverage Turkey Paketleme Sanayi ve Ticaret AS (f/k/a Rexam Paketleme Sanayi ve Ticaret AS), Ball Canada Plastics Container Corp., Ball Capital Corp. II, Ball Cayman International Limited, Ball Chile S.A. (f/k/a Rexam Chile S.A.), Ball Company, Ball Container LLC, Ball Delaware Corporation (f/k/a Rexam Delaware Corporation), Ball Delaware Holdings, Ball Delaware Holdings S.C.S. (f/k/a Ball Holdings S.a.r.l.), Ball Delaware International Holdings Corp., Ball Envases de Aluminio S.A. (f/k/a Rexam Argentina S.A.), Ball Europe Limited, Ball European Holdings S.a.r.l., Ball Finance LLC (f/k/a Rexam Finance LLC), Ball Foundation not for profit, Ball Funding Inc. (f/k/a Rexam Funding Inc.), Ball Glass Containers, Ball Global Business Services Corp., Ball Global Services Americas S. de R.L. de C.V., Ball Holdings Corp., Ball Holdings LLC, Ball Inc. (f/k/a Rexam Inc.), Ball Industria e Comercio de Latas e Tampas Ltda (f/k/a Rexam Industria e Comercio de Latas e Tampas Ltda, Ball International, Ball International Holdings B.V. (f/k/a recan B.V.), Ball International Holdings II, Ball International Holdings LLC, Ball International Holdings S.a.r.l., Ball International Partners SCS, Ball JV LLC, Ball Luxembourg Holdings S.a.r.l., Ball Luxembourg I S.a.r.l., Ball MI Holding Company (f/k/a Rexam MI Holding Company), Ball Marketing Limited (f/k/a Rexam Marketing Limited), Ball Metal Beverage Container Corp., Ball Metal Beverage Mexico Holdings B.V. (f/k/a Ball Saudi Arabia Holdings B.V.), Ball Metal Beverage Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V. (f/k/a Ball Mexico Holdings Corp S del RL de C.V.), Ball Metal Container Corporation, Ball Metal Food Container (Oakdale) LLC (f/k/a Ball Metal Food Container LLC f/k/a Ball Western Can Company LLC), Ball Metal Food Container LLC (f/k/a Ball Metal Food Container Corp. f/k/a Heekin Can Inc.), Ball Metallising Inc. (f/k/a Rexam Metallising Inc.), Ball Packaging Europe Belgrade d.o.o., Ball Packaging Europe France S.A.S., Ball Packaging Europe Holding B.V., Ball Packaging Europe Lublin Sp. z o.o., Ball Packaging Europe Metall GmbH, Ball Packaging Europe Rostov LLC, Ball Packaging LLC (f/k/a Ball Packaging Corp. f/k/a Ball Packaging Holdings Corp.), Ball Packaging Products Canada Corp., Ball Pan-European Holdings, Ball Peru S.A.C., Ball Southeast Asia Holdings (Singapore) PTE LTD, Ball Technologies Holdings Corp., Ball Technology Services Corporation, Ball Trading France S.A.S., Ball Trading Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Ball UK Acquisition Limited, Ball UK Holdco Limited, Ball UK Holdings Ltd, Ball UK Investments Limited, Ball do Brasil Ltda (f/k/a Rexam do Brasil Ltda), Berkeley Nominees Limited, Bookprint Limited, Bowater SCG Limited, Bowaters Canadian Holdings Limited, Brackenbush Limited, Brookhill Mouldings Limited, CPRX-Hughesville Inc., Causton Printing Limited, Citiforms (Sales) Limited, Controladora Envases Universales Rexam SA JV, Copal S.A.S., Cope Allman Holdings Limited, Cope Allman Int (Management Services) Limited, Cope Allman Packaging Group Limited, Cope Allman Packaging Limited, Corsec Mercantile Services Limited, Counting House Computer Systems Limited, DRG Australia Limited, DRG France Limited, DRG Medical Packaging Supplies (Flexpak) Ltd, DRG Medical Packaging Supplies (Malago) Ltd, DRG Medical Packaging Supplies Limited, Deister Handels & Beteiligungs GmbH, Dimgate Limited, EXAL Holdings France, Ejectoret Limited, Envases Antillanos C. por A., Envases Universales Rexam de Centroamerica SA, Envases del Istmo SA JV, Envases del Plata, FTB Corporate Services Limited, FTB Packaging Limited, Filmset Limited, Foshan Packaging Holdings Limited, Gainer Developments Ltd., Guangdong Jianlibao Group, Hanil Can Co Limited (Associate), Heekin Can, Impact Packaging Limited, Jambalaya S.A., Jauntbrook Limited, Jesse Broad Limited, John Dunhill & Co Limited, KB Jarnaldern 3, Kemsley Fields Limited JV, Knightsbridge Trustees Limited, Latapack-Ball Embalagens Ltda., Latas De Aluminio Ball, M.C. Packaging (Hong Kong) Limited, MCP Beverage Packaging Limited, MCP Device Limited, MCP Intellectual Property Holdings Limited, Magnaparva Packaging Limited JV, McCorquodale & Blades Trust Limited, McCorquodale Commercial Products Limited, McCorquodale Leasing Limited, McCorquodale Limited, Mertonlight Limited, Metal Packaging International, N O Limited, N O Packaging Limited, N O Pensions Administration Limited, N&W Properties Limited, Nacanco Deutschland GmbH, National Trading Corporation, Nellford Limited, Neuman Aluminium, OPD Packaging Limited, PLM Septanus AB, Poland Glassworks Holding BV, Prestadora de Servicios de Dentroamerica SA, Qingdao M.C. Packaging Limited, RAC Holding II Pte Limited, RAC Holding Pte Limited, RBT (London) Limited, Rayeil International Limited, Restlat Investments Limited, Rexam (AK) Limited, Rexam (Jersey) Limited, Rexam AB, Rexam Amazonia Ltda, Rexam Ashmore Beverage Can Myanmar Company Limited, Rexam BC Limited, Rexam Beauty (Taiwan Holdings) Limited, Rexam Beverage Can (India Holdings) Limited, Rexam CFP Limited, Rexam CW Limited, Rexam Closures Limited, Rexam Coated Products Limited, Rexam DFR China Limited, Rexam DFR Taiwan Limited, Rexam European Holdings AB, Rexam European Holdings Limited, Rexam FW Limited, Rexam Finance Company Limited, Rexam Finance Germany Limited, Rexam Finance Netherlands Limited, Rexam Finance Poland Limited, Rexam Finance Sweden Limited, Rexam Financial Services Limited, Rexam Flexibles Viking Limited, Rexam France SAS, Rexam Graphics Limited, Rexam Group Holdings Limited, Rexam Healthcare Innovation SAS, Rexam High Performance Flexibles Limited, Rexam Holding GmbH, Rexam Holdings AB, Rexam Holdings Germany AB, Rexam Holdings Limited, Rexam Industrial Bulk Packaging Limited, Rexam Investments Pty Limited, Rexam Jersey 2007 Limited, Rexam Latas Americas Mexico SA de CV, Rexam Leasing AB, Rexam Limited, Rexam Liquid Packaging Limited, Rexam Nacanco Netherlands BV, Rexam Nederland Holdings BV, Rexam Overseas Holdings Limited, Rexam PLC, Rexam Packaging Limited, Rexam Packaging Systems Limited, Rexam Pension Trustees Limited, Rexam Pharma Development SA, Rexam Pharmaceutical Packaging Limited, Rexam Plastic Containers Limited, Rexam Property Developments Limited, Rexam Property Holdings Limited, Rexam RDI Limited, Rexam Trustees (Jersey) Limited, Rexam UK Holdings Limited, Rexam US Investments Limited, Rexam United Arab Can Manufacturing Limited, Rexam Uruguay SA, Rexam WCL Limited, Rexam WCP Limited, Rexam WM Limited, Rexam Webster Limited, Ruth Jersey 2009 Limited, SCI le Marais, Sario Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH & CO. Objekt Elfi, Schmalbach-Lubeca AG, Sir Joseph Causton & Sons Limited, Sofab Limited, Solray Plastics Limited, Specialty Coatings Group UK Trustees Limited, The Renaissance Insurance Company, USC May Verpackungen Holding Inc., Unit Moulders Limited, Victor International Plastics (London) Limited, Viking Packaging Limited, Wavefront Technologies, Wembley Press Limited, Wessex Typesetters Limited, and Wise Champion Investments Limited.
Wall Street analysts have given SPDR Gold Shares a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but SPDR Gold Shares wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.
View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.
Andrew Peller Ltd is a Canada-based company, which produces and markets wine and wine related products. The Company's brands include Peller Estates, Trius, Thirty Bench, Wayne Gretzky, Sandhill, Conviction, Red Rooster, Peller Estates French Cross, Peller Estates Proprietors Reserve, Copper Moon, Black Cellar, XOXO, skinnygrape, Hochtaler, Domaine D'Or, Schloss Laderheim, Royal and Sommet. With wineries in British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, the Company markets wines produced from grapes grown in Ontario's Niagara Peninsula, British Columbia's Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys, and from vineyards across the world. The Company produces and markets personal winemaking products through its subsidiary, Global Vintners Inc. (GVI). The Company owns and operates over 100 independent retail locations in Ontario under The Wine Shop, Wine Country Vintners, and Wine Country Merchants store names. It also owns The Small Winemaker's Collection Inc. and Andrew Peller Import Agency.
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The Mytsone project would dam for the first time the Irrawaddy River, the cradle of Burmese civilisation. Whilst Beijing is pressing for work to resume, Myanmar wavers. About 90 per cent of the power generated by the complex would go to China. One of the most authoritative voices against the dam is Card Charles Maung Bo.
Yangon (AsiaNews) About 10,000 people in northern Myanmars Kachin state staged a massive rally Thursday to protest against the controversial Chinese-backed Myitsone Dam, a project to be built at the confluence of the Mali and NMai rivers, which form the Irrawaddy River.
The project was put on hold in 2011. Yesterday morning, Kachin activists, political leaders, religious leaders, civil society groups, and ordinary people rallied at Manaw park in the State capital of Myitkyina, marching peacefully through the streets of the city to express their opposition.
The US$ 3.6-billion, 6,400-megawatt project is controlled by Chinas State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC). Should it be completed, it would be the first dam to block the Irrawaddy River, the cradle of Burmese civilisation.
In 2011, following widespread local protests against the dams potential environmental impact, then Myanmar President Thein Sein halted construction, angering Beijing. It is estimated that about 90 per cent of the power generated would go to China.
Now Beijing wants construction to resume but the governments hesitation has angered people in Kachin State.
The mega dam is not for us, said lead protester Steven Naw Awng. Instead, we will lose our lives and property because of it. So, we are all gathering to express our opposition [to the project] and demand its termination so that the Irrawaddy can flow freely.
Duwa Gumgrawng Awng Hkam, leader of the Kachin Democratic Party, agrees. This is a call for a permanent halt of Myitsone dam project, he said. We consider [Chinas move] an act of bullying because it looks like they are trying to get what they want, so Id like to urge the government to address the issue decisively.
A statement released by protest organisers calls on the Chinese companies involved in the project to respect the wishes of the people and contribute to good bilateral relations by giving up on their plans.
Since ethnic Kachin are largely Christian, many leaders of the Catholic and Baptist Churches took part in the demonstration.
Three days ago, Christian leaders also spoke with General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces. The latter reassured them that the Armed Forces would respect the will of the population.
One of the most authoritative voices against the Myitsone dam is Card Charles Maung Bo, archbishop of Yangon and president of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences (FABC).
On 28 January, Myanmars first cardinal penned a public letter in which he defined the project as a "death sentence to the people of Myanmar" because of its environmental damage as well as its impact on the country's prospects for peace after decades of civil war.
The following companies are subsidiares of American International Group: AGC Life Insurance Company, AIG APAC HOLDINGS PTE. LTD., AIG Advisors S.r.l., AIG Aerospace Insurance Services Inc., AIG Asia Pacific Insurance Pte. Ltd., AIG Asset Management (Europe) Limited, AIG Asset Management (U.S.) LLC, AIG Assurance Company, AIG Australia Limited, AIG Brazil Holding I LLC, AIG CIS Investments LLC, AIG Canada Holdings Inc., AIG Capital Corporation, AIG Capital Services Inc., AIG Claims Inc., AIG Egypt Insurance Company S.A.E., AIG Employee Services Inc., AIG Europe (Services) Limited, AIG Europe Holdings S.a.rl., AIG Europe S.A., AIG Federal Savings Bank, AIG Financial Products Corp., AIG General Insurance Co. Ltd., AIG Global Asset Management Holdings Corp., AIG Global Real Estate Investment Corp., AIG Global Reinsurance Operations, AIG Holdings Europe Limited, AIG Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited, AIG Insurance Company China Limited, AIG Insurance Company JSC, AIG Insurance Company of Canada, AIG Insurance Company-Puerto Rico, AIG Insurance Hong Kong Limited, AIG Insurance Limited, AIG Insurance Management Services Inc., AIG Insurance New Zealand Limited, AIG International Holdings GmbH, AIG Investments UK Limited, AIG Israel Insurance Company Ltd, AIG Japan Holdings Kabushiki Kaisha, AIG Kenya Insurance Company Limited, AIG Korea Inc., AIG Latin America I.I., AIG Latin America Investments S.L., AIG Lebanon SAL, AIG Life Holdings Inc., AIG Life Insurance Company (Switzerland) Ltd, AIG Life Limited, AIG Life South Africa Limited, AIG Life of Bermuda Ltd., AIG MEA Holdings Limited, AIG MEA Limited, AIG Malaysia Insurance Berhad, AIG Markets Inc., AIG Matched Funding Corp., AIG PC Global Services Inc., AIG Philippines Insurance Inc., AIG Property Casualty Company, AIG Property Casualty Inc., AIG Property Casualty International LLC, AIG Property Casualty U.S. Inc., AIG Re-Takaful (L) Berhad, AIG Resseguros Brasil S.A., AIG Seguros Brasil S.A., AIG Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., AIG Shared Services Corporation, AIG South Africa Limited, AIG Specialty Insurance Company, AIG Technologies Inc., AIG Travel Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., AIG Travel Assist Inc., AIG Travel Assist Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., AIG Travel EMEA Limited, AIG Travel Inc., AIG Uganda Limited, AIG Vietnam Insurance Company Limited, AIG WarrantyGuard Inc., AIG-FP Pinestead Holdings Corp., AIG-Metropolitana Cia. de Seguros y Reaseguros S.A., AIGGRE EOLA LLC, AIGGRE Europe Real Estate Fund I GP S.a r.l., AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund I GP LLC, AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund I LP, AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund II GP LLC, AIU Insurance Company, AM Holdings LLC, Ageas Protect, AlphaCat Managers Ltd., American General Corporation, American General Life Insurance Company, American Home Assurance Co. Ltd., American Home Assurance Company, American Home Assurance Company Escritorio de Representacao no Brasil Ltda., American International Group Inc., American International Group UK Limited, American International Overseas Association, American International Overseas Limited, American International Realty Corp., American International Reinsurance Company Ltd., American International Underwriters del Ecuador-Holding S.A., American Security Life Insurance Company Limited, Arthur J. Glatfelter Agency Inc., Avondhu Limited, Blackboard Customer Care Insurance Services LLC, Blackboard Insurance Company, Blackboard Services LLC, Blackboard Specialty Insurance Company, Blackboard U.S. Holdings Inc., Chartis Takaful Enaya B.S.C. (c), Commerce and Industry Insurance Company, Crop Risk Services Inc., Eaglestone Reinsurance Company, Ellipse, Fortitude Group Holdings LLC, Fortitude Life & Annuity Solutions Inc., Fortitude Reinsurance Company Ltd., Franklin Life Insurance Company, Fuji Fire and Marine, Glatfelter Insurance Group, Globe and Rutgers Insurance Group, Grand Isle SAC Limited, Granite State Insurance Company, Group Risk Services Limited, Group Risk Technologies Limited, Illinois National Insurance Co., Jefferson Eola Venture LLC, Johannesburg Insurance Holdings (Proprietary) Limited, Laya Healthcare Limited, Lexington Insurance Company, MG Reinsurance Limited, Mt. Mansfield Company Inc., National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh Pa., National Union Fire Insurance Company of Vermont, New Hampshire Insurance Company, PT AIG Insurance Indonesia, Pine Street Real Estate Holdings Corp., Private Joint-Stock Company AIG Ukraine Insurance Company, Risk Specialists Companies Insurance Agency Inc., SA Affordable Housing LLC, SAFG Retirement Services Inc., Service Net Warranty LLC, Stratford Insurance Company, SunAmerica Affordable Housing Partners Inc., SunAmerica Asset Management LLC, Talbot Holdings Ltd., Talbot Underwriting Holdings Ltd., Talbot Underwriting Ltd., Thai CIT Holding Company Limited, The Insurance Company of the State of Pennsylvania, The United States Life Insurance Company in the City of New York, The Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company, Travel Guard, Travel Guard Group Canada Inc./Groupe Garde Voyage du Canada Inc., Travel Guard Group Inc., Tudor Insurance Company, VALIC Financial Advisors Inc., Valic Retirement Services Company, Validus Holdings, Validus Holdings (UK) Ltd., Validus Holdings Ltd., Validus Reinsurance (Switzerland) Ltd, Validus Reinsurance Ltd., Validus Ventures Ltd., Volunteer Firemen's Insurance Services Inc., Western World Insurance Company, and Western World Insurance Group Inc..
Xylem Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the design, manufacture, and servicing of engineered products and solutions for the water and wastewater applications in the United States, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. It operates in three segments: Water Infrastructure, Applied Water, and Measurement & Control Solutions. The Water Infrastructure segment offers various products, including water and wastewater pumps; controls and systems; filtration, disinfection, and biological treatment equipment; and mobile dewatering equipment under the Flygt, Godwin, Wedeco, Sanitaire, and Leopold names for the transportation and treatment of water. The Applied Water segment provides pumps, valves, heat exchangers, controls, and dispensing equipment systems under the Goulds Water Technology, Bell & Gossett, A-C Fire Pump, Standard Xchange, Lowara, Jabsco, and Flojet brand names for residential and commercial building services, and industrial water applications. The Measurement & Control Solutions segment provides smart metering, networked communications, and measurement and control technologies, as well as critical infrastructure technologies that allow customers to use their distribution networks for the delivery, monitoring, and control of critical resources, such as water, electricity, and natural gas. It also offers software and services, including cloud-based analytics, remote monitoring, data management and analytics, leak detection, condition assessment, asset management, and pressure monitoring solutions, as well as testing equipment and managed services. This segment sells its products under the BLU-X, Pure, Sensus, Smith Blair, WTW, and YSI brand names. The company markets and sells its products through a network of direct sales force, resellers, distributors, and value-added solution providers. Xylem Inc. is headquartered in Rye Brook, New York.
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Robert Half International Inc. provides staffing and risk consulting services in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The company operates through three segments: Temporary and Consultant Staffing, Permanent Placement Staffing, and Risk Consulting and Internal Audit Services. It places temporary services for accounting, finance, and bookkeeping; temporary and full-time office and administrative personnel consisting of executive and administrative assistants, receptionists, and customer service representatives; full-time accounting, financial, tax, and accounting operations personnel; and information technology contract consultants and full-time employees in the areas of platform systems integration to end-user technical and desktop support, including specialists in application development, networking, systems integration and deployment, database design and administration, and security and business continuity. The company also offers temporary and full-time employees in attorney, paralegal, legal administrative, and legal secretarial positions; and senior level project professionals in the accounting and finance fields for financial systems conversions, expansion into new markets, business process reengineering, business systems performance improvement, and post-merger financial consolidation. In addition, it is involved in serving professionals in the areas of interactive media, design, marketing, advertising, and public relations; and placing freelance and project consultants in various positions, such as creative directors, graphics designers, Web content developers, Web designers, media buyers, brand managers, and public relations specialists. Further, the company provides business and technology risk consulting, and internal audit services. It serves clients and employment candidates. Robert Half International Inc. was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
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Suncor Energy Inc. operates as an integrated energy company. The company primarily focuses on developing petroleum resource basins in Canada's Athabasca oil sands; explores, acquires, develops, produces, transports, refines, and markets crude oil in Canada and internationally; markets petroleum and petrochemical products under the Petro-Canada name primarily in Canada. It operates in Oil Sands; Exploration and Production; Refining and Marketing; and Corporate and Eliminations segments. The Oil Sands segment recovers bitumen from mining and in situ operations, and upgrades it into refinery feedstock and diesel fuel, or blends the bitumen with diluent for direct sale to market. The Exploration and Production segment is involved in offshore operations off the east coast of Canada and in the North Sea; and operating onshore assets in Libya and Syria. The Refining and Marketing segment refines crude oil and intermediate feedstock into various petroleum and petrochemical products; and markets refined petroleum products to retail, commercial, and industrial customers through its other retail sellers. The Corporate and Eliminations segment operates four wind farm operations in Ontario and Western Canada. The company also markets and trades in crude oil, natural gas, byproducts, refined products, and power. The company was formerly known as Suncor Inc. and changed its name to Suncor Energy Inc. in April 1997. Suncor Energy Inc. was founded in 1917 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.
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SolarWinds Corporation provides information technology (IT) infrastructure management software products in the United States and internationally. It offers products to monitor and manage network, system, desktop, application, storage, database, and website infrastructures, whether on-premise, in the public or private cloud, or in a hybrid IT infrastructure. It provides a suite of network management software that provides real-time visibility into network utilization and bandwidth, as well as the ability to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance problems; and a suite of infrastructure management products, which monitor and analyze the performance of applications and their supporting infrastructure. It also offers suite of application performance management software that enable visibility into log data, cloud infrastructure metrics, applications, tracing, and web performance management; and service management software. In addition, the company provides cloud-based software solutions to enable managed service providers (MSPs) to support digital transformation and growth in small and medium-sized enterprises; and service management software that provides ITIL-compliant service desk solutions for various companies. Further, it offers remote monitoring and management solutions for the performance of networks and devices, and automation of policies and workflows; security and data protection products for network and systems infrastructure, applications, and end user devices; and business management solutions for professional services automation, and password and documentation management. The company markets and sells its products directly to network and systems engineers, database administrators, storage administrators, DevOps professionals, and managed service providers. The company was formerly known as SolarWinds Parent, Inc. and changed its name to SolarWinds Corporation in May 2018. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
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The "logic of mercy" should counter that of a "throwaway" culture. Ecological awareness should be raised and the value of life defended at a time of new possibilities offered by the development of biomedical sciences.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) Pope Francis on Saturday met students and teachers from Romes Alphonsian Academy on the 70th anniversary of its foundation.
In his address, the pontiff said that whilst moral theology faces concrete challenges, the "logic of mercy" must oppose to that of a throwaway culture. This requires raising ecological awareness and defending life at a time of new possibilities provided by the development of biomedical sciences.
Francis urges the Academy, whose specialisation is moral theology, to make "an even more convinced and generous commitment to a moral theology inspired by the missionary tension of an outbound Church.
Indeed, we must always avoid letting ourselves be imprisoned in positions of schools or in judgments formulated far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of people and families. Equally, it is necessary to be on guard against an excessive idealization of Christian life that is not capable of reawakening trust in Gods grace.
"The realities to be heard are first and foremost the sufferings and the hopes of those whom the thousand forms of power of sin continue to condemn to insecurity, to poverty, to marginalization. Saint Alphonsus understood very soon that it was not a world to defend oneself against, even less to condemn, but rather to heal and liberate, in imitation of the action of Christ: incarnating and sharing needs, to reawaken the deepest expectations of the heart, to make sure that everyone, however fragile and sinful, is in the heart of the Heavenly Father and is loved by Christ unto the cross. Who is touched by this love, feels the urgency to respond with love.
"All words of moral theology must let themselves be formed by this merciful logic, that enables them to be encountered effectively as words of a life in fullness."
Our increasingly globalised world requires overcoming individualistic morality and three quick responses. The first is against the growing dominance of the logic of the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest. The second is against the view that treats human beings [as] consumer goods. And lastly comes the cry of the earth, violated and wounded in a thousand ways by selfish exploitation.
"I reflect on the fact that when I administer Reconciliation even before, when I did so only rarely does someone admit to having carried out an act of violence to nature, to the earth, to creation. We do not yet have awareness of this sin. It is your task to do this.
"Moral research is also called to carry out dialogue and shared commitment also in relation to the new possibilities that the development of the biomedical sciences makes available to humanity. There should never lack a frank testimony of the unconditional value of every life, reiterating that it is precisely the weakest and most defenceless life that we are called to take responsibility for in a united and trustful manner.
I am sure that the Alphonsian Academy will continue to be committed to a moral theology that does not hesitate to get its hands dirty with the concrete reality of problems, especially with the fragility and the suffering of those who most see their future under threat, bearing witness with frankness to Christ, the way and the truth and the life (Jn, 14: 6)."
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RATIONAL Aktiengesellschaft develops, produces, and sells professional cooking appliances for industrial kitchens worldwide. It offers SelfCookingCenter and CombiMaster Plus combi-steamers, as well as care products for combi-steamers; VarioCooking Center, a multifunctional cooking appliance that cooks in liquids or direct contact with heat; and ConnectedCooking connectivity solution, an online portal for the professional kitchen. The company also provides accessories, service parts, and services for its products. It serves restaurants and hotels; catering operations, such as company canteens, hospitals, schools, universities, military facilities, prisons, and retirement homes; and quick service restaurants, caterers, supermarkets, bakeries, snack outlets, butchers' shops, and service stations. The company sells its products through independent distribution partners. RATIONAL Aktiengesellschaft was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Landsberg am Lech, Germany.
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DXC Technology Company, together with its subsidiaries, provides information technology services and solutions primarily in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It operates in two segments, Global Business Services (GBS) and Global Infrastructure Services (GIS). The GBS segment offers a portfolio of analytics services and extensive partner ecosystem that help its customers to gain rapid insights, automate operations, and accelerate their digital transformation journeys; and software engineering and solutions that enable businesses to run and manage their mission-critical functions, transform their operations, and develop new ways of doing business. This segment also uses various technologies and methods to accelerate the creation, modernization, delivery, and maintenance of secure applications allowing customers to innovate faster while reducing risk, time to market, and total cost of ownership. In addition, it offers business process services, which include digital integration and optimization of front and back office processes, and agile process automation. The GIS segment adapts legacy apps to cloud, migrate the right workloads, and securely manage their multi-cloud environments; and offers security solutions help predict attacks, proactively respond to threats, and ensure compliance, as well as to protect data, applications, and infrastructure. It also provides IT outsourcing services support infrastructure, applications, and workplace IT operations, including hardware, software, physical/virtual end-user devices, collaboration tools, and IT support services. In addition, this segment offers workplace and mobility services to fit its customer's employee, business, and IT needs from intelligent collaboration; and modern device management, digital support services, Internet of Things and mobility services. The company has a strategic collaboration with Microsoft. DXC Technology Company was founded in 1959 and is headquartered in Tysons, Virginia.
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| June 23rd | 2021 5:00 AM
You Quit Your Job Good for You! But How Does that Impact Your Investments?
As companies make plans to return employees back to the office, millions of workers have made a decision not to go back at all. In fact, the number of people who quit their jobs increased to four million in April and increased 2.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The largest increases in employees leaving their jobs occurred in retail trade and professional and business services.
Chegg, Inc. operates direct-to-student learning platform that supports students on their journey from high school to college and into their career with tools designed to help them to learn their course materials, succeed in their classes, and save money on required materials. The company offers Chegg Services, which include subscription services; and required materials that comprise its print textbooks and eTextbooks. Its subscription services include Chegg Study, which helps students master challenging concepts on their own; Chegg Writing that provides students with a suite of tools, such as plagiarism detection scans, grammar and writing fluency checking, expert personalized writing feedback, and premium citation generation; Chegg Math solver, a step-by-step math problem solver and calculator that helps students to solve problems; Chegg Study Pack, a bundle of various Chegg Services product offerings, including Chegg Study, Chegg Writing, Chegg Math Solver, video content, and practice quizzes, which creates an integrated platform of connected academic support services; and Thinkful, a skills-based learning platform that offers professional courses in the areas of software engineering, UX/UI design, digital marketing, data science, product management, data analytics, product design, and technical project management directly to students. The company also provides other services, such as Chegg Prep and internships; and rents and sells print textbooks and eTextbooks. Chegg, Inc. was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
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by Nirmala Carvalho
The attack, which took place in Sultanpur district, saw three Christians seriously injured; yet, police did not allow them to file a complaint. For Sajan K George, fanatics are whipping up hostility against Christians for political gain.
Mumbai (AsiaNews) A mob of Hindu radicals attacked a group of Protestants during a prayer service led by Rev Ranjit. The incident occurred on Thursday in Chapar, a village in Sultanpur district, Uttar Pradesh.
The faithful "were severely beaten, said Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), speaking to AsiaNews. They did not even spare women."
"The GCIC condemns these acts of violence, he added. Intolerance towards Christians in Uttar Pradesh is spiralling upward and religious freedom is pulverised by fanatical elements."
According to the Christian leader, the event "is a shame on secular India. It is also a disgrace for the dignity of women, who were victimised in the attack and beaten."
The raid took place at a prayer gathering. A crowd of 25 Hindu radicals broke into the clergymans house and began insulting those present. This escalated into slapping and hitting with sticks. Three members of the prayer group Rakesh, Mukesh and Bhanu Pratap suffered serious injuries.
The extremists also set some copies of the Bible on fire.
What is most regrettable for Sajan K George, "is that the police, once it arrived at the place, did nothing. It did not allow Christians to file a complaint against the attackers nor let the injured get medical certificates for their injuries."
The president of the GCIC "strongly condemns the incident. Fear is at its highest levels as the general elections (in May) approach. Fanatics are whipping up hostility against Christians for political gain."
The attack against women and the lack of respect for them "is a terrible blot for our society". The same goes for the lumpen elements who create law and order problems and escape scot free. This emboldens them to continue attacking the vulnerable Christian minority."
A10 Networks, Inc. provides networking solutions in the United States, Japan, other Asia Pacific, and EMEA countries. The company offers Thunder Application Delivery Controller (ADC) that provides advanced server load balancing; Lightning ADC, a cloud-native software-as-a-service platform to boost the delivery and security of applications and micro services; and Thunder Carrier Grade Networking product, which offers standards-compliant address and protocol translation services for service provider networks. It also provides Thunder Threat Protection System (TPS) for the protection of networks and server resources against massive distributed denial of service attacks; Thunder Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Insight solution that decrypts SSL-encrypted traffic and forwards it to a third-party security device for deep packet inspection; and Thunder Convergent Firewall, which addresses various critical security capabilities in one package by consolidating various security and networking functions in a single appliance. In addition, the company offers intelligent management and automation tools comprising harmony controller that provides intelligent management, automation, and analytics for secure application delivery in multi-cloud environment; and aGalaxy TPS, a multi-device network management solution. The company delivers its solutions on optimized hardware appliances, bare metal software, containerized software, virtual appliances, and cloud-native software. It serves cloud providers, service providers, government organizations, and enterprises in the telecommunications, technology, industrial, retail, government, financial, gaming, and education industries. The company markets its products through sales organizations, as well as distribution channel partners, including distributors, value added resellers, and system integrators. A10 Networks, Inc. was incorporated in 2004 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.
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A separatist-called shutdown con Saturday in the Kashmir Valley to mark the sixth death anniversary of Parliament-attack mastermind Afzal Guru, has paralysed life across the region.
Afzal Guru was executed in Delhi's Tihar Jail on this day in 2013.
While calling for the shutdown, the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), a separatist conglomerate headed by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, has reiterated their demand for handing over Afzal Guru's mortal remains to the family.
After the execution, Afzal Guru's body was buried within the precincts of the jail. He is survived by his wife, Tabassum and 18-year old son, Ghalib, who live in Tarzoo village near north Kashmir's Sopore town.
Authorities placed Mirwaiz Umer Farooq under house arrest on Friday at his residence on the outskirts of Srinagar.
Markets, public transportations and other business establishments remained closed in Srinagar and other major cities and towns of the valley.
Authorities made heavy deployments of police and paramilitary forces at law and order sensitive places in Srinagar, Sopore, Baramulla, but n o restrictions were imposed on public movement anywhere in the valley.
The coherence and signature represented by six Modi Budgets is in the emphasis given to long-term nation building and modernisation over populist sops. This has given us the good macroeconomic profile and the international recognition of an economy on the move, writes Gautam Mukherjee
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim.
Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged
A farewell Budget that lays out a 10-year roadmap and a pot of gold $10 trillion strong at 13 years from now, is unusual to say the least. If you think of 2032, when most of our 65 per cent of the population that is under 35 will be around, remember $10 trillion puts you in the top three economies of the world in nominal terms, and probably at the very top in PPP terms. This is due to Indias 7-8 per cent GDP growth per annum, year on year compounding away, and expected to power on for the next 30 years. No other major economy can hope for as much with the near certainty that we can. Of course, it presupposes that the great Indian electorate does not plunge this country into chaos by throwing a spanner in the works.
Narendra Modis audacity is in his assumption of continuity. He is banking on the good sense of the electorate to see him through. And very deftly, he has moved the time dial for himself forward. In 2014, he used to speak of the need for 10 years to get many things done. At the end of the first five, he wants, health and God willing, a further 13 years some two-and-a-half terms to retirement or worthy Lotus branded successor.
There is no pleading or grandstanding Congress-style, of if we are voted back to power. And this, weeks before the declaration of dates for the General Elections 2019. And in the face of a howling cacophony of an Opposition contemplating a life of irrelevance and powerlessness. The whole country registered the point that Modi thinks he has done well because he has not hesitated to list his Governments achievements so far. But he also needs more time to see his vision through to its logical conclusion. Given that the other side had nearly six decades, most of them mired in low growth, scarcity, and poverty, it seems like a very reasonable implied request indeed. The foreign media was quick to join a chorus of domestic observers that called it a campaign Budget because it tried to include over 70 per cent or more of the electorate in its reach. It was campaign promise, yes, but also an American style state of the Union address, and a vision statement, besides being at its minimum the usual set of proposals towards the annual accounting exercise.
The new NSSO data on jobs on which the Opposition has jumped with all the vigour of a pack of ravenous hyenas, is clearly spurious, resignation of its authors notwithstanding. This talk of a 45-year high in unemployment is absurd, because 45 years ago, this country, in the sadistic grip of the Licence-Permit Raj and minus growth rates, was barely allowed to manufacture a sling shot. It, therefore, reads like an old Soviet crop report in its exaggeration and inaccuracy. The half-baked NSSO report was leaked just before the tabling of the Interim Budget on February 1, despite being disallowed by the Government.
It has clearly done no more than a shoddy job of surveying the formal economy. That the private sector in it, mostly benefited by the Congress and its payola systems, and in a sulk ever since it was booted out, along with a mostly unproductive public sector, is not the whole truth, is obvious. The formal private sector, deprived of loans they understood they were not required to pay back, leading to a massive bad debt problems at all the public sector and some private sector banks, has indeed not grown much.
The informal economy, however, which is at 80-90 per cent of the whole, and fuels the robust GDP growth too, is ignored by the lazy babus at the NSSO, who cant be bothered to survey and enumerate it. But this cannot be ignored with impunity. Certainly not without serious distortions of data. Because, it, the domestic service, the self-employed small entrepreneur, the street vendor, the drivers, helpers, cooks, guards, construction site workers, chowkidars even is growing much faster than the formal economy!
Along with it are the poorly documented small and medium enterprises, estimated to employ some 200 million people at least. In this Budget, this MSME sector has been given an interest subvention of 2 per cent for loans up to Rs 1 crore.
The broad informal sector has been offered a small monthly pension of Rs 3,000 per month after the age of 60. It is a benefit that will accrue to millions of people. This comes on top of other insurance schemes for the poor, announced earlier, including those for medical insurance, life, and accident insurance. In addition to bank accounts, Aadhaar-based identity authentication, and a massive thrust towards digitisation, the insurance vehicles are definitely a Modi favourite.
The larger benefit for the country is the inclusion of the same millions who work in these sectors, on the statistical rolls. We will know who these people are, where they work, as the pension scheme identifies millions of workers for eligibility. They can qualify for the scheme only by making a monthly contribution of between Rs 55-100, depending on age. It will be, therefore, to an extent, self-supporting, like most insurance schemes are.
In this Interim Budget as a whole, there was the careful balancing act of distributing sops, incentives, and largesse, without impacting the admirable fiscal deficit number as it stands. Certainly not by more than 0.1 per cent, even projected into next year. This was made possible by a doubling of direct tax collections for the very first time. It was a Budget that was responsive to the needs of various sections of the population, and thanked the taxpayer a first for any Indian Government for enabling the development programmes of this administration to go forward.
The Modi Government presented, via a stand-in Finance Minister, who is also the Railway Minister, what might have been a vote-on-account. That is if it was an administration with less self-confidence and more reverence for convention. Minister Piyush Goyal young, fit, fluently bilingual in Hindi and English presented a substantial Budget through a long speech.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was there, thumping the table along with his colleagues on the Treasury Benches, in repeated approval of many of the announcements that were made.
The media and the middle classes saw to it that the best received announcement bar none was the one that exempted up to Rs 5 lakh in taxable income from Income Tax. It will benefit an estimated three crore people. And there were hints that people in higher tax brackets might also see some relief when the Budget proposals are confirmed after the elections. This even as a small payment of Rs 6,000 per annum to farmers who own less than five acres of land, has nevertheless remembered another 12 crore people.
This too, like the pension scheme for the informal sector will help identify by name, Aadhaar Card and bank account some 12 crore people who qualify, and will also improve our statistical abilities. States will need to cooperate by supplying much of the information from their land records. But the uses of this captured information will be handy for other benefits too, as they roll out in future.
The Congress was quick to mock at this one, announced early in the Budget speech, seeing their plank of being the farmers champion melting away. At just Rs 17 a day, Rahul Gandhi called it an insult to the Indian farmer. Internet wags promptly mocked him on social media, calling it 0.02 paise per second. This, even as the BJP said the States, particularly the Congress-ruled ones, were at liberty to enhance the amounts to the extent that their purse and conscience could afford. This was probably in oblique reference to the already floundering farm loan waiver schemes announced by the Congress in the three Hindi heartland States they have recently won as well as in Karnataka. This token amount, of course, comes on top of other benefits, such as minimum price guarantees for produce, subsidised fertiliser and low-cost loans and interest waivers also extended by this Budget to those in fisheries, poultry, and dairy industries.
The moribund real estate sector that accounts for at least 10 per cent of the GDP, ignored for the entirety of the Modi Government so far, despite being a significant employer, has at last been given some benefits. Perhaps the Government saw its relentless emphasis on infrastructure development in preparation for facilitating a $10-trillion economy, as attention enough.
However, the housing, office, retail shopping centres and so on, are definitely a distinct, largely urban area category, and deserve encouragement. Having seen the light on this at last, the present Budget moves on relief in notional rents from second homes. It also includes long-term capital gains from property concessions. This permits buying two homes after the sale of one to a capital gains value of Rs 2 crore, without attracting any tax, but only once in a lifetime.
There were a number of efficiency-oriented announcements, including income tax assessments and refunds within a day, digitised and anonymous scrutiny, single-window clearances for domestic filmmakers, and a massive push for furthering the digital in general as a tool to curb corruption and increase efficiency. Bank fixed deposits might experience a revival because the TDS threshold has been raised from applicability at just Rs 10,000 earned to Rs 40,000.
The Opposition was visibly upset at a near-full Budget instead of a mere vote-on-account, and whined about this for a day or two after the one-hour-45-minute presentation by Goyal. It was nevertheless called a good Budget by experts, the captains of business and industry, the ordinary people, the stock market, and the media.
Various Congress Party grandees, including the Gandhis, sat on in Parliament through Goyals cheerful speech, making faces as if they were suffering the full rigours of purgatory. Undaunted, the Budget laid out a 10-point vision statement. It wants to build physical infrastructure fit for a $10-trillion economy. This cannot be faulted, because infrastructure bottlenecks have hampered our progress for decades and stigmatised India as a third world country. Modi also wants a fully digital economy by 2030, probably in line with all of the developed world. Electric vehicles will become de rigeur, as will renewable energy to curb bad air, ground, and water pollution.
Rural industrialisation is an inevitable priority, as more and more people migrate to the cities as a corollary to development seen all over the world. So there will be mechanisation, productivity enhancement, village industry and so on, to transform the countryside. Clean rivers are starting to become a reality for the first time with sewage and chemicals being processed instead of being allowed to pollute the rivers. This trend will be strengthened going forward even as Ganga water has shown improvement for the very first time. Let us remember that there were no fish in the Thames because it was so polluted before conservation measures were put in place. There will be a scaling up of the Blue Water Economy using the flagship Sagarmala and other projects. The Space Programme will send an Indian to space by 2022 and India will become the worlds go-to place for the launch of satellites.
Food self-sufficiency, already a thing achieved, must be maintained using sustainable farming practices. Comprehensive education and healthcare for all is on its way to becoming a reality, but is also a basic requirement for a developed economy. Improved Government efficiency as a goal is probably the hardest to achieve, but can come about if permanent tenure is removed.
The biggest defence Budget ever at Rs 3 lakh plus crore, however, is grossly inadequate, considering the backlog of work towards modernisation of the equipment for the armed forces. This will have to be reinforced liberally off Budget. The Budget for the Indian Railways towards modernisation, greater connectivity, and growth, has been enhanced, as it is on its way to revival and profitability once again. It is indeed a proud achievement that all unmanned level crossings on the broad gauge network have now been eliminated. People need not die at them anymore. Civil aviation is growing by leaps and bounds as over a million people use it daily to travel to and from 100 airports domestically.
There are many other aspects of this Budget, both in the headlines and the fine print. But suffice is to say that it plans to increase expenditure significantly without wrecking the fiscal deficit. Let us hope the Governments substantial divestment PSU programme, which has not gone particularly well, does not queer the pitch. The lending and rating agencies will be watching for fiscal slippage.
Is this Budget, responsive as it is, too little too late in the day to seriously influence the coming elections? This depends on what one thinks of both public memory and attention span. Modi clearly thinks that it is best to do welcome things as close to the General Elections as possible. The coherence and signature represented by the six Modi Budgets is in the emphasis given to long-term nation building and modernisation over populist sops. It is this that has given us the good macroeconomic profile and the international recognition of an economy on the move.
Of course, at the grassroots level, this Budget acknowledges that there is much that remains to be done. But the Opposition seems to be considerably behind the curve on this, because it relies heavily, as always, on the gullibility of the voter and its response to the promise of immediate benefit, however fraudulent. It has even worked for them to an extent electorally very recently. Will it do the trick in a couple of months? My guess is that it is advantage Narendra Modi all the way.
The Director of Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Jharkhands largest state-run health facility, has asked all the doctors to either abstain from private practice or be ready to face strict actions.
In a notification dated February 8, Dr. DK Singh said the doctors working for RIMS are strictly prohibited from practicing in private clinics and any such act will not be spared.
The notification, which comes in the backdrop of a similar notification by the Department of Health, Medical Education and Family Welfare, says, Private practice of any sort will attract punishment as per rule and will tarnish the image of RIMS and doctors.
I request all of you to cooperate in this matter and improve the image of the institute, the notification further adds.
Doctors at government hospitals have been accused of running private practices on several occasions in the past.
Ayodhya divisional prison was once again in news when two groups of inmates clashed over possession of mobile phone and virtually took over the jail by blocking entry for several hours late Friday night.
It was only after District Magistrate Anil Kumar, Senior Superintendent of Police Joginder Kumar, SP (City) Anil Singh Sisodiya, SP (Rural) Sanjay Kumar and a large contingent of police personnel entered the jail premises through ladders that the situation could be controlled. The officials spoke to the warring groups and later said that the situation was under control.
Interestingly, the officers also summoned fire-tenders as the inmates threatened to blast LPG cylinders kept inside.
Last year also, in July, the Ayodhya prison was in news after a hardened criminal celebrated his birthday inside the barrack and its video went viral.
As per reports, some inmates who were recently shifted from Azamgarh jail to the Ayodhya prison, clashed with fellow inmates over keeping mobile phones. Suspecting that inmate Bhola had tipped-off the authorities, the other group brutally assaulted him on Friday night. They also attacked a jail guard who tried to rescue Bhola. Later, a free for all ensued and prisoners took over the jail.
Finding himself in a hapless situation, the jail superintendent informed the District Magistrate about the development after which senior officials rushed to the prison.
To monitor the situation, drone cameras were pressed into service and additional police force was requisitioned before the contingent entered the jail campus.
The injured were later shifted to hospital but it took several hours to defuse the situation and force the inmates to return to their barracks.
The BJP made a slew of poll promises for the people of the State at its Pratishruti Samabesh (convention of promises) held here on Saturday.
Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced the party will provide permanent land records (pattas), jobs to youths and pucca houses to all needy people if the BJP is voted to power in the State in the coming elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done a lot of things for the poor in the country in the past 5 years. BJP will provide necessary facilities including pattas, pucca houses, drinking water, toilets, electricity and LPG connections to people in Odisha, said Pradhan.
Pradhan said as many as 30 lakh people are still residing in kuchha houses across the State. He alleged that the State Government has failed to provide basic amenities to the people during the last 19 years.
Former Minister Bishwabhushan Harichandan alleged that the Naveen Patnaik Government has betrayed people. The BJP will form Government in Odisha in 2019 and provide all basic amenities to all people in nooks and corners of the State.
Former administrator Aparajita Sarangi said the BJP is the only political party which translates promises into reality. Ahead of elections, schemes are being created every day but benefits are not reaching people. But we will keep our promises, she said.
BJP Yuva Morcha State president Tankadhar Tripathy slammed the State Government saying that it provided jobs to only 26,450 youths while as many as 22.57 lakh unemployed educated boys and girls had registered names in the Employment exchanges during the last 19 years.
In his third visit to Jharkhand in past six months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate three medical colleges built with a cost of nearly Rs 885 crore and other welfare projects worth around Rs 1000 crore during a public rally in Hazaribagh on February 17, officials said on Saturday.
A senior official from the Building Construction Department said that the construction of the three medical colleges to be inaugurated by the Prime Minister is almost complete and the assets would be handed over to the Health Department within the next two months.
Each of the three colleges, in Hazaribagh, Dumka and Daltanganj, is likely to have 100 seats and a hospital with 500 beds.
While the main buildings of all the three colleges are ready to be handed over, the work of furnishing at hostels is in progress and the entire property can be handed over within two months. Classes can be started from the upcoming academic session, said a senior official of the Building Construction Department, requesting anonymity.
Health Secretary Nitin Madan Kulkari said that the Health Departments work will start soon after the buildings are handed over to it.
In September 2018, Modi laid the foundation stones for medical colleges in Koderma and Chaibasa. While laying foundation for the two 300-beded medical colleges, he said that Jharkhands push towards building healthcare infrastructure was an example of the NDA governments quick steps towards development.
Besides the colleges, Modi is also likely to inaugurate the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, which promises Rs 6000 to each farmer holding up to two hectares of land. Announced in the latest interim budget, the scheme may earn the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the support of otherwise disgruntled farmers, political experts have said.
This visit by the PM assumes significance as Jharkhand is set to go to polls in 2019 and this might be Modis last official visit to Jharkhand as the Prime Minister in his current term.
Riding the Modi wave, the BJP won 12 of 14 Lok Sabha seats in the State in 2014 the highest by any political party since Jharkhands formation in 2000. Under his leadership, the BJP also won the assembly elections and formed a majority government for the first time here.
Chief Minister Raghubar Das held meetings with senior BJP leaders, office bearers and legislators on Thursday and gave them necessary instructions for the programme .
Hazaribagh has been a BJP stronghold since the days of unified Bihar.
From 1989 to 2014, the BJP won the constituency in six out of eight parliamentary elections, with former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha winning the seat thrice in the past 40 years.
Uttar Pradesh Congress headquarters at Nehru Bhawan in Mall Avenue and the route from Chaudhary Charan Singh Airport at Amausi airport to it are being decked up to accord a grand welcome to Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on her first visit to the state capital on Monday after taking over as AICC general secretary in-charge of UP East.
Priyanka will have her hands full during her four-day visit to Lucknow as she will meet senior leaders and office-bearers of the party.
Priyanka will be accompanied by her brother and Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Congress general secretary in-charge for western UP, Jyotiraditya Scindia.
Elaborate security arrangement has been made for the high-profile visit as the Gandhi siblings have Special Protection Group (SPG) protection.
Congress office-bearers said here on Saturday said that Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka and Scindia would touch down at Amausi airport on Monday noon and thereafter hold a roadshow on 10-km stretch to Nehru Bhawan.
Prior to reaching the party headquarters, the Congress leaders will garland statues of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr BR Ambedkar, Rajiv Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
The route of the roadshow has been decked up with hordings of Congress leaders with huge photos of Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi. They will be welcomed by party workers and leaders at more than 30 points.
UP Congress chief Raj Babbar had been camping in Lucknow for the last two days to oversee preparations and he held a meeting with Lucknow District Congress Committee in this regard on Friday. However, on Saturday, he flew to Delhi to attend a meeting of state Congress chiefs with Rahul Gandhi.
An advance team of AICC and Priyankas office have reached Lucknow along with all AICC secretaries in-charge of UP on Friday night, party sources said.
A SPG team led by a senior officer also reached Lucknow on Saturday to co-ordinate with UP Police the security of Rahul and Priyanka during their road show.
The SPG team also inspected Congress headquarters where Priyanka will be meeting leaders during her four-day stay.
Sources said that Priyanka would be interacting with party leaders of 42 Lok Sabha constituencies of east UP, for which 20 senior Congress leaders from each constituency have been invited. The participants would include sitting and former MPs and MLAs, district and block chiefs, office-bearers of frontal outfits and poll aspirants.
Scindia would also meet leaders of 38 Lok Sabha constituencies of west UP, but the time of the meeting has not yet been finalised. In all probability, Scindias meeting could be held in Agra next week.
Priyankas four-day stay will be a concerted effort to get inputs from leaders at the grassroot level and strengthen the party in the state, a senior leader commented.
In Lucknow, Priyanka will dedicate an hour to each parliamentary constituency and take up 14 constituencies per day starting from Tuesday.
The Congress leaders are eyeing the visit as the virtual launch of the partys poll campaign in the state, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Congress workers are excited about the visit of party leaders and we are awaiting to give them a rousing welcome... we hope that with her (Priyanka Gandhi Vadra) joining active politics, the state will also get a new energy, chief state Congress spokesperson Rajiv Bakshi said.
This is a very auspicious time for us and a good omen for the party, he said.
A second woman has accused Virginia's lieutenant governor of sexual misconduct.
The allegation comes after another woman accused Fairfax of misconduct over a sexual encounter they had in a hotel room 15 years ago. (Photo:AP)
Washington: A second woman has accused Virginia's lieutenant governor of sexual misconduct, US media reported Friday, further adding to the political turmoil in the eastern US state.
Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is next in line for the governorship if Governor Ralph Northam -- who faces intense pressure to resign over a racist yearbook photo -- decides to step down.
The Washington Post reported that a Maryland woman accused Fairfax of a "premeditated and aggressive" attack when the two were undergraduate students at Duke University in 2000, while CNN said the woman had accused Fairfax of rape.
The allegation comes after another woman accused Fairfax of misconduct over a sexual encounter they had in a hotel room 15 years ago, one that he insists was "100 percent consensual".
Fairfax, a 39-year-old Democrat, won election in November alongside Northam, who has been fighting for his political survival since a 1984 yearbook surfaced that features a racist photo on a page dedicated to him.
After initially saying he was in the photo -- which pictures one man in blackface next to another wearing a Klu Klux Klan robe and hood -- Northam now denies appearing in the image, and has so far declined calls to step down.
In what could be termed as the first set of casualty in multi-million PDS scam, the Congress Government on Saturday suspended DGP Mukesh Gupta and Rajnesh Singh, Superintendent of Police (SP) Narayanpur district.
The official orders confirmed that both the IPS officers have been suspended in accordance with provisions under Section 3(1) of All India Services (discipline and appeal) rules 1969.
Notably, FIR against both the officers was registered on Thursday after they were allegedly found involved in illegal phone tapping.
Both the officers have been booked under Sections 166, 166 A(b) 167, (Public servant disobeying law, with intent to cause injury to any person), 193 (false evidence), 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 466 (Forgery of record of Court or of public register,), 471 (Using as genuine a forged) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of Indian Penal Code (IPC).
They have also been booked under with Section 25, 26 and 5(2) of Indian Telegraph Act.
The 1988 batch IPS officer Mukesh Gupta was among the trusted comrades of former Chief Minister Raman Singh who headed the BJP regime for 15 years. During the previous (BJP) regime, Gupta headed the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) as well as Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).
The Congress Government which came to power in December had speeded up the investigation into PDS scam and formed an SIT.
Armed dacoits broke into the residence of a retired forest officer and looted cash and valuables worth around 10 lakhs rupees in Ananatpur colony under the Chutia police station area of Ranchi district early on Saturday morning.
Police said that four persons armed with pistol and knife entered the victims house at around 3 AM after cutting window grills of the kitchen. They took the inmates under control at gun point and then tied their limbs with clothes.
I was sleeping on bed when the criminals woke me up and pointed their gun on my head. They threatened to shoot me in case I raised an alarm. Even though the criminals were masked I think I have seen a few of them before. They went out of my sight soon after I was woken, said the victim Deepak Ghosh who retired as a senior officer.
The stolen items include around three lakh in cash, jewelries worth five to six lakhs and other valuables including laptops and SLR cameras.
City SP Sujata Veenapani who reached the spot in the morning said, We have started investigation in the case. The forensic science laboratory team has also examined the scene of crime. We are also examining the closed circuit television cameras located in the area. The police have, however, not got any clue regarding the criminals so far.
Maintaining the Bharatiya Janata Partys electoral campaign momentum after the visit of its national president Amit Shah earlier this month, the deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, Sushil Kumar Modi, is slated to arrive in Dehradun today while Union Minister Uma Bharti will be visiting Haldwani later this month.
As part of the BJPs Bharat ke Mann ki Baat campaign, the deputy Chief Minister of Bihar will arrive in the provisional State Capital on Sunday while Union Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation, Uma Bharti will reach Haldwani on February 25, as per the decision taken by the partys central leadership, informed the BJP State media in-charge Devendra Bhasin. In Dehradun, Modi will interact with media persons and also hold discussions with ex-servicemen. During her visit to Haldwani on February 25, the Union Minister Uma Bharti will address a press conference and also interact with representatives of farmers. The partys State media-in-charge further informed that as part of the Bharat ke Mann ki Baat programme, in Uttarakhand two publicity vehicles of the BJP are currently visiting various areas in the Haridwar and Nainital Lok Sabha constituencies.
The Bharat ke Mann ki Baat campaign was launched earlier this month by the partys national president. The purpose of this month-long exercise is to seek suggestions from about 10 crore people from various sections of society across the nation in order to help the party prepare its manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections.
It is pertinent to mention here that while the national level leaders of the Congress are yet to start campaigning in Uttarakhand, the BJP became more active with the visit of its national president Amit Shah in the first week of February to Dehradun where he addressed booth level workers of the party from Haridwar and Tehri Lok Sabha constituencies in a Trishakti Sammelan.
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is slated to visit Rudrapur in Udham Singh Nagar district on February 14 where he will launch developmental schemes and address a public gathering. In addition to this, other senior party leaders including Uttar Pradesh Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Union Minister of State for External Affairs, VK Singh and Uttar Pradesh deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma are also slated to address Trishakti Sammelan programmes for different Lok Sabha constituencies in the near future.
Haryana Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, O.P. Dhankar on Saturday said that the 4th Agri Leadership Summit-2019 would be organised from February 15-17 at India International Horticulture Market (IIHM), Ganaur in district Sonipat.
Union Agriculture Minister, Radha Mohan Singh and Union Minister of Steel, Birender Singh would inaugurate the summit and every day over 60,000 farmers as well as dignitaries from across the country and abroad, would participate.
Dhankar said on the second day of the Summit, the Union Minister of State for Agriculture, Parshottam Rupala would be the Chief Guest. On the concluding ceremony, the President, Ramnath Kovind would be the Chief Guest and Haryana Chief Minister, Manohar Lal would preside over the programme.
Presiding over a meeting to take stock of the preparations for the Summit, Dhankar said that in 2015, the State Government had organised the first Agri Leadership Summit in Gurugram for the development of agriculture and farmers.
He said during the three-day summit, different themes have been formed based on innovative farming for making farming a profitable venture. "During the 3-day Summit, our farmers and our departments would exhibit all what they have achieved. Farmers would also be allowed to sell their products or produce," he said.
The minister said this year, the state government would honour the farmers with new award Haryana Kisan Ratna Samman to encourage them. This award would carry a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh and a citation and would be given to a farmer for his outstanding work in the field of agriculture development.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis second day in Assam saw nude protest, a bandh, raising of black flags and burning of effigies by agitators over the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
Six Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) activists were taken into police custody on Saturday when they stripped naked in front of Janata Bhawan the State secretariat here.
The KMSS activists had arrived in cars and stripped naked before holding the protests. The Tai Ahom Yuba Parishad had called a 12-hour bandh in the State to protest against the PMs visit to the State.
The bandh impact was felt in the upper Assam districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Lakhimpur and Jorhat with vehicles remaining off the road and shops and business establishments closed.
The bandh was supported by the KMSS along with 70 other organisations jointly protesting against the Bill. The All Assam Students Union (AASU) claimed that police resorted to mild lathi-charge to disperse its activists who had assembled with black flags and black balloons at the Amingaon-Hajo Road, about 10 km from Modis rally at Changsari.
The protesters burnt effigies of the prime minister and released black balloons into the air in different districts across the State. Modi was shown black flags in at least two places here on Saturday for the second consecutive day while on his way to the airport from the Raj Bhawan here.
Protesters, belonging to the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP), showed black flags to Modi at Machkhowa area.
Minutes later, a group of students of the Gauhati University too waved black flags at Modi in the Jalukbari area. Both the groups were detained as soon as they lodged their protest, police said.
A few students of the Gauhati University alleged that they were manhandled by police. On Friday evening, the prime minister was shown black flags in at least four different locations as soon as he landed in Guwahati and was travelling from the airport to the Raj Bhawan to spend the night.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill seeks to provide Indian citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after six years of residence in India even if they do not possess any document. The Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha during the Winter Session on January 8 and has been awaiting Rajya Sabha nod.
A day after his son was grilled by the Enforcement Directorate for six hours, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram appeared before the Enforcement Directorate in INX Media money laundering case on Friday. Both P Chidambaram and Karti are being questioned by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) for the latters alleged links with INX Media.
Chidambaram reached ED office after he was part of a press conference held by Congress president Rahul Gandhi targeting the Modi government over the Rafale deal in the morning. The senior Congress leader met the investigators at 11 am and was questioned by the agency for over five hours with a one-hour lunch break for which he went to his residence. Chidambaram has been grilled in this case in December last too.
It is understood that he was questioned in context with some documents seized and recovered by the agency in the case. The ED attached Kartis assets worth an estimated Rs 54 crore, located in India and abroad, in the case last year.
The ED registered the PMLA case on the basis of a CBI FIR and had alleged irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance to INX Media for receiving overseas funds to the tune of Rs 305 crore in 2007, when P Chidambaram was the finance minister.
It registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), the EDs equivalent of a police FIR, against the accused named in the CBI complaint, including Karti, INX Media and its directors -- Peter and Indrani Mukerjea.
Karti was arrested on February 28 last year by the CBI, the other central agency investigating the case, for allegedly taking money to facilitate the FIPB clearance to INX Media in 2007. He was granted bail subsequently.
The agency has alleged that Karti received money from INX Media, using his influence to manipulate a tax probe against it in a case of violation of FIPB conditions to receive investments from Mauritius.
By Wednesday, February 13, after the Interim Budget is passed, the 16th Lok Sabha will become history. In another fortnight or so, the model code of conduct will come into effect and the country will formally get into election mode. Normal governance will resume at the end of May when the duly elected Government will be sworn in by the President.
Elections are a key feature of a functioning democracy and it is only natural that all the political players, whether in Government or the Opposition, should focus their attention on securing a mandate from the people. Yes, it is undeniable that India has too many elections. Even if the Lok Sabha is elected once in five years, every intervening year has a clutch of State Assembly elections. Each of these elections are important to different sections of the country and a great deal of energy and attention is expended on the campaign, not to speak of the large amounts of money expended.
The overdose of elections may seem a distraction, especially because governance comes to a halt for nearly two months between the time the model code comes into play and a new government assumes charge. However, all the attempts by different leaders from LK Advani to Narendra Modi to press for simultaneous elections so that all politicking and disruptions become a five-yearly affair have come to nought. The ideas have been dismissed as undemocratic and inimical to the federal spirit. The lack of consensus has meant that no Government has been able to put a good idea into effect. Maybe this is an idea whose time has yet to come.
However, even within the constraints of the present system, it is acknowledged that a Government with a majority in the legislature should be allowed to govern without hinderance for five years the term stipulated by the Constitution. Only one in Indias 71-year post-Independence history has the term of a legislature been extended beyond five years. That shameful extension happened when Indira Gandhi extended the term of the 5th Lok Sabha during the Emergency. However, unless India is in the midst of war, it is unlikely that such an experience will ever be repeated. The inefficiencies resulting from an overdose of elections has been internalised by people. As of now, they dont want annual festivals of democracy to be converted into a once-in-five-years experience.
The sanctity of annual bouts of public consultations would have become more meaningful if Governments were allowed to govern for their full term assuming, of course, that they have majority support in the legislatures. While this may be true of State Governments, this, unfortunately, cannot be said to be true for the Government at the Centre. As the Narendra Modi Government prepares to complete its tenure and face the elections, it must be painfully aware that its job is still incomplete.
I am not referring to any legislation facilitating the building of the Ram temple in Ayodhya or, for that matter, any Constitutional Amendment that will finally terminate the temporary Article 370 conferring special status on Jammu & Kashmir. Important as these subjects are for the BJP, these are not issues that the Government put on top of the agenda and then failed to deliver. What I have in mind are pieces of legislation that have been cleared by the Lok Sabha and are awaiting approval by the Rajya Sabha.
The list is fairly impressive. They range from controversial Bills such as the law to make triple talaq already outlawed by the Supreme Court a criminal offence and the Citizenship Amendment Bill that fast-tracks the process whereby Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Christian refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan can acquire Indian citizenship. At the same time they also include proposed changes to the Motor Vehicles Act and the Archaeological and Ancient Monuments Act. Both these pieces of legislation have gone to Select Committees of the Rajya Sabha that have submitted reports.
As of now it seems that none of these Bills will become laws for the simple reason that the Rajya Sabha hasnt cleared them. With only three days of the present session left, the Rajya Sabha, is yet to complete a single day of business. Each day of the present session apart from the Presidents address to the joint session of Parliament has witnessed disruptions and adjournments on some pretext or another. It is extremely unlikely that the remaining three days will see any business apart from a motion thanking the President for his address.
I may be mistaken and it is entirely possible that a determined Government will try to somehow get a few Bills passed. Even if it does so, there is unlikely to be any satisfactory discussion as a section of the Opposition will probably do its utmost to stall proceedings and force adjournments. The Opposition knows that any Bill that has originated from the Lok Sabha will automatically lapse with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha. Having convinced itself that the term of the Modi Government has already expired, it is in no mood to let the Government govern. Consequently, the Rajya Sabha has been turned into a blocking chamber.
That this strategy of Opposition through disruptions goes against the very spirit of democracy is obvious. The long-term costs of a dysfunctional democracy are quite catastrophic. More to the point, the implications of a truly multi-party democracy on governance are quite ominous. The Modi Government has suffered on account of the Rajya Sabha throughout its term. If it is re-elected in May, how will it deal with the problem? Indeed, how will any government deal with an Upper House where no party commands a majority?
It is only in London that all the real and fake stakeholders of the complex conundrum that Jammu & Kashmir is come face to face.
At this awkward crossroads, some of them stand together, like the Dogras and the Kashmiri Pandits, one fighting to be heard and seen, the other searching a way back home, both minorities in their own home state.
Then there is the curious relationship between the Dogras from Jammu and the ethnically similar diaspora from Pakistan Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (POJK), who do have not much common in ideology, the former being fiercely proud of their Indian nationality, the latter aspiring for the pre-1947 Riyasat-e-Jammu-Kashmir.
Since POJK includes parts of Jammu under illegal Pakistani occupation, these two groups are bound by shared history, culture and language.
The Dogras from Jammu and POJK-ians recognise Maharaja Gulab Singh as the founder of the state of Jammu & Kashmir and admire Maharaja Hari Singh for his progressive rule, even through the most tumultuous times in the state the love and respect both these groups have for the Dogra dynasty results in grudging mutual respect for each other.
United by history: The Dogras from Jammu and the POJK-ians both admire Maharaja Hari Singh for his progressive rule. (Photo: PIB)
These communities living side by side in Britain have one common enemy though the Pakistani state, which continues to meddle in the affairs of Jammu & Kashmir, and is relentless in its design to derail peace and development in the region. Pakistan, for the last seventy years, starting from the tribal invasion of 22 October 1947, has fought a war both real and proxy with India over Jammu & Kashmir.
It is in reality waging a war against the people of Jammu & Kashmir.
All people from J&K are a victim of Pakistani-state sponsored terrorism. Pakistan has been sending terrorists into Jammu & Kashmir on the one hand, and aiding and abetting radicalisation in the Valley on the other.
The drama of 'solidarity' with Kashmiris is just that a drama.
The fake solidarity Pakistan professes for Kashmir on February 5, a day it has declared Kashmir Solidarity Day, is another tool for its radicalisation program. Pakistans stooges in the Valley from the Hurriyat to some political leaders of regional parties pick on it to demonise India and to make Pakistan a partner in the discussion on Jammu & Kashmir. In the process, they make all the real voices and stakeholders of J&K irrelevant.
In the battle of narratives that Kashmir has become, the ISI-dictated Pakistani media which blacks out protests in its own country plays the Kashmir Solidarity Event in London on repeat. It is aimed to feed the malicious agenda in Kashmir and sell a false narrative on J&K globally.
The ISI-dictated Pakistani media blacks out POK protests in its own country but highlights state propaganda against India. (Photo: ANI)
The duplicity of Pakistan is called out best by the people of POJK.
The Kashmir Solidarity event held at the British House of Commons on February 4, 2019, saw the delegation from POJK, including former Councillor Ghulam Hussain, being unceremoniously thrown out under the garb of being a 'security threat'. Reportedly, the Member of Parliament from Burnley, Julie Cooper, protested against this, saying it was against British democratic norms and walked out with the delegation in solidarity.
Pakistan followed it with what it does best lying. They called these Kashmiris "Indian agents" who were there to disrupt the conference which was being attended by the foreign minister of Pakistan and the President of Pakistan Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (POJK).
Undoubtedly, the Kashmiris thrown out would have challenged the lies being told there by the Pakistanis and pro-Pakistan leaders.
If the Kashmiris from Pakistan Occupied Jammu & Kashmir did not stand a chance, there was no way the Dogras and Kashmiris from J&K, who stood outside the British Parliament protesting, would have been allowed inside. The Indian media was also barred from attending this event.
So much for Pakistani tolerance and love for the freedom of all Kashmiris.
The Pakistan-sponsored event at the House of Commons was followed by the Kashmir Solidarity Rally on February 5 at Downing Street. Pakistani-backed newspapers in the Valley reported this as Pakistans support for Kashmiris in London but they chose to ignore the protests against the Pakistanis and their fake 'solidarity' events by Dogras and Kashmiris from both J&K and POJK.
Once, when the view was glorious: A glimpse from the Mubarakh Mandi Palace in Jammu. (Photo: Reuters)
The Dogras from Jammu and the Kashmiri Pandits, along with the wider Indian diaspora in London, wrote to their local MPs, reiterating that Jammu & Kashmir is an integral and constitutional part of India and highlighted the proxy war being waged by Pakistan in J&K, which has seen the persecution of minorities and the exile of Kashmiri Hindus.
They raised the issue of Pakistan-funded radicalisation programs in the Valley and the fact that Pakistan actively sends terrorists into the state. The unprovoked ceasefire violations all along the IB and LOC in Jammu region was also an issue they brought attention to.
The concern for human rights of Kashmiris claimed by Pakistan took a severe beating when the protesting POJK delegation raised banners, demanding abolishing of terrorist charges against human rights activists in Gilgit Baltistan. Politically seeking a pre-1947 Riyasat, they looked into the eyes of the large Pakistani gathering who had been fed Kashmiri tea and a hot meal, and shouted slogans of Yeh jo dehshatgardi hai, iske peechay vardi hai and ISI ke pyaaron ko ek dhakka aur do.
In the evening, more POJKians gathered at the hotel where a conference was being held by the Pakistanis.
Carrying banners, they asked Pakistan to stop sending terrorists into Jammu & Kashmir. They demanded that Pakistan must stop spending POJKs resources, and should open up the Skardu-Kargil road. A strong demand for the release and better treatment of political prisoners in POJK, like Baba Jan, was also made.
Despite claiming to fight for an 'Azad Kashmir', Pakistan has reportedly sold J&K territories it illegally occupies to China. (Photo: ISPR)
Between all these groups, it is clear that the 'solidarity' Pakistan was showing was only to itself and to its jihadi agenda for Kashmir.
It has reportedly already sold territories of J&K it illegally occupies to China.
Pakistan is an exporter of terror and its minorities, Shias, Ahmadis, Hindus in Sindh, Pathans in FATA, Balochis, and POJKians, are suffering gross human rights violations.
Despite all this, the impunity with which Pakistan continues to make attacks on the territorial integrity of India at international forums is shocking but not new.
There is a need however for a sterner message to be sent to the UK government by India. India is one of the worlds fastest-growing economies and in the backdrop of Brexit, a thriving Indo-UK relationship is critical for the UK.
This, coupled with the times we are living in, when the war against terror is a global call, means the UK cannot be entertaining states like Pakistan which harbour terrorists and fund terrorism in its neighbouring countries.
The unfortunate series of events of February 4 and 5 in London, and the UK governments silence over this, has made it look helpless and weak in its fight against terror. They cannot be harbouring snakes on their soil for, without doubt, they will come back to bite them too.
Also read: Naya Pakistan in the new year? No, we will have the same broke, belligerent neighbour
Most pollsters predict a hung Parliament in 2019. But if a week is a long time in politics, the 12 weeks that remain before the 2019 general election give Prime Minister Narendra Modi time to recover lost ground.
Modi will be judged on his governments five year performance. How does his report card read? Underwhelming. Consider first, though the achievements. Ten stand out.
Flagship success
Ayushman Bharat: The health insurance scheme launched on September 23, 2018, has already benefited 10 lakh poor patients and could be an electoral game-changer. More than 500 million Indians who could not afford medical treatment for non-communicable illnesses like cancer and heart disease now have access to free healthcare.
The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code: The legislation, enacted in December 2016, is the silver bullet to tackle Indias chronic problem of non-performing assets. Banks have begun to recover debts that had seemingly turned irretrievably bad. Phone banking has ground to a halt.
PM Modi will be judged on his governments five-year performance.(Photo: India Today)
Rural electrification: The Modi governments push to provide last-mile connectivity to hard-to-access rural clusters has been fairly successful. However, several villages cited as connected to the electrical grid still have households without power. Part of the problem is that some villages lie in areas controlled by Naxalites while in others the terrain makes access difficult.
Free LPG cylinders: Under the Ujjwala Yojana scheme, women in villages now have access to cooking gas. This has both health and economic benefits. Over 60 million free LPG connections have been given with nearly 50 per cent going to SC/ST households.
Sanitation: The Swachh Bharat Mission has built toilets at an unprecedented pace. Since October 2014, over 92 million toilets have been constructed, covering nearly 500 million households in one of the worlds largest operations of its kind. Cultural habits, however, mean that open-air defecation remains endemic. Many newly-built toilets lack sewage facilities; others are being used as storage rooms. Nonetheless, a beginning has been made.
Digital transfer of subsidies: This has cut out most (though not all) middlemen who routinely siphoned off large chunks of benefits due to the poor. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, had famously said in December 1985, while addressing the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Congress, that only 15 paise out of every rupee in subsidies reaches the poor. With digitised transfers that figure has probably risen to 75 paise.
However, lack of Internet connectivity in rural areas, combined with limited digital literacy among farmers and labourers, often leave them at the mercy of local officials to access their money electronically.
Infrastructure: There has been a steep rise in building roads, highways and metro networks as well as housing for the poor. These are long-term initiatives but the benefits are already visible. According to fact-checking sites, 12km of highways were constructed in 2013-14. This pace more than doubled to 27km per day in 2017-18. In Mumbai alone, coastal roads, a new airport and a large metro network could transform public transport in Indias richest city that has long been infrastructure-poor.
Modi has emerged as Indias best election campaigner and executor of important developmental schemes. (Photo: PTI)
Strong basics
Foreign policy: The government has repaired relations with China, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, built economic and geopolitical bridges to east Asia and west Asia and strengthened the strategic partnership with the US.
GST: The implementation of the goods and services tax was chaotic and its structure needlessly complex. Its benefits, though, are beginning to seep through the economy. Revenue is lower than expected but the removal of octroi, for example, has greatly helped the logistics and transport industries. The absence of state boundary checks means truckers save up to 30 per cent in fuel and time, raising productivity with quicker turnarounds.
All the PMs men
Boosting Indias space programme: ISRO has proved that putting scientists and technocrats rather than bureaucrats in charge of key organisations pays dividends. The success of ISRO also highlights the governments lacunae in other areas of institution building.
Failures of the government across domains have taken some of the sheen off its concrete achievements. The Centre has let key institutions wither. A Lok Pal has not been appointed. The Central Bureau of Investigation and the Reserve Bank of Inadia have lacked strong, consistent leadership. A talent deficit is evident at all levels: the Cabinet, academic institutions and statutory bodies.
Tax laws lack certitude. The bureaucracy, in the defence and finance ministries in particular, has not distinguished itself. The Prime Ministers Office maintains a sphinx-like silence on key issues, allowing disinformation full play.
Modi is Indias best election campaigner and executor of important developmental schemes. But as Prime Minister, you need to go beyond that and nurture talent.
The most successful leaders surround themselves with people smarter than themselves.
The Prime Minister, in contrast, is surrounded by people who are not smarter than him. That is, perhaps, the biggest failing of his prime ministership.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)
Also read: 5 reasons why Modi could end up as Leader of Opposition in 2019
The nationalist SDLP has voted by more than two to one to back a new partnership with Irelands main opposition party.
Members gathered in Newry in Co Down on Saturday to confirm leader Colum Eastwoods proposed link-up with Fianna Fail.
An alternative, supported by many founding grandees, was defeated.
These are extremely serious times. People can be in no doubt that we're heading towards a hard border if the Backstop is not banked"- @columeastwood https://t.co/q2citpPg2v pic.twitter.com/0Bg4tXbRs8 Social Democratic and Labour Party (@SDLPlive) February 6, 2019
Mr Eastwood said: What we have agreed today is a policy partnership, to try to deal with the very real problems, the crises that are in our politics today.
It is two parties working together for the betterment of this country, that is what we have committed to, that is what we have agreed, that is what we have a mandate for and that is all we are doing today.
The leaderships proposal was carried by 121 votes to 53 for an alternative tabled by the Lurgan branch, a margin of 70%.
The SDLP has badly trailed Sinn Fein in the polls over recent years.
Mr Eastwood said: We have a huge challenge, we know that, politics does better, people do better, when the SDLP do well.
We are not pretending this is a quick fix.
We are not talking about building for the next election, we are talking about building for the next generation, that is the work we are recommitting to today.
It is a hard slog, it will be a lot of hard work, but people look at the alternatives and the fact that we have had no government in this place for two years.
When we look at the fact that we have Brexit and the only MPs fighting our corner are independent unionist MP Sylvia Hermon.
The people representing us in Westminster either dont turn up or vote against the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland.
That is not good enough, it is time to see a change, we are committed to making that change and looking forward to rolling our sleeves up, to getting around the doors and working together to make sure we see that happen.
The SDLP and Fianna Fail previously proclaimed the move a step towards breaking the cycle of vacuum and division which had failed people in Northern Ireland during the two years since political powersharing collapsed.
Fianna Fail is a larger southern party which its leader Micheal Martin said would give electoral resources and know-how as the SDLP bids to bolster faltering fortunes north of the border.
A merger to create an all-island party is not currently envisaged but Brexit has prompted republican calls for a referendum on Irish unity after a majority in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU alongside their southern neighbours.
Dissenting voice South Belfast Stormont Assembly member Claire Hanna said: I came believing an exclusive arrangement was not a good idea, I have not changed my mind.
The SDLP has no representation at Westminster and 12 members of the 90-strong Stormont Assembly in Belfast.
It has promised a partnership with Fianna Fail based around shared policies on issues like Brexit and Irish unity.
Stormont has been becalmed amid a row between former powersharing partners Sinn Fein and the DUP.
Mr Eastwood said the change aimed to restore public faith in politics.
Irish Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin said: After decades of co-operation with SDLP as our sister party, its sad to see them moving into the arms of Fianna Fail.
In a statement the party said they were disappointed.
The consequences of the partnership decision will now be carefully considered by the Labour Party in the coming weeks, and in consultation with our colleagues in the Party of European Socialists.
The Labour Party remains committed to supporting those who wish to maintain Labour politics and the social democratic tradition in Northern Ireland.
US officials will be in Beijing February 14-15 for the third round of talks.
Negotiators are working towards an agreement before the 90-day tariff truce expires March 1. (File Photo)
Washington: US officials will be in Beijing February 14-15 for the third round of talks aimed at heading off an escalation of the ongoing trade war with China, the White House announced Friday.
Negotiators are working towards an agreement before the 90-day tariff truce expires March 1, after which the US is set to more than double punitive duties on 200 billion dollars in Chinese goods.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will lead the delegation, which also includes David Malpass, who President Donald Trump has nominated to be president of the World Bank, according to the statement.
However, strident White House China critic Peter Navarro was not listed as part of the US team. While officials seemed optimistic after talks last week in Washington, more recent comments have jarred financial markets, amplifying concerns about how the dispute will impact global growth.
US President Donald Trump said Thursday he did not expect to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping before a March 1 deadline for the two economic superpowers to reach a deal.
Trump had said final resolution of the trade dispute would depend on the meeting with Xi "in the near future," but told reporters it had not yet been arranged. And top White House economist Larry Kudlow said Thursday that while Trump was "optimistic" about prospects for a deal, there remained a "sizeable distance" separating the two sides.
Washington is demanding far-reaching changes from China to address unfair practices it says are deeply unfair, including theft of American intellectual property and the massive Chinese trade surplus.
The White House said there will be a preparatory meeting of senior officials beginning February 11, and the talks will include officials from the Agriculture, Energy and Commerce Departments.
Viggo Mortenson was putting on a dapper display as he attended the Nespresso British Academy Film Awards Nominees' Party on Saturday, arriving with his Green Book co-star Linda Cardellini.
The 60-year-old Hollywood star was looking sharp in a simple navy suit and striped tie, while Linda, 43, was looking leggy in a cut-out mesh frock.
The duo's outing comes as Green Book is set to be one of the top contenders in Sunday's grand awards show, with four nominations including Best Film.
Smart: Viggo Mortenson was putting on a dapper display as he attended the BAFTA Nominees' Party on Saturday, as he arrived with his Green Book co-star Linda Cardellini
Showing off their close friendship off-screen, Viggo was looking sharp in his navy suit with a red and blue striped tie as he arrived for the bash in London's Kensington Palace.
The Lord Of The Rings star was every inch the silver fox, after earning critical acclaim for his performance as Frank 'Top Lip' Vallelonga.
Viggo is nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance, and is expected to be one of the hot favourites when the ceremony takes place on Sunday.
Sharp: The 60-year-old Hollywood star was looking sharp in a simple navy suit and striped tie
Gorgeous: Viggo was in attendance for the bash alongside his on-screen wife Linda, 43, who stunned in a semi-sheer black frock
Meanwhile Linda showed off her amazing pins in a semi-sheer dress with revealing chest cut-outs, as she cosied up to her on-screen spouse upon arrival at the event.
The Brokeback Mountain star pulled her brunette tresses into a half-up half-down bouffant, and finished the sexy ensemble with matching mesh heels.
The duo were in attendance for the bash ahead of walking the red carpet for the BAFTA Awards.
Beaming: The pair were in attendance for the bash ahead of Sunday's ceremony, which sees Green Book nominated for four awards
Flawless: Linda put on a leggy display in a semi sheer dress with a revealing chest cut-out, which she teamed with matching mesh-style heels
Green Book was praised following its US release last year, as it tells the real-life story of white driver Frank, who acts as a driver/bodyguard for black pianist Don Shirley, as he tours the 1960s American South.
Mahershala Ali is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as musician Don, and the picture if also nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
For the ceremony, Joanna Lumley will return for a second stint as host after impressing last year in place of Stephen Fry while Cirque de Soleil will also be back with another performance after their 2018 tribute to Guillermo del Toros The Shape of Water.
The BAFTAs will air on Sunday 10th February at 9pm on BBC One.
Pretty: The Brokeback Mountain star pulled her brunette tresses into a half-up half-down bouffant, accentuated her flawless complexion with dramatic lined eyes
They both forged quite the close friendship while filming for the critically acclaimed flick, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
And Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant were arm-in-arm as they took to the red carpet at the Nespresso British Academy Film Awards Nominees' Party at Kensington Palace in London on Saturday night.
The actress, 48, and actor, 61 - who are both up for coveted gongs during the BAFTA award ceremony on Sunday night - couldn't contain their giggles as they posed away.
Pals: Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant took to the red carpet at the Nespresso British Academy Film Awards Nominees' Party at Kensington Palace in London on Saturday
Melissa looked absolutely sensational as she arrived in style in a striking all-black ensemble.
The star, who showed a very different side to her acting prowess in the drama flick, wowed in a black top and matching satin trousers which she teamed with a chic blazer with statement buttons.
Melissa sported a glossy blowdry and enhanced her features with a coat of deep red lipstick, blusher and coats of mascara.
Meanwhile, Richard also put on quite the snazzy display himself as he donned a navy blazer atop a striped denim waistcoat.
Nominees: The actress, 48, and actor, 61 - who are both up for coveted gongs during the BAFTA award ceremony on Sunday night - couldn't contain their giggles as they posed away
Chic: Melissa looked absolutely sensational as she arrived in style in a striking all-black ensemble
Looking good: The star wowed in a black top and matching satin trousers which she teamed with a chic blazer with statement buttons
The pair were unable to contain their smiles as they joked and giggled the night away.
During the main award ceremony, Melissa will be competing in the Best Actress in Leading Role category alongside Glenn Close, Lady Gaga, Olivia Colman and Viola Davis.
Richard will be competing in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role against Adam Driver, Mahershala Ali, Sam Rockwell and Timothee Chalamet.
In October, Melissa told MailOnline that filming for the movie alongside Richard was like 'summer camp on steroids'.
Stunning: Melissa sported a glossy blowdry and enhanced her features with a coat of deep red lipstick, blusher and coats of mascara
Handsome: Richard also put on quite the snazzy display himself as he donned a navy blazer atop a striped denim waistcoat
Happy: The pair were unable to contain their smiles as they joked and giggled the night away
She revealed of the Marielle Heller directed film: 'You work so hard on a movie. Its like summer camp on steroids. You just fall in love with all these people.'
And despite the acclaim surrounding the film, Melissa admitted the thing she was most proud of was viewers engulfing themselves in the story of author, Lee Israel.
'In this case I feel protective of Lee and Jack and their story. When you feel like youre really connecting to the film, its all you can really hope for.
'Personally, more people knowing who Lee Israel was, picking up her books, reading and finding out what an amazing writer she was, is really exciting to me. That means the most to me,' she continued.
Talented: Melissa will be competing in the Best Actress in Leading Role category alongside Glenn Close, Lady Gaga, Olivia Colman and Viola Davis
Fingers crossed! Richard will be competing in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role against Adam Driver, Mahershala Ali, Sam Rockwell and Timothee Chalamet.
Forging a bond: In October, Melissa told MailOnline that filming for the movie alongside Richard was like 'summer camp on steroids'.
Meanwhile, Richard also shared similar sentiments about Melissa, telling MailOnline: 'Its astonishing because we made this film in January last year for 28 days over 6 weeks and for such an intimate story, Melissa and I got along so extraordinarily well.'
The stars are set to turned out in force at the 2019 British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, held at the Royal Albert Hall in London for the third year in a row, after the move from the Royal Opera House.
Joanna Lumley will return for a second stint behind the podium for the 72nd annual awards after impressing last year in place of Stephen Fry while Cirque de Soleil will also be back with another performance after their 2018 tribute to Guillermo del Toros The Shape of Water.
'I feel protective': Despite the acclaim surrounding the film, Melissa admitted the thing she was most proud of was viewers engulfing themselves in the story of author, Lee Israel
She has surely the most enduring marriage in showbusiness.
And Dolly Parton divulged the secret to her 52-year marriage to Carl Thomas Dean on Friday.
The 73-year-old country legend declared 'respect' and 'forgiveness' to be essential, when asked by Us, as she was honored as MusiCares Person of the Year in Los Angeles.
Enduring: Dolly Parton divulged the secret to her 52-year marriage to Carl Thomas Dean on Friday
Dolly - who wed Dean, 76 - in May 1966, keep their relationship out of the limelight and she told the publication that her absences have also made the heart grow fonder.
'You gotta kinda respect and like each other and forgive a lot of stuff and accept a lot of things,' she explained.
She added: 'Love each other and keep your vows,' before revealing that the distance when she's been on tour has helped - Dean remains at home.
Long time loves: The couple met when Dolly was just 18-years-old, in Nashville, and wed two years later
'It doesn't hurt to have some separation. I stay gone a lot, so we're excited when we see each other!'
The couple met when Dolly was just 18-years-old, Carl 21, in Nashville, and wed two years later.
Despite being married for over five decades, notoriously private Carl has only appeared with Dolly in public a handful of times.
Married: Despite being married for over five decades, notoriously private Carl has only appeared with Dolly in public a handful of times
It's black and white: Dolly said the secret is to 'keep your vows' (pictured 6 Dec)
Parton's goddaughter Miley Cyrus also made an appearance at the event at the Los Angeles Convention Center, alongside dad Billy Ray and mom Tish.
The former Disney Channel star joined Shawn Mendes and Mark Ronson during the ceremony for a performance of Islands in the Stream, which was originated by Parton and Kenny Rogers in 1983.
Miley shared a video of her performance with her Instagram followers on Saturday.
Iconic: Parton's goddaughter Miley Cyrus also made an appearance at the event at the Los Angeles Convention Center and sang with Shawn Mendes
She is used to attending high profile events and showing off her trend setting looks.
And, Alexa Chung's outfit appeared to take inspiration from a gift box when she stepped out on the red carpet Nespresso British Academy Film Awards Nominees' Party at Kensington Palace on Saturday.
Putting on a leggy display, the 35-year-old opted for a thigh-skimming, floral mini dress that was nipped in at the waist with a large green bow.
Gift-wrapped: Alexa Chung's outfit appeared to take inspiration from a gift box when the 33-year-old stepped out on the red carpet Nespresso British Academy Film Awards Nominees' Party at Kensington Palace on Saturday
Slim-pins: Putting on a leggy display, the model opted for thigh-skimming, floral mini dress that was nipped in at the waist with a large green bow.
Golden girl: Displaying her quirky eye for fashion, Alexa accessorised her outfit with a gold, glittery box bag
Displaying her quirky eye for fashion, Alexa accessorised her outfit with a gold, glittery box bag.
She continued bringing the sparkle with a pair of kitten heel Roger Vivier pumps that were adorned with square, silver buckles.
Alexa style her tresses in a laid-back style as her brunette, shoulder length hair was left down.
The blue-eyed beauty happily took the carpet with her radio-DJ presenter friend Nick Grimshaw, 34.
Quirky: She continued bringing the sparkle with a pair of kitten heel Roger Vivier pumps that were adorned with square, silver buckles
Beaming: The blue-eyed beauty happily took the carpet with her radio-DJ presenter friend Nick Grimshaw, 34
Dapper: Nick sported a black Polo Ralph Lauren double breasted tuxedo
Fun times! The pair giggled as they stood in front of the flashing cameras
All smiles! The pals showed off their teeth as they posed for snaps at the event
Poser: The brunette's outfit highlighted her svelte figure and long legs
Natural beauty: The English rose glowed with her minimal make up and laid-back hair-do
Big night: The 2019 BAFTA's will be held on Sunday, held at the Royal Albert Hall in London
Nick sported a black Polo Ralph Lauren double breasted tuxedo with a crisp, white shirt.
The pair stepping out is ahead of the biggest night in British film, The EE British Academy Film Awards that will take place on Sunday.
The stars are set to turned out in force at the 2019 British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, held at the Royal Albert Hall in London for the third year in a row, after the move from the Royal Opera House.
Joanna Lumley, 72, will return for a second stint behind the podium for the 72nd annual awards after impressing last year in place of Stephen Fry while Cirque de Soleil will also be back with another performance after their 2018 tribute to Guillermo del Toros The Shape of Water.
Chic: The beauty held herself elegantly as she showed off her floral ensemble
Stunning: Alexa's attendance was to gear up for the 2019 British Academy Film Awards
Hosting duties: Joanna Lumley, 72, will return for a second stint behind the podium for the 72nd annual awards
Their romance blossomed when they were cast opposite each other on the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody.
And Rami Malek, 37, and Lucy Boynton, 25, looked like a picture of true love as they attended Nespresso BAFTAs Nominees' Party held at Kensington Palace, London on Saturday.
Being an award season pro, the actor looked dapper in a black suit with a quirky white shirt featuring a black pocket, while his stunning other half opted to change outfits as they dashed to a second pre-BAFTA party.
Couple: Rami Malek, 37, looked stylish in a black suit, while his girlfriend Lucy Boynton, 25, opted to change outfits as they dashed between pre-BAFTA parties in London on Saturday
Rami showed off his handsome features as he gelled his locks back to stare into his on-off screen beau's eyes.
Meanwhile Lucy looked sensational as she rocked a printed black dress complete with lace collar and sleeves.
She added height to her frame with quirky burgundy heels and donned a large gold ring to complete her look.
Dressed to impress: Being an award season pro, Rami, 37, looked dapper in a black suit with a quirky white shirt featuring a black pocket
Dapper: He showed off his handsome features as he gelled his locks back and looked sultry for the camera
Romance: Meanwhile Lucy, 25, looked sensational as she rocked a printed black dress complete with lace collar and sleeves
Happy pair: The Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek was putting on a loved-up display with his co-star and girlfriend Lucy Boynton, who made a quick wardrobe change before heading to the second bash of the night
The blonde beauty wore her cropped locks away from her face and sported bold eye makeup paired with neutral skin.
After attending the Kensington Palace party, Lucy made a quick wardrobe change before heading to their second event of the night.
The blonde beauty changed into the ever-so Chanel white tweed skirt suit, which featured a cute central black bow.
The stars play Queen frontman Freddie Mercury and his longtime girlfriend/confidante Mary Austin in 2018 hit film with Rami nominated for the best actor BAFTA for his role.
And he's already had great success during award season picking up gongs at the Golden Globes, Screen Actor's Guild, Satellite and AACTA awards.
Stunning: The blonde beauty wore her cropped locks away from her face and sported bold eye makeup paired with neutral skin
New look: The couple were previously seen at the official BAFTAs pre-party at Kensington Palace, with Lucy changing into the ever-so Chanel white tweed skirt suit
Co-stars: The pair play Queen frontman Freddie Mercury and his longtime girlfriend/confidante Mary Austin in 2018 hit film
We're here! Leading many stars who party-hopped between the various pre-bashes, Lucy switched into a different suit for the Chanel event
When the the Los Angeles native picked up the Screen Actors Guild award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for his work in the film he gave a moving speech.
Rami said he was 'taken aback' to win the award for his role as the Queen frontman and said the prize was simply 'beyond my wildest dreams'.
While Bohemian Rhapsody is also nominated for the BAFTA for Best British Film, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Costume Design and Best Makeup and Hair.
Accolade: Rami picked up the Screen Actors Guild award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for his work in the film last month
'They'll never be back!'
That's what Candace Cameron-Bure said about her former Full House co-stars twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at the Movieguide Awards in Hollywood on Friday.
The 42-year-old Fuller House star told Us and other media at the awards: 'They are never coming back on the show! They don't want to be on the show. The answer's no!'
Her prediction: Fuller House star Candace Cameron-Bure, who plays D.J. Tanner, said that Full House stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen would 'never' return for the reboot, when she appeared at the Movieguide Awards in Hollywood on Friday
And she laughingly added: 'You heard it from me first.'
The Olsen twins, now 32, starred on Full House as Michelle Tanner from 1987 to 1995. But they refused to take part in the Netflix revival, Fuller House,
The rest of the main cast - including Candace as D.J. Tanner, Jodie Sweetin as Stephanie Tanner, Bob Saget as Danny Tanner, Andrea Barber as Kimmy Gibbler, John Stamos as Jesse Katsopolis, Lori Loughlin as Rebecca Katsopolis and Dave Coulier as Joey Gladstone - are in the reboot.
She's got the skinny: The 42-year-old actress laughingly declared, 'You heard it from me first'
With her mini-me: Candace posed with her actress daughter Natasha Bure, 20, at the awards
Creator Jeff Franklin, who was fired for alleged inappropriate behavior in February 2018, told Us in September 2017 that he was not optimistic about the sisters making a cameo.
'I've stopped asking, really I kind of gave up,' he admitted at the time. 'But the door is always open.
'I think we've gotten enough no's. We're kind of done asking. But who knows? You never know in life. Who thought this whole thing could happen?'
Different careers: Twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, 32, now fashion entrepreneurs, chatted as they took a smoke break together outside their New York City office
The twins shot to stardom playing Michelle Tanner in the iconic sitcom Fuller House from 1987 to 1995.
After starting their careers on Fuller House, the sisters became household names, launching a film career around their adventures in a series of family-friendly movies.
Now they have shifted their focus to fashion with the launch of their line The Row.
Family shot: From left Full House stars Dave Coulier as Joey carries baby Michelle, one of the Olsen twins, in a scene with Bob Saget as Danny and John Stamos as Jesse in his Elvis costume
Back in August, the girls spoke to WSJ Magazine about their line.
'We're not product pushers. I don't know if it's because of the way we grew up we just don't like talking about ourselves or talking about what we're doing.... It's not really our approach,' Ashley said.
'We do everything together,' said Ashley, to which Mary-Kate added: 'We came out of the womb doing that.'
Netflix announced in January that Fuller House's fifth season will be its last. Candace, who looked stunning in a royal purple gown, said: 'I have no idea if it's true. I'm settled if it's the fifth and final season.'
Season 5 of Fuller House will premiere on Netflix in the fall.
She instils confidence in aspiring catwalk queens on her hit show, Americas Next Top Model.
However, Tyra Banks faced some light-hearted backlash for uploading a throwback image from 2005 Grammy Awards, where she uploaded the caption: 'What the HELL was I thinking!!!??? #HotRedMess
The supermodel, 45, was proven wrong by her hoards of fans as they failed to see the stunning snap from her point of view.
Style evolution: Tyra Banks, 45, faced some light-hearted backlash for uploading a throwback image from 2005 Grammy Awards
Not feeling it: Tyra uploaded the caption: 'What the HELL was I thinking!!!??? #HotRedMess
The throwback snap saw the TV personality sporting warm copper locks and a gold, gem-encrusted gown as she walked the red carpet at the 2005 Grammy Awards.
Glowing in the photo, the youthful beauty appeared hardly different to recent times - apart from switching her rust-coloured locks to a sun kissed, chocolate tone.
However, her accompanying caption proved she wasn't feeling the look, fans disagreed with the stars opinion.
A social media user asked: Mess? Where?
Confused: Fans disagreed with the stars opinion, one wrote: 'What? I see a beautiful fierce girl on the red carpet only
Envy-inducing: A jealous follower joked: 'If that's you as a hot mess girl i'm jealous
Super-model: The America's Next Top Model host penned: 'What the HELL was I thinking!!!??? #HotRedMess
'Nothing wrong with it': Some followers found it comical that the show-stopping beauty was mocking her appearance
Others typed: What? I see a beautiful fierce girl on the red carpet only and Your look great! What are u talking about??
Some followers found it comical that the show-stopping beauty was mocking her appearance, as they commented: If that's you as a hot mess girl i'm jealous and *eye roll - There's nothing wrong with it!!
One conflicted follower jibbed: If you really didnt like it you wouldnt have posted it !!!
Diva: Tyra is reportedly riding high after the success of her Freeform holiday feature Life Size 2
The runway diva-turned-entrepreneur is reportedly riding high after the success of her Freeform holiday feature Life Size 2 and is now 'inundated with producing and acting requests,' according to an insider.
'Life Size-2 went way beyond expectations it was Freeforms biggest premiere of the year executives were over the moon with the cult classic sequel,' the source dished.
They continued, adding: 'Tyras been inundated with producing and acting requests she wants to produce and create TV.'
He is best known for his portrayal of Jamie Fraser in time travel series Outlander.
And Sam Heughan, 38, looked world's away from his on-screen character as he posted a smouldering shirtless snap on Instagram on Saturday.
However, while the Scottish actor flexed his gym-honed muscles, he was at the centre of his co-star Caitriona Balfe's ridicule as she hilariously mocked him.
Hunk: Sam Heughan, 38, looked world's away from his on-screen character as he posted a smouldering snap on Instagram on Saturday
Unaware that he would be amusingly trolled by Balfe, 39, Sam captioned the snap: 'This was just before I took an "alternate" route down.... Then got trapped in a forest of cacti and eventually arrived on an American Airforce base.'
'I couldn't leave as I had no ID and shouldn't be there. Thankfully called an Uber driver who was ex military (Cheers Brent!) and he got me out!!! Hiking is good for you. When you have a military driver....(And let's not talk about the sunburn)'.
However, his outlander co-star Caitriona took to Twitter hours to poke fun at her on-screen lover: 'Hey @SamHeughan looks like youve lost your clothes and your arm seems to be broken at an unfortunate angle .... are you okay?
Banter: His Outlander co-star Caitriona Balfe, 39, took to Twitter hours after to poke fun at her on-screen lover' (pictured January 2019)
Joking around: She said: 'Hey @SamHeughan looks like youve lost your clothes and your arm seems to be broken at an unfortunate angle .... are you okay?'
'Need help?? Did someone mug you..??? ( Oh and also... your hat is the wrong way round ...) #SOSForSam'.
The hilarious exchange sent fans into peals of laughter with one calling Caitriona 'the best personal in the whole world'.
Another fan added: 'Cairtiona thanks for this. I needed a little humor before attempting to do my hw [sic]'.
Amusing: The hilarious exchange sent fans into peals of laughter with one calling Caitriona 'the best personal in the whole world'
While a third said: 'DEAD Cait, you're on fire this morning! "Your hat is the wrong way around."'
The banter between the co-stars come as last year Caitriona told Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she doesn't understand why people keep referencing Outlander spoilers when the plot is inspired by a book.
She said: 'It's funny, when we go to do these press things, we're always told, "This is a spoiler, that's a spoiler," but you're like, "But it's on a book." It's in a book, on a shelf, in a bookstore'.
Declan Donnelly was enjoying a low-key break from Britain's Got Talent filming on Saturday, as he stepped out in Manchester with his wife Ali and their daughter Isla.
The presenter, 43, was beaming as he and Ali were joined by judge David Walliams for a relaxing stroll along the canal front.
Dec has been back at work on the show after he was reunited with his presenter partner Ant McPartlin last month, with the host making a triumphant return to the show following his drink-drive arrest in March.
Lovely: Declan Donnelly was enjoying a break from Britain's Got Talent filming on Saturday, as he stepped out in Manchester with his wife Ali, baby daughter Isla and David Walliams
Dec and Ali were wrapped up against the chilly February climes as they made their way through the city, with little Isla happily placed inside her pram.
The couple - who tied the knot in 2015 - seemed to enjoying the break from Dec's busy work schedule, while David happily strolled along with a hot drink in hand.
The trio looked to be in good spirits on their outing ahead of a return to filming for BGT next week, which will see Dec reunite with Ant again following his triumphant return to work last month.
Happy: The presenter, 43, was beaming as he and Ali were joined by judge David Walliams for a relaxing stroll through the city
Good spirits: David was seen heading through Manchester and along the canal front with Dec and Ali, as he took a day off from judging the auditions
Relaxing: The stars will presumably return to work next week for the next leg of auditions in Manchester
Ant returned to work at the show's London Palladium auditions on January 18, and admitted he was 'really really emotional' as he was given a standing ovation.
The Geordie star was convicted of drink-driving, given an 86,000 fine and a 20 month driving ban following a three-car smash in March and later checked into rehab.
In August last year, Ant revealed he was taking a break from presenting with co-host Dec to focus on recovering from his painkiller addiction, months after his drink-driving charge in April.
Back to it: David and Dec have been filming the new series, which saw Ant McPartlin also returning to work following his drink-drive arrest last year
Pals: The duo were deep in conversation as they made their along the picturesque canal front
This led Dec to host the remaining episodes of Saturday Night Takeaway solo, along with the Britain's Got Talent live shows in May.
Ant previously credited new girlfriend Anne-Marie Corbett as being 'his rock' over the past year as he battled with drug and alcohol addiction and took time away from the spotlight.
Speaking to The Sun, he said: 'Anne-Marie honestly is the fundamental reason for the great change in my life. She's been my rock. She's a beautiful soul. We're very happy.'
Sam and Phoebe Burgess called time on their three-year marriage in December last year, less than a month after welcoming their second child.
But it appears that the pair may be making inroads toward a reunion, with the couple spotted looking close on a park date on Saturday.
In photos obtained by The Daily Telegraph, the NRL star and the former journalist looked relaxed and happy as they took their two children to Centennial Park.
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Back together? Sam and Phoebe Burgess have sparked reconciliation rumours after they were spotted at Centennial Park with their two children on Saturday. Pictured in April 2018
Sam, 30, carried the pair's daughter Poppy, two, in his arms while Phoebe, 29, wheeled their newborn, William, nine weeks, in a pram.
There was little sign anything was amiss as the pair enjoyed the warm summer day, strolling along and chatting.
However, a source tells The Daily Telegraph that the display of unity is 'just for their children' and there appears to be no reunion yet.
Family time: It appears that the pair may be making inroads toward a reunion, with the couple spotted looking close on a park date. Pictured in 2018
Not yet? However, a source tells The Daily Telegraph that the display of unity is 'just for their children' and there appears to be no reunion yet. Pictured with newborn son William
However, it comes after the footy star was spotted back at the family's $3.8 million property in Sydney's Maroubra in late January.
It was the first time he had been seen at the home in more than a month.
Phoebe has remained living at the palatial residence, and it is understood that her mother, Sarah Hooke, has temporarily moved in to lend a helping hand.
Sticking around? In recent days, Sam has been sending increasing time at his marital home and going for food and nappy runs
The Rabbitohs player dropped by briefly and looked downcast as he left the premises without a wedding ring on his finger.
However in recent days, he's been sending increasing time at the home, The Daily Telegraph reports, and going for food and nappy runs.
Sam and Phoebe, 29, first met at an Avicii concert in Sydney back in January 2014 and by June 2015, they were engaged following a romantic holiday in Greece.
Over? The couple announced their separation in December, weeks after their son was born
In January 2017, the couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Poppy Alice, now two.
Their second child, son William 'Billy' Mark, was born in early December 2018, and a month later, the couple announced their separation.
Soon after, reports surfaced describing Phoebe and Sam's marriage split as 'pretty messy'.
A close friend of the former couple told The Daily Telegraph that 'things [had] been bad for a while' before they parted ways.
Another way of phrasing the declaration is that for Ms Irani, the leader is paramount over the party and what it stands for.
Earlier this week, Union minister Smriti Irani said she would leave politics the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi hangs up his boots. Lest this be interpreted as her alluding to the possibility of a premature closure of a breathtaking political career, she exuded confidence that Mr Modi would be around for long years. But the moot point of her suo moto declaration is that she is active in politics and in the Bharatiya Janata Party chiefly because of personal loyalty and not out of commitment to an ideology or party programme. Another way of phrasing the declaration is that for Ms Irani, the leader is paramount over the party and what it stands for.
Fifteen years ago in December 2004, Ms Irani had threatened to fast unto death demanding the resignation of Mr Modi, then the chief minister of Gujarat. Although the protest, embarrassing for the party, was subsequently called off, it must be emphasised that she wished to embark on it on Christmas Day, which was also Atal Behari Vajpayees birthday, as a mark of respect to him. Despite Mr Modis homage, the political and personal divergence between him and Vajpayee has been well documented. When Ms Irani announced her protest, she was asked if permission had been taken from the party leadership: Why do you think you need permission to do what you think is right. The BJP is a democratic party. Not many BJP leaders would be able to make such an assertion now without risking their stature and position.
This story needed retelling not for the transformation of Ms Irani, her changing loyalties and Mr Modis spectacularly altered fortunes. These developments involving the same set of individuals, over a period of a decade and a half, underscores the partys transition. From being a party with a difference known for its ideology, loyalty towards its political fraternity and commitment to the partys programmes, the adhesive in the party is now focused mostly on an individual. From a time when party leaders used nationalist slogans as their battle cry, now, as recently seen in the Lok Sabha on Budget day, the name of a single leader has turned into the rallying point. Anyone who doesnt utter the incessant chant or who does not burst into a cackle of laughter when commanded, is pilloried recall how defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman was panned when she did not find the joke cracked at the expense of Renuka Chaudhury any bit amusing. The BJP now, like all non-Communist parties, has one presiding deity, and a
nyone not paying obeisance is most likely to be marginalised, if not actually labelled anti-national.
When the BJP distinguished itself as party where policies and programmes were more important than any individual, its leaders took pride in the collegiate style of the BJPs working, where internal charcha or discussion was mandatory before major decisions. In the years when the party moved from the political periphery to the centrestage before 2014, the party cadre boasted that the organisation had the ability to carry ek mayan mein do talwarein or two swords in one sheath indicating to the Atal Behari Vajpayee-L.K. Advani duo. The two were at one level, two ends of the Hindutva spectrum, and locked in ceaseless competition. Yet they remained ideological brothers, never failing to close ranks whenever danger arose from outside. Barring the two main Communist parties and the original Janata Dal, the BJP was the closest one could get to a democratic party in Indian politics. Other parties, from the Congress to various factions of the Janata Parivar, which later branched out into family enterprises, even ideological parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party, remain merely personal bastions of insecure yet ambitious leaders.
The BJP has its roots in the Jan Sangh, which was controlled by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, especially after Syama Prasad Mookerjees death. Deen Dayal Upadhyay, who fronted for the RSS, was, however, more of a Balasaheb Deoras loyalist than a blind admirer of M.S. Golwalkar. The two differed on the fundamental organisational credo Golwalkar practised the principle of Ek Chalak Anuvartitva or follow one leader, while Deoras stood for Sah Chalak Anuvartitva or follow multiple leaders. Till 2014, this remained the partys organisational principle. In November 2015, the four sidelined party veterans L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha and Shanta Kumar in a statement bemoaned the demise of this party tenet. They asked for a review of how the party is being forced to kowtow to a handful, and how its consensual character has been destroyed. Issues raised in that note have never been addressed and the page has been turned.
The danger of what has happened to the BJP, how the Congress reoriented itself as chiefly a family hegemonised organisation after 1967 and how other parties became proprietary units has always lurked. In his concluding speech in the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1941, Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar sounded three warnings for the emergent republic, of which the second is most pertinent in the context being discussed in this article. He quoted John Stuart Mill arguing that lawmakers and people must not lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enables him to subvert their institutions. Further ahead, he read out the words of another great patriot, the Irish leader Daniel OConnel: No man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. Finally, he recalled that Bhakti was a part of Indias culture and religion for its capacity to be the road to salvation for many.
However, in politics Bhakti or hero worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. There is little point in blaming anyone or pointing fingers at individuals responsible for the BJPs changed political values, but there is a need to be aware of this development and recall Ambedkars forewarning.
The Australian actor has appeared in well-known films, including Black Hawk Down, Chopper, The Time Traveler's Wife and Troy.
And Eric Bana took to the stage of the Tropfest film festival in Sydney on Saturday as a star judge.
The Full Frontal star, 50, dressed for the occasion in a smart casual ensemble, as he spoke to the large crowd at Parramatta Park.
Bringing a touch of Hollywood! Acclaimed actor Eric Bana has taken to the stage as a guest judge at the Tropfest Junior 2019 film festival in Sydney. The 50-year-old dressed for the occasion in a smart casual ensemble of a navy button down shirt and grey pants
Eric wore a navy button down dress shirt and grey trousers.
He was accompanied on stage by the event's emcee Yumi Stynes - dressed in a short, whimsical animated dress and sneakers - who held the microphone for him.
Also at the event was film director and stuntman Nash Edgerton, the older brother of actor Joel Edgerton.
The Gringo director kept it casual in black jeans, a black button down shirt with a white T-shirt peaking underneath, and a trucker cap with emblazoned with 'sex, drugs and sushi' across the front.
Creative flare: He was accompanied on stage by the event's emcee Yumi Stynes - dressed in a short, whimsical animated dress and sneakers - who held the microphone for him
Cool and casual: Also at the event was film director and stuntman Nash Edgerton, the older brother of actor Joel Edgerton. The Gringo director kept it casual in black jeans, a black button down shirt with a white T-shirt peaking underneath, and a trucker cap
Actress, and star of A Place To Call Home, Marta Dusseldrop also walked the black carpet.
The Jack Irish actress opted for a monochrome outfit with a black top, zebra print pants and leather flats.
Eric's appearance at the filmmaker festival comes after he recently discussed his role as a sociopath conman in Dirty John with The Daily Telegraph.
Stylish: Actress and star of A Place to Call Home Marta Dusseldrop also walked the black carpet. The Jack Irish actress opted for a monochrome outfit with a black top, zebra print pants and leather flats
'I've looked at a lot of TV stuff over the past 10 years, and this was the one that got me. So it was a combination of a lot of factors.' the father-of-two said.
'There's a lot of scope to explore that sociopath behaviour,' he told the publication.
Based on the renowned podcast, the upcoming drama centres on the real-life love story between John Meehan and Debra Newell, played by actress Connie Britton.
Teen was spotted on Instagram and made her runway debut last year
'A lot of people think both her and I are Australian, but us Kiwis know we are from,' she said
She wants Australia to stop 'claiming' her and fellow Kiwi stunner Georgia Fowler
The proud New Zealander is sick of people assuming she's Australian
Stunning model Maia Cotton made her Victoria's Secret runway debut last year.
But as the 19-year-old's star has risen, she's found one downside to fame that she wants to set right.
She's sick of people thinking she's Australian.
The brunette beauty told Confidential she wants Australia needs to stop 'claiming' her and fellow Kiwi stunner Georgia Fowler.
Setting the record straight: Maia Cotton made it clear she's a proud New Zealander
'A lot of people think both her and I are Australian, but us Kiwis know we are from,' she said.
'We know you guys claim Georgia Fowler,' she laughed.
'We try to claim her back all the time and make it known she is from New Zealand,' she added.
New Zealand's finest: The model also told the publication to Australia needs to stop 'claiming' Georgia Fowler (pictured). 'We know you guys claim Georgia Fowler,' she laughed. 'We try to claim her back all the time and make it known she is from New Zealand,' she added
Maia took to the catwalk in a silver hoodie and an electric blue bra and underwear set that also showed off her phenomenal figure on the Victoria's Secret fashion show back in November.
The New York-based beauty has been modelling since she was 14 and appeared in the pages of New Zealand magazines such as Miss FQ, as well as featured in shoots for Urban Outfitters and Tigerlily.
Runway ready: Maia took to the catwalk in a silver hoodie and an electric blue bra and underwear set that also showed off her phenomenal figure on the Victoria's Secret fashion show back in November
The striking beauty was discovered on Instagram and revealed being booked for the Victoria's Secret show was a dream come true.
'I used to think about what this moment might feel like, and it is simply indescribable,' she wrote on Instagram.
'Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined I would get the opportunity to cast, let alone confirm the show of a lifetime.'
She is back from her health and fitness Azerbaijan break.
And Millie Mackintosh, 29, mounted her husband Hugo Taylor, 32, when they were reunited outside Core Collective, in London on Saturday.
A raunchy Instagram snap captured the moment the heiress snaked her hands around her love's neck as she went to plant a kiss on his lips while she straddled him.
Reunited: Millie Mackintosh mounted her husband Hugo Taylor as they packed on the PDA in VERY hands-on reunion on Saturday after her Azerbaijan break
The Made In Chelsea golden couple, who tied the knot last year, looked madly in love as they gazed adoringly into each other's eyes.
Clad in workout gear, the fitness guru showed off the rewards of her gym labours in the tight fitting ensemble.
A photographer could be seen in the glass focusing in on the duo with his fancy camera to ensure their incredibly candid reunion didn't go undocumented.
Sun-kissed: The fitness guru has been driving her fans wild with her picture-perfect social media snaps from her break
She penned in the caption accompanied with a heart emoji: 'Reunited.'
Millie and Hugo were delighted to be in each other's arms once again after she returned from her Azerbaijan health getaway.
The fitness guru has been driving her fans wild with her picture-perfect social media snaps from her break.
Radiant: Millie has been keeping her social media fans updated with her cleansing break to Azerbaijan and earlier this week shared a glimpse of her daily schedule
Hugo and Millie initially dated in the early series of Made In Chelsea back in 2011, where they had starred on the reality series.
While their relationship didn't work out first time round, Hugo and Millie rekindled their love following her split from ex-husband Professor Green in 2016 - they were granted a divorce the same year.
Hugo later proposed to Millie during a romantic break in Greece in July 2017, with the pair tying the knot in June the following year.
They had wed in an official marriage service held in Chelsea Town Hall, a few days before hosting a lavish celebration.
The couple received a religious blessing, in front of their family and friends at Whithurst Park which is owned by Hugo's uncle - in West Sussex.
The couple announced their engagement in July 2017 following a holiday in Greece, before tying the knot a year later in a romantic Sussex wedding.
He's the world's second richest man, with a jaw-dropping estimated fortune of $136 billion AUD.
But it appears Bill Gates' twelve figure bank balance doesn't guarantee that he can skip the queue when he needs a haircut.
According to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, the 63-year-old Microsoft founder was required to wait in line during a recent visit to a barber in the harbour city.
He's just like us! According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently 'waited in line for a haircut at a Sydney barber' despite his jaw-dropping $136 BILLION fortune
Bill reportedly 'popped into a barber in the affluent Sydney suburb of Double Bay for a short back and sides'.
The billionaire 'was waiting patiently for his turn when he asked the hairdresser' if he could pop out to grab a coffee.
The Sydney Morning Herald claims the barber told him 'he was free to grab a caffeine hit so long as he didn't mind going to the back of the queue' when he returned.
He's not a cut above! Billionaire Bill 'was waiting patiently for his turn when he asked the hairdresser' if he could pop out to grab a coffee (Stock photo)
The barbershop was not named in the report, but it allegedly caters to some of the Sydney's political and financial elite - although none of the clientele would have a fortune anywhere near the size of the tech founder.
Daily Mail Australia has reached out to The Gates Foundation for comment.
Bill has visited the country several times in the past few years.
Regular visitor! Bill is pictured with former Prime Minister Julia Gillard during his 2013 trip to Australia
The business magnate holidayed in Sydney with wife Melinda in 2011, before meeting with the country's then Prime Minister Julia Gillard during a visit in 2013.
He was last in the country in 2017, where he visited a remote Queensland farm 'to see how digital agriculture is used to raise cattle in the Australian outback'.
Although there was no photographic evidence of Bill's barbershop visit, his down-to-earth behaviour is well documented.
Just last month, the philanthropist was spotted waiting patiently in line for a Coke and fries at a budget burger outlet in Seattle called Dick's Drive-In.
Russell Crowe and Sienna Miller were unidentifiable when they transformed into their characters Roger Ailes and his wife Elizabeth to film the biopic TV series.
The Loudest Voice In The Room is an eight-part series which will focus around the disgraced Fox News chief's fall after he was accused of sexual harassment.
Sienna, 37, hid her gorgeous visage beneath heavy make-up and prosthetic jowls as she mirrored the looks of the shamed TV star's wife when filming with Russell, 54.
Seeing double: Russell Crowe and Sienna Miller (L) looked unrecognisable as they transform into Roger Ailes and his wife Elizabeth (R) to film The Loudest Voice In The Room
All about the story: The Loudest Voice In The Room is an eight-part series which will focus around the disgraced Fox News chief's fall after he was accused of sexual harassment
The British American star was pictured having make-up applied to her changed facial features by a team of on-set make-up artists.
A tan coat and floral scarf completed the transformation for the normally fashion-forward actress, a far cry away from Sienna's red carpet appearances.
The outfit and make-up gave her an uncanny resemblance to the 58-year-old widow of the disgraced mogul whom she is portraying in the biopic.
Russell also sported facial prosthetic as he slipped into the role of the American Sniper star's on-screen husband.
Do you recognise her? Sienna hid her gorgeous visage beneath heavy make-up and prosthetic jowls as she mirrored the looks of the shamed TV star's wife
Dramatically different: Russell embraced the Fox News chief's signature style with a bald cap and a cleanly shaven face (L), while Russell recently has opted for a full beard (R)
The Les Miserables actor embraced the Fox News chief's signature style with a bald cap and a cleanly shaven face, while Russell recently has opted for a full beard.
Forest Hills, Queens is one of the hot locations selected for the Showtime series set where Russell and Sienna were spotted filming outside a property.
Cameras started rolling in New York City back in November for the biopic based on the book with the same name The Loudest Voice In The Room.
As well as Sienna and Russell, a whole galaxy of stars have been hired to pull off the epic eight-part television series including Simon McBurney as Rupert Murdoch.
Spotted: Forest Hills, Queens is one of the hot locations selected for the Showtime series set where Russell and Sienna were filming outside a property
Shocking transformation: A tan coat and floral scarf completed the transformation for the normally fashion-forward actress, a far cry away from Sienna's red carpet appearances (R)
Naomi Watts will take on the role of former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson while Seth MacFarlane will portray former Fox News spokesperson Brian Lewis.
Annabelle Wallis, Aleska Palladino and David Whalen will also join the star-studded cast on their project.
Showtime's new limited series will tell the story of the last decade of Ailes' life, including his fall from Fox after a slew of women accused him of sexual harassment.
The drama will explore how Fox News founder fought to push the network to the top, after employees including anchor Gretchen made accusations against him.
A little helping hand: The British American star was pictured having make-up applied to her changed facial features by a team of on-set make-up artists
Who knew it was the same man? Russell also sported facial prosthetic (R) as he slipped into the role of the American Sniper star's on-screen husband
It will also include flashbacks to defining events in Ailes' life and will be told through multiple points of view to give a number of characters a voice.
Showtime Networks president and CEO David Nevins told Variety of the project: 'In many ways, the collision between the media and politics has come to define the world we live in today.
'We've seen this phenomenon depicted on screen as far back as the story of Charles Foster Kane, and it finds contemporary embodiment in the rise and fall of Roger Ailes.'
They're leading Hollywood stars who have made their home in the quaint coastal town of Byron Bay, in northern NSW.
And Thor actor Chris Hemsworth, 36, and his glamorous wife Elsa Pataky, 42, proved they fit in just fine during an outing on Friday.
The couple were spotted stepping out for dinner barefoot with their children, twins Tristan and Sasha, both four, and daughter India Rose, six.
It's Byron baby! Chris Hemsworth and wife Elsa Pataky keep it casual as they go barefoot while heading out for dinner with their three kids
Chris and Elsa looked like any other doting parents, wrangling their young children while on the outing at a restaurant in the idyllic beach-side town.
The genetically-blessed couple and their children all opted to go sans shoes for the low-key outing, with them being an activity-loving family.
Elsa was seen holding the hand of the couple's daughter India Rose, who was seen clad in an unusual reindeer costume.
Keep it low-key: Hollywood star Chris opted to show off his bulging biceps in a grey singlet as he wrangled his sandy-haired twins, Tristan and Sasha, four
Meanwhile, Chris happily handled the couple's twins, holding onto the adorable long-haired boys hair as they crossed the road.
Spanish film star Elsa opted to go boho chic for the outing, with her wear an off-the-shoulder floral maxi dress, which clung to her impressive figure.
The blonde beauty opted to pair the low-key dress with a fringed handbag, which she wore across her body.
Barefoot beauty: Elsa looked boho glam in an off the shoulder maxi dress, as she held hands with her daughter India Rose
Mum-mode: Elsa was seen holding her daughter's hand as she crossed the road, with India Rose wearing an elaborate reindeer costume
Elsa completed the look by wearing her ash blonde tresses up in a messy bun, while going make-up free for the occasion.
Chris however, looked every inch the action hero showing off his muscled arms with him clad in a loose-fitting grey singlet.
The hunky movie star paired the singlet with a pair of blue shorts, with it appearing it may have possibly just come back from the beach.
Family first: the actors looked to be in a cheerful mood as they headed off for a bite to eat
The family are close to finishing their $9 million mansion in Byron Bay, with locals comparing it to a shopping centre or office building.
It has been claimed the property will feature a gym, steam room, infinity swimming pool, luxury spa, media room and game room.
It will also have six bedrooms and state-of-the-art appliances.
Boho chic: Elsa happily chatted with her young daughter as they headed to the restaurant
Beach life: 'We did the move three years ago and I'm so happy with it,' Elsa told Stellar magazine of the family's relocation to idyllic Byron Bay back in 2014
Chris and Elsa relocated to Chris' native Australia in 2014.
Spanish star Elsa previously said she enjoys the more laid-back lifestyle in Byron Bay.
'We did the move three years ago and I'm so happy with it,' Elsa told Stellar magazine in April 2017.
'In Byron we just feel like locals. People really respect us... and it's what I always dreamt of giving to my kids.'
She has been a mainstay at New York Fashion Week.
And on Friday, Bella Thorne had her usual front row seat at the Sherri Hill fashion show in Manhattan, alongside older sister Dani Thorne, 26.
This go-around, the 21-year-old You Get Me actress opted to make a bold statement with her striking ginger locks and black sequin jumpsuit.
Making a statement: Bella Thorne attended the Sherri Hill fashion show as part of New York Fashion Week on Friday
Wanting to make an impactful first impression, Bella arrived for the show with a black full-length furry coat over her striking number.
Once inside and out of the cold, she took of the coat to reveal the piece in its full glory under the bright lights of the event.
The sequins set off endless sparkles and the form-fitting design showcased her toned figure.
For extra flare, the long-sleeved jumpsuit hung off her left shoulder, which in turn was accentuated by her many classic model poses during the event.
Coordinating: Bella wore black platform heels with her sequin jumpsuit
Grand arrival : The actress wore a black full-length furry coat over a black sequin jumpsuit
Sister night: The former Disney star, 21, arrived with older sister Dani, 26,right behind her
Strike a pose: The sequins set off endless sparkles under the bright lights and the form-fitting design showcased her toned figure
The Florida native also added her own touch of flare with her red-siren hair, blue eye shadow and assorted silver chains around her neck.
Proclaiming it was 'a sister day' on her Instagram, the former Disney star strutted her stuff with her sister Dani, who was always near her side.
She too opted to make a bold statement in a sparkly black sequin mini dress, complete with spaghetti straps and black knee-high boots.
On this night she wore her multi-colored tresses long and with a part in the middle.
Bold statement: Dani opted for a sparkly black sequin mini dress, complete with spaghetti straps and black knee-high boots
Flashers: The sisters stopped to flash some big beaming smiles while sitting in the front row
The sisters also got to soak in all the new designs with Kelly Killoren Bensimon, who was sitting right next to them in the front row.
The Real Housewives of New York alum showcased her tanned gams in a black mini dress and knee-high black leather boots.
Keeping with her usual winter attire, she wore black coat with a white furry collar over her shoulders for much of the show.
Extra flare: The long-sleeved jumpsuit hung off Bella's left shoulder, which in turn was accentuated by her many classic model poses during the event
paying respect: The sisters are regulars at Sherri Hill's (center) fashion shows in recent years
During the event, the sisters posed with the likes of journalist Alicia Quarles, model Halima Aden and the designer of the night, Sherri Hill.
Some of the other high-profile names on hand included pageant beauties: Miss Universe Catriona Gray, Miss USA Sarah Rose Summers and Miss Teen USA Hailey Colborn.
New York Fashion Week kicked-off Friday with a number of star-studded events, and goes through Saturday February 16.
Working it: Bella Thorne struck a pose with journalist Alicia Quarles
Making the rounds: Bella and Dani also chatted up model Halima Aden
Pageant beauties: Miss Universe Catriona Gray, Miss USA Sarah Rose Summers and Miss Teen USA Hailey Colborn gathered for some photos
The Victoria's Secret stunner has only just left Australia's beaches for Los Angeles, but it seems she's already slipped back into a bikini.
Sharing a series of cheeky snaps from the other side of the world on Saturday, Australian stunner Shanina Shaik looked nothing short of sensational.
Shanina captioned the trio of photos 'Why so blue?' in reference to the eye-popping cobalt shade of her bikini.
'Why so blue?' Victoria's Secret stunner Shanina Shaik shared a series of cheeky snaps which she captioned 'Why so blue?' in reference to the eye-popping cobalt shade of her bikini
It seems the model has an endless supply of bikini garments, having donned an almost identical racy blue bikini in Sydney earlier in the week.
The glowing 27-year-old perched effortlessly on a white towel with her slim and endless pins stretched out in front.
Her playful bikini top and high-waited bikini bottoms were reminiscent of a '90's-inspired swimsuit.
Legs for days! The glowing 27-year-old perched effortlessly on a white towel with her slim and endless pins stretched out in front
Posing as she looked downward, she flaunted her envy-inducing figure as her brunette locks fell behind her shoulders in glamorous waves.
Shanina celebrated her birthday early this month with her friends in Miami, as they surprised her with an extravagant multi-tiered cake and took to the town to party.
The Melbourne-born beauty's actual birthday is on February 11.
90s inspired: Shanina's playful bikini top and high-waited bikini bottoms were reminiscent of a '90's-inspired swimsuit
Earlier in the week, Shanina broke her silence on her involvement in Fyre Festival.
The model was one of a several supermodels who were paid to promote the disastrous Bahamas-based music festival in 2017 and was featured heavily in Netflix's recently-documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.
Shanina confirmed that she had seen the Netflix expose, admitting: 'I cried when I watched it.'
Shanina added that she would never have promoted the event if she had known about its doomed future and the backlash she would have received.
Star Wars: Episode IX premieres December 20, 2019 -- that's been widely publicized.
But little else has been revealed about the third installment in the sequel trilogy.
So on Thursday, Jimmy Kimmel tried to get some of the juicy details about what fans can expect when the late night show host grilled Richard E. Grant about his role in the upcoming epic.
Juicy details: Jimmy Kimmel grilled Richard E. Grant about his role in Star Wars: Episode IX
For much of the appearance, Grant dished about his Oscar nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me.
He also talked about taking selfies with many of the other Academy Award nominees during a luncheon, growing up in the small country of Swaziland, learning to French kiss as a 12-year old and his ongoing friendship with funnyman Steve Martin.
Then Kimmel took a more hesitant tone and asked about Star Wars.
'You are in the new Star Wars movie as well, we can say that, right?' the late night host inquired.
With a big smile on his face, the 62-year old actor admitted he had a role in the film but refused to dish about any specific details.
May the force be with him: The 62-year old actor revealed: 'I haven't even told my wife and daughter the name of my character,' during his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live
Hard sell: The late night show host pressed the actor about giving up more about the film
After a little more prying on Kimmel's part, Grant revealed: 'I haven't even told my wife and daughter the name of my character.'
The host seemed surprised that he had not told his family the name of his character.
Being a newcomer to the series, Grant was hesitant to give away anything.
'As you can see, I'm a blabbermouth, and I value my knees,' her joked with sincerity, adding, 'and I don't want to get fired or removed from the movie, so I haven't told anybody.'
Patience: The third film in the sequel trilogy premieres December 20, 2019
Despite Grant's apprehension, Kimmel pressed even more and asked if revealing the name of his character would spoil the plot of the film.
'Sorry what?' Grant responded, sending a signal that he wouldn't give up anything else.
J.J. Abrams is back to direct Star Wars: Episode IX. He also co-wrote the script with Chris Terrio.
This third installment in the sequel series follows The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017).
Rose McGowan pulled out another reliably edgy outfit for an appearance during New York Fashion Week on Friday.
The 45-year-old Citizen Rose star made a splash in the front row for the New York City-based label Chromat, where she also spoke to New York Post.
Shooting down the idea of new film or television projects, the actress-turned-activist told the publication: 'I don't f*** with Hollywood.'
What a sight: Rose McGowan, 45, made a splash in the front row for the New York City-based label Chromat
Rose's fashion show look was just as striking as her comments. She wore a striking textured fur top with form-fitting red leather pants to the fashionable event.
The 5foot4 Charmed star chose an eye-catching shade of crimson lipstick to match her pants.
She stuck to the red and white color scheme with her bleached hair and and white nail polish.
Rose accessorized with a small black handbag and a pair of black leather shoes decked out with star patterns.
Hot pants: She wore a striking textured fur top with form-fitting red leather pants to the fashionable event
No thanks: 'I don't f*** with Hollywood,' she told the New York Post. 'I don't like it'
Speaking to the New York Post at the event, Rose shot down the idea of new film or television projects.
'I don't f*** with Hollywood,' she replied when asked about future work. 'I don't like it.'
The actress was among the first women to publicly accuse Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, 66, of rape and sexual assault in 2017.
Weinstein was arrested in New York in May 2018 and charged with rape and a variety of other sexual crimes.
He's set to go to trial on May 7.
Sharing the truth: The actress was among the first women to publicly accuse Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, 66, of rape and sexual assault in 2017
In January, Rose criticized her former lawyers, Jose Baez and Ron Sullivan, for representing Weinstein in his criminal battle.
She originally hired the lawyers to represent her for a drug possession charge two years ago. The Grindhouse star was accused of leaving a wallet filled with cocaine on a plane at Dulles International Airport.
Rose alleged that the wallet was planted by Weinstein's allies, though no evidence of that particular claim ever arose.
The actress pleaded no contest and was given a $2,500 fine and a suspended jail sentence.
Rose has been dating the non-binary actress and model Rain Dove, 29, since July.
Cute couple: Rose has been dating the non-binary actress and model Rain Dove, 29, since July; pictured in London in September
Swimwear for all: Chromat's runway show focused on swimsuits for multiple body types
Colorful fashion: Chromat's collection featured a bevy of bright, multi-colored beachwear
Still young: Chromat was founded in 2010 by Becca McCharen-Tran and draws from her background in design and architecture
According to preliminary reports, Congress chief ministers Amarinder Singh, Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel are expected to join.
The newly-appointed Congress general secretary, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, was slated to take charge last Thursday when she was to attend her first meeting of party office-bearers. However, she stumped everyone, including her security personnel, when she decided to visit the Akbar Road party headquarters a day earlier. She dropped in at the office after accompanying her husband Robert Vadra to the office of the Enforcement Directorate which had called him in for questioning in connection with the ownership of properties abroad. After making a point that she stood by her husband, Ms Vadra clearly wanted to send out a message that she was unfazed by these developments and that it was business as usual.
But there was chaos and confusion at the party office as no one was aware of her arrival. Most of the office bearers, who would have otherwise lined up to welcome her, were missing. Even veteran Congress leader Motilal Vora, who visits his office regularly, was not present. Nevertheless, word got around and, in true Congress style, the place was soon swarming with sycophantic party workers.
Though Opposition parties, which are coming together to battle the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have, of late, shown a degree of willingness to work with Congress president Rahul Gandhi, they remain averse to the Nehru-Gandhi scion stealing the limelight. This is exactly what happened last week when a host of Opposition leaders met in the Capital to discuss various issues on which they can work together. Realising that he is on test, the Congress president is learned to have been sufficiently deferential to veteran leaders like Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and was equally courteous to second-rung leaders of other parties who participated in the deliberations.
After hearing everyone out, the Congress president suggested that the Opposition camp highlight those issues on which there is unanimity among them while leaving out contentious subjects. It was, therefore, decided that jobs crisis, agrarian distress and destruction of institutions by the Modi government would be areas focussed upon. A suggestion by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that they should also highlight the issue of communalism was brushed aside. Addressing the media later, Mr Gandhi even urged Mr Pawar to speak about farm crisis, but he declined. Nevertheless, both Mr Pawar and Mr Naidu felt the need to talk to the press the next day about the same meeting. Either they did not want Mr Gandhi to emerge as the default leader of this grouping or they felt he was unable to put across his views with sufficient clarity.
Having succeeded in securing support of all regional parties during her brief standoff with the Centre, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee gleefully announced at the end of her three-day dharna that the parties will now take their battle to Delhi. The entire Opposition bloc is planning to sit on a similar dharna in the capital in the coming week. According to preliminary reports, Congress chief ministers Amarinder Singh, Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel are expected to join. But there has been some debate about the format of this protest. Since she has developed a warm rapport with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the Trinamul chief is keen that he join the sit-in. But Congress leaders are not happy to be seen in his company. As a way out, it is being suggested that there should be a relay protest and that leaders take turns to sit on dharna. This will ensure full attendance and also avert any awkward situation.
A dinner hosted by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar last week at his residence turned out to be an occasion to show that the veteran leader has the ability to make friends across the political divide The guest list included BJP ministers Prakash Javadekar, Nitin Gadkari and Kiren Rijiju, Left leaders Sitaram Yechury and D. Raja, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut, Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav, a large contingent of Trinamul MPs, senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel and Bhupinder Singh Hooda and DMK's Kanimozhi. Mr Pawar's daughter and Lok Sabha MP Supriya Sule, who played the perfect hostess, took care to invite her friends from Gen Next, including former Congress ministers R.P.N. Singh and Jitin Prasada. From all accounts, it was a pleasant evening with good music, delicious food and easy conversation. But after enjoying Mr Pawar's generous hospitality, all the guests were left asking one question:
What was the purpose of this dinner? The overwhelming view is that perhaps Mr Pawar is reaching out to friends and opponents in a bid to position himself as a prime ministerial candidate.
Fashion Week has officially descended upon New York City.
And Devon Windsor headed to the Chiara Boni Le Petit Robe show at Spring Studios on Friday.
The 24-year-old model delivered a devilish look as she walked the red carpet into the event.
Devilish: Devon Windsor headed to the Chiara Boni Le Petit Robe show at Spring Studios on Friday
The leggy Missourian threw on a plunging red top that she held together with a black belt.
She sported straightforward black pants, and painted her lips a deep nude pink.
Her long blonde tresses were left unencumbered and they tumbled across her shoulders in relaxed waves.
Devon wasn't not at the show to walk, and, after stopping for some photos with the show's designer, Chiara Boni, found herself sitting next to Sofia Resing, 27, and Caroline Vreeland, 31.
Taking the plunge: The 24-year-old model delivered a devilish look as she walked the red carpet into the event
Sultry: The leggy Missourian threw on a plunging red top that she held together with a black belt
Photo op: She sported straightforward black pants, and painted her lips a deep nude pink, and stopped for some photos with the show's designer, Chiara Boni
Resing stunned in a skintight navy jumpsuit with a plunging neckline that highlighted her cleavage.
The Brazilian beauty parted her straight dark tresses down the middle and they fell easily across her shoulders.
Vreeland, meanwhile, opted for an all black dress with a keyhole over her cleavage and a matching hat.
In the crowd: found herself sitting next to Sofia Resing, 27, and Caroline Vreeland, 31
Brazilian bombshell: Resing stunned in a skintight navy jumpsuit with a plunging neckline that highlighted her cleavage
Last year, Devon returned to the Victoria's Secret catwalk, held in New York City, where she dazzled in an ivory bodice and sparkling wings.
In her personal life, the blonde beauty is engaged to Johnny Dex, who proposed to her on June 23 after more than two years of dating.
While taking a plane ride, the blonde bombshell was able to see 'Marry Me?' spelled out on the sand of a private beach in the Bahamas.
She was conveniently wearing an all white ensemble for the special occasion.
Keeping busy: Last year, Devon returned to the Victoria's Secret catwalk, held in New York City, where she dazzled in an ivory bodice and sparkling wings
Flowers: It looked like floral would return for the coming season as models' ensembles were covered in flower patterns
Drama: There was certainly some flair for the dramatic within the outfits presented
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Bella Hadid was centre stage at the New York Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2019 Tomo Koizumi Show on Friday, as she donned an enormous dress of voluminous frills to take to the runway.
The stunning model, 22, looked amazing in the multi coloured look with her dark tresses in a slicked-back helmet style, as she flaunted her endless pins on the catwalk.
She was joined at the fashion showcase by Game Of Thrones actress Gwendoline Christie, as they showed off the looks that seemed to be inspired by paper roses, in a showcase created by the Tokyo designer.
Incredible: Bella Hadid was centre stage at the New York Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2019 Tomo Koizumi Show on Friday, as she joined Gwendoline Christie (right) on the catwalk
Bella's ensemble was extremely difficult to miss as she made her way down the runway, sporting a mixture of royal blue paper-esque frills along with similar embellishments in a mint green.
The daughter of Real Housewives star Yolanda Hadid had her slender pins on display in the frock, which excelled in its width than its height.
Finishing the look with black heels, Bella sported her dark tresses in a helmet-esque blunt fringe and au naturelle makeup, as the sensational dress certainly highlighted the designer's vision.
Jaw-dropping: Bella's ensemble was extremely difficult to miss as she made her way down the runway, as it boasted an incredible mixture of coloured frills, very much similar to a paper rose
Pretty: The frock boasted a mixture of royal blue paper-esque frills along with similar embellishments in a mint green
It's amazing! The daughter of Real Housewives star Yolanda Hadid had her slender pins on display in the frock, which excelled in its width than its height
Looking good: Finishing the look with black heels, Bella sported her dark tresses in a helmet-esque blunt fringe and au naturelle makeup, as the sensational dress certainly highlighted the designer's vision
Game Of Thrones star Gwendoline's dress even excelled Bella's in its eccentricity and grandeur, as it boasted different layers and frills in all colours of the rainbow, and also boasted a train in a mixture of red and blue.
The English actress also had her blonde tresses in a sleek helmet, as she somehow made her way down the runway in the frock, though her feet were barely visible as she made her way back up the stairs.
The dress also boasted an elaborate layered green and yellow sleeve, as well as a pale blue skirt, with a pink underlay along with the double-coloured train.
Quirky: Game Of Thrones star Gwendoline's dress even excelled Bella's in its eccentricity and grandeur, as it boasted different layers and frills in all colours of the rainbow
Unbelievable: The dress also boasted an elaborate layered green and yellow sleeve, as well as a pale blue skirt, with a pink underlay along with the double-coloured train
A bit of trouble: he English actress also had her blonde tresses in a sleek helmet, as she somehow made her way down the runway in the frock, though her feet were barely visible as she made her way back up the stairs
Daring: It certainly proved to be a unique look for the fashion and TV star, as she slowly manoevererd her way along the catwalk in the jaw-dropping ensemble
Also rocking the catwalk in a far-more subdued look was Emily Ratajkowski, as she sported a more simple white shift dress with minimalist frills that accentuated her beauty.
The Blurred Lines star also had her raven tresses styled into a blunt fringe as she delivered a leggy strut along the runway, again finishing the ensemble with simple black heels.
The dress seemed practically plain in comparison to the other dresses that were on display in the show, as the frocks boasted the rose-inspired dresses in all colours of the rainbow.
Amazing: Also rocking the catwalk in a far-more subdued look was Emily Ratajkowski, as she sported a more simple white shift dress with minimalist frills that accentuated her beauty
Legs for days: The Blurred Lines star also had her raven tresses styled into a blunt fringe as she delivered a leggy strut along the runway, again finishing the ensemble with simple black heels
Sensational: The intricate frock boasted perfectly sewn frills on the thigh-skimming dress which boasted higher hems around the leg area
American Beauty: Emily also sported barely-there makeup apart from heavily defined brows as part of her sensational style
Amazing: The dress seemed practically plain in comparison to the other dresses that were on display in the show, as the frocks boasted the rose-inspired dresses in all colours of the rainbow
She transformed into Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) for Adam McKay's Vice.
And Amy Adams looked windswept as she battled the windy weather upon her arrival in London after getting the Eurostar from Paris on Friday night.
The actress, 44, looked chic in a grey longline jacket, which she paired with a matching jumper and dazzling gold jewellery.
Dancing in the wind: Amy Adams looked windswept as she was hit by a strong gust of wind whilst braving the cold in a chic grey coat as she arrived in London via Eurostar on Friday
The Arrival star showcased her slender legs in a pair of dark blue jeans, while she boosted her height by stepping out in heeled Chelsea boots.
Amy struggled to keep her hair from dancing in the wind, as she headed out with her Away carry-on suitcase and personal items in tow.
Not one to be put off by the winter weather, Amy brushed her fiery locks back with her hands when she was hit by a strong gust of wind.
Strong gust: Amy struggled to keep her hair from dancing in the wind, as she headed out with her Away carry-on suitcase and personal items in tow
Vice is currently up for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the Academy Awards.
Amy has also been nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lynne Cheney.
Bale won the Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for the role.
In his acceptance speech, he said: 'Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration on how to play this role.
The former Batman star joked that Adam McKay wanted him for the role because he and the Republican politician have similar personalities.
'He said, "I have to find somebody that can be absolutely charisma free and reviled by everybody, so we wanted Christian Bale",' he said.
She's set to host this year's BAFTAs after a stellar performance in 2018.
And an excited Joanna Lumley put on a very animated display at the BAFTA gala dinner at the Savoy, London on Friday.
The Absolutely Fabulous star, 72, donned an eye-catching skirt embroidered with plenty of purple and blue flowers over a black jumper.
Loving life: Joanna Lumley, 72, put on a very animated display at the BAFTA gala dinner at the Savoy, London on Friday
She covered up against the winter chill in a black cardigan and donned a quirky blue rock style necklace while opting for subtle bracelets.
The former BAFTA winner left her blonde locks in a loose crop and opted for plenty of heavy makeup for the gala dinner.
As the night progressed Joanna displayed a hilarious series of different poses and showed off her modelling skills with one hand in her hair and arm on her waist.
Style: The Absolutely Fabulous star donned an eye-catching skirt embroidered with plenty of purple and blue flowers over a black jumper
Gems: She covered up against the winter chill in a black cardigan and donned a quirky blue rock style necklace while opting for subtle bracelets
Age-defying: The former BAFTA winner left her blonde locks in a loose crop and opted for plenty of heavy makeup for the gala dinner
Vogue: As the night progressed Joanna displayed a hilarious series of different poses and showed off her modelling skills with one hand in her hair and arm on her waist
The outing comes as Joanna prepares to host the prestigious ceremony for the second time since taking over from Stephen Fry.
In January, BAFTA announced via its official Twitter account: 'We are excited to be welcoming back the phenomenal Joanna Lumley as host of the #EEBAFTAs Film Awards @RoyalAlbertHall on 10 February!'
Emma Baehr, the Director of Awards at BAFTA, said: 'We're delighted to be returning to the iconic Royal Albert Hall for the third year and collaborating again with Cirque du Soleil.
Starring role: The outing comes as Joanna prepares to host the prestigious ceremony for the second time since taking over from Stephen Fry
Honour: BAFTA announced via its Twitter account: 'We are excited to be welcoming back the phenomenal Joanna Lumley as host of the #EEBAFTAs Film Awards @RoyalAlbertHall'
Action packed: Emma Baehr, Director of Awards said: 'We're delighted to be returning to the iconic Royal Albert Hall for the third year and collaborating again with Cirque du Soleil'
Honour: She continued: 'We're thrilled that Joanna has agreed to return as our host for a second year, she was fantastic and we're looking forward to the ceremony with her once again'
'We're thrilled that Joanna has agreed to return as our host for a second year, she was fantastic and we're looking forward to the ceremony with her once again at the helm.'
Joanna previously admitted she was delighted to have been offered the chance to host the BAFTAs.
She said: 'I'm really just literally the host. It's a good word, the host: it means make sure everybody is happy. My thrill of accepting this honour of presenting is because I adore film.
'The excellence of films is what I adore: the whole of the BAFTA film awards is about the brilliance of performances direction, art direction, costumes...'
Counting down: Joanna previously admitted she was delighted to have been offered the chance to host the BAFTAs: 'The excellence of films is what I adore'
She's the pregnant former Bachelor winner, who is expecting her first child with hunky boyfriend, Matty 'J' Johnson, 31.
And now, Laura Byrne, 32, has revealed her shortlist of baby names with a number of surprising picks.
Taking to Instagram on Friday, Laura revealed the names she likes, while joking about how hormonal she is while pregnant.
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Can you pick them? Pregnant Bachelor star Laura Byrne reveals the surprising baby names at the top of her list... as she jokes about being hormonal
Taking to her Instagram Story for a Q&A, Laura was upfront with the first name that had made for the cut for the pair.
Clad in a black crop top and boho style skirt, the Toni May jewellery designer went straight to it.
'These are my fave (sic) girl names: Ava, Daphne, Poppy, Ruby and Isla,' she wrote, answering the question.
Top picks: Laura picked out a range of strong, traditional names for the couple's child including Ava or Daphne if it's a girl or Felix and Flynn if it's a boy
'For a boy: Felix, Theodore, Flynn, Gus and Parker.'
Elsewhere in the clips, Laura revealed the couple were yet to decorate their nursery while showing off one of their spare bedrooms.
Panning over a messy bedroom, she said: 'Guys, this our nursery. It's become Matt's shoe wardrobe and also our walk-in ironing room.'
'We haven't actually brought anything yet. Really last minute kind of people,' she finished.
Hormonal: 'She's been a delight, a dream, I'm the luckiest guy in the world, isn't that right babe?' Matty J said in a light-hearted clip with Laura (both pictured)
Laura and hunky boyfriend Matty J also joked that she hasn't suffered hormonal mood swings.
'The thing about Laura is that she hasn't been hormonal at all, not once during the pregnancy,' he said to the camera.
While Laura ate stir-fry, he continued: 'She's been a delight, a dream, I'm the luckiest guy in the world, isn't that right babe?'
'It's a lie,' Laura confirmed, before Matty said: 'A nightmare.'
'It's a lie': The fun-loving couple went on to joke, with Matty calling his stunning girlfriend a 'nightmare' in the short clip
Speaking on his Nova 96.9 summer breakfast show last December, Matty said he wanted to name his firstborn 'something crazy'.
'I wanna call my child something crazy like Moon, or Phoenix, or River,' he told co-hosts Sarah McGilvray and Matt de Groot.
He explained his reason for wanting a unique name for his child was because he and his siblings - Tom, David, Matt, Adam and Kate - have 'quiet boring' names.
She just returned from soaking up the sun in Cape Verde following a breakup with ex Stephen Bear.
And Georgia Harrison was in high spirits as she stepped out looking stunning at the The Visionary Honours in London on Friday.
The Love Island 2017 star, 24, showed off her toned legs in a black and red dress complete with a sultry slit up one leg.
Wow: Georgia Harrison was in high spirits as she stepped out looking stunning at the The Visionary Honours in London on Friday
The blonde beauty left her hair in loose curls and opted for full makeup and red lips for the outing which celebrates the films, music, media and people who have had a positive social impact on the UK in the last year.
She donned a sleek red Gucci bag and added a pair of large good hoop earrings to her look before finishing off with black heels.
Also at the event was rapper Professor Green, 35, who looked dapper in an all black outfit teamed with a teal-coloured leather jacket.
Racy: The Love Island 2017 star, 24, showed off her toned legs in a black and red dress complete with a sultry slit up one leg
Glamorous: The blonde beauty left her hair in loose curls and opted for full makeup and red lips for the outing
Style: Also at the event was rapper Professor Green, 35, who looked dapper in an all black outfit teamed with a teal-coloured leather jacket
Joining forces: He was later joined by pal Rag'n'Bone Man, who he collaborated with on the 2018 hit Photographs
The Need You Tonight hitmaker sported a huge grin as he posed for photos at the event hosted by Sir Lenny Henry.
He was later joined by pal Rag'n'Bone Man, who he collaborated with on the 2018 hit Photographs.
Rag'n'Bone Man, real name Rory Graham, 34, showed off his edgy style in a quirky printed jacket paired with khaki trousers and brown boots.
Smiling: Rag'n'Bone Man, real name Rory Graham, 34, showed off his edgy style in a quirky printed jacket paired with khaki trousers and brown boots
Tatted up: He sported a heavy beard, but showed off his many facial inkings, with tattoos under his eyes and on his sideburns
Bromance: The pair shared a laugh at the event while showing off their many inkings
Heading out: Also attending the event was Dancing On Ice star, Richard Blackwood - who left the ice rink in week three - in a blue suit trimmed with black piping
Couple: Meanwhile former Strictly Contestant Danny John-Jules, 58, and wife Petula Langlais flashed their biggest smiles at the gala
Pretty: Actress Elysia Wren looked ravishing in a leopard print dress which hugged her amazing figure to perfection
He sported a heavy beard, but showed off his many facial inkings, with tattoos under his eyes and on his sideburns.
Also attending the event was Dancing On Ice star, Richard Blackwood.
The former EastEnders actor, 46, - who left the ice rink in week three - looked stylish in a blue suit trimmed with black piping.
He paired the look with a white shirt and clad his feet in brown boots.
Meanwhile former Strictly Contestant Danny John-Jules, 58, and wife Petula Langlais flashed their biggest smiles at the gala.
The actor suited up in a pinstripe number and top hat while his wife opted for a blue number.
Matching: Songwriter Kym Mazelle opted for her take on a co-ord in the form of a checked top and printed bottoms
Hot: Shipwrecked's Harry Goodwins looked handsome in a checked suit while showing off his golden locks
Pose: Meanwhile blogger Chidera Eggerue wrapped up in a bow-inspired dress with printed heels
Aidan Turner is set to play the man who assassinated Adolf Hitler, in his new indie film The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot.
The actor, 35, transformed into American soldier Calvin Barr in the first trailer for the film, which sees him embark on a dangerous mission to assassinate the Nazi leader.
Directed by Robert Krzykowski, the film also follows Calvin in later life (played by Sam Elliot), as he is called upon by the FBI to kill a mythical Sasquatch that carries a disease which could wipe out all life on Earth.
Transformation: Aidan Turner became an American soldier posing as a Nazi to assassinate Adolf Hitler in first trailer for indie film The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot
Opening with an older Calvin sat alone in a bar, a narrator says: 'My grandfather used to tell me stories all about this one soldier.
'As he got older the stories got stranger, some I believed, others I dont know. But it wasnt describing a man. It was more like something mythic, legendary.'
Threatened by a group of thugs, the character appears to just be a defenceless old man until he skillfully beats them up.
Spy: The actor plays Calvin Barr in the first trailer for the film, which sees him embark on a dangerous mission to assassinate the Nazi leader
Later life: Opening with an older Calvin sat alone in a bar, a narrator says: 'My grandfather used to tell me stories all about this one soldier'
Sitting down with an FBI agent, he's asked: 'You didnt pull any swords from any stones did you? But you might have done something, something bigger maybe.'
Delving into the time he spent, seemingly, undercover in the Third Reich during World War Two, the trailer then gives a glimpse into Aidan's performance.
A flurry of scenes show the Poldark star having a romantic dinner with Caitlyn FitzGerald's Maxine, before he later opens a box with an engagement ring inside.
Talking about what bothers him, the older Calvin narrates over the top: 'Things I could have done differently, regrets.'
Past: A flurry of scenes show the Poldark star having a romantic dinner with Caitlyn FitzGerald's Maxine, before he later opens a box with an engagement ring inside
Looking back: Talking about what bothers him, the older Calvin narrates over the top: 'Things I could have done differently, regrets'
Dangerous mission: Another scene sees the character dressed in a Nazi uniform as he goes to meet with Hitler and kill him
Another scene sees the character dressed in a Nazi uniform walking past a group of people walking slowly towards a train, and then is later saluted by officers as he goes to meet with Hitler.
Narrating, the older Calvin admits: 'I shot someone during the war. I never wanted that, even if he had it coming, and he did.'
Aidan is then seen quickly putting a pistol together from parts hidden upon his person, before shooting the man.
Difficult: Narrating, the older Calvin admits: 'I shot someone during the war. I never wanted that, even if he had it coming, and he did'
New mission: Returning to the modern day, the FBI agent asks Calvin if he's heard about 'the killings up north', and if he can help with tracking down Bigfoot
Dangerous: Explaining why they need his help, the man says: 'Imagine all our worst fears about influenza in humans, bovine, swine, all of it coming true to life, only worse'
Returning to the modern day, the FBI agent asks Calvin if he's heard about 'the killings up north', and if he can help with tracking down Bigfoot.
Explaining why they need his help, the man says: 'Imagine all our worst fears about influenza in humans, bovine, swine, all of it coming true to life, only worse.'
Calvin is then seen tracking the beast down, as he follows its tracks and finds a corpse of a moose and goes on a quest through the Canadian Rockies to find it.
As he goes through the dangerous mission, a character can be heard saying: 'If we cannot contain the beast, we cannot destroy it, and it escapes, it could mean the very end of our world as we know it.'
The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot was released in cinemas across the USA on Friday, and is yet to be given a release date for the UK.
On a mission: Calvin is then seen tracking the beast down, as he follows its tracks and finds a corpse of a moose and goes on a quest through the Canadian Rockies to find it
She never fails to hit the mark with her sensational style.
And Helen George stunned as she attended the BAFTA gala dinner with partner Jack Ashton at the Savoy, London on Friday.
The Call The Midwife actress, 34, looked every inch the leading lady as she stepped out in a blue ruffled number.
Stepping out: Helen George, 34, stunned as she attended the BAFTA gala dinner with partner Jack Ashton at the Savoy, London on Friday
The sequined dress featured a quirky neckline to hold up Helen's assets which she paired with a similarly embellished clutch bag.
The mother-of-one swept her signature crop back from her face but sported a smattering of blonde locks in the form of her fringe.
Never one to forgo on accessories, Helen donned large gold earrings and a ring by Robinson Pelham to go with her perfectly made up face.
Red carpet ready: The Call The Midwife actress looked every-inch the leading lady as she stepped out in a blue ruffled number
Style: The sequined dress featured a quirky neckline to hold up Helen's assets which she paired with a similarly embellished clutch bag
Meanwhile Helen's co-star and real life beau Jack looked dapper as he graced the red carpet in a grey suit over a blue blazer.
The actor went for a rugged look as he sported a beard with his brunette hair lightly gelled back.
The pair, who have been dating since 2016, are proud parents to 17-month old daughter Wren Ivy.
Beauty: Never one to forgo on accessories, Helen donned large gold earrings to go with her perfectly made up face
Hunk: Meanwhile Helen's co-star and real life beau Jack looked dapper as he graced the red carpet in a grey suit over a blue blazer
She previously gushed about how he cares for their baby daughter on This Morning: 'He's so good with her, so hands on, he shares the feeds.'
Helen previously said of her and Jack's romance: 'We're there for each other and actors get together because we understand the job,' before saying that working with him 'is good because we understand the show'.
Jack is the first person Helen has been romantically linked with since splitting from fellow actor Oliver Boot. The couple confirmed their separation in 2015 following three years of marriage.
Romance: The pair, who have been dating since 2016, are proud parents to 17-month old daughter Wren Ivy
She swapped the bright lights of Hollywood for a more relaxed life Down Under four years ago.
And Elsa Pataky blended in with locals while running errands in Byron Bay, New South Wales with her children on Thursday.
The 42-year-old actress, who is married to Thor star Chris Hemsworth, looked bohemian chic in a long patterned skirt and black singlet.
No shoes, no problem! Elsa Pataky went barefoot in a long skirt and singlet while running errands in Byron Bay, New South Wales on Thursday
Elsa kept things casual for her trip to the market, going barefoot as she walked down the street.
She also went makeup free, allowing her age-defying beauty to take centre stage.
The mother-of-three, who hails from Madrid, accessorised with several bracelets and necklaces as well as a fringed handbag.
Boho style: The mother-of-three, who hails from Madrid, accessorised with several bracelets and necklaces as well as a fringed handbag
At one stage, she appeared to have her hands full while carrying several apples and peaches, in addition to her iPhone.
She was also spotted later in the day, this time wearing pink T-shirt and with her blonde hair swept up into a scruffy bun.
On this occasion, she was joined by one of her children.
Running errands: She was also spotted later in the day, this time wearing pink T-shirt and with her blonde hair swept up into a scruffy bun
Elsa, who relocated with her husband to Australia in 2014, has previously said she enjoys the more laid-back lifestyle in Byron Bay.
'We did the move three years ago and I'm so happy with it,' she said in April 2017.
'In Byron we just feel like locals. People really respect us... and it's what I always dreamt of giving to my kids.'
She surprised fans last year by debuting her baby bump at Derby Day.
And on Thursday Nikki Phillips showed off her 34-week-old baby bump in a maroon-hued lacy lingerie set.
Taking to Instagram, the 36-year-old shared a photo of her burgeoning belly and admitted she was now hitting the difficult stage of her pregnancy.
'My body is starting to feel the strain now': Nikki Phillips, 36, showed off her 34-week-old baby bump in a maroon-hued lacy lingerie set on Instagram this Thursday
She wrote at length in the caption: 'Youre all asking so here is a bump shot update. #34weekspregnant now and feeling every wriggle, kick and hiccup!
'This little munchkin is very active!! My body is starting to feel the strain now'.
She added that her usual 'night beach swims', use of a belly band and 'frequent lower back massages' couldn't fix her back pain.
Bump it! She went on to reveal she was hitting the difficult stage of her pregnancy
Workout! 'This little munchkin is very active! My body is starting to feel the strain now' she said, adding that her usual 'night beach swims' couldn't fix her back pain. Pictured with son Jett
The New Zealand-born beauty concluded excitedly: 'Cant wait to meet this wriggle monster.'
Last year, Nikki spoke candidly about her second pregnancy, calling it a 'miracle' and confirming that it was a happy accident.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph she said: 'This time round it was completely unplanned and completely lucky.'
Loved up: The model and her partner Dane Rumble (left) welcomed their first child Jett in 2017
'I would say that both my children, this one and Jett, are complete miracles in their own rights.'
The Kiwi model and her partner Dane Rumble welcomed their first child Jett in 2017.
Nikki's journey to motherhood hasn't been easy, with the blonde suffering three miscarriages before welcoming Jett.
This change in weather is attributed to cooler northerly winds and the cold weather in North India.
Mumbai: Mumbaikars were in for a pleasant surprise when most parts of the city experienced a sudden chill on Friday. The city recorded the lowest daytime maximum temperature of the decade on Friday at 24.2C, seven degrees below the normal average temperature.
This change in weather is attributed to cooler northerly winds and the cold weather in North India.
In the past two days, many cities in the northern parts of India have experienced rainfall and hailstorms, bringing cold winds in the western region as well. According to the Indian Meteorolog-ical Department (IMD), Mumbai recorded a minimum temperature of 14.4 degrees over the past 24 hours since Thursday, which was four degrees below the average. The weather will remain cooler for the next two days as north westerly to northerly winds are likely to prevail in the lower level over the region, said an IMD official.
Weathermen have stated that the citys temperature has dropped by 10 degrees in ten days since February 4 when the temperature rose to 30 degrees.
High speed winds from the North West will not allow Mumbais temperature to rise much. Warm and comfortable days and cool nights will continue for the next two days, said Mahesh Palawat from Skymet Weather, a private weather forecasting agency.
According to Skymet Weather, the maximum temperature during the day will increase from February 10 as the direction of the wind would undergo a change again.
Bail!, my instructor screams, as Im struck by another pounding wave. I hold my breath, jump off the board and dive under.
Im learning to surf in the hip neighbourhood of Canggu on the southwest coast of Bali the latest go-to place for those wanting to learn how to hang ten.
Trendy coffee shops, wooden surf hire shacks and yoga studios line the main roads that lead to Canggus two beaches.
Life goes on: Nusa Lembongan pictured above. It's paradise, but getting there is a slog...
Inspired by the news the sport is to make its Olympic debut next year, I commit to an intense three-hour lesson with a cheery Balinese twentysomething called Made. He teaches me how to stand and peel thats go across the wave.
The sea is filled with surfers of every ability and age; complete novices in their 60s share waves with joyful local children who dance across the water, doing acrobatics and aerials.
Getting to Bali is a slog. Direct 15-hour flights from London were introduced last month, but they are only direct on the outbound leg.
On a tight budget, we opt for the 300 (350 after reserving seats) China Southern route which takes 26 hours and includes an eight-hour stopover.
On our first day, we hire a scooter for 3 a day, exploring the area via backstreets hugged by terraced rice paddies, the scent of incense and flower offerings to the islands Hindu gods and goddesses greeting us at almost every twist and turn.
The sunsets in Canggu are as impressive as the surfing. We spend our first evening drinking the local Bintang beer on the beach while watching the sky turn from grey to bright pink and realise we are surrounded by millennials getting that all-important social media snap.
If surfing isnt for you, dont worry. The water is enticingly warm and the islands diverse coral reef means there are plentiful opportunities for snorkelling or a relaxing dip.
On Mades recommendation, we head an hour south of Canggu to the small enclave of Balangan for what he had described as the best vibes on the island.
The beautiful beach is much more low-key. Bamboo huts on stilts which function as cafes, known as warungs, are sandwiched between the white sand and green patch of land lined with gigantic palm trees.
Island living: A local collecting seaweed. Harriet was woken each morning by squawking roosters and sunrise Hindu mantras
Surfers use the cafes to refuel on fresh coconut and spicy nasi goreng a rice dish with meat, fish or vegetables. Flower offerings are found at the foot of the ladders leading up to each hut to ward off evil spirits that the Balinese believe live in the sea.
The sunbeds are taken up by women in barely-there bikinis who look like theyve walked off the Victorias Secret catwalk.
We spend one unenjoyable evening in the islands original surfing capital, Kuta, where the most interaction we have with the Balinese is street sellers trying to flog us magic mushrooms.
Balis one-time tourist hub is now packed full of tawdry bars, characterless hotels, all-night clubs and stores selling phallic-shaped souvenirs.
But know where to go and avoid Kuta and youll find Bali has been resilient to the effects of tourism (5.7 million visitors now descend annually). My final surf session comes on the small neighbouring island of Nusa Lembongan, reached by a 30-minute boat ride, which feels like the Bali that hippies first discovered in the Seventies.
Were woken from our 35-a-night cabana each morning by squawking roosters and sunrise Hindu mantras, and find elderly men farming seaweed at low tide and local children playing in the mangroves.
We spend one day switching between swimming with manta rays above a rainbow-coloured coral reef and snoozing on swinging hammocks. I come to admire pretty much every one of the Balinese traditions, but the belief that bad spirits live in this sea? Impossible.
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The carnival season is upon us, so don the sequins and dance to the sound of steel drums.
Rio Carnival may be the most famous but you can join the parade right across the world, from New Orleans to Jamaica to Venice.
Here's our selection of some of the best and most dazzling carnival celebrations
RIO DE JANEIRO: Dazzling samba
Vibrant: Rio Carnival is the 'mother of all carnivals,' writes Jeff Mills. Pictured above is a Rio de Janeiro dancer
No holds barred at this, the mother of all carnivals, when the local samba schools unveil the fabulous floats they have spent months preparing in the favelas (shanty towns), and don their colourful costumes.
It is an extravaganza of dance and music as they head to the Sambadrome, where the best of the best show off their skills.
For a prime view, buy a ticket for the grandstand or a platform high up in the Sambadrome (rio-carnival.net), or just take to the streets to be part of the noise, colour and action.
When: March 29.
How to do it: Journey Latin America (journeylatinamerica.co.uk, 020 8600 1881) has nine-day B&B holidays to Rio from 2,755pp including flights, transfers, carnival tickets and excursions.
JAMAICA: Frenzy in calypso central
Sound of the Caribbean: Steel bands will entertain revellers
Throw yourself into the frenzy of carnival (or Bacchanal) in Kingston, Montego Bay and Ocho Rios.
Its origins go back to when slaves started parodying their masters, but todays carnival has more to do with the music of Bob Marley and calypso.
Dancing, steel bands and parades where thousands of scantily clad revellers show off feathered and sequined costumes all set the scene for weeks of a rum and who-knows-what-else-fuelled party that takes the Caribbean island by storm.
When: From March 8 until it reaches its climax on April 28.
How to do it: Go to Kingston for the carnival, but stay in the beach resort of Ocho Rios. Virgin Holidays (virginholidays.co.uk, 0344 739 3309) has seven-night stays at the superb Jamaica Inn from 1,887pp, room only, including flights and transfers.
SPAIN: A very merry free-for-all
'The pretty town of Sitges (above) may be quiet and dignified for most of the year, but all hell breaks loose for carnival week'
The pretty town of Sitges may be quiet and dignified for most of the year, but all hell breaks loose for carnival week when the whole area becomes an enormous open-air party.
It starts with the arrival of King Carnival, who overthrows the local government and rules the town. It then descends into something of a free-for-all, with parades such as Extermination and Debauchery, all featuring flesh-baring dancers.
And if you tire of that, there are all the delights of Barcelona close by.
When: February 28March 6.
How to do it: Jet2holidays (jet2holidays.com, 0800 408 0778) has seven-night B&B deals at the four-star Subur Maritim hotel from 655pp, including flights and transfers.
VENICE: Fancy dress and flirting
Elegant: The stars of Venice Carnival (above) wear elaborate costumes and beautiful Venetian masks
Grab your mask and head to Venice for one of the most sophisticated and elegant events to be found in Europe.
Theres the suggestion of much more raucous activities going on behind closed doors, as beautiful women in silk dresses and fashionable men in velvet breeches whisper to one another, possibly arranging that evenings liaisons.
Take a vaporetto (water bus) along the Grand Canal and steer clear of gondolas, unless you have taken out a second mortgage.
Avoid the overpriced bellinis at Harrys Bar and find a backstreet restaurant to tipple in instead.
When: February 16- March 5.
How to do it: Scott Dunn (scottdunn.com 020 8682 5030) has five-night holidays to the Venice Carnival from 3,700pp, including flights, a room at the four-star Aman Venice, private transfers and selected experiences.
New Orleans: Mad Mardi Gras
Good times: Mardi Gras in New Orleans in known as one the world's most exciting street parties
Rain on your parade: Revellers will gather in the Louisiana city's French quarter next month
Party spirit: The celebrations feature colourful floats, marching bands and exotically clad dancers
Its known as the worlds most exciting street party, when everyone gathers in the Louisiana citys French quarter for a bourbon and rum-fuelled party of indulgence and excess, with colourful floats, marching bands and exotically clad dancers at every turn.
Grab a spot on a balcony in the old part of the city if you can, fill a Go-cup (a Mardi-Gras must-have drinking in the street is legal here) with your favourite snifter and catch dozens of events, staged by carnival parade organisations known as krewes.
There are parties and jazz bands all over town.
When: Get there for March 16 (March 5 is Mardi Gras, known as Fat Tuesday).
How to do it: Seven-night Mardi Gras festival experience holidays from Scott Dunn (as before) from 2,375pp, staying at the Hotel Monteleone, including flights and private transfers.
COSTA RICA: Tribute to Columbus
The Puerto Limon Carnival is Costa Ricas biggest and most exciting street party the Caribbean coastal citys tribute to Christopher Columbus. He landed on the nearby island of Uvita in 1502 during his exploration of the New World.
Its excuse enough for colourful parades, fireworks displays and plenty of reggae and calypso. And, best of all, the weather should be as fabulous as the dancing.
When: October 612.
How to do it: A 13-night Rainforests, Rivers & Rapids tour, which includes three nights at the beach resort of Puerto Viejo near Limon, is offered by Trailfinders (trailfinders.com, 020 7408 9044) from 3,499 including flights, hotels, a number of meals, transfers and sightseeing trips.
COPENHAGEN: Long live the Vikings
Around 100,000 people make the trip in June for days of partying in the Danish capital for the Copenhagen Carnival
A relative newcomer on the carnival scene, the Copenhagen Carnival has already made a name for itself with its Caribbean-style parades, music and samba.
Upwards of 100,000 people make the trip in June for days of partying in the Danish capital, which is usually sunny at that time of the year.
Most of the carnival action takes place at the Faelledparken, where bands and dancers in lavish costumes entertain the crowds. And you may even spot the odd Viking not to mention Copenhagens classic Little Mermaid.
When: June 79.
How to do it: Two nights at the Scandic Sydhavnen hotel from 277pp through Superbreak (superbreak.com, 01904 717 362), with flights and transfers.
Microsoft wants users to stop surfing the web on Internet Explorer.
In a blog post, the tech giant's cybersecurity expert Chris Jackson pleaded with users to stop using the legacy web browser, which Microsoft officially discontinued in 2015.
Instead, Jackson is advising that users move to a more 'modern browser' that is up to date with current web standards.
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Microsoft is pleading with users to ditch its web browser, Internet Explorer, which the firm officially discontinued in 2015. It now refers to Internet Explorer as a 'compatibility solution'
He laid out the reasons why users should switch in a blog post titled the 'perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser.'
Many users have moved to browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft's latest browser, Edge.
But some businesses still rely on Internet Explorer to route their web traffic, which is something Jackson discourages in the post.
Jackson doesn't even refer to Internet Explorer as a browser in the blog post.
'You see, Internet Explorer is a compatibility solution,' Jackson explained.
'We're not supporting new web standards for it and, while many sites work fine, developers by and large just aren't testing for Internet Explorer these days. They're testing on modern browsers.
'...As new apps are coming out with greater frequency, what we want to help you do is avoid having to miss out on a progressively larger portion of the web,' he added.
With Internet Explorer's decline, Many users have moved to browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft's latest browser, Edge. Some businesses continue to use IE, however
Jackson also pointed out that when companies continue to use Internet Explorer, they end up taking on 'technical debt,' or paying extra to get support for old software, which can rack up additional costs over time.
He added that it's generally OK for people to use Internet Explorer in an enterprise environment, but they would better protect themselves if they switch to a newer browser.
Internet Explorer, which was first called Windows Internet Explorer, was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 in 1995.
Internet Explorer was one of the most widely used web browsers, attaining a peak of about 95 per cent during 2002 and 2003.
However, it struggled in the face of competition, and in May 2012 it was announced that Google's Chrome overtook Internet Explorer as the most used browser worldwide.
Microsoft later confirmed that it is dropping the Internet Explorer brand for Edge when it launched Windows 10.
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When New Horizons dipped in close to the distant object MU69, also known as Ultima Thule, just after midnight on New Years Day, it captured humanitys first clear look at an object in the Kuiper Belt more than four billion miles from home.
The incredible images confirmed some predictions and dispelled others, revealing MU69 to be a snowman-shaped world with a rusty red hue that spins end-over-end like a propeller.
And, with New Horizons last look before pressing on with its mission, things have gotten even stranger.
A new image sequence from the spacecrafts departing view of MU69 shows it isnt actually made up of spheroidal segments, as first thought instead, its two lobes are flat like pancakes.
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On Twitter, Berkeley planetary astronomer Alex Parker commented that the unusual space rock is pretty pancake-like, with one of its lobes resembling Saturns flat moon, Atlas. Weve never seen something like this orbiting the sun,' said lead investigator Alan Stern
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT ULTIMA THULE SO FAR? The NASA craft first captured images of the dual-lobed space rock, located more than a billion miles from Pluto, when it reached it on New Year's day. It is about four billion miles from Earth and looks like a reddish snowman. Based on the New Horizons observations so far, the scientists say Ultima has a very regular rotation period, at about 15 hours. But, it spins end-over-end like a propeller. The latest images upended the initial assumptions, showing it isnt actually made up of spheroidal segments, as first thought instead, its two lobes are flat like pancakes. Advertisement
This really is an incredible image sequence, taken by a spacecraft exploring a small world four billion miles away from Earth, said mission Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of Southwest Research Institute.
Nothing quite like this has ever been captured in imagery.
On Twitter, Berkeley planetary astronomer Alex Parker commented that the unusual space rock is pretty pancake-like, with one of its lobes resembling Saturns flat moon, Atlas.
New Horizons captured the last-look images on Jan. 1 at 12:42 a.m. EST, when it was 5,494 miles (8,862 kilometers) beyond the Kuiper Belt object.
Stars can be seen blinking out in the background of an animation created from several images stitched together as New Horizons flew by.
And, the new view is quite unlike anything scientists expected.
We had an impression of Ultimate Thule based on the limited number of images returned in the days around the flyby, but seeing more data has significantly changed our view, Stern said.
It would be closer to reality to say Ultimate Thules shape is flatter, like a pancake.
But more importantly, the new images are creating scientific puzzles about how such an object could even be formed. Weve never seen something like this orbiting the sun.
New Horizons captured the last-look images on Jan. 1 at 12:42 a.m. EST, when it was 5,494 miles (8,862 kilometers) beyond the Kuiper Belt object. MU69 exists in an arrangement known as a contact binary and, its now the first a spacecraft has ever explored
New Horizons' first images confirmed some predictions and dispelled others, revealing MU69 to be a snowman-shaped world with a rusty red hue that spins end-over-end like a propeller. A new image sequence, however, from the spacecrafts departing view of MU69 shows it isnt actually made up of spheroidal segments instead, its two lobes are flat like pancakes
MU69 exists in an arrangement known as a contact binary and, its now the first a spacecraft has ever explored.
The scientists say the two lobes of MU69 came together in a 'gentle' accretion process, with two objects bound together by each other's gravity.
Stars can be seen blinking out in the background of an animation created from several images stitched together as New Horizons flew by
The primitive world was 'born' this way, and did not evolve or deform through external processes to take on the strange shape, the team explains.
'New Horizons is like a time machine, taking us back to the birth of the solar system,' said Jeff Moore, New Horizons Geology and Geophysics team lead, at the beginning of January.
'We are seeing a physical representation of the beginning of planetary formation, frozen in time,' Moore says.
'Studying Ultima Thule is helping us understand how planets form both those in our own solar system and those orbiting other stars in our galaxy.'
Thanks to the close observations, we now know the small, oddly shaped world is 'two objects conjoined,' Stern says.
'That bowling pin is gone,' the leader of the New Horizons joked, in reference to the first blurry images sent home after the flyby. 'Its a snowman, if anything at all.'
Based on the New Horizons observations so far, the scientists say Ultima has a very regular rotation period, at about 15 hours.
Recent media reports have raised questions regarding Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves and his membership in Kappa Alpha fraternity at Millsaps College from 1993-1997, particularly related to fraternity activities that included displays of Confederate memorabilia and confrontations with students of color. Millsaps College engaged with these issues at the time by facilitating conversations between the Black Student Association, the administration, and the fraternity, and today we continue to confront the difficult and important issues of truth, racial healing and reconciliation.
Additionally, the national Executive Council of Kappa Alpha Order adopted new regulations in 2015 that forbid any function with the name Old South or functions with any similar name. That directive has been implemented and supported at Millsaps. Within the last three years, several African-American men have been invited into and accepted membership in Millsaps chapter of the Kappa Alpha Order.
Relative to the images of members of the fraternity shown in blackface, the decision to publish those and any other similar photographs was a mistake. Those actions and images were offensive to African-American students, and not in line with our values at Millsaps College.
Millsaps is a leader on issues of civil and human rights and was the first college or university in Mississippi to voluntarily integrate. Within the past 30 years, African-American men have been invited into and accepted membership with all fraternities on campus, including Pi Kappa Alpha, Lambda Chi Alpha, Kappa Sigma, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon. The College also hosts a chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Millsaps College recognizes the role that fraternities and sororities can play in an active student community in terms of leadership, philanthropy, and academics. The College continues to support an inclusive campus atmosphere that recognizes the value of every student.
It will appal many of his young supporters but Corbyn welcomed David Camerons Referendum announcement because his Euroscepticism is long-standing and deep-rooted
Europe, he told President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela in 2014, had suffered appallingly because the EU was a capitalists club and a barrier to his lifes work to build socialism.
The EU, he believed, existed for greedy bankers and multinationals to exploit the working class.
If Britain voted to leave, and freed itself from Brussels control, a socialist government could prevent British investment abroad and control markets, tariffs and profits all contrary to EU laws.
Criticised: Corbyn angered Remainers with his appearance on the comedy show The Last Leg
Both Corbyn and McDonnell wanted to campaign for Britain to leave, but were challenged by Hilary Benn and others in the Shadow Cabinet. Reluctantly, Corbyn agreed to campaign for Remain. The Remainers chances of success, Corbyn knew, depended on Labour voters. Camerons fate was equally bound up in the outcome. If Britain voted Leave, Corbyn calculated, the PM would be humiliated and the Tories weakened. Those were good reasons not to appear on any platform alongside him. To Alan Johnson, appointed to lead Labours Remain campaign, Corbyns reluctance to preach the advantages of the EU was risible.
Within weeks of Johnson starting his work, tensions intensified. According to him, Corbyns closest associates were undermining his efforts.
Corbyn ignored him at meetings and found regular excuses not to appear on the Remainers platform while he continued to speak in favour of the IRA and Hamas.
Youre deliberately sending Jeremy to speak in areas where hes not needed, a journalist told Seumas Milne, Corbyns spin doctor. Dont be so stupid, said Milne, laughing. He would not dream of scuppering the vote.
Corbyn knew the contrary. For Labour supporters tempted to vote Leave, controlling immigration was critical, but to him those opposed to open borders were racist. To keep ideologically pure, he ordered party officials to remove every reference to immigration from Labours campaign. As he understood perfectly well, his stance was deeply damaging to Remain. Hilary Benn intervened. Entering Corbyns office, he said: You need to think in the language of the national interest.
Milne laughed. Whats funny about the national interest? asked Imran Ahmed, Benns assistant.
The EU, he believed, existed for greedy bankers and multinationals to exploit the working class
Milnes dismissive shrug sparked an outburst from Benn directed at Corbyn. Trashing Cameron, he said, was short-sighted. The Referendum could be lost. Milne started to interrupt. Shut up! Benn shouted. This is for elected people to discuss!
We wont speak about immigration or the national interest, Corbyn told Benn. Soon after, he removed from an important leaflet a personal endorsement written by a party official. The words he deleted ran: I am clear, just like my Shadow Cabinet, the trade union movement and our members, that it is in the interests of the people of this country to remain in the EU.
His not-so-subtle sabotage of his own campaign went on. On Milnes advice, Corbyn chose to star at the British Kebab Awards rather than attend a major Remain rally. Johnson was even more indignant about his leaders appearance in a white fur coat and black tie on The Last Leg, a Channel 4 comedy show.
Not only did Corbyn deliberately look unserious, but, to harm the campaign still further, he told the audience that he was only 7 or 7.5 out of 10 in favour of Europe.
Im not a huge fan of the EU, he said, smiling.
The result of the Referendum on June 23 shocked everyone. The puzzle on that momentous night was to locate Corbyn. He had disappeared his staff assumed he had gone home to sleep, and had turned his telephone off. After getting up late the following day, Corbyn was seen laughing over breakfast with his team. Although Milne and McDonnell admitted to voting Leave, Corbyn would deny that he had done so.
After a telephone conversation, his old friend Keith Veness believes that he did vote Leave, not least because he sounded so delighted.
Before Corbyn arrived at his office that morning, he publicly demanded that the Government should immediately apply for Article 50, the process to terminate Britains membership of the EU. Back then he saw no reason to prepare for negotiations or for a transition period.
He simply wanted Britain out of the European Union without establishing any relationship with the customs union or the single market, and emphatically ruled out a second referendum.
Former Eurovision Song Contest host Katie Boyle left a 14 million fortune, The Mail on Sunday can reveal, with 8 million of it going to charity.
In her will, the TV personality, who died last March at the age of 91, left 3.6 million to be shared between 109 friends and relatives.
Of that, 2 million goes to her sister, Margherita Imperiali Di Francavilla, a child psychologist.
After taxes, the rest goes to good causes including the Actors Benevolent Fund, Compassion In World Farming and the Alzheimers Society all of which receive 10,000.
Miriam Stoppard and Katie Boyle (right) with one of her beloved pooches at her feet
Katie Boyle (top centre) on a special Christmas edition of Blankety Blank with (left to right) host Terry Wogan, David Hamilton, Windsor Davies, Shirley Anne Field, Jimmy Tarbuck and Sandra Dickinson
The same sum goes to both the Dogs Trust and The Battersea Dogs Home, where she served on the committee for more than 25 years.
Boyle owned Yorkshire terriers and was an agony aunt for Dogs Today magazine during the 1990s.
Her executors will decide where much of the charity money goes, but the star born in a Florence palace as the daughter of an Italian marquis asked that 3,000 be shared between the staff at her three favourite restaurants and 1,000 be given to actress Maureen Lipman as a token of our friendship.
Boyle inherited much of her fortune from her third husband, Sir Peter Saunders.
He produced The Mousetrap, which has been running in Londons West End since 1952, and left 11 million when he died in 2003.
Ms Boyle was 20 when she came to Britain in 1946. She soon began modelling and appeared in several films before finding TV success in game shows including Whats My Line?
But her most prominent role was hosting Eurovision on the four occasions it was held in the UK between 1960 and 1974.
Her first marriage in 1947 to Viscount Boyle ended in divorce in 1955. A year later, she wed Greville Baylis, a Lloyds underwriter. They stayed together until he died in 1976.
A former international rower is to begin training to become the first female Royal Marine in the Corps 350-year history, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Trailblazing Philippa Birch, 25, is expected to start a 32-week programme in April after passing an arduous three-day potential recruits training course with flying colours.
Marines sources insisted last night that Ms Birch, who rowed for England last year, will be treated just like any other recruit in her attempt to earn the Corps coveted green beret.
Her historic bid follows then Prime Minister David Camerons decision in 2016 to lift a centuries-old ban on women serving in close-combat regiments.
Philippa Birch, 25, has been dubbed GI Pippa by her instructors at the Marines' base at Lympstone in Devon
His groundbreaking decision remains controversial because some commanders consider women incapable of withstanding the rigours of infantry training.
Critics fear that adding women to male-only frontline units could undermine teamwork and, ultimately, cost lives.
Ms Birch will earn 18,000 a year as a recruit, rising to 22,600 on completion of basic training. The more significant reward will be her place in history as the Corps first female Royal Marine.
She has already been dubbed GI Pippa a reference to the 1997 Hollywood film GI Jane, starring Demi Moore by instructors at the Marines base at Lympstone in Devon.
Last night a military source said: Inevitably there will be a lot of pressure on her.
Shes going where no woman has gone before and that is a big ask. But once shes in the gate shell be one of us, just another recruit. Shell do the same weapons and fitness tests as any male recruit. Exactly the same standards will be expected of her as of them.
Shes already shown us that shes highly motivated, physically fit and intelligent. It is very, very early days but everyone is keeping their fingers crossed that she succeeds.
This is an exciting time for her and for the Royal Marines.
How she was inspired by cross-dressing heroine who conned her way into the Army AND Marines Hannah Snell joined George II's army in 1745 under the alias 'James Gray' Dressed in her Royal Marines uniform, this is the 18th Century soldier who inspired Philippa Birchs bid to earn a coveted green beret. Hannah Snell (1723-1792) joined the Army in 1745, using the name James Gray. She deserted the following year and signed up for the Royal Marines. She even managed to hide her true identity when she was badly wounded during the siege of Pondicherry in India in 1748. When she returned to London, she revealed her identity and became a celebrity, appearing on stage in her uniform. Ms Snells military career was officially recognised and she was granted a pension by the Royal Chelsea Hospital. Advertisement
In January, Ms Birch, who is 5ft 8in tall, completed a series of aptitude tests at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines, including assault courses, firemans carries and five-mile endurance runs over Woodbury Common next to the base.
She also racked up impressive scores in a series of gym tests which included press-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups.
According to her profile on the employment website LinkedIn, Ms Birch passed A-levels in psychology, biology and chemistry at Godalming College, Surrey, and studied mechanical engineering at Oregon State University in the United States and subsequently at Loughborough University.
The site also suggests Ms Birch is from Reading, Berkshire, and that, after graduating, she sought temporary work as a clerical administrator via the recruitment agency Office Angels.
She has represented Molesey Rowing Club at elite-level events and last year rowed for England in the womens lightweight double sculls at a four-nations regatta in Cork, Ireland.
Ms Birch first revealed her ambition to join the Royal Marines on the social media platform Instagram. Her posts on the site have made reference to the Corps motto Per Mare Per Terram Latin for By Sea By Land and to Hannah Snell, a woman who served in the Royal Marines in the 18th Century by pretending to be a man.
After completing the Marines enlistment papers, Ms Birch posted a picture of herself and wrote: Biggest hurdle cleared. One step closer to the impossible.
She added the hashtags #hannah snell and #permareperterram to her message, which received 73 likes.
About ten per cent of Britains regular forces personnel and 14 per cent of reservists are women.
Women have been serving on the front line for many years in roles such as helicopter pilots, medics and engineers.
Female soldiers have also proven invaluable in gathering intelligence and conducting community engagement among women in socially conservative societies where females would not speak to men.
But their inclusion in units such as the Royal Marines and Special Forces whose specific role is to kill enemy combatants at close quarters and sometimes in hand- to-hand combat situations is still hugely divisive. Traditionalists insist the presence of even a single woman could alter unit dynamics and change soldiers behaviour for the worse and cost lives.
A campaign to stop the deportation of foreign-born criminals to Jamaica is being led by violent Marxists who were previously accused of 'hijacking' the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Fourteen criminals, including violent offenders, sex attackers and drug dealers, who were due to be deported from Britain last week, were instead granted a last-minute reprieve and hauled off a flight to Kingston.
The move followed a backlash to last year's Windrush scandal, when the Government's policy of removing Caribbean migrants who had lived and worked in Britain for decades was exposed.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that efforts to prevent the deportations is being led by the Movement For Justice By Any Means Necessary (MFJ), a pressure group which calls for the abolition of immigration controls, the closure of detention centres and an amnesty for all asylum seekers.
Violent Marxists accused of 'hijacking' the Grenfell Tower disaster are believed to be behind the latest campaign to stop the deportation of violent foreign-born criminals
The group last night confirmed it was supporting the reprieved deportees, who include a drug dealer who flooded the streets of Bath with crack cocaine and a former soldier jailed for stabbing his girlfriend's father.
MFJ spokesman Karen Doyle said: 'We are helping people to access legal representation, medical advice, their MPs, support organisations and to continue to tell their stories [and] get the truth out about who are the people being deported on these charter flights.'
Two years ago, MFJ sparked outrage by organising a 'Day of Rage' protest to 'bring down the Government' just days after the Grenfell Tower fire in West London, which killed 72. Victims accused the group of hijacking their grief.
The MFJ, whose name is inspired by a speech made by human rights activist Malcolm X, was founded in the 1990s by Tony Gard, a former primary school teacher. In 1996, he poured paint over then Tory Party chairman Lord Mawhinney and was convicted of assault.
Movement For Justice By Any Means Necessary founder Tony Gard who assaulted Lord Mawhinney
Ms Doyle, 43, from South London, was convicted of assault over the same incident, during which Lord Mawhinney's wife Betty was reported to have been 'roughed up'.
Another leading MFJ member is Antonia Bright, a research assistant at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and a leading organiser of the 'Day of Rage' protest.
On its website, the MFJ claims to have 'infiltrated' detention centres and 'built a movement to shut down the entire detention system'. Last week, its members alerted media outlets to the chartered deportation flight scheduled to leave on Tuesday night before staging a demonstration outside the Jamaican High Commission in London the following day. Ms Bright was photographed at the protest.
In a round of media interviews, MFJ campaigners heaped pressure on the Home Office by portraying those facing deportation as victims of the system. Ms Doyle told one website: 'These people are being subject to a brutal double punishment, many for crimes that the British public would not consider serious drunken fights and driving offences.'
She did not, however, highlight serious criminals who were scheduled for removal.
They include Lascelles White, 61, a crack cocaine kingpin in Bath and Somerset who was jailed in 2011.
Another man saved from last week's flight is disgraced former soldier Twane Morgan, 34, who was jailed for six years in 2012 for plunging a knife into the chest of his girlfriend's father.
Sympathetic reporting detailed how he had served two tours of Afghanistan before being discharged in 2007 because he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
However, The Mail on Sunday has established Morgan served in an area of Afghanistan where there was no fighting and was discharged after misdemeanours, including an arrest for the alleged possession of cannabis.
Rachel Riley teams up with former Blair government advisers to form new party
Countdown star Rachel Riley and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowlings agent are teaming up with advisers from Tony Blairs Government to launch a breakaway Labour Party within weeks.
The plotters, led by Blairs former Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, addressed about 50 potential supporters of a new political movement to stop Jeremy Corbyn getting the keys to No 10, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The secret meeting on Tuesday night was held in the Central London offices of Ms Rowlings agent, Neil Blair, where Powell and former Blair speechwriter Philip Collins delivered plans for a new pro-European centrist party.
Oxford-educated Ms Riley, who is Jewish, revealed last month that her Channel 4 bosses ordered extra protection after she publicly criticised Corbyn and received threats from his hard- Left followers [File photo]
The proposed party does not yet have a leader but there was rapturous applause after one audience member called for Ms Rowling to take charge. She is a noted Labour supporter and donor but also an outspoken critic of Corbyn.
Powell and Collins told guests over drinks and canapes that they aim to launch the party later this year, following Britains EU exit on March 29. They claimed their yet-to-be-named party could eventually win up to 100 seats.
The pair also raised the running sore of anti-Semitism in Labour, which was cited as a key reason behind the planned breakaway.
The proposed party does not yet have a leader but there was rapturous applause after one audience member called for Ms Rowling (above) to take charge. She is a noted Labour supporter and donor but also an outspoken critic of Corbyn [File photo]
At the meeting were Ms Riley and former EastEnders star Tracy Ann Oberman, who have both been attacked by Labour supporters for criticising Corbyns handling of the anti-Semitism crisis.
Oxford-educated Ms Riley, who is Jewish, revealed last month that her Channel 4 bosses ordered extra protection after she publicly criticised Corbyn and received threats from his hard- Left followers.
After the rebels meeting, one source said: There was a presentation which lasted for about 45 minutes and was followed by a Q&A. The organisers emphasised the need for a charismatic leader for the party to succeed. But they made it clear they are unsure who that is at the moment. One attendee suggested J. K. Rowling which got a large round of applause.
They emphasised that a new centrist movement has the opportunity to attract people with a more nuanced approach to politics and life and that is why they believe they can succeed where the SDP failed.
At the meeting were Ms Riley and former EastEnders star Tracy Ann Oberman (above), who have both been attacked by Labour supporters for criticising Corbyns handling of the anti-Semitism crisis [File photo]
The Social Democratic Party was formed in 1981 by four senior Labour moderates and eventually merged with the Liberal Party.
The invitation to Tuesdays meeting declared: We are hosting a drinks reception at 7pm on Tuesday 5th February for potential supporters of a new political movement that Britain desperately needs. This is an initiative led by Jonathan Powell and Philip Collins. Britain is stuck. The promise that the next generation will be better off than their parents is broken. Inequality is tearing the country apart.
Housing is too expensive, earnings are static and the quality of work is too poor for too many. The world is changing fast and were retreating from it the old parties cannot face the future because they have run out of answers, energy and leadership.
That is why Jonathan and Philip are building a new political movement to move Britain on to a better politics.
Ms Rowling is a friend of former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and donated 1 million to the party in 2008. However, she has used social media to mock Corbyns position on Brexit.
Out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, TMC had won 34 seats in the 2014 General elections while Congress has four.
According to Somendra Nath Mitra, Rahul had said in the meeting, If there is an alliance with dignity, it (alliance) will be there, otherwise, there won't be one. There won't be any alliance with TMC, this is final. (Photo: ANI)
New Delhi: West Bengal Congress President Somendra Nath Mitra on Saturday ruled out any possibility of an alliance with the Trinamool Congress for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
After a meeting with Congress president Rahul Gandhi and other senior Congress leaders, Mitra said, nobody from the party, including its workers, wanted an alliance with TMC.
According to Mitra, Rahul had said in the meeting if there is an alliance with dignity, it (alliance) will be there, otherwise, there won't be one. There won't be any alliance with TMC, this is final.
Out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, TMC spearheaded by its chief Mamata Banerjee had won 34 seats in the 2014 General elections.
Currently, there are four Congress Lok Sabha Members of Parliament in West Bengal.
Jeremy Corbyn was last night condemned as not fit to govern following a devastating new expose by one of Britains leading investigative authors.
Tom Bower has spent 18 months talking to those who know Corbyn best to create the most in-depth portrait ever compiled of the Labour leader, including shocking details about the anti-Semitism of his supporters and his duplicity over Brexit.
The damning profile comes amid increasing claims that despairing Labour MPs are poised to break away from Corbyn and form their own party.
Jeremy Corbyn was condemned as not fit to govern following a devastating new expose
In his new book, Dangerous Hero serialised from today in The Mail on Sunday Bower reveals that Corbyn:
Was secretly delighted by the Brexit result despite campaigning for Remain;
Inspired attacks on Jewish and moderate Labour MPs, and did nothing to protect them;
Has such a chaotic professional and personal life that one close friend and adviser says: He is not fit to be leader of the Labour Party or Prime Minister;
Followed Lenin and Trotskys blueprint to seize power, purge moderates and crush dissent while playing the nice guy and letting Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell to do the scary work as key allies, including union backer Len McCluskey, drew up lists of opponents to be deselected;
Employs staff in his office who are described as lazy and p***ed on 100,000 a year;
Lacks the mental agility to chair all but the most basic political meetings;
Harbours a lifelong jealousy of the rich and successful that started when he flunked his A-levels and dropped out of his polytechnic degree, although he claimed he left because of a row with a lecturer;
Almost had his house repossessed after running up 30,000 in debts;
Had a series of relationships with younger women after separating from wife Claudia, conducting them in the basement of their shared house while Claudia was living with their three sons and a toy boy on the top floors;
Believes that anyone who disagrees with uncontrolled immigration is racist ;
Has no interest in culture or in reading books;
Abandoned his vegetarian principles when he was invited to eat meat with Cuban leader Fidel Castro;
Was on the brink of retiring to Wiltshire to keep bees when he was persuaded to run for leader.
Last night, Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis reacted to the revelations by saying: What Corbyn has done to his own party is shameful, what he would do to our country would be a tragedy. He is not fit to govern.
Corbyn provoked further fury last night by snubbing a showdown with his MPs over anti-Semitism, due to be held at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party tomorrow.
Corbyn, along with party general secretary Jennie Formby, have pleaded prior engagements despite the MPs warning that Labour risks being seen as institutionally anti-Semitic.
Corbyn provoked further fury last night by snubbing a showdown with his MPs over anti-Semitism, due to be held at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party tomorrow
But last night a Labour source insisted that Corbyn was never expected to be or scheduled to be at Mondays meeting.
As the anti-Semitism row rages, this newspaper has obtained shocking messages directed at Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger.
She was branded a dirty little Zionist rat and taunted with vile abuse describing all Jews as c**** by pro-Corbyn supporters on an official Facebook page for a local Liverpool Labour Party constituency.
In a statement issued in response to the attacks, Ms Berger said: This is all-too typical of the malign culture now bearing down on many hard-working MPs.
Dangerous Hero, by investigative author Tom Bower
Nothing will deter me from exposing the truth about the anti-Semitism allowed to fester on Jeremy Corbyns watch.
Bowers investigation will further stoke the growing fury in the party over Mr Corbyns handling of the anti-Semitism scandal, his supporters hounding of moderate MPs and his deliberately incoherent stance on Brexit.
The author describes how Momentum, the Left-wing movement which backs Corbyns leadership, engaged in permanent mobilisation to cement him in power.
A loyalty list was compiled of Labour MPs, with every Jewish MP described as hostile or negative, while Chuka Umunna, whose father was Nigerian, was described as not politically black.
When Mr McDonnell saw Mr Ummuna interviewed on television he seethed that he was not one of our people.
Unite leader Len McCluskey, a key Corbyn bankroller, also had a little list in his inside pocket with names of people Id like to see go.
Bowers book will fan the growing anger in Labour over Corbyns Brexit policy by setting out how both Corbyn and McDonnell wanted to campaign for Britain to leave the EU despite the vast majority of Labour MPs backing Remain because he regarded the EU as a capitalists club which would be a barrier to his project to build socialism. He also concluded that Brexit would destroy David Camerons Government and increase the chance of Labour getting into power.
Corbyn supporters aim vicious racist rants at Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger, who was threatened with motions of no confidence last week Jeremy Corbyn supporters subjected a Jewish Labour MP to vicious racist attacks over claims she plans to join a breakaway political movement. Luciana Berger, who was threatened with motions of no confidence last week by members of her Liverpool Wavertree party, was called a dirty little Zionist rat and a c*** on a Facebook page of a local constituency party. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell had sparked a backlash among supporters of the MP by suggesting she should have pledged loyalty to Labour and linking her to the alleged Labour breakaway party. In response to the reports that she might leave, one message read: At f****** last the dirty little zionist RAT I f****** hate her. Whats the bets the day she leaves labour shell be a Tory by midnight. Activists had accused the Jewish MP of undermining Mr Corbyn by criticising his stance on anti-Semitism and Brexit, but withdrew their motions of no confidence following an intervention from the Labour leadership. Ms Berger was also taunted on pro-Corbyn websites suggesting falsely that she was an agent of a foreign power, an Israel attack dog and Tory scum. Advertisement
Corbyn only agreed to campaign to stay in the EU after protests from Remainers in his Shadow Cabinet, led by Hilary Benn. But his deliberate sabotage of his own campaign was highlighted when he decided to attend the British Kebab Awards rather than attend a major Remain rally, on the advice of his most senior adviser, Seumas Milne.
Bower writes that, on the night of the referendum, Corbyn disappeared, and the following morning was seen laughing over breakfast with his team. He says: Although Milne and McDonnell admitted to voting Leave, Corbyn would deny that he had done so.
Further evidence has also emerged about Corbyns real anti-EU views. Footage of him addressing the Durham Miners Gala in 2010, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, shows him condemning the worlds bankers, International Monetary Fund, European Union for being utterly united in what they want. Utterly united in deflation, suppressing the economy, and creating unemployment.
The revelations come as at least six Labour MPs who object to Corbyns policy on Brexit are believed to be in talks about a breakaway movement.
Corbyn threw his party into turmoil last week by setting out a series of demands to Theresa May in return for Labours support for her Brexit deal, including membership of a customs union. The move enraged many of his pro-Remain MPs, including Mr Umunna, who called it totally demoralising because it would kill off their plans for a second referendum.
Tory chairman Brandon Lewis added: For decades Jeremy Corbyn peddled his blinkered world view and hard-Left ideology from the Commons backbenches happier to sow dissent than heal division, to criticise than to seek consensus. He is not a backbench MP any more he is a man who wants to be our Prime Minister but one who still refuses to accept the responsibilities that come with leadership.
He failed to face facts over the Salisbury poisoning, he has shamefully failed to root out racism in his own ranks and he has failed to set out a credible plan for Brexit.
He has stood by as the Labour Party, with its proud tradition of decency and patriotism, succumbed to the mentality of mob rule and has stayed silent while his own MPs are bullied and hounded online.
How is Jacob Rees-Mogg selling Boris Johnson to Tory MPs as their future leader during the wine-fuelled 'back Boris' dinners he hosts at his 6million London townhouse?
Dog hears that JRM's strategy is to point out over pudding that surveys of Tory members rank Jacob and Boris as favourites, before announcing: 'But as I have no intention of standing, then the choice is obvious.'
Will this boozy Brexiteer love-in actually work though?
Backing Boris: Jacob Rees-Mogg is calling on MPs to back Mr Johnson as a future Tory leader
Diane Abbott has gone very quiet about Venezuela after once claiming that the imploding socialist paradise showed capitalists how 'another way is possible'.
But her attempts to distance herself from the disaster are ever so slightly undermined by the fact that her own office has given a parliamentary pass to Matthew Willgress a lobbyist for the slavishly pro-Maduro government Venezuela Solidarity Campaign.
Silent: Diane Abbott is steering herself away from the crisis in Venezuela
Theresa May shook the tin on the other side of the political fence this week, telling her party's biggest donors that Venezuela 'cannot feed its children, cannot provide basic medicines to the sick and has lost millions of its own people as refugees.
That is socialism in action.' Quipped one deep pocketed Tory moneyman: 'It sounded awfully like her own Government's No Deal scaremongering.'
Prime Minister Theresa May has been lobbying for support for people living in crisis-hit Venezuela
Liz Truss is morphing into some sort of Carry On star. The spirited Chief Secretary to the Treasury, left famous for her 'That. Is. A. Disgrace' conference catchphrase responded with a twinkle in her eye when she was invited to an event called The Big Sausage in her Norfolk constituency.
'That is ticking rather a lot of my boxes,' she told them. Ooh er missus.
What a Carry On! Liz Truss is said to be turning into a star of the show with her innuendos and catchphrases
With David Cameron's memoirs slated for the autumn, Tony Blair's former spin chief Alastair Campbell predicts they will be a Brexit bore-athon.
'Short of revealing he took drugs all the way from Bullingdon to No10, including a few snort-ups with Obama and Angela Merkel in the Cabinet Room, then expect Brexit to figure large,' he warns.
But on the plus side DC has 'aged a lot better' out of office than his former master, he concludes disloyally.
Brexit book: David Cameron's memoirs are expected to lift the lid on the referendum as well as his time in No10
The political tomes keep on coming. Recently resigned Tory Minister Jo Johnson has pocketed an 85,000 advance for a mystery new book about ethical capitalism.
And friends of David Davis whisper the Tory hardman is writing 'the definitive history of Brexit'.
'We are all on tenterhooks to know how it ends,' teased a pal.
Brought to book: Former Tory Minister Jo Johnson is also looking to follow former Prime Minister David Cameron and write a book
Dog hears clean-cut, former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab is picking up support from the Tory faithful, and not just because of his hard-line, pro-Leave credentials.
One blue-rinse septuagenarian left her local MP gobsmacked when asked why she would hand him the keys to No 10, purring: 'I'm not sure about his politics but he's eminently fanciable' (although that's not the 'f' word she used).
Felicia D'Jamirze, now named Felitciana Zsha'Mirzzee, is suing the Queensland government for burning her face and hand
A former beauty queen is suing the Queensland government after her face was burned during a drug raid in 2016.
Felicia D'Jamirze, who has changed her name to Felitciana Zsha'Mirzzee, was sleeping inside her then-fiance's home near Hervey Bay when police stormed in, using flash grenades to stun the occupants.
At the time, she claimed she had suffered horrific burns to her hand and her face, and The Gold Coast Bulletin reports she is now alleging the police caused her psychological and physical injuries.
Officers were chasing Zsha'Mirzzee's then-fiance, 37-year-old Dean Grant O'Donnell, when they stormed the property.
Two kilograms of methamphetamine was found during the raid, along with a 'pump action shotgun', a hand gun and a silencer, and was jailed.
Zsha'Mirzzee later pleaded guilty to supplying ice.
During her sentencing, the court heard the 30-year-old's right hand may have required amputation due to a lack of blood flow, and that she had lost strength in it.
Zsha'Mirzzee also claimed she was suffering with a 'residual imperfection' in her cornea and was concerned she would go blind.
The former beauty queen claims her face and hands were badly burnt during a police raid in February 2016 (pictured right before the raid and left after the raid)
Zsha'Mirzzee said she 'thought she was on fire' at the time police deployed a flash grenade near her, and is suing for ongoing damages (pictured in hospital in 2016)
She told A Current Affair at the time: 'I could feel this side of my face was burning. I thought I was on fire'.
'I felt like my hair was on fire and I was scared that another one was going to hit me and I was screaming out 'Please stop, I'm hurt',' she said.
In February 2016, lawyer Chris Ford, who represented Zsha'Mirzzee, told Daily Mail Australia police treated the raid like a 'military operation,' which was 'entirely unnecessary'.
'There was a high level of both physical and electronic surveillance. The police must have known my client was sleeping in a confined area when they tossed the stun grenade into her bedroom,' he said at the time.
Zsha'Mirzzee has not specified an amount she is requesting in damages, but it is understood she could ask for up to $1million.
A healthy mother-of-two almost died when she suddenly went into massive cardiac arrest while house hunting.
Liza Stearn leads a healthy and active lifestyle but one day when she felt an unusual pain down her left arm.
Luckily Mrs Stearn's quick-thinking husband knew it wasn't a good sign and called paramedics.
The 45-year-old from Rose Bay in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, insisted she would be fine just going to the doctors but went into cardiac arrest within three minutes of paramedics arriving.
The 45-year-old insisted she would be fine just going to the doctors but went into cardiac arrest within three minutes of paramedics arriving
'When the ambulance arrived I flatlined, they worked on me for half an hour with CPR and gave me seven shots of the defibrillator and on the seventh shot they finally got a pulse back,' Mrs Stearn told Daily Telegraph.
Her husband Lawrence 'thought she was gone' as he looked on while paramedics worked hard to save his wife.
'After 18 minutes of CPR I thought they were going to call it and she was not coming back,' the 52-year-old told the publication.
Mrs Stearn was eventually diagnosed with spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD).
SCAD is an uncommon emergency condition that occurs when a tear forms in one of the blood vessels in the heart, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Blood flow can either be slowed or blocked to the heart which could result in a heart attack, abnormalities in heart rhythm or sudden death.
Women in there 40s and 50s are more likely to be affected, but it can occur at any age, despite being healthy.
Mrs Stearn (right) spent six weeks in hospital and has since made a full recovery
Mrs Stearn spent six weeks in hospital and has since made a full recovery.
Dr Inken Martin from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute said heart disease 'claims one in three Australians prematurely' and says its important for everyone to get checked out.
'We urge people to encourage their loved ones this Valentine's Day to visit their doctor for a simple heart health check. By doing this today, you can save heartache tomorrow,' Dr Martin told the publication.
Australian UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker has pulled out his title defence just hours before one of the biggest fights of his life.
The UFC superstar will spend Sunday recovering from surgery instead of preparing for his UFC 234 showdown against US opponent Kelvin Gastelum at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena.
It's understood Whittaker, 28, made the the heartbreaking decision to pull the pin after he was rushed to hospital late Saturday night suffering from severe abdominal pain.
UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker has pulled out on Sunday's showdown
He was diagnosed with a hernia and has since undergone emergency surgery.
UFC officials have since confirmed the headline bout won't go ahead.
Earlier on Saturday, Whittaker took to social media to say he was ready for his title defence on home soil.
'Never been better prepared or more ready! BRING. IT. ON,' Whittaker posted on Instagram.
Disappointed fans have since commented on the post after hearing the news on Sunday morning.
'Pullout Merchant. Twice in own country. I understand it can happen but you would had symptoms earlier so i think it's just a b******t excuse,' one posted.
Another added: 'Bro are you made of glass. Literally injured before and after every event.'
Others called him a coward over the late withdrawal.
The Kiwi-born Sydney-based star has been plagued with illness and injury in recent years
Whittaker took to Instagram on Saturday to say he was ready to defend his title
Other fans jumped to Whittaker's defence and wished him well in his recovery.
'He's one of the best champs, made it through with that thing in his abdomen the whole time. That's a true warrior, good thing doctors picked up on it when they did,' one posted.
Another added: 'Get well soon champ. Gutted for you.'
With a record of 20 wins from 24 bouts, the Kiwi-born Sydney-based star hasn't been beaten in five years.
Robert Whittaker (pictured) was rushed to hospital on Saturday night and has been diagnosed with a hernia and undergone surgery
However, he's been plagued with injuries and illness in recent years.
A straph infection in his stomach forced Whittaker to pull out UFC 221 in Perth last year, which was also a title defence.
He was on the comeback after breaking his hand in an epic showdown with Yoel Romero last June.
New Zealand superstar Israel Adesanyas fight with Brazillian 10-time UFC titleholder Anderson Silva will now headline the UFC 234 fight card.
The UFC has offered refunds to disappointed fans who had bought tickets to see Whittaker in action.
Whittaker attracted a huge crowd of Melbourne fans in the big build up to UFC 234
British Airways has suspended five of its pilots after The Mail on Sunday unearthed evidence of offensive behaviour including emails containing racist language and pornographic images.
The airline launched an immediate investigation after being informed that:
A senior BA captain repeatedly used the N word in email messages to an ethnic-minority colleague;
Another pilot sent an image of a man having sexual intercourse with a chicken;
Images of blacked-up performers from the BBCs controversial Black And White Minstrel Show were shared between pilots.
The allegations centre on BA pilots who combine their flying duties with work as part-time trade union officials. Thirty BA pilots work up to 45 hours a month as representatives for the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa).
However, this newspaper has seen six messages sent by Captain Brendan ONeal (above), a senior union official, to Captain Patel in which the N-word is used. In one, sent in November 2012 as union reps organised a Christmas pub lunch, Captain ONeal asked: What food you want n****?
One pilot said: Being a union rep is a very alpha-male, testosterone-driven, locker-room-type role.
The claims of racism are being made by Manish Patel, 46, a Boeing 777 captain who quit as a Balpa rep last year. He has filed an employment tribunal claim against the union in which he claims he was sent emails featuring racist language by colleagues.
He also alleges that he endured racist comments, including being called P*** lad and chai wallah, as well as inappropriate jokes that he also worked as a taxi driver or ran a corner shop.
It is understood that he admits sending offensive emails himself, but says he did so only to fit in. Last night Balpa said his claim is strenuously denied and will be robustly defended.
The claims of racism are being made by Manish Patel, 46, a Boeing 777 captain who quit as a Balpa rep last year. He has filed an employment tribunal claim against the union in which he claims he was sent emails featuring racist language by colleagues
However, this newspaper has seen six messages sent by Captain Brendan ONeal, a senior union official, to Captain Patel in which the N-word is used.
In one, sent in November 2012 as union reps organised a Christmas pub lunch, Captain ONeal asked: What food you want n****?
In another, from September 2012, he asked Captain Patel: U on skype n****? In July 2012, Captain ONeal, who trains other BA pilots, asks: Why you selling the car n****?
Balpa last night said that Captain ONeal had stepped down from his position as the unions executive president with immediate effect.
Captain ONeal said the allegations were the subject of ongoing legal proceedings, adding: Whilst I would like to defend myself, in these circumstances it would be inappropriate to do so at this stage.
Further emails reveal how Russell Williams, a BA training captain, sent a pornographic image of a man having sex with a chicken to five other union reps in March 2015 along with the caption: Its Friday. S*** some birds this weekend.
It is understood that Captains ONeal and Williams are among the five pilots suspended by BA. The pilot who originally emailed the images was suspended from holding a union position for two years but allowed to return within five months [File photo]
Captain Williams, who states on his LinkedIn page that he is also a magistrate, is now chairman of the British Airways Company Council (BACC), which negotiates with BA on behalf of Balpa.
Last night he said: I accept these emails, while sent some time ago, were ill-judged and unprofessional.
It is understood that Captains ONeal and Williams are among the five pilots suspended by BA.
In June last year, two pictures of blacked-up actors from The Black And White Minstrel show broadcast in the 1970s were emailed among union officials. An accompanying caption read: Ahh. The Black And White Minstrel Show. Wouldnt be able to get away with that these days
The pilot who originally emailed the images was suspended from holding a union position for two years but allowed to return within five months.
Balpa said it accepts that there have been past cases of inappropriate emails passing among a small number of Balpa representatives, but insisted it was committed to ensuring a good, modern-day work environment.
A BA spokesman said: We are appalled to learn of this behaviour which does not reflect the values of our company.
Nine of the women who were seduced by a con man who lied about his identity and swindled his smitten lovers out of $2million have broken their silence.
Derek Alldred, 49, met more than two dozen women online, faked his identity with a web of lies, then quietly stole their credit cards, their Social Security numbers, and with some, spent their entire retirement savings.
Several of his victims are finally speaking out and revealing their heartbreak and terror upon realizing that their lover was really a con mastermind in the new documentary Seduced by Evil, set to air on Oxygen on Saturday.
'Derek took everything from me...$325,000,' Linda Dyas, who reported Alldred to police, says in the documentary.
Victim Linda Dyas says conman Derek Alldred, 49, 'took everything from me'. He seduced women he met online and stole their money and Social Security cards behind their backs
Dyas and Allred pictured together during the time they dated
The women revealed they all thought they had found their true love with Alldred.
'He was the perfect guy... I thought he was the one...mother's day four dozen roses,' several of his victims explain in the documentary.
He even made big plans with his victims like moving in together and making wedding plans.
He specifically targeted intelligent and vulnerable women seeking a long-term partner so he could benefit from their money.
Cindi Pardini met Alldred in 2012 through mutual friends on Facebook but would not meet in person until September 2013, He asked to stay at her home, presenting himself as an investment banker hoping to relocate from Hawaii to San Francisco. He ultimately scammed the woman out of $250,000 by hacking into her finances.
Speaking out: The women in the documentary reveal how they were charmed by Allred when they first met him on dating apps (left, Cindi Pardini; right JoAnn Venhuizen)
He specifically targeted intelligent and vulnerable women seeking a long-term partner so he could benefit from their money (left, Missi Brandt; right Kimberly Haycraft)
Alldred then met Wendy Harvey on a dating website as Derek 'Allred.' The man claimed to be an investment banker and bought the Maui agency CEO lavish gifts, including $3,000 diamond earrings. While she began having suspicions about him while doing online searches, those worries were confirmed after Pardini called and revealed that Alldred was using her money to buy Harvey gifts.
Alldred met Dr. Kimberly Haycraft on Match.com in 2013 after he had left Pardini. Haycraft owned anti-aging practices in Maui and Minnesota, while Alldred claimed that he was part owner in a financial firm and became her business manager when the two started getting serious. He robbed her of $35,000 in fraudulent checks, $60,000 in fraudulent credit and a $28,000 advance. Haycraft eventually bankrupted her businesses and feared for her life with Alldred, which was covered in 'Seduced By Evil.'
Next, he claimed to be 'Derek R. Allarad' when meeting Minnesota school teacher JoAnn Venhuizen on Match.com in 2014. Alldred claimed to be an international banking lawyer but Venhuizen sensed something was off when they went on a trip to Hawaii to meet his daughter that never showed. The teacher would soon learn that there was a warrant out for Alldred's arrest but not before he managed to steal $24,000 from her.
Dyas pictured above with Allred. She met him when he paraded under the alias 'Rich Peterson' and they moved into together. He stole $325,000 from her
Alldred met Minneapolis IT executive Kimberly Nelson on OurTime.com while dating Dyas, going by the name 'Rich Peterson.' He claimed to be a professor who was volunteering at a homeless shelter and the two dated briefly before breaking up and rekindling the flame in 2016. She soon learned that he stole $8,000 worth of jewelry, her passport and even her birth certificate. Nelson would soon learn that Allred was sleeping at that same shelter.
The mastermind would meet Dorie Watkins, a HR manager from Dallas, on PlentyOfFish in mid-2017. He claimed to be an employee with Department of Defense named 'Rich Tailor who worked as a Navy jet pilot. But Watkins became suspicious when he kept cancelling on him and by the time she realized who he could be, Alldred had already stolen $17,000 from her. The woman would take his fake uniform and badge to her local police.
Alldred also dated Dallas health care executive Tracie Cooper-Cunningham on PlentyOfFish at the same time he was dating Watkins. He went by 'Rich Tailor' on a different profile and old her he was a 'semi-retired' political science professor who served in the Navy. When she finally tried to end their fling after a month and a half, she received a call from Naval Criminal Investigative Service and participated in a sting to help detain him.
His scam finally began falling apart in spring 2016 after he met former flight attendant Missi Brandt.
Prosecutors determined Alldred targeted at least 25 women in California, Hawaii, Minnesota and Nevada (left, Dorie Watkins; Tracie Cooper-Cunningham)
Cindi Pardini of San Francisco rallied the victims up to bring Alldred to justice, according to the US Attorney's Office in Texas, and nine of them spoke at Alldred's sentencing (left, Kimberly Nelson; right Wendy Harvey)
Allred met her under the alias Richie Peterson off dating website OurTime.com and lied that he completed eight tours in Afghanistan and even donned a full uniform when he spent time with Brandt and her daughters.
One day when he was in the shower, she went through his wallet and found a Social Security card with his real name and two credit cards belonging to another woman - Linda Dyas.
Brandt investigated Alldred and immediately contact Dyas.
'I was contacted on Facebook Messenger by another victim who sent me his real name and his prior arrest and an article on him with his mugshot,' Dyas, a nuclear scientist based in Minnesota said to Fox.
'It was just a huge shock. I mean, yes, I was questioning, but when you think somebody might have lied to you about some things, you dont think they lied about everything. It was literally about everything,' she added.
Allred and Dyas were living together in her home at the time.
'He was still in my house at the time. I was upstairs in my bedroom when I opened this message,' she said. She immediately went to go check on her gun which she kept in the house and found it missing.
Dyas said Alldred (pictured right dressed as a Navy pilot) stole her credit cards and spent her retirement savings
He also paraded as an army veteran who did eight tours in Afghanistan
'He had used it a time or two at the shooting range. I found out later that he had carried it with him at times. I had told him not to use it. I planned to change the safe lock, and I didn't,' she said.
'There I was upstairs in my bedroom scared out of my wits because I just saw this guy's mugshot,' she added.
Dyas added there were warning signs.
'His military career didnt really match up. But I didnt question it that much. He had told me he was a reservist. I didnt really know anything about that. I didnt ask the questions I probably should have. But I just never pushed the issue,' she said.
On another occasion he threw a violent and angry outburst that terrified Dyas.
He conned more than two dozen women out of a cumulative $2million and was sentenced to 24 years in prison for his crime s
'It was about seven months into the relationship. He got angry about something. I dont even remember what it was. But the way he handled it was out of what I would think was the norm. He really went over the top. It scared me. To be honest, it put the fear of God in me. Very soon after, I was getting feelings that something wasnt right,' Dyas said to Fox.
Later that same day Alldred complained of a pain and said he needed to go to the emergency room.
Dyas dropped him off them called the cops on her way home. By the time she called Brandt to tell her the news, Alldred was already in custody.
Alldred stole all of Dyas' emergency credit cards, ordered new cards in her name and maxed them out on lavish dinners and trips to Hawaii with her and other women.
He drained her retirement savings and used the money to purchase a boat, two motorcycles and he even put her name on the house's lease.
Dyas and Brandt then launched their own investigation and met other women who were also conned by Alldred.
It turned out Alldred had used various aliases and pretended he had an impressive career alternating between a US Navy pilot, professor, defense analyst, attorney, doctor and firefighter.
In August Alldred was sentenced to 24 years in prison in Texas for his crimes. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud and aggravated identity fraud and was forced to pay $255,000 in restitution.
Prosecutors determined he targeted at least 25 women in California, Hawaii, Minnesota and Nevada.
'This defendant left a trail of tears, emotional devastation, and financial ruin behind him,' US Attorney Joseph Brown said at his sentencing.
Cindi Pardini of San Francisco rallied the victims up to bring Alldred to justice, according to the US Attorney's Office in Texas, and nine of them spoke at Alldred's sentencing.
Their severely disabled son, Tiago, died aged four from pneumonia in October 2016
A desperate couple reeling from the loss of their severely disabled son say their lives have been a 'nightmare' since being left with just 20 a week in Universal Credit to survive.
Sabrina McCarl and her partner Marco Simoes have struggled since four-year-old Tiago McCarl-Simoes died from pneumonia in 2016.
Mr Simoes, from Portugal, has been refused Universal Credit despite having previously worked in the UK, while Ms McCarl's monthly allowance leaves the couple and their surviving son, Ruben, with a paltry sum to live on.
Now their family risks being torn apart as construction worker Mr Simoes contemplates working back in Portugal, despite leaving 11 years ago.
The couple, from Birmingham, have suffered from depression after Tiago's death.
Mr Simoes, 36, said: 'We've tried to do everything the correct way, but Universal Credit is the biggest mess ever.
'I was receiving benefits as normal as our son's joint carer, he was very, very ill until he passed away. I'd also worked and paid tax in the UK in construction jobs removing asbestos.
Sabrina McCarl and partner Marco Simoes have struggled to cope since four-year-old Tiago McCarl-Simoes died from pneumonia in 2016
'After our son passed away we moved houses and I was told to apply for Universal Credit.
'I showed them all the documents and paperwork, right down to my NHS number, but they decided I wasn't entitled to anything, even though everything was fine before.
'It's been a nightmare. We only survive on my partner's money, we can't afford clothes and I haven't had 10 in my wallet for the last year.
'I'm trying to find work and waiting to see what happens with Brexit but it's looking like I'll have no choice but to return to Portugal and leave my family behind.'
Mr Simoes, who previously claimed Employment and Support Allowance, has needed surgery on his hand to remove tumours but requires further treatment as well as monitoring to ensure they are not cancerous.
Ms McCarl, 30, receives Universal Credit for her diagnosis of depression and anxiety, amounting to just 900 a month.
But after utilities and rent, the couple - along with six-year-old Ruben - survive on less than 10 a week each.
'By the time we've paid the bills we barely have 20 to 30 a week to spare, and much of that is taken up with bus fares,' said Ms McCarl.
'I've had to turn to family to borrow money and to foodbanks. We don't care about ourselves, we just want to give our son the best start in life.
'We've told them about our bereavement and how we have struggled since but it's made no difference, they just don't take into account your needs.'
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: ' Mr Simoes has not provided evidence of the right to reside in the UK and therefore is not eligible to receive Universal Credit.'
A British school has cancelled a performance of a musical about Charles Darwin after parents complained about the representation of Christian views.
Students from the Hartford Manor Primary School in Cheshire were due to perform the 'Darwin Rocks!' musical next month but it has been scrapped after six parents raised concerns over lyrics that 'refer to bump and grind' - a sexually-suggestive dance move.
The headteacher of the school, Simon Kidwell, said a handful of parents believed a bishop in the play was 'mocked' in a scene.
The 'Darwin Rocks!' musical is based loosely around Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution
Musicline, the musical's publishers, said it was written by a Christian and said they were unaware of the performance having 'courted controversy before'.
The production is meant to be a 'light-hearted look' at the work of Darwin's theory of evolution, according to Musicline's website.
One concerned parents said they did not want their daughter to think her ambition to be an engineer went against Christian values, Mr Kidwell told the BBC.
The school board was not involved in the decision to drop the muscial, Mr Kidwell added, and denied suggestions made in a local newspaper that a local vicar influenced the decision.
The performance of 'Darwin Rocks!' at the Hartford Manor Primary School has been cancelled
Mr Kidwell said the school teaches evolution as part of its syllabus.
Mike Smith, managing director at Musicline, said the play had been performed in schools around the world since 2017.
He said: 'You can't please all the people all the time, but having been in the school musical business for over 25 years, we can't ever recall having courted controversy before.'
For 18 months, Britains top investigative author has been uncovering the truth about the Marxist who wants to be PM.
TOM BOWERs new biography paints a chilling picture of a bitter extremist hiding behind a mask of geniality.
Here, our first exclusive extracts reveal how Corbyn took Diane Abbott into his bed and how his cold-hearted neglect and chaotic finances cost the mother of his three sons their family home...
Disappointed lover: Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott began their relationship in the 1970s
Shortly after his first wife Jane Chapman walked out, Corbyn encouraged his friend Keith Veness and another political ally to join him posting leaflets around a council estate.
At about 11.30am he announced We need to collect more leaflets, and drove them back to his flat. The three walked in to discover a naked woman on the bed. Diane Abbott, Corbyn proudly announced, was his new girlfriend. He wanted us to see her in his bed, recalled Veness. She was shocked when we entered.
Abbott, who quickly wrapped herself in a duvet, was the antithesis of a white, middle-class English woman. Born to Jamaican immigrants in 1953, she went to a grammar school in London, then to Cambridge.
As the first female black student from a state school at Newnham College, she enjoyed a hectic social life and became firmly hard Left, passionately committed to the class struggle.
After graduating, she began working as a race relations officer at the National Council for Civil Liberties. Belying the human rights groups name, her colleagues rummaged through her desk and found her private diary. One entry recorded her sexual fantasy of being manhandled by her lover Corbyn a bearded Fenian and NUPE national organiser.
There were also descriptions of a motorbike holiday with him around France and a passionate romp in a Cotswolds field, which she described as her finest half-hour.
Diane Abbott became passionately committed to the class struggle
Corbyns passion for Abbott ended any hope Jane Chapman might have had that their relationship could be restored. He had found a political soul mate who regarded Britain as the country that invented racism, and echoed his praise for the IRA. Feisty and, in her early years, good-looking, Abbott even persuaded Corbyn to change his habits to suit her, at least for a while: he enjoyed social evenings with her and friends at restaurants and dinner parties.
Abbott secured a job as a TV producer but fretted that Corbyn and Chapman were still meeting at Haringey Council.
Chapman recalled a nervous, tense and slightly hostile Abbott knocking on her door one evening, and making her demands clear. Get the hell out of here, said Abbott. Youre in the media and everywhere and I want you out of town.
I cant, replied Chapman, Ive been elected to office.
Later, Chapman explained: She wanted a clear run. I was in the media a lot then because of my political work and she wished I wasnt.
Abbott also grew fed-up with Corbyns way of life; just as he had ignored Chapman, he began ignoring her.
At 27, she wanted marriage and eventually children. Corbyn wanted neither.
One morning, Bernie Grant, the firebrand Tottenham MP, called Keith Veness. Dianes had enough of Jeremy. Shes moving out. Come and give us a hand.
Labour activist Keith Veness arrived at Corbyn's flat to find its rooms strewn with papers and clothing
Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn at day three of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on September 25
Veness arrived in a large van at Corbyns flat, finding its rooms strewn with papers and clothing.
Its hard to have a relationship with someone who doesnt come home for two weeks, said Abbott defensively.
She, Grant and Veness set about packing away her things.
Suddenly the door opened, and in walked Corbyn. Hello, mate, he said to Grant. Then he saw Veness carrying out Abbotts possessions. After hearing why the two men were there, he walked away without comment; he was off to a meeting, he said.
Appalled by the way Abbott had been treated, Grant chased after Corbyn.
Get real, he said, knowing full well that Corbyn remained insult-proof.
Later, Corbyn would recall: Diane always says to me, You learned everything you know in Shropshire, and unfortunately youve forgotten none of it.
Dangerous Hero: Corbyns Ruthless Plot For Power, by Tom Bower, is published by William Collins on February 21 at 20. Offer price 16 (20 per cent discount) until February 24. Pre-order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over 15. Spend 30 on books and get FREE premium delivery.
His idea of fun? Cold Tesco baked beans or sitting on the floor singing IRA songs: Book lifts the lid on life for Corbyn's first wife that turned into a succession of political demos
1974 was the tumultuous year Britain endured two General Elections. It was also the year that, during endless hours of leafleting and canvassing, Corbyn met the woman whod become his first wife.
Jane Chapman was 23, an attractive graduate studying for a doctorate at the London School of Economics. Jeremy professed love early on, she recalled, and said that I was the best of the best, so I thought this must be the thing.
Consumed by what she described as a whirlwind three-month romance he constantly urged us to marry she agreed because he was friendly and lively and seemed bright and not bad-looking.
'Jane was shocked that Corbyn didnt read a single book in four years of marriage' (pictured: Jane Chapman)
Naturally, both were hard-Left activists she says Jeremy was a Trotskyist, no doubt about it and their respective local Labour branches selected each to stand in the council elections for the North London borough of Haringey. Both were elected and two days later, on May 4, 1974, they were married at the town hall.
Neither set of parents was impressed by their childs choice. Chapmans mother, a lifetime Tory, was not pleased that her ambitious daughter was marrying a poorly off, uneducated trade union official.
Corbyns mother Naomi disliked her new alpha female daughter-in-law. It was wrong, she thought, to have such an obvious competitive element in a marriage.
Tensions were aggravated when Corbyns brother Piers arrived at the wedding looking even more scruffy than normal. Embarrassed, Naomi swept him off to buy a shirt and a suit, but they did not return until after the ceremony.
Following a brief honeymoon in Ireland, the newlyweds returned to a tiny ground-floor studio room in Haringey, moving a year later to a bigger ground-floor flat nearby. There, several chickens, a cat christened Harold Wilson and a dog named Mango ran around the garden.
Married life became a succession of political meetings and demos. Some mornings they would head for a picket line at 5.30am to support strikers.
Among the biggest surprises for Chapman was the total absence of books in her husbands life.
Jane Chapman addressing a Labour Party event in 1975 during her marriage to Jeremy Corbyn
Throughout the four years of their marriage, he never read a single one. He did not think deeply about ideology or political philosophy. Her initial judgment that he was bright was mistaken.
His other handicap, Corbyn was acutely aware, was his lack of a working-class pedigree especially when his childhood family home had been Yew Tree Manor, a five-bedroom 17th Century farmhouse in Shropshire.
From there his parents scruffy, unconventional but undeniably middle-class moved to a new home in Wiltshire, chosen to enable them to pursue their burgeoning interest in archaeology.
During Corbyn and Chapmans visits for Sunday lunch, politics were politely discussed, but Corbyns parents never mentioned that they had been present at the Battle of Cable Street, or that his father David had ever considered going to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
Following a brief honeymoon in Ireland, the newlyweds returned to a tiny ground-floor studio room in Haringey, moving a year later to a bigger ground-floor flat nearby
Their sons introduction of those key events into the biographies of his parents would come much later. As Jane Chapman discovered, her husbands understanding of their domestic finances was no better than his dismal grasp of economics. In line with his lifelong disapproval of aspiration and success, he never talked about buying a bigger home or car or increasing his income. When he returned home at night, hed happily open a can of beans, swallow them cold and declare himself satisfied.
Jeremy Corbyn is condemned as 'not fit to govern' after devastating expose Jeremy Corbyn was last night condemned as not fit to govern following a devastating new expose by one of Britains leading investigative authors. Tom Bower has spent 18 months talking to those who know Corbyn best to create the most in-depth portrait ever compiled of the Labour leader, including shocking details about the anti-Semitism of his supporters and his duplicity over Brexit. The damning profile comes amid increasing claims that despairing Labour MPs are poised to break away from Corbyn and form their own party. In his new book, Dangerous Hero serialised from today in The Mail on Sunday Bower reveals that Corbyn: Was secretly delighted by the Brexit result despite campaigning for Remain; Inspired attacks on Jewish and moderate Labour MPs, and did nothing to protect them; Has such a chaotic professional and personal life that one close friend and adviser says: He is not fit to be leader of the Labour Party or Prime Minister; Followed Lenin and Trotskys blueprint to seize power, purge moderates and crush dissent while playing the nice guy and letting Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell to do the scary work as key allies, including union backer Len McCluskey, drew up lists of opponents to be deselected; Employs staff in his office who are described as lazy and p***ed on 100,000 a year; Lacks the mental agility to chair all but the most basic political meetings; Harbours a lifelong jealousy of the rich and successful that started when he flunked his A-levels and dropped out of his polytechnic degree, although he claimed he left because of a row with a lecturer; Almost had his house repossessed after running up 30,000 in debts; Had a series of relationships with younger women after separating from wife Claudia, conducting them in the basement of their shared house while Claudia was living with their three sons and a toy boy on the top floors; Believes that anyone who disagrees with uncontrolled immigration is racist ; Has no interest in culture or in reading books; Abandoned his vegetarian principles when he was invited to eat meat with Cuban leader Fidel Castro; Was on the brink of retiring to Wiltshire to keep bees when he was persuaded to run for leader. Last night, Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis reacted to the revelations by saying: What Corbyn has done to his own party is shameful, what he would do to our country would be a tragedy. He is not fit to govern. Corbyn provoked further fury last night by snubbing a showdown with his MPs over anti-Semitism, due to be held at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party tomorrow. Corbyn, along with party general secretary Jennie Formby, have pleaded prior engagements despite the MPs warning that Labour risks being seen as institutionally anti-Semitic. But last night a Labour source insisted that Corbyn was never expected to be or scheduled to be at Mondays meeting. As the anti-Semitism row rages, this newspaper has obtained shocking messages directed at Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger. She was branded a dirty little Zionist rat and taunted with vile abuse describing all Jews as c**** by pro-Corbyn supporters on an official Facebook page for a local Liverpool Labour Party constituency. In a statement issued in response to the attacks, Ms Berger said: This is all-too typical of the malign culture now bearing down on many hard-working MPs. Nothing will deter me from exposing the truth about the anti-Semitism allowed to fester on Jeremy Corbyns watch. Bowers investigation will further stoke the growing fury in the party over Mr Corbyns handling of the anti-Semitism scandal, his supporters hounding of moderate MPs and his deliberately incoherent stance on Brexit. The author describes how Momentum, the Left-wing movement which backs Corbyns leadership, engaged in permanent mobilisation to cement him in power. A loyalty list was compiled of Labour MPs, with every Jewish MP described as hostile or negative, while Chuka Umunna, whose father was Nigerian, was described as not politically black. When Mr McDonnell saw Mr Ummuna interviewed on television he seethed that he was not one of our people. Unite leader Len McCluskey, a key Corbyn bankroller, also had a little list in his inside pocket with names of people Id like to see go. Bowers book will fan the growing anger in Labour over Corbyns Brexit policy by setting out how both Corbyn and McDonnell wanted to campaign for Britain to leave the EU despite the vast majority of Labour MPs backing Remain because he regarded the EU as a capitalists club which would be a barrier to his project to build socialism. He also concluded that Brexit would destroy David Camerons Government and increase the chance of Labour getting into power. Corbyn only agreed to campaign to stay in the EU after protests from Remainers in his Shadow Cabinet, led by Hilary Benn. But his deliberate sabotage of his own campaign was highlighted when he decided to attend the British Kebab Awards rather than attend a major Remain rally, on the advice of his most senior adviser, Seumas Milne. Bower writes that, on the night of the referendum, Corbyn disappeared, and the following morning was seen laughing over breakfast with his team. He says: Although Milne and McDonnell admitted to voting Leave, Corbyn would deny that he had done so. Further evidence has also emerged about Corbyns real anti-EU views. Footage of him addressing the Durham Miners Gala in 2010, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, shows him condemning the worlds bankers, International Monetary Fund, European Union for being utterly united in what they want. Utterly united in deflation, suppressing the economy, and creating unemployment. The revelations come as at least six Labour MPs who object to Corbyns policy on Brexit are believed to be in talks about a breakaway movement. Corbyn threw his party into turmoil last week by setting out a series of demands to Theresa May in return for Labours support for her Brexit deal, including membership of a customs union. The move enraged many of his pro-Remain MPs, including Mr Umunna, who called it totally demoralising because it would kill off their plans for a second referendum. Tory chairman Brandon Lewis added: For decades Jeremy Corbyn peddled his blinkered world view and hard-Left ideology from the Commons backbenches happier to sow dissent than heal division, to criticise than to seek consensus. He is not a backbench MP any more he is a man who wants to be our Prime Minister but one who still refuses to accept the responsibilities that come with leadership. He failed to face facts over the Salisbury poisoning, he has shamefully failed to root out racism in his own ranks and he has failed to set out a credible plan for Brexit. He has stood by as the Labour Party, with its proud tradition of decency and patriotism, succumbed to the mentality of mob rule and has stayed silent while his own MPs are bullied and hounded online. Advertisement
Occasionally, he returned late from a meeting of the Hornsey Labour Party with friends to sing IRA songs while they all got drunk on beer.
He would sit on the floor in his greasy, unwashed army surplus store jacket, oblivious to his wifes irritation.
They rarely went out together. Dinner invitations were refused. Chapman spent lonely evenings in their small flat with Mango the dog and Harold Wilson the cat as her only companions, while Corbyn met political cronies.
Among them was fellow Haringey councillor Bernie Grant, a bombastic Black Power Marxist from Guyana.
Its racism to control immigration, Grant frequently declared an opinion that Corbyn quickly adopted.
In the summer of 1976, Corbyn and Chapman set off on his 250cc Czech motorbike for a camping holiday across Europe.
Jeremy always chose to go on holiday in August, explained Chapman, because there were no political meetings. She feared the holiday would be as uncomfortable as the previous year in France, Spain and Portugal.
The ordeal was not just riding pillion on Corbyns bumpy bike, but his passion for abstinence.
While Chapman wanted to sleep in a proper bed and eat in interesting restaurants, Corbyn insisted on a small tent and cooking tins of beans on a single ring Calor gas stove. The nearest Chapman got to comfort was after a rainstorm flooded their tent outside Prague.
Begrudgingly, Corbyn agreed to spend the night under cover not in a hotel, but in a student hostel. He became furious when his motorbike broke down in Czechoslovakia, assuming that because it had been manufactured there it would be easy to have it repaired. Instead, he was introduced to the realities of a communist economy.
The bike had been made exclusively for export, and no Czech garage mechanic knew how to fix it. For two days he fumed until it was finally repaired.
During their journey, Chapman discovered that her husband was not interested in equality within marriage, or in sharing any domestic chores. He never spoke about sex, music, fashion or books. He put class first.
Equally distressing was his indifference to Europes most beautiful cities. In Vienna, he refused to enter the palace of Schonbrunn, the Kaisers summer retreat, because it was royal. You go in, he told her, Ill stay outside.
European culture offended him. He stood in Viennas Ringstrasse said by many to be the most beautiful boulevard in the world and pronounced it capitalist. He walked past all the museums and art galleries, and found no pleasure in medieval towns.
In villages, he was only interested to watch the peasants going about their lives. In Prague, soaking wet from torrential rain, he did not lament a missed visit to Hradcany castle, and turned down a walk through the old town. Nor did he comment on the dilapidation of the citys old buildings, all neglected by its communist overlords. Preservation of architecture and heritage, recalled Chapman, didnt appear to be on his agenda.
For similar reasons he had always refused to accompany her to Paris, where she did occasional research, or to Los Angeles to visit her aunt. He spoke only about elections, campaigns and demos, although his knowledge even of these was incomplete.
By contrast, he expressed a deep interest in Britains manhole covers, especially their dates of manufacture: My mother always said theres history in drain covers.
Most travellers who crossed into Czechoslovakia from Austria during the Cold War were shocked by the experience.
Running just behind the customs buildings were two rows of electrified barbed wire and between them a minefield. Looking out over the eerie silence were armed soldiers in guard towers, with orders to shoot on sight anyone approaching from the Czech side.
Those caught within five miles of the border without police permission could expect imprisonment. Any Western visitor riding a motorbike through those fortifications would be left in no doubt that Eastern Europe was a prison. Czechs were badly dressed, had limited food, and lived in decaying buildings.
Czechoslovakia, a rich democracy before 1939, was a police state. But Corbyn uttered not a single word of criticism, and expressed no sympathy for the countrys 1968 attempt at liberation from the Soviet Union.
He said nothing about the thousands of skilled and scholarly Czechs forced to take menial employment as street cleaners or worse, as punishment for opposing the Soviet occupation.
He was a Tankie, said his old friend and constituency agent Keith Veness, meaning that Corbyn had supported the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 and the Prague uprising 12 years later.
When in conversation Veness mentioned Stalins cruelties, Jeremy walked away. He couldnt do political arguments.
He was a communist fellow-traveller. The bastard never apologised for the Moscow trials.
The Corbyns returned to London with Jeremy unaware that their marriage was cracking up.
Jeremy never thought there was anything wrong, recalled Chapman. He assumed that, because our politics were compatible, that amounted to a proper relationship.
She tried to make it work, said Keith Veness, but he was uninterested. He never came home, and the relationship just slowly broke up.
Chapmans requests for more than just a political life cinemas, restaurants, clubs, children were ignored. He didnt acknowledge my emotional side, said Chapman. He doesnt recognise a womans feelings.
At Christmas she prepared a special five-course vegetarian lunch for Corbyn and his brother Piers. They stuffed it down their gullets and never said thanks, she recalled. Her husband, she knew, would have been happy with a can of beans: Usually Tesco, not Heinz, but he wouldnt know the difference.
Just before Christmas 1979, Chapman walked out of the family home. According to Keith Veness, she just gave up on him. As she packed her belongings, Corbyn told his wife: You should read Simone de Beauvoir.
Clearly, ever the non-reader, he had heard about de Beauvoir from someone, and had failed to understand the authors philosophy. Women, de Beauvoir complained, were regarded as the second sex, and defined by their relationship to men. To rescue themselves, they should elevate themselves by exercising the same choice as men precisely what Chapman had decided to do.
Corbyn was exhibiting all the contradictions of an unresolved personality, disconnected from the real world.
His self-portrayal as a universal do-gooder was at odds with his inability to care for his wife, or indeed any female companion. He was quite incapable of understanding why his marriage had collapsed.
He thought I left him on a feminist kick, recalled Chapman, but it was because I wanted some fun. His lack of emotional awareness didnt change. My emotional life as part of a relationship was forgotten.
Finally, she realised that his judgment at the beginning of their relationship that she was the best of the best was because I was the only woman who would put up with his political obsessions.
Nearly 20 years later, Corbyn invited Chapman for tea in the Commons. You should lighten up, he advised her, convinced as usual that he had been in the right.
If anyone lacked a sense of humour, thought Chapman, it was her joyless former husband.
Married to a joyless fanatic: How Jeremy Corbyn neglected the mother of his three sons and cost them the family home because of his chaotic finances, new book claims
The father-to-be was distracted and anxious. His wife Claudia was due to give birth to their first child at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, and Jeremy Corbyn headed for the telephone outside the delivery room.
If his old friend and constituency agent Keith Veness was surprised to get the call, he was even more startled by what Corbyn running for re-election as an MP in the 1987 General Election had to say.
Im really worried, the lifelong Marxist many believe will be Britains next Prime Minister complained as his new wife lay in a hospital bed preparing to bring their baby son into the world. We havent put out that leaflet about Northern Ireland.
Havent you got something more serious to worry about? asked Veness.
Whats that?
Youre about to be a father. Ive never heard of anyone who lost an election because they didnt get a leaflet out.
But then Jeremy Corbyn has never done family life like everyone else.
When Claudia tried to hire a cleaner, Corbyns friends asked if his wife had bourgeois tendencies
He met Claudia Bracchitta, the fiercely intelligent and good-looking daughter of Chilean exiles, the previous year at a protest meeting against her homelands military dictatorship, addressed by Ken Livingstone.
She wanted to get off with me, Livingstone later ungallantly recalled, but I had to go off to meet Kate, my partner, so she went for Jeremy.
Claudia was already married, but by the following year she was pregnant with Corbyns child and rushed through a divorce to marry her new admirer.
Neither of Corbyns parents was present at the wedding: his father had died the previous year and his mother was not invited.
In fact, he didnt tell even his close friends about his marriage.
Within little more than a decade the relationship was dead, killed not by, as they told the world, principled political differences about whether to send their son to a grammar school but by Corbyns financial incompetence, his neglect of his family, his arid lifestyle and his apparent misogyny.
Ive got all these debts, Corbyn told his long-time friend Reg Race as they sat in the spartan living room of the politicians semi-detached house in North London in late 1996. Can you work out why?
Political upbringing: Corbyns sons Sebastian, Benjamin and Tommy applaud their father at last years Labour Conference
I dont need to be a genius to tell him whats wrong, Race thought. Hes in danger of bankruptcy. Across the room sat his host and Claudia, positioned unnaturally far apart. Race, a former hard-Left MP whod transformed himself into a successful financial consultant, had been summoned by Claudia as a mutual friend to solve their differences.
The papers in front of him showed that the Corbyns owed their bank 30,000, the equivalent of twice that figure today. Several personal loans had been guaranteed by Corbyns income as an MP and he was also burdened by high mortgage repayments.
As a last resort, the bank could threaten to recover its money by seizing his home. Youve run out of loans, said Race. Unchecked, within five years the debts would be 100,000. Corbyns annual salary was 43,000. Claudia interrupted. This was entirely the result of her husbands folly, she said. She and their three young sons Sebastian, Benjamin and Thomas had little money even to buy food and clothes. We cant afford a decent life.
The principal cause of the debts was the Red Rose Community Centre in Holloway a bar and dance area on the ground floor of a building that fulfilled his commitment to open his party office in his North London constituency. Corbyn was paying its rent and some staff salaries out of his own pocket. Simultaneously, he owed a large sum to the Inland Revenue for his employees unpaid National Insurance and pension contributions.
The financial chaos was matched by his management style. His employees complained about being both undervalued and underpaid.
Among the casualties was Liz Phillipson, his battle-scarred assistant, who had resigned rather than continue to tolerate Corbyns fecklessness. You havent got enough money for what youre doing, Race said bluntly. You should close your office and move to the Commons.
I wont, replied Corbyn.
Oh, come on, Jeremy, you know hes right, Claudia said, her voice rising. Corbyn mumbled, then fell silent. His body language showed he felt no inclination to follow Races advice. Claudia was becoming noticeably agitated. It was clear a breakdown was coming, thought Race.
He was not surprised by the tension. Throughout their marriage, Corbyns lack of interest in material things had meant that he ignored her need for comfort.
Debt-ridden: Jeremy Corbyn in the 1980s
At one stage she had planned for the family to move from Islington to leafy Kingston upon Thames, but was quickly disabused of the idea. He has to live in his constituency, a political aide told her.
She got the same short shrift from her husband when she tried to hire a cleaner a move that prompted one of Corbyns friends to question whether his wife had bourgeois tendencies.
To Corbyn, Claudias list of complaints was familiar. Over the years, a succession of women had made the same observations: he never changed his ways, and he rarely thought about them.
He wore the same shabby clothes, ate the same bland food and stuck to the same dogmatic political convictions he first developed as a teenager.
Admirers hailed his inflexibility as proof of his integrity. Detractors blamed his limited intelligence and lack of education for his failure to appreciate others.
Long before the onset of their financial problems, life with Corbyn had proved difficult for Claudia. Labour MP Tony Banks witnessed just how difficult as one day he walked into Westminsters central lobby and spotted her standing by the wall, tearfully holding her children.
Jeremy, Claudia explained, had promised to meet her two hours earlier. He had not turned up. Banks took the four Corbyns to the Commons family room and went off in search. Eventually he found Corbyn in a committee room. Youd better come out and look after your children, he suggested. Corbyn did not seem fazed for a moment. Banks was not surprised. When pushed to have a day off, he recalled, Jeremys idea was to take his partner to Highgate Cemetery and study the grave of Karl Marx.
His old friend Reg Race had experienced something similar when he had invited the Corbyn family for a weeks holiday at his country home in Derbyshire.
On the day, Claudia arrived with the children.
Wheres Jeremy? asked Mandy, Regs wife. I dont know, replied Claudia with sadness. He just told me, Ive got to go to a meeting, and I havent seen him since.
Over the following 36 hours, Claudia called several numbers searching for her husband. Two days later he turned up, explaining his absence as a necessary sacrifice for the movement.
By the time Race was called in to help resolve Corbyns financial crisis, the marriage was all but over.
Corbyn had regularly picked wood from neighbourhood skips, and also collected railway junk as he criss-crossed the country on trains
That afternoon Race told his friend that he had little choice but to sell the family home.
Claudia agreed. Reluctantly, so did Corbyn and thereafter broke off his relations with Race. The messenger was to blame, a failure to take personal responsibility that left Race to conclude of the man hed worked closely with over three decades: Hes not fit to be leader of the Labour Party, and not fit to be Britains Prime Minister.
In early 1999, the Corbyns home was sold for 365,000 (730,000 today), and they downsized to a house in Mercers Road, a shabby street off Holloway Road.
On the day of the move, Corbyn was told by Claudia to empty the fridge. He forgot. He also forgot to clear the garage. Late in the afternoon, while their former homes new owner fumed on the pavement, the garage door was opened to reveal rubbish crammed to the ceiling.
Corbyn had regularly picked wood from neighbourhood skips, and also collected railway junk as he criss-crossed the country on trains. Boxes of safety lamps, metal signs, track signals and other paraphernalia had been stuffed in any old how. Late in the day, everything was finally shuttled across to the basement of Mercers Road, creating a new world of clutter.
The move brought one advantage. The building had been converted into bedsits, making the estrangement between Claudia and Corbyn easier.
She and their three sons took the top floors, where she lived with a young South American dubbed the toy boy, while Corbyn, in the basement, had relationships with a series of younger women.
The Labour leader has always done his best to conceal his chaotic personal life from the media which he loathes. His break-up with Claudia was no different, shrouded as it was with obfuscation and lies.
Late in 1999, while Corbyn was at a peace conference in The Hague, a journalist contacted his wife and asked whether the two had separated. She said their 12-year marriage had ended in 1997. She said she had wanted their 11-year-old son Ben to go to Queen Elizabeths grammar school in Barnet, but that Corbyn had stipulated that he should go instead to Holloway School, a failing local comprehensive.
From The Hague, Corbyn confirmed Claudias account. Defending his ideological purity against selective schools, he implied, was more important than his sons education or his marriage.
In a series of interviews, Claudia reinforced the same message. My childrens education is my absolute priority, and this situation left me with no alternative but to accept a place at Queen Elizabeth Boys School. I had to make the decision as a mother and a parent It isnt a story about making a choice, but about having no choice.
To the public, Corbyn appeared to have acquiesced in his wifes wishes, but, like so many communists, he had put his political principles first, and ended the marriage: he could not live with a woman who did not accept his beliefs.
The only dent to that image of ideological purity was Claudias revelation that Corbyn had agreed for another of their sons to spend two years at the local Montessori nursery, at 600 per term.
If that had been the last word on the subject, the notion that the marriage had broken up over Corbyns principles might have been plausible. But Claudia, possibly with Corbyns encouragement, went further. He is first the politician and second the parent, she said. Its very difficult when your ideals get in the way of family life It has been a horrendous decision.
Sixteen years later, the whole tale was expanded. Rosa Prince, Corbyns semi-authorised biographer, described, with Claudias help, a tormented family: Corbyn and Bracchitta went round and round in circles for months.
She would not send Ben to Holloway School and Corbyn could not bear for him to go to Queen Elizabeths In choosing Queen Elizabeths, Bracchitta was aware that she was ending her marriage.
Is this version correct? Friends say the marriage ended because of Corbyns behaviour his financial fecklessness, his thoughtless absences and his selfish refusal to do anything to make his wifes life more pleasant.
He told me that the marriage had ended long before the school bit, Ken Livingstone recalled. We had a chat at the time and he said his marriage had fallen apart over other things, not the school.
Livingstone had discovered that Corbyns authenticity was fictitious a confection for political appearances. Like his great hero Lenin, the Labour leader had mastered a critical ruse to grab public support: A lie told often enough, wrote the Soviet revolutionary, becomes the truth. Few politicians have deployed this tactic as ruthlessly and effectively as Jeremy Corbyn.
Jeremy Corbyn's 40 years of plots, lies, intimidation and chaos: Chilling biography tells how Labour leader followed Lenin and Trotsky's bloody footprint - seize power, purge moderates, crush dissent and leave the dirty work to others
If Corbyns class-war politics are unchanged from the 1970s, so too are his tactics: lies and deceit, bullying and intimidation and getting others to do the dirty work while he plays Mr Nice Guy.
And if you want to understand how Corbyn wins power and the chaos and misery that results theres no better place to look than his early career in Haringey, one of the most notorious of Londons Loony Lefty boroughs.
It was there he honed the malign modus operandi many now fear will land him in No 10.
Lenin was the first on the far-Left to advocate the infiltration of Labour, telling British communists: Support the Labour Party as the rope supports the hanged man. Lenins idea was that once communists controlled the party, they could win an election and with it the power to destroy capitalism.
If Corbyns class-war politics are unchanged from the 1970s, so too are his tactics
This was the lifetimes journey Corbyn began when he joined his local Hornsey Labour Party and discovered, for the first time in his life, a sense of purpose.
The Hornsey party was viciously split between warring communists, Marxists and Trotskyites as well as social democrats. Starting a soon-to-be familiar pattern, Corbyn deftly gave the appearance of not belonging to any faction.
But Barbara Simon, the branchs long-serving secretary, wasnt fooled. He was a natural Marxist, she noted, seeing him as a sly agitator seeking political advantage at every turn.
Douglas Eden, a polytechnic lecturer and a member of the Hornsey Labour Party, watched as Corbyn manoeuvred to take over the branch.
In his carefully self-controlled way, said Eden, he presented himself to the lower orders of society, the vulnerable and inadequate people who felt indebted to him, as working-class.
Indeed in his early years Corbyn would introduce himself by saying Im from Telford New Town, suggesting he came from a working-class area when the truth couldnt be more different.
Republican friend: Corbyn with Sinn Feins Martin McGuinness in 1995
His tactics paid off and in early 1974, at the age of 24, Corbyn won a seat on Haringey Council.
Although he never read Trotsky, he adopted his ideas to foment what Trotsky had called a permanent state of unrest as a prelude to eventual victory.
You could not out-Left Corbyn, recalled Robin Young, Haringeys Labour whip. He detested everyone who disagreed with him. And he always got others to do his dirty work.
Vegetarian... until invited to eat meat with Castro Pictured: Fidel Castro enjoys a steak dinner Corbyn had been a vegetarian ever since he witnessed the treatment of farm animals in Shropshire as a boy. But then came a visit to Cuba with his wife Claudia as official guests. The highlight was dinner with Castro, pictured right. In his welcoming speech, Castro hailed Corbyn as a trusted friend against American imperialism. The main course was meat. To Claudias bemusement, rather than mentioning the fact that he was a vegetarian, her husband swallowed the beef with his principles. Advertisement
Now began a campaign of intimidation that set the template for those carried out by Corbyns Momentum shock troops 40 years later. And, just like today, the man secretly driving it all swore blind that it had nothing to do with him.
So Corbyn quietly ordered junior councillors to propose motions to destabilise the moderates, encouraged activists to confront his ideological enemies and energetically recruited far-Leftists as Labour members.
Meetings of the Hornsey Labour Party grew raucous. Corbyn was encouraging all the Left groups to join, says Toby Harris, its chairman. Some arrived with fake names, especially the hardliners.
The 1979 General Election loomed and Corbyn was certain Labour would win, especially in Hornsey, a marginal seat. The chosen candidate was Ted Knight, a 45-year-old unmarried Trotskyite and leader of Lambeth Council as debt-ridden and rotten as Haringey. Always dressed in a dark suit, foul-mouthed Knight addressed everyone as Comrade, always delivered with a hint of menace.
In a campaign leaflet issued by Corbyn, Knight pledged to weaken the capitalist police who are an enemy of the working class, pay not a penny for defence, and repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act at the height of the IRAs bombing campaign.
Going well beyond Labours official policy, the two men also advocated mass nationalisation of banks, major shops and even newspapers all without compensation.
Targeting the immigrant vote, Corbyn spread the word that Labour would abolish border controls. Tories accused his canvassers of telling West Indian immigrants theyd be sent home if Labour lost.
Yet despite his best efforts, on May 3, 1979, Mrs Thatcher swept to power.
Not surprisingly, Haringey became one of the new Tory governments prime targets.
Over the previous five years, the council had hired an extra 1,000 staff and accumulated a 6 million deficit, yet its services were deteriorating. Endless strikes, enthusiastically encouraged by Corbyn, had meant uncollected rubbish, closed schools and unrepaired council homes.
Now, Thatcher forbade all councils to increase their debts and, at the same time, reduced their government grants. Most sought to improve efficiency, but Corbyn demanded that Haringeys Labour group defy the Government by setting illegally high rates.
Well be personally surcharged, the moderates retorted, fearing that their privately owned homes would be seized to pay the fines.
Corbyn continued to demand the sacrifice, without revealing that his own flat had been bought with a GLC mortgage, and was therefore safe from repossession.
Wheres that member of Militant who just won in Hayes? asked Greater London Council leader Ken Livingstone jocularly about a trusted comrade in his sprawling headquarters opposite Parliament.
Although he never read Trotsky, he adopted his ideas to foment what Trotsky had called a permanent state of unrest as a prelude to eventual victory (pictured: Corbyn aged 18 in 1967)
Thats me! replied John McDonnell. And Ive left Militant. Livingstone admired McDonnells macho form of class-based politics. The Trotskyites fondness for a violent revolution to topple the capitalists, said Livingstone, had been learned during his training as a supporter of Militant Tendency the hard-Left faction eventually defeated by Neil Kinnock.
Livingstone brought McDonnell out of the shadows to make him GLC deputy and, together with Corbyn, set out trying to destroy Thatchers government. But the 1983 General Election famously fought on a manifesto dubbed the longest suicide note in history was a catastrophe for Labour, if not for Corbyn, whose exhaustive campaigning won him a seat as MP for Islington North.
Although he enjoyed his new status, for Corbyn real life was outside Parliament.
Smash the Tory state! he would yell into his megaphone on endless marches through Islington.
Nevertheless, once Corbyn left Haringey Council, his image began to change an illusion that would end up having catastrophic consequences for everyone who fell for it.
Few at Westminster had witnessed his vituperative campaign against moderate Labour councillors. And many saw him as a good guy because of the way he always employed a mild manner in debate. The hatred and divisions recalled by Haringey councillors at nasty meetings orchestrated by Corbyn were lost in a smokescreen of indifference.
Still, some saw through him. After the 1992 General Election handed the Conservatives their fourth successive victory, Corbyns constituency agent Keith Veness resigned. Ive had enough, he told his MP. Youre an anarchic shambles, without any discipline.
In particular, he was fed up with the candidates obsession with leaflets. Theres so much paper around that no one can open the doors, he complained.
Corbyns financial indiscipline was another irritation. Whenever Veness protested that there was no money for another leaflet, Corbyn replied: Well find it.
When on May 1, 1997, Tony Blair secured Labours return to power after 18 years, even Corbyn could not resist celebrating. The other good news for Corbyn was the selection of John McDonnell, one of 145 new Labour MPs.
McDonnells arrival in the Commons strengthened Corbyn, the Liverpudlians education and understanding of Marxism compensating for Corbyns intellectual deficits.
While Corbyn was uncertain how Marxist ideology fitted in with lip service to capitalist democracy, McDonnell admitted he was a member of Labour only as a tactic, because it was a useful vehicle.
Discounting the ballot box as a means to change the world, McDonnell who called himself the last communist in Parliament explained: Theres another way too which in the old days we called insurrection.
Now we call it direct action. Its when the Government dont do as you want, you get in the streets or you occupy.
McDonnell was taken aback when Corbyn announced he was standing for the Labour leadership after Ed Milibands 2015 defeat. I thought we decided not to put up anyone from the Left, he said. Well, weve decided that we need a debate, replied Corbyn.
He wants unrestricted immigration... anyone who disagrees is racist Show of support: Corbyn celebrates with Diane Abbott and Bernie Grant, dressed in their parents national costume, as they mark their first day in Parliament in 1987 Dressed in a dirty jacket and creased trousers, Jeremy Corbyn arrived in Westminster as a new MP in the summer of 1983. He immediately told friends that Parliament was a waste of time with no relevance to his Islington constituents, especially the immigrant communities. To meet them, he set up offices in the Red Rose Centre in Holloway where his door was always open to a tide of human misery: Cypriots, Jamaicans, Indians, Pakistanis, South Africans, South Americans, Somalis, West Saharans and Kurds all sought his help. The procession of petitioners reinforced his conviction that Britain should allow unrestricted immigration and offer the worlds destitute an open invitation to share our wealth. In his opinion, all immigrant communities were victims of white imperialists, and the British state owed them a financial obligation. Anyone who disagreed was racist. Four years later Corbyn was back in Westminster for another first day of the new Parliament. To celebrate a new era, Britains first three black MPs all Labour marched into the Commons chamber together. Paul Boateng, Diane Abbott and Bernie Grant, together with the Asian Keith Vaz, each dressed in their parents national costumes, created an unprecedented spectacle as they walked towards the Speaker to take the oath. Acting as part-supplicant and part-valet, Corbyn walked immediately behind, pleased to have a place as the honorary white man for the black caucus. Look at Jeremy, said Brian Wilson, a new Scottish MP, to George Galloway, who had also been newly elected. He would black up if he could. Advertisement
The only obstacle was obtaining enough nominations and Corbyn called every Labour MP, asking for their support.
Hes a good bloke, many agreed, mentioning that, unlike McDonnell, Corbyn was always polite, and never openly threatening. Soon his name was on the ticket.
Many of those who backed him quickly considered it the greatest mistake of their career.
Now came a key addition to Corbyns inner sanctum: Seumas Milne, his 57-year-old intellectual consigliere, an alumnus of Winchester and Oxford, and the son of Alasdair Milne, ex-director general of the BBC.
Known as a Tankie when he joined the Guardian as a journalist because he supported the Soviet suppression of the uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, Milne praised Stalin for offering socialist political alternatives.
There were lessons to be learned, he wrote, from the Soviet success: For all its brutalities and failures communism in the USSR, Eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education and job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. It encompassed genuine idealism and commitment.
Milnes political convictions and intellectual eloquence were to prove vital in helping Corbyn get elected Labour leader in September 2015 in a stunning victory that even dwarfed the mandate for Blair in 1994.
Youre too nice to be leader, Ken Livingstone told the most unexpected winner in his partys history.
No ones scared of you.
John McDonnell will do all the scary stuff, Corbyn replied.
Just like in the 1970s, Corbyns winning power was quickly followed by chaos.
While the new leader wrestled with Shadow Cabinet appointments, office phones rang unanswered, messages remained unacknowledged and arrangements for meetings disappeared because there was no diary. The few scheduled meetings that did take place were abandoned after Corbyn failed to appear, often because he was averse to making decisions. The atmosphere was fraught, tense and unhappy, reported adviser Harry Fletcher, because the staff were terrified of having power.
In the weeks after Corbyns election, most outsiders were still unaware that Trotskyite groups were disbanding so their members could qualify to join Labour in targeted constituencies. Many came from Momentum. Their attempt to rejoin was supported by Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, who saw the move as helping to purge the party of moderates still unfinished business.
Leaving his office (decorated with a large portrait of Lenin), McCluskey set off to tell a meeting: We may lose some people along the way. All I can say to that is, Good riddance. Ive got a little list here in my inside pocket with names of people Id like to see go.
He was voicing the private thoughts of Corbyn, McDonnell and Milne. In public, all four talked about a kinder, gentler politics, at odds with the campaign of hatred, unprecedented in British politics, which then followed.
The conspirators were helped by the list of party members names, email addresses and telephone numbers that had been handed to Momentum founder Jon Lansman during the leadership election.
It was now used ruthlessly to flush out their foes. The first traces emerged in mid-October 2015: Hilary Benn was voted off Labours National Executive Committee and replaced by a loyalist.
Next, Corbyn supporters challenged moderate Labour councillors in Portsmouth, Lambeth and Brighton. Naturally, Corbyn denied any responsibility. I want to make it crystal clear, he told questioners, I do not support changes to make it easier to deselect MPs.
Milne introduced ideological discipline to Corbyns office. He persuaded him to make Katy Clark, a hard-Left bruiser, his political secretary. To assist her, Corbyn appointed the Trotskyist Andrew Fisher, who was advised to delete blogs describing his enthusiasm for violence.
Clarks arrival aggravated the office chaos. Meetings arranged to start at 9am were delayed because no one arrived until 11, and some staff did not come to work at all. They were lazy and p***ed on 100,000 a year, said a member of Corbyns team. If, by chance, sufficient numbers had arrived by midday, the next hurdle was to find Corbyn.
But even once he was located, aides quickly discovered their leader lacked the mental agility to chair a meeting without a clear brief of what he was to say. Milne was well aware he was serving an indecisive man prone to change his opinion depending on whoever he had last spoken to.
Corbyns malleability played to his own strengths, but also required careful handling. Too many outside the room judged Corbyn thick. At meetings, Milne sat expressionless when Corbyn asked the room nervously: Whats wrong? In response, there was silence.
Meanwhile, the relentless campaign against his enemies was directed from the Labour leaders office. Milne and others anonymously briefed social media websites such as The Canary and Squawk Box to target anyone who stood up to them.
The vitriol was given rocket fuel by Momentum, by then employing permanent staff and strengthened by Len McCluskeys union money.
Without a leader or an ideology, many MPs were cowed by Labours shock troops, led by Lansman, a battle-hardened party activist. Based in his office overlooking Euston station, Lansman claimed to control 90,000 supporters spread through a hundred groups across the country.
Arsenal fan... who finds game crude and awful Fairweather fan: Corbyn with ex-Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger Over the years Corbyn has made great play about his alleged passion for his local football club, Arsenal. But, according to his old friend and constituency agent Keith Veness, he regarded the game as crude and awful, and much preferred not to go. So Veness took Corbyns sons to matches, while their father went to political meetings. Jeremy wasnt interested in football, recalled Veness. Except, that was, on Cup Final day when, no doubt, his attendance was sure to generate positive man- of-the-people media coverage. Advertisement
He spoke about permanent mobilisation to defend Corbyn, not least action by Momentums members to trigger mandatory deselection of untrusted MPs.
To root them out, in early 2016 a loyalty list was drafted to classify MPs into five categories, from core group to hostile. It listed only 17 unquestioned loyalists, including McDonnell and Abbott. Every Jewish MP was hostile or negative, including Ed Miliband. Chuka Umunna, another hostile, was described by a Momentum activist as not politically black.
While authorising these classifications from his own office, Corbyn the consummate hypocrite publicly ordered his MPs to cease their personal abuse, public sniping and anonymous briefings.
When, over the summer of 2016 Corbyn faced a challenge to his leadership, Momentum activists went to war against the 172 rebel MPs on Twitter, issuing stark threats of deselection, violence and even murder. Fearing for their safety, some MPs hesitated to leave their offices.
Meanwhile, the purge of the moderates intensified.
Hundreds of Momentum members stormed into the annual meeting of Brighton and Hoves Labour Party in an attempt to deselect MP Peter Kyle. Momentum directed similar tactics against Thangam Debbonaire, the MP for Bristol West, while she was being treated for breast cancer.
Other women MPs accused John McDonnell of urging supporters at rallies to demonstrate outside their constituency offices. A brick was thrown through a window of Angela Eagles office.
She directly accused Corbyn of allowing a culture of bullying to develop. Its being done in your name, another of the victims told Corbyn. He replied with the old lie: I dont allow bullying.
High on the list of targets was Ben Bradshaw, the MP for Exeter, who denounced Corbyn as a destructive combination of incompetence, deceit and menace.
John Woodcock, another victim, reviled Corbyn and McDonnell for having set themselves up as the high priests of honest and straight-talking politics. Yet as soon as they are challenged, their operation squirms, spins and distorts like the very worst of anything that came before.
But, once again, the bullyboy tactics worked.
In the new leadership contest, Corbyn won 61.8 per cent of the votes, even better than a year earlier. Election success against Theresa May in June 2017 unleashed yet more bloodletting.
No jobs for traitors, declared McDonnell on seeing his partys rising black star Chuka Umunna interviewed on TV. Umunna, McDonnell seethed, was not one of our people.
In a chillingly Stalinist twist, Momentum turned against 50 Labour MPs accused of failing to praise Corbyn during their election campaigns.
The pressure to pledge allegiance to their leader was unpleasant and intense.
Although she was on maternity leave, Liverpool MP Luciana Berger was told by a Unite official who had recently been elected on to her constituencys executive committee to get on board quite quickly now, and apologise to Corbyn. She duly succumbed.
The intimidation of Berger was not unique. Many female Labour MPs, particularly Jews, complained of renewed abuse by the Left.
As in 1970s Haringey, Corbyn did nothing to protect them. He inspired the attacks, then stood back. Now was the moment, he agreed with Lansman, to revive the deselections interrupted by the 2017 election.
Momentum members in local branches were empowered to remove Blairite MPs. In Hampstead, Enfield, Lewisham, Hastings, Mansfield, Stoke and Brighton, moderate Labour MPs were under siege.
Then came a twist to bring the story of Corbyns toxic brand of politics full circle.
In his old stomping group of Haringey, members of Momentum intimidated the moderate councillors to succumb to what they termed a democracy review.
Claire Kober, the boroughs popular Labour leader, resigned after ten years because the activists anti-Semitism and misogyny, she said, got too much.
Richard Horton, the chairman of Haringeys Stroud Green branch, complained of aggressive Marxists destroying my mental health and damaging my family life and he too departed.
How proud the young Jeremy Corbyn would have been.
Principled? Corbyn secretly believed in Brexit... but 'campaigned' for Remain, bombshell book reveals
It will appal many of his young supporters but Corbyn welcomed David Camerons Referendum announcement because his Euroscepticism is long-standing and deep-rooted
Europe, he told President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela in 2014, had suffered appallingly because the EU was a capitalists club and a barrier to his lifes work to build socialism.
The EU, he believed, existed for greedy bankers and multinationals to exploit the working class.
If Britain voted to leave, and freed itself from Brussels control, a socialist government could prevent British investment abroad and control markets, tariffs and profits all contrary to EU laws.
Criticised: Corbyn angered Remainers with his appearance on the comedy show The Last Leg
Both Corbyn and McDonnell wanted to campaign for Britain to leave, but were challenged by Hilary Benn and others in the Shadow Cabinet. Reluctantly, Corbyn agreed to campaign for Remain. The Remainers chances of success, Corbyn knew, depended on Labour voters. Camerons fate was equally bound up in the outcome. If Britain voted Leave, Corbyn calculated, the PM would be humiliated and the Tories weakened. Those were good reasons not to appear on any platform alongside him. To Alan Johnson, appointed to lead Labours Remain campaign, Corbyns reluctance to preach the advantages of the EU was risible.
Within weeks of Johnson starting his work, tensions intensified. According to him, Corbyns closest associates were undermining his efforts.
Corbyn ignored him at meetings and found regular excuses not to appear on the Remainers platform while he continued to speak in favour of the IRA and Hamas.
Youre deliberately sending Jeremy to speak in areas where hes not needed, a journalist told Seumas Milne, Corbyns spin doctor. Dont be so stupid, said Milne, laughing. He would not dream of scuppering the vote.
Corbyn knew the contrary. For Labour supporters tempted to vote Leave, controlling immigration was critical, but to him those opposed to open borders were racist. To keep ideologically pure, he ordered party officials to remove every reference to immigration from Labours campaign. As he understood perfectly well, his stance was deeply damaging to Remain. Hilary Benn intervened. Entering Corbyns office, he said: You need to think in the language of the national interest.
Milne laughed. Whats funny about the national interest? asked Imran Ahmed, Benns assistant.
The EU, he believed, existed for greedy bankers and multinationals to exploit the working class
Milnes dismissive shrug sparked an outburst from Benn directed at Corbyn. Trashing Cameron, he said, was short-sighted. The Referendum could be lost. Milne started to interrupt. Shut up! Benn shouted. This is for elected people to discuss!
We wont speak about immigration or the national interest, Corbyn told Benn. Soon after, he removed from an important leaflet a personal endorsement written by a party official. The words he deleted ran: I am clear, just like my Shadow Cabinet, the trade union movement and our members, that it is in the interests of the people of this country to remain in the EU.
His not-so-subtle sabotage of his own campaign went on. On Milnes advice, Corbyn chose to star at the British Kebab Awards rather than attend a major Remain rally. Johnson was even more indignant about his leaders appearance in a white fur coat and black tie on The Last Leg, a Channel 4 comedy show.
Not only did Corbyn deliberately look unserious, but, to harm the campaign still further, he told the audience that he was only 7 or 7.5 out of 10 in favour of Europe.
Im not a huge fan of the EU, he said, smiling.
The result of the Referendum on June 23 shocked everyone. The puzzle on that momentous night was to locate Corbyn. He had disappeared his staff assumed he had gone home to sleep, and had turned his telephone off. After getting up late the following day, Corbyn was seen laughing over breakfast with his team. Although Milne and McDonnell admitted to voting Leave, Corbyn would deny that he had done so.
After a telephone conversation, his old friend Keith Veness believes that he did vote Leave, not least because he sounded so delighted.
Before Corbyn arrived at his office that morning, he publicly demanded that the Government should immediately apply for Article 50, the process to terminate Britains membership of the EU. Back then he saw no reason to prepare for negotiations or for a transition period.
He simply wanted Britain out of the European Union without establishing any relationship with the customs union or the single market, and emphatically ruled out a second referendum.
Defending Citizenship Bill, PM said we must understand pain of people forced to flee their homes and leave behind all they own.
PM Modi also attacked Congress for ignoring real ratnas of India. I pay my tributes to Dr Bhupen Hazarika. He raised his voice for the deprived and the poor. (Photo: Twitter | @BJP4India)
Guwahati: Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi addressed a rally in the city of Guwahati on Saturday in a series of rallies to capture the North Eastern states amid protests over the highly controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 said aid in Assam that there is no room for "intruders" in the state as well as the country. He said that he and his government are fully committed to safeguarding the rights and interests of the people of the region.
Defending the Bill, PM Modi said we must "understand the pain of people forced to flee their homes and leave behind all they own".
"Those who sit in AC rooms in Delhi, who fight us (BJP) in the parliament, are spreading misinformation and confusion about this Bill. But the BJP is committed to protecting the culture and resources of Assam and the northeast. The Clause 6, which is the soul of Assam Accord, has remained unimplemented for the last 35 years and our government will implement it in letter and spirit as soon as possible," he said.
Hitting out at the Opposition, PM Modi said, A confusion is being created over the citizenship bill. You need to beware of the intention of those doing so...They are all mahamilawati (highly adulterated) parties.
Clause 6 of the accord suggests constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social and linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people. It looks at giving constitutional safeguards to indigenous Assamese people against alleged illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
The Prime Minister promised that a committee formed by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) will ensure successful implementation of Clause 6 in the state which hasnt been worked out in the years after the declaration of the Assam Accord.
It must be understood that there is a difference between those who forcefully entered the country and those who were forced to flee their homes to save their lives due to their faith. Both are not the same", he said.
"We have committed to provide shelter to those who are minorities in neighbouring countries and had to leave everything due to the atrocities inflicted on them. They have come to our country and embraced the idea and ethos of Mother India," he said.
Then to allay the fears expressed by those protesting this Bill, he said, Citizenship to the migrants will be given only after proper verification. It will not be done without the recommendation of the state government, he said.
On Saturday morning, PM Modi was shown black flags for the second consecutive day over the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. Various groups including the All Assam Students Union (AASU), the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP) and the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) have been opposing the citizenship bill for a long time.
PM Modi also attacked Congress for ignoring real ratnas of India. I pay my tributes to Dr Bhupen Hazarika. He raised his voice for the deprived and the poor, said PM Modi.
While repeating his BC and AD jibe, PM Modi said, I want to ask Congress, why did they fail to confer Bharat Ratnas to those who really deserved it? Why did they ignore real ratnas of India?
His remarks came close on the heels of Bhupen Hazarika being conferred Bharat Ratna posthumously.
In the recent budget, we increased the budget by more than 21 per cent for the North East. This shows our commitment to the North East. In the last four-and-half years, projects worth Rs 14,000 crore have been completed in the oil and gas sector alone in Assam, he further added.
The prime minister then went on to say that the opposition is abusing him as the government has launched a drive against corruption. Those who had fled the country after committing corruption are being brought back and made to face justice, he said.
The prime minister also said the BJP government was committed to make Assam the oil and gas hub of the country and in the last four years projects worth Rs 14,000 crore have been completed.
(With agency inputs)
California authorities stumbled upon a secret underground shooting range hidden beneath the home of a known gang member.
Officers with the Fontana Police Department's gang unit came across the hideaway while executing a search warrant at the home on Thursday night.
'While searching the house a man hole was located that led to an underground hiding area and an additional underground area that was being used as a shooting range,' the department said in a press release.
Inside the range they found thousands of rounds of ammunition and weapons including a '100 round drum for an AR-15 rifle'.
Multiple suspects were arrested following the discovery, but authorities did not indicate the exact number.
Police in Fontana, California, discovered a secret shooting range underneath the home of a known gang member while executing a search warrant on Thursday night
Inside the range hidden inside a man hole, officers found thousands of rounds of ammunition and weapons including a '100 round drum for an AR-15 rifle', according to a press release
The Fontana Police Department shared several photos of the underground armory in a Facebook post along with a warning to the public.
'Friendly message to anyone who wants to engage in illegal activity and be a member of a gang. We will never give up on keeping our community safe and free of violence,' the post said.
'We are the champions at Hide n Seek and no manhole will help you. If you hide we will find you. If you run you will go to jail tired. If you do crime in our city, we will hunt you in the pursuit of justice for our community.'
'We strongly recommend that you put as much effort as you did in your underground cave, into becoming a productive member of society. You will thank us later for this advice.'
For 18 months, Britains top investigative author has been uncovering the truth about the Marxist who wants to be PM.
TOM BOWERs new biography paints a chilling picture of a bitter extremist hiding behind a mask of geniality.
Here, our first exclusive extracts reveal Corbyn's extremist roots; how he took Diane Abbott into his bed; his 'delight' with Brexit despite campaigning for Remain; and how his cold-hearted neglect and chaotic finances cost the mother of his three sons their family home...
If Corbyns class-war politics are unchanged from the 1970s, so too are his tactics
If Corbyns class-war politics are unchanged from the 1970s, so too are his tactics: lies and deceit, bullying and intimidation and getting others to do the dirty work while he plays Mr Nice Guy.
And if you want to understand how Corbyn wins power and the chaos and misery that results theres no better place to look than his early career in Haringey, one of the most notorious of Londons Loony Lefty boroughs.
It was there he honed the malign modus operandi many now fear will land him in No 10.
Lenin was the first on the far-Left to advocate the infiltration of Labour, telling British communists: Support the Labour Party as the rope supports the hanged man. Lenins idea was that once communists controlled the party, they could win an election and with it the power to destroy capitalism.
This was the lifetimes journey Corbyn began when he joined his local Hornsey Labour Party and discovered, for the first time in his life, a sense of purpose.
The Hornsey party was viciously split between warring communists, Marxists and Trotskyites as well as social democrats. Starting a soon-to-be familiar pattern, Corbyn deftly gave the appearance of not belonging to any faction.
But Barbara Simon, the branchs long-serving secretary, wasnt fooled. He was a natural Marxist, she noted, seeing him as a sly agitator seeking political advantage at every turn.
Douglas Eden, a polytechnic lecturer and a member of the Hornsey Labour Party, watched as Corbyn manoeuvred to take over the branch.
In his carefully self-controlled way, said Eden, he presented himself to the lower orders of society, the vulnerable and inadequate people who felt indebted to him, as working-class.
Indeed in his early years Corbyn would introduce himself by saying Im from Telford New Town, suggesting he came from a working-class area when the truth couldnt be more different.
Republican friend: Corbyn with Sinn Feins Martin McGuinness in 1995
His tactics paid off and in early 1974, at the age of 24, Corbyn won a seat on Haringey Council.
Although he never read Trotsky, he adopted his ideas to foment what Trotsky had called a permanent state of unrest as a prelude to eventual victory.
You could not out-Left Corbyn, recalled Robin Young, Haringeys Labour whip. He detested everyone who disagreed with him. And he always got others to do his dirty work.
Now began a campaign of intimidation that set the template for those carried out by Corbyns Momentum shock troops 40 years later. And, just like today, the man secretly driving it all swore blind that it had nothing to do with him.
So Corbyn quietly ordered junior councillors to propose motions to destabilise the moderates, encouraged activists to confront his ideological enemies and energetically recruited far-Leftists as Labour members.
Meetings of the Hornsey Labour Party grew raucous. Corbyn was encouraging all the Left groups to join, says Toby Harris, its chairman. Some arrived with fake names, especially the hardliners.
Jeremy Corbyn is condemned as 'not fit to govern' after devastating expose Jeremy Corbyn was last night condemned as not fit to govern following a devastating new expose by one of Britains leading investigative authors. Tom Bower has spent 18 months talking to those who know Corbyn best to create the most in-depth portrait ever compiled of the Labour leader, including shocking details about the anti-Semitism of his supporters and his duplicity over Brexit. The damning profile comes amid increasing claims that despairing Labour MPs are poised to break away from Corbyn and form their own party. In his new book, Dangerous Hero serialised from today in The Mail on Sunday Bower reveals that Corbyn: Was secretly delighted by the Brexit result despite campaigning for Remain; Inspired attacks on Jewish and moderate Labour MPs, and did nothing to protect them; Has such a chaotic professional and personal life that one close friend and adviser says: He is not fit to be leader of the Labour Party or Prime Minister; Followed Lenin and Trotskys blueprint to seize power, purge moderates and crush dissent while playing the nice guy and letting Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell to do the scary work as key allies, including union backer Len McCluskey, drew up lists of opponents to be deselected; Employs staff in his office who are described as lazy and p***ed on 100,000 a year; Lacks the mental agility to chair all but the most basic political meetings; Harbours a lifelong jealousy of the rich and successful that started when he flunked his A-levels and dropped out of his polytechnic degree, although he claimed he left because of a row with a lecturer; Almost had his house repossessed after running up 30,000 in debts; Had a series of relationships with younger women after separating from wife Claudia, conducting them in the basement of their shared house while Claudia was living with their three sons and a toy boy on the top floors; Believes that anyone who disagrees with uncontrolled immigration is racist ; Has no interest in culture or in reading books; Abandoned his vegetarian principles when he was invited to eat meat with Cuban leader Fidel Castro; Was on the brink of retiring to Wiltshire to keep bees when he was persuaded to run for leader. Last night, Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis reacted to the revelations by saying: What Corbyn has done to his own party is shameful, what he would do to our country would be a tragedy. He is not fit to govern. Corbyn provoked further fury last night by snubbing a showdown with his MPs over anti-Semitism, due to be held at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party tomorrow. Corbyn, along with party general secretary Jennie Formby, have pleaded prior engagements despite the MPs warning that Labour risks being seen as institutionally anti-Semitic. But last night a Labour source insisted that Corbyn was never expected to be or scheduled to be at Mondays meeting. As the anti-Semitism row rages, this newspaper has obtained shocking messages directed at Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger. She was branded a dirty little Zionist rat and taunted with vile abuse describing all Jews as c**** by pro-Corbyn supporters on an official Facebook page for a local Liverpool Labour Party constituency. In a statement issued in response to the attacks, Ms Berger said: This is all-too typical of the malign culture now bearing down on many hard-working MPs. Nothing will deter me from exposing the truth about the anti-Semitism allowed to fester on Jeremy Corbyns watch. Bowers investigation will further stoke the growing fury in the party over Mr Corbyns handling of the anti-Semitism scandal, his supporters hounding of moderate MPs and his deliberately incoherent stance on Brexit. The author describes how Momentum, the Left-wing movement which backs Corbyns leadership, engaged in permanent mobilisation to cement him in power. A loyalty list was compiled of Labour MPs, with every Jewish MP described as hostile or negative, while Chuka Umunna, whose father was Nigerian, was described as not politically black. When Mr McDonnell saw Mr Ummuna interviewed on television he seethed that he was not one of our people. Unite leader Len McCluskey, a key Corbyn bankroller, also had a little list in his inside pocket with names of people Id like to see go. Bowers book will fan the growing anger in Labour over Corbyns Brexit policy by setting out how both Corbyn and McDonnell wanted to campaign for Britain to leave the EU despite the vast majority of Labour MPs backing Remain because he regarded the EU as a capitalists club which would be a barrier to his project to build socialism. He also concluded that Brexit would destroy David Camerons Government and increase the chance of Labour getting into power. Corbyn only agreed to campaign to stay in the EU after protests from Remainers in his Shadow Cabinet, led by Hilary Benn. But his deliberate sabotage of his own campaign was highlighted when he decided to attend the British Kebab Awards rather than attend a major Remain rally, on the advice of his most senior adviser, Seumas Milne. Bower writes that, on the night of the referendum, Corbyn disappeared, and the following morning was seen laughing over breakfast with his team. He says: Although Milne and McDonnell admitted to voting Leave, Corbyn would deny that he had done so. Further evidence has also emerged about Corbyns real anti-EU views. Footage of him addressing the Durham Miners Gala in 2010, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, shows him condemning the worlds bankers, International Monetary Fund, European Union for being utterly united in what they want. Utterly united in deflation, suppressing the economy, and creating unemployment. The revelations come as at least six Labour MPs who object to Corbyns policy on Brexit are believed to be in talks about a breakaway movement. Corbyn threw his party into turmoil last week by setting out a series of demands to Theresa May in return for Labours support for her Brexit deal, including membership of a customs union. The move enraged many of his pro-Remain MPs, including Mr Umunna, who called it totally demoralising because it would kill off their plans for a second referendum. Tory chairman Brandon Lewis added: For decades Jeremy Corbyn peddled his blinkered world view and hard-Left ideology from the Commons backbenches happier to sow dissent than heal division, to criticise than to seek consensus. He is not a backbench MP any more he is a man who wants to be our Prime Minister but one who still refuses to accept the responsibilities that come with leadership. He failed to face facts over the Salisbury poisoning, he has shamefully failed to root out racism in his own ranks and he has failed to set out a credible plan for Brexit. He has stood by as the Labour Party, with its proud tradition of decency and patriotism, succumbed to the mentality of mob rule and has stayed silent while his own MPs are bullied and hounded online. Advertisement
The 1979 General Election loomed and Corbyn was certain Labour would win, especially in Hornsey, a marginal seat. The chosen candidate was Ted Knight, a 45-year-old unmarried Trotskyite and leader of Lambeth Council as debt-ridden and rotten as Haringey. Always dressed in a dark suit, foul-mouthed Knight addressed everyone as Comrade, always delivered with a hint of menace.
In a campaign leaflet issued by Corbyn, Knight pledged to weaken the capitalist police who are an enemy of the working class, pay not a penny for defence, and repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act at the height of the IRAs bombing campaign.
Going well beyond Labours official policy, the two men also advocated mass nationalisation of banks, major shops and even newspapers all without compensation.
Targeting the immigrant vote, Corbyn spread the word that Labour would abolish border controls. Tories accused his canvassers of telling West Indian immigrants theyd be sent home if Labour lost.
Yet despite his best efforts, on May 3, 1979, Mrs Thatcher swept to power.
Not surprisingly, Haringey became one of the new Tory governments prime targets.
Over the previous five years, the council had hired an extra 1,000 staff and accumulated a 6 million deficit, yet its services were deteriorating. Endless strikes, enthusiastically encouraged by Corbyn, had meant uncollected rubbish, closed schools and unrepaired council homes.
Now, Thatcher forbade all councils to increase their debts and, at the same time, reduced their government grants. Most sought to improve efficiency, but Corbyn demanded that Haringeys Labour group defy the Government by setting illegally high rates.
Well be personally surcharged, the moderates retorted, fearing that their privately owned homes would be seized to pay the fines.
Corbyn continued to demand the sacrifice, without revealing that his own flat had been bought with a GLC mortgage, and was therefore safe from repossession.
Wheres that member of Militant who just won in Hayes? asked Greater London Council leader Ken Livingstone jocularly about a trusted comrade in his sprawling headquarters opposite Parliament.
Thats me! replied John McDonnell. And Ive left Militant. Livingstone admired McDonnells macho form of class-based politics. The Trotskyites fondness for a violent revolution to topple the capitalists, said Livingstone, had been learned during his training as a supporter of Militant Tendency the hard-Left faction eventually defeated by Neil Kinnock.
Livingstone brought McDonnell out of the shadows to make him GLC deputy and, together with Corbyn, set out trying to destroy Thatchers government. But the 1983 General Election famously fought on a manifesto dubbed the longest suicide note in history was a catastrophe for Labour, if not for Corbyn, whose exhaustive campaigning won him a seat as MP for Islington North.
Although he enjoyed his new status, for Corbyn real life was outside Parliament.
Smash the Tory state! he would yell into his megaphone on endless marches through Islington.
Nevertheless, once Corbyn left Haringey Council, his image began to change an illusion that would end up having catastrophic consequences for everyone who fell for it.
Few at Westminster had witnessed his vituperative campaign against moderate Labour councillors. And many saw him as a good guy because of the way he always employed a mild manner in debate. The hatred and divisions recalled by Haringey councillors at nasty meetings orchestrated by Corbyn were lost in a smokescreen of indifference.
Still, some saw through him. After the 1992 General Election handed the Conservatives their fourth successive victory, Corbyns constituency agent Keith Veness resigned. Ive had enough, he told his MP. Youre an anarchic shambles, without any discipline.
In particular, he was fed up with the candidates obsession with leaflets. Theres so much paper around that no one can open the doors, he complained.
Corbyns financial indiscipline was another irritation. Whenever Veness protested that there was no money for another leaflet, Corbyn replied: Well find it.
When on May 1, 1997, Tony Blair secured Labours return to power after 18 years, even Corbyn could not resist celebrating. The other good news for Corbyn was the selection of John McDonnell, one of 145 new Labour MPs.
McDonnells arrival in the Commons strengthened Corbyn, the Liverpudlians education and understanding of Marxism compensating for Corbyns intellectual deficits.
While Corbyn was uncertain how Marxist ideology fitted in with lip service to capitalist democracy, McDonnell admitted he was a member of Labour only as a tactic, because it was a useful vehicle.
Discounting the ballot box as a means to change the world, McDonnell who called himself the last communist in Parliament explained: Theres another way too which in the old days we called insurrection.
Now we call it direct action. Its when the Government dont do as you want, you get in the streets or you occupy.
McDonnell was taken aback when Corbyn announced he was standing for the Labour leadership after Ed Milibands 2015 defeat. I thought we decided not to put up anyone from the Left, he said. Well, weve decided that we need a debate, replied Corbyn.
The only obstacle was obtaining enough nominations and Corbyn called every Labour MP, asking for their support.
Hes a good bloke, many agreed, mentioning that, unlike McDonnell, Corbyn was always polite, and never openly threatening. Soon his name was on the ticket.
Many of those who backed him quickly considered it the greatest mistake of their career.
Now came a key addition to Corbyns inner sanctum: Seumas Milne, his 57-year-old intellectual consigliere, an alumnus of Winchester and Oxford, and the son of Alasdair Milne, ex-director general of the BBC.
Known as a Tankie when he joined the Guardian as a journalist because he supported the Soviet suppression of the uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, Milne praised Stalin for offering socialist political alternatives.
There were lessons to be learned, he wrote, from the Soviet success: For all its brutalities and failures communism in the USSR, Eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education and job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. It encompassed genuine idealism and commitment.
Milnes political convictions and intellectual eloquence were to prove vital in helping Corbyn get elected Labour leader in September 2015 in a stunning victory that even dwarfed the mandate for Blair in 1994.
Youre too nice to be leader, Ken Livingstone told the most unexpected winner in his partys history.
No ones scared of you.
John McDonnell will do all the scary stuff, Corbyn replied.
Just like in the 1970s, Corbyns winning power was quickly followed by chaos.
While the new leader wrestled with Shadow Cabinet appointments, office phones rang unanswered, messages remained unacknowledged and arrangements for meetings disappeared because there was no diary. The few scheduled meetings that did take place were abandoned after Corbyn failed to appear, often because he was averse to making decisions. The atmosphere was fraught, tense and unhappy, reported adviser Harry Fletcher, because the staff were terrified of having power.
In the weeks after Corbyns election, most outsiders were still unaware that Trotskyite groups were disbanding so their members could qualify to join Labour in targeted constituencies. Many came from Momentum. Their attempt to rejoin was supported by Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, who saw the move as helping to purge the party of moderates still unfinished business.
Leaving his office (decorated with a large portrait of Lenin), McCluskey set off to tell a meeting: We may lose some people along the way. All I can say to that is, Good riddance. Ive got a little list here in my inside pocket with names of people Id like to see go.
Although he never read Trotsky, he adopted his ideas to foment what Trotsky had called a permanent state of unrest as a prelude to eventual victory (pictured: Corbyn aged 18 in 1967)
He was voicing the private thoughts of Corbyn, McDonnell and Milne. In public, all four talked about a kinder, gentler politics, at odds with the campaign of hatred, unprecedented in British politics, which then followed.
The conspirators were helped by the list of party members names, email addresses and telephone numbers that had been handed to Momentum founder Jon Lansman during the leadership election.
It was now used ruthlessly to flush out their foes. The first traces emerged in mid-October 2015: Hilary Benn was voted off Labours National Executive Committee and replaced by a loyalist.
Vegetarian... until invited to eat meat with Castro Pictured: Fidel Castro enjoys a steak dinner Corbyn had been a vegetarian ever since he witnessed the treatment of farm animals in Shropshire as a boy. But then came a visit to Cuba with his wife Claudia as official guests. The highlight was dinner with Castro, pictured right. In his welcoming speech, Castro hailed Corbyn as a trusted friend against American imperialism. The main course was meat. To Claudias bemusement, rather than mentioning the fact that he was a vegetarian, her husband swallowed the beef with his principles. Advertisement
Next, Corbyn supporters challenged moderate Labour councillors in Portsmouth, Lambeth and Brighton. Naturally, Corbyn denied any responsibility. I want to make it crystal clear, he told questioners, I do not support changes to make it easier to deselect MPs.
Milne introduced ideological discipline to Corbyns office. He persuaded him to make Katy Clark, a hard-Left bruiser, his political secretary. To assist her, Corbyn appointed the Trotskyist Andrew Fisher, who was advised to delete blogs describing his enthusiasm for violence.
Clarks arrival aggravated the office chaos. Meetings arranged to start at 9am were delayed because no one arrived until 11, and some staff did not come to work at all. They were lazy and p***ed on 100,000 a year, said a member of Corbyns team. If, by chance, sufficient numbers had arrived by midday, the next hurdle was to find Corbyn.
But even once he was located, aides quickly discovered their leader lacked the mental agility to chair a meeting without a clear brief of what he was to say. Milne was well aware he was serving an indecisive man prone to change his opinion depending on whoever he had last spoken to.
Corbyns malleability played to his own strengths, but also required careful handling. Too many outside the room judged Corbyn thick. At meetings, Milne sat expressionless when Corbyn asked the room nervously: Whats wrong? In response, there was silence.
Meanwhile, the relentless campaign against his enemies was directed from the Labour leaders office. Milne and others anonymously briefed social media websites such as The Canary and Squawk Box to target anyone who stood up to them.
The vitriol was given rocket fuel by Momentum, by then employing permanent staff and strengthened by Len McCluskeys union money.
Without a leader or an ideology, many MPs were cowed by Labours shock troops, led by Lansman, a battle-hardened party activist. Based in his office overlooking Euston station, Lansman claimed to control 90,000 supporters spread through a hundred groups across the country.
He wants unrestricted immigration... anyone who disagrees is racist Show of support: Corbyn celebrates with Diane Abbott and Bernie Grant, dressed in their parents national costume, as they mark their first day in Parliament in 1987 Dressed in a dirty jacket and creased trousers, Jeremy Corbyn arrived in Westminster as a new MP in the summer of 1983. He immediately told friends that Parliament was a waste of time with no relevance to his Islington constituents, especially the immigrant communities. To meet them, he set up offices in the Red Rose Centre in Holloway where his door was always open to a tide of human misery: Cypriots, Jamaicans, Indians, Pakistanis, South Africans, South Americans, Somalis, West Saharans and Kurds all sought his help. The procession of petitioners reinforced his conviction that Britain should allow unrestricted immigration and offer the worlds destitute an open invitation to share our wealth. In his opinion, all immigrant communities were victims of white imperialists, and the British state owed them a financial obligation. Anyone who disagreed was racist. Four years later Corbyn was back in Westminster for another first day of the new Parliament. To celebrate a new era, Britains first three black MPs all Labour marched into the Commons chamber together. Paul Boateng, Diane Abbott and Bernie Grant, together with the Asian Keith Vaz, each dressed in their parents national costumes, created an unprecedented spectacle as they walked towards the Speaker to take the oath. Acting as part-supplicant and part-valet, Corbyn walked immediately behind, pleased to have a place as the honorary white man for the black caucus. Look at Jeremy, said Brian Wilson, a new Scottish MP, to George Galloway, who had also been newly elected. He would black up if he could. Advertisement
He spoke about permanent mobilisation to defend Corbyn, not least action by Momentums members to trigger mandatory deselection of untrusted MPs.
To root them out, in early 2016 a loyalty list was drafted to classify MPs into five categories, from core group to hostile. It listed only 17 unquestioned loyalists, including McDonnell and Abbott. Every Jewish MP was hostile or negative, including Ed Miliband. Chuka Umunna, another hostile, was described by a Momentum activist as not politically black.
While authorising these classifications from his own office, Corbyn the consummate hypocrite publicly ordered his MPs to cease their personal abuse, public sniping and anonymous briefings.
When, over the summer of 2016 Corbyn faced a challenge to his leadership, Momentum activists went to war against the 172 rebel MPs on Twitter, issuing stark threats of deselection, violence and even murder. Fearing for their safety, some MPs hesitated to leave their offices.
Meanwhile, the purge of the moderates intensified.
Hundreds of Momentum members stormed into the annual meeting of Brighton and Hoves Labour Party in an attempt to deselect MP Peter Kyle. Momentum directed similar tactics against Thangam Debbonaire, the MP for Bristol West, while she was being treated for breast cancer.
Other women MPs accused John McDonnell of urging supporters at rallies to demonstrate outside their constituency offices. A brick was thrown through a window of Angela Eagles office.
She directly accused Corbyn of allowing a culture of bullying to develop. Its being done in your name, another of the victims told Corbyn. He replied with the old lie: I dont allow bullying.
High on the list of targets was Ben Bradshaw, the MP for Exeter, who denounced Corbyn as a destructive combination of incompetence, deceit and menace.
John Woodcock, another victim, reviled Corbyn and McDonnell for having set themselves up as the high priests of honest and straight-talking politics. Yet as soon as they are challenged, their operation squirms, spins and distorts like the very worst of anything that came before.
But, once again, the bullyboy tactics worked.
In the new leadership contest, Corbyn won 61.8 per cent of the votes, even better than a year earlier. Election success against Theresa May in June 2017 unleashed yet more bloodletting.
No jobs for traitors, declared McDonnell on seeing his partys rising black star Chuka Umunna interviewed on TV. Umunna, McDonnell seethed, was not one of our people.
In a chillingly Stalinist twist, Momentum turned against 50 Labour MPs accused of failing to praise Corbyn during their election campaigns.
Arsenal fan... who finds game crude and awful Fairweather fan: Corbyn with ex-Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger Over the years Corbyn has made great play about his alleged passion for his local football club, Arsenal. But, according to his old friend and constituency agent Keith Veness, he regarded the game as crude and awful, and much preferred not to go. So Veness took Corbyns sons to matches, while their father went to political meetings. Jeremy wasnt interested in football, recalled Veness. Except, that was, on Cup Final day when, no doubt, his attendance was sure to generate positive man- of-the-people media coverage. Advertisement
The pressure to pledge allegiance to their leader was unpleasant and intense.
Although she was on maternity leave, Liverpool MP Luciana Berger was told by a Unite official who had recently been elected on to her constituencys executive committee to get on board quite quickly now, and apologise to Corbyn. She duly succumbed.
The intimidation of Berger was not unique. Many female Labour MPs, particularly Jews, complained of renewed abuse by the Left.
As in 1970s Haringey, Corbyn did nothing to protect them. He inspired the attacks, then stood back. Now was the moment, he agreed with Lansman, to revive the deselections interrupted by the 2017 election.
Momentum members in local branches were empowered to remove Blairite MPs. In Hampstead, Enfield, Lewisham, Hastings, Mansfield, Stoke and Brighton, moderate Labour MPs were under siege.
Then came a twist to bring the story of Corbyns toxic brand of politics full circle.
In his old stomping group of Haringey, members of Momentum intimidated the moderate councillors to succumb to what they termed a democracy review.
Claire Kober, the boroughs popular Labour leader, resigned after ten years because the activists anti-Semitism and misogyny, she said, got too much.
Richard Horton, the chairman of Haringeys Stroud Green branch, complained of aggressive Marxists destroying my mental health and damaging my family life and he too departed.
How proud the young Jeremy Corbyn would have been.
Dangerous Hero: Corbyns Ruthless Plot For Power, by Tom Bower, is published by William Collins on February 21 at 20. Offer price 16 (20 per cent discount) until February 24. Pre-order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over 15. Spend 30 on books and get FREE premium delivery.
'She was shocked when we entered': Jeremy Corbyn drove two friends to his flat because he WANTED them to see new girlfriend Diane Abbott naked in his bed, biography reveals
Shortly after his first wife Jane Chapman walked out, Corbyn encouraged his friend Keith Veness and another activist to join him posting leaflets around a council estate.
At about 11.30am he announced We need to collect more leaflets, and drove them back to his flat. The three walked in to discover a naked woman on the bed. Diane Abbott, Corbyn proudly announced, was his new girlfriend. He wanted us to see her in his bed, recalled Veness. She was shocked when we entered.
Abbott, who quickly wrapped herself in a duvet, was the antithesis of a white, middle-class English woman. Born to Jamaican immigrants in 1953, she went to a grammar school in London, then to Cambridge.
Disappointed lover: Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott began their relationship in the 1970s
As the first female black student from a state school at Newnham College, she enjoyed a hectic social life and became firmly hard Left, passionately committed to the class struggle.
After graduating, she began working as a race relations officer at the National Council for Civil Liberties. Belying the human rights groups name, her colleagues rummaged through her desk and found her private diary. One entry recorded her sexual fantasy of being manhandled by her lover Corbyn a bearded Fenian and NUPE national organiser.
There were also descriptions of a motorbike holiday with him around France and a passionate romp in a Cotswolds field, which she described as her finest half-hour.
Diane Abbott became passionately committed to the class struggle
Corbyns passion for Abbott ended any hope Jane Chapman might have had that their relationship could be restored. He had found a political soul mate who regarded Britain as the country that invented racism, and echoed his praise for the IRA. Feisty and, in her early years, good-looking, Abbott even persuaded Corbyn to change his habits to suit her, at least for a while: he enjoyed social evenings with her and friends at restaurants and dinner parties.
Abbott secured a job as a TV producer but fretted that Corbyn and Chapman were still meeting at Haringey Council.
Chapman recalled a nervous, tense and slightly hostile Abbott knocking on her door one evening, and making her demands clear. Get the hell out of here, said Abbott. Youre in the media and everywhere and I want you out of town.
I cant, replied Chapman, Ive been elected to office.
Later, Chapman explained: She wanted a clear run. I was in the media a lot then because of my political work and she wished I wasnt.
Abbott also grew fed-up with Corbyns way of life; just as he had ignored Chapman, he began ignoring her.
At 27, she wanted marriage and eventually children. Corbyn wanted neither.
One morning, Bernie Grant, the firebrand Tottenham MP, called Keith Veness. Dianes had enough of Jeremy. Shes moving out. Come and give us a hand.
Labour activist Keith Veness arrived at Corbyn's flat to find its rooms strewn with papers and clothing
Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn at day three of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on September 25
Veness arrived in a large van at Corbyns flat, finding its rooms strewn with papers and clothing.
Its hard to have a relationship with someone who doesnt come home for two weeks, said Abbott defensively.
She, Grant and Veness set about packing away her things.
Suddenly the door opened, and in walked Corbyn. Hello, mate, he said to Grant. Then he saw Veness carrying out Abbotts possessions. After hearing why the two men were there, he walked away without comment; he was off to a meeting, he said.
Appalled by the way Abbott had been treated, Grant chased after Corbyn.
Get real, he said, knowing full well that Corbyn remained insult-proof.
Later, Corbyn would recall: Diane always says to me, You learned everything you know in Shropshire, and unfortunately youve forgotten none of it.
His idea of fun? Cold Tesco baked beans or sitting on the floor singing IRA songs: Book lifts the lid on life for Corbyn's first wife that turned into a succession of political demos
1974 was the tumultuous year Britain endured two General Elections. It was also the year that, during endless hours of leafleting and canvassing, Corbyn met the woman whod become his first wife.
Jane Chapman was 23, an attractive graduate studying for a doctorate at the London School of Economics. Jeremy professed love early on, she recalled, and said that I was the best of the best, so I thought this must be the thing.
Consumed by what she described as a whirlwind three-month romance he constantly urged us to marry she agreed because he was friendly and lively and seemed bright and not bad-looking.
'Jane was shocked that Corbyn didnt read a single book in four years of marriage' (pictured: Jane Chapman)
Naturally, both were hard-Left activists she says Jeremy was a Trotskyist, no doubt about it and their respective local Labour branches selected each to stand in the council elections for the North London borough of Haringey. Both were elected and two days later, on May 4, 1974, they were married at the town hall.
Neither set of parents was impressed by their childs choice. Chapmans mother, a lifetime Tory, was not pleased that her ambitious daughter was marrying a poorly off, uneducated trade union official.
Corbyns mother Naomi disliked her new alpha female daughter-in-law. It was wrong, she thought, to have such an obvious competitive element in a marriage.
Tensions were aggravated when Corbyns brother Piers arrived at the wedding looking even more scruffy than normal. Embarrassed, Naomi swept him off to buy a shirt and a suit, but they did not return until after the ceremony.
Following a brief honeymoon in Ireland, the newlyweds returned to a tiny ground-floor studio room in Haringey, moving a year later to a bigger ground-floor flat nearby. There, several chickens, a cat christened Harold Wilson and a dog named Mango ran around the garden.
Married life became a succession of political meetings and demos. Some mornings they would head for a picket line at 5.30am to support strikers.
Among the biggest surprises for Chapman was the total absence of books in her husbands life.
Jane Chapman addressing a Labour Party event in 1975 during her marriage to Jeremy Corbyn
Throughout the four years of their marriage, he never read a single one. He did not think deeply about ideology or political philosophy. Her initial judgment that he was bright was mistaken.
His other handicap, Corbyn was acutely aware, was his lack of a working-class pedigree especially when his childhood family home had been Yew Tree Manor, a five-bedroom 17th Century farmhouse in Shropshire.
From there his parents scruffy, unconventional but undeniably middle-class moved to a new home in Wiltshire, chosen to enable them to pursue their burgeoning interest in archaeology.
During Corbyn and Chapmans visits for Sunday lunch, politics were politely discussed, but Corbyns parents never mentioned that they had been present at the Battle of Cable Street, or that his father David had ever considered going to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
Their sons introduction of those key events into the biographies of his parents would come much later. As Jane Chapman discovered, her husbands understanding of their domestic finances was no better than his dismal grasp of economics. In line with his lifelong disapproval of aspiration and success, he never talked about buying a bigger home or car or increasing his income. When he returned home at night, hed happily open a can of beans, swallow them cold and declare himself satisfied.
Occasionally, he returned late from a meeting of the Hornsey Labour Party with friends to sing IRA songs while they all got drunk on beer.
He would sit on the floor in his greasy, unwashed army surplus store jacket, oblivious to his wifes irritation.
They rarely went out together. Dinner invitations were refused. Chapman spent lonely evenings in their small flat with Mango the dog and Harold Wilson the cat as her only companions, while Corbyn met political cronies.
Among them was fellow Haringey councillor Bernie Grant, a bombastic Black Power Marxist from Guyana.
Its racism to control immigration, Grant frequently declared an opinion that Corbyn quickly adopted.
In the summer of 1976, Corbyn and Chapman set off on his 250cc Czech motorbike for a camping holiday across Europe.
Jeremy always chose to go on holiday in August, explained Chapman, because there were no political meetings. She feared the holiday would be as uncomfortable as the previous year in France, Spain and Portugal.
The ordeal was not just riding pillion on Corbyns bumpy bike, but his passion for abstinence.
While Chapman wanted to sleep in a proper bed and eat in interesting restaurants, Corbyn insisted on a small tent and cooking tins of beans on a single ring Calor gas stove. The nearest Chapman got to comfort was after a rainstorm flooded their tent outside Prague.
Following a brief honeymoon in Ireland, the newlyweds returned to a tiny ground-floor studio room in Haringey, moving a year later to a bigger ground-floor flat nearby
Begrudgingly, Corbyn agreed to spend the night under cover not in a hotel, but in a student hostel. He became furious when his motorbike broke down in Czechoslovakia, assuming that because it had been manufactured there it would be easy to have it repaired. Instead, he was introduced to the realities of a communist economy.
The bike had been made exclusively for export, and no Czech garage mechanic knew how to fix it. For two days he fumed until it was finally repaired.
During their journey, Chapman discovered that her husband was not interested in equality within marriage, or in sharing any domestic chores. He never spoke about sex, music, fashion or books. He put class first.
Equally distressing was his indifference to Europes most beautiful cities. In Vienna, he refused to enter the palace of Schonbrunn, the Kaisers summer retreat, because it was royal. You go in, he told her, Ill stay outside.
European culture offended him. He stood in Viennas Ringstrasse said by many to be the most beautiful boulevard in the world and pronounced it capitalist. He walked past all the museums and art galleries, and found no pleasure in medieval towns.
In villages, he was only interested to watch the peasants going about their lives. In Prague, soaking wet from torrential rain, he did not lament a missed visit to Hradcany castle, and turned down a walk through the old town. Nor did he comment on the dilapidation of the citys old buildings, all neglected by its communist overlords. Preservation of architecture and heritage, recalled Chapman, didnt appear to be on his agenda.
For similar reasons he had always refused to accompany her to Paris, where she did occasional research, or to Los Angeles to visit her aunt. He spoke only about elections, campaigns and demos, although his knowledge even of these was incomplete.
By contrast, he expressed a deep interest in Britains manhole covers, especially their dates of manufacture: My mother always said theres history in drain covers.
Most travellers who crossed into Czechoslovakia from Austria during the Cold War were shocked by the experience.
Running just behind the customs buildings were two rows of electrified barbed wire and between them a minefield. Looking out over the eerie silence were armed soldiers in guard towers, with orders to shoot on sight anyone approaching from the Czech side.
Those caught within five miles of the border without police permission could expect imprisonment. Any Western visitor riding a motorbike through those fortifications would be left in no doubt that Eastern Europe was a prison. Czechs were badly dressed, had limited food, and lived in decaying buildings.
Czechoslovakia, a rich democracy before 1939, was a police state. But Corbyn uttered not a single word of criticism, and expressed no sympathy for the countrys 1968 attempt at liberation from the Soviet Union.
He said nothing about the thousands of skilled and scholarly Czechs forced to take menial employment as street cleaners or worse, as punishment for opposing the Soviet occupation.
He was a Tankie, said his old friend and constituency agent Keith Veness, meaning that Corbyn had supported the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 and the Prague uprising 12 years later.
When in conversation Veness mentioned Stalins cruelties, Jeremy walked away. He couldnt do political arguments.
He was a communist fellow-traveller. The bastard never apologised for the Moscow trials.
The Corbyns returned to London with Jeremy unaware that their marriage was cracking up.
Jeremy never thought there was anything wrong, recalled Chapman. He assumed that, because our politics were compatible, that amounted to a proper relationship.
She tried to make it work, said Keith Veness, but he was uninterested. He never came home, and the relationship just slowly broke up.
Chapmans requests for more than just a political life cinemas, restaurants, clubs, children were ignored. He didnt acknowledge my emotional side, said Chapman. He doesnt recognise a womans feelings.
At Christmas she prepared a special five-course vegetarian lunch for Corbyn and his brother Piers. They stuffed it down their gullets and never said thanks, she recalled. Her husband, she knew, would have been happy with a can of beans: Usually Tesco, not Heinz, but he wouldnt know the difference.
Just before Christmas 1979, Chapman walked out of the family home. According to Keith Veness, she just gave up on him. As she packed her belongings, Corbyn told his wife: You should read Simone de Beauvoir.
Clearly, ever the non-reader, he had heard about de Beauvoir from someone, and had failed to understand the authors philosophy. Women, de Beauvoir complained, were regarded as the second sex, and defined by their relationship to men. To rescue themselves, they should elevate themselves by exercising the same choice as men precisely what Chapman had decided to do.
Corbyn was exhibiting all the contradictions of an unresolved personality, disconnected from the real world.
His self-portrayal as a universal do-gooder was at odds with his inability to care for his wife, or indeed any female companion. He was quite incapable of understanding why his marriage had collapsed.
He thought I left him on a feminist kick, recalled Chapman, but it was because I wanted some fun. His lack of emotional awareness didnt change. My emotional life as part of a relationship was forgotten.
Finally, she realised that his judgment at the beginning of their relationship that she was the best of the best was because I was the only woman who would put up with his political obsessions.
Nearly 20 years later, Corbyn invited Chapman for tea in the Commons. You should lighten up, he advised her, convinced as usual that he had been in the right.
If anyone lacked a sense of humour, thought Chapman, it was her joyless former husband.
Married to a joyless fanatic: How Jeremy Corbyn neglected the mother of his three sons and cost them the family home because of his chaotic finances, new book claims
The father-to-be was distracted and anxious. His wife Claudia was due to give birth to their first child at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, and Jeremy Corbyn headed for the telephone outside the delivery room.
If his old friend and constituency agent Keith Veness was surprised to get the call, he was even more startled by what Corbyn running for re-election as an MP in the 1987 General Election had to say.
Im really worried, the lifelong Marxist many believe will be Britains next Prime Minister complained as his new wife lay in a hospital bed preparing to bring their baby son into the world. We havent put out that leaflet about Northern Ireland.
Havent you got something more serious to worry about? asked Veness.
Whats that?
Youre about to be a father. Ive never heard of anyone who lost an election because they didnt get a leaflet out.
But then Jeremy Corbyn has never done family life like everyone else.
When Claudia tried to hire a cleaner, Corbyns friends asked if his wife had bourgeois tendencies
He met Claudia Bracchitta, the fiercely intelligent and good-looking daughter of Chilean exiles, the previous year at a protest meeting against her homelands military dictatorship, addressed by Ken Livingstone.
She wanted to get off with me, Livingstone later ungallantly recalled, but I had to go off to meet Kate, my partner, so she went for Jeremy.
Claudia was already married, but by the following year she was pregnant with Corbyns child and rushed through a divorce to marry her new admirer.
Neither of Corbyns parents was present at the wedding: his father had died the previous year and his mother was not invited.
In fact, he didnt tell even his close friends about his marriage.
Within little more than a decade the relationship was dead, killed not by, as they told the world, principled political differences about whether to send their son to a grammar school but by Corbyns financial incompetence, his neglect of his family, his arid lifestyle and his apparent misogyny.
Ive got all these debts, Corbyn told his long-time friend Reg Race as they sat in the spartan living room of the politicians semi-detached house in North London in late 1996. Can you work out why?
Political upbringing: Corbyns sons Sebastian, Benjamin and Tommy applaud their father at last years Labour Conference
I dont need to be a genius to tell him whats wrong, Race thought. Hes in danger of bankruptcy. Across the room sat his host and Claudia, positioned unnaturally far apart. Race, a former hard-Left MP whod transformed himself into a successful financial consultant, had been summoned by Claudia as a mutual friend to solve their differences.
The papers in front of him showed that the Corbyns owed their bank 30,000, the equivalent of twice that figure today. Several personal loans had been guaranteed by Corbyns income as an MP and he was also burdened by high mortgage repayments.
As a last resort, the bank could threaten to recover its money by seizing his home. Youve run out of loans, said Race. Unchecked, within five years the debts would be 100,000. Corbyns annual salary was 43,000. Claudia interrupted. This was entirely the result of her husbands folly, she said. She and their three young sons Sebastian, Benjamin and Thomas had little money even to buy food and clothes. We cant afford a decent life.
The principal cause of the debts was the Red Rose Community Centre in Holloway a bar and dance area on the ground floor of a building that fulfilled his commitment to open his party office in his North London constituency. Corbyn was paying its rent and some staff salaries out of his own pocket. Simultaneously, he owed a large sum to the Inland Revenue for his employees unpaid National Insurance and pension contributions.
The financial chaos was matched by his management style. His employees complained about being both undervalued and underpaid.
Among the casualties was Liz Phillipson, his battle-scarred assistant, who had resigned rather than continue to tolerate Corbyns fecklessness. You havent got enough money for what youre doing, Race said bluntly. You should close your office and move to the Commons.
I wont, replied Corbyn.
Oh, come on, Jeremy, you know hes right, Claudia said, her voice rising. Corbyn mumbled, then fell silent. His body language showed he felt no inclination to follow Races advice. Claudia was becoming noticeably agitated. It was clear a breakdown was coming, thought Race.
He was not surprised by the tension. Throughout their marriage, Corbyns lack of interest in material things had meant that he ignored her need for comfort.
Debt-ridden: Jeremy Corbyn in the 1980s
At one stage she had planned for the family to move from Islington to leafy Kingston upon Thames, but was quickly disabused of the idea. He has to live in his constituency, a political aide told her.
She got the same short shrift from her husband when she tried to hire a cleaner a move that prompted one of Corbyns friends to question whether his wife had bourgeois tendencies.
To Corbyn, Claudias list of complaints was familiar. Over the years, a succession of women had made the same observations: he never changed his ways, and he rarely thought about them.
He wore the same shabby clothes, ate the same bland food and stuck to the same dogmatic political convictions he first developed as a teenager.
Admirers hailed his inflexibility as proof of his integrity. Detractors blamed his limited intelligence and lack of education for his failure to appreciate others.
Long before the onset of their financial problems, life with Corbyn had proved difficult for Claudia. Labour MP Tony Banks witnessed just how difficult as one day he walked into Westminsters central lobby and spotted her standing by the wall, tearfully holding her children.
Jeremy, Claudia explained, had promised to meet her two hours earlier. He had not turned up. Banks took the four Corbyns to the Commons family room and went off in search. Eventually he found Corbyn in a committee room. Youd better come out and look after your children, he suggested. Corbyn did not seem fazed for a moment. Banks was not surprised. When pushed to have a day off, he recalled, Jeremys idea was to take his partner to Highgate Cemetery and study the grave of Karl Marx.
His old friend Reg Race had experienced something similar when he had invited the Corbyn family for a weeks holiday at his country home in Derbyshire.
On the day, Claudia arrived with the children.
Wheres Jeremy? asked Mandy, Regs wife. I dont know, replied Claudia with sadness. He just told me, Ive got to go to a meeting, and I havent seen him since.
Over the following 36 hours, Claudia called several numbers searching for her husband. Two days later he turned up, explaining his absence as a necessary sacrifice for the movement.
By the time Race was called in to help resolve Corbyns financial crisis, the marriage was all but over.
Corbyn had regularly picked wood from neighbourhood skips, and also collected railway junk as he criss-crossed the country on trains
That afternoon Race told his friend that he had little choice but to sell the family home.
Claudia agreed. Reluctantly, so did Corbyn and thereafter broke off his relations with Race. The messenger was to blame, a failure to take personal responsibility that left Race to conclude of the man hed worked closely with over three decades: Hes not fit to be leader of the Labour Party, and not fit to be Britains Prime Minister.
In early 1999, the Corbyns home was sold for 365,000 (730,000 today), and they downsized to a house in Mercers Road, a shabby street off Holloway Road.
On the day of the move, Corbyn was told by Claudia to empty the fridge. He forgot. He also forgot to clear the garage. Late in the afternoon, while their former homes new owner fumed on the pavement, the garage door was opened to reveal rubbish crammed to the ceiling.
Corbyn had regularly picked wood from neighbourhood skips, and also collected railway junk as he criss-crossed the country on trains. Boxes of safety lamps, metal signs, track signals and other paraphernalia had been stuffed in any old how. Late in the day, everything was finally shuttled across to the basement of Mercers Road, creating a new world of clutter.
The move brought one advantage. The building had been converted into bedsits, making the estrangement between Claudia and Corbyn easier.
She and their three sons took the top floors, where she lived with a young South American dubbed the toy boy, while Corbyn, in the basement, had relationships with a series of younger women.
The Labour leader has always done his best to conceal his chaotic personal life from the media which he loathes. His break-up with Claudia was no different, shrouded as it was with obfuscation and lies.
Late in 1999, while Corbyn was at a peace conference in The Hague, a journalist contacted his wife and asked whether the two had separated. She said their 12-year marriage had ended in 1997. She said she had wanted their 11-year-old son Ben to go to Queen Elizabeths grammar school in Barnet, but that Corbyn had stipulated that he should go instead to Holloway School, a failing local comprehensive.
From The Hague, Corbyn confirmed Claudias account. Defending his ideological purity against selective schools, he implied, was more important than his sons education or his marriage.
In a series of interviews, Claudia reinforced the same message. My childrens education is my absolute priority, and this situation left me with no alternative but to accept a place at Queen Elizabeth Boys School. I had to make the decision as a mother and a parent It isnt a story about making a choice, but about having no choice.
To the public, Corbyn appeared to have acquiesced in his wifes wishes, but, like so many communists, he had put his political principles first, and ended the marriage: he could not live with a woman who did not accept his beliefs.
The only dent to that image of ideological purity was Claudias revelation that Corbyn had agreed for another of their sons to spend two years at the local Montessori nursery, at 600 per term.
If that had been the last word on the subject, the notion that the marriage had broken up over Corbyns principles might have been plausible. But Claudia, possibly with Corbyns encouragement, went further. He is first the politician and second the parent, she said. Its very difficult when your ideals get in the way of family life It has been a horrendous decision.
Sixteen years later, the whole tale was expanded. Rosa Prince, Corbyns semi-authorised biographer, described, with Claudias help, a tormented family: Corbyn and Bracchitta went round and round in circles for months.
She would not send Ben to Holloway School and Corbyn could not bear for him to go to Queen Elizabeths In choosing Queen Elizabeths, Bracchitta was aware that she was ending her marriage.
Is this version correct? Friends say the marriage ended because of Corbyns behaviour his financial fecklessness, his thoughtless absences and his selfish refusal to do anything to make his wifes life more pleasant.
He told me that the marriage had ended long before the school bit, Ken Livingstone recalled. We had a chat at the time and he said his marriage had fallen apart over other things, not the school.
Livingstone had discovered that Corbyns authenticity was fictitious a confection for political appearances. Like his great hero Lenin, the Labour leader had mastered a critical ruse to grab public support: A lie told often enough, wrote the Soviet revolutionary, becomes the truth. Few politicians have deployed this tactic as ruthlessly and effectively as Jeremy Corbyn.
Principled? Corbyn secretly believed in Brexit... but 'campaigned' for Remain, bombshell book reveals
It will appal many of his young supporters but Corbyn welcomed David Camerons Referendum announcement because his Euroscepticism is long-standing and deep-rooted
Europe, he told President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela in 2014, had suffered appallingly because the EU was a capitalists club and a barrier to his lifes work to build socialism.
The EU, he believed, existed for greedy bankers and multinationals to exploit the working class.
If Britain voted to leave, and freed itself from Brussels control, a socialist government could prevent British investment abroad and control markets, tariffs and profits all contrary to EU laws.
Criticised: Corbyn angered Remainers with his appearance on the comedy show The Last Leg
Both Corbyn and McDonnell wanted to campaign for Britain to leave, but were challenged by Hilary Benn and others in the Shadow Cabinet. Reluctantly, Corbyn agreed to campaign for Remain. The Remainers chances of success, Corbyn knew, depended on Labour voters. Camerons fate was equally bound up in the outcome. If Britain voted Leave, Corbyn calculated, the PM would be humiliated and the Tories weakened. Those were good reasons not to appear on any platform alongside him. To Alan Johnson, appointed to lead Labours Remain campaign, Corbyns reluctance to preach the advantages of the EU was risible.
Within weeks of Johnson starting his work, tensions intensified. According to him, Corbyns closest associates were undermining his efforts.
Corbyn ignored him at meetings and found regular excuses not to appear on the Remainers platform while he continued to speak in favour of the IRA and Hamas.
Youre deliberately sending Jeremy to speak in areas where hes not needed, a journalist told Seumas Milne, Corbyns spin doctor. Dont be so stupid, said Milne, laughing. He would not dream of scuppering the vote.
Corbyn knew the contrary. For Labour supporters tempted to vote Leave, controlling immigration was critical, but to him those opposed to open borders were racist. To keep ideologically pure, he ordered party officials to remove every reference to immigration from Labours campaign. As he understood perfectly well, his stance was deeply damaging to Remain. Hilary Benn intervened. Entering Corbyns office, he said: You need to think in the language of the national interest.
Milne laughed. Whats funny about the national interest? asked Imran Ahmed, Benns assistant.
The EU, he believed, existed for greedy bankers and multinationals to exploit the working class
Milnes dismissive shrug sparked an outburst from Benn directed at Corbyn. Trashing Cameron, he said, was short-sighted. The Referendum could be lost. Milne started to interrupt. Shut up! Benn shouted. This is for elected people to discuss!
We wont speak about immigration or the national interest, Corbyn told Benn. Soon after, he removed from an important leaflet a personal endorsement written by a party official. The words he deleted ran: I am clear, just like my Shadow Cabinet, the trade union movement and our members, that it is in the interests of the people of this country to remain in the EU.
His not-so-subtle sabotage of his own campaign went on. On Milnes advice, Corbyn chose to star at the British Kebab Awards rather than attend a major Remain rally. Johnson was even more indignant about his leaders appearance in a white fur coat and black tie on The Last Leg, a Channel 4 comedy show.
Not only did Corbyn deliberately look unserious, but, to harm the campaign still further, he told the audience that he was only 7 or 7.5 out of 10 in favour of Europe.
Im not a huge fan of the EU, he said, smiling.
The result of the Referendum on June 23 shocked everyone. The puzzle on that momentous night was to locate Corbyn. He had disappeared his staff assumed he had gone home to sleep, and had turned his telephone off. After getting up late the following day, Corbyn was seen laughing over breakfast with his team. Although Milne and McDonnell admitted to voting Leave, Corbyn would deny that he had done so.
After a telephone conversation, his old friend Keith Veness believes that he did vote Leave, not least because he sounded so delighted.
Before Corbyn arrived at his office that morning, he publicly demanded that the Government should immediately apply for Article 50, the process to terminate Britains membership of the EU. Back then he saw no reason to prepare for negotiations or for a transition period.
He simply wanted Britain out of the European Union without establishing any relationship with the customs union or the single market, and emphatically ruled out a second referendum.
But it is understood the car park is close to a secret nuclear bunker
Gavin Williamson is at the centre of a Commons row over claims he has hit taxpayers with a 300 million bill to protect his VIP parking spot.
The Defence Secretary has told MPs and peers overseeing the 5 billion restoration of Parliament that he objects to plans to turn the Ministry of Defence car park where his chauffeur-driven limousine is parked into a building site.
One peer accused Mr Williamson of being pampered, saying: It will cause delays and inconvenience which the consultants say will add 300 million to the cost.
Objections: Gavin Williamson (centre) in his Government chauffeur-driven car. It is understood that the car park is close to a secret nuclear bunker from which the Government would be run in the event of all-out war
Insiders said the huge bill is down to hold-ups caused to the building timeframe because of restricted access for contractors lorries and alternative secure parking arrangements having to be set up elsewhere.
But a source close to Mr Williamson hit back, saying there were extremely compelling security reasons to block the work, including sensitive issues relating to the actions of Special Forces.
It is understood that the car park is close to a secret nuclear bunker from which the Government would be run in the event of all-out war.
The restoration, which is being studied by the joint committee on the draft Parliamentary Buildings Bill, follows warnings that the Palace of Westminster is becoming a death trap beset by falling masonry, leaking pipes and lethal electrics.
The cost of the refurbishment, which has been billed as the most complex renovation of a building in Britains history, is spiralling towards 6 billion.
MPs are expected to leave the Palace in 2025 and move into a rebuilt Richmond House next to the MoD, which used to be the headquarters of the Department of Health.
The restoration, which is being studied by the joint committee on the draft Parliamentary Buildings Bill, follows warnings that the Palace of Westminster is becoming a death trap beset by falling masonry, leaking pipes and lethal electrics [File photo]
Equipping the new building with a chamber and offices would require extensive work, which is why the contractors have requested to take over the MoD car park.
A source on the committee said: We are going to take Gavin to task for this. I do not accept that these objections have validity.
But a Whitehall insider said: Our understanding is the cost given by the refurbishment team was 100 million. We are not sure how they have come to this [300 million] figure.
And a senior defence source added: Even if you had a dozen trucks in there [Mr Williamsons] vehicle would have room to park. This is simply about national security concerns.
If just 2,227 more people had voted for him in seven marginal seats, Jeremy Corbyn would have been in pole position to enter Downing Street at the last Election.
And with the Tories tearing each others throats out over Brexit, whos to say that he wont make it next time?
Yet as I read through the manuscript of Dangerous Hero a gripping and terrifying book the same thought kept looping through my head: Not Fit For Office.
Corbyns destructive socialist beliefs and long association with terrorists and anti-Semites might already be embedded in the public consciousness.
Tom Bowers 'Dangerous Hero: Corbyns Ruthless Plot for Power' details the story of Jeremy Corbyn the man
But what Tom Bowers masterly evisceration details for the first time is the full truth about Corbyn the man.
Bower is excoriating about Corbyns basic lack of intelligence, and the clumsy duplicity deployed to disguise it: having flunked his A-levels, he dropped out of polytechnic but insisted it was for political rather than academic reasons.
Plenty of prominent public figures have recovered from early academic failure and used the experience to drive them on to later success.
But Corbyn was no late-bloomer. Rather than be spurred on by setbacks, he has instead channelled his frustration into a life framed by bitterness and envy.
As Bower writes: He came to loathe achievers disdained those who enjoyed material wealth most of all he hated the rich and successful, and identified with losers. In his self-protection he became conspicuously stubborn.
Corbyns inability to run an office, let alone the country, is a recurring theme.
Bower writes: He came to loathe achievers disdained those who enjoyed material wealth most of all he hated the rich and successful, and identified with losers'
In his 20s he was sacked as a researcher for the engineering workers union because his work was sub-standard; as a young MP, his agent resigned on the grounds that Corbyn was an anarchic shambles, without any discipline; and when he won the party leadership in 2015, his office was described as fraught, tense and unhappy, where staff were lazy and p***ed on 100k a year.
Shockingly, the author claims that Corbyn was even unable to discharge his most basic duty as an MP.
Bower makes no excuse for delving deep into Corbyns private life to shed light on his personal qualities or lack of them.
Corbyns first two marriages, along with numerous other relationships, were characterised by his financial incompetence, his thoughtless absences, his neglect of his family and his apparent misogyny.
Corbyn is offering himself up as the nations next First Lord of the Treasury, yet his own debts nearly led to him losing his home.
He appears never to read books, seemingly restricting himself to a quick flick through the communist newspaper Morning Star.
This lack of intellectual curiosity must be an unprecedented trait among putative prime ministers.
His first two wives agree that life with Corbyn was narrow and joyless: they all talk about his shabby clothes, tolerance of bland food and endlessly recited, yet utterly inflexible, beliefs.
One Christmas Day, keen to avoid his family and with no political rallies to attend, he decided to spend it alone with his dog on a windswept beach.
These were the factors behind the collapse of his marriage to Claudia Bracchita not, as Corbyn likes to claim, because he objected to her decision to send their son to grammar school.
As Bower says: Corbyn has concealed or distorted the nature of his close relationships, his personal life and his prejudices.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn talking at a Labour local government conference in Coventry
You really wouldnt want to take a holiday with this man unless you enjoy riding pillion on a motorbike tour of Cold War Eastern Europe, or boycotting royal palaces, counting manhole covers and visiting the graves of dead communists.
As a work colleague, he found it hard to integrate because he was vegetarian, rarely drank and did not smoke, and neither did he go to the cinema, watch any sport or enjoy any social activity.
Denis Healey talked about politicians having a hinterland: Corbyn has a wasteland.
This is the man who Bower reveals was so demotivated in the months before his shock elevation to leader that he was planning to retire to Wiltshire to keep bees before deciding that he couldnt afford to.
These insights are in the public interest because they go to character and to competence.
Perhaps the books most devastating line comes from Reg Race, who knew Corbyn well during his time as a young activist.
Race tells Bower simply: Hes not fit to be leader of the Labour Party or Prime Minister.
The reader quickly arrives at the same conclusion.
As Bower builds his picture, it becomes clear that Corbyns friendly-grandpa image amounts to a calculated fraud on the public.
He is a hologram, generated by the partys real power brokers: Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and union baron Len McCluskey, and buttressed by the youth cult Momentum, which harnesses the power of social media to ruthlessly suppress moderate opposition.
Bower reveals the level of cynicism involved: the hard-Left McDonnell was always intended to be the bad cop to Corbyns supposed good cop, and the Labour leader was deliberately kitted out in a blue suit to make him look like a respectable bank manager, even if his socialist policies make him more like a bank robber.
The most notorious stain on Corbyns character has been left by the shocking anti-Semitism displayed by his followers, and his habit of hanging out with terrorists and their sympathisers.
Corbyns pro-Palestinian activism is well-established, symbolised by him being present when a wreath was laid alongside the graves of PLO terrorists.
What Bower suggests, controversially, is that Corbyns views were forged in his youth: not just because of his pro-Palestinian beliefs, but because as a union worker he grew to believe in the malign collective power of Jews.
Bower says that, even as a young MP, Corbyn refused to visit a centre for Orthodox Jews and ranked Holocaust survivors low down the list of victims of historic tragedies.
He also describes a mood of flippant disdain in his office before they met Jewish leaders to discuss their concerns. Says Bower: Corbyn was an empty vessel, uneasy with a race complicated by its history of survival.
On the biggest single political issue to face this country in a generation, Corbyn has been Janus-faced.
While the vast majority of Labour MPs supported Remain, it is clear from Bowers book that Corbyn and his henchmen only went through the motions of campaigning to stay in the European Union.
Corbyn, McDonnell and chief adviser Seumas Milne actually wanted Brexit. Not for reasons of patriotism, but because they regard Brussels rules on state aid as a threat to their socialist agenda and hoped that Brexit would destabilise the Tories sufficiently to let in a Labour government (a wish that could yet come true).
Corbyns gang blatantly undermined and marginalised Alan Johnson, the Labour co-ordinator of the Remain campaign, and struck all mentions of staying in the EU from leaflets.
Corbyn himself did a disappearing act on the night of the vote. All of this makes his vitriolic denunciations of the Tory splits on Brexit seem even more cynical and hypocritical.
The reader puts down this book convinced that Corbyn presents the largest single threat to Britains security and prosperity for more than a generation.
If elected, he would be the most Left-wing prime minister in history with the same suicidal socialist beliefs as his political mentor, Tony Benn.
But while Margaret Thatcher was able to crush the Bennites, and send them into the political wilderness, Theresa Mays distracted and divided Tories are level pegging with Labour in the polls.
Recent electoral projections by Tory HQ put Corbyn in No 10 as the head of a coalition if a poll were held tomorrow.
As the Tory election guru Lynton Crosby discovered to his cost in 2017, the bedrock of Corbyns support comes from the under-40s, who feel priced out of the housing market and exiled from the comfortable lives enjoyed by the over-65 baby-boomers.
So when Crosby carpet-bombed the media with reminders of Corbyns links to the IRA, most of his supporters just shrugged: to them it was ancient history.
Nor, worryingly, are the charges of anti-Semitism damaging his poll ratings as much as they should: Corbyns supporters in Momentum use their aggressive stranglehold on social media to dismiss the allegations as fake news disseminated by the mainstream media.
This is why Bowers book should serve as such an important corrective. The charge sheet he draws up against Corbyn is long, detailed and irrefutable.
He is not fit for office, and must never be allowed to become Prime Minister.
Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has claimed in an upcoming book that President Donald Trump unleashed a 'strain of insanity' in U.S. politics, and forced Deputy Attorney General to justify the sacking of FBI Director James Comey.
McCabe's book, titled The Threat: How The FBI Protects America In The Age Of Terror And Trump, is due for release on February 19, just under a year after he was fired from the FBI.
Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions sacked McCabe just 26 hours short of his eligibility to retire with pension, saying that Comey's former right-hand man 'lacked candor' in an investigation into media leaks.
Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (above) has claimed in an upcoming book that Trump forced Deputy Attorney General to justify the firing of FBI Director James Comey
Now, McCabe claims that a 'glassy-eyed' Rosenstein was emotional and visibly upset in a May 12, 2017 meeting, saying that Trump had forced him to write the memo that justified Comey's firing, according to the Guardian, which has an advance copy of the book.
McCabe's book is due for release February 19
'He said it wasn't his idea. The president had ordered him to write the memo justifying the firing,' McCabe wrote.
Rosenstein said he was having trouble sleeping, McCabe wrote.
'There's no one here that I can trust,' Rosenstein is quoted as saying.
Rosenstein has publicly defended his memo, which said that the 'reputation and credibility' of the FBI had been damaged under Comey's tenure, citing the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
At the time, the White House denied that Trump had ordered Rosenstein to write the memo.
'It was all him,' said then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer of Rosenstein and the memo.
Five days after Comey's firing, Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Muller to investigate any 'links and/or coordination' between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Rosenstein (left) was emotional and upset, saying Trump had forced him to write the memo used to justify the firing of James Comey, McCabe wrote in his new book
McCabe also compared Trump to a mob boss for trying to pressure his loyalty after Comey's firing.
'The president and his men were trying to work me the way a criminal brigade would operate,' McCabe wrote.
He wrote that Trump's 'heedless bullying' and intolerance for other viewpoints is 'nurturing a strain of insanity in public dialogue.'
The father-to-be was distracted and anxious. His wife Claudia was due to give birth to their first child at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, and Jeremy Corbyn headed for the telephone outside the delivery room.
If his old friend and constituency agent Keith Veness was surprised to get the call, he was even more startled by what Corbyn running for re-election as an MP in the 1987 General Election had to say.
Im really worried, the lifelong Marxist many believe will be Britains next Prime Minister complained as his new wife lay in a hospital bed preparing to bring their baby son into the world. We havent put out that leaflet about Northern Ireland.
Havent you got something more serious to worry about? asked Veness.
Whats that?
Youre about to be a father. Ive never heard of anyone who lost an election because they didnt get a leaflet out.
But then Jeremy Corbyn has never done family life like everyone else.
When Claudia tried to hire a cleaner, Corbyns friends asked if his wife had bourgeois tendencies
He met Claudia Bracchitta, the fiercely intelligent and good-looking daughter of Chilean exiles, the previous year at a protest meeting against her homelands military dictatorship, addressed by Ken Livingstone.
She wanted to get off with me, Livingstone later ungallantly recalled, but I had to go off to meet Kate, my partner, so she went for Jeremy.
Claudia was already married, but by the following year she was pregnant with Corbyns child and rushed through a divorce to marry her new admirer.
Neither of Corbyns parents was present at the wedding: his father had died the previous year and his mother was not invited.
In fact, he didnt tell even his close friends about his marriage.
Within little more than a decade the relationship was dead, killed not by, as they told the world, principled political differences about whether to send their son to a grammar school but by Corbyns financial incompetence, his neglect of his family, his arid lifestyle and his apparent misogyny.
Ive got all these debts, Corbyn told his long-time friend Reg Race as they sat in the spartan living room of the politicians semi-detached house in North London in late 1996. Can you work out why?
Political upbringing: Corbyns sons Sebastian, Benjamin and Tommy applaud their father at last years Labour Conference
I dont need to be a genius to tell him whats wrong, Race thought. Hes in danger of bankruptcy. Across the room sat his host and Claudia, positioned unnaturally far apart. Race, a former hard-Left MP whod transformed himself into a successful financial consultant, had been summoned by Claudia as a mutual friend to solve their differences.
The papers in front of him showed that the Corbyns owed their bank 30,000, the equivalent of twice that figure today. Several personal loans had been guaranteed by Corbyns income as an MP and he was also burdened by high mortgage repayments.
As a last resort, the bank could threaten to recover its money by seizing his home. Youve run out of loans, said Race. Unchecked, within five years the debts would be 100,000. Corbyns annual salary was 43,000. Claudia interrupted. This was entirely the result of her husbands folly, she said. She and their three young sons Sebastian, Benjamin and Thomas had little money even to buy food and clothes. We cant afford a decent life.
The principal cause of the debts was the Red Rose Community Centre in Holloway a bar and dance area on the ground floor of a building that fulfilled his commitment to open his party office in his North London constituency. Corbyn was paying its rent and some staff salaries out of his own pocket. Simultaneously, he owed a large sum to the Inland Revenue for his employees unpaid National Insurance and pension contributions.
The financial chaos was matched by his management style. His employees complained about being both undervalued and underpaid.
Among the casualties was Liz Phillipson, his battle-scarred assistant, who had resigned rather than continue to tolerate Corbyns fecklessness. You havent got enough money for what youre doing, Race said bluntly. You should close your office and move to the Commons.
I wont, replied Corbyn.
Oh, come on, Jeremy, you know hes right, Claudia said, her voice rising. Corbyn mumbled, then fell silent. His body language showed he felt no inclination to follow Races advice. Claudia was becoming noticeably agitated. It was clear a breakdown was coming, thought Race.
He was not surprised by the tension. Throughout their marriage, Corbyns lack of interest in material things had meant that he ignored her need for comfort.
Debt-ridden: Jeremy Corbyn in the 1980s
At one stage she had planned for the family to move from Islington to leafy Kingston upon Thames, but was quickly disabused of the idea. He has to live in his constituency, a political aide told her.
She got the same short shrift from her husband when she tried to hire a cleaner a move that prompted one of Corbyns friends to question whether his wife had bourgeois tendencies.
To Corbyn, Claudias list of complaints was familiar. Over the years, a succession of women had made the same observations: he never changed his ways, and he rarely thought about them.
He wore the same shabby clothes, ate the same bland food and stuck to the same dogmatic political convictions he first developed as a teenager.
Admirers hailed his inflexibility as proof of his integrity. Detractors blamed his limited intelligence and lack of education for his failure to appreciate others.
Long before the onset of their financial problems, life with Corbyn had proved difficult for Claudia. Labour MP Tony Banks witnessed just how difficult as one day he walked into Westminsters central lobby and spotted her standing by the wall, tearfully holding her children.
Jeremy, Claudia explained, had promised to meet her two hours earlier. He had not turned up. Banks took the four Corbyns to the Commons family room and went off in search. Eventually he found Corbyn in a committee room. Youd better come out and look after your children, he suggested. Corbyn did not seem fazed for a moment. Banks was not surprised. When pushed to have a day off, he recalled, Jeremys idea was to take his partner to Highgate Cemetery and study the grave of Karl Marx.
His old friend Reg Race had experienced something similar when he had invited the Corbyn family for a weeks holiday at his country home in Derbyshire.
On the day, Claudia arrived with the children.
Wheres Jeremy? asked Mandy, Regs wife. I dont know, replied Claudia with sadness. He just told me, Ive got to go to a meeting, and I havent seen him since.
Over the following 36 hours, Claudia called several numbers searching for her husband. Two days later he turned up, explaining his absence as a necessary sacrifice for the movement.
By the time Race was called in to help resolve Corbyns financial crisis, the marriage was all but over.
Corbyn had regularly picked wood from neighbourhood skips, and also collected railway junk as he criss-crossed the country on trains
That afternoon Race told his friend that he had little choice but to sell the family home.
Claudia agreed. Reluctantly, so did Corbyn and thereafter broke off his relations with Race. The messenger was to blame, a failure to take personal responsibility that left Race to conclude of the man hed worked closely with over three decades: Hes not fit to be leader of the Labour Party, and not fit to be Britains Prime Minister.
In early 1999, the Corbyns home was sold for 365,000 (730,000 today), and they downsized to a house in Mercers Road, a shabby street off Holloway Road.
On the day of the move, Corbyn was told by Claudia to empty the fridge. He forgot. He also forgot to clear the garage. Late in the afternoon, while their former homes new owner fumed on the pavement, the garage door was opened to reveal rubbish crammed to the ceiling.
Corbyn had regularly picked wood from neighbourhood skips, and also collected railway junk as he criss-crossed the country on trains. Boxes of safety lamps, metal signs, track signals and other paraphernalia had been stuffed in any old how. Late in the day, everything was finally shuttled across to the basement of Mercers Road, creating a new world of clutter.
The move brought one advantage. The building had been converted into bedsits, making the estrangement between Claudia and Corbyn easier.
She and their three sons took the top floors, where she lived with a young South American dubbed the toy boy, while Corbyn, in the basement, had relationships with a series of younger women.
The Labour leader has always done his best to conceal his chaotic personal life from the media which he loathes. His break-up with Claudia was no different, shrouded as it was with obfuscation and lies.
Late in 1999, while Corbyn was at a peace conference in The Hague, a journalist contacted his wife and asked whether the two had separated. She said their 12-year marriage had ended in 1997. She said she had wanted their 11-year-old son Ben to go to Queen Elizabeths grammar school in Barnet, but that Corbyn had stipulated that he should go instead to Holloway School, a failing local comprehensive.
From The Hague, Corbyn confirmed Claudias account. Defending his ideological purity against selective schools, he implied, was more important than his sons education or his marriage.
In a series of interviews, Claudia reinforced the same message. My childrens education is my absolute priority, and this situation left me with no alternative but to accept a place at Queen Elizabeth Boys School. I had to make the decision as a mother and a parent It isnt a story about making a choice, but about having no choice.
To the public, Corbyn appeared to have acquiesced in his wifes wishes, but, like so many communists, he had put his political principles first, and ended the marriage: he could not live with a woman who did not accept his beliefs.
The only dent to that image of ideological purity was Claudias revelation that Corbyn had agreed for another of their sons to spend two years at the local Montessori nursery, at 600 per term.
If that had been the last word on the subject, the notion that the marriage had broken up over Corbyns principles might have been plausible. But Claudia, possibly with Corbyns encouragement, went further. He is first the politician and second the parent, she said. Its very difficult when your ideals get in the way of family life It has been a horrendous decision.
Sixteen years later, the whole tale was expanded. Rosa Prince, Corbyns semi-authorised biographer, described, with Claudias help, a tormented family: Corbyn and Bracchitta went round and round in circles for months.
She would not send Ben to Holloway School and Corbyn could not bear for him to go to Queen Elizabeths In choosing Queen Elizabeths, Bracchitta was aware that she was ending her marriage.
Is this version correct? Friends say the marriage ended because of Corbyns behaviour his financial fecklessness, his thoughtless absences and his selfish refusal to do anything to make his wifes life more pleasant.
He told me that the marriage had ended long before the school bit, Ken Livingstone recalled. We had a chat at the time and he said his marriage had fallen apart over other things, not the school.
Livingstone had discovered that Corbyns authenticity was fictitious a confection for political appearances. Like his great hero Lenin, the Labour leader had mastered a critical ruse to grab public support: A lie told often enough, wrote the Soviet revolutionary, becomes the truth. Few politicians have deployed this tactic as ruthlessly and effectively as Jeremy Corbyn.
lDangerous Hero: Corbyns Ruthless Plot For Power, by Tom Bower, is published by William Collins on February 21 at 20. Offer price 16 (20 per cent discount) until February 24. Pre-order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over 15. Spend 30 on books and get FREE premium delivery.
Hundreds of strangers turned up in freezing conditions for the funeral of a hero Holocaust survivor after a rabbi's plea on Facebook.
Zale Newman had visited 85-year-old Eddie Ford over the last seven months at a hospital in Toronto where he was suffering from cancer.
Ford said he wanted a Jewish funeral at the end of his life so Zale asked for those living near Toronto to 'escort a Hero of the Holocaust for his final journey' in a 'huge PURE act of kindness'.
Despite posting his request online just the night before the service and temperatures of 13F, hundreds of people made the journey to pay their respects.
Among the mourners was Eddie's long-lost brother, whose relative learned of the sad news on the Internet and informed him so he could attend.
Zale followed up on his post saying when he saw a line of cars the next day he 'assumed there was another funeral taking place at the same time'.
He said the random of kindness from dozens of strangers left him in tears.
Scroll down for video.
Eddie Ford survived the Holocaust after he was hidden with a Christian family in Budapest
Volunteer rabbi Zale Newman asked people online to come to the service. When hundreds turned up Newman said the kindness from dozens of strangers left him in tears
Despite posting his request online just the night before the service and temperatures of 13F, hundreds of people made the journey to pay their respects
Newman had visited Ford over the last seven months at a hospital in Toronto
Zale wrote: ' I sent out a late night FB post and two emails to groups neither of whom replied. 3 people responded that they would join me. I was hoping for at least ten in total. When I arrived at the cemetery in a wind chill of -27, far to the north of Toronto, I couldn't get in because of the line of cars.
'I assumed there was another funeral taking place at the same time and I wondered how we would find Eddie's resting place. I stopped people who were walking and they all said they were going to the funeral of Mr Ford.
'I had to park far away and walk in the freezing wind to join an estimated 150 people in a huge, warm circle of love, as we gave Eddie a sweet, proper, fitting, loving send off to the Next World.
'We made a pathway to comfort his long lost brother from a small town in Ontario, whose relative had found about Eddies passing on the Internet and informed him so that he could attend.
'I am in tears just thinking about how humbling and awesome it is to be part of the Jewish People who on very short notice; would drop everything, leave whatever they were planning on doing, drive fa long distance, to stand outside in a open field, on a super freezing, blowing, windy day to escort a sweet, little Jew from Budapest, who was unknown to almost all them, on his final journey.'
A woman who said she was Ford's niece wrote to Zale to explain her family did visit him. Elyse Friedman wrote: 'Everyone in Eddies (admittedly tiny) family were heartened by your post and by the response of the Jewish community. We wouldnt have had a minyan without you.
'My dad, Eddies brother, lived just down Bathurst from him and visited him at least once a week in hospital (and regularly at his apartment before he was hospitalized). I believe he mentioned that to you at the funeral. I also visited my uncle in the hospital and so did his nephews and their kids.'
The Washington Post reports how Ford survived the Holocaust after he was hidden with a Christian family in Budapest when he was just six-years-old.
Zale told Global News: 'It was his last request that he have a proper Jewish burial. We would sing together and he would tell me jokes and ask me questions. Hes left with just a few good memories and the rest from those days are very bleak and dark.'
For a proper Jewish burial 10 adults or 'minyan' are required and so Zale took to social media for help.
Zale wrote: 'ATTENTION TORONTO JEWISH COMMUNITY! We need to have a minyan present tomorrow at noon for a sweet Holocaust survivor who passed away leaving no relatives other than a nephew in a US city.
'Can you come escort a Hero of the Holocaust for his final journey. This is a huge PURE act of kindness. Wont take long but please dress warmly. Thank you so much.'
Following the touching service one person wrote to Zale: 'Was an honour (sic) and privilege to be part of it. So amazing to see how many people care.'
Another added: 'This is so touching and beautiful to see our community help one another.'
Embattled Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is still refusing to resign in the wake of the yearbook blackface scandal, according to reports.
Northam, who is fighting to keep his job after his page featured a person in blackface and another person in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, is said to have told his Cabinet on Friday that he has no plans to resign, CNN reports.
The Democrat - now a year into his four-year term - announced his intention to stay at a Friday afternoon Cabinet meeting, according to a senior official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In so doing, Northam defied practically the entire Democratic Party, which rose up against him after a racist photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook page surfaced and he acknowledged wearing blackface in the 1980s.
On Saturday, Northam made his first official public appearance since he denied being in the photo, attending the funeral for a state trooper killed in a shootout. But he made no public comments upon arriving in Chilhowie, four hours west of the tumult in Richmond.
State Trooper Lucas B. Dowell was killed in the line of duty earlier in the week in a shootout during a drugs raid.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, left, and his wife Pam, attend the funeral of Virginia State Trooper Lucas B. Dowell at the Chilhowie Christian Church in Chilhowie
Virginia State Trooper Lucas B. Dowell was killed during a shootout in a drugs bust
Virginia State Trooper Lucas B. Dowell was killed in the line of duty earlier in the week and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam today attended his funeral
The embattled Democrat is fighting to keep his job after he denied being in the racist photo
In his first interview since the scandal erupted, a chastened Northam told The Washington Post on Saturday that the uproar has pushed him to confront the state's deep and lingering divisions over race, as well as his own insensitivity.
But he said that reflection has convinced him that, by remaining in office, he can work to resolve them. He said: 'It's obvious from what happened this week that we still have a lot of work to do. There are still some very deep wounds in Virginia, and especially in the area of equity.'
Northam said he planned to work for the rest of his term to address issues stemming from inequality, including improving access to health care, housing, and transportation. He also repeated his contention that he is not the one pictured on his yearbook page in blackface. But he could not explain how it wound up there, or why he had taken responsibility for it.
He added: 'I overreacted. If I had it to do over again, I would step back and take a deep breath.'
Northam has now also said he can't be man in blackface because he's left handed and both people are holding beers in their right, according to reports.
He is now said to have told advisers it could not possibly be him in the image as he struggled using his right hand and would have held the drink in his left, according to Buzzfeed News.
A photo on Northam's yearbook page depicts a man in blackface and another in a KKK robe. Northam said he felt sick when he saw the image recently, despite admitting to covering his face in shoe polish to emulate Michael Jackson
Northam has now said he can't be man in blackface because he's left handed and both people are holding beers in their right
Northam has posted to his own Twitter account showing him holding a beer in his right hand
Northam is said to have argued that in medical school he found using his right hand so awkward he had to force himself to hold the scalpel with it.
But on social media users were quick to point out Northam, who is facing mounting pressure to resign, appears to have been pictured in the past signing bills and holding a beer with his right hand.
In his initial apology, Northam, a pediatric neurologist, said that the photo does not represent who he is now.
But a day later he denied being in the photograph at all, while admitting to wearing blackface to imitate Michael Jackson at a dance contest.
'It has taken time for me to make sure that it's not me, but I am convinced, I am convinced that I am not in that picture,' he told reporters at the Executive Mansion in Richmond, calling the picture offensive and horrific.
On social media users were quick to point out Northam, who is facing mounting pressure to resign, appears to have been pictured in the past signing bills with his right hand
Northam, pictured using his right hand, is said to have argued that in medical school he found using his right hand so awkward he had to force himself to hold the scalpel with it
Northman admitted to smearing shoe polish on his face to impersonate Michael Jackson for a dance contest which he won after performing the Moonwalk. It was not until later, he said, that he realized it was offensive.
'I had the shoes, I had a glove, and I used just a little bit of shoe polish to put under my or on my cheeks. And the reason I used a very little bit is because, I don't know if anybody's ever tried that, but you cannot get shoe polish off,' he said.
'I look back now and regret that I did not understand the harmful legacy of an action like that.'
The half page that Northam was allotted in the yearbook includes three pictures, including one of him in a suit.
A fourth photo shows a man in blackface standing next to a person in a full KKK costume.
Senior Democrats have already called on him to resign, including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tim Kaine and Elizabeth Warren.
The woman who broke her wrist in a car crash with Prince Philip has welcomed the news that he has surrendered his license, and says that the 'roads will be safer', as prosecutors also consider whether to bring a legal case against him.
Emma Fairweather, 46, was a passenger in the Kia that was involved in a collision with the Duke's Land Rover last month.
She broke her wrist in the crash and has said that the Duke's decision is 'sensible and the right thing to do', before adding that it was a 'shame he didn't make the decision sooner'.
A file has been handed to prosecutors who are now weighing up whether to bring a case against the Duke.
Emma Fairweather, 46, has welcomed the news that Prince Philip has surrendered his driver's licence
Prince Philip left two people requring hospital treatment after his Land Rover rammed into a Kia
A CPS spokesperson said: 'We review each file carefully before a decision is made and will take this development into account.'
The Duke of Edinburgh has voluntarily given up his driving licence just weeks after he crashed his Land Rover which sent two women to hospital.
Buckingham Palace confirmed Prince Philip relinquished his licence on Saturday.
The 97-year-old apologised for his role in the accident after his vehicle hit another car before landing on its side.
Ms Fairweather told the Sunday Mirror: 'He's making the most sensible decision he can. It's a shame he didn't make it a bit sooner but it's the right thing to do.
'Undoubtedly the roads will be safer now. It won't have been easy for him to make as it is a loss of independence. But he can work around it.'
She also added that she has done nothing but cry' this week after having an operation to screw a metal plate into her arm.
Just two days after the crash, the Duke was spotted driving without a seatbelt, sparking widespread backlash.
A statement from Buckingham Palace said: 'After careful consideration the Duke of Edinburgh has taken the decision to voluntarily surrender his driving licence.'
The retired barrister who pulled the Duke from the wreckage said he might have been overly cautious giving up his licence.
Roy Warne said: 'No one should be driving if they don't feel safe to do so however old they are but in the Duke of Edinburgh's case we don't have the full facts so it is very difficult to express a view.'
Mr Warne, who with wife Victoria helped free the royal and tend to the injured women driver and passenger, said: 'He's surrendering his licence but maybe the accident wasn't his fault. We simply don't know.
'He's done what he felt was best and maybe he had been under pressure so I can't be surprised either way. But younger drivers are much more dangerous than older drivers.'
A Norfolk Police said: 'We can confirm that the 97 year old driver of the Land Rover involved in the collision at Sandringham on Thursday 17 January 2019 has today voluntarily surrendered his licence to officers. We will follow the standard procedure and return the licence to the DVLA.
The investigation file for the collision has been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for their consideration.
Witnesses revealed Philip was shaking and pleading 'get me out' after his Land Rover crashed while he was out driving alone without a protection officer.
Just two days after the crash, Prince Philip was back behind the wheel
He escaped injury but Emma Fairweather, 46, broke her wrist and called for Prince Philip to be prosecuted if found to be at fault.
According to one eyewitness, the Kia, driven by a 28-year-old mother, 'T-boned' the duke's car and ended up in a hedge with smoke coming from the engine.
On January 21, Prince Philip sent her a letter wishing her a 'speed recovery' and that he 'failed to see the car coming', the Sunday Mirror reported.
The sun was blamed for hindering his vision and he wrote he was 'very contrite about the consequences' of the collision.
Philip is believed to have just left Sandringham, marked in red, and was turning on to the A149 at this junction when he collided with a Kia and his car cartwheeled on to the other side of the road, circled blue
A driver claims Prince Philip almost crashed into her as near Sandringham estate before his shocking crash on Thursday (pictured)
A motorist who swerved around the wreckage (aftermath of crash pictured) said the duke was 'hanging from his seat' and saying 'my leg is trapped'. Four rescuers had to free him from his upturned Land Rover
He said he was 'deeply sorry' and explained while he was familiar with the junction he could 'only imagine' the low sun stopped him seeing her approaching.
The Duke appeared to admit responsibility in a letter to Ms Fairweather several days after the accident.
In his 181-word typed letter, Prince Philip wished her a 'speedy recovery from a very distressing experience'.
Two days ago, Norfolk Police confirmed they were still investigating Prince Philip's crash on January 17 when his Land Rover rolled over after being hit by a Kia.
The accident happened as Philip pulled out of a side road on to the 60mph limit A149 road.
The Duke, who has given a police statement, could be charged with careless driving.
Witnesses yesterday revealed the 97-year-old was shaking and pleading 'get me out' after his Land Rover crashed (aftermath pictured) while he was alone and without a protection officer
A mother whose daughter choked to death on mashed potato wants nursery staff to be armed with first aid skills to prevent another tragedy.
Heartbroken Joanne Thompson's world fell apart when she had the call little Millie had been rushed to hospital.
But nothing could save the nine-month-old who died in 2012.
Both Joanne and her husband Dan were left soul searching and started probing whether they could spare other parents from going through the agony they had been through.
Devastated: Joanne and Dan Thompson lost Millie after she choked after eating mashed potato at a nursery
Joanne was left shocked to learn that only one worker needed to be trained in children's first aid at a nursery by law.
'As a parent putting your child into nursery, you just assume they will be safe,' Joanne told Birmingham Live .
'We chose the best nursery in our area but it never crossed our minds to ask about how many members of staff were trained in paediatric first aid.
'As parents, we should be asking these questions.
'We also need to check the training too because standard first aid doesn't cover children's first aid.
Fighting on: The family are lobbying for all nursery staff to be trained in paediatric first aid
'It's also worth asking 'would you be confident if my child started choking that you would know what to do?'
The couple raised a 100,000 signature petition sparking a Parliamentary debate over the issue.
But it was felt the issue was too large for the law to be able to impose greater regulations.
However, newly-qualified nursery staff now have to be trained in paediatric first aid as a result of the debate.
The couple's determined efforts have inspired Millie's Mark, forged in a link-up with NDNA (National Day Nurseries Association), to award childcare providers where every member of staff is trained in paediatric first aid.
But to get the mark nurseries have to pass a series of tough tests and show a strong delivery of paediatric first aid training and understanding of such skills throughout the workforce over three to six months.
Millie's Trust has also been established by the couple and the charity offers first aid training for minimal costs in a range of different places.
Joanne said she struggled in the wake of Millie's death and added: 'It's the worst thing you can ever go through as a parent.
Never forget her: 400 nurseries across Britain are complying with the call to upskill staff and save another tragedy
'You never expect something like this to happen to you.
'Millie was a funny, happy, smiley little girl who loved to dance, particularly to Paul Simon songs.
'She was our only child so we lost our family unit and had to go back to being a couple again. It's so hard.
'I suffered PTSD from what happened and have had treatment for anxiety and depression.
'I felt that I couldn't have another child because I couldn't bear going through that again.'
Joanne, of Stockport, suffered many sleepless nights and turned to Facebook in a bid to cope with her loss and to speak to parents going through the same thing.
Through social media they were put in touch with a couple from New Zealand who were left devastated following their son's death through choking on an apple at nursery.
After more than 10,000 was raised for the couple to visit them in New Zealand their lives changed.
Joanne said: 'We met them at Auckland Zoo and moved in with them for a couple of weeks.
'They had two older children and had gone onto have another baby since losing their son. Talking to them and being with them felt so good. We came home and I was pregnant three months later.'
Joanne and Dan have extended their family and have gone onto have two sons since, Leo, who is now nearly four, and Asher, 15 months.
'It's been a horrendous journey and is not something you ever get over but it does get easier,' Joanne said.
'Birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas are the hardest time.
'People have helped us, most can't believe something like this can happen.'
He added: 'The boys have pictures of her in their bedrooms, and we go as a family to visit her resting place. It was Leo's first journey as a baby.
Happier times: Joanne and Dan with their young family who regularly visit Millie's resting place
'It would have been her seventh birthday on January 12 and Leo asked he we could hold a party for his sister. We said maybe not a party , but how about a cake?
'So he went and chose a cake and we lit candles for her.
'They feel comfortable being there, I hope it's somewhere they will continue to go when they're older. Somewhere where, if they have problems, they could contemplate them.
'I don't like to think of these places as being scary for children, it's just where they go to see their sister.'
Now 400 nurseries right across Britain have been given Millie's Mark, including a number of firms in the Midlands.
Sources claim that the Congress demanded a sizable share, but Mr Yadav has been reluctant.
Patna: Seat sharing among Grand Alliance partners has turned into a thorny affair as most of the parties, including Congress, have been demanding a sizable seat share for general elections.
Political analysts are of the opinion that Tejashwi Yadav, the political heir of RJD chief Lalu Yadav will have to shed rigidity and take a couple of steps back in order to end brewing resentment among the alliance partners over the issue of seat adjustments in Bihar.
Sources claim that the Congress demanded a sizable share, but Mr Yadav has been reluctant. During the initial discussions, he offered only ten or fewer seats to the party.
However, Congress leaders believe that huge turnout during the Jan Akansha Rally in Patna on February 3 has given an edge to the party ahead of seat-sharing discussions with RJD and others. It is being understood that all the alliance partners would now sit together to finalise seat adjustments for the general elections.
During the rally, Congress president Rahul Gandhi while speaking about an alliance with RJD had said that the party intends to play on the front foot by contesting Lok Sabha elections in alliance with parties like RJD in Bihar.
With leaders like Tejashwi and Lalu Yadav, the Congress will play on the front foot and always hit a six during elections, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said during the Jan Akansha Rally in Patna on Sunday.
Sources claim that Mr Gandhi gave the statement after Mr Yadav during his speech publicly backed him for the post of Prime Minister and acknowledged Congress as the largest party in the alliance.
You have all the qualities to be the next Prime Minister, but you should also take along all the other parties, Mr Yadav said during the rally in Patnas iconic Gandhi Maidan on February 2.
Analysts are also of the opinion that the face-off between West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and the Centre has also played a crucial role in bringing almost all Opposition parties, including the Congress, on one platform and the impact of this could be seen during the general elections.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and other Grand Alliance partners had supported Ms Mamata Banerjees.
Their coming together may also end seat-sharing crisis among the alliance partners in Bihar. RJD and Congress, however, may face a little resentment from Jitan Ram Manjhi who wants a sizable seat share to contest in the coming Lok Sabha elections, said political observers in Patna. Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) sources claim that Mr Manjhi has been demanding at least four seats to contest in the general elections. HAM spokesperson Danish Rizwan told this newspaper that the party wants coordination committee to decide seat sharing after analysing the strength of Grand Alliance partners in Bihar. During the initial round of talks, we have already conveyed our demands to the committee and waiting for the final round of discussions with political parties on the issue at the earliest.
He said HAMs political base has increased after 2015 Assembly elections and Jitan Ram Manjhi has a major stake in the Mushahar community, a sub-caste among dalits in Bihar. The community has the population of around 40 lakh and was classified among Mahadalits in 2007 by chief minister Nitish Kumar.
There have also been demands for a respectable seat share from RLSP chief Upendra Kushwaha who had left NDA and joined the Grand Alliance in December 2018.
Mr Kushwaha with around 10 per cent voter base of his Koeri community is considered another strong player to join the alliance in Bihar. Mukesh Sahanis Nishad community accounts for 14 per cent of the state population and the RJDs M-Y combination forms about 30 per cent vote share (Muslims 16 and Yadav 14 per cent).
RJD and Congress-led Mahagathbandhan has nine members including Jitan Ram Manjhis HAM, NCP, Upendra Kushwahas Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), Left parties (CPI and CPI-ML) and Sharad Yadavs Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD).
Parents have described a school's policy to charge 2 if a child is caught with a mobile phone as 'ransom'.
South Wigston High School in Leicestershire introduced the policy to stop pupils from using their mobile phones in class.
In the school's behaviour and awards policy, it asks parents to pay 2 if their child has their mobile phone confiscated.
South Wigston High School in Leicestershire introduced the policy to stop pupils from using their mobile phones in class
The Department for Education said schools cannot levy compulsory charges, but the secondary school says the payment is 'voluntary'.
Some guardians have reacted furiously to the new rule, according to Leicestershire Live.
One parent, who did not wish to be named, said: 'If my kids went to a school with this policy in place I definitely wouldn't be nice about it.
'In my eyes it is my property that is being held at ransom.'
In the school's behaviour and awards policy, it asks parents to pay 2 if their child has their mobile phone confiscated
The school defended its decision by claiming that mobile phones were a tool for bullying and a distraction from learning.
Head teacher Susan Webb wrote in an online statement to parents: 'Although we request a 2 charity contribution when parents collect mobile phones, this is voluntary and no parent is made to contribute.'
Ms Webb added in an interview with the BBC that the policy was 'working well' and there were around two charges per week.
Other parents welcomed the new rule.
File photo: The school defended its decision by claiming that mobile phones were a tool for bullying and a distraction from learning
One parent said: 'Most kids take a phone, but if they are using them in class then staff are taking them off them.
'They are the rules.
'I've been there to pick one up for a 2 charge, but it didn't seem so bad when I found out money goes to charity.
'Kids shouldn't be taking them to use when at school - they take over their lives enough at home, so I think it's a good rule.'
Sen Cory Booker defended his sponsorship of the controversial Green New Deal proposal to combat climate change by comparing it to defeating the Nazis in World War II and landing on the moon.
The presidential hopeful addressed recent backlash to the radical plan unveiled earlier this week while speaking to a crowd of about 100 people on Friday morning at a campaign event in Mason City, Iowa.
'There's a lot of people now going back on the Green New Deal, they're like: "Oh it's impractical, oh it's too expensive, oh it's all of this,"' Booker said.
'If we used to govern our dreams that way, we would have never gone to the Moon. "God, that's impractical. See that ball in the sky? That's impractical."'
'We are a nation that has done impossible things before.'
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Sen Cory Booker addressed recent backlash to the controversial Green New Deal by comparing its proposed climate change initiatives to landing on the moon and defeating the Nazis in World War II during a campaign event in Mason City, Iowa, on Friday morning
Booker is one of several Democratic presidential hopefuls who have co-sponsored the proposal to combat climate change unveiled by freshman New York Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left) and Massachusetts Sen Ed Markey (right) on Thursday
The New Jersey Democrat continued: 'My parents taught me: "Reach for the moon, reach for the stars. Even if you come up short, at least you're going to be hovering above the ground, you'll be soaring young man."
'So we need to be bold again in America. We need to have dreams that other people say are impossible. We need to push the bounds of human potential because that is our history.
'When the planet has been in peril in the past, who came forward to save Earth from the scourge of Nazis and totalitarian regimes? We came forward. Who came forward to save the planet, or continents, from financial ruin? We came forward with the Marshall Plan.
'Our history is standing up and saying: "Look, humanity is in crisis, America is going to be the light and the hope."'
Video of Booker's remarks has been widely shared by Republican pundits who accused the 2020 candidate of being dramatic at best and fear-mongering at worst.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted the clip with the caption: 'You cant make this up.
'Cory "Spartacus" Booker says adopting the socialist "Green New Deal" would be like defeating the Nazis and putting a man on the moon.'
Speaking to a group of about 100 people in Mason City, Booker said: 'There's a lot of people now going back on the Green New Deal, they're like: "Oh it's impractical, oh it's too expensive, oh it's all of this." If we used to govern our dreams that way, we would have never gone to the Moon.'
Video of Booker's remarks has been shared by Republican pundits who've accused the 2020 candidate of being dramatic in his comparisons to the moon landing (above) and World War II
Booker is one of several Democratic presidential hopefuls who have co-sponsored the Green New Deal proposed by freshman New York Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen Ed Markey on Thursday.
'Excited to join @AOC & @SenMarkey on a historic #GreenNewDeal resolution to address the peril of climate change and worsening inequality,' Booker tweeted after the unveiling.
'Our history is a testimony to the achievement of what some think is impossible we must take bold action now.'
The ambitious 14-page resolution suggesting a framework for future policy that includes a goal to reach zero carbon emissions in the next decade has been met with skepticism from politicians on both sides of the aisle.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Politico that Ocasio-Cortez's proposal is just a 'suggestion' and one of 'many' the caucus is likely to receive on green energy.
'The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but theyre for it right?' she said, mocking the democratic socialist's effort.
Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado said at a climate change hearing in the House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday that the policy was akin to a 'Soviet five-year plan.'
Answering her critics, Ocasio-Cortez said that when former President John F Kennedy said he'd put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, 'people said it was impossible,' too.
She held up Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society as examples of major government projects.
The package includes $4.6trillion in new government spending on infrastructure projects aiming 'to remove greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from every sector of our economy.'
Democrats want 'a sustainable, pollution and greenhouse gas free, food system,' new power grids and a program to 'upgrade or replace every building in [the] US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.'
They claim their plan would 'remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing,' but offer few details.
The Green New Deal, an ambitious 14-page resolution suggesting a framework for future environmental policy, has been met with skepticism from politicians on both sides of the aisle
Answering her critics, Ocasio-Cortez (above) said that when former President John F Kennedy said he'd put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, 'people said it was impossible,' too
Capping off another week of partisan squabbles, Booker called for unity and vowed to bring America together as he launched his Iowa caucus campaign on Friday.
'I'm running for president because I believe right now people are surrendering to cynicism about our ability to solve our problems,' he told a crowd in Waterloo, according to the Des Moines Register.
'I believe that we are going to be a great nation, not because of what were against, but because of what were for, because of who were for. At this time in our country, we dont need to fight fire with fire.
'Were not in this because we want to beat up people or beat down people. We want to help people and serve people. I tell Democrats all the time I dont want to bash Republicans. Theyre Americans too.'
Our history is standing up and saying: "Look, humanity is in crisis, America is going to be the light and the hope." - Cory Booker
Booker allowed ample time to take questions from audience members, including one man who told the candidate his wife said hello.
'Keep talking, Im just going to steal your phone,' Booker interjected as he grabbed the man's cell phone and dialed his wife's number.
'Hi Christy, its Cory Booker,' he said when he reached her. 'Everybody say hello to Christy! I'm here with your husband. He passed on the "Hello."'
The lighthearted interaction elicited laughs and applause from the crowd before Booker proceeded to address the man's question about the influence of corporations on Iowa's family farms.
'I believe that we are all in this together that whats happened to the agriculture industry is hurting all of us,' Booker said.
'Its hurting our environment. Its hurting our family farmer. Its hurting the consumers. Its hurting the American way. The very culture of our country is being eroded as towns and communities are being hollowed out by big, multinational corporations.'
Booker touted legislation he'd introduced that would put a moratorium on corporate consolidation in the agriculture sector, adding: 'I'm a guy from Jersey, but I know were all in this together.'
Booker called for unity and vowed to bring America together as he launched his Iowa caucus campaign on Friday. He is pictured at a gathering in Cedar Rapids
The family of a mother-of-four brutally stabbed to death in the street while picking up one of her children from school have described her as having a 'wonderful heart' in a touching tribute.
Aliny Mendes, 39, was knifed in broad daylight on a suburban road in Ewell, Surrey yesterday, by a man who jumped out of a black 4x4 and attacked her.
Now her sister, who has not been named, has issued a heartfelt statement while well-wishers have raised more than 20,000 in just seven hours to help repatriate her body to Brazil.
Police also confirmed that a man in his 50s, from London, had been released without charge after being arrested on suspicion of assissting an offender.
Another man, in his 40s and from Epsom, Surrey, remains in custody on suspicion of murder
This is the 'warm and wonderful' mother-of-four who yesterday was stabbed to death in the street while carrying one of her children during the school run. Aliny Mendes is believed to have been holding one child in her arms when she was knifed in broad daylight on a suburban road by a man who jumped out of a black 4x4 and attacked her
Ms Mendes's sister said: 'My sister was lovely, always thinking about everyone but mostly her children.
'She had a wonderful heart and there was no-one else like her. She was a caring sister and worried about everyone.
'She was always making sure everyone was OK. She tried to help everyone where she could.
'She loved to cook and would organise surprise parties for friends and family, giving cakes and presents, and she was loved by everyone.
'Everything she did was for the love for her children.'
Aliny Mendes holds a child as she poses in a wedding photograph, the mother was described as 'full of life' by members of her Catholic church community
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Chapman described Ms Mendes' death as a 'tragic incident'.
He added: 'The incident took place during the day and is likely to have a traumatic effect on the people who witnessed the incident and the subsequent police activity.'
Ms Mendes' children are being provided with 'support and immediate care', he said.
Friends and other well-wishers have now raised more than 20,000 for Ms Mendes family, to help them repatriate the mother's body to Brazil and ensure her children are not separated.
Brazilian-born Ms Mendes was described as 'full of life' by members of her Catholic church community, who said she loved to raise money for people through the church in Surrey.
Aliny Mendes (left and right) was, according to one parent, 'very, very popular,' and said the 'whole school community is shocked'
Her JustGiving page read: 'You may have seen press reports that our dear friend, colleague and mother of four adored children, Aliny was murdered on Friday 8th February in a knife attack in Ewell near to Epsom, Surrey while picking up her children from school.
'Her friends, church community, colleagues and her family in Brazil and other parts of the world are in total shock at the loss of this wonderful person.'
'We are raising money to repatriate Aliny's body to her family in Brazil and to pay for a lawyer to work with the family to protect the interests of the children and try and keep them all together as they will have to be fostered or adopted and there is a risk that they will be separated. There is a costly legal process that has to be followed.
'Please can you find it in your hearts to support this very worthy cause and help these poor children who will now grow up without parents and furthermore, to lay Aliny to rest in her home country of Brazil.'
A mother was yesterday stabbed to death in the street in front of her three children just yards from a primary school. Forensic officers were this morning carrying out investigations at the crime scene following the attack which has rocked the quiet Surrey suburb
Forensic officers were this morning carrying out investigations at the crime scene following the attack which has rocked the quiet Surrey suburb.
Reports suggested it was a domestic-related attack. One neighbour near the murder scene, who did not want to be named, said: 'It was outside my house. The body was out there for some time.'
The victim was airlifted to hospital but doctors were unable to save her. Two hours after the stabbing, armed police arrested a man on suspicion of murder a mile from the scene. He was found in a van near Cheam Leisure Centre at 5.15pm.
A second man was later arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender. Yesterday a member of staff at the leisure centre described how armed police raced towards the white van and drew their guns.
The woman in her 30s is believed to have been holding one child in her arms when she was knifed in broad daylight on a suburban road by a man who jumped out of a car and attacked her
The employee, who did not wish to be named, said: 'It was unbelievable. The armed men got out and were pointing their guns at a white van, closing in and shouting, before making the arrest.
'It looked very efficient, very professional. It was over in just a few minutes. There didn't seem to be much sign of a struggle. They did very well.'
A bunch of flowers left at the police cordon this morning read: 'Aliny, rest in peace.
'You were so warm and such a wonderful mum. There are no words. Lots of love Alison and family'.
Locals claimed on social media that she was attacked in front of her children close to their primary school in Stoneleigh, Surrey, while doing the school run at around 3pm
Flowers are placed at the crime scene on the London Road in North Cheam, where a woman in her 30's was stabbed to death
Police were called to London Road, Ewell at 3pm today after reports that a woman in her 30s was stabbed
One parent at the Meadow Primary School, where she was picking up her children from at the time of the attack, spoke of the community's grief at the horrific incident.
The woman, who did not want to be named, said: 'She was very, very popular. The whole school community is shocked, and will do anything to support the children in any way that they can.
'We are doing a JustGiving page to raise money for the children, and for repatriation to fly her back to Brazil.'
She was speaking as parents from the school and local residents gathered 24 hours after the attack to pay their respects to Ms Mendes on the street where she was killed, as an array of vibrant and colourful flowers gathered on the pathway.
Residents on the busy A-road said she was carrying a child at the time and that she may have been collecting her two other children from the nearby primary school for the 3.15pm pick-up.
A woman said: 'She has three children, two go to the school. The other is a baby.
'My granddaughter goes to the school and they send the children home at 3.15pm so she must have been on her way to pick them up.
'The school haven't said anything about it as it happened on Friday teatime..'
Officers say they believe the victim and suspect were known to each other (pictured: A police van near the scene
Officers say they believe the victim and suspect were known to each other, and the stabbing would have been witnessed by 'a number of people'.
The victim was said to have been stabbed just yards from Meadow Primary School on Sparrow Farm Road, next to the A24 London Road.
Chief Inspector Michael Hodder from Surrey Police said: 'This was a tragic and shocking incident in which a woman has lost her life after being attacked in broad daylight. Our thoughts are with her friends and family at this time.
'At this stage we believe the victim and suspect are known to each other. We realise there will be a number of questions about what has happened which we will try to answer when we can and would ask the public not to speculate.
Residents claimed that the victim was a mother on her way back from collecting her children during the school run, but this remains unconfirmed
Pictured: Police at the scene on the London Road in North Cheam, on the south-west London and Surrey border
'We have a number of officers in the area to both investigate and support the community following this attack which we believe would have been witnessed by a number of people.
'If you did witness what happened and haven't already spoken to officers, or may have dashcam footage I would urge you to do so immediately, by calling 101 and quoting the reference number PR/P19030779.'
Police were said to have chased the suspects after they fled the scene.
Local councillor Drew Heffernan tweeted that there had been a knife attack, saying his thoughts are with the victim's family.
London Road and adjoining Sparrow Farm Road were cordoned off as officers arrived to investigate.
Witnesses said an air ambulance landed close to one of the nearby primary schools.
A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder while a second man has been arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender
Officers responded to reports of an attack on London Road near Cheam this afternoon
One witness told the Surrey Comet a black 4x4 mounted the pavement before a man got out of the vehicle, chased the woman and grabbed her to the ground.
Passers-by performed CPR on the woman before an air ambulance took her to a London hospital, it is understood.
Officers later confirmed that the woman had died, and two men were arrested in connection with the attack.
Transport for London tweeted that buses had been diverted via Cheam Road and Malden Road due to a police incident on London Road.
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A new exhibition will document the unseen side of the Black Panther Party in a series of rare archive images taken by a husband and wife team who gained unprecedented access to the group's inner circle.
Vanguard Revisited will take the pictures from 1968 by Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch and display them alongside new images of the Black Panther Party from 1969 onwards.
The images show people of all ages taking on police brutality with community activism, political education campaigns and coalitions with local and national organizations. The couple aimed to show a different image of the protesters from the mainstream media at the time.
Baruch said at the time: 'We can only tell you: This is what we saw. This is what we felt. These are the people.'
Elbert Bigman Howard, one of the Panther founders, said Jones and Baruch had a great eye for humanity; nobody was posing; we were all part of somebodys family'.
Jones and Barruchs archival photographs will now run alongside the work of four contemporary black artists and collectives - Kija Lucas, Tosha Stimage, Chris Martin, and 5/5 Collective.
American professor of law Kathleen Cleaver wearing dashiki during a Black Panther rally in 1968. A new exhibition will document the unseen side of the Black Panther Party in a series of never before seen images
Ruth-Marion Baruch, left, photographs one campaigner helping out at a Panther free breakfast for children program. Community activism and strong political education played a large role in The Black Panther Party
The children of Captain David Hilliard, Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party, pictured at a Free Huey rally at Bobby Hutton Memorial Park taken by Ruth-Marion Baruch who gained unprecedented access to the group
Baruch said of the Black Panthers, pictured here in 1968 at a Free Huey rally in Bobby Hutton Memorial Park, 'we can only tell you: This is what we saw. This is what we felt. These are the people'
Jones took this image of men talking on park bench. Vanguard Revisited will take pictures from 1968 taken by Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch and display them alongside new images of the Black Panther Party from 1969 onwards
The images show people of all ages taking on police brutality, including these women, with community activism, political education campaigns and coalitions with local and national organizations
Jones and Barruchs archival photographs will now run alongside the work of four contemporary black artists and collectives - Kija Lucas, Tosha Stimage, Chris Martin, and 5/5 Collective
A man pictured serving food to girl at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church under the Black Panther Free Breakfast for Children Program. The couple aimed to show a different image of the protesters from the mainstream media at the time
The streets of Oakland. Elbert Bigman Howard, one of the Panther founders, said the couple had a great eye for humanity'
Marin City Black Panthers photographed by Pirkle Jones in 1968. Jones stood in solidarity with them and his images were first printed in The Black Panther weekly newspaper before going on display at San Franciscos de Young Museum shortly after
George Murray, Minister of Education, teaching English at San Francisco State College, San Francisco, CA
Crowds viewing The Black Panthers: A Photographic essay show at de Young Museum after the images went on display. It is thought that more than 100,000 people attended the show and the historic body of work has now inspired a new exhibition
Three men carrying Free Huey banners on court house steps at Alameda County Courthouse. Huey Percy Newton co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966 with Bobby Seale
Panthers pictured during a drill. Newton was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and his imprisonment sparked protests
A Free Huey rally, DeFremery Park, Oakland. Newton's conviction was overturned and in 1970 he was released from prison
Black Panthers drilling before Free Huey Rally, DeFremery Park, Oakland, CA. Newton had been convicted of voluntary manslaughter after the death of a police officer in 1967
Yellow vest campaigner James Goddard joined activists in Manchester today - just a month after he was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence.
Wearing a T-shirt depicting Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, Goddard was pictured facing off with a protester.
Goddard was part of a group that surrounded Tory MP Anna Soubry and called her a 'Nazi' and a 'traitor' in January.
His arrest last month was in connection with the harassment of the MP for Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire during and after her interview with BBC journalist Simon McCoy.
Police said Goddard was not charged after the arrest but he was released on bail until early February.
Yellow vest campaigner James Goddard was seen facing off with a protester in Manchester today, just a month after he was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence
He was in a group of agitators that surrounded Tory MP Anna Soubry and called her a 'Nazi' and a 'traitor' in January
Since December, Goddard and his followers have accosted a number of MPs, campaigners and TV journalists at Westminster.
The yellow vest group in the UK have been inspired by weeks of nationwide anti-austerity demonstrations by the 'gilets jaune' movement in France.
The French protests began in mid-November over a proposed increase in fuel duties, and soon turned violent.
Britain has seen several small protests by Brexit supporters wearing yellow vests since November, but other activists have been slow to adopt the symbolic attire and movement.
The yellow vest group in the UK have been inspired by weeks of nationwide anti-austerity demonstrations by the 'gilets jaune' movement in France
Goddard is a vocal supporter of Tommy Robinson and asks for online donations to support his 'yellow vest' campaign.
When Mr Goddard was released on bail last month police gave him two hours to leave the area within the M25.
He shared the details of his bail to backers in a Holborn pub before heading home to Leicester.
Pledging to rally people in Manchester or Leicester instead, he accused Ms Soubry of orchestrating his arrest.
The Tory has branded him and others leading the protests as 'racist, fascist and a threat to democracy'.
Richard Merritt, 44, is on the run from police after failing to surrender himself to Cobb County Jail last week, and he's also suspected of killing his mother in Georgia
Police have launched a nationwide search for an ex-lawyer who allegedly removed his ankle tracker and murdered his mother, after failing to surrender himself for a 30-year sentence.
Richard Merritt, 44, was sentenced the one-and-a-half decades behind bars and another 15 on probation last month, after he was found guilty of stealing from and exploiting 17 of his clients.
Given a week to 'get his affairs in order', Merritt never appeared at the County Cobb jail in Georgia to begin his sentence on February 1.
US Marshalls headed to a Stone Mountain home to detain the disgraced lawyer but found his mother, Shirley Merritt, dead at the bottom of the stairs.
Merritt was issued a 30 year sentence last month after he was found guilty of 34 counts of theft and exploitation. It was also found he stole more than $400,000 from 17 clients and spent to proceeds on lavish holidays and a Porsche
Shirley Merritt, 77, was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in her home, in Stone Mountain Georgia, with a series of stab wounds in her side, and a steak knife found next to her lifeless body
The 77-year-old had been 'violently killed' according to police, with a series of stab wounds in her side and a steak knife found next to her body.
Merritt, however, was no where to be found and police have now identified him as the main suspect of the murder having purportedly removed his ankle bracelet and fled the home.
Authorities say Merritt should be considered 'armed and dangerous' in an announcement on Thursday and warned the public to keep their distance.
US Marshalls believe he may be fleeing the state in his mother's 2009 silver Lexus RX350, license plate CBV6004.
'He probably knows people all over the country, being a lawyer,' said Frank Lempka of the US Marshals.
'He could be anywhere. We think he may be anywhere in the country.'
Police say they are investigating a number of Merritt's associates and contacts in the hope of locating the fugitive.
Lempka also aired concern that Merritt could be seeking revenge on the former clients who pressed charges leading to his conviction.
'We don't know what's going on with him, but he's very unpredictable.
'He could hurt or kill someone else at this point,' he said.
The 44-year-old was disbarred in 2018, having been a Lawyer for 18 years. He blamed his misconduct on alcohol abuse and the anxiety of nearly two decades in a high-pressured environment
Merritt, a former partner of Merritt & Fletcher LLC, became a lawyer in 2000 but was disbarred in January 2018.
In 2017, he pleaded guilty to stealing $75,000 from a client, and more charges were raised the following year.
He was indicted on a total of 34 criminal charges and stole $420,000 from 17 different clients, the Supreme Court found.
Merritt is said to have spend the stole cash on a series of lavish holidays and even bought a Porsche.
The 44-year-old cited alcohol abuse as the reason for his wrongdoing.
He was issued a 30 year sentence by Judge Robert Flournoy, with 15 to be served in prison.
Merritt was also ordered to pay $454,706 in restitution.
DeKalb Police is asking anyone with information on the whereabouts of Richard Merritt to please call 770-724-7850 or Crime Stoppers at 404-577-TIPS(8477).
A city council member from Texas has been forced to apologize after he sparked outrage by calling New York Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a 'bimbo' on Twitter.
Richardson City Councilman Scott Dunn responded to a tweet from the outspoken freshman congresswoman by writing: 'The embarrassment is to have bimbos like you with nothing between your ears.'
The post received enough backlash that Dunn ultimately deleted his Twitter account, but not before his comment was immortalized in a screenshot that's gone viral.
Because the post was deleted, it's unclear which specific tweet Dunn was responding to, but the Dallas Morning News reported that it was in 'defense of the president' and his State of the Union address earlier in the week.
Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, has become a political lightning rod due to her staunch criticisms of the Republican Party and her socialist platform.
She has not responded publicly to Dunn's remark.
Richardson City Councilman Scott Dunn (left) took aim at Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (right) on Twitter earlier this week by writing in a reply to one of the freshman congresswoman's tweets: 'The embarrassment is to have bimbos like you with nothing between your ears'. The Texas city council member later deleted his Twitter account and apologized for his remark
Screenshots of Dunn's since-deleted tweet (pictured) sparked outrage on social media
Dunn posted a brief apology to his personal Facebook page, which has since been made private.
'The words I used were offensive,' he wrote. 'I am responsible for my own words and actions. I apologize to anyone who finds what I said offensive.'
Richardson Mayor Paul Voelker released a statement saying he was 'extremely disappointed and embarrassed' to see Dunn's comment.
Dunn (above) has served on the city council since 2011, and announced last month that he will not be running for re-election
'While I certainly respect Councilman Dunn's, or any citizen's, right to freely express his or her opinion on any issue of public concern, I also believe that Richardsons values are best upheld when we engage in civic discourse that is civil in tone, respectful of others and designed to produce constructive outcomes for the betterment of our community.
'Even when we disagree about important political and social issues, we shouldnt resort to name-calling.
'I condemn the description of any woman in this manner as clearly inconsistent with Richardson's values.'
Voelker noted that Dunn's comment was not made in an official capacity or using city communication channels.
The mayor added: 'I have expressed my concerns to Councilman Dunn, and I am hopeful that he will take this matter deeply to heart and that he will express sincere remorse and a clear understanding of his words' hurtful impact.'
A candidate for Richardson city council, Mauri Long, also released a statement about Dunn's comment, which she called 'inappropriate, demeaning and divisive'.
'As one of only two women running for City Council, I find this sort of locker room talk disturbing and personally offensive,' Long wrote.
'This type of caustic rhetoric by an elected representative of our great city is not reflective of our own values.'
Dunn has served on the city council since 2011, and announced last month that he will not be running for re-election.
Florida and alligators go hand in hand - but this mom-to-be might have taken that idea a little too literally.
Lindsay Tuttle, from Tampa Bay, wanted to add a sharp edge to her maternity photo shoot and so she elicited the help of a razor-toothed creature indigenous to her home town.
The processing manager can be seen cradling a small gator like a baby in her arms as her husband, Fred Tuttle, holds a bottle of milk to its mouth.
Lindsay Tuttle (left) and her husband Fred (right) wanted to add a tongue-in-cheek twist to their maternity photo-shoot, so they decided to play off a number of Florida Stereotypes
Playing on a number of Florida stereotypes, Lindsay is wearing denim shorts and leather boots, with a shotgun and case of Bud Light also in shot.
With the state flag also flying behind the expectant parents, Lindsay posted the picture from the shoot to Facebook which has since gone viral online.
'Last minute practice for baby,' wrote Lindsay. 'Alligators don't like to bottle-feed, apparently...Didn't try to breastfeed.'
More than a hundred comments flooded into to the post on Facebook, with one user remarking 'HOLY S**T I LOVE FLORIDA'.
'I wanted a picture different than your run of the mill maternity photos of women in the forest being goddesses,' said Lindsay to WTSP.
The couple's post went Viral eliciting a series of amusing responses. Their baby is due on March 6 but they're keeping the gender a secret
Lindsay met Fred the alligator (pictured) a few months ago during the Dysfunctional Grace Art Company educational exhibition
'[Reddit thread] "Florida Man" has always cracked up my husband and I, so we decided to make me Florida woman.'
Model for the day, Fred the alligator, met Lindsay a few months ago during the Dysfunctional Grace Art Company educational exhibition.
It was there that Lindsay came up with the idea.
'I pitched the idea to his owner and he was game to help me reach peak Florida levels,' Lindsay said.
'Fred is a great big brother and will be a great big brother figure for baby Tuttle.'
Lindsay and Fred's baby is due on March 6th, but the couple say they're keeping the gender a secret.
A Tennessee dog trainer has taken his own life three days after he was arrested for abusing animals in his care.
Earlier this week Stephen Kinder, 42, was accused of severely mistreating pets at his business Kinder Dog Training in Cleveland.
He was arrested on Monday facing five counts of animal cruelty after several customers accused him of starving and neglecting their dogs. He was later released after posting $1,250 bond.
The following day he insisted he was innocent in interviews with local media then on Thursday tragically shot himself in his car.
Dog trainer Stephen Kinder, 42, killed himself on Thursday, three days after he was arrested for mistreating animals in his care at his business Kinder Dog Training in Tennessee
Pet owners complained their dogs were malnourished, covered in urine, feces, and sores after staying with Kinder. His training facility pictured above
He was pronounced dead shortly afterwards at a Cleveland hospital, according to police.
He took his own life after Dalton Police executed a search warrant at his home in Dalton, Georgia on Thursday.
Dalton detectives said they spoke to Kinder on the phone at 12.10pm then just 20 minutes later someone in Cleveland, Tennessee called police and Kinder was found suffering a self inflicted gunshot wound.
It's about a 40 minute drive from Kinder's Dalton, Georgia address to his Cleveland, Tennessee business.
Abigail Eastburn said her dog lost 30 pounds and was severely malnourished after spending seven weeks in Kinder's care
Eastburn's Great Dane puppy pictured above after he was picked up from Kinder's care. He was so skinny his ribs and leg bones were visible
Another severely malnourished dog found in Kinder's care pictured above
'I don't know what was going through his mind. I don't know if it was just this specific incident, if it was what was being said, or if it was the collective - you know, something that made him think that this was just not worth it, in order to take his own life,' Cleveland PD Sergeant Evie West said.
Kinder was first reported for abusing animals when dog owner Abigail Eastburn told police Kinder returned her Great Dane malnourished and injured after spending seven weeks in his care, according to WTVC.
Another person who filed a complaint with police claimed she could see her dog's ribs and leg bones protruding through its skin when the pet was returned to her.
Some pet owners complained that their dogs were also picked up covered in urine, feces and sores, according to WDEF.
On Friday, a day after Kinder took his own life, animal control raided his Dalton, Georgia home (above) and rescued 16 starving dogs
The 16 dogs were found in crates where they were stuck for weeks without any breaks
On Tuesday Kinder insisted he was innocent after he faced animal cruelty charges. On Thursday, he took his own life
On Friday animal control raided his Dalton, Georgia home and found 16 severely starved and dehydrated dogs living in squalid conditions in the residence.
They also found two baby goats, two turtles, a snake and nine ducks in the backyard. there were also allegedly several dead animals, according to WDEF.
Animal control said the dogs had remained in crates for weeks and neighbors noted never seeing Kinder take any of the animals out.
Seven of those dogs were owned by different people who hired Kinder to train their pets.
The animals were rescued and taken to Canine Pet Rescue near Atlanta, where the business' founder Carla Brown said that many of the dogs were so malnourished, they wouldn't have survived another week.
The Kinder Dog Training business is still open and operating.
James Taylor was shot dead in his car close to Holy Cross Close in Liverpool at around 8pm on Thursday night while he waited to pick his young daughter
A father was shot dead while waiting to pick up his daughter from her dance class in Liverpool, prompting armed police raids across the city.
James Taylor was shot dead in his car close to Holy Cross Close at around 8pm on Thursday night while he waited to pick his young daughter.
Police have said it is not clear what his daughter witnessed but she is being supported by specialist officers after the incident.
Last night armed officers from Merseyside Police raided a number of houses across Liverpool.
A burned out black Ford Fiesta was found a few minutes away from the murder scene in Marshall Place near Eldon Grove in Vauxhall.
The circumstances surrounding Mr Taylor's death shocked locals.
On Friday night, a spokesperson for Merseyside Police said: 'Officers have today (Friday, 8th February) released the name of the victim fatally shot in Liverpool yesterday evening as James Taylor, 34 of Liverpool.
'Investigations are continuing to find those responsible and officers are urging anyone that has any information, dash cam footage or was simply in the area at the time and believes that could help, to please get in touch.
Last night armed officers from Merseyside Police raided a number of houses across Liverpool. A burned out black Ford Fiesta was found a few minutes away from the murder scene in Marshall Place near Eldon Grove in Vauxhall
'As part of ongoing enquiries, a series of warrants have tonight taken place at four addresses in Liverpool.'
Earlier in the day Det Chief Supt Mark Kameen said: 'The victim was sat in vehicle waiting for his daughter at a dance academy when he was approached and a firearm was discharged.
'Casings recovered at the scene relate to a handgun but I must stress we are still at the early stages at our investigation.
'One of the particularly aggravating and horrific elements to this shooting, no shooting is acceptable in Merseyside, but the fact is there was children in the area and the victim's own daughter was in the dance school.
'This is a vile act which has crossed a line.'
The Congress president brought in his brother-in-law Robert Vadra and senior leader P. Chidambaram to make his point.
New Delhi: The Rafale controversy continued unabated with Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday demanding answers to questions raised by a media report that the PMO conducted parallel negotiations on the Rafale deal, saying it is now crystal clear that the watchman is the thief as he ramped up his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Making it clear that he has no problem if the government pushes probe agencies to investigate his brother-in-law Robert Vadra or senior party leader P. Chidambaram as long as it also answers questions on the contentious defence deal.
It is an open and shut case, Mr Gandhi declared citing the report which claimed that the ministry of defence (MoD) raised strong objections to parallel discussions conducted by the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) during the negotiations over the Rs 59,000 crore Rafale fighter jet deal between India and France.
The Congress president brought in his brother-in-law Robert Vadra and senior leader P. Chidambaram to make his point. Whatever inquiry you want to do, you do it. You implement the law. Robert Vadra, P. Chidambaram you implement the law on everyone. No problem. But you also give answers on the Rafale matter.
At a press conference here, Mr Gandhi responded to charges made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha on Thursday that the Congress did not want the Indian Air Force (IAF) to be strong.
He said he wanted to address every member of the armed forces. It is absolutely clear that the Prime Minister has stolen Rs 30,000 crore of your money, bypassed a process, and given it to his friend Mr Anil Ambani.
Mr Gandhi also reiterated his demand for a joint parliamentary committee to probe the Rafale deal.
Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said, I have great respect for the august office of the PMO. But, I would regretfully say, the PMO almost behaved like a middleman in
this defence transaction. They must answer to our direct charge.
Both the government as well as Mr Ambani have strongly denied any wrongdoing in the fighter jet agreement with France.
The BJP reacted furiously to Mr Gandhis allegations. Party spokesman G.V.L. Naramimha Rao used the chor barb to allege that Mr Gandhi was making wild allegations due to questioning of his brother-in-law Robert Vadra by the ED in a money laundering case.
Rattled by On bail Tax Chor Rahul Gandhi with more lies! Routine notings are sensationalized in friendly media & silly chor Congress makes a big deal! This was an emergency procurement & a Govt2Govt deal. PMO & the CCS have final accountability & authority, he tweeted.
A number of Union ministers from the BJP hit out at Mr Gandhi after his fresh attack on the Prime Minister. The lie-manufacturing factory of Rahul Gandhi continues to operate and he has served us yet another lie. We absolutely reject his allegations, Union minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters.
He demanded that Mr Gandhi should tell them as to which aircraft companys officials he had met during his recent visit to Europe.
Rahul Gandhi and the Congress are working to get the Rafale deal scrapped. They are playing in the hands of foreign forces and companies with vested interest, Mr Javadekar alleged.
Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Congress is doing a hit job for those conspiring against the national interest and accused Mr Gandhi of levelling baseless allegations to spread confusion over the issue.
Taking a dig at the Gandhi family, he described it as a scared, defaulter dynasty and alleged the Congress presidents baseless charges are aimed at diverting peoples attention from probe into corruption cases against his family members.
A kitesurfer has died after an incident in Devon this morning during Storm Erik.
The person, who has not been named, was airlifted from Saunton Sands to North Devon District Hospital at around 11am today.
Witness John Ingram told DevonLive that the 'helicopter left carrying an injured man on a stretcher.'
They said: 'The injured man is believed to be a local kitesurfer who was caught out in today's very rough weather.'
A kitesurfer has died after an incident on Saunton Sands beach in Devon today (file picture
A spokesman for the Marine and Coastguard Agency said: 'A kitesurfer has been taken to North Devon District Hospital by the Devon Air Ambulance.
'We were informed by the ambulance service of a casualty on the beach.'
Fierce winds are expected to batter most of the British Isles today as the Met Office issues a yellow weather warning for strong wind covers much of Wales, central and northern England and southern Scotland until 3pm on Saturday.
Yesterday a tree weighing several tonnes crushed an Alfa Romeo carrying a 50-year-old man as it travelled along the A384 at Buckfastleigh, Devon at 5.30am.
The driver, a 50-year-old man from Totnes in Devon, sustained fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene, while the female driver of a Hyundai miraculously escaped with only minor injuries.
A young mother and her child have been rushed to hospital after an elderly driver accidentally rammed them into a wall while trying to park her car.
The mother and daughter were sitting on a ledge outside the Tao restaurant in the northern Perth suburb of Innaloo on Saturday afternoon at about 3.30pm when the elderly woman's car suddenly lurched forward.
Police said the driver had accidentally hit the accelerator rather than the brake.
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A young mother and her child have been rushed to hospital after an elderly driver accidentally rammed them into a wall while trying to park her car (aftermath pictured)
The mother and daughter were sitting on a ledge (pictured) outside the Tao restaurant in the northern Perth suburb of Innaloo on Saturday afternoon at about 3.30pm when the elderly woman's car suddenly lurched forward
Witnesses said the driver reversed back from the wall, Channel 9 reported, leaving the mother aged in her 20s screaming in pain.
The mother was taken to Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital with a broken leg following the incident on Scarborough Beach Road.
Witnesses said the young girl, who was taken to Perth's Children's Hospital as a precautionary measure, did not appear badly injured after the collision.
Police are investigating and it is believed the elderly woman spoke to police.
An increase in rogue mountain bike riding in Victoria's natural bushland has been blamed for the extinction of endangered, vulnerable and rare plants.
People have been mountain bike riding at Yarra Bend Park for more than 20 years, but an increase in illegal bike jumps over the past year is endangering plants.
Parks Victoria's area chief ranger Brendan Sullivan told The Age the increase in illegally built tracks is having a 'significant impact' of the viability of vegetation.
An increase in rogue mountain bike riding in Victoria's natural bushland has been blamed for the extinction of endangered, vulnerable and rare plants
People have been mountain bike riding at Yarra Bend Park (pictured) for more than 20 years, but an increase in illegal bike jumps over the past year is endangering plants.
'Some of the worst examples are trails built for downhill riding due to the vulnerability of the soil,' Mr Sullivan said.
The chief ranger said the devastating impact of bike riders isn't just visual and short term, but rather it can have a long-lasting and damaging effect on biodiversity.
Yarra River Keeper Andrew Kelly said he was shocked at the amount of erosion he has seen as a result of illegally constructed tracks and jumps.
He said carving trails through the park often strips away vegetation and erodes the delicate fragile surface soil, which can lead to a range of issues in the park.
Mr Kelly said he would like to see riders on illegally built tracks fined because, aside from the environmental damage, the erosion makes the park look quite ugly.
The park is also home to seven of Victoria's 1120 most rare and endangered plant species, including the Small Scurf-Pea, Gilgai Blown Grass and Short Water Starwort.
In addition, there are also almost 290 indigenous plants located in the park, which also contains some of the last remaining bushland in inner-Melbourne.
While the park has definitely taken a beating over the last twelve months, Mr Sullivan said luckily no culturally significant sites have been damaged - despite the risk.
In addition, there are also almost 290 indigenous plants located in the park (pictured), which also contains some of the last remaining bushland in inner-Melbourne
While the park (pictured) has definitely taken a beating over the last twelve months, Mr Sullivan said luckily no culturally significant sites have been damaged - despite the risk
He said it's wonderful people want to use the park for leisure activities, and he suggested bike riding should be restricted to one trail or path.
'Whilst illegal trail building can damage sensitive ecosystems, Parks Victoria is managing the issue and its associated impacts in collaboration with the community while still providing a great recreational opportunity,' Mr Sullivan said.
Currently, bike riders can be hit with fines of up to $178 for making and riding on illegal tracks, but Parks Victoria would prefer to avoid the 'zero-tolerance- approach.
Mr Kelly disagreed with that approach, saying he still wants to see riders fined because education and collaboration can only go so far.
'If you don't enforce the laws then you're saying those laws don't matter,' he said.
A fraudster who pretended to be a prince and stole $16million dollars from taxpayers has dubbed himself a 'political prisoner' who should be allowed to walk free from jail.
Kiwi-born Joseph Hohepa Morehu-Barlow stole money from his employer Queensland Health over four years after getting a job there as a finance officer.
He now says he's a changed man and claims to be the 'perfect inmate' who deserves a second chance.
Kiwi-born Joseph Hohepa Morehu-Barlow (pictured) defrauded his employer Queensland Health in a four year span where he roped in almost $17million
Joseph Hohepa Morehu-Barlow (pictured) now says he's a changed man and claims to be the 'perfect inmate' who deserves a second chance
In letters written from his cell at Wolston Correctional Centre in Brisbane's south-west and obtained by The Sunday Mail, Morehu-Barlow explained that he turned to crime because he wanted to 'become someone'.
Morehu-Barlow told his mother in the letters that he's angry that he applied for parole twice and was rejected.
He also claimed to have helped more than 50 inmates with their parole applications and they've all been successful, except for his.
'My one is political, I know that, that's why I expect not to go home,' he wrote.
'I am prepared for them to say no again. I am the perfect inmate, a role model inmate. If my crime wasn't against the government I would be home already.'
In the letters, he acknowledged the shame he brought to his family and asked for forgiveness from his mother.
He said the time in jail had taught him to appreciate family more than ever before as he is preparing a third application to the Parole Board.
'I know now the most precious gift/item/things in life is not money, wealth, flash house or cars it's people, particularly family,' he said.
In 2013 luxurious items seized from Morehu-Barlow's were auctioned in Brisbane, raising money for Queensland Health
The fraudster's crimes began in 2004 when he walked into Queensland Health with a fake law degree and quickly climbed the ranks to become a finance officer.
In the following six years he stole money and covered it up by saying he was royalty, beginning by transferring small amounts meant for charities into his private bank account.
When he found he wasn't getting caught he started transferring public funds into his own accounts.
In 2011, $11 million went missing from Queensland Health, which Morehu-Barlow used to buy a luxury apartment for $5.4 million, gaining attention from authorities.
Before his arrest in December 2011, Morehu-Barlow would tell friends and colleagues he was a Polynesian prince
Before his arrest in December 2011, Morehu-Barlow would tell friends and colleagues he was a Polynesian prince.
This allowed him to live an extravagant life where he would splash on exorbitant branded goods, gifts for friends and a multimillion-dollar luxury New Farm unit.
Morehu-Barlow was handed a 14-year jail sentence in 2013, with parole eligible in December 2016.
Since being eligible for parole, he has cost taxpayers almost $130,000 while remaining locked away in Wolston Jail, near Brisbane.
According to official Queensland Corrective Services prisoner prices, it would cost a minimum of $65,000 to house and feed him for a year.
The first request for parole in February 2017 was denied by the parole board while a second request in November 2017 was deferred before it was again denied.
The outcome of the request was unclear but it is understood the board previously decided he would be an 'unacceptable risk to the New Zealand community'.
Despite authorities claiming they have recovered about $11.88 million, Morehu-Barlow owes the state an increased amount of $11.6 million - due to more than $50,000 of interest accumulating each month.
This allowed him to life an extravagant life where he would splash on exorbitant branded goods, gifts for friends and a multimillion-dollar luxury New Farm unit (pictured: police investigating his riverfront apartment)
Morehu-Barlow's visa was automatically cancelled under the Migration Act and if released he will be deported to New Zealand.
The act, which was updated in 2014, aims to target foreign nationals convicted of crimes with a minimum one-year jail sentence.
When eventually released in New Zealand, Morehu-Barlow will face 'parole-like' conditions.
The State Government can continue to pursue him for the money by applying to register his debt.
In 2013 luxurious items seized from Morehu-Barlow's were auctioned in Brisbane, raising money for Queensland Health.
The auction included dozens of items from his one of his favourite designers, Louis Vuitton, as well as art, designer alcohol and appliances.
Australia's oldest federal politician has said he will enact Victoria's voluntary euthanasia laws and take his own life if his cancer returns.
Senator Derryn Hinch, a self-described 'Human Headline', shared his confronting decision on Sunday, the day after his 75th birthday.
A radio shock jock and liver cancer survivor, Hinch said he has been a long-time advocate for voluntary euthanasia.
Senator Derryn Hinch has announced he would take his own life if his liver cancer returned
'I am a great believer that suicide is your greatest civil right,' the controversial senator told The Sunday Telegraph.
He is currently on the campaign trail, working under the slogan 'Unfinished Business' to vie for another six years in parliament in the upcoming May federal election.
The 75-year-old says one of his priorities in the campaign is to make it easier for Australians with terminal illnesses to end their lives.
Victoria became the first Australian state to vote in favour of voluntary assisted dying in 2017.
The Alfred Hospital will become the only facility in the country to legally administer a lethal dose of a euthanasia drug from June 19 2019 onwards.
The controversial former journalist survived liver cancer, brought on by drinking, after a last-minute transplant in 2011
Senator Hinch praised the move, but quickly set his sights on enacting the bill nation-wide.
He has been a long-time backer of voluntary euthanasia after watching his mother die.
He says she died with 'no modesty' and wants to go on his own terms.
Hinch says he will utilise the bill he actively campaigned for and end his own life if the liver cancer he was diagnosed with more than a decade ago returned.
He was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer in 2007, brought on by heavy drinking.
Hinch, a long-time advocate for voluntary euthanasia, said his mother's death was 'not modest'
He said he had 'accepted' that he would probably die before he had a life-saving transplant in 2011.
But he has been criticised for deciding to continue drinking red wine after receiving a new liver.
'People have really been after me over it,' he said.
'But I made a decision, I want to live my life.'
A young woman who paid her university fees and high rent by dating rich older men has revealed why she joined the 'sugar baby' trend which has been sweeping Australia.
The woman named only as Samantha, from Melbourne, is one of many young women signed up to the dating site Seeking Arrangement as a way to meet rich older men.
The 26-year-old Monash University student has managed to afford $1,800 a month in rent by being a sugar baby - which involves spending time and sometimes having sex with older men in exchange for gifts or cash.
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Another sugar baby: In her time as a 'sugar baby' Brooke West (pictured) has received lavish gifts totalling $30,000, including an expensive laptop, flights and even a dog
As an overseas student, she has to pay her university fees upfront, which can range between $8,500 and $10,000 a semester - and her 'sugar daddies' have helped with this.
Samantha, who is originally from New Zealand, has also been treated to an all-expenses-paid trip to Bali by one of her 'sugar daddies'.
And she even pocketed $8,000 as part of the arrangement that saw her spend four days on holiday, news.com.au reported.
The 26-year-old has been showered in gifts from the men she dates, including expensive meals and clothing, as well as an allowance. She earns around $50,000 a year in 'allowances' from the men.
While sex is not expected as part of the arrangement, it does tend to happen, she said.
Miss West (pictured) meets her 'Sugar Daddies' at the strip club she dances in and makes a choice about whether they're someone she wants to engage with
'You don't have to (have sex) but you tend to find you develop these relationships - a lot are superficial but you still have a friendship connection.
'For me personally, if I was dating somebody I wouldn't just jump straight into sex. I'd see them for a while, form some emotional connection, it's the same in this case.'
Samantha said she initially signed up as a joke with friends but before too long had dated five or six men.
'It's a weird situation and it's never really felt normal, because it isn't normal, it's really taboo,'she said. 'But if it's mutual and everyone's got respect and everything's on the table, you feel much more comfortable.'
Samantha is not alone. There has been a growing trend of young, attractive women seeking out 'sugar daddies' in the hope of living a life of luxury.
According to Seeking Arrangement, there are 150,000 women signed up as sugar babies across Australia.
What is a Sugar Baby? Attractive people looking for the finer things in life. They appreciate exotic trips and gifts. Sugar Babies get to experience a luxurious lifestyle, and meet wealthy people on a regular basis. Advertisement
What is a Sugar Daddy? Successful men who know what they want. They're driven, and enjoy attractive company by their side. Money isn't an issue, thus they are generous when it comes to supporting a Sugar Baby. Advertisement
A 19-year-old from Sydney told Daily Mail Australia she had been receiving $1,000 a week from her 'sugar daddy' to 'help her maintain her lifestyle'.
In exchange for the money, the pair meet up once a month and have the occasional phone call.
'He lives interstate, so our relationship exists predominantly over the phone - I've never been intimate with him,' she told FEMAIL.
She said that when he visits they will go out for coffee or lunch or he will take her on a shopping spree.
When they go shopping he buys her anything that makes her gaze linger, such as designer clothes and bags, or designer shoes.
'At first it was really hard for me to get used to getting all these gifts! He used to make me send him a 'wish list' of things that I wanted, so he could surprise me with a couple of them when he came here,' the woman named as Gemma said.
'We get along really well and hold great conversations. After our first meeting, he started gifting me $1,000 a week to help maintain my lifestyle, even though he is far away.'
Gabi Grecko famously admitted in 2015 to meeting her now-husband Geoffrey Edelsten (both pictured) on sugardaddie.com
Amy Keating (pictured), a 'sugar baby' known online as 'Sweet Sophia Rose', told New Idea earlier this month she had been texting a 43-year-old married politician
Similarly, Brooke West, who is based in Auckland, New Zealand, has managed to build a lucrative career as a Sugar Baby.
Miss West would meet her sugar daddies at strip clubs where she was a dancer and decide whether she wanted to take the relationship further.
The exotic dancer told NZ Herald she had noticed a trend of 'everyday' women engaging in the online trends, which caused her some concern.
'It's not necessarily easy money - there are definitely men that can become intense and controlling, creating a pretty toxic situation if you don't know what you're doing and how to manage that.'
In her time as a 'sugar baby' Brooke West has received lavish gifts totalling $30,000, including an expensive laptop, flights and even a dog.
But the 26-year-old from Auckland, New Zealand, doesn't classify her work as 'prostitution' and argues there is a clear difference between them.
'The most surprising thing about these relationships to outsiders is that they don't involve sexual services, it's about companionship,' she explained.
Edelsten, who is a medical entrepreneur and founded Allied Medical Group, met the model-turned rapper in 2014
'Sleeping with men for cash is just prostitution and I'm going to need some of us to be honest about that. Prostitution and sugars are two separate things.'
Another sugar baby, Amy Keating, was at the centre of a sexting scandal with federal MP Andrew Broad.
Amy Keating met Mr Broad on a dating website for 'sugar babies' and he took her for dinner at the exclusive Aqua restaurant while he was at a fruit conference in Hong Kong in September.
In December, Ms Keating told New Idea magazine that Mr Broad, 43, had sent her lewd messages, referring to himself as 'James Bond', while bragging about his 'important job'.
Five weeks before the controversial texts were leaked, Mr Broad told Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack he would be willing to quit the front bench.
And even celebrities have been involved in the sugar baby trend.
Model Gabi Grecko famously admitted in 2015 to meeting her now-husband millionaire Geoffrey Edelsten on the website sugardaddie.com.
Edelsten, who is a medical entrepreneur and founded Allied Medical Group, met the model-turned rapper in 2014.
Being a sugar baby, though, is not without it's risks, experts have claimed as the trend sweeps the nation.
Laura Ramirez, Coalition against Trafficking in Women program co-ordinator, said 'sugaring' almost always involves a coercive exchange of money for sex.
'There is a power imbalance between the man and the woman,' she told the New York Post last year.
'And I think a lot of women don't realise the position that they're placing themselves in, and the subjugation that they're sort of willing to go through to have a man pay for their things.'
HBO is standing by its controversial Michael Jackson documentary that reveals the horrific alleged sexual abuse of young boys he took under his wing and invited to stay in his lair Neverland.
Despite rumors that HBO is reconsidering acquiring the rights to Leaving Neverland, the network's boss Casey Bloys says he has every intention to continue with the film.
'There is no hesitation, there are no plans to not air it,' Bloys, HBO's programming president, said to The Wrap.
He added that despite challenges from Michael Jackson's estate attorneys, the network will proceed with airing the film on Sunday March 3.
HBO is standing by their recently acquired film Leaving Neverland, a shocking documentary that follows the story of two men who say they were molested by Michael Jackson when they were children . Director Dan Reed (center) and alleged victims Wade Robson (left) and James Safechuck (right)
'There is no hesitation, there are no plans to not air it,' HBO boss Bloys said on the controversial film (Jackson above with accuse Wade Robson)
Jackson's estate has challenged the film and asked HBO to reconsider airing it (James Safechuck pictured above as a child with Jackson, who he claims raped and molested him)
'All I ask of this is that people watch it and judge for themselves. I think you will see a very powerful, very moving, disturbing documentary. Once people see it, they can decide for themselves,' Bloys said.
'We're not dealing with any legal issues or concerns. It's going to air and we have not edited it,' he said when asked about any possible ramifications.
'We have a very, very experienced legal team. This has been vetted,' he added.
The bombshell four-hour documentary, directed by Dan Reed, was first screened at the Sundance film festival in January and HBO and Channel 4 quickly scooped up the rights for the shocking film.
The film follows the story of Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck who claim that they were molested by the pop star while they were children.
The abuse alleged in the film was so appalling there were counselors on hand for traumatized viewers.
Since airing, the film has sparked backlash and outrage among Jackson fans and the king of pop's estate.
Jackson's estate has slammed the abuse claims as false and sent a 10-page letter to HBO executives to discredit Robson and Safechuck's accounts in the documentary.
The estate released a statement last month calling the film 'yet another lurid production in an outrageous and pathetic attempt to exploit and cash in on Michael Jackson'.
'Wade Robson and James Safechuck have both testified under oath that Michael never did anything inappropriate toward them. This so called "documentary" is just another rehash of dated and discredited allegations. Its baffling why any credible filmmaker would involve himself with this project,' the statement added.
Estate lawyer Howard Weitzman offered to meet with HBO executives in his letter and says that if the network cares about ethical standards 'this documentary will never air on HBO'.
James Safechuck, left, pictured as a child holding hands with Michael Jackson, received a standing ovation from the audience at the film's Sundance festival premiere last month
Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch in Los Olivos, California pictured above
'We know that this will go down as the most shameful episode in HBOs history,' he said in the letter.
'We know that Michaels devoted fans, and all good people in the world, will not swiftly forgive HBO for its conduct,' he added.
Afterwards, HBO released a statement defending the film.
'Our plans remain unchanged...Dan Reed is an award-winning filmmaker who has carefully documented these survivors' accounts. people should reserve judgement until they see the film.'
Director Dan Reed also defended his movie.
'Anyone who sees the film will know it is solely about hearing the stories of two specific individuals and their families in their own words, and that is a focus we are very proud of,' he said in a statement.
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Violence broke out on the streets of Paris today as anti riot police confronted a mass of French yellow vest protesters on the 13th consecutive weekend of demonstrations.
Tear gas and baton charges were used around the Champs Elysee, after demonstrators threw stones at officers and vandals tried to smash shop windows.
Shocking footage shows protesters gathering around a man whose hand appears to have been ripped off which spurts blood as he cries in pain.
Other grisly scenes show demonstrators trying to topple boards, throwing planks of wood and cornering police as more tear gas is thrown.
Many businesses were shut as the Yellow Vests - who are named after their high visibility jackets - mobilised across the country.
Protesters wearing a yellow vest throw back tear gas canisters to police officers near the National Assembly in Paris, on during the 13th consecutive Saturday of demonstrations
An injured protester is given help during a demonstration after baton charges and tear gas were used around the Champs Elysee
Protesters gathering around a man whose hand appears to have been ripped off which spurts blood as he cries in pain
Grisly scenes show blood splattered on the ground as protesters pour water over a mans wound after his hand was torn off
Firemen work to battle blazing cars in Bordeaux on Saturday afternoon in scenes that are becoming familiar in Macron's France
A protester faces police officers amid tear gas smoke outside the National Assembly in Paris. The protest in the French capital has passed the National Assembly and will end up near the Eiffel Tower
Riot police lift a demonstrator up by his limbs as they remove him from heavy clashes on the streets of Bordeaux this afteroon
Many businesses were shut as the Yellow Vests - who are named after their high visibility motoring jackets - mobilised across the country
Men destroy the window of a bank. The protest in the French capital has passed the National Assembly and will end up near the Eiffel Tower
A protester from the movement climbs a police vehicle on the Champs Elysees during the 'Act XIII' demonstration
Protesters wearing a yellow vest gather outside the National Assembly in Paris. There have been months of continual unrest, including riots that saw the Arc de Triomphe and other public monuments attacked, with shops looted and set on fire
Police officers stand amid tear gas smoke outside the National Assembly in Paris. Extremists wearing black balaclavas infiltrated the crowds
Protesters march during a demonstration near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris as they gather to keep pressure on French President Emmanuel Macron's government
Four armoured cars containing chemical weapons dispensers were being used to patrol the demonstration, together with water canons and other police vehicles.
In shocking footage, a detonation is heard before a group of protesters call out for medics and surround someone whose hand is seen very severely injured. It was reportedly torn off by a detonating sting grenade.
The protest in the French capital has passed the National Assembly and will end up near the Eiffel Tower.
It follows months of continual unrest, including riots that saw the Arc de Triomphe and other public monuments attacked, with shops looted and set on fire.
An officer at the scene said: 'Extremists wearing black balaclavas have infiltrated the crowds and are intent on violence.'
Among those in the crowd was Jerome Rodrigues, a leading Yellow Vest who lost an eye after being hit by a fragment from a rubber bullet fired at him last month.
Like others who have been mutilated by such weapons he called for them to 'be outlawed immediately,' but they were still in use today.
Eric Drouet, another Yellow Vests leader, said the incident justified 'a mass uprising without precedent by all useful and necessary means.'
Such words were of huge concern for President Macron, who has accused British politicians of 'tearing society apart' by allowing a Brexit referendum in Britain.
It comes as a criminal enquiry was launched after an arson attack on the home of the President of France's National Assembly.
Richard Ferrand, who is the equivalent of the Speaker in Britain's House of Commons and a close personal friend of President Emmanuel Macron, described the attack on the property in his Brittany constituency as 'violence and intimidation'.
The National Gendarmerie discovered a blanket, tire residue and a homemade torch soaked in fuel on the site, leaving 'the criminal origin in no doubt,' according to a statement from Mr Ferrand's office.
The Yellow Vests have been joined by extremists from the far Right and the ultra-Left, as well as anarchists intent on causing as much damage as possible.
The independent Mr Macron, leader of the Republic On The Move party, won the French presidential election in a landslide in 2017, but he is now dubbed the 'President of the Rich' with polls showing his popularity rating struggling to get above 30 per cent.
Today's ugly scenes are typical of those that have regularly reduced Paris and other towns and cities to a war zone.
The yellow vest activists, who have brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets over the past three months, are now trying to achieve electoral success but the movement is politically divided and has no appointed leader.
President Emmanuel Macron - the target of many demonstrators' anger - seems to be clawing back support as he tries to quell the movement with a national political debate. Recent polls show Macron's approval ratings rising.
Several competing groups of yellow vests are getting ready to present candidates for the European Parliament election in May, while other figures insist the movement must remain non-political.
Around 69,000 people nationwide took part in French protests last week, down from more than 80,000 the previous two weekends, according to the French Interior Ministry.
The yellow vests movement began in November and was named after the fluorescent safety vests that French motorists must carry.
A protester throws a tear gas canister on the facade of the National Assembly in Paris
Protesters wearing a yellow vest stand in tear gas smoke near the Eiffel Tower in Paris
An injured policeman in riot gear is given help during a demonstration by the "yellow vests" movement
A protester wearing a yellow vest attempts to remove a banner depicting President of the French National Assembly Richard Ferrand and French MPs, outside the National Assembly
A protester throws a wooden plank on the facade and a man destroys boards of the National Assembly
Yellow flowers are seen on the top of a mast displaying the French national flag as yellow vest protesters gather around the Arc de Triomphe
Among those in the crowd was Jerome Rodrigues (pictured), a leading Yellow Vest who lost an eye after being hit by a fragment from a rubber bullet fired at him last month
A pensioner who was robbed and burned alive in one of Australia's most horrific cold cases may have been killed for a cache of opals, detectives believe.
At least three people broke into Franco Murat's home in north Adelaide on August 16, 1999 and robbed the pensioner before setting him alight.
It has been two decades since the horrific attack, but Major Crime detectives have now revealed the attackers may have been targeting a large quantity of precious opals.
At least three people broke into Franco Murat's (pictured) Blair Athol home in Adelaide's north on August 16, 1999, and robbed the pensioner before setting him alight
The motivation behind one of Australia's most horrific cold cases where a pensioner was burned alive may have been a cache of opals (Pictured: Mr Murat in the ambulance before he died)
The opals, mined by the invalid pensioner over multiple years, were stolen along with his car, Adelaide Now reported.
While it's been known robbery was the most probable motive of the attack, detectives still cannot explain why the attackers set Mr Murat on fire.
The three people broke down Mr Murat's back door and confronted the pensioner in his bedroom.
They then put a pillowcase over his head before covering his body in accelerant and setting him on fire.
Somehow Mr Murat was able to tell one of the uniformed officers that two men and a women were responsible - despite suffering severe burns to more than 30 per cent of his body.
Before he was rushed to hospital he also told officers the attackers asked for the keys to his car, which was found burnt just a kilometre away.
The pensioner was put into an induced coma and remained on life support in Royal Adelaide Hospital for three weeks before he died.
The opals, that were mined by the invalid pensioner over multiple years, were stolen along with his car (pictured)
Before he was rushed to hospital he also told officers the attackers asked for the keys to his car, which was found burnt just a kilometre away
Major Crime case officer Detective Brevent Sergeant Simon May said the homicide had an unusual amount of violence.
'It is an incredibly callous thing to do. It is a horrific way to die, I don't think there is any other way you could describe it,' he said.
Not only did the robbers take the opals and the car, they also tore through multiple rooms in the house in an attempt to find the opal.
However, the attackers left lots of expensive jewellery.
Mr May believes the pensioner was targeted in a planned attack but has been unable to connect anyone to the case.
'He kept fairly much to himself. It is a mystery, limited people would have known he had the jewellery and opals in his house,' he said.
'It could be someone known to him, but there are no suspects at this time.'
Police are offering a reward of up to $200,000 for any information on the case.
A New Zealander with an extensive criminal record has been allowed to stay in Australia because his great-great grandfather is Aboriginal.
The 35-year-old man was facing deportation after his Australian visa was cancelled on character grounds - but he took his fight to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and won.
The father-of-two has a rap sheet three pages long, and it includes domestic violence convictions, assaulting police and drug offences spanning a decade.
A New Zealander with an extensive criminal record has been allowed to stay in Australia as his great-great grandfather is Aboriginal
The argument that won his case was that he and his two children identify as indigenous people of Australia this is despite the man being born and bred in New Zealand.
The man's parents were also born and raised in New Zealand and identify as Maori.
But the man's maternal grandfather five generations back was Aboriginal.
The great-great grandfather fled Tasmania for New Zealand to escape massacres.
His two children were born in Australia after the man and his wife moved to Western Australia in 2005.
The boy's mother told the tribunal her children believe they are indigenous to Australia.
The argument that won his case was that he and his two children identify as indigenous people this is despite the man being born and bred in New Zealand (stock image)
The tribunal ruled in favour of the man as it was concerned revoking his visa may have a 'detrimental impact of the children's cultural identity'.
'If their Aboriginal parent was removed to New Zealand without them, they would lose the benefit of learning about their culture from their father. If the children were to relocate to New Zealand they would be removed from being part of the indigenous community in Australia.
'This would negatively impact on their ability to actively participate in, and learn about their Australian Aboriginal culture and heritage.'
The minister questioned whether doubts were being deliberately created in public minds because of some corporate warfare.
New Delhi: The Rafale deal issue once again rocked the Lok Sabha on Friday with a combative defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman countering a renewed offensive by the Opposition by terming as incomplete and distorted a newspaper report about parallel negotiations by the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) in the Rafale fighter deal. The minister questioned whether doubts were being deliberately created in public minds because of some corporate warfare.
On Friday, a news report claimed that the then defence secretary G. Mohan Kumar made a noting about parallel negotiations by the PMO on an official file on Nov. 24, 2015, saying, RM may pl. see. It is desirable that such discussions be avoided by the PMO as it undermines our negotiating position seriously.
Claiming that the media report and Oppositions allegations amounted to flogging a dead horse, Ms Sitharaman accused the Opposition of playing into the hands of multinational companies and vested interests to stop the deal.
They are flogging a dead horse. Periodical enquiries by the PMO cannot be construed as interference, she said during the Zero Hour.
Please see the then defence minister statements... See how this publication conveniently chooses not to quote the then defence minister. I am sorry to say, but this is selective journalism... to present a story in a manner, just to get reactions.... We condemn such irresponsible and slanderous journalism, she said.
The Opposition parties, however, stepped on the gas with the CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had consistently undermined the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the defence ministry to benefit his cronies in the Rafale deal. Other leaders, including Saugata Roy of the Trinamul Congress (TMC), Omar Abdullah of the National Conference and former defence minister A.K. Antony of the Congress, joined ranks to attack the Prime Minister.
Opposition pointed to the media report which claimed that the defence ministry had protested to the PMO over the mechanism adopted for the Rafale deal.
Ms Sitharaman said the then defence minister Manohar Parrikar had replied to the letter asking the official to remain calm as everything was alright.
Ms Sitharaman said, As for the PMO following up with the defence ministry is concerned, does the PMs Office asking for regular updates from a ministry to ensure timely work called interference? Interference is what Sonia Gandhi did with not just all the ministries, but the PMO too. That is what is called interference.
Immediately after the House convened at noon, members from the Congress, the TMCs and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) jumped into the well shouting slogans and showing placards referring to the media report.
Opposition members were heard shouting slogans demanding resignation of Mr Modi on the issue. Opposition parties also demanded constitution of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the Rafale deal.
Saugata Roy of the TMC alleged that notorious National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was conducting parallel negotiations in Paris, undermining the bargaining power of the government.
National Conference leader Mr Abdullah said that a purported MoD note on Rafale indicated that Mr Parrikar had no knowledge of the progress in negotiations for the fighter jet deal.
Former defence minister A.K. Antony claimed it was shocking that the PMO was conducting parallel negotiations on the Rafale deal and alleged it had special interests to protect.
Never in the history of Government of India it has happened like that. What is the special interest of the PMO? Why did the PMO take such a special interest in this case? They have special interests to protect. They want to favour somebody, he alleged.
RTHK: Acclaimed actor Albert Finney dies, aged 82
Veteran British actor Albert Finney, who starred in films including Murder on the Orient Express and Erin Brockovich, has died at the age of 82, a family spokesman said Friday.
Finney, who received four best actor Oscar nominations and won three Golden Globes, "passed away peacefully after a short illness with those closest to him by his side", the spokesman said.
He grew up in Manchester, northwest England, and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
He started out in William Shakespeare plays and mixed his movie career with acclaimed theatre roles.
His more recent films include The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Bourne Legacy (2012), and the James Bond film Skyfall, out the same year.
His four best actor Academy Award nominations were for Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983) and Under the Volcano (1984).
He was also nominated for best supporting actor for his performance in Erin Brockovich (2000). (AFP)
This story has been published on: 2019-02-09. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Hundreds of families in residential apartment buildings are unknowingly living in death-traps made of highly flammable cladding.
The alarming revelation came to light after a fire tore through the Neo200 high-rise in Melbourne early last Monday morning.
Many residents of the tower weren't told their units were lined with the combustible cladding until after they were forced to run for their lives.
While authorities in the Victorian Cladding Taskforce work to identify buildings with the dangerous material, fresh concerns have emerged that there are no legal requirements for residents to be told of the danger.
Hundreds of families are unknowingly living in homes with flammable cladding. Pictured are some of the 200 residents forced to evacuate after the Neo200 high-rise caught fire Monday
A week after the fire, residents of around 60 buildings deemed a possible risk have still not been told.
Council of International Students Australia president Bijay Sapkota said this was 'very frustrating. They should know about it,' he told The Herald Sun.
The state government is now considering reform that would force landlords to inform their tenants of any potential risk.
Planning Minister Richard Wynne told The Herald Sun 'a lot of work' had already been done on keeping residents informed but said: 'If we have to do more, we will.'
After a fire ran rampant through the Neo200 building, reminiscent of London's deadly Grenfell Tower which went up in flames and killed 72 people in 2017, there were calls for a public register of buildings lined with the cladding in Victoria.
The Andrews Government quickly dismissed pleas for a publicly available list, saying it would make those buildings targets for arsonists.
Dangerous cladding (pictured lining the building) was deemed responsible for the Neo200 fire
An investigation has meanwhile been launched into identifying high-risk buildings, with 1,200 of 2,000 inspected referred to a panel for urgent review.
One emergency order has already been issued to a building in Frankston South, southeast of Melbourne.
The order decreed urgent fire safety upgrades, primarily new smoke alarms and removing anything that could spark a fire near cladding.
However, residents were never told the full extent of the danger, only that it would be safest if they evacuated.
'You have faith that when you buy a property that it's safe. We didn't build it, so I don't understand why we have to pay for it,' one resident said.
A top British surgeon has called for transgender women to get life-changing womb transplants so they can have children of their own.
It comes after doctors in Brazil delivered the world's first baby from a womb transplant that was given to a woman from a deceased donor last year.
Now surgeon Christopher Inglefield, founder of the London Transgender Clinic, believes transgender women deserve a uterus implant.
He says the procedure is 'essentially identical' to the one performed on women.
Surgeon Christopher Inglefield (pictured), founder of the London Transgender Clinic, believes transgender women deserve a uterus implant
It comes after doctors in Brazil delivered the world's first baby from a womb transplant from a deceased donor to a woman last year
Dr Inglefield, who appeared in ITV's Transformation Street, told the Mirror: 'This pioneering birth is extremely important for any trans female who would like to carry her own child.
'Because once the medical community accept this as a treatment for cis-women with uterine infertility, such as congenital absence of a womb, then it would be illegal to deny a trans-female who has completed her transition.'
There are currently no regulations in place to prevent a trans women from receiving IVF if they do receive a transplant.
Dr Inglefield says 'harvesting' the womb from the donor is tricky as surgeons must not damage arteries and veins to the uterus.
Surgeons perform a cesarean section on a woman who received a womb transplanted from a deceased donor, at the hospital in Brazil
Trans females have a narrower pelvis than women but there would still be room to carry a child
But he says the 'plumbing in' is straight forward because vessels are connected to veins which are the same in both males and females.
Trans females have a narrower pelvis than women but there would still be room to carry a child.
And supplements can be taken to replicate hormones experienced during pregnancy.
He said births would most likely be delivered by cesarean section in order to safeguard the child.
And other experts agree that transgender women should get a womb transplant.
Dr Richard Paulson, former president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said there is no obvious reason why transgender women should not receive a womb implant.
He said: 'I personally suspect there are going to be trans women who are going to want to have a uterus and will likely get the transplant.'
The View co-host Meghan McCain has said that she wishes Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump had not attended her father's funeral.
McCain appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Thursday night, describing her shock at seeing the couple at late Senator John McCain's September 1 service at the Washington National Cathedral.
'The Trumps had beef with me then, and in the words of Cardi B, they're gonna have beef with me forever, and I'm not gonna forget,' she said, referring to the rapper's lyrics in the 2016 song Foreva.
'It's sort of a strange element of my life now that they attended, and I wish they had chosen not to, out of respect, if nothing more, for me,' she added.
Meghan McCain appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Friday night, describing her shock at seeing Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at her father's funeral
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are seen attending John McCain's funeral on September 1 at the Washington National Cathedral, a move that left Meghan McCain embittered
'I thought that my family had made it clear, or at least I had, that the Trumps are unwelcome around me, and that my father had been sort of very clear about the line between the McCains and the Trumps,' she told Colbert.
'So I was surprised when they were there. And it made me uncomfortable, and I hope I made them uncomfortable, honestly, with everything,' she continued, referring to her jibes at President Donald Trump while eulogizing her father.
During her eulogy, Meghan McCain criticized 'cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice (her father) gave so willingly.'
Speaking with Colbert, Meghan McCain added of Kushner and Ivanka: 'It's their call, and I think America can judge on its own what they thought of that, and what they thought of my eulogy.'
Meghan McCain (right) leaves the podium after speaking during the funeral service for U.S. Sen. John McCain at the National Cathedral on September 1
John McCain died at the age of 81 after battling brain cancer. He made explicit his desire that President Trump not attend his funeral, and also dis-invited his 2008 running mate, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
His beef with President Trump dates at least back to the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump criticized him for being taken prisoner in Vietnam.
'He's not a war hero,' Trump said in July 2015, sarcastically quipping: 'He's a war hero because he was captured.'
Then, he added, 'I like people that weren't captured.'
Meghan McCain and her mother Cindy McCain embrace as the casket of the late Senator John McCain arrives at the Washington National Cathedral for the funeral service for John McCain
After Trump was elected, John McCain was tied to the leak of British ex-spy Christopher Steele's 'dirty dossier' on Trump, which contained salacious and unsubstantiated allegations.
Former State Department official David Kramer, an executive at the McCain Institute, met with BuzzFeed reporter Ken Bensinger on December 29, 2016 and passed the information in the dossier, according to court documents.
Two weeks later, Buzzfeed published the dossier, which landed like a bombshell just days before Trump's inauguration.
The feud famously continued when the Republican senator rushed to DC to dramatically block Obamacare repeal, which both he and Trump has campaigned on, less than two weeks after undergoing brain surgery.
Like Meghan McCain, Trump is apparently unwilling to squash the beef, griping about McCain's surprise vote on the Affordable Care Act as recently as Tuesday.
At an off-the-record lunch with television news anchors prior to his State Of The Union address, Trump described McCain's vote against repeal as a betrayal, the New York Times reported.
The President added: 'By the way, he wrote a book and the book bombed.'
A forensic police investigation has revealed RSL employees have allegedly spent up to $5million in misappropriated charity funds on luxury watches, dinners and tailored suits costing $5,000.
Forensic auditiors, Ernst & Young were last year called in to go through the organisation's finances after it was alleged there had been financial irregularities.
Several account books were seized during the audit that allegedly contained multiple unspecified payments to various RSL figures, it was reported.
A forensic police investigation has revealed RSL employees have allegedly spent up to $5million in misappropriated charity funds
According to the records, one employee was allegedly paid $30,000 a month for undefined work, while another was given a $45,000 check for no apparent reason, The Herald Sun reported.
Another RSL employee was allegedly paid to have custom-made suits twice a year, while another was reimbursed for filling up his car with petrol twice in the same day.
Among the other big-ticket items listed in the account books were $500 watches, fine dining and weekly trips to both domestic and overseas destinations.
There were allegedly numerous other promotional cheques given to anonymous people and organisations, as well as countless 'promotional' spends, such as hotel stays.
While several people frequently signed off on expenditure, one colleague would often sign for another - usually with no explanation or description, it is alleged.
Former RSL state president Don Rowe (pictured) has also faced charges for allegedly misusing his corporate credit card
There were also countless 'Ditto' marks throughout the pages to represent the unspecified regular payments paid to former employees.
The investigation is the latest scandal involving the RSL organisation, and it comes after it was revealed the former state president Don Rowe was facing charges for allegedly misusing his corporate credit card.
There have also been allegations of bullying as well as conflicts of interest with outside institutions being investigated.
As a result of the audit, the Australian Federal Police fraud squad in Canberra have launched a formal investigation into the alleged misappropriation of funds.
The Australian Federal Police have declined to comment as it is an ongoing investigation.
Turkey's president helped carry the coffin of one of the victims of the apartment building collapse in Istanbul today as the death toll hit 17.
While visiting the scene of the collapse, he said that there were 'many lessons to learn' before visiting victims in the hospital.
The cause of Wednesday's tragedy is under investigation but officials have said the top three floors of the eight-story building in the Kartal district were built illegally.
'In this area, we have faced a very serious problem with illegal businesses like this done to make more money,' President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters at the scene.
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the funeral of nine victims of a building collapse in Istanbul today
Erdogan, pictured with one of the victims, said there were 'many lessons to learn' from the collapse
The cause of the tragedy is under investigation but officials have said the top three floors of the eight-story building were built illegally. Pictured: Erdogan at the scene
He said the government would take 'steps in a determined way' after investigators complete their work.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has increased the death toll to 17.
Erdogan also visited a hospital where more than a dozen people are being treated. Seven of them are in serious condition.
Friends and relatives waited near the wreckage for news of their missing loved ones as emergency teams, aided by sniffer dogs, worked around the clock to reach possible survivors.
Pictured: President Erdogan and other people praying during the funeral of nine of the victims
Pictured: Erdogan visiting Azra Havva Tekgoz who was injured during the building collapse
Pictured: rescue workers at the scene of the collapse in the Kartal district of Istanbul earlier today
Officials have not disclosed how many people are still unaccounted for. The building had 14 apartments with 43 registered residents
Officials have not disclosed how many people are still unaccounted for. The building had 14 apartments with 43 registered residents.
The collapse took place at around 4pm on the Asian side of Istanbul in the mostly residential Kartal district.
Security camera footage on HaberTurk television showed several people, including schoolchildren with backpacks, running away from the site as the building tumbled down and a cloud of dust engulfed the area.
'We rushed out as soon as we heard a loud noise. When we got out, we saw that the building had collapsed,' resident Kenan Ayyildiz told the news channel.
Friends and relatives waited near the wreckage for news of their missing loved ones as emergency teams, aided by sniffer dogs, worked around the clock to reach possible survivors
The British model at the centre of a fatal love triangle which ended with the arrest of her ex-boyfriend after a body was found in a shallow grave has been named.
Mily Leonard, 23, was arrested alongside her long-term boyfriend Wayne Walsh after his flatmate's body was found buried alongside two bottles of bleach nearly five months after he vanished in Costa Blanca.
Walsh is suspected of murdering convicted drugs dealer Carl Carr, 38, in a fight with a knuckleduster before using bleach to clean up their rented Spanish villa.
Party girl Mily, who boasted of her luxury lifestyle by posing on the bonnet of a Hummer, is languishing in prison after being accused of 'concealing' the alleged homicide.
Police have confirmed they suspect Dubliner Carr was beaten to death over a 'love triangle' involving Walsh's ex.
British model Mily Leonard, 23, has been accused of helping her boyfriend, Wayne Walsh, conceal the murder of his flatmate - and her ex-boyfriend - Carl Carr
Police have confirmed they suspect Dubliner Carr was beaten to death over a 'love triangle' involving Mily
Wayne Walsh, pictured with long-term girlfriend Mily, is suspected of attacking Carr, who lived with him in Costa Blanca, when he learned his friend had enjoyed nights out with the model
Locals in the holiday resort of Torrevieja where the pair shared a home say Walsh was seeing Mily again after a split as well as sleeping with a pretty British bar manager, who has also been arrested.
He is suspected of attacking Carr, who moved to Spain after serving an eight-year prison sentence in Ireland over a 1.25million heroin and cocaine bust in 2008, when he learned his friend had enjoyed nights out with the model.
One said: 'Walsh bragged to friends he had got rid of him after he went missing.
'Everyone was talking about Carr being seen out and about with Mily before he disappeared.
'She is very pretty and would turn heads whenever she walked into a room.
Mily (left) Walsh's other female friend Natalie Edwards (centre) were remanded in custody on Saturday after appearing in court in Torrevieja
Carl Carr, 38, was last seen in September on a night out at the Cabo Roig resort near Torrevieja
'She had a young son with Wayne. They had split up but Walsh was a real womaniser and word is that he was sleeping with Mily again as well as the other Brit woman who has been arrested.'
Mily, 23, boasted of modelling for a Benidorm-based agency and beat off stiff competition to become the face of a popular Costa Blanca bar when she was a teenager and won herself a one-year contract.
Modelling pics show her posing in a figure-hugging red swimsuit and a daring black dress.
In others she is photographed lounging on an inflatable ring in a pool - and exposing her midriff in a crop top at a bar.
Mily and Walsh's other female friend Natalie Edwards were remanded in custody on Saturday after appearing in court in Torrevieja as part of an ongoing criminal probe.
One of the women is also being probed on suspicion of illegal weapons possession following the discovery during one of the police searches of a 9mm pistol.
One local said: 'Walsh bragged to friends he had got rid of him after he went missing. Everyone was talking about Carr being seen out and about with Mily before he disappeared'
Walsh was sent to jail along with a Spanish handyman also suspected of concealment.
A fifth woman - another Brit who has not been named - was arrested on suspicion of making a false statement and remains under investigation but was not sent to prison.
None of the five have yet been charged, as is normal in Spain where formal charges are only laid shortly before trial.
Carr's body was found buried by the AP-7 motorway between Benijofar and Algorfa, a 20-minute drive north from where the Irishman was last seen on September 16 last year.
Police say they believe he was killed after a night out before his body was driven to woods 20 minutes north of his home and buried alongside bleach used in a clean-up operation to hide the crime.
His grief-stricken mum Marie, who was told of the gruesome discovery last Saturday, said: 'The Spanish police have told me Carl's death has nothing to do with drugs.
'I believe he was killed because of a romantic triangle, by a man he knew who accused him of dating one of his girlfriends.
'He told me twice in the last conversation we had that he loved me. Those were his last words, "I love you Mam".'
Saying he spoke regularly to his two young children in Ireland by a former long-term partner, she added: 'I knew this was never a voluntary disappearance. He talked to his children every day and he talked to me every second day.
'Whoever did this to my son must pay the consequences.'
A father has been hailed as a hero after saving his two-year-old son's life by shielding him from a falling tree.
Miguel Mawate, 37, was at a birthday party in a park in eastern Adelaide when the freak accident occurred at about 1pm on Saturday.
Twelve people - including at least five children - were sitting beneath a tree when it suddenly split in two.
Mr Mawate had initially tried to get the children out of the way - but the tree came down too fast so he thew himself over his son.
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Miguel Mawate (right)has been hailed as a hero after saving his two-year-old son's life by shielding him from a falling tree
'The tree was coming down too quick, so he actually put the children underneath him,' witness Bianca di Brino told Channel 9.
Mr Mawate suffered back injuries and was taken to hospital, along with the 61-year-old grandfather of the birthday girl, but miraculously the young boy was uninjured.
The grandfather, Charlambos Dimitriou, had rushed to the aide of those who were under the tree when it fell and was treated for a heart condition.
Two of the children were treated for shock.
'I guess you do anything for your kids,' Ms di Brino told reporters at the scene.
Mick Sausse from the South Australian Country Fire Service told Channel 7 the tree could have fallen as a result of the recent hot weather coupled with rain on Saturday morning.
12 people - including five children - were sitting beneath the tree at a birthday party in a park on Barr Smith Street and a witness said Mr Mawate had initially tried to get them out of the way (pictured tree after it fell)
'It's got rotting in the middle of it by the look of it, we've had a lot of trees go down here,' he said.
Determined not to let the freak accident affect the celebrations, the party continued as the two men recovered in hospital.
The fallen tree has been cordoned off and Burnside Council have said they will be investigating the cause.
Officials said no previous concerns had been raised about the tree, according to The Adelaide Advertiser.
Mr Mawate suffered back injuries and was taken to hospital (pictured), along with the 61-year-old grandfather of the birthday girl, but miraculously the young boy was uninjured
A sex offender who abused boys with one of Britain's most notorious paedophiles has been released from prison - and the family of victims fear he's living near them.
Sick Peter Norsworthy, 72, was jailed in October 2006 after he was found guilty of 13 charges including rape and indecent assault all on boys under the age of 16.
During his trial it emerged that Norsworthy would 'share' victims with William Goad - one of the most prolific child molesters in British legal history.
Norsworthy was jailed for 15 years for his crimes in and around Plymouth in Devon and was released in 2015 on parole before being recalled for breaching conditions.
Now vile Norsworthy has been released again - and the mother of one victim fears her son, who has brain damage, may run into the predatory pensioner.
The mother said she found out Norsworthy had been released in a letter from the Victim Contact Service, in conjunction with HM Prison and Probation Service.
ick Peter Norsworthy, 72, was jailed in October 2006 after he was found guilty of 13 charges
Last month she was told Norsworthy had 'recently had his case reviewed by the Parole Board and has been granted release'.
She was informed he would be released 'in February to an approved premises in the Southwest.'
He will be subject to two licence conditions - not to contact her son directly or indirectly and not to enter Plymouth as defined by a map supplied.
The mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: 'After seeing the map I asked if they had moved him closer - as close as Saltash.
'The woman hesitated. I asked 'have you moved that dirty pig closer to Plymouth?' She couldn't tell me.
'Right now he is allowed right up to the Saltash bridge. Next year he will be able to walk the streets of Plymouth again - where many of his victims still live.
'My son goes through Saltash three times a week.
'I don't want him [Norsworthy] nearer to my family. The parole people said that if he breaches his conditions I'm to phone the police.
'I won't be bothering with the police. He and Goad were abusing children for years and the police knew about it and did nothing.
'It was only when they were forced into it, thanks to [retired Det Con Shirley Thompson] that they did anything and arrested him.'
Norsworthy's offences covered a 12-year-period between 1988 and 2000, when he abused children alongside Britain's most notorious paedophile - William Goad.
Goad was jailed for life in 2004 after pleading guilty to raping a child, but Norsworthy faced trial after claiming he was innocent.
This meant his victims had to give evidence in open court, sharing their horrifying experiences at the hands of the 'predatory paedophile'.
But the jury found Norsworthy guilty and he was sent to prison.
The mother continued: 'To me he is worse than Goad - at least Goad pleaded guilty.
'This pig made them all go through it and made us listen, sitting in the dock with a smirk on his chops.
'I can't guarantee that if I see him I won't put my hands on him. There's no forgiveness in my body.
'When we was given parole last time me and Shirley went to Bristol to see him, but we didn't find him - they'd already moved him.
'Nobody told me he had been rearrested and sent back to prison. When I asked the parole board they admitted it was 'something to do with children'.
'So they let him out, he reoffends or breached his conditions.
'Who's to say he won't do it again now? What does it take for them to realise paedophiles like him never change?'
The mother was also told that as of June 2020, when his sentence comes to an end, Norsworthy would no longer be subject to any licence conditions.
William Goad - one of the most prolific child molesters in British legal history
The mother added: 'Next year he can be back in Plymouth - and he will because his friends are here. There's no remorse in him.
'He could follow my son if he wanted to - my son gave evidence back then. Knowing what he [Norsworthy] is like he would seek revenge on my son.
'What was done to my boy is etched in my brain, every day I re-live it.'
She said her son suffered a debilitating brain injury after suffering encephalitis around three years after giving his evidence in court.
He was hospitalised for a lengthy period of time and as a result has no short term memory.
She said despite now being in his 30s, her son 'behaves like a seven-year-old', and that in some respects it was a blessing as he does not remember that period of his life.
She said: 'His memories are there, but because of his short term memory it's not at the forefront.
'It's like a severe form of dementia. But it means he needs 24-hour care and I can't leave him on his own.
'I feel that he [Norsworthy] got him on that road, which led him to suffer.
'When my son told me what had happened - it broke me. I haven't got a life now, it was taken away from me.
'It's about constantly thinking about things that have happened to my son.
'You hear the names [Norsworthy and Goad] and it all comes back.
'I blame them for what happened to my son and what is happening to him now.
(l-r) Detective Constable Shirley Thompson, Danny Salmon (foreground) and Ray Zola (background) leave the High Court after the Appeal Court ruled not to increase paedophile William Goad's eligibility for parole tariff
'My life is about making sure [my son] is okay. He was just eight years old when [Norsworthy] went for him.
'When he finally told me he admitted that when he was younger he used to get into trouble on purpose so he could be sent to prison, so that he could be safe.
'The stress of it eats at you. It's physically painful. He is out enjoying his life and he shouldn't be out.
'I truly wish he was dead. If hanging was brought back I would pull the lever. I've never hated anyone like I do him.
'I've no forgiveness for him, not in a million years, not for him.'
The Ministry of Justice was approached for a statement but said they could not comment on individual cases.
Goad died in 2012.
A six-year-old boy was reportedly brutally killed with broken glass as his mother desperately tried to save him in Saudi Arabia.
Zakaria Al-Jaber was in a taxi with his mother on their way to the shrine of Prophet Muhammad in Medina when the driver stopped the car and forced the boy out.
He dragged him to an area near a coffee shop in the Al-Tilal neighborhood, before smashing a glass bottle, reports TMV.
The report said the taxi driver slit his throat with a shard of glass before stabbing him repeatedly as both his mother and a nearby police officer attempted to stop the brutal attack.
Zakaria Al-Jaber, six, was reportedly beheaded with a shard of glass while on his way to the shrine of Prophet Muhammad in Medina, Saudi Arabia (picture)
It is not known why the driver attacked the boy, but Saudi officials have reportedly claimed he was suffering from mental health issues.
Shia Rights Watch, a group that defends the rights of minority Shia Muslims, also said the boy was killed on Thursday in an act of sectarian violence, but claimed it was a `beheading'.
The group said that an unknown man had asked the mother if she was Shia moments before the attack happened.
They said: 'The Saudi Shia community came together today in mourning and to show solidarity with the parents.
'The community also reported this incident is a result of ongoing violations and lack of protection by the Saudi authority toward its Shia population.'
Shia Rights Watch, whose headquarters are in Washington D.C., said the `beheading' must be addressed ASAP.
They added: 'Shia Rights Watch, other human rights NGOs and activists have long advocated for the rights of this minority through campians, UN and other entities.
'However the population still suffers because of the lack of international commitment to end such violations.
'Beheading of a young child in such manner must be addressed ASAP.'
The former crime boss Tony Mokbel has reportedly become a highly respected figure among fellow inmates, maintaining order behind bars.
Morkbel is serving a 30-year sentence for masterminding a drug trafficking empire after he was sent down in 2012.
The one-time drug kingpin is a peacekeeper in Victoria's Barwon Prison and recently saved a 19-year-old from being bashed behind bars, according to a new report.
Tony Mokbel has emerged as somewhat of a peacekeeper in Barwon Prison, after recently saving a 19-year-old from being bashed behind bars
Morkbel is currently serving his 30 year jail sentence, with a minimum parole period of 22 years, after being sentenced in 2012 for masterminding a multi-million dollar drug trafficking empire
As arguably one of the most infamous men in Australia's gangland wars, Mokbel was extradited from Athens, Greece after fleeing the country in 2006
The Sunday Herald Sun said an extortion racket was being run in the prison by Pacific Islanders who had targeted a young teen locked up on assault charges.
The teenager was being forced to pay $50 a month to the group or risk being assaulted.
When Mokbel received word of the extortion, he reportedly arranged for the men to be spoken to and the young man was immediately left alone.
'He's lost none of his power since being locked up,' an anonymous source told The Sunday Herald Sun.
'All he has to do is say the word, and people listen.'
As arguably one of the most infamous men in Australia's gangland wars, Mokbel was extradited from Athens, Greece after fleeing the country in 2006.
He spent more than a year evading police after skipping bail during his trial for importing cocaine.
He fled after becoming aware of police investigating his possible links to gangland killings.
He was arrested 15 months after fleeing the country and extradited back to Australia to face trail.
BJP Karnataka president B S Yeddyurappa rubbished as 'fake' and 'a concocted story' audio clips released by state chief minister.
Shortly after Kumaraswamy released the clips, Yeddyurappa said he had not met anyone to woo JD(S) lawmaker Nagana Gouda. (File Photo)
Bengaluru: BJP Karnataka president B S Yeddyurappa Friday rubbished as fake and a concocted story audio clips released by state chief minister H D Kumaraswamy about his alleged bid to lure an MLA to topple the Congress-JD(S) government.
Shortly after Kumaraswamy released the clips, Yeddyurappa said he had not met anyone to woo JD(S) lawmaker Nagana Gouda as alleged and that the charge against him was far from the truth.
Yeddyurappa said he went to Devadurga, where the MLAs son Sharan Gouda claimed to have met him and recorded the conversation, to visit a temple and flew back to the city.
Kumaraswamy had concocted the story to hide his failures and inability to keep the JD(S) and Congress flock together, Yeddyurappa told reporters here.
It is a fake audio... I have not met anyone.
Kumaraswamy is trying to hide his failures. This is a drama, Yeddyurappa said.
He said the Kumaraswamy government had lost the trust of the people and had no moral right to continue in office.
Kumaraswamy himself is a film producer. He is an expert in voice recording.... whatever the charge he has made is baseless, Yeddyurappa said.
He also dismissed a claim by the chief minister that he had spoken in the audio about a Rs 50 crore offer to the assembly speaker.
I will retire from politics if it (the allegation) is proved...If I had spoken like this (about the speaker), if it is proved... I will resign as an MLA and quit politics.
A woman has been rushed to hospital after being stabbed in a daylight attack in Adelaide's CBD - before police arrested a man known to her.
The woman, aged in her 40s, was seriously injured in the attack which happened just after 5pm on the southern end of King William Street.
She was treated by paramedics at the scene and taken to Royal Adelaide Hospital.
A woman has been rushed to hospital after being stabbed in a daylight attack in Adelaide's CBD - before police arrested a man known to her (scene pictured)
Her alleged attacker was arrested on a nearby side street off South Terrace and is expected to be charged, Channel 7 reported.
The victim and perpetrator are believed to have known each other.
Scottish author Ian Rankin has revealed he is moving into the apartment of the arch villain in his crime novels
Scottish author Ian Rankin has revealed he is moving into the apartment of the arch villain in his crime novels.
The Inspector Rebus writer is downsizing to a flat where his fictional detective's nemesis Big Ger Cafferty resides.
In a previous book in the best-selling series about the Edinburgh police officer, Rankin moved crime boss Cafferty from a large home in the city's Merchiston area to a luxury apartment in the Quartermile development.
And the 58-year-old told how he is about to make the exact same move with his wife Miranda.
The author said he had switched from 'hero to villain' as Rebus' flat in the books is where he lived when he wrote the first novel in the series.
He said: 'Here's a bizarre thing, Rebus lives and always has done in Arden Street in Edinburgh which is not an area he would realistically live in because it's all students.
Rankin moved crime boss Cafferty from a large home in the city's Merchiston area to a luxury apartment in the Quartermile development (pictured)
The former Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh was converted into luxury apartments known as the Quartermile
The novel series was turned into British television show starring John Hannah as DI John Rebus (left) and James Cosmo as Morris 'Big Ger' Gerald Cafferty (right)
'It's four storey tenements, 19th century, and it's a student area but he has always lived there because that's where I was taying when I wrote the first Rebus novel.
'Cafferty lives in a lovely penthouse apartment in what's called Quartermile which used to be the old infirmary, the old hospital in Edinburgh. That's where I'm moving to in a couple of months.
'We are selling our big house and we are downsizing into Cafferty's apartment.'
He added: 'I think that's really weird. I'm sure a psycho analyst could make much of the fact I have gone from being the hero of my books to the villain of my books.
'My personal trajectory has been from hero to villain.'
The novel series was turned into British television show starring John Hannah as DI John Rebus and James Cosmo as Morris 'Big Ger' Gerald Cafferty.
The former Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh was converted into luxury apartments known as the Quartermile.
Fife-born Rankin was speaking during a talk in the US to promote his latest Rebus book, In A House of Lies.
Fife-born Rankin was speaking during a talk in the US to promote his latest Rebus book, In A House of Lies
Last year, he revealed he was donating an archive of his work, letters, and papers to the National Library of Scotland. He had gathered the material into 19 boxes while preparing for his house move.
In A House of Lies, which was published last year, is the 22nd Rebus novel. A new television series featuring the detective is also being planned.
Gregory Burke, the playwright who wrote Black Watch, the much-lauded National Theatre of Scotland play, is working on the script for the new television version of Rankin's famous character.
Letters written by serial killer Ivan Milat from the confines of a maximum security jail cell are being auctioned online for hundreds of dollars.
A series of notes and envelopes signed by Milat, who is serving seven consecutive life sentences in New South Wales' Goulburn Supermax, have appeared on American website True Crime Auction with a price tag of $US265, about $AU373.
The letters, which feature Milat's signature and doodling, are among several Australian items of 'murderabilia' that have been listed on the site.
Letters from convicted murdered Ivan Milat are selling online for hundreds of dollars
The letter opens with an apology from the convicted killer, saying he was sorry for taking so long to reply
Milat's letter that is being sold currently is addressed to 'Kelly' and was sent in June 2013.
His opening sentence is a furtive apology for not replying to a letter sent six months earlier.
'It is not that I have been suddenly resurrected from my grave,' he writes before explaining he had to wait to be allowed to send mail from behind bars.
The letter goes on to describe the legal system as 'draconian', with Milat penning his disdain for the judiciary system.
Milat wrote the letters from Goulburn Supermax, where he is spending seven life sentences
Milat, now 74 years old, will spend the rest of his life behind bars after murdering seven young people in the 1990s, five of which were foreign backpackers.
His letters are two Australian-linked items for purchase on the marketplace, with a letter from Snowtown murder accomplice Mark Haydon also up for sale.
Haydon was convicted of helping killers John Bunting, Robert Wagner and James Vlassakis dispose of bodies in vats of acid in the 1990s.
A letter signed from him costs significantly less than Milat's signature, selling for less than $100.
A letter from South Australian killer Mark Haydon is also up for purchase, going for about $100
The founder of the auction house, Nick Violante, says he started the shop because he was 'fascinated' by killer's mentality.
'It's interesting to think about people who've done these horrible things and why would they do that,' he told The Daily Telegraph.
'And when you hold something like that in your hand the first couple of times, there's a real dark feeling, like, "boy, these hands that wrote this murdered so many people".'
The auction house's administrators say the memorabilia offers an insight into the psyche of killers, and Milat's penmanship is no exception.
But others have labelled it 'sick.'
An armed police officer unintentionally shot a suspect while responding to a report that a woman was being held captive in a pub yesterday.
A woman rang police at around 4am, saying another female was being held by armed men in The Anchor, in Lewisham, South-East London. Officers stopped a car near Blackheath that had driven from the pub.
During the vehicle stop, a police firearm was unintentionally discharged, a Scotland Yard statement said.
Armed police shot a man as they arrested a group of allegedly holding a woman captive, Scotland Yard has said
Forensic officers carry out investigations after police shot a man during an arrest last night
They arrested the wounded man, believed to be in his 20s, whose injuries were not thought to be life-threatening. He was being treated in hospital.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it had launched an inquiry into the incident.
Scotland Yard said six other men were arrested one in the car and five in the pub.
No woman was found during a search of the pub.
Detective Chief Inspector James Stanyer said: It is vital that we hear again from the original caller in this case.
The man, believed to be in his 20s, was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound after an officer opened fire near Blackheath, south-east London, in the early hours of Saturday, police said.
Armed police shot a man as they arrested a group of allegedly holding a woman captive, Scotland Yard has said.
He was arrested along with a further six men. Five were detained on suspicion of false imprisonment and one for possession of an offensive weapon.
Police were not immediately able to say why the shot man was arrested.
Shortly before 4am, armed officers responded to a report of concern for the welfare of a woman in a property in Lewisham Road and a man being witnessed with a gun, the Metropolitan Police said.
Officers stopped a car near Lewisham Road's junction with Blackheath Hill, on the border of the borough of Greenwich, when an officer opened fire, the force said.
The wounded man's injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct and the Directorate of Professional Standards have been informed as inquiries continue, the force said.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: 'Police were called at approximately 03:55hrs on Saturday, 9 February to reports of a male seen in possession of a firearm in the vicinity of Lewisham Road, SE13.
The caller also raised concerns for the welfare of a woman at an address in Lewisham Road.
'Officers, including armed officers, attended the scene and stopped a vehicle near to the junction with Blackheath Hill. A police firearm was discharged.
'One man, believed aged in his 20s, was taken to a south hospital suffering a gunshot injury. His condition is not life-threatening. He has been arrested.
'A further six males have been arrested; five for false imprisonment and one for possession of an offensive weapon.
'Enquiries into the circumstances remain ongoing.'
A mother who lost her son, brother and father in the Tunisian beach massacre in 2015 has said the jihadists' life sentences would never 'compensate her loss'.
Travel lecturer Suzanne Richards, 49, lost her son Joel Richards, 19, brother Adrian Evans, 44, and father Charles 'Patrick' Evans, 78, in the Sousse attack.
Her younger son Owen Richards, now 19 and studying at university, was shot in the shoulder but survived.
Ms Richards has said four years on the family is still struggling to cope with the grief of losing members from three generations.
Earlier today seven jihadists involves in the attacks at a museum in Tunis and on the beach in Sousse, which killed 60 people including 31 British tourists, were handed life sentences.
Victims' family members in France and Belgium watched Friday's hearing via a live video feed - but British families were not given this option.
Suzanne Richards, pictured with her son Owen in March 2017, lost her son Joel Richards, brother Adrian Evans and father Charles 'Patrick' Evans in the Tunisian beach massacre in 2015
Ms Richards has said four years on the family is still struggling to cope with the grief of losing members from three generations. Pictured: Owen Richards, Adrian Evans, Charles 'Patrick' Evans and Joel Richards
Ms Richards told MailOnline: 'Nothing will compensate our loss. I just hope lessons will have been learned from this atrocity.
'So many people have been affected by this and so many families have been destroyed.
'Nothing will ever put it right. We still struggle [four years on]. The grief never goes away. It lives with you, it becomes part of your life, you miss them every day.
'Time doesn't heal - you just miss them even more. I recently lost my mum as well - I have lost four now since the attack.'
Ms Richards has said she was 'disappointed' that she and other British families were not offered the chance to watch the court proceedings.
She added: 'We were extremely disappointed to find out the French and Belgian families were able to gain video conferencing to see justice carried out.
'In the UK, we had very little information. We are still hoping to find out who has been charged, what they have been charged with and what the prison sentence is.
'I am waiting for our Government to tell us. I am disappointed that other people are telling me how many years they have got when I haven't been told.
Ms Richards has said she was disappointed British families were not offered the chance to watch the court proceedings over video link like Belgian and French families. Pictured: Joel
She added: 'Nothing will ever put it right. We still struggle [four years on]. The grief never goes away. It lives with you, it becomes part of your life, you miss them every day.' Since the deaths of Joel, Adrian (right) and Patrick (left), Ms Richards has set up a charity in their honour called Smile for Joel
'We were never given a reason why we weren't given access to the court proceedings.'
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been contacted for comment.
Since the deaths of Joel, Adrian and Patrick, Ms Richards has set up a charity in their honour called Smile for Joel.
The charity, which gained official status in November 2017, has supported 200 families affected by homicide in England and Wales.
Ms Richards also works to make travel abroad safer.
She said: 'Through my job, I am working with the travel industry to see how we can make changes to tourism to make it safer.
'It was clear from the UK inquest that changes need to be made to how holidays are booked.'
Earlier today a Tunisian court handed seven jihadists who killed 60 people during the attacks life sentences.
The closely linked shootings, which occurred just months apart in Tunis and Sousse, saw dozens of defendants go on trial, with many acquitted.
Four were sentenced to life in prison for the shooting rampage at a Sousse tourist resort in June 2015, which killed 38 people, mostly British tourists.
Five other defendants in the Sousse case were handed jail terms ranging from six months to six years, while 17 were acquitted, prosecution spokesman Sofiene Sliti said.
Three were given life sentences for the earlier attack in March 2015 at the capital's Bardo National Museum, in which two gunmen killed 21 foreign tourists and a Tunisian security guard.
Pictured: the 30 Britons murdered by an ISIS gunman while on holiday in Sousse, Tunisia on June 26, 2015
Seven jihadists who killed 60 people during attacks at a museum and on a beach (pictured) in 2015 have been handed life sentences by a Tunisian court
Four were sentenced to life in prison for the shooting rampage at a Sousse tourist resort in June 2015, which killed 38 people, mostly British tourists
Others found guilty of links to the Bardo attack were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to 16 years, and a dozen defendants were acquitted, Sliti said.
The court heard that the two attacks, both claimed by ISIS, were closely linked.
Several defendants pointed to the fugitive Chamseddine Sandi as mastermind of both.
According to Tunisian media, Sandi was killed in a US air strike in neighbouring Libya in February 2016, although there has been no confirmation.
Victims' family members in France and Belgium watched Friday's hearing via a live video feed.
'It was important for us to see, and especially to hear - to try to understand the role' of each defendant, said one French survivor.
Three were given life sentences for the earlier attack in March 2015 at the capital's Bardo National Museum (pictured: blood stains outside the museum)
Two gunmen, pictured on CCTV during the attack, killed 21 foreign tourists and a Tunisian security guard
Mother-of-two Sally Adey (centre) was on a luxury cruise with her husband (right) when they went into the museum. She was among 21 tourists killed
'Arriving at the end of the process will help us to turn the page, even if we can never forget.'
Gerard Chemla, a lawyer for French victims, said the live feed had brought some degree of comfort to relatives.
'The trial allowed them - by organising the video conferencing and giving the floor to lawyers chosen by the victims - to finally be recognised as victims by the Tunisian state,' he said.
But he lamented that the families of those killed had not been compensated.
The Sousse attack, which killed 30 Britons, is also the subject of proceedings in front of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, which is seeking to establish what happened.
After holding inquests into the British deaths in January and February 2017, judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith concluded that the response of Tunisian police was 'at best shambolic, at worst cowardly'.
He said hotel guards were not armed and had no walkie-talkies.
Both attacks were claimed by ISIS. Several defendants pointed to the fugitive Chamseddine Sandi as mastermind of both. Pictured: tourists light candles outside the Bardo museum
Gunman Seifeddine Rezgui, pictured, who was laughing and joking among the midday bathers, was later shot dead by police after a rampage lasting at least 20 minutes
Among those who were facing trial were six security personnel accused of failing to provide assistance to people in danger during the Sousse attack.
That shooting was carried out by Seifeddine Rezgui, who opened fire on a beach before rampaging into a high-end hotel, where he continued to fire a kalashnikov and throw grenades until being shot dead by police.
Four French nationals, four Italians, three Japanese and two Spaniards were among those killed in the Bardo attack, before the two gunmen, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, were themselves shot dead.
Investigations showed one of the gunmen, Yassine Laabidi - who was born in 1990 and was from a poor district near Tunis - had amphetamines in his body.
His fellow attacker Jaber Khachnaoui, born in 1994 and from Tunisia's deprived Kasserine region, had travelled to Syria in December 2014 via Libya.
Rezgui pulled out a Kalashnikov hidden in a beach parasol and fired bullets at sunbathers lounging on a beachfront resort in the deadliest Islamist attack on westerners since the July 7 London bombings in 2005
One suspect questioned in court, Tunis labourer Mahmoud Kechouri, said he had helped plan the Bardo attack, including preparing mobile phones for Sandi, a neighbour and longtime friend.
Kechouri, 33, said he was driven by a 'duty to participate in the emergence of the caliphate,' that IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed in June 2014 across swathes of territory the jihadists controlled in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
Other defendants accused of helping prepare the attack said they had only discussed ideas with friends. Several alleged they were tortured in detention.
There have been substantial improvements in security at Tunisian tourist resorts since the massacre and in July 2017 Britain lifted its warning against 'all but essential travel' to the North African country.
The attacks and resulting travel warnings dealt a devastating blow to Tunisia's vital tourism sector from which it has taken time to recover.
Since a 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, jihadist attacks in Tunisia have killed dozens of members of the security forces.
Thousands have also travelled abroad to join jihadist organisations in Iraq and Syria, Libya, Mali and Yemen, according to the United Nations.
An FCO spokesperson said: 'We welcome the conclusion of the judicial process as an important step forward for the affected families.'
A midwife has told how she receives 'upsetting and demoralising' abuse from patients after a damning report revealed widespread abuse in hospitals.
A study found that 80 per cent of nurses in New South Wales experienced verbal or non-physical forms of abuse in the past year.
Nurses and midwives have been bitten, spat at, punched and even had bodily fluids thrown at them while on the job, the report found.
Nurses and midwives have been bitten, spat at, punched and even had bodily fluids thrown at them in the past year according to a new report - as they blame ice for the increase in violence
New South Wales midwife Jackie Holmes, 62, told 9news the results from the study - conducted by University of Technology Sydney researcher Dr Jacqui Pich - were not surprising as abuse is common in their field of work.
She said verbal abuse alone can be very demoralising and can stay with you a long time.
'The verbal abuse can be very demoralising and it can be, you know, very upsetting,' she said.
The study, which was one of the largest of its kind in Australia, revealed that 35 nurses had reported being sexually attacked.
Four out of five nurses had faced verbal or physical abuse during the past year.
Some had even had hospital equipment used against them as a weapon, the study found.
The shocking report also showed 400 nurses had reported having blood, urine, faeces or semen thrown at them in the past year.
Dr Pich said there have been similar studies covered in other states that have revealed the same results.
She said it was surprising that despite this nothing has been done to address the issues.
New South Wales midwife Jackie Holmes, 62, said the results from the study were not surprising as abuse is common in their field of work
One mental health nurse told The Daily Telegraph under the cover of anonymity the increase in violence had him fearing for his safety - and blamed drugs like ice for the rise
One mental health nurse told The Daily Telegraph under the cover of anonymity the increase in violence had him fearing for his safety.
'The ice epidemic is real - everyone is being affected by it,' he said.
'The shouting and fighting and aggression is happening on an increasing basis.'
When pitching the research in Toronto, Dr Pich asked 'why is it safer to work in a prison or be police officer?'
Despite the findings, the academic said under-reporting of violence in the medical profession was still a major problem.
'Often the system is designed so that they won't report it because it is going to take time or because the violence is so common, or they know if they report it nothing will happen,' she said.
A 92-year-old woman who loves penguins had her wish come true when a care home surprised her with a visit form her favourite animal.
Annie Thelwell always wears a penguin necklace and has filled her memory box with photos of the birds.
The pensioner made a wish to meet one of the friendly animals - so carers organised for them to pop in at Mountbatten Grange care home in Windsor, Berkshire.
Annie was amazed when two penguins waddled into the the room to meet the residents.
Annie Thelwell (pictured), 92, always wears a penguin pendant and has filled her memory box with photos of the birds
Annie didn't suspect a thing and was amazed when two penguins waddled into the the room to meet the residents
And chuffed Annie spent the afternoon petting and feeding two penguins named Charlie and Pringle.
Mountbatten Grange Home Manager, Saad Baig, said it was 'incredible' to see Annie's reaction after she wished on the care home's wishing tree to see the birds.
He said: 'We always like to go the extra-mile for residents here at Mountbatten Grange, and make their wishes come true, no matter how small - or unusual.
'Annie talks about penguins with passion, so we were really excited to be able to make her dream of seeing one up close come true.
'We managed to keep the visit a complete surprise, so it was incredible to see her light up when they waddled into the care home.
'They are truly wonderful creatures and it was a fantastic moment for everyone involved.
Annie spent the afternoon petting and feeding two penguins named Charlie and Pringle
The hand-reared Humboldt penguins from Heythrop Zoo turned up to surprise Annie and other residents
'The penguins were so friendly, and we know just how beneficial animal therapy can be for older people, especially for those living with dementia.
'Being close to animals can help lift a person's mood, stimulate social interaction and ease agitation - and the penguins were brilliant at doing just that.'
The hand-reared Humboldt penguins from Heythrop Zoo turned up to surprise Annie and other residents.
Having been brought up in captivity, they are friendly and relaxed around humans.
Charlie and Pringle live in a specially-constructed enclosure at Heythrop Zoo, which includes a swimming pool, a pebble beach and a penguin house.
The pair regularly meet new people and attend workshops and educational talks all around the UK, aiming to raise the general public's awareness of conservation matters.
Originating in South America, the Humboldt penguins are used to warm weather and can adjust to different environments.
Mountbatten Grange Home Manager, Saad Baig, said it was 'incredible' to see Annie's reaction after she wished on the care home's wishing tree to see the birds
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Storm Erik has claimed a third victim after a kitesurfer died in Devon this morning while 80mph gales tear down trees and batter the British Isles.
The person, who has not been named but is thought to be a man, was airlifted to North Devon District Hospital but could not be saved.
Witness John Ingram told Devon Live that the 'man is believed to be a local kite surfer who was caught out in today's very rough weather.'
This death is the third after a 50-year-old man was killed yesterday when brutal winds caused a large tree weighing several tonnes to fall on the A384 at Buckfastleigh, Devon at 5.30am and collide with his van.
While the driver, from Totnes in Devon, sustained fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene, the female driver of a Hyundai miraculously escaped with only minor injuries.
A kite surfer was airlifted to North Devon District Hospital this morning, but they sadly died a short while later. Pictured is the scene on Saunton Beach as emergency services arrived to provide assistance
The tail end of Storm Erik - the first named storm of 2019 - still has enough strength to bring huge waves battering the sea defences at Aberystwyth on the Cardigan Bay coast
A British Airways aircraft aborts it's landing at Leeds Bradford airport this morning as strong winds from Storm Erik continue to batter the UK
Storm damage is seen on a terraced house on Foundry Street where high winds have removed the top of the gable end of the wall in Dukinfield, Manchester
A woman struggles through strong gusts during the tail end of Storm Erik in Aberystwyth on the Cardigan Bay coast, West Wales this morning
Another driver was also killed at around 10am on Friday on the B4306 between Llannon and Pontyberem in west Wales.
Shocking video footage also shows a baby escaping death after ferocious gales from Storm Erik swept one horrified parent's pram into the road, forcing a car to suddenly brake.
The vicious storm rages on for a second day, with a yellow weather warning in place for most of England and Wales - with travel disruption on the roads and rail network.
But it has already caused widespread damage and disruption, with two reported dead, and one father enduring their worst nightmare - as their pram is dragged into a busy road.
The video, taken in Dublin yesterday, shows the father taking his child for a walk in a pram. Suddenly the wind snatches something from his hands, and the parent quickly makes chase.
While away from their child, the ferocious gales sweep the pram into the road - as the horrified man filming the footage shouts out a warning.
A father takes his child for a walk through Dublin during the height of Storm Erik on Friday. Just moments later, the winds snatch something from the pram
As the father makes chase, his pram is swept into a busy street forcing an Audi driver to slam on their brakes. The man filming the footage shouts in horror as the scene unfolds
The child and pram crash into the road, as the winds sweep them into the path of a moving car. An Audi driver has to slam on their brakes to avoid a crash
The parent runs over to pick up their child and the pram. Fortunately both made it out without injury
But it's too late and the child and pram veer into the road, tipping over in the process - and an Audi has to slam on its brakes to avoid a crash.
The child can be heard crying as the parents races to get them out of the road. But fortunately both make it away unharmed.
Fierce winds are expected to batter most of the British Isles today as the Met Office issues a yellow weather warning for strong wind covers much of Wales, central and northern England and southern Scotland until 3pm on Saturday.
A separate yellow warning running until 3pm on Saturday for northern Scotland predicts heavy rain could lead to flooding.
While in Dublin, the strong winds are set to continue - but to a lesser extent, with gusts of up to 37mph. And over in Belfast gusts will reach as much as 36mph.
A weather warning for wind on Saturday has been extended to cover most of the UK, while in Scotland heavy rain is expected into the afternoon, with a risk of flooding in some parts. This satellite image shows the expected weather for today
This was the scene in Woolacombe, North Devon this morning as strong winds continued to batter the coast. Gales are expected until later this afternoon
A yellow weather warning is due to remain in place until 2pm this afternoon covering large swathes of the country. A yellow weather warning for rain has also been issued for parts of Scotland
It comes after a day after the ferocious storm killed two people on Friday, including a driver at around 10am on the B4306 between Llannon and Pontyberem in west Wales.
The brutal winds caused a large tree to fall on a country road and it collided with a van, killing the man inside.
Meanwhile, a huge tree weighing several tonnes crushed an Alfa Romeo carrying a 50-year-old man as it travelled along the storm-lashed A384 at Buckfastleigh, Devon at 5.30am.
The driver, a 50-year-old man from Totnes in Devon, sustained fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene, while the female driver of a Hyundai miraculously escaped with only minor injuries.
Today, heavy rain is expected in Scotland the afternoon, with a risk of flooding in some parts - and some mixed with hale and becoming thundery.
Meteorologist Alex Burkill, from the Met Office, said: 'It's going to be another very windy one, particularly across northern England, Northern Ireland, southern Scotland and northern Wales.
'They're going to have very strong winds. We could therefore see some further problems on roads.'
Passengers had a miraculous escape when a large tree crashed through the roof of a double-decker bus in Poole, Dorset. There were no injuries, as none of the five passengers on board were sat at the front of the bus at the time
A motorist has died after Storm Erik ripped a giant tree from the earth and sent it flying into the road in Devon (pictured), as meteorologists issued 'danger to life' warnings due amid 80mph winds and heavy rain
Footage emerged yesterday showing a British Airways plane forced to abandon its initial landing at Heathrow airport after strong winds put the aircraft off-balance seconds before it was about to touch down.
As winds ease off later on Saturday, some hill snow is forecast in central and southern parts of England and into Wales, Mr Burkill said, before calmer conditions on Sunday.
'That (hill snow) will clear through Sunday morning, with blustery showers following behind. Meanwhile, in the north it's going to be a fairly bright day. There will be a few showers perhaps and it could turn windy but not as windy as today by any means.'
This weekend, homes and buildings are at risk of damage from flooding and motorists could face more travel woes because of brutal high winds that are expected to uproot trees.
The Met Office says that strong westerly winds will move east throughout Saturday and could reach speeds of up to 70 mph.
It also warns that the winds could lead to power cuts in some areas, adding that people living on the coast may also see large waves.
On Friday, horrifying footage showed a British Airways plane aborting a landing at Heathrow as Storm Erik hit Britain.
The storm killed one motorist after gusts ripped a tree from the ground and sent it flying onto a busy A-road.
Winds travelling at over 80mph saw several passenger jets struggle to land at airports across the country, with one BA flight forced to climb back into the sky as it attempted to meet the tarmac near London.
Meanwhile, passengers had a miraculous escape in Poole, Dorset when a large tree crashed through the roof of a double-decker bus, obliterating the front few seats of the top deck, where no-one was sitting at the time.
In Wales, two people were pulled from a submerged car after it left a flooded road in St Clears, near Carmarthen.
The storm has caused widespread travel delays, with railway lines blocked by fallen trees, high winds disrupting planes at airports and the Severn Bridge between Wales and England one of many to be shut to all traffic.
Strong winds and heavy rain is set to batter much of Britain today, with clearer skies expected through the weekend (shown)
A yellow wind warning has been declared for parts of northern England and Northern Ireland, while a yellow rain warning covering much of Scotland warned that there could be power cuts and flooding.
The first storm of the year is tracking east across Northern Ireland, northern England and Scotland throughout today and into Saturday.
The severe weather has caused disruption throughout much of the UK, including;
Delays at Heathrow and Leeds airports as planes struggle to land and take-off due to high winds
The closure of Severn Bridge, linking Wales and England, and the A38 Tamar Bridge, between Devon and Cornwall, in both directions
Road closures throughout the country, including the A384 at Buckfastleigh, Devon, where a man has died after a tree fell on his car
Train services suspended between Tattenham Corner and Coulsdon Town in Surrey due to fallen tree on the line
An aircraft struggles to land in strong cross winds at Englands highest airport, Leeds Bradford International, as Storm Erik batters the UK
Waves smashed against the breakwater in Newhaven, East Sussex, sending water shooting higher than the lighthouse
Giant waves crash over the Cobb wall as Storm Eric uleashes its full fury on the Dorset coastline at Lyme Regis yesterday afternoon
The storm has caused widespread travel delays, with railway lines blocked by fallen trees, high winds disrupting planes at airports and the Severn Bridge between Wales and England one of many to be shut to all traffic
A cyclist gets a soaking (pictured) as the wind brings waves crashing across the road at Southsea, near Portsmouth yesterday
A windsurfer makes the most of the treacherous conditions as he rides the waves in Lyme Regis, Dorset, where they have been many flood warnings issued
Commuters on Waterloo Bridge in London struggled as gusts of wind blasted across the River Thames
One woman looks on suspiciously as a couple stand underneath an umbrella on the Millennium Bridge in London
Newhaven Lighthouse in East Sussex is battered by waves whipped up by Stork Erik which has formed in the Atlantic
These two people scuttled across the Millennium Bridge in London as storms battered large parts of the country
Flood warnings have also been issued by authorities in Dorset while several flood alerts are in place across the south west and central England.
Met Office chief meteorologist Will Lang said southern and central England would not escape the brutal gales despite not being directly in the path of the storm, adding that Friday would be a 'windy day for everyone'.
The Welsh and Cornish coasts could see winds of 55mph, while along the coast of southern England gusts could reach 50mph.
This pick up truck edged its way along the front of the sea wall in Prestwick, Scotland as waves slammed into the coast
This satellite image shows the eye of the storm north of Antrim and approaching the western coast of Scotland
Tourists crossing the Millennium Bridge across the River Thames braved the inclement conditions in the city
The stormy weather resulted in some 'quite nasty travelling conditions', meteorologist Sarah Kent warned yesterday.
She added: 'It's going to be a noticeably windy day everywhere today. And that is going to be in association with outbreaks of heavy rain too, so there will be some quite nasty travelling conditions out there this morning.'
While there is expected to be a lull in the fiercest winds on Friday evening, gusts will pick up again around midnight, when a warning for wind will cover Northern Ireland, southern Scotland and much of Northern England.
Storm Erik was named by Irish forecaster Met Eireann on Thursday and overnight brought winds of 56mph to Cork.
Troon in Scotland is battered by strong winds, with the rest of the country covered by a yellow weather warning lasting until tomorrow
The Met Office warned that travel delays throughout the day were very likely, with the risk of fallen trees blocking roads and railways and high winds disrupting planes (pictured in Leeds) and closing bridges and ferry routes
Members of the public look on as Storm Erik makes landfall with winds of up to 70mph hitting areas along the coast of the UK including Prestwick, Scotland (pictured)
The first storm of the year is tracking east across Northern Ireland , northern England and Scotland throughout Friday and into Saturday (pictured is Lyme Regis)
Flood warnings have also been issued by authorities in Dorset (pictured) while several flood alerts are in place across the south west and central England
HMS Mersey tweeted these pictures of rough-conditions this morning along with the caption: 'Having that Friday feeling'
Giant waves crash over the Cobb wall as Storm Eric unleashes its full fury on the Dorset coastline at Lyme Regis this afternoon
A shopper in Troon, Scotland, does her best in the conditions. The stormy weather will result in some 'quite nasty travelling conditions', forecasters warned
Engineers monitor the weather at Dawlish train station which is situated on the south coast of Devon as Storm Erik batters many parts of Britain today
Rough conditions are pictured at Brighton pier today. Storm Erik is set to batter parts of Britain with 80mph gales and heavy rain forcing meteorologists to issue 'danger to life' warnings
Mrs Justice Parker, pictured, 'momentarily' dozed off during a family hearing at the High Court
A 68-year-old judge has been disciplined after she 'momentarily' dozed off during a family hearing at the High Court.
It is not known which case Mrs Justice Parker fell asleep in, but lawyers at the hearing complained after the incident.
Mrs Justice Parker, who became a High Court judge in 2008, has now been given 'formal advice' by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office, reports Legal Cheek.
They said her conduct had the 'potential to undermine public confidence in the judiciary', but added she had 'expressed remorse'.
A spokesperson from the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office said: 'Mrs Justice Parker has been issued with formal advice following a complaint by parties in a case that she had fallen asleep during a hearing.
'While concluding that this amounted to conduct which had the potential to undermine public confidence the judiciary, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice took into consideration that the judge fell asleep only momentarily and has expressed remorse for doing so.'
Mrs Justice Parker, who became a High Court (pictured) judge in 2008, has now been given 'formal advice' by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office
Mrs Justice Parker is the second most experienced judge in the family division.
She hit the headlines in 2016 when she ruled that a 'profoundly disabled' two-year-old boy could only be given end-of-life care.
Mrs Justice Parker's decision was slammed by the boy's 'devastated' parents, whose lawyer said afterwards that the court had 'effectively condemned their son to death'.
Nurses said the child had stopped smiling and no longer giggled when he was tickled.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday said that minorities were being treated as second class citizens.
New Delhi: India on Saturday evening slammed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan yet again for his latest alleged remarks on treatment of minorities in India, with New Delhi saying all Indian citizens are treated equally and pointing out instead how minorities are systematically discriminated against in Pakistan.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday said that minorities were being treated as second class citizens. Addressing a gathering at Balloki Headworks in Nankana Sahib, he said: The PTI government would not allow minorities to be treated like second class citizens like those experienced by minorities in India. In a statement, the MEA said, The Pakistan Prime Ministers remarks are an egregious insult to all citizens of India. Her has yet again demonstrated his lack of understanding about Indias secular polity and ethos.
He overlooks the obvious fact that adherents of all faiths choose to live under the democratic polity and the progressive Constitution of India. India has eminent leaders of all faiths who occupy its highest Constitutional and official positions.
The MEA added, In contrast, Pakistani citizens of non-Islamic faith are barred from occupying high Constitutional offices. The minorities are often turned away from government bodies like the Economic Advisory Council of their Prime Minister, even in naya Pakistan. Pakistan would do well to focus on its domestic challenges and improve conditions of its citizens rather than try and divert attention. The Pakistan Prime Ministers latest attempts to play with minority sentiment in India will be rejected by the people of India.
The government has terminated a contract with Seaborne Freight to provide extra ferries in the event that the UK leaves the European Union without a deal in March.
The decision to award the 14million contract in December even though Seaborne did not have any ships was heavily criticised by opposition politicians and others.
The Transport Secretary has also faced calls to quit, with Labour's Andy McDonald saying: 'The Chris Grayling catalogue of calamities grows bigger by the day.'
A Department for Transport spokeswoman has now said the contract was terminated after Seaborne Freight's backer Arklow Shipping decided to step back from the deal.
The contract with Seaborne Freight to provide extra ferries in the case of a no-deal Brexit has been cancelled (pictured is the Port of Ramsgate)
The contract was one of several signed by ministers as a contingency plan in case no deal leaves the main Dover-Calais route (file) in chaos
She said: 'It became clear Seaborne would not reach its contractual requirements with the government. We have therefore decided to terminate our agreement.
'The government is already in advanced talks with a number of companies to secure additional freight capacity - including through the Port of Ramsgate - in the event of a no-deal Brexit.'
The spokeswoman said no taxpayer money had been transferred to Seaborne. She added that for commercial reasons the government had previously not been able to name Arklow Shipping's involvement.
A spokesperson added: 'The decision to terminate the contract was difficult, but it is ultimately important that the taxpayer is protected.'
Britain's EU membership means that trucks now drive smoothly through border checks within the 28-nation bloc.
But after a no-deal Brexit, even a few minutes' delay at customs for each truck could mean vehicles backed up at ports and queuing on feeder roads on both sides of the Channel.
Trucks could become backed up in queues at ports due to delays at customs if there's a no-deal Brexit (pictured is the port of Dover)
A spokesperson said the government is already in talks with a number of companies to secure additional freight capacity, including through the Port of Ramsgate, if there's a no-deal Brexit
The Department for Transport spokeswoman also said the government stood by the due diligence carried out on Seaborne.
Labour seized on the situation to say transport secretary Chris Grayling should quit or be sacked.
Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said: 'As we predicted, the Seaborne Freight contract has been cancelled.
'This cannot go without consequence. The Chris Grayling catalogue of calamities grows bigger by the day.
'This contract was never going to work but this Secretary of State, true to form, blunders from one disaster to another.
'Whilst Theresa May needs the few friends she has right now, we cannot have this incompetent Transport Secretary carry on heaping humiliation after humiliation on our country. He has to go.'
Brexit-backing Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg questioned whether Leo Varadkar's Irish Government had any influence on Irish company Arklow's decision.
He told the Daily Telegraph: 'One has to hope that the Irish Government has not leant on or put any pressure on Arklow to persuade it to pull out.
'That would be a very unfriendly act of a neighbour to obstruct no-deal preparations and one has to hope very sincerely that this is genuinely a corporate decision.'
Mr Grayling last month defended the Seaborne Freight contract, insisting it was 'not a risk'.
Transport secretary Chris Grayling, pictured, previously defended giving the contract to Seaborne Freight
It was one of three firms awarded contracts totalling 108 million in late December to lay on additional crossings to ease the pressure on Dover when Britain leaves the EU, despite having never run a Channel service.
The company was also criticised when its business terms and conditions showed references to placing 'any meal/order', prompting speculation on social media that it had copied the format from a takeaway delivery company.
Seaborne has since updated its website.
The firm's website read: 'It is the responsibility of the customer to thoroughly check the supplied goods before agreeing to pay for any meal/order.'
It also said: 'Delivery charges are calculated per order and based on [delivery details here].'
In another section, the terms read: 'Users are prohibited from making false orders through our website.'
It added: 'Seaborne Freight (UK) Limited reserves the right to seek compensation through legal action for any losses incurred as the result of hoax delivery requests and will prosecute to the full extent of the law.'
Labour deputy Tom Watson spotted the glaring error in Seaborne Freight's published terms and conditions.
He tweeted: 'Seaborne Freight. No ships, no trading history and website T&Cs copied and pasted from a takeaway delivery site...'
Ilford MP Mike Gapes posted: 'Well. Well. Fish and Chips, Curry, Chinese, Kebab or Pizza. Seaborne Freight certainly have plans to Take Away our money.'
Transport secretary Chris Grayling previously defended handing the no deal ferry contract to Seaborne as the government was 'supporting new businesses'.
The firm was accused of copying its terms and conditions from a takeaway shop in January (pictured is Tom Watson highlighting the gaffe)
Mr Grayling told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Seaborne had been properly vetted before being chosen, after concerns were raised over its ability to fulfil the contract.
He said: 'It's a new start-up business, Government is supporting new business and there is nothing wrong with that.
'We have looked very carefully at this business and have put in place a tight contract that makes sure they can deliver for us.
'This has been looked at very carefully by a team of civil servants who have done due diligence.'
Seaborne aimed to operate freight ferries from Ramsgate in Kent to the Belgian port of Ostend, beginning with two ships in late March and increasing to four by the end of the summer.
It was established two years ago and has been in negotiations about running freight ferries between Ramsgate and Ostend, but no services are currently running.
Narrow berths in the port mean there are few suitable commercial vessels available.
In a statement at the end of December, the company said it had been working since 2017 on plans to reintroduce ferry sailings from Ramsgate from early 2019.
Britain is on course to leave the EU at the end of next month without a deal unless Prime Minister Theresa May can convince the bloc to reopen the divorce agreement she reached in November and then sell it to sceptical British lawmakers.
A female arsonist is on the run from police after lighting two fires.
The female firebug was filmed torching a chest of drawers before setting fire to a parked car in Cheltenham, southeast of Melbourne, around 4am on Thursday.
Now Victoria Police are calling on the public to help hunt the arsonist down, describing the attacks as 'calculated'.
A woman has been captured on film pouring petrol on a chest of drawers before igniting them
The woman first targeted a hardware store on the corner of Bay and Reserve Roads.
There, CCTV footage showed her dousing petrol over a stack of wooden drawers before crouching and igniting them.
The pile erupted in a ball of flames, almost setting the firebug ablaze as she stumbled back from the flames.
After watching the fire for a few seconds, she returned to her car and set another parked vehicle ablaze, destroying it, and then fled the scene.
Nobody was injured in the fires.
The arsonist targeted a store in Cheltenham, southeast Melbourne, before torching a car
The woman remains on the run after starting the fires on the early hours of Thursday morning
The woman was described as white, about 170cm tall and with long, straight brown hair.
She wore a black zip-up jacket, dark sunglasses, khaki pants and light-coloured Crocs shoes.
Senior Constable George Azar from Victoria Police said she was 'very methodical with how she went about committing this offence,' he told 7News.
The government is making plans to deal with 'riots in the street' if there is a no-deal Brexit, it has been claimed.
Lord Kerslake, who led the Civil Service from 2012-14, said too many workers are spending 'significant time not doing the jobs they're paid to do, but preparing for the possibility of riots'.
He also demanded a second referendum to stop a 'disaster,' reports the Mirror.
Lord Kerslake said: 'We shouldn't be preparing for riots in the streets, which is what we're doing.'
Former head of the Civil Service Lord Bob Kerslake, pictured, has claimed that the government is making plans for 'riots in the streets' if there's a no-deal Brexit
When asked to explain what these preparations could be, Lord Kerslake told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'I guess you look at where you deploy resources like the police, how the services are organised.
'We dont need to be wasting peoples time doing this, we could eliminate the option of no deal now,' reports iNews.
Although dismissing the claims, Number 10 revealed they are making 'sensible' plans for 'all scenarios.'
Yesterday some of Whitehall's most senior former mandarins called on Theresa May to put Brexit on hold, warning the UK is not ready for the uncertainty it will create.
Number 10 has dismissed the claims but said they are making 'sensible plans' for all scenarios. Pictured is Theresa May
Crossbench peer Lord O'Donnell, who was head of the Civil Service under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, said it would be 'irresponsible' for the Government to consider taking Britain out of the EU without any clear idea of the final outcome.
His successor in the role, Lord Kerslake, warned Britain is heading for a 'blindfold' break which will lead to years of wrangling with Brussels.
Lord Kerslake said it is clear the UK is not ready to leave the EU and he called for the two-year Article 50 withdrawal process to be extended beyond the scheduled date of Brexit on March 29.
In a report published by the People's Vote campaign for a second referendum, Lord Kerslake said there is no clarity about key elements of Britain's future relationship with the EU.
He said the 'proper functioning of government' required a proper understanding of how issues such as the future regulation of air travel and drugs, the sharing of data and criminal records, and co-operation on tackling climate change would be dealt with in future.
'Britain is divided, directionless and hurtling towards a legal deadline with no idea where we will end up after we cross it,' he said.
'A responsible government should now acknowledge our predicament: we are not ready to embark on a journey when we do not know where we will end up.
'We should not leave until and unless we know where we are going.
'If we do, the only certainty is that the resources, energy and talent of our country will be consumed by Brexit for many more years to come.
'The nightmare will not end. It will simply take on another form. A blindfold Brexit that offers no clarity can never provide closure.
'It means the arguments about Brexit will just go on and on.'
Horrified tenants were forced out of their apartment after being subject to drunken Airbnb guests who banged on walls and left vomit and blood outside their door.
Mariele Klering and Vitor Ugo Roda da Rosa Junior said they became fearful as a result of the activities in a neighbouring unit in central Auckland's Victoria Residences.
The two tenants were able to cut their fixed-term tenancy short after they argued that fulfilling their contract would cause them severe hardship.
Horrified tenants were forced out of their apartment in central Auckland (pictured) after being subject to drunken Airbnb guests who banged on walls and left vomit and blood outside their door
'The tenants have become fearful in the property as a result of incidents at a neighbouring unit which is rented out as an AirBnB,' read a Tenancy Tribunal judgement seen by Daily Mail Australia.
The document said the tenants had been 'subjected to loud drunken behaviour late at night' as well as banging on walls and bodily fluids left outside their unit door.
The property manager Catalise Limited claimed it had attempted to remedy the situation with Airbnb.
Their landlord also argued he would suffer financial hardship if the contract was reduced because of the of the cost of advertising and the time needed to find a new tenant.
But the tribunal ruled the tenants' hardship would be greater than the landlord's hardship.
Ms Kleiring and Mr Rosa Jr's tenancy was ruled to end on February 20 - rather than the original conclusion date of June 4.
The judgement said the expiry date would give the landlord 21 days to find a new tenant.
'The tenants have become fearful in the property as a result of incidents at a neighbouring unit which is rented out as an AirBnB,' a Tenancy Tribunal judgement seen by Daily Mail Australia said (stock image)
'I am satisfied as a result of what they have endured to date, the tenants would suffer severe hardship if the tenancy were not reduced,' the ruling said.
The landlord, who did not dispute any of the facts in the case, was not awarded any compensation.
The tenants also claimed there were delays in maintenance being completed for the washer and dishwasher at the beginning of their tenancy and delays in contractors repairing a leak in a sliding door.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Airbnb for comment.
Mr Rosa Jr declined to comment when approached by Daily Mail Australia.
A newsreader who was diagnosed with cancer after losing her father to the disease has revealed her heartbreak after her baby son died in childbirth.
Maria Gaban, a radio newsreader in Adelaide, lost her father to cancer when she was just 19.
In 2017, she faced further heartbreak when her second son with her husband Alastair died in childbirth.
While grieving, the 38-year-old quickly became pregnant again and gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Trinity. But she was then dealt another shattering blow.
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Maria Gaban, an Adelaide newsreader, shared her heartbreaking story after enduring a year of compounded heartache
Maria Gaban, an Adelaide newsreader, (pictured right) says her husband Alastair Gaban (pictured left) has been her greatest supporter throughout the past year
The mother-of-two noticed a lump in her breast about seven weeks after giving birth to her daughter.
She was told by doctors the lump was filled with milk and assured it would go away.
But four months later the lump was still there.
Ms Gaban returned to the doctors for a mammogram, which was when she was informed she had cancer.
'I just actually didn't believe this was happening, I almost felt like I shrunk back into the chair I was sitting on and felt as small as a pea,' she told Adelaide Now.
She said her first thought was whether she would live long enough to take her children to school.
Her emotional story brought others to tears when she shared her story with radio show Mix102.3 on Monday.
During the show she revealed her biggest fear was not seeing her children grow up.
'I've got a five-month-old in my hands, we've just come off the back of that horrid loss (of son Julius) and now I'm facing breast cancer. I didn't have kids not to raise them. I want to be there for every cry and every milestone.'
She said the hardest part of her ordeal was losing her son.
'The worst, most traumatic part in all of this has been losing Julius, I am still here to fight but our son didn't get that chance, he didn't get to have a cry or breathe or anything,' she said.
Once a 6cm tumour was removed from her breast Ms Gaban was declared cancer free.
But because she lost her father to bowel cancer when she was 19, she opted for chemotherapy as a precaution.
She returned back to work at Mix 102.3 on a part-time basis on Monday, one week into her final course of chemotherapy.
She is now urging others to get checked if something doesn't feel right.
A man has been rushed to hospital in a serious condition after he was gored in the back by a bull.
Emergency services were called to a rural property in Caltowie West, far north of Adelaide, about 4pm on Saturday.
The 25-year-old victim was treated at the scene by paramedics and was rushed to Jamestown Hospital, about 25 kilometres away.
A man has been rushed to hospital after he was impaled by a bull on a regional property (stock image used)
Medstar paramedics - specialists trained in treating critically injured patients - were flown from Adelaide to meet him at the regional hospital.
He was expected to be flown to Adelaide for further treatment once stabilised.
The man remained in a serious condition as of 6pm Saturday.
A 'mentally ill' 35-year-old accused of murdering his scientist father has been taken to hospital with paper bags covering his hands to preserve forensic evidence.
Frank Russo, 65, was found dead inside his home in north-eastern Adelaide at just before 5.30am on Friday.
His son Joel was arrested at the scene and charged with murder.
He was then pictured entering a hospital later in the day with brown paper bags over his hands so he could be forensically examined.
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Frank Russo, 65, was found dead inside his home in north-eastern Adelaide at just before 5.30am on Friday. His son Joel (pictured) was arrested at the scene and charged with murder
A family is mourning the death of Mr Russo who was allegedly murdered by the 35-year-old
He was refused bail and will face Adelaide Magistrates Court on Monday.
Neighbours have told of how both the father and son allegedly suffered from mental health issues.
One said police were called to the property a number of times over several years responding to mental health incidents.
'I'm horrified it did come to this,' neighbour Tanja Sandu said.
Ms Sandu added Russo was a 'good father' to the 35-year-old now accused of his murder.
The deceased was a theorist and self-proclaimed research scientist who had lived at the home on Urban Avenue in Paradise for decades, Channel 9 reported.
The deceased (pictured) was a theorist and self-proclaimed research scientist who had reportedly lived at the home on Urban Avenue in Paradise for decades
He ran a website containing articles and videos speculating on the universe and giving health advice.
The 65-year-old, whose biography said he moved to Australia from Italy when he was nine, also claimed to have scored an IQ of 170.
It is understood Mr Russo and Joel's mother separated more than two decades ago, The Adelaide Advertiser reported.
An accounting firm executive who coerced children into abusing each other via social media has been jailed for nine years.
Hayden Elstob, 25, would pose as a woman and encourage children as young as two to record themselves performing sexual acts or sexually abusing their siblings.
'I love incest so much. You and your sister are playing for me. I love it and I love you,' he told an American boy who was later prosecuted for abusing his little sister.
Hayden Elstob (pictured), 25, was sentenced to jail on Friday after years of coercing children into sending him explicit pictures and sexually assaulting their own siblings via social media
He committed the crimes from his home in Somerville, southeast of Melbourne, over four years from 2014.
Though he never physically touched his victims, Melbourne County Court heard on Friday that his manipulations on them caused significant harm, The Age reported.
Prosecutors say Elstob created a number of fake social media accounts to coerce 11 children into performing sexual acts, while a further 34 people, mostly children, sent sexually explicit images at his request.
His youngest victim was two years old.
The Melbourne County Court (pictured) heard some of Elstob's victims now face prosecution
Others now face prosecution for crimes committed under his influence, including an 18-year-old Australian man who abused his niece and a New Zealander who violated his children on webcam at Elstob's insistence.
Elstob would request to 'see pictures' of the man's children while also discussing drugging them with sleeping tablets.
When he was caught in 2018, Elstob said he was 'relieved' because vile pictures of a two-year-old girl 'repulsed' him.
Police found he had amassed more than 4600 files of pornography on 10 devices, with 600 of them in the worst two categories for child abuse material.
Elstob ammassed omre than 4600 files of pornographic content on 10 separate devices (stock image used)
A psychologist later diagnosed Elstob with paedophilic and depressive disorders, while Judge Gavan Meredith said he was a lonely, isolated man who was bullied for being gay in high school.
Elstob pleaded guilty to 30 child sex charges and was sentenced to 12 years in jail.
Judge Meredith said his plea indicated a desire to rehabilitate, and said he would receive treatment while behind bars.
Elstob has already been in custody for 320 days and must serve nine years before he is eligible for parole.
A military judge on Tuesday dismissed two charges against decorated veteran, Edward Gallagher (pictured), 39, who is accused of murdering a 15-year-old Afghan boy with his knife in 2017
Three days after a military judge dismissed two charges against a Navy SEAL accused of murdering a 15-year-old Afghan terrorist with a knife, the decorated veteran's brother has called upon President Trump to intervene.
Edward Gallagher is currently being held in a military prison in California amid accusations he repeatedly plunged a knife into the wounded body of a young ISIS fighter in 2017 and fired sniper rounds at innocent civilians in Iraq.
On Tuesday, Navy Capt Aaron Rugh, the judge in the court martial, announced that Gallagher, 39, would no longer face trial for allegedly performing a reenlistment ceremony next to the militant's corpse or for operating a drone over the corpse, according to The San Diego Tribune.
The veteran, however, still faces charges for premeditated murder for stabbing the teen and aggravated assault for firing rounds at civilians.
Gallagher also faces an allegation he posed for a photo with the militant's body.
He could serve a life sentence if convicted of the current charges against him.
His brother, Sean Gallagher, wrote in an op-ed provided to Fox News asking Trump to 'review Eddies case, reunite him with his family, and place him back on the front lines where he belongs.'
Sean said during a Fox & Friends segment Friday: 'We need the intervention of the President of the United States, sadly.'
He added: 'If you want to know what a real Navy SEAL is like, if you want to know what a real warrior is like, look at someone like Eddie who literally just faced down death.
'He just had a battle with ISIS and in the midst of that after defeating the enemy on the same battle he risked his life, he swears before man and God that he will do it again, that he will stand his post and defend the country.
'There are lawyers back home in the Navy that wanted to charge him for a war crime, for that... thats honor... thats bravery.'
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The veteran's brother, Sean Gallagher, (seen above) wrote in an op-ed provided to Fox News asking Trump to review Eddies case
Sean said during a Fox & Friends segment: 'We need the intervention of the President of the United States'
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The chief petty officer's platoon commander, Lt Jacob Portier, is also facing court martial charges alleging that he was aware of the complaints against Gallagher, but failed to report them.
Portier has also been charged with conducting Gallagher's reenlistment ceremony.
Last week, seven Navy SEALs were granted immunity to testify against Gallagher.
Up to 13 additional witnesses are expected to testify against the soldier whose trial begins on February 19.
During a motion hearing on January 25, prosecutors said witnesses told NCIS investigators that Gallagher bragged about killing up to 200 people 'three a day' he allegedly said during his 2017 deployment to Mosul, Iraq, according to the Tribune.
Prosecutors also revealed at the time that they had recovered a knife that tested positive for DNA, although they did not reveal whose DNA was found on the weapon - or say conclusively that it was related to the incident in question.
On Tuesday, Navy Capt Aaron Rugh, the judge in the court martial, announced that Gallagher (left and right), 39, will no longer face trial for allegedly performing a reenlistment ceremony next to the militant's corpse or for operating a drone over the corpse
Gallagher (pictured) still faces charges for premeditated murder for stabbing the teen and aggravated assault for firing rounds at civilians
In November last year, prosecutors presented accounts from several other SEALs in Gallagher's platoon describing his behavior as reckless and bloodthirsty.
They said he fired into civilian crowds, gunned down a girl walking along a riverbank and an old man carrying a water jug, and threatened to kill fellow SEALs if they reported his actions.
In May last year, Iraqi forces in Mosul caught an Islamic State fighter aged in his teens, who was left battered and bloody from the combat.
Investigators allege while the teen was receiving medical treatment from SEAL medics, Gallagher walked up and stabbed him in his neck and side with a knife, killing the fighter.
Then, they said, he posed for photographs with the fighter's body, holding his head in one hand and his blade in the other and sent one of the images to a fellow SEAL with the caption: 'I got him with my hunting knife'.
Gallagher is a married father-of-three and a highly lauded special warfare operator who has racked up numerous awards during his eight tours of duty.
After his latest tour, fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq, he was named the top platoon leader in SEAL Team 7 and nominated for the Silver Star, the military's third-highest honor.
In November last year, prosecutors presented accounts from several other SEALs in Gallagher's (pictured) platoon describing his behavior as reckless and bloodthirsty
A charge sheet shows Gallagher is accused of 'stabbing a male person in the neck and body with a knife'
He fought in Iraq and Afghanistan several times and has been a Navy Seal for 14 years.
His brother Sean also defended him in an interview with Fox News back in November.
'This investigation is not about justice and the truth, it's about a win,' Sean told the network at the time.
'A SEAL is a shiny, golden nail where if you take them down it makes you look good,' he added.
The Navy has charged Gallagher with premeditated murder, attempted murder and nearly a dozen other offenses, including obstruction of justice and bringing 'discredit upon the armed forces'.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Airline passengers have been left furious after spending five-hours on a plane only to end up back where they started.
Passengers on board an Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to Queenstown last Wednesday were forced to endure a 'nightmare flight' they said made them feel 'like cattle'.
Strong tailwinds prevented the plane from landing in Queenstown, on New Zealand's south island, and the plane had to be redirected to Christchurch to refill with fuel.
Passengers on board an Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to Queenstown last Wednesday were forced to endure a 'nightmare flight' that they claim made them feel 'like cattle'
Passengers did not disembark, and had expected to fly on to Queenstown, but after 40 minutes on the tarmac they were told the plane was returning to Auckland.
Joel Herbert, who was flying with his partner and their 16-month-old baby, told NZME no one could understand why they were being turned around when they were already two-thirds of the way to their destination which was only an hour away by air.
'It was a mixture of anger and disbelief,' he said.
'I don't think there was a single person aboard who could understand why we would have to return to the other end of the country rather than be redirected to another airport. I mean, we're already in Christchurch.
An Air NZ spokeswoman said Air New Zealand had done as much as it could to make the redirected flight as tolerable as possible for passengers
'The plane, A320, doesn't have the facilities to cope with that many people being stuck aboard for that long, so basically there was a queue for both of the toilets from both ends of the plane the whole way back.'
After five hours spent on the plane only to arrive back where they took off from, passengers were put up in a motel overnight.
An Air NZ spokeswoman said Air New Zealand had done as much as it could to make the redirected flight as tolerable as possible for passengers.
Passengers were unable to disembark the plane in Christchurch because the plane was parked at an international gate, meaning passengers would have to go through customs, the spokeswoman said.
Justices A.K. Sikri and Abdul Nazeer before whom the matter came up for hearing on Friday transferred the petition to a bench of Justice Arun Mishra.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday referred to a bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Vineet Saran, a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by an NGO, Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), seeking a fresh probe into the murder of former Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya in 2003, as they claim it to be a political murder.
A bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Abdul Nazeer before whom the matter came up for hearing on Friday transferred the petition to a bench of Justice Arun Mishra pointing out that this bench had already reserved appeals against the Gujarat high court order acquitting the 12 accused in the case.
The 12 were earlier convicted by a special Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) court in 2007 and awarded life imprisonment, which was reversed by the high court. Aggrieved by the acquittal, the state had moved a PIL in the apex court, which was being heard by a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who was present in the court, questioned the locus standi of the NGO to file the petition, but Justice Sikri observed that the bench of Justice Arun Mishra would consider all matters.
The NGOs petition filed by advocate Kamini Jaiswal, while reeling out the statements of various persons who were reportedly privy to the information relating to the conspiracy behind the murder, had sought an independent probe in the collective interest of the public towards ensuring that the criminal justice system works in a non-partisan manner and a fresh investigation need to be carried out fairly to bring to book the real culprits.
According to the petition, the public disquiet has been unabated regarding the highly unsatisfactory way in which investigation has been carried out into the murder of Mr Pandya.
The petition said, There may be possibly a shielding of high place officials. The need for this petition arises due to some startling information that has recently come to light, and has been extensively reported by the media regarding Mr Pandyas murder.
Chelsea Clinton showed off her baby bump Thursday as she promoted her new children's book in California, just days after being pictured enjoying a Lady Gaga concert in Las Vegas.
The pregnant 38-year-old stepped out in San Diego to flog copies of She Persisted Around the World: 13 Women Who Changed History and fans shared images on social media praising the former First Daughter who announced last month she's expecting her third child.
Donning two different printed shirts as she did her rounds talking about her new release, Clinton appeared at both a book signing and a chat at the University of San Diego.
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Chelsea Clinton showed off her baby bump Thursday at public appearances in California
She was welcomed at the University of San Diego campus to celebrate her new children's book She Persisted Around the World
Clinton is expected her third child later this summer she announce January 22
Spotted: Clinton was pictured by a fan at a Lady Gaga concert in Las Vegas only days ago
The mother paired the tops that enabled her burgeoning belly to be seen with fitted jeans and black high heels.
'Thank you @ChelseaClinton for sharing your new picture book, #ShePersisted, with us last night! Your book dedicated to young girls is an inspiration!' USD tweeted about her appearance Friday.
This book illustrated by Alexandra Boiger features Marie Curie, Malala Yousafzai, J.K. Rowling, Viola Desmond, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Sissi Lima do Amor, Leymah Gbowee, Caroline Herschel, Wangari Maathai, Aisha Rateb, Kate Sheppard, Yuan Yuan Tan, and Mary Verghese.
Book illustrated by Alexandra Boiger features Marie Curie, Malala Yousafzai and J.K. Rowling
'I loved meeting all of you!' she posted after one of her events in San Diego Thursday
Clinton shared an image of the Warwick's event with audience members holding up copies. She captioned the shot: 'I loved meeting all of you!'
During the book event she answered questions from children. When asked what it was like growing up in the White House she responded: 'My parents made it as normal as possible and also ensured that I was aware of how extraordinary it was.'
Fox 5 San Diego added she said: 'When my father ran for office and the bullying sort of took on a whole other level, it was very extreme and Im grateful that it was so extreme, because I was 11 ... I knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with adults bullying children. It just seemed very strange to me.'
She said the best advice her mother gave her was 'to take serious criticism from serious people seriously' and 'to take unserious criticism from unserious people unseriously'.
She was in San Diego today to see how the Clinton Foundation is working with local partners including to address the needs of children in the child welfare and juvenile justice system
The former First daughter was pictured laughing and smiling as she took part in a chat
They spoke about the development of a youth-led trauma informed code of conduct that will be implemented across the county
Her Foundation partners the San Diego County Health and Human Services were also present
Clinton added that her trip was an inspiring one after meeting organisations that help young people and their families
On Twitter, she thanked the San Diego Foundation for 'supporting this important work'
Clinton added that her trip was an inspiring one after meeting organisations that help young people and their families.
Child welfare and the juvenile justice systems were the topic of discussion with her Clinton Foundation partners the San Diego Foundation.
Her Foundation partners the San Diego County Health and Human Services were also present.
They spoke about the development of a youth-led trauma informed code of conduct that will be implemented across the county.
She tweeted: 'Inspired by leaders I met yesterday in San Diego working to improve health outcomes for kids, young adults & families, including at Project A.W.A.R.E. who developed the Trauma Informed Code of Conduct & at @jitfosteryouth who showed me their proven method of training peer mentors.'
Her 13 Women Who Changed History book tells stories of the likes of Viola Desmond (pictured on the currency) Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and Sissi Lima do Amor
Her book also features Leymah Gbowee (pictured) Caroline Herschel, Wangari Maathai, Aisha Rateb, Kate Sheppard, Yuan Yuan Tan, and Mary Verghese
Just days before her book promotion appearances she was letting her hair down in Sin City.
A fan shared a picture of her intently watching a Lady Gaga gig in the state of Nevada.
Along with turning her brood into a trio, it's also a hat trick for Clinton as far as books go when her third comes out March 6.
The new baby in expected in the coming months.
Clinton who married 41-year-old investment banker Marc Mezvinsky in 2010, tweeted January 22: 'Marc and I have loved watching Charlotte be such a wonderful big sister and we're excited to watch Aidan become a big brother! We cannot wait to meet our newest addition later this summer.'
The New York couple's daughter was born in 2014 and son was born in 2016.
In a reply to congratulations on Twitter, Clinton said her parents Hillary and Bill are thrilled.
Both kids offered their mother money and they are 'sorry' about perished cattle
A farmer who lost half her stud cattle due to extreme floods in Far North Queensland saw her spirits raised by two of her children this week.
Jaye Hall, based at one of her family properties close to 200km east of Mt Isa on 45,000 acres, shed 'plenty of tears' moments after reading a heart-felt letter from Madison, 13, and Wyatt, 11.
'We are sorry about all of these cattle. If there is anything we can do to help, let us know,' the letter read.
'If we need more money you can take mine out of my bank and put it in yours. I could even sell some of my animals for money.'
The touching letter from Madison and Wyatt to their mother Jaye Hall, a farmer in Far North Queensland whose stud cattle has been ravaged by the floods
The conditions in some places in Far North Queensland (pictured) are so brutal that stud cattle are literally bogged down before dying
Speaking to Yahoo7 News, Ms Hall said she was 'so proud' of her children's selfless attitude.
'It made me cry but I couldn't be more proud of them,' she said.
'I take a lot of pride in our cattle and they know that. We sell a lot of stud bulls.. it takes a long time to breed a herd up.'
Following nine days of seemingly non-stop rain, freezing cold weather and huge winds, a huge portion of the calves and young bulls have perished.
'Their legs are heavy and encased in mud mud up to their knees in places,' Hall said.
'They've just obviously been walking trying to find higher ground and bogged and died there.'
After enduring a brutal drought for seven years, to be now ravaged by wet and boggy farm conditions is proving very hard to deal with.
'It's just gone from one extreme, completely to the other extreme,' Hall said.
'Everyone's (other farmers) bank balance is pretty limited at the moment and now this has happened.'
Stud cattle (pictured) are unable to move if they are bogged into the ground - with no access to food, they all eventually die a slow death
A California deer managed to save its own hide by diving into a swimming pool during its mad dash to outrun a hungry mountain lion.
The determined deer's lucky escape was caught by surveillance cameras in the backyard of a home in Glendale, California, on Thursday at about 4am.
In the night vision footage, obtained by KTLA, a deer can be seen streaking past one of the cameras with a mountain lion hard on its tail, just a split-second later.
Backyard surveillance cameras caught a deer's panicked flight from a mountain lion, which ended in the in-ground pool of a home in Glendale, California, early Thursday morning
The mountain lion followed the deer into the pool, but quickly climbed out of the cold water
A second camera then captures the deer diving into the home's swimming pool. The mountain lion, with its glowing eyes, leaps into the in-ground pool, too, appearing to land on top of the deer for a moment, before it hurriedly makes its way to the pool edge to haul itself out of the water.
The mountain lion then slinks out of sight, while the deer wisely continues to take laps around the pool until the coast is clear, before exiting the pool itself.
The life-or-death swim was discovered by homeowner Rachel Wong and her husband later that morning, when they realized that something was different about their backyard, which butts up against the Verdugo Mountains.
'My husband came in and he said, "Did something fall in the pool?"' Wong told KTLA, noting that 'it was all wet on both sides of the pool.'
They then checked their surveillance tapes and that's when they discovered their nocturnal visitors.
The deer paddled around in the pool, appearing to wait until the mountain lion left the area, before exiting the pool itself
Rachel Wong called the nocturnal events in her backyard 'National Geographic in my pool'
Wong said the surprising event was like having 'National Geographic in our pool.'
Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy wildlife photographer Johanna Turner said she believes the mountain lion is a female called 'Nikita,' which has been clocked roaming around the mountainous areas around Glendale.
Turner called the pool footage the 'most incredible thing I've ever seen' and said that the speed at which the mountain lion exited the pool meant it was likely that it 'was shocked to be soaked,' especially since it had been cold overnight.
Although the mountain lion appeared to have vamoosed from the scene, Turner suspects that it didn't go far and was, in fact, waiting for the deer off-camera.
'I think it's very possible the lion might've waited for her, waited for the deer on her way out,' Turner said.
Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez celebrated news that Amazon may be reconsidering building a headquarters in New York City after a furious backlash over the purported tax breaks they would receive.
Ocasio-Cortez, 29, had been a strong opponent of the plans, citing the rent hikes and local displacement as seen around the tech firm's headquarters in Seattle, as grounds for why the city should reject the proposal.
After a litany of local opposition, Amazon is now said to be considering pulling the plug on its plans to open a new headquarters in the Queens borough, potentially jeopardizing 25,000 new jobs in the city.
Ocasio-Cortez responded, tweeting: 'Can everyday people come together and effectively organize against creeping overreach of one of the worlds biggest corporations? Yes, they can.'
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Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist whose district is adjacent to Long Island City, spoke out to decry the deal to bring an Amazon campus to Queens
In a tweet on Friday, the freshman US Representative urged 'everyday people' to fight back against Amazon's plans
The online retailer has not yet purchased or leased any land for the multi-billion dollar project, which would allow it to withdraw the plans easily, an anonymous source told the Washington Post.
According to the source, Amazon executives have allegedly held internal discussions recently to reassess the situation in New York and explore alternative sites.
The reported change of heart coincided with Amazon's share prices falling around 2.4 percent on Friday.
In November, the Jeff Bezos-owned firm revealed it would branching out from its home base in Seattle, and unveiled New York City and Arlington as the lucky suitors of its 50,000 combined job plan.
The retailer said it planned to spend $5billion on the two new developments, and hoped to get more than $2billion in tax credits and incentives with plans to apply for more.
At the time, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo lauded the announcement as an economic triumph, but critics hounded the state for providing too many subsidies in order to sanction the deal.
This November photos from Long Island City shows the area Amazon had planned to take over for their New York headquarters
Amazon has mailed flyers to Queens residents touting the economic and employment benefits of its New York expansion hoping to blunt opposition, but protests still persisted.
A critic of the plan, Queens state Senator Michael Gianaris, was appointed to a panel charged with approving the new Amazon campus, and has the power to block the plan.
Last week, city council members challenged Amazon company executives for a second time at a public hearing where activists jeered and booed holding anti-Amazon placards.
Cuomo lambasted Gianaris and other members of the New York Senate for their short-sighted view of Amazon's potential impact on the borough and beyond.
'For the State Senate to oppose Amazon, was governmental malpractice. And if they stop Amazon from coming to New York, they're going to have the people of New York State to explain it to,' he said.
'I've never seen a more absurd situation where political pandering and obvious pandering so defeats a bonafide economic development project.
'We incentivized Amazon to come, as we incentivize every big business to come. You know what the incentive package was? We get $27 billion in revenue, they get $3 billion back.
'I would do that all day long.'
Amazon announced after a yearlong search that it would split its 'HQ2' between Arlington, Virginia, outside the US capital, and the Long Island City neighborhood in the New York borough of Queens (above)
A demonstrator holds a sign at a rally to protest Amazon's new location workplace in Long Island City in Queens
The social media message came as a follow up to her previous comments from when the proposal was initially unveiled.
'Amazon is a billion-dollar company,' she wrote in November. 'The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.'
The following month, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson echoed Ocasio-Cortez's sentiments.
'We have a crumbling subway system, record homelessness, public housing that is in crisis, overcrowded schools, sick people without health insurance and an escalating affordable crisis,' he said.
'Is anyone asking if we should be giving nearly $3billion in public money to the world's richest company?'
The alleged leak was thought to possibly be a ploy by the e-commerce behemoth to negotiate even more favorable terms at the eleventh hour.
The worlds largest online retailer plans to spend $5 billion on two new developments in Long Island City, in Queens, and in Arlington, Virginia, and expects to get more than $2 billion in tax credits and incentives with plans to apply for more
But in a statement to CNN, Amazon denied they were considering revoking the HQ2 plans.
'We're focused on engaging with our new neighbors small business owners, educators, and community leaders.
'Whether it's building a pipeline of local jobs through workforce training or funding computer science classes for thousands of New York City students, we are working hard to demonstrate what kind of neighbor we will be.'
According to The New York Times, Amazon executives are fearful over the uncertainty of the plans with regard to the senate, having already made significant investments of money and time.
They haven't however made any contingencies plans for a potential plan b should their proposal suddenly be blocked.
The split second headquarters, which Amazon called HQ2, attracted 238 proposals from across North America in a year-long bidding war that garnered widespread publicity for the company.
Amazon ended the frenzy by dividing the spoils between the two most powerful U.S. East Coast cities and offering a consolation prize of a 5,000-person center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Amazon was met with disapproval and opposition. This photo is from a January protest
At the outset of its search last year, Amazon said it was looking for a business-friendly environment.
Buried in the 32-page proposal was also a controversial clause allowing the company to build a roof-top helipad - which have been banned in the city since 9/11.
According to Slate, Amazon's agreement with New York doesn't require the company to contribute any funds to the city's ailing subway system.
It does however include a clause requiring them to make 'payments in lieu of property taxes', which at least half of which will be invested in the 'Infrastructure fund' overseen by the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
The fund will support projects 'including but not limited to streets, sidewalks, utility relocations, environmental remediation, public open space, transportation, schools and signage,' around the eventual headquarter site.
The company said it will receive performance-based incentives of $1.525billion from the state of New York, including an average $48,000 for each job it creates.
It can also apply for other tax incentives, such as New York City's Relocation and Employment Assistance Program that offers tax breaks potentially worth $900 million over 12 years. What benefit the company would actually get was unclear.
In November, President Trump renewed his assault on the retail giant and warned New York lawmakers they may regret showing Bezos' company so much leniency.
'Theyre giving up a lot; theyre expensive deals. Only time will tell. Maybe Amazon will have massive competition and they wont be the same company in five years in which case it would be a big mistake,' Trump told The Daily Caller.
Amazon wasn't the only online giant to cement its future in America's financial captial.
In December, Google said it would invest more than $1billion on a new campus in New York, creating thousands of jobs.
A man has been jailed for nine years after he sexually assaulted a backpacker on an isolated nudist beach.
Zane Rowe, 33, followed the woman after initially spotting her at Belongil Beach in Tyagarah, just north of Byron Bay in NSW, on June 6, 2017.
The European tourist was on a student visa, arriving in Byron Bay just a few days before the attack.
The District Court heard Rowe was meditating when the woman first encountered him.
A man has been jailed for the sexual assault of a woman at a beach near Byron Bay in June of 2017 (stock image)
The woman was attacked at random at a nudist beach just north of Byron Bay (stock image)
She kept walking, but he began to follow her before he approached her and threatened to kill the victim with a gun.
The victim could not know that Rowe, a disability pension recipient, did not have a gun in the bag he was carrying.
Rowe then subjected the woman to repeated sexual assaults, the Courier Mail reported.
Reading from police facts, Judge Julia Baly said Rowe, told his victim he was about to rape her although he 'didn't really want to'.
When asked why he would do this, he said: 'You asked for it. You came to a nude beach all by yourself'.
After the attack, Rowe also said: 'You are in my country and you can do what I say'.
The court heard the woman 'feared for her life' during the attack.
Remarkably, the woman - who Judge Baly described as a 'survivor' - convinced Rowe to walk with her back to Byron Bay, where she sought help at her accommodation.
CCTV footage was integral in the subsequent arrest of Rowe at his Coffs Harbour address on June 16, 2017.
The European woman befriended the man after the attack, and then played a role in his arrest after he was spotted on CCTV surveillance (stock image)
At Rowe's home, police found pornography shot from beach locations, and a blackboard with the message: 'All woman are the enemy'.
Rowe had been in custody since June 16, 2017 and pleaded guilty to the six counts of aggravated sexual assault, committing an act of indecency and destroying or damaging property.
Judge Baly imposed a sentence of nine years and nine months behind bars.
Rowe will not be eligible for parole until March 15, 2024.
Saudi students from at least eight different states have fled the U.S. after being charged or convicted of serious crimes including manslaughter, rape and possession of child porn, it has been revealed.
After the Saudi government was accused last month of helping five citizens studying in Oregon flee after they were accused of crimes, an investigation by The Oregonian has found similar cases in Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.
Another two cases were discovered in Nova Scotia, Canada.
So far, at least 17 young Saudi men, all studying at college, have disappeared following accusations or convictions, with what appears to be assistance from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Abdulrahman Semeer Noorah, 23, is believed to have fled on a private jet with the help of his country's consulate in June last year just weeks before he was due to stand trial for killing a 15-year-old girl.
Ron Wyden said in a letter, first obtained by The Oregonian, to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, Friday that the new theory from authorities that Noorah used an illicit passport to fly home on a private jet provided by the Saudi consulate should be reason to push forward with action.
Abdulrahman Semeer Noorah (right) is believed to have fled on a jet with the help of the Saudi consulate in June just weeks before his manslaughter trial was starting over the hit-and-run death of 15-year-old Fallon Smart (left) in Portland in 2016
Noorah's case made international headlines in December following uproar over the killing of U.S.-based Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered inside the country's consulate in Istanbul in October.
Officials believe Noorah escaped on a private jet with help from the Saudi consulate last year.
An investigation by The Oregonian revealed that four other Saudi students, who were studying in Oregon and facing similar circumstances to Noorah, have also fled the U.S. in recent years.
Courtesy of KOIN
All were young men studying at one of Oregon's public colleges or universities with assistance from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Officials revealed in December that they were working to get Noorah extradited back to the U.S. after he removed his court-ordered ankle monitor and supposedly used an illegal passport to flee the country.
Noorah vanished just two weeks before he was due to stand trial on manslaughter charges for killing 15-year-old Fallon Smart with his car when she was crossing a road in Portland in August 2016.
The Saudi government only recently informed U.S. authorities that Noorah, who was a Portland Community College student, had returned to Saudi Arabia seven days after he went missing.
Noorah had been released from jail at the time on a $100,000 bond that the Saudi consulate paid. He vanished after being picked up from his college campus in a black SUV.
Portland State University student Suliman Ali Algwaiz (left) was arrested in August 2016 after he drunkenly struck a homeless man with his car. Waleed Ali Alharthi (right), who was an Oregon State University student, was found in possession of child porn in April 2015
Now it has emerged that his was not an isolated case, with four other men also fleeing either before or after their cases went to court.
Portland State University student Suliman Ali Algwaiz was arrested in August 2016 after he drunkenly struck a homeless man with his car.
He fled the scene but was later sentenced to 90 days in jail.
Algwaiz was serving his sentence at weekends, but vanished before completing the 90 days and a warrant for his arrest is still outstanding.
Waleed Ali Alharthi, who was an Oregon State University student, was found in possession of child porn in April 2015.
Police found pornographic videos on his laptop involving children. He was arrested and booked on 10 counts of encouraging child sex abuse.
The consulate also put up the security deposit for his $500,000 bail.
Alharthi attended multiple court hearings related to his case but failed to attend a status check in April 2015.
His lawyer told the court that she feared he was dead but authorities learned he had flown from Mexico City to Paris the week before.
In a similar case a few years prior, Abdulaziz Al Duways was arrested in December 2014 over the rape of a female classmate at Western Oregon University.
Arrest affidavits related to his case show that the alleged victim accused Al Duways of giving her marijuana and whiskey shots prior to the attack.
She called 911 during the alleged attack and when police arrived they found her crying in his bed.
Al Duways had allegedly told her: 'Tell them I'm your girlfriend' and 'I'll give you anything. I'll do anything if you don't tell them'.
He was charged with rape and held on a $500,000 bond. Days later, a Saudi consulate official paid his bond and Al Duways vanished before he faced court.
In 2012, Oregon State University student Ali Hussain Alhamoud was charged with raping a young woman.
He was released on bail, which the Saudi government posted, and he flew back to Saudi Arabia that same day.
Abdulaziz Al Duways (left) was arrested in December 2014 over the rape of a female classmate at Western Oregon University. In 2012, Oregon State University student Ali Hussain Alhamoud (right) was charged with raping a young woman
Mohammed Zuraibi Al-Zoabi, (left) disappeared in December 2018 after being charged with sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement of a woman between 2015-17. Sami Suliman Almezaini, (right) is accused of raping his female roommate in July 2017, the same month he disappeared
The first four cases were all represented by the same attorney, Ginger Mooney. She has represented at least nine Saudi students since 2014.
Mooney declined to comment in relation to the Oregonian investigation. Her attorney said any suggestion of unethical or improper conduct by her client was 'completely unfounded'.
According to The Oregonian report, men from other states include Mohammed Zuraibi Al-Zoabi, of Nova Scotia, Canada.
He disappeared in December 2018 after being charged with sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement of a woman between 2015-17.
Sami Suliman Almezaini, of Gallatin County, Montana, is accused of raping his female roommate in July 2017, the same month he disappeared.
Saud Alabdullatif, of Spokane County, Washington, disappeared in May 2016. He was charged with forcible second-degree rape and unlawful imprisonment after he forced a woman to perform oral sex on him that month.
Faisal Altaleb, Gallatin County, Montana, disappeared November 2016, after he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman he linked up with at a bar.
Monsour Alshammari, of Utah County, Utah, was charged with first-degree rape and obstruction of justice.
He is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in February 2015. He disappeared in April 2015 and was captured later that month.
Abdullah Almakrami, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, disappeared one month after he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman at his apartment in March 2014.
Hani Alshammary, of Erie County, Pennsylvania, is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in April 2014.
He was charged with attempted rape, forcible compulsion, unlawful restraint, harassment and disorderly conduct.
Hani Alshammary is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in April 2014. He was charged with attempted rape, forcible compulsion, unlawful restraint, harassment and disorderly conduct
Fahad Al Ghuwainem (left) disappeared in December 2014, two months after he allegedly raped a man with male accomplice after the three linked up at a gay bar. Abdulrahman Ali Al-Plaies disappeared November 1988. In June 1988, he was accused of causing a fatal car crash that claimed the life of an elderly woman
Fahad Al Ghuwainem, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, disappeared in December 2014, two months after he allegedly raped a man with male accomplice after the three linked up at a gay bar.
Taher Ali Al-Saba, of Nova Scotia, Canada, disappeared January 2007. He was charged with sexually assaulting two children the year prior.
Siraj Marakeey, of Snohomish County, Washington, disappeared July 1991. He was accused of first-degree rape for sexually assaulting a child in June 1991.
Abdulrahman Ali Al-Plaies, of Greene County, Ohio, disappeared November 1988. Another student has not been identified.
In June 1988, he was accused of causing a fatal car crash that claimed the life of an elderly woman.
When the case involving Noorah came to light last year, Oregon senator Ron Wyden urged the U.S. government to investigate and to take action.
'These are shocking claims in any event, but with the barbaric murder of US resident Jamal Khashoggi, they suggest a brazen pattern of disregard for the law and abuse of diplomatic privileges,' Wyden wrote.
'If they are accurate, they would require significant restrictions on Saudi Arabias diplomatic privileges and call into question the future of Americas bilateral relationship with the Saudis.'
A 74-year-old Australian tourist who fell ill on a cruise liner in Argentina has been airlifted to hospital.
The elderly man collapsed on board the Celebrity Eclipse Solstice-class cruise ship about 485 kilometres from the Port of Rawson, southern Argentina, according to local media.
The doctor reportedly said the tourist was struggling to breath and had very low blood pressure.
The elderly man collapsed on board the Celebrity Eclipse Solstice-class cruise ship (pictured) about 485 kilometres from the Port of Rawson, southern Argentina
The man was airlifted from the cruise liner after the on-board doctor became increasingly concerned about the man's deteriorating health.
The Argentine Navy organised a rescue helicopter containing paramedics and members of the military as well as an aircraft for support, according to local media.
The helicopter landed on the helipad on the vessel's bow and the man was flown to hospital.
He was treated by paramedics on-board until he arrived at hospital.
There are no new updates on his condition.
Abuse of non-disclosure agreements to hide sexual harassment will be tackled by the Government but ministers last night failed to set out a timetable for the plan.
Officials said the promised consultation on the use of such orders would be launched in due course.
Women and equalities minister Penny Mordaunt said: Sexual harassment at work is illegal, yet this disgusting behaviour is something that many women still experience.
It is clearly unacceptable that non-disclosure orders have been used to hide workplace harassment or intimidate victims into silence and we will take the necessary steps to stop this.
Officials added that the Governments consultation would cover how to ensure workers understand their rights when they have signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Pictured: Sir Philip Green with his wife Tina, left, and daughter Chloe
In the wake of the Philip Green case, a string of MPs have called for changes to ensure that gagging orders or NDAs can no longer be used to silence allegations of sexual or racial abuse.
One senior MP said that any orders currently in place should now lose legal force if they were being used to stop workers going public with claims of serious misbehaviour.
Although the injunction covering the Sir Philip allegations was lifted yesterday, the tycoon said the five ex-employees who had signed NDAs were under an obligation to honour them.
Yesterday, he faced calls to release his accusers from the controversial agreements, while MPs and lawyers demanded immediate reforms to the orders. Maria Miller, chairman of the influential Commons women and equalities committee, said: NDAs cannot be used to cover up criminal wrongdoing.
We should not allow rich individuals to silence employees who have been victims of behaviour that breaks the law.
If that is how the law stands, then it is unacceptable. We have heard a mountain of evidence that shows people feel they have no option but to sign NDAs because they feel powerless. She added: The Philip Green case shows how broken the current system is. Employers and lawyers need to hear a strong message from Government that this has to change.
A good way to start may be to allow NDAs that are currently in force to be set aside if they were not entered into willingly or if they are not in the public interest because they mask any type of unlawful discrimination.
She was backed by Lord Hain, the former Labour Cabinet minister who originally used Parliamentary privilege to expose Sir Philip as the figure accused of sexual and racial abuse by five employees.
Women and equalities minister Penny Mordaunt said: Sexual harassment at work is illegal, yet this disgusting behaviour is something that many women still experience'
Lord Hain named him in the Lords after appeal judges imposed the injunction protecting him from publicity.
Lord Hain said: The Government must reform the law. Commercial non-disclosure agreements are legitimate in commercial transactions, for example when Jose Mourinho was sacked by Manchester United he agreed not to tell his side in return for a big pay-off. It is entirely wrong to use NDAs to conceal abuse of victims by powerful or rich individuals.
That is deploying gagging orders to enforce injustice and the abuse of human rights of ordinary citizens who dont have the money to fight back. Ministers initially promised in December to launch a consultation on the use of NDAs saying they recognised concern over the unethical use of [them].
However they said there would be no criminal law against misuse of NDAs, a reform demanded last summer by Mrs Millers committee.
There was also widespread support for reform yesterday among backbench MPs. Labours John Mann said: People with money will rely on NDAs by definition and that is why I call for the law to change in cases like this. People who sign them, the evidence shows, feel pressured to do so and ought to have the ability to go public. Unease about the use of NDAs was shared among lawyers. The barristers regulator, the Bar Standards Board, was poised last autumn to bring in guidance for lawyers banning the use of NDAs to suppress allegations of abuse.
However new rules were held up after appeal judges gave Sir Philip his anonymity last October.
A spokesman for the board said: The BSBs position in relation to guidance for barristers on the use of non-disclosure agreements will become clear in the next few weeks.
Dawn Butler, Labour spokesman for women and equalities, said: I want to pay tribute to survivors of sexual abuse and harassment, who are too often silenced and cannot command an army of lawyers to fight their corner.
NDAs should never be used to suppress allegations of criminal behaviour. The next Labour government will review the statute book to ensure that the law protects the voices of survivors.
Facebook has vowed to ban graphic images of self-harm as social media companies step up their efforts to clamp down on gory content influencing children.
In a blog post shared on Thursday, Facebook's global head of safety Antigone Davis said the social network had consulted a number of experts in suicide prevention to determine how best to deal with troubled young users.
She said that while graphic images of self-harm would be banned, users would still be allowed to 'share admissions' of self-harm and suicidal thoughts so they can be connected with those who can help.
In a blog post shared on Thursday, Facebook's global head of safety Antigone Davis said the social network had consulted a number of experts in suicide prevention
Miss Davis added: 'We constantly re-examine how we're doing as we develop new products or see people using our services in new ways.
'In some cases, it might be a single experience that causes us to pause and question whether we need to make changes.
And that's what we've done following the tragic death of a young girl by suicide in the UK.'
She said experts from ten countries had advised that Facebook 'should allow people to share admissions of self-harm and suicidal thoughts, but should not allow people to share content promoting it'.
Based on their feedback, she said the site would 'no longer allow graphic cutting images' and would 'begin enforcing this policy in the coming weeks'.
It comes as Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, agreed to ban all graphic content, such as self-cutting videos.
The ban comes as Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, agreed to ban all graphic content that showed self-harm
It marks a major victory for the family of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who is thought to have taken her own life after viewing content on Instagram that was said to glamorise suicide.
Her father Ian Russell had said Instagram 'helped kill' his daughter. Instagram boss Adam Mosseri yesterday told the Daily Telegraph about the moment Mr Russell blamed the site for his daughter's death.
'It's the kind of thing that hits you in the chest and sticks with you,' he said.
Plans to make social media firms legally liable for content on their sites are set to be shelved, the Health Secretary has said.
Matt Hancock yesterday said proposals which could have seen firms facing fines for allowing vile and illegal material on their sites were too drastic.
Speaking to the Today programme, he said: 'The whole concept [of social media] would collapse if you made them legally liable for everything on their site.'
Jeremy Corbyn has been slammed by some of his party's most prominent female figures over the treatment of Jewish MP Luciana Berger.
Harriet Harman, the former leader, Margaret Hodge, and Dame Louise Ellman all called for Berger to be spared from being ousted for criticising Corbyn's handling of the anti-Semitism crisis.
The bid to oust Ms Berger was dramatically dropped last night after MPs rallied around her.
According to the Times, Labour sources suggested Corbyn feared a walkout over the crisis, combined with Labour's ambiguous position over Brexit.
Luciana Berger, 37, (pictured at Brexit debate in Parliament Square last month) could be ousted from her job if the local Labour group votes to remove her
Ms Berger, who is Jewish, has been scathing about Jeremy Corbyn's handling of Labour's anti-Semitism crisis, as well as his positioning on Brexit.
Senior MPs rallied behind her last night after it emerged the Liverpool Wavertree constituency party will consider two no confidence motions on February 17.
John McDonnell inflamed the row this morning by arguing that the action against Ms Berger was triggered by concern about her loyalty to the party.
But senior Labour sources confirmed tonight that the no confidence motions had been wtihdrawn.
A source close to the Labour leader said activists had taken the 'right decision'.
John McDonnell (pictured giving an interview on Sky News today) insisted this morning that the action against Ms Berger was triggered by concern she would defect to another political group, not because of her views on Mr Corbyn
The intervention sparked fury, with Holocaust Educational Trust chief executive Karen Pollock branding Mr McDonnell a 'disgrace'
Earlier, Mr McDonnell called on the MP to make clear she is not planning to 'jump ship'.
He told Sky News: 'If people are saying 'look, we are expressing a vote of no confidence because Luciana has stood up and exposed anti-Semitism in our party', that would be completely wrong and, of course, we would say that is not right.
'But it looks as though there's other issues.
'It seems on social media, from what I've seen, what's happened is Luciana has been associated in the media with a breakaway party.
'Some local party members, the media, have asked her to deny that. She hasn't been clear in that.
'So my advice really, on all of this, is for Luciana to just put this issue to bed.
'Say very clearly 'no, I'm not supporting another party, I'm not jumping ship'.
'And for local party members to sit down with Luciana and actually say 'how can we support you? How can we work together in the future?' And then overcome the present difficulties.'
Mr McDonnell said: 'It's not a deselection from what I understand. We are not into our selection process.
'It's a vote of no confidence, which is simply an expression by local party members.'
The intervention sparked fury, with Holocaust Educational Trust chief executive Karen Pollock branding him a 'disgrace' and saying he needed to 'deal with the racism in your own party'.
Posting on Twitter, she responded: 'Demanding loyalty from @lucianaberger rather than addressing the racism in your party? What a disgrace. Take responsibility @johnmcdonnellMP and deal with the racism in your own party. What has @UKLabour become?'
Reacting to the treatment of Berger, Labour Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham Harriet Harman tweeted: 'All this & @lucianaberger is 8 MONTHS PREGNANT! @UKLabour has proud record leading on pregnant womens rights & against harasment of pregnant women.
'STOP THIS NOW! An 8 month pregnant MP at bay will shame all the women in our party!'
Margaret Hodge added that it is 'unfair and outrageous' that her 'friend' has to face a no confidence motion.
She tweeted: 'So unfair and outrageous for my friend Luciana Berger to face no confidence motion. She spearheads campaign to root out anti Semitism, fighting for the moral soul of Labour.
'Her work on mental health helps Labour stay ahead on this vital issue. Stop this vindictive absurdity now.'
'After todays events, the Labour Party must now carry out its promise and root out anti-Semitism. Fully support @lucianaberger, a very hardworking and inspirational MP,' said Louise Ellman.
It was followed by the SP running a series of tweets on its account with the same hashtag and endorsing Yadav's message to corner BJP.
The SP chief is very active on Twitter and has 90 lakh followers on the microblogging site, while the party has more than 16 lakh followers. (Photo: File)
Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party took to Twitter on Friday with the hashtag, 'NeverAgain', asking people to vow that they would stand against the BJP and not fall for its "gimmicks" in Lok Sabha polls.
"Let us vow that we will #NeverAgain... let people die waiting in line to withdraw money from a bank, fall for the 15 lakh rupee lie, allow farmers to kill themselves, let national security enrich the famous few, let people be killed for their beliefs, let two and half men rule us," SP president Akhilesh Yadav tweeted.
Let us vow that we will #NeverAgain
let people die waiting in line to withdraw money from a bank
fall for the 15 lakh rupee lie
allow farmers to kill themselves
let national security enrich the famous few
let people be killed for their beliefs
let two and half men rule us Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) February 8, 2019
It was followed by the SP running a series of tweets on its account with the same hashtag and endorsing Yadav's message to corner the Bharatiya Janata Party.
"It's an attempt to make people aware of the BJP gimmicks and stand against it," a senior party leader said. The SP chief is very active on Twitter and has 90 lakh followers on the microblogging site, while the party has more than 16 lakh followers.
The series of tweets is seen as an attempt by the SP to counter the BJP IT cell, which was dubbed recently by Yadav as "Internet Terrorist" cell.
On Tuesday, Yadav had repeatedly said "two and a half men" were running the country, apparently targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
"When there was the SP government, they (BJP) used to say that there were five CMs running the state. Now our party is saying that two and a half men are running the country. They can be easily guessed," a party leader said.
His change of heart follows Geoffrey Whaley, a terminally ill man, ending his life at Dignitas in Switzerland on Thursday
Vince Cable has called for assisted dying to be legalised, becoming the first party leader to back the move.
In a moving article that will reopen the debate around the emotive subject, the Liberal Democrat leader called for Parliament to introduce new laws.
His change of heart emerged as Geoffrey Whaley, a terminally ill man who ended his life at Dignitas in Switzerland on Thursday, said police inquiries about his wifes role had marred his final weeks.
Writing for the Mail, Sir Vince said nursing his first wife Olympia as she died of breast cancer had strengthened his opposition to assisted dying.
Sir Vince Cable has called for assisted dying to be legalised in a moving article that will reopen the debate around the emotive subject
But a decade on, he had been convinced a change in the law was needed by the moving stories of constituents who chose to end their lives.
When Parliament finally lifts its gaze beyond the all-consuming Brexit debate, it will have to think about some of the big ethical and political issues out there, he writes.
Assisted dying is one of them.
Government should take the lead but, failing that, I am one of a growing number of MPs willing to support private members legislation in Parliament.
Sir Vince said his previous objections had been based on fears that greedy relatives could take advantage of lax laws to force elderly people to end their lives.
He warned that there would need to be strict safeguards built in to protect the patient and the doctors involved and to prevent a slippery slope.
He said he and his current wife Rachel had decided that they would both support assisted dying if they were suffering.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal in the UK. Parliament has consistently voted against changing the law.
Mr Whaley, 80, a retired accountant from Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, wrote a letter to MPs describing his anguish at police inquiries into his case.
The motor neurone disease sufferer said his final weeks had been blighted by officers questioning his wife Ann over her involvement in his plan to end his life at Dignitas.
Meanwhile, it emerged that two people were arrested on suspicion of assisting suicide after Ralph Snell, 94, was found dead at his home in Lymington, Hampshire.
Yesterday police said that an 89-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man had been released from custody under investigation.
I couldn't let my wife suffer if her life became unbearable
Commentary by Vince Cable
One of the most difficult issues as an MP is to face a constituent who has a life or death problem and you are unable, for reasons of conscience, to help or support them.
This was the position I found myself in for most of my parliamentary career when faced with people seeking relief from a painful and distressing illness through assisted dying, or their grieving relatives.
I encountered some terrible cases, particularly people entering the advanced stages of motor neurone disease when, fully conscious of their condition, patients are for example unable to swallow and face the prospect of choking to death. I had to say, Sorry, I dont believe in assisted dying.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable and his second wife Rachel in the New Forest
I have now changed my mind.
My original opposition was not based on religious doctrine, though I do respect and understand the belief that we must not devalue life itself.
My views had been formed, as they are for many people, by personal experience.
My mother died some years ago a sad and frightened old lady in her 80s, in a fog of confusion brought on by a combination of dementia and long-standing mental illness.
Vince Cable's first wife Olympia (pictured) died 14 years after being diagnosed with breast cancer
When I was in my early teens she was confined for a long time to a psychiatric hospital after suffering a breakdown what would now be called post-natal depression (the baby being my brother).
She was pronounced cured and released and she recovered with the help of adult education which made up for the schooling she missed as a teenage factory girl.
But she was always somewhat diminished and lacking in confidence and, in her advanced years, her mental state deteriorated.
When I visited her towards the end of her life she sometimes begged to die, to be released from her unhappy state; but on other occasions she insisted on her love of life; simple pleasures like a walk in the park, and by the river.
Without self-worth, however, she was obsessed about being a burden. I could see all too clearly that, in a permissive regime for assisted dying, fragile and muddled people like my mother would easily be persuaded to sign up.
My other experience stemmed from my late wife Olympia who died 14 years after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
Her last few years with crumbling bones and loss of mobility were very difficult, undignified and painful too.
But she was a brave, resilient and positive woman who wanted to keep going as long as she could. She actually hung on until I had been re-elected in 2001, giving whatever practical help she could in bed and at the end of a telephone.
And her last wish was to die at home surrounded by her family and with their love. The whole notion of assisted dying never crossed her lips and she would have been appalled at the idea. And that confirmed my prejudice.
I have since met people who feel strongly in the opposite direction: who are not confused or mentally ill but deadly serious and consistent; who may not have the option of being at home with a loving family; who face ending their lives either in constant pain or with no dignity.
And they dont have the money to be flown to a clinic in Switzerland.
I respond with arguments about slippery slopes and how a system of assisted dying could be abused by greedy relatives bringing pressure to bear and overworked doctors (or worse) signing on the dotted line if asked; and how the elderly and disabled would fear coming under pressure to stop being a burden.
Having talked at length to some of the campaigners for assisted dying it is clear that these fears and reservations can be addressed: that strict safeguards can be built in to protect both the patient and the doctors involved.
There have been several attempts in recent years to change the law under which it is an offence to encourage or assist suicide (attempted suicide itself was decriminalised in 1961). Dozens of cases are referred to the police but prosecutions are rare.
The Supreme Court has declined to intervene and change the law by saying, rightly, that this is a matter for Parliament.
Recent attempts to legislate have failed but the process has established the principles and the safeguards.
Persons must have a terminal illness, medically certified. They must be mentally capable.
A judge must be satisfied that the request is voluntary, settled and informed and the signed request must be made in front of a witness and countersigned by two doctors.
Doctors would have every right to opt out of the process on conscience grounds. There is a cooling off period for reconsideration. These considerations could be strengthened or modified.
It was striking that when the issue was last debated in Parliament there were some powerful contributions from those, like Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who admitted (like me) to have changed their minds.
He said: In my view it is a profoundly Christian and moral thing to devise a law that enables people, if they choose, to end their lives with dignity.
A few weeks ago, I asked my wife Rachel I am happily remarried what she thought of this issue, if either of us should be afflicted by some dreadful illness. She is a humanist; I describe myself as a rather bad Christian.
We both agreed that if assisted dying were legal, we could not allow the other to suffer intolerable pain should they wish to bring it to an end.
When Parliament finally lifts its gaze beyond the all-consuming Brexit debate, it will have to think about some of the big ethical and political issues out there.
Assisted dying is one of them. Government should take the lead but, failing that, I am one of a growing number of MPs willing to support private members legislation in Parliament.
Sensational harassment allegations levelled against Philip Green by former staff were revealed last night.
The Topshop tycoon faced a barrage of claims that he intimidated employees, groped women in front of their colleagues and even put a female executive in a headlock and dragged her round the room.
In another incendiary allegation, Sir Philip is said to have told a black worker he was still throwing spears in the jungle.
More than a dozen employees came forward to claim the 66-year-old billionaire had threatened to throw them out of windows or off balconies. He allegedly smashed the phone of a senior executive who had not reported in with updates on his work.
Sir Philip Green, pictured with his wife Tina. More than a dozen employees came forward to claim the 66-year-old billionaire had threatened to throw them out of windows or off balconies
Another boss said Sir Philip called her a naughty girl and grabbed her bum. She later received a 1million payout.
The details of complaints made by former employees emerged after the businessman finally dropped a court injunction that had prevented the media reporting the claims of sexual and racial harassment. The humiliating U-turn leaves him with a 3million legal bill and the prospect of even more claims becoming public.
However the 66-year-old billionaire told his accusers to stick to the non-disclosure agreements they signed when they left his firm or face further legal actions and significant losses.
His threat triggered a string of MPs to call on the Government to prevent NDAs from being used by rich, powerful men to silence their accusers.
The row began last August when the Daily Telegraph tried to publish details of accusations by five former employees of Sir Philips Arcadia group, which controls brands including Topshop and Miss Selfridge. All had left and signed NDAs that, in theory, prevented them from telling their story.
The newspaper was stopped from publishing details of the allegations because Sir Philip gained a temporary injunction that also protected his identity. The court said publication of his name could cause substantial and possibly irreversible harm.
The list of accusations labelled Britains #metoo scandal was said to include intimidation and bullying; many amounting to criminal offences. Sir Philip was identified as the businessman at the centre of the case when Lord Hain used parliamentary privilege to name him in the House of Lords.
He allegedly smashed the phone of a senior executive who had not reported in with updates on his work
The Daily Mail revealed last week that Sir Philip had finally decided to ditch efforts to keep the injunction in place.
Yesterday, the High Court allowed him to formally finalise this climbdown in his legal action against the Telegraph Media Group.
Lifting the injunction, Mr Justice Warby branded the tycoons decision after months of wrangling as well outside the norm.
He said only one of the former staff members wanted information about their experience published.
The five, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had accepted substantial sums from Arcadia after complaining about Sir Philips behaviour.
By dropping the case, he avoided being questioned in the High Court in an impending hearing to consider the public interest in the story.
But in a statement issued after yesterdays court hearing, Sir Philip and Arcadia said: The Telegraph has pursued a vendetta against Sir Philip Green and the employees and management of Arcadia Group.
The Telegraph and its owners must now decide whether to do the decent thing and respect the NDAs. If not, they will expose their sources to potential further legal actions and significant losses.
Independent MP Frank Field, who held the tycoon to account over the BHS pensions scandal, said the threats amounted to bullying. Sir Philip has always strenuously denied harassment.
Maria Miller, who chairs Parliaments women and equality committee, said: NDAs cannot be used to cover up criminal wrongdoing or unlawful behaviour.
Penny Mordaunt, who is minister for women and equalities, promised action on NDAs without saying when.
Recordings of phone calls in which Sir Philip threatened journalists and said he would bankrupt the Daily Telegraph also emerged yesterday.
In a stark illustration of the global scourge of litter, these microplastic beads were all collected on a short stretch of Cornish beach.
Millions of the plastic lumps known as nurdles or mermaids tears were gathered by sieving sand across just 100m of coastline.
The beads, which have also been found washed up at a nature reserve in Norfolk, are a hazard for fish, seabirds and other creatures who mistake them for food.
Photographer Sam Hobson was commissioned by the WWF to take pictures of the sacks of beads on Tregantle Beach, Whitsand Bay, to show the huge extent of the pollution they cause
Many of the nurdles, smaller than 5mm in diameter, are likely to have been used in sewage works to break down waste.
Others will have been raw ingredients for plastic production which have fallen into the sea during transit.
Photographer Sam Hobson was commissioned by the WWF to take pictures of the sacks of beads on Tregantle Beach, Whitsand Bay, to show the huge extent of the pollution they cause.
Mr Hobson, 37, from Bristol, said that although the beach looks pristine from afar, when you start digging, within two minutes your hands are full of nurdles.
And the detritus collected by the Rame Peninsula Beach Care group went far beyond microplastics elsewhere on beaches in Whitsand Bay, plastic cutlery, hair combs and baby dummies had also washed up in their hundreds.
Had they not been collected, these throwaway items would have blighted the landscape for centuries and threatened the lives of endangered species.
It comes after researchers from Fauna and Flora International (FFI) found hundreds of nurdles at Blakeney national nature reserve in Norfolk during a two-day sweep last month.
An estimated 53billion nurdles end up in the oceans each year, according to the conservation charity. Studies suggest microplastics can introduce chemical contaminants into marine animals bodies if ingested
The area is home to around 3,000 newly-born seal pups, which are known to ingest microplastics, usually by eating prey that has consumed nurdles, FFI said.
An estimated 53billion nurdles end up in the oceans each year, according to the conservation charity.
Studies suggest microplastics can introduce chemical contaminants into marine animals bodies if ingested.
Dilyana Mihaylova, of FFI, said: All companies that make, use and transport nurdles must take action to stop these microplastics polluting Britains beaches and damaging critical habitats for our iconic seal colonies.
The Mails Turn the Tide on Plastic campaign has led calls for measures to stop the surge of waste poisoning our oceans. Now it is promoting Keep Britain Tidys Great British Spring Clean, which has also won support from Prince William, Theresa May and the United Nations
So far, 42,917 Mail readers have signed up to be part of the pick between March 22 and April 23 and you can too, by simply going online to gbspringclean.org.
Parenthood actress Monica Potter claims she rejected Harvey Weinstein's sexual advances three times, subsequently killing her chances to appear in the 1999 film 'The Cider House Rules.'
The 47-year-old Cleveland native alleges that she was refused a role in the romance drama after she rejected the mogul's numerous advances.
'I didn't do something, so therefore I missed out on it,' Potter said on Friday, during a segment of WKYC's 'Let's Be Clear'. 'I'm not saying the person who got it did, I'm just saying I didn't.'
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Monica Potter, 47, (left) claims that she was refused a role in 'The Cider House Rules' (right) because she rejected Harvey Weinstein's sexual advances
'I didn't do something, so therefore I missed out on it,' Potter said on Friday, during a segment of WKYC's 'Let's Be Clear'. 'I'm not saying the person who got it did, I'm just saying I didn't'
The lead female role of Candy Kendall would eventually be played by Charlize Theron in the film.
While Potter admitted to speaking to her father about the first incident after it occurred, she had yet to disclose that it had happened until Friday.
The actress said that on two occasions, Weinstein made advances towards her while he was in a bath robe.
'He tried three times with me,' she added. 'Twice was in New York and once was in London.'
Potter said that on two occasions, Weinstein made advances towards her while he was in a bath robe
But Potter asserts that she was resilient, claiming she was able to physically prevent him from doing anything to her.
'I belted him. I flat out belted him... I really hit him where it hurt,' she exclaimed. 'So yeah, I missed out on that role because of that hairy pig.'
'I belted him. I flat out belted him...I really hit him where it hurt,' she exclaimed (pictured in 2001). 'So yeah, I missed out on that role because of that hairy pig'
Potter is sure that as a result of the exchanges, she was a victim of retaliation, but she did share that she was pleased that other women have come forward against Weinstein.
'I'm so grateful for all the women that stood up,' Potter said.
Weinstein's representative sent a statement to WKYC that called Potter a 'talented actor for whom he has great respect.'
'The final cast decisions on Cider House was the creative team's alone. Close to 100 people auditioned and it came down to two people, which is a pretty good position to be in,' the statement continued.
'There has never been anything other than respect and professionalism between Weinstein's company and Ms. Potter, stemming from The Very Thought of You in 1998, and they have only had a friendly and cordial relationship over the years, and any suggestion or allegation otherwise is simply false.'
Since October 2017, Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than 80 women, including prominent actresses such as Ashley Judd and Angelina Jolie.
At the end of last month, Weinstein appeared in a Manhattan Supreme Court to request a new defense team for his rape and sexual assault case.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Weinstein for a comment.
A new Brexit party backed by Nigel Farage was officially recognised yesterday by the electoral regulator.
The Electoral Commission said the Brexit Party is an official organisation which will allow it to field candidates at elections.
Former Ukip leader Mr Farage said the engine is running and he stood ready for battle to fight the Tories and Labour.
Farage said he would stand for the new Brexit Party if the UKs departure from the European Union was delayed
He said he would stand for the new Brexit Party if the UKs departure from the European Union was delayed. Brexit is due to take place on March 29 but Mr Farage said that if MPs kick the can down the road by extending Article 50 then logically we would have to fight European elections and I would certainly stand in them in those circumstances.
Mr Farage said that the registration of the Brexit Party should be a warning to MPs considering backing any effort such as the move championed by Labours Yvette Cooper and Tory Nick Boles to extend Article 50 in order to allow more time for negotiations.
MPs considering such a move need to be aware there could be a very serious electoral threat to them, he said.
The Brexit Partys leader is former Ukip candidate Catherine Blaiklock.
EU Commission President Jean Claude Juncker, greeting Farage in European Parliament last month
She is hoping it can field candidates for the European Parliament elections in May if Brexit is delayed past that date.
Mrs Blaiklock told the Telegraph that a number of hundred Conservative members had been in touch to say they wanted to defect to the new party and the figure was likely to rise to thousands.
She failed to win Great Yarmouth for Ukip in the 2017 general election after brandishing a large photograph of her Jamaican husband at one hustings.
Mrs Blaiklock used the photograph to demonstrate that those in the party were not racist, later telling Vice: I sleep with somebody who is black.
Donald Trump said Friday that he will hold his second summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Hanoi and predicted that the authoritarian country would someday become 'a great economic powerhouse' under Kim's leadership.
In a pair of tweets, Trump praised Kim and said his representatives had just left North Korea after a 'productive meeting' on the February 27-28 summit.
Trump added: 'I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!'
In a pair of tweets, Donald Trump (pictured) praised Kim Jong Un and said his representatives had just left North Korea after a 'productive meeting' on the February 27-28 summit
Trump added, 'I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!'
'North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse,' Trump added
The president had previously announced Vietnam as the summit location, but the city hadn't been identified.
It will be the pair's second summit, the first coming last June in Singapore. Kim pledged then to work toward the 'complete denuclearization' of the Korean Peninsula, without providing a clear timetable or roadmap.
While in Asia, Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, is thought to have discussed specific disarmament steps that Pyongyang could promise at the Vietnam summit and what corresponding measures the United States is willing to take.
In announcing the location of their second meeting, Trump showered praise on Kim, whom he used to derisively call 'Little Rocket Man.'
Months after their Singapore summit, Trump said that Kim had written him 'beautiful letters' and that the two 'fell in love.'
'North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse. He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!' Trump tweeted Friday.
North Korean-US relations were a key issue in Trump's recent State of the Union address to Congress, where he hailed his diplomacy with the nation and announced his meeting.
It will be the pair's second summit, the first coming last June in Singapore (pictured)
'Our hostages have come home, nuclear testing has stopped, and there has not been a missile launch in 15 months,' Trump told lawmakers assembled in the House chamber.
'If I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea. Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one,' he said.
Trump met Kim in June in Singapore, the first-ever summit between leaders of the two countries that have never formally ended the 1950-53 Korean War, months after the US leader was threatening to obliterate North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests.
The two leaders in Vietnam will need to work out the meaning of North Korea's promise in Singapore of 'denuclearization,' with Kim envisaging an end to all weapons in the peninsula rather than quickly giving up the arsenal built for decades by the totalitarian dynasty.
The US special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Biegun, headed for talks in Pyongyang on preparing the summit this week.
Biegun said last week that, while not lifting all sanctions without denuclearization, Washington was ready to take first steps to support North Korea's badly needed economic development.
Trump, in a speech focused primarily on domestic priorities including his tough line on immigration, cast himself as a realist in the world, saying he is pursuing 'a foreign policy that puts America's interests first.'
Imagine the mental torture that many Labour MPs are suffering this weekend as they wrestle with their consciences.
Those representing constituencies which voted Leave in the EU referendum must choose whether to help see through voters' wishes by backing Theresa May's exit deal, or defy them by following their own leader and stymie Brexit.
All this week in Westminster they have been inundated with letters and emails urging them to honour their voters.
But this weekend they will be back on their home turf being told the same thing to their faces.
One MP has told me how surprised he and his colleagues have been by the volume of correspondence.
Those representing constituencies which voted Leave must choose whether to help see through voters' wishes by backing Theresa May's exit deal, or defy them
What has long been a low rumble of discontent is increasingly becoming dismay and anger. It could yet turn into a political earthquake with profound consequences for how Brexit is achieved.
It is estimated that about 160 Labour MPs represent constituencies that voted Leave. One Labour backbencher says: 'My constituency is not a big letter-writing constituency or an email-writing one. But I'm getting lots on Brexit. They all say the same thing: 'The country voted to Leave, make sure we do.' '
Another tells me that he expects alarmed constituents to stop him for chats and reassurance when he goes to his local supermarket today.
He says: 'People come up to me and say: 'Brexit will happen, won't it? Don't let us down.' ' The message is simple: Get on with it!
Some voters quote the infamous leaflet posted to every household by the Cameron government during the referendum campaign which said: 'This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide.'
They also point to the Labour manifesto from the 2017 General Election which contained an unambiguous promise to uphold the result of the referendum.
This pressure which ratchets daily as March 29 Brexit Day gets closer is being applied across great swathes of the North of England and the Midlands where voters backed Leave and now scent betrayal.
They look to Westminster and see plots to delay Article 50, which is the clause in the EU's Treaty of Lisbon that sets out how a country can leave the union.
This is the biggest game of political poker played for many decades. The stakes couldn't be higher for the players and for the country
Such moves are being orchestrated by backbenchers like Labour's Yvette Cooper, a fierce Europhile despite representing a heavily Leave-supporting Yorkshire seat.
She is expected to make another blocking manoeuvre in the Commons on Thursday cynically camouflaged as a means of avoiding a No Deal Brexit.
Some of her Labour colleagues have gone the other way. They have chosen to break with Jeremy Corbyn's line and have supported the Government, or abstained, in critical Brexit votes. These include the independent-minded Caroline Flint, whose Don Valley seat in South Yorkshire voted more than 2:1 for Leave.
This week, she hinted that with the right assurances, she could back Theresa May, saying: 'The British people expect us to work together to sort Brexit.'
Others on the Labour benches are keeping low quietly terrified about being vilified for voting against Mrs May's deal and being seen to be sabotaging Brexit.
'They don't want to go back to their constituencies and say they have not delivered on it,' a Labour MP says. Labour whips who are responsible for cajoling their fellow MPs to follow the party line whisper that the number of rebels is growing.
Indeed, a Tory minister mischievously credits the rising number of pliable Labour-Leave MPs for his growing optimism about Brexit going ahead.
For her part, Mrs May is wisely investing a huge effort in winning over these Labour waverers, inviting small groups to No 10 to listen to their concerns and trying to find ways to bring them onside.
You might call this Operation Code Red as No 10 works out a strategy to coax amenable Labour MPs into backing the May Withdrawal Deal.
In the coming days, expect her to make a significant offer of new laws on workers' rights and the environment.
These issues may be identified, traditionally, with Labour, but they are central to the PM's own agenda. So they would be easy concessions and would not offend her own side.
In addition, Mrs May will make pledges of investment in Leave-voting areas regardless of accusations of 'bribery'. And why should she not, if it helps get Brexit through?
The plain truth is that many Leave-voting areas are desperate for more public funds something emphasised by Labour Brexiteer MP John Mann in an article in the Mail last week.
Indeed, Labour voters would be furious if their MP rejected the opportunity for their area to have new schools, roads, hospitals or other infrastructure.
As former Labour MP Frank Field, who now sits as an independent in Birkenhead, put it last week: 'If the Government is going to give us money for doing what we think is right, what's actually wrong with that?'
It is also true that many Labour Leave voters respect Mrs May personally, despite their natural party allegiance. They admire her determination and forbearance under great pressure.
Their support may go some way to explaining how two polls in the past week have put the Tories seven points ahead of Labour.
What's more, Mrs May's cause among such folk has most definitely been boosted by EU Council chief Donald Tusk.
His incendiary remarks this week may have been aimed at the leaders of the Leave campaign, who he said deserve a 'special place in Hell'.
But however they were intended, many Leavers will have taken them as a personal insult.
Pressure from Labour Leavers may also help explain Corbyn's decision to come off the fence on Brexit this week. By narrowing his 'key tests' for Mrs May's deal, he sent a message that Labour is not a roadblock to Brexit.
Of course, this does not mean Mrs May can expect any help from the Labour front bench. They will find any excuse to vote against her if they sniff the chance to bring down the Government.
Meanwhile, it must be stressed, too, that Mrs May has to win over all 316 other Tory MPs.
As it became clear this week, she is going to go to the wire in the hope of extracting something from Brussels on the Northern Ireland backstop which will placate the rebellious rump of hardline Brexiteers.
On the other side of the Tory divide on Europe, she needs her Remainer MPs who fear No Deal to 'hold their nerve', as Chancellor Philip Hammond put it.
If they pull the rug from underneath her by voting to delay Brexit, she'll have scant hope of securing any meaningful concession from the EU.
This is the biggest game of political poker played for many decades. The stakes couldn't be higher for the players and for the country. Of course, when the last chips go in, someone will lose everything.
As we begin the final, treacherous descent to March 29, Theresa May must win over hardline Tory Eurosceptics. That is still a huge challenge.
Yet, if she fails to do so, it could be Labour MPs in Leave seats, looking at their bulging postbags and conscious of the increasingly noisy clamour for Brexit to 'just happen', who eventually help get her over the line.
Will jailbird MP return to Commons with electronic tag?
It is 11 days since Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was jailed for three months for perverting the course of justice.
Eleven days have passed without a word of contrition from her or the grace to concede that she must relinquish her job as Peterboroughs MP.
This impasse is the result of her own disgraceful obduracy but also because of pathetically lax parliamentary rules which stipulate that an MP only loses their seat automatically if they are imprisoned for 12 months or more.
And so a shameless Onasanya is allowed to keep pocketing her 77,000 salary while her 71,000 constituents are not represented properly.
To make matters worse, I am reliably informed that the solicitor is likely to be freed from prison after serving just 28 days, under an early release scheme.
Onasanya would then be required to wear an electronic tag and obey a curfew. But there would be nothing apart from common decency to stop her returning to the Commons.
More than 1,000 children and teenagers were admitted to hospital with stab wounds last year as Britains knife epidemic continued to escalate.
The victims, who included two youngsters under the age of five, were treated for assaults with knives and other sharp objects at hospitals across England.
A health chief warned last night that doctors are particularly concerned by the popularity of Zombie knives huge weapons with serrated blades, which have become a status symbol among gang members.
Admissions for stabbings among all age groups have soared by almost a third in five years, with 4,986 cases in 2017/18, compared with 3,849 in 2012/13.
Police in London found all five of these deadly combat knives being carried by just one 14 year old boy
Alarmingly last years victims included two pre-school children, aged one to four, and two primary pupils aged five to nine
Worryingly, those involving young victims are rising more rapidly still, NHS figures show.
Last year, 1,029 people aged 19 or under were admitted to hospital following deliberate assaults with a sharp object up 55 per cent from 659 five years previously. Of these, 347 were aged 16 and under up by 93 per cent from 180 in 2012/13.
Alarmingly last years victims included two pre-school children, aged one to four, and two primary pupils aged five to nine. Another 57 victims were aged ten to 14.
The figures could be even higher because they do not include those who receive minor treatment in A&E or other urgent care units. These cases are not recorded as admissions.
Health bosses said the scourge was devastating families and diverting doctors away from other emergencies. They blamed easy access to knives on the high street and online and called on retailers to stem the tide of available weapons.
Professor Chris Moran, national clinical director for trauma at NHS England, said: Violent crime destroys lives, devastates families, and diverts doctors time away from other essential patient care. Hospital visits linked to knife crime and other violence is a major cause for concern and puts extra pressure on our expert staff.
Far too many young people are able to buy knives on the high street, and we need councils and retailers to work together to stop this.
Professor Moran added: Nobody should be able to buy a weapon like a Zombie knife they are only designed to inflict terrible wounds, to maim and kill people.
Its heartbreaking to see a young man with his whole future ahead of him killed or in a wheelchair with his life changed forever.
Hospitals in England treated nearly 18,000 patients for wounds caused by knives last year. But 4,986 of these were recorded as being the result of deliberate assaults.
The hospital statistics, compiled by NHS Digital, show more than 90 per cent of victims were male and the average victim age was 30.
The data does not give details on the number of fatalities, length of admission or treatments needed, such as surgery. But doctors suggest many patients will need long-lasting care for both the mental and physical impact of their trauma.
A so-called 'Zombie knife' stands beside relatively small combat knives in evidence tubes held by Hackney Police
The stark NHS figures follow a year of violence, with police data revealing that knife crime surged by 12 per cent nationally in the last year to 40,000 offences more than 100 offences a day.
In London alone, there were 134 killings in 2018, with children and teenagers making up more than a fifth of victims.
The tide of violence has shown little sign of slowing, with Lejean Richards, 19, this week becoming the ninth person to be killed in the capital this year.
Medics performed surgery in the street, but were unable to save him after he was stabbed 500 yards from Prince Georges school in Battersea, south London, on Tuesday evening.
A fresh bid to delay Brexit next week could be postponed to give Theresa May yet more time to negotiate, it emerged last night.
Sources involved in the cross-party push to extend Article 50 said they may abandon plans to force a fresh vote next week because of cold feet among potential Tory rebels.
Last month a Commons bid led by Labours Yvette Cooper and Tory Nick Boles to force the Government to delay Brexit until the end of the year was defeated by 23 votes.
Supporters believe the move is essential to prevent a No Deal Brexit next month.
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Mrs May had a series of awkward encounters with EU chiefs including Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured) in Brussels yesterday
But, with the initiative needing at least a dozen more Tory MPs to switch sides in order to succeed, they fear that Mrs Mays success in persuading Brussels to reopen negotiations could lead to a damaging second defeat. Miss Cooper and Mr Boles, along with Labours Hilary Benn and Jack Dromey and Tories Sir Oliver Letwin and Dame Caroline Spelman, are expected to publish new proposals to delay Article 50 next week. But sources suggested they may not force a vote on February 14 for fear of losing.
Commons business has been cleared on that day to allow MPs to debate the way forward over Brexit. With potential Tory rebels pushing for Mrs May to be given more breathing space, the vote could now be delayed until the end of the month. One source within the group said: There is a complete commitment to doing everything possible to avoid a No Deal next month. The question is when is the best time to strike? Some Conservatives want to give the Prime Minister a little more time. Its a decision for next week, but there is no point putting it to a vote if we know we cannot win.
Tory whips will launch a massive push next week designed to prevent Conservative MPs, including a string of wavering ministers, from swapping sides. Chancellor Philip Hammond, who is known to be opposed to a No Deal Brexit, urged people to hold their nerve.
A senior Tory source warned that a Commons vote to delay Brexit would leave the PM to negotiate with one hand tied behind her back.
Theresa May met a wall of resistance from EU chiefs to her pleas for changes to the backstop in a brutal round of talks in the Belgian capital yesterday
The development came as Mrs May flew to Dublin for Brexit talks with Leo Varadkar, despite the Irish PM warning he was not prepared to negotiate.
Former cabinet secretary Gus ODonnell called for Article 50 to be extended, saying it would be irresponsible to press ahead with a No Deal Brexit the UK was not prepared for.
The PM prepared to offer further talks with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the coming days, despite ruling out his call for a permanent customs union.
Mr Boles warned Mrs May she could only get a deal through Parliament if she pursued a super-soft Brexit that could win the support of Labour.
Mrs May won agreement to reopen the Brexit talks this week following a series of frosty meetings with EU leaders in Brussels. Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay will fly to Strasbourg on Monday to begin negotiations with Michel Barnier on a possible compromise to overcome Tory objections to the controversial Irish backstop.
Mr Barnier said he was looking forward to the meeting but restated the EUs position that the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement cannot be reopened. The EU negotiator said: I will listen to how the UK sees the way through. Mr Boles yesterday suggested he and other Tory moderates could eventually join forces with Labour to push through a Norway-style soft Brexit if talks fail, in order to prevent a No Deal Brexit.
Mr Boles said: The PM has a choice. She can try and change the Withdrawal Agreement to get hardliners from the European Research Group on board. Or she can change the Political Declaration to get soft Brexiteers on board. Its pretty obvious which one is more likely to lead to a deal.
Their brothers, husbands and uncles fought on the D-Day beaches but never lived to see a fitting memorial.
Now the women they left behind have thrown themselves behind the campaign to right that wrong.
They are among hundreds who have supported a charity planning a British Normandy Memorial.
The fundraising campaign, backed by the Daily Mail, aims to build a tribute to the 22,500 British troops who fell in the ferocious conflict to liberate France during the summer of 1944.
Artist's impression issued by the Normandy Memorial Trust (NMT) of a front view of the charity's proposed D-Day Memorial
Glenys Maine (right) holds fond memories of her brother Ivor Parr, 24, (left) who made it up the beach on D-Day but was killed by a sniper after he went four miles inland
Cheques have been pouring in ranging from a fiver to hundreds of pounds.
Many are accompanied by poignant letters dedicating the donations to loved ones whose bravery shall never be forgotten. The Normandy Memorial Trust has already secured 20million from the Governments penalty fund for rogue bankers, but is trying to raise 9million to complete the project.
The Prince of Wales has become its royal patron, describing the memorial as long overdue. The US, Canada and France already have memorials to their fallen.
The 50-acre memorial complex will have the names and ages of every British combatant who fell in the Battle of Normandy engraved in polished stone. The first phase of the project will take shape this summer with the unveiling of a central statue during commemorations for the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Many of the letters arriving from well-wishers contain cheques dedicated to uncles, cousins and brothers who gave their lives to secure freedom for Europe.
Robert Wilson, 74, of Cowbridge, Wales, whose father welded tanks and submarines in the war, sent a cheque with a letter saying: I wish I could afford more. He told the Mail: Im just glad to help. My ambition is to walk the beaches where our soldiers gave their lives for us. I even have a dream about being in a bar when servicemen come in and I buy them a drink.
Hero killed by sniper
Glenys Maine wrote in a note with her cheque: I was so glad to hear there is to be a memorial to the brave men who died on D-Day.
She holds fond memories of her brother Ivor Parr, 24, who made it up the beach on D-Day but was killed by a sniper after he went four miles inland.
Mrs Maine, of Pontyclun, Wales, told the Mail: He died on D-Day. There was a German sniper in the church tower in Magny-en-Bessin and my brother was leading his troop along the lane and he got shot.
The sniper was then shot and my brother and the German were both buried in the churchyard where they fell. They later took the German away, but the people of Magny wanted to keep my brother there.
She visited the grave commemorating Private Parr, of the 2nd Battalion South Wales Borderers, on the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994. She said: We met a lady who takes care of my brothers grave.
The people of Magny have always been so kind and welcoming. Yesterday it was Mrs Maines 86th birthday and she said: Talking about this has brought back a lot of memories. My brother was married with a baby son he never saw.
Liberated death camp
Janet Smiths late husband William was among the first wave of troops to land on the hellish Normandy beaches.
Janet Smith, 81, (right) and her late husband William (left) who was among the first wave of troops to land on the hellish Normandy beaches.
He beat all the odds to survive the hail of bullets and went on to liberate one of the Nazi camps in Poland, living to 2000 when he died aged 76.
Mrs Smith, 81, said yesterday: Around the 50th anniversary of D-Day, my grandson wanted to take some of his medals to show at school and he asked my husband: What did you do on D-Day? and the reply was: Got my feet wet! She added: Whenever I would say to him, Perhaps we should go to France on holiday this year? he would always say: No, last time I got my feet wet!
As a 20-year-old rifleman, the horrors Mr Smith witnessed on D-Day and beyond stayed with him forever. When he helped liberate a Nazi death camp he fell in love with a young Polish prisoner and they married in 1946.
She was a witness at the Nuremburg war crimes trials, but died in the 1960s. He married his second wife in 1971 and Mrs Smith, of Ilfracombe, Devon, said: We had a wonderful life together.
Paved way for invasion
Kathleen Griffin, 95, said her husband Jack, who died in 2016 aged 96, was in the RAF and involved with the gliders that started the Allied invasion.
Kathleen Griffin, 95, (right) said her husband Jack (left), who died in 2016 aged 96, was in the RAF and involved with the gliders that started the Allied invasion.
She said: He was a radio operator and the gilders were a very important part of D-Day. I played my own small part, as I was in the national fire service and preparing for attacks on the ports along the south coast.
We went to Normandy many times, but Jack and I always used to think, Well, wheres our memorial?. So this is a very good project.
Mrs Griffin, of Andover, Hampshire, travelled the world with her husband, who remained in the RAF and retired in the rank of Squadron Leader.
In the final stages of the war, she lost her brother Derrick Moore, 22. The dispatch rider in the Royal Corps of Signals died when his bike skidded on ice as he was delivering an urgent message from a base in Brussels six months after D-Day.
As per the Supreme Court orders that had made it clear that Kumar cannot be arrested by the CBI, he arrived in Shillong on Friday.
Kumar, who headed a SIT that looked into the ponzi case is accused of destroying evidence to allegedly protect the accused, sent a letter to CBI director Rishi Kumar Shukla and offered himself for questioning in Shillong. (Photo: ANI)
Kolkata: Days after a standoff between the Mamata Banerjee government and the Centre, CBI begins questionning Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar on Saturday in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam.
As per the Supreme Court orders that had made it clear that Kumar cannot be arrested by the CBI, he arrived in Shillong on Friday.
Kumar, who headed a SIT that looked into the ponzi case is accused of destroying evidence to allegedly protect the accused, sent a letter to CBI director Rishi Kumar Shukla and offered himself for questioning in Shillong.
On Sunday night, a CBI team was detained by the Kolkata police after they reached Kumars residence in connection with the probe. Three hours later, they were released after the Union home ministry worked the phones, but the incident led to a standoff between the West Bengal government and the Centre.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched a protest and accused PM Modi and BJP president Amit Shah of plotting a coup and using CBI and government agencies to threaten political opponents.
After 45 hours, Banerjee called off the protest which drew support of several regional party leaders planning a grand alliance against BJP following- the Supreme Courts intervention.
An award-winning restaurateur dubbed the 'Perth Food King' has been charged after allegedly attacking his wife, leaving her with a broken jaw.
Nicholas Stewart Bond, 45, faced Perth Magistrate's Court earlier this week charged with aggravated grievous bodily harm, which if convicted, can carry a maximum sentence of 14 years jail time.
Bond is accused of attacking his ex-partner, who is believed to have left him after the attack, at a residence in Leederville, a Perth suburb, in November last year.
Nicholas Stewart Bond (pictured) faced Perth Magistrate's Court earlier this week charged with aggravated grievous bodily harm
It is alleged that the victim suffered severe facial injuries including a fractured eye socket and a broken jaw, The Weekend West reported.
'I have experienced the utmost professionalism from the police in the handling of this matter to date and I am confident justice will take its course,' the victim said.
Bond was originally charged with aggravated unlawful assault causing bodily harm but police prosecutors upgraded the charge to grievous bodily harm as a result of the medical evidence.
The accused, who owns a number of popular eateries in the local area, is also charged with breaching a protective bail condition.
The company director was not required to enter a plea at his hearing.
Mr Bond (pictured left) who owns a number of popular eateries in the local area, is also charged with breaching a protective bail condition
Mr Bond (pictured far right) had his bail renewed and he's expected to reappear in court in April
His bail was renewed and he's expected to reappear in court in April.
In the wake of the allegations Mr Bond, who was a board member for the Australian Hotels Association of Western Australia, voluntarily took a leave of absence from his role in December.
Mr Bond has owned Rubylight investments for 11 years which lists Ria authentic Malaysian, Kitsch Bar Asia and Foam Coffee Bar as three businesses under the umbrella brand.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Bond for comment.
An Australian father faces up to five years in a Bali jail if found guilty after he allegedly stole a thousand-dollar Gucci bag while on holiday.
Bilal Kalache, 43, was arrested on January 10 and remains locked up in Kerobokan prison, The Daily Telegraph reported.
He is accused of stealing a $1,250 designer label bag from a Kuta duty free shop in the Bali Galeria shopping centre.
Kuta police investigator Putu Ika Prabawa said Kalache visited the store at about 4pm with his son and a friend.
Bilal Kalache, 43 (pictured), was arrested on January 10 and remains locked up in Kerobokan prison
The shop assistant is said to have stepped to the back of the store to collect a bag, after the trio chose a black bag from a showcase.
Kalache then allegedly grabbed a different, cream-coloured Gucci sling bag, throwing it over his shoulder.
When Kalache approached the cashier to pay up there was some kind of verbal argument between the shop assistant and Kalache's friend.
Kalache allegedly told the assistant to apologise before leaving with both bags.
'The suspect then left the Gucci store with his son and friend,' Mr Prabawa said.
'When they left the store the bag that was slung across the suspects body hadnt been paid for.'
Duty Free staff allegedly tried to chase down Kalache but when they arrived at the address he had given them they found he was not staying there.
Kalache was stopped at the airport by police and the cream-coloured Gucci bag was allegedly found inside the son's bag.
Kalache now awaits a court date in Denpasar District Court as prosecutors prepare their case.
News of the arrest of Kalache is brought to light after Melbourne woman Catherine Anne Hogg was released from overseas custody.
She had spent five days locked up over the theft allegations.
Authorities suspected she she stole a pair of upmarket earrings from a Seminyak store.
She later paid the store $1,100 and signed a document of apology as conditions of her release.
Philanthropist Jack Hough, 73, was killed during a suspect robbery or carjacking while sitting in his Mercedes outside a Georgia CVS while waiting for his wife who was inside
A Georgia businessman and philanthropist was killed in a CVS parking lot after what authorities believe was an attempted robbery or carjacking.
Jack Hough, 73, was fatally shot in the torso while in a CVS Pharmacy parking lot in Gainesville, Georgia, on Thursday at about 7.45pm.
Hough, the founder of MSE Branded Food Systems, was pronounced dead at the hospital about an hour later, according to the Gainesville Times.
It is unclear how many times Hough was shot.
Although police have not yet identified the suspect, they have released a surveillance camera image showing a man wearing dark clothes and sneakers.
Authorities said that witnesses reported seeing a man wandering around the parking lot outside the CVS, wearing all-black clothes, a hooded sweatshirt and a mask, according to WSBTV.
Police said that Hough was sitting in his Mercedes while he waited for his wife to come out of the CVS.
That was when the suspect approached Hough and the two men began to struggle with each other, leading to Hough being shot.
Witnesses described seeing a man wearing all black and a mask loitering in the parking lot. Authorities believe the man approached Hough's car and that the two men struggled before Hough was fatally shot in the torso on Thursday night
Police released this surveillance image of the suspect who was described as wearing all black. They believe the suspect left the scene on foot, but may have had a getaway driver
Witnesses reported that the suspect left the shooting scene on foot, but authorities believe that he may have had a getaway driver nearby.
Authorities have been searching for the suspect using K-9 units and a helicopter, but have not yet been able to locate him.
Police said that the shooting occurred during the commission of either a robbery or a carjacking and that they were investigating the incident as a homicide.
Gainesville Police Chief Jay Parrish said that he feels sympathy for Hough's wife.
'I can't imagine what it would be like to walk out of that business and find citizens rendering aide to my spouse. That's what breaks my heart and keeps me up and driven to find this man,' Parrish said.
Hough's friends are said to be chipping in to create a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest of the suspect.
Hough was said to have been in the parking lot, waiting for his wife, Gail, to come out of the CVS at when he was fatally shot
Hough was well known in his community. The Air Force veteran founded a successful business, was a member of the Rotary Club of Gainesville and also active in charity work
'Jack was a fine Southern Gentleman,' Hough's friend, Ron Clary, told accesswdun.com. '[He was] always trying to help others. A great community volunteer.'
Hough's close friend, Andy Piucci, called Hough's death 'senseless.'
'I'm numb. I mean, my wife last night said she couldn't cry anymore,' Piucci told WSBTV. 'He was a great friend and just a wonderful person. It's just horrible.'
Hough is said to have been well-known within the Gainesville community.
The Air Force veteran headed up MSE Branded Foods, which developed and operated food courts in malls and airports around the country, for 23 years. In addition, he was president of the Wall Street Club, a member of Rotary Club of Gainesville and a founding director of the Chattachoochee Bank of Georgia, according to his obituary.
He and his wife, Gail, were said to have been very involved in local charities, particularly We Care.
On November 1, 2012, at 7.30am, David Black was driving to work as usual along the M1 motorway in County Armagh.
The father of two was due to retire in six months after almost 30 years in the Northern Ireland Prison Service.
Even though it was more than 14 years since the Good Friday Agreement brought a formal end to the Troubles, Mr Blacks job remained a hazardous one.
The Provisional IRA leadership had agreed to abide by the ceasefire but several hardline Republican paramilitaries rejected peace. Splinter groups such as the Continuity IRA and Real IRA vowed to carry on the war. They have done so to this day.
Jeremy Corbyn (right) and Tony Benn at 2012 conference
Mr Black worked at Maghaberry top-security jail, which held 41 dissident Republican prisoners. Some were connected to notorious outrages in a conflict that had claimed more than 3,500 lives. Three were serving time for gathering information on prison officers that could be used in attempted assassinations.
Mr Black had reached the junction with the M12 motorway when a Toyota with a Dublin number plate drew alongside his Audi. Someone in the Toyota opened fire with an automatic weapon and he was hit numerous times. His car crashed off the motorway and he died at the scene.
David Black was the first prison officer to be murdered by Republican terrorists for 23 years. When the news reached Maghaberry, dissident Republican prisoners ostentatiously smoked cigars to celebrate.
The killing was greeted with condemnation across the mainstream political spectrum. Prime Minister David Cameron said: These killers will not succeed in denying the people of Northern Ireland the peaceful, shared future they so desperately want.
Stormont First Minister Peter Robinson, of the Democratic Unionist Party, and his deputy Martin McGuinness, of Sinn Fein, said in a joint statement: There can be no justification for this brutal attack.
But this revulsion was not shared by every British political group outside dissident Republicanism.
A Mail investigation has uncovered damning evidence that, just nine days after the killing, the current leadership of the Labour Party showed solidarity with the paramilitary group behind the killing.
Less than three years before Jeremy Corbyn became party leader, he chaired a debate of hard-Left activists that voted in favour of the release of dissident Republican prisoners opposed to the Northern Ireland peace process.
Among those prisoners was Old Bailey bomber Marian Price, who the previous year had been charged in connection with the 2009 murder of two British soldiers.
The debate took place at the annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) at the Conway Hall in Bloomsbury, Central London. The LRC is an umbrella organisation of far-Left groups, founded and led by the now Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
Police Service of Northern Ireland officers and forensic officers examine the scene of David Black's shooting on the M1 motorway near Lurgan, Northern Ireland in 2012
We found that records of that now hugely embarrassing event have mysteriously vanished from the LRCs official web pages. Video footage and photographs have also been taken down from the internet. But much of the deleted material has been retrieved by the Mail and now the shameful truth of what happened that day can be revealed.
Formed in 1900, the original LRC was the forerunner of the Labour Party. It was relaunched in 2004 by members of the hard-Left Campaign group of MPs, which included McDonnell and Corbyn, as a vehicle to challenge the prevailing Blairite agenda. Mr McDonnell had been chairman since its relaunch (and is now honorary president).
Analysis by the Daily Mail shows that in 2012 the LRC listed 35 organisations as official affiliates, including Permanent Revolution and the pro-Stalin New Communist Party, which supports the North Korean dictatorship. All would be represented at the LRCs annual conference.
Mr McDonnell would deliver a keynote speech in the morning, Mr Corbyn would preside over one of the afternoon segments. A delegate who has since fallen out of love with the LRC told the Mail: This was like the alternative party conference, the real hard-Left Labour conference.
But these were tough times for the hard-Left. LRC conference attendance numbers were down by more than 10 per cent on 2011.
No one in the hall, least of all the man himself, could have imagined that in less than three years Mr Corbyn would be leader of the entire Labour Party and, as he now says, ready to become the next prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
But on November 10, 2012, Mr Corbyn was still unconstrained by any need, still less desire, to appeal to a mainstream electorate.
Instead, he surrounded himself with fellow revolutionary dreamers: Marxists, communists, Maoists and the Tankies who had supported the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. There was no need for him to fudge, dissemble or, as in the case of Brexit, refuse to show his ideological hand.
Marian Price, (left), and Dolours Price, (right), provisional IRA members in prison following their conviction at the Old Bailey in London
You will struggle to find any official LRC account of events at the Conway Hall that afternoon.
Such records were once in the public domain but since Mr Corbyn surprised the world and himself by becoming Labour leader, most of the archive material has vanished from the internet. The Mail has, however, spoken to several of the 160 delegates who were in the Conway Hall that day.
We can also turn to the official LRC timetable and conference report retrieved by the Mail from a deleted web page as well as an eyewitness account that was published in the Weekly Worker, a far-Left newsletter.
The author was one Andy Gunton, a member of a group called Labour Party Marxists.
Mr Gunton reported that Comrade McDonnell had moved the LRCs national committee statement and outlined its work over the previous year.
The man who could be our next Chancellor of the Exchequer finished by calling for an international struggle against capitalism.
The afternoon saw Mr Corbyn replace his comrade in the chair. His sessions would be devoted to international topics. In the LRCs world-view, that included all of the island of Ireland.
The conference timetable shows Mr Corbyn was in the chair when the conference engaged in its most controversial debate; one that today represents an enormous political embarrassment to the Labour Party and, given the resumption of the dissident IRA bombing campaign, a major concern to national security.
Motion 4 was titled Release All International Prisoners of War. It was put forward by one Gerry Downing. He did so on behalf of the Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group, one of the LRCs affiliated organisations.
A Trotskyite bus driver from North London, Mr Downing is a former friend of Mr McDonnell. He was expelled from the Labour Party in March 2016, when he wrote in a blog that the 9/11 attackers must never be condemned. More recently he was expelled from a Labour Party splinter group for alleged anti-Semitism.
Mr Downings motion named and called for the release of three leading dissident Republicans who, he said, were interned without charge. In fact, two of them had had their parole licences revoked for posing a threat to public safety, and the other was starting a 20-year prison sentence for a terror attack. They were held at HMP Maghaberry, where Mr Black had worked until his murder.
Foremost among them was Marian Price. In 1973, along with her sister Dolours, Price had been part of the IRA active service unit that attacked the Old Bailey and other London targets with car bombs, injuring 200 and causing one death. For that, she received two life terms.
She was freed after only seven years because she suffered from severe anorexia nervosa, caused by the hunger strikes she undertook to successfully force her transfer to an Ulster jail.
In 2011, Price had her release licence revoked and was returned to prison because then Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Patersonconsidered her an increased risk to public safety through her links to dissident paramilitary activity.
At the same time, she was charged and would eventually be convicted in connection with the 2009 murder of two British soldiers gunned down as they waited for a pizza delivery at the gates of their base in County Antrim. Price had supplied the phone used by the terrorists to claim responsibility for the killings.
Today, 46 years after the Old Bailey attack, she is at the centre of a new furore.
A recently published book concludes that she was the executioner of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten who was abducted in front of her children, shot and buried in an unmarked grave by the IRA in December 1972. Mrs McConvilles body was not recovered for 30 years. A lawyer acting for Price has said she vehemently denies the allegation.
The two other leading dissident Republicans being held at Maghaberry and named in Motion 4 were double police killer Martin Corey and Gerry McGeough, the IRAs main weapons buyer in the 1980s.
Jeremy Corbyn signing a letter to Theresa May in the run-up to recent Brexit talks
Corey had been released on parole in 1992. In 2010, his licence was revoked and he was returned to jail during an upsurge in dissident Republican terrorist activity.
The revocation, by then Labour Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward, was made on the grounds of closed material. Corey was considered a risk to public safety. It was said he had been one of the leaders of the Continuity IRA since 2008.
In 1977, the SAS raided a South Armagh farm belonging to William Slab Murphy, said to be the IRAs chief of staff. Murphy would be linked to the bombings that killed Lord Mountbatten and 18 paratroopers at Warrenpoint.
One of the farm workers arrested during the raid was Gerry McGeough.
Trained to be a teacher, McGeough was in fact the IRAs arms-buying supremo. As such, he had much blood on his hands. He was jailed in the U.S. for trying to buy Stinger surface-to-air missiles and also spent time in a German prison for IRA-related activities.
McGeough opposed the peace process. In 1999, he told Sinn Feins annual conference he had not spent very good years of his life buying arms simply so we could hand them over to the very enemy we were trying to use them against.
In 2011 he was convicted of the 1981 attempted murder of an off-duty member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. He was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.
Motion 4 demanded the release of all anti-imperialist political prisoners internationally and that all Irish Republican political prisoners should have their political status restored. It also accused prison staff of carrying out brutal assaults on the jailed terrorists. The motion contained no condemnation of paramilitary assassinations.
Releasing dissident Republican terrorists or referring to them as POWs in the shadow of Mr Blacks murder did not sit well with everyone in the hall.
Some felt Mr Corbyn should not have allowed the motion to be debated in the first place. LRC chairman Mr McDonnell also bore a good deal of responsibility.
Mr Black had been a prison officer at the Maze during the 1981 hunger strikes. Mr McDonnell has or had a list of the names of the IRA men who died there on the wall of his constituency office. It was presented to him by Gerry Kelly, a member of Marian Prices Old Bailey bombing team. Now Mr Black was dead and Mr McDonnells organisation was voting to support his killers.
It is worth reproducing part of Andy Guntons article about that 2012 meeting:
There was greater controversy with Motion 4, from the Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group, he reported. It called for the release of political prisoners, highlighting Palestinians in Israel and Naxalites (revolutionary Maoist communists) in India.
However, it was the paragraphs dealing with Irish Republican prisoners that split the meeting.
Opposing Motion 4, a comrade from Socialist Appeal warned that, should we pass the motion, we would have to call for the release of those who murdered prison officer David Black, shot while driving to work... nevertheless, the motion was passed, by a show of hands, by a margin of 52 to 35.
The Mail spoke to Mr Downing this week. He was unapologetic and remembered the debate well.
It was controversial, well put it that way, he said at his home in London.
Chortling at the memory, he went on: But I did say (during the debate) that if you want to know my personal views I can confirm your worst fears. I do actually support the dissident IRA! That raised a titter.
Referring to the David Black killing, he said: If you defend prisoners rights, then you defend them in all circumstances, you dont make exceptions because theres been a murder.
There is no publicly available record of how individual delegates voted on the motion, nor is it clear whether the chair was allowed to vote. But Mr Downing said he was fairly sure Mr Corbyn had supported his motion.
Mr Downing said that while he supports the aims of the dissident IRA, he opposes violence.
He said Marian Price might well have been involved in violent attacks, but that wasnt the issue at the time. The issue was opposition to Britains occupation of the six north-eastern counties of Ireland.
Two days after the LRC gave its backing to dissident Republican paramilitaries, a new group calling itself the IRA claimed responsibility for Mr Blacks murder.
The organisation was believed to have been formed during the summer of 2012, from an amalgamation of previously disparate organisations. In a statement, the group said it had killed him to protect and defend republican prisoners.
The excuse sounded very like the rationale of Motion 4.
But who would protect and defend the victims of Marian Price and her comrades-in-arms?
In 2013, Gerry McGeough was released under the Good Friday Agreement, having served only two years of his 20-year sentence.
In March the same year, the mother of Sapper Mark Quinsey, 23, one of the two soldiers gunned down as they collected a pizza in 2009, was found dead at her home in Birmingham. It was less than a fortnight after the fourth anniversary of her sons murder.
Comrade John: The LRC is an umbrella organisation of far-Left groups, founded and led by the now Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
Later in 2013, Marian Price admitted she had provided the phone that the killers of Sappers Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar used to claim responsibility for the murders.
So what of the records of the 2012 LRC conference?
Last year, a slick new website called labourrep.com was launched to promote the LRC and update members on events.
But the old version of the site remains live, with material dating as far back as 2008. Curiously, however, content related to the 2012 LRC conference has vanished.
It is not possible to determine whether it has been deliberately deleted, and it may have been erased due to a technical glitch.
But the evidence collated by the Daily Mail suggests it has been selectively removed while other less controversial content remains.
Our researcher was able to find an original copy of the 2012 conference report using specialist web tools. It confirms that Mr Corbyn chaired the Motion 4 debate.
Trotskyist Gerry Downing laughed when he was told that details of the LRC conference had vanished from the website. Well, I suppose they are protective of Jeremy, he said.
Another delegate, who was present and has since turned away from the Corbynistas because of anti-Semitism, agreed.
He said: This event [in 2012] is now a political embarrassment. I am not surprised if there has been an airbrushing of history.
Last night Kyle Black, son of the murdered prison officer, told the Mail: It is deeply concerning that someone who aspires to be Prime Minister of the UK has openly shown solidarity with terrorist organisations that continue to inflict murder and mayhem upon Northern Ireland today.
(It) also shows the hypocrisy of the Labour Party leadership, that says it is fighting to defend workers rights. A total of 32 prison officers have been murdered by terrorists in Northern Ireland two in the past six years, including my dad.
To be targeted and murdered simply for doing their job. What greater violation of a workers rights can there be?
The father of Sapper Quinsey also launched an emotional attack on Corbyn and McDonnell after learning of the 2012 conference.
Retired postman Bill Quinsey, 70, said: They are just as bad as the killers. They should be locked up with them. In my eyes Corbyn and McDonnell are traitors to this country, not future leaders.
This week, the Mail asked Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell how they had voted on Motion 4, what consideration they had given to the then recent murder of Prison Officer Black, and what they knew of the subsequent disappearance from the official internet site of reports or records of the debate.
In response, a Labour Party spokesman first gave this terse statement on their behalf: Jeremy and John have always supported peace and justice and condemned terrorism, and are not responsible for the views of individuals who have participated in LRC events.
When pressed last night, a spokesman said of Motion 4: Mr Corbyn didnt vote for it. It was still unclear whether he voted at all or, as chairman of the debate, abstained.
The LRCs 2019 conference takes place today. Mr McDonnell is to be the star speaker. Delegates will then vote on a resolution to reject the internationally accepted definition of anti-Semitism, recently adopted by the Labour Party.
Among those who have said they will attend is Gerry Downing, the man who moved the 2012 motion to free Marian Price and her friends.
One is the worlds most powerful man, the other its richest and they dont like each other one bit. Forget simmering tensions between America and China: nothing gets Donald Trump enraged like the Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.
The President often rails at the internet retail giants tax avoidance and hard-nosed business tactics, which he says threaten thousands of U.S. jobs. He compounded the outbursts by recently dubbing him Jeff Bozo.
The 55-year-old billionaire has responded by generously offering Trump a one-way ticket into space on his Blue Origin rocket.
It was inevitable, then, that Trump would gloat when excruciatingly embarrassing details emerged last month that Mr Bezos was having an affair with the wife of a business partner.
As Jeff Bezos faced a split from MacKenzie (both pictured), his wife of 25 years, and potentially losing half of his $137 billion fortune, Trump crowed that the divorce was going to be a beauty
As Mr Bezos faced a split from MacKenzie, his wife of 25 years, and potentially losing half of his $137 billion fortune, Trump crowed that the divorce was going to be a beauty.
Now, this battle of the giants, bellowing their contempt for each other like tigers in the jungle, has taken an extraordinary turn after Jeff Bezos publicly accused the magazine that exposed the affair of extortion and blackmail.
The National Enquirer allegedly threatened to publish highly compromising nude selfie photos of Mr Bezos and his lover, Lauren Sanchez, 49, unless he stopped claiming its investigation into his private life was politically motivated.
The gossip magazine is owned by David Pecker, a publishing tycoon who is close to Trump and who has already admitted doing favours for the President in the Enquirer.
An investigation by Bezoss security chief has suggested that Ms Sanchezs brother, Michael, an ardent supporter of the President, may have exposed the affair in a conspiracy with two shady Trump associates.
So were the astonishing revelations about Bezos which may yet rock the U.S. stock market if hes forced to relinquish his hold over Amazon to pay for his divorce settlement simply just another dark chapter in his battle with Trump?
Bezos certainly believes so, repeatedly saying in a post on the blogging website Medium published on Thursday night that he would be lying if he said that the affair investigation had no political dimension.
The National Enquirer allegedly threatened to publish highly compromising nude selfie photos of Mr Bezos and his lover, Lauren Sanchez (pictured), 49, unless he stopped claiming its investigation into his private life was politically motivated
The usually publicity-shy tech mogul said he was prepared for further personal embarrassment by publishing what he said was an email from Enquirer editor Dylan Howard outlining in detail the selfie pictures it has of him and Ms Sanchez. They included a below-the-belt selfie of Bezos, and others depicting sexual arousal and simulated sex.
Bezos also published a purported letter from a lawyer for American Media, the National Enquirers parent company, outlining a deal in which it wouldnt publish or even describe the photos in return for Bezos and his team denying they have any evidence that the coverage of his affair was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.
American Media said yesterday it was investigating Bezoss claims, and believes fervently that it acted lawfully in reporting his affair. It added: Further, at the time of the recent allegations made by Bezos, it was in good faith negotiations to resolve all matters with him.
The company has already insisted its story wasnt influenced in any way by external forces, political or otherwise.
It will stick in many peoples craw to see Bezos take the moral high ground. He is, after all, the ruthless online retail king who has laid waste to the global High Street, crippled the book industry and whose poorly paid staff toil under reportedly oppressive conditions in Amazon mega-warehouses.
Yet such is the polarising power of President Trump that many will instinctively sympathise with any target of his notoriously vindictive temperament. Some believe Trump cannot forgive Bezos (who has claimed to be politically non-partisan) for past attacks, such as accusing his election campaign of eroding democracy.
Others think the President just cannot forgive him for being so much richer than he is. Others still say the Washington Post news-paper is the real issue.
Bezos bought the Post in 2013. He insists he has no editorial say, although Trump clearly believes he does. The liberal media institution that exposed the Watergate Scandal and toppled President Nixon another controversial Republican leader has been hounding Mr Trump ever since he was elected.
In response, the President has called the Post a scam and a big tax shelter. Bezos suggested on Thursday that the Post lay at the root of Trumps beef with him.
Its arguable whether the newspaper has caused any damage to the President that approaches the heartache the Enquirer has caused for Bezos.
The latter declared he was getting divorced last month just hours before the magazine announced hed been having a months-long affair with Ms Sanchez, a helicopter pilot and former TV presenter.
Across 11 pages, the supermarket tabloid revealed details and pictures of an affair in which it had followed them across five states and 40,000 miles, tailed them on private jets, swanky limos, helicopter rides, romantic hikes, five-star hotel hideaways, intimate dinner dates and during quality time in hidden love nests.
Some believe Trump cannot forgive Bezos (who has claimed to be politically non-partisan) for past attacks, such as accusing his election campaign of eroding democracy
The Enquirer had even got hold of toe-curlingly embarrassing text messages between the couple. I love you, alive girl, he wrote. I will show you with my body, and my lips and my eyes, very soon.
Compounding the humiliation, they are both married with children. The busty and pouty Ms Sanchez had met Bezos through her husband, Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, who worked with him on the Oscar-winning film Manchester By The Sea.
Bezos and Sanchez claimed both marriages ended recently, before they started an affair, although the Enquirer claimed their trysts had been going on for at least eight months.
The normally tightly controlled Bezos found not only his private life imploding but given the fact that he had no pre-nuptial arrangement and so will have to share his vast fortune evenly with his wife even his hold over Amazon under threat.
The damning email in full This week, Jeff Bezos leaked an email sent from the National Enquirer to his lawyer, which seems to suggest that if the Amazon boss doesnt quash a Washington Post story, then highly embarrassing, sexual pictures of Bezos could be published in the magazine. Marty: In the interests of expediating [sic] this situation, and with The Washington Post poised to publish unsubstantiated rumours of The National Enquirers initial report, I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our newsgathering. In addition to the below the belt selfie, The Enquirer obtained a further nine images. These include: Mr. Bezos face selfie at what appears to be a business meeting.
Ms. Sanchez response a photograph of her smoking a cigar in what appears to be a simulated oral sex scene.
A shirtless Mr. Bezos holding his phone in his left hand while wearing his wedding ring. Hes wearing either tight black cargo pants or shorts and his semi-erect manhood is penetrating the zipper of said garment.
A full-length body selfie of Mr. Bezos wearing just a pair of tight black boxer-briefs or trunks, with his phone in his left hand while wearing his wedding ring.
A selfie of Mr. Bezos fully clothed.
A full-length scantily-clad body shot.
A naked selfie in a bathroom while wearing his wedding ring. Mr. Bezos is wearing nothing but a white towel and the top of his pubic region can be seen.
Ms. Sanchez wearing a plunging red neckline dress revealing her cleavage and a glimpse of her nether region.
Ms. Sanchez wearing a two-piece red bikini with gold detail dress revealing her cleavage. It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense can prevail and quickly. Advertisement
The Enquirer was naturally protective of its sources, but insiders said that rather than hacking any phone, it had been passed the incriminating text messages by someone with whom Ms Sanchez had shared them.
Inevitably, the autocratic Bezos wasnt happy with that brief explanation and he assigned his long-time security chief to investigate how his electronic communications ended up with the notorious scandal sheet.
That investigator, Gavin de Becker, has now concluded the lovers were not hacked. There was a mole, he says, and he identified Ms Sanchezs brother, a Hollywood talent manager, who claims he represents his sister. Mr de Becker says Mr Sanchez is a fierce Trump supporter who hoped the affair would damage the Presidents adversary.
As supporting evidence, Mr de Becker cited the fact that Mr Sanchez is friends with two murky Trump campaign insiders.
One of them is Roger Stone, a veteran Republican fixer last week charged with lying to Congress and witness tampering over the official inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The other chum is Carter Page, an ex-Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. His trips to Moscow prompted FBI suspicions the Kremlin was trying to recruit him.
The two men have denied any involvement in exposing Bezoss affair. Mr Sanchez admits he spoke to both of them about it, but only after the National Enquirer ran its story, and only to pick their brains about his theory that his sister had been under surveillance.
Speaking to the Washington Post naturally Mr de Becker also cited another strong indicator of a Trump connection.
The Enquirers owner, David Pecker, is a close friend of the President, and the Enquirer has written a string of favourable stories about him.
Its parent company even admitted that in 2016 it paid $150,000 to a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, to buy her story about having had an affair with Mr Trump. In what is known as a catch-and-kill operation, it then declined to publish it, thus preventing it from harming his chances in the presidential race.
This inquiry [about the Bezos affair] has been about crime, not journalism. Again and again, political motives became evident, said Mr de Becker.
Distinctly shady or just all a little too convenient? American Medias alleged blackmail attempt will certainly fuel suspicion that its expose was indeed a political hit job.
Mr Sanchez vehemently denies hes the mole. Compounding the confusion, he has pointed the finger instead at Mr de Becker himself.
He suggests the security consultant, a nationally acclaimed expert on violence prevention, leaked the story of the affair because he was determined to protect Bezoss marriage presumably by forcing him to return to his wife.
The Enquirers owner, David Pecker (pictured), is a close friend of the President, and the Enquirer has written a string of favourable stories about him
He has also argued that the security expert came up with the political hit job theory to cover up for his failure to protect Bezos.
Mr de Becker denies all this and says that its no surprise when a suspect throws allegations back at his accuser.
Theres a third theory as to how the affair became public the one offered by the Enquirer itself. Insiders at the magazine have insisted that the Bezos affair was a straightforward journalistic scoop with no Trump connection.
A source close to the story told the Mail that Enquirer editor Dylan Howard spotted a photo of Bezos travelling with Ms Sanchez on his private jet and became suspicious about their relationship.
The damning text messages surfaced later as they made inquiries during an investigation that lasted four months. According to the insider, its sources for the text messages included one person who had been sent them, and another who had read them.
Its still just about possible that American Medias clumsy attempt to twist Jeff Bezoss arm was simply because it was fed up with continually being tarred as a Trump stooge.
However, Bezoss security chief isnt the only one suggesting a political motive for the Enquirers investigation.
Michael Sanchez, who says he did his own spot of sleuthing, insists several people at American Media told him that the magazine did a takedown to make Trump happy.
It surely didnt help the companys cause that Trump praised the Enquirer for revealing the affair.
So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post, he carped on Twitter.
We are still none the wiser how any mole got hold of the compromising selfies in the first place. Would Ms Sanchez really share those with anybody? One possibility is that she inadvertently shared them digitally on a communal cloud, allowing friends or family to find them.
Theres yet another mystery about Bezoss relationship with Ms Sanchez: what has happened to it?
The pair havent seen each other for nearly a month since their relationship was exposed, though a source close to the couple told the New York Post: Theyre in constant contact, but the intrigue exploding behind the scenes has made it extremely difficult for them to see each other.
According to Michael Sanchez, theyve been kept apart by Gavin de Becker. The security expert has a strange control over the couple and has forced them to stay apart while he investigates the Enquirers expose, he says.
Cheating spouses, high politics, and an almighty row between two of the worlds most powerful and egotistical men the tawdry claim and counter-claim in Bozogate are enough to make anyone conclude they all royally deserve each other.
A distressed mother stabbed her boyfriend after he made a 'joke' about her 16-year-old daughter.
Shelley Elizabeth Patten, 44, pleaded guilty to the May 2018 attack at the Bundaberg District Court, Queensland, on Friday.
Patten became enraged when her partner made a comment about her daughter and proceeded to threaten the man, the Sunshine Coast Daily reported.
Shelley Elizabeth Patten (pictured) stabbed her boyfriend after he made a 'joke' about her 16-year-old daughter
The mother told him she would report him to the police as a 'paedophile' and tell others he was a 'police informant'.
The man became 'provoked' by her threats and used physical strength to restrain her.
He 'grabbed her by the throat and put her down on the floor' and then drove Patten's daughter to school.
The couple continued to argue when he returned to the property and Patten approached him with a knife.
She began to swing at him and made contact with his torso and ribs before he freed the knife from her.
The 44-year-old pleaded guilty to the May 2018 attack at the Bundaberg District Court (pictured), Queensland, on Friday
The man's wounds were 'not significant injuries', argued defence barrister Scott Moon.
Mr Moon told Judge Leanne Clare that his client would likely lose her job if she was put in custody and she had been treated for bipolar disorder at the time of offending.
'She has a government job in the hospital, she has one offence, it's out of character,' he said.
Judge Clare said the duo appeared to spark each other up, and that the man had overreacted in the first incident.
Patten (pictured) swung at her partner and made contact with his torso and ribs before he freed the knife from her
'The limited force and the fact he was nicked by the tip of the knife is probably the strongest thing in her favour,' she said.
'(He) forgave you and doesn't want you to go to jail,' she said.
Patten was handed a two-year prison sentence, suspended for three-years.
An Aboriginal boy took his own life after he was gang-raped by three men in his family home.
The 15-year-old boy's mother was an alcoholic and had been due to go to rehab when her son was brutally raped by the men in his family home in 2012.
The teenager said he had told his parents of the sickening attack, but they were too drunk to understand him, The Australian reported.
Less than a year after speaking to authorities about the rape, the boy's body was found in a town camp on the edge of Kununurra.
An Aboriginal boy who took his own life had tried to explain to his parents three men had raped him, but they were too drunk to understand him (stock picture)
Less than a year after speaking to authorities about the rapes, the body of the boy was found in a town camp on the edge of Kununurra (pictured)
School reports described the teenager as likeable, though he had a troubled background of drug and alcohol abuse.
He had a low school attendance rate of between 35 and 54 per cent and came from a home where domestic violence and alcohol abuse was commonplace.
For legal reasons, the boy is referred to as Case 6.
Police referred Case 6 to the Child Protection Department back in 2010 when he was 12-years-old, after they found him with a group of kids making a commotion about petrol, possibly sniffing it.
Case 6 was constantly moved around homes and was at times homeless, away from supervision.
Around the time of the rapes, the department was organising rehab for the teenager's mother and looking to set up Case 6 with his aunt.
Case 6 refused to make a police complaint of the horrific sexual assault because he was worried he would be targeted again, and that his family could face repercussions.
His case only came to light after a non-family member reported the rapes, prompting the boy to tell child protection workers what happened.
According to an inquest, Case 6 told his mother in January 2014 he was looking forward to starting at a new school on the south coast.
His mother said her son was talking about the future.
The next day, the body of Case 6 was found.
School reports described the teen as likeable, though he had a troubled background of drug and alcohol abuse (pictured, Kununurra)
A report from West Australian Coroner Ros Fogliani drew attention to the inaction or insufficient action from child protection authorities.
The inquiry not only looked into Case 6 but also 12 other Aboriginal children and young people who took their lives in the Kimberley between 2012 and 2016.
The report was presented along with startling evidence that suicide rates in the Kimberley was three times the national average between 2009 ad 2013.
Claims were also cited that the suicide rate of Aboriginal people in the region was one of the highest in the world.
The crisis comes after numbers of Aboriginal children taken into care have more than tripled in the past 15 years.
In June 2018 there were 5,029 children in care, up from 1,453 in 2004.
Of the children in care, 55 per cent are Indigenous Australian.
The traumatised boy approached the Kimberley Mental Health and Drug Service in the town for counselling (pictured, Kununurra)
Health minister Roger Cook, says the removal of children is anything but the answer.
'We need to address the underlying causes,' he said.
Fogliani said a foster system that relied on relatives as carers could pose risks.
She looked at a case of a seven-year-old boy.
He had been sent to live with a relative at the remote community of Wangkatjungka,
The boy reported older boys had molested and later raped him.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar praised Fogliani's report and said the crisis had to be addressed as soon as possible.
'The evidence is clearly showing us that we need to do more to support families in the vital prevention work, to keep our kids alive.
'This is about intergenerational trauma and healing.'
Indigenous psychologist Tracy Westerman was concerned there were no nationally accepted evidence-bsed programs for suicide prevention, despite the overwhelming suicide rates.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has promised one of the largest ever investments in community mental health services from the federal government.
He announced $1.45 billion will be directed into matter over the next three years.
Sarah Palin has hit out at Democrats at the Alaska State Capitol after one of her daughter's former stalkers landed a job there as a legislative aide.
Peter Paul Ferrero, 30, was convicted of stalking Palin's eldest daughter, Bristol, in 2014, after sending her more than 1,000 Facebook messages and even turning up outside her home. He was arrested again in 2017 for violating his probation by returning to Bristol's home, while high on crack, and flashing oncoming traffic.
Despite his checkered history, he was hired to work as an aide to Democratic Sen. Tom Begich in Juneau last month, The Alaska Landmine reports.
Former presidential candidate Sarah was furious at the move, which she claimed encouraged Ferrero to 'continue his evil.'
'It has been years of DEADLY THREATS and SEXUAL HARASSMENT,' she wrote in a Facebook rant. 'Delusional Peter Paul Ferrero... none of us had ever met him but hes always insisted to officials I hired him in Florida to work for me, insisting Bristol, Willow & I all had affairs with him.'
Peter Paul Ferrero (left) a man convicted in 2014 of stalking Bristol Palin (right) has landed a job as a legislative aide at the Alaska State Capitol building. He is pictured left and right on Facebook
Palin added thatt Ferrero, who was arrested again in 2017 for violating his parole, repeatedly sexually harassed, stalked and sent death threats to her family.
'Hes communicated over 17,000 messages plus harassed and threatened my parents and siblings with calls and communications for years.
'The criminal moved to Alaska from Florida, broke onto Bristols property and vandalized - arrested, etc. etc. etc; lifes hell and scary for my daughters with this criminal,' Palin wrote.
Ferrero was initially hired to work on the Alaska State Legislature but was terminated from the position shortly after for an unspecified reason.
Sen. Begich has confirmed he is now working for him as an aide. Begich said he met Ferrero when he was working as a volunteer for his 2016 campaign.
'He was on probation and working on putting his past behind him and moving forward with his life.
'Ive always believed in second chances and encouraged him to go back to school, and to develop his skills. In the end he made the Deans list, found employment and, despite some setbacks, never gave up,' he said.
The former governor of Alaska announced the news about Ferrero's job in a Facebook post Friday afternoon
Palin's post also included an expletive-filled video of Ferrero ranting about her family after learning Palin's daughter, Willow, got a dog
'Hes completed his probation, earned a law clerk certification, and, when he found himself out of work here, I gave him a small contract to research crime statistics and to help me better understand how gangs get into Alaska, drawing on his own experience in the system and his research.
'His research and writing has been good and Ive been satisfied with his work. If we truly believe in giving people a chance to be productive in society after theyve served their sentence, then Peter is a good example of those who deserve a chance to be successful.'
Court documents obtained by the The Blast from his 2017 arrest revealed police were called to a location near a Palin home, where Ferrero was 'exposing himself and urinating at oncoming traffic.'
Ferrero reportedly admitted to smoking crack cocaine during the arrest.
'While cops began to take Ferrero into custody, he became combative and allegedly assaulted two police officers. Cops say he also attempted to steal an officers handgun twice and was also tased while being locked up,' the Blast reported.
Ferrero is currently working as an aide to Democratic Sen. Tom Begich (right on January 24, 2019, in Juneau, Alaska) Also pictured is Sen. Bill Wielechowski
Palin added thatt Ferrero, who was arrested again in 2017 for violating his parole, repeatedly sexually harassed, stalked and sent death threats to her family. He is pictured on Facebook
Palin's post also included an expletive-filled video of Ferrero ranting about her family after learning Palin's daughter, Willow, got a dog.
Ferrero shared numerous posts in 2011 suggesting he and Willow had a romantic relationship, despite never meeting her.
Palin said her daughters continue to live in fear of the unknown.
'His torment continues to this day as my girls always have to look over their shoulders, always dread what stalkers will do next, always doubting many officials cared about the sexual and physical harassment aimed at innocent young women.
'And I understand my familys concern because many people seem downright thrilled at what stalkers have done - and continue to do.
'Its puzzling many dont care about ramifications of our stalkers actions over these years - all our reporting, all the attorney bills, all our warnings. Weve witnessed that people dont care nor seem to worry until it happens to them.'
She blamed Democrats for encouraging his 'evil' behavior by rewarding him with a job.
'My hope is this doesnt happen to others, despite democrats empowering the person to continue the evil.
'Great job, democrats,' Palin concluded.
Paul announced that he landed the job in a Facebook post January 8.
Paul announced that he landed the job in a Facebook post January 8
He wrote: 'Just a quick About Me... Just want to give a formal introduction of myself my name is Peter Paul, I am currently a Legislative Page for the Alaska State Legislature.
'I consider myself very fortunate as someone who has been a Law Clerk in the past to really be an entity, and non entity at the same time. I deliver things on both sides of The House.
'I am 30 and this job suits me for now because it is certainly an honorable job and important function of government. Please catch me Live 5 days a week on your local Alaska Stations.'
Ferrero was arrested in September 2014 after climbing the third-floor balcony of Bristol's home in Wasilla, Alaska, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
An affidavit said Bristol recognized the man immediately because he had sent her 'approximately 1,000 Facebook messages.'
Wasilla police officer Brandon Gray said Bristol 'told Ferrero to back off several times and he continued to approach her.'
Gray added: 'Palin said she was scared that Ferrero might hurt her so she dropped her stuff, grabbed her son, and ran across the street to call 911.'
Palin said Ferrero has sexually harassed, stalked and sent death threats to her family. Sarah Palin and daughters Bristol, Willow and Piper (left to right) in a July 4, 2018 Instagram photo
Bristol told police that she blocked Ferrero on Facebook numerous times but he continued to find her and attempt to communicate through fake profiles.
Ferrero is just one of many stalkers the Palin family has dealt with over the course of the past decade.
In November, Bristol Palin revealed chilling details of another man who allegedly burgled her ex-husband's home in August.
In a dramatic episode of Teen Mom OG, Palin claimed that Shawn Christy had been terrorizing her family for a decade.
Christy was arrested in September, after months on the run, for ransacking Palin's former husband Dakota Meyer's home in Kentucky and stealing his SUV.
The burglary came just a day after Meyer was hospitalized for an anxiety attack that came as a result of Palin announcing their divorce was final.
He also reportedly threatened to kill Meyer, and to shoot President Trump.
On the reality show in November, Palin described how she'd been affected by her stalker.
While showing off her new Texas home on FaceTime with her little sister, Piper, she revealed: 'So last night was my first night in the house, and I got a text message pretty late from Dakota saying that his house had got broken into. His Kentucky house... I swear to God, it was the stalker.'
Bristol is seen FaceTiming with her sister Piper during a Teen Mom OG episode in November. She said Shawn Christy (left in mugshot) has been stalking her for ten years
Dakota Meyer's home was broken into a day after he suffered an anxiety attack. He posted a photo of himself in a hospital bed with the caption 'pit stop before work' on his Instagram story
Meyer revealed in August his Kentucky home (pictured) had been broken into and his jeep had been stolen
The 28-year-old mother-of-three said the stalking incidents made it difficult for her to sleep.
She told her sister: 'I get maybe four hours of sleep as it is... I've had this constant threat for 10 years.'
Palin revealed that Christy has been following and threatening her family since her mother, Sarah Palin, ran for vice president.
The Palins were forced to take out a protection order against him as a result.
Surveillance footage showed the stalker use a sledgehammer to enter the home, where Meyer's younger brother had also been living, through a back window.
When he got inside, he stole food from the refrigerator, and took the keys to a 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee which he fled in afterward.
Police say Christy threatened to kill Meyer and also 'put a bullet' in President Trump's head.
Christy was arrested in Ohio in October following a months-long manhunt. He failed to show up to a court appearance for an assault case back in June.
A major mafia lawyer who dealt with some of Melbourne's most serious criminals was also a police informant working closely with the mysterious 'Lawyer X', it has been revealed.
Joe 'Pino' Acquaro was the leading lawyer for Calabrian mafia boss Pasquale Barbaro and other heavyweight gangland criminals including Alphonse Gangitano and Mario Condello.
But the Herald Sun reports that years before he was gunned down outside a Lygon Street cafe in 2016, Acquaro had become a police informant snitching on his clients.
Acquaro turned from solicitor to snitch in 2008, just months after his client Barbaro had been caught trying to import $440 million of ecstasy into Australia - hidden in tomato tins.
Major mafia lawyer Joe Acquaro (pictured), who dealt with some of Melbourne's heavyweight underworld criminals, was a police informant just like the mysterious 'Lawyer X'
Acquaro was gunned down outside his restaurant Gelobar in Carlton, in Melbourne's north, in 2016 (pictured). Police had warned Acquaro a bounty of $500,000 had been put on his head
Prior to the drugs arriving in Australia 'Lawyer X' had handed a shipping document to Victoria Police, leading them to the more than four tonnes of ecstasy.
On August 8, 2008, both Acquaro and 'Lawyer X' were called in to Australian Federal Police headquarters to discuss the gangland mafia and their failed drug shipment.
In the years following a bounty - believed to have been worth as much as $500,000 - was reportedly placed on the head of Acquaro.
The solicitor was warned by police about the bounty on his head in 2015, but chose not to enter a protection program.
He was gunned down outside his gelato parlour in March 2016, with Calabrian man Vince Crupi charged with his murder.
Suspicion had reportedly been rife among some of Acquaro's other criminal clients long before he met with the AFP in 2008
Among the solicitor's top clients were Calabrian mafia kingpin Pasquale Barbaro (left) who was caught attempting to import $440 million worth of ecstasy into Australia in 2007. He is serving life in prison.
Barbaro and other members of the Calabrian mafia attempted to import the ecstasy into the country inside Tomato tins (pictured), but police were tipped off by Lawyer X and picked the drugs up at the border
Acquaro also looked after Alphonse Gangitano (left) and Mario Condello (right), who in 2002 held the solicitor at gunpoint and tortured him after suspecting he was snitching to police
In 2002 the solicitor was stripped naked by Calabrian Mafia boss Mario Condello and repeatedly pistol-whipped.
The torture session at the hands of Condello lasted two hours inside the 'Pizza by the Metre' restaurant in Carlton, the Herald Sun reports.
Condello - who was shot dead in his driveway in 2006 - had been under investigation by police for attempting to launder proceeds of crime, and he believed Acquaro had tipped off detectives.
The mafia enforcer held the lawyer at gunpoint and interrogated him with questions, before Acquaro convinced Condello he was innocent and was allowed to walk free.
When questioned by his mother about his injuries, the lawyer reportedly claimed he had fallen off his roof while doing repairs.
Criminals such as infamous drug king Tony Mokbel (pictured), who was represented by Lawyer X, are expected to appeal against their convictions
Notorious drug boss Carl Williams (left, with his father George) was another gangland criminal to have been represented by the notorious Lawyer X
In addition to his criminal clients, Acquaro had strong connections with politicians and prominent businessmen.
The dealings of Acquaro, 'Lawyer X' and four other informants with police will come under the microscope from next week when a royal commission gets underway.
The revelations that gangland lawyers were passing privileged information to police is expected to result in many major jailed crime figures appealing their convictions.
Expected to be among them are Barbaro, who is serving a life sentence for his failed ecstasy importation, as well as infamous drug boss Tony Mokbel, who received a 30-year sentence for drug trafficking.
When a travel journalist broke up with her boyfriend of one-and-a-half years, she hardly expected what he would do next.
Shortly after the breakup, Cairn's woman Fiona Harper learned that nude pictures of her had been posted online.
She had become a victim of revenge porn, Cairns Post reported.
'I was mortified, horrified that he thought it was OK to use that photo for his own use.'
When a travel journalist broke up with her boyfriend of one-and-a-half years, she hardly expected what he would do next (pictured, Fiona Harper)
Though shortly after the breakup, Cairn's woman Fiona Harper (pictured) learned that nude pictures of her had been posted online
He was a professional photographer who had taken hundreds of photos with her as the pair sailed around remote Fijian Islands for Ms Harper's work.
Included in the archive of images were nude shots.
When the pair broke up at Cairns Airport in December, Ms Harper told him to not share the photos 'anywhere they shouldn't be'.
Though three weeks later, she found a photo of herself plastered on website NZ Swingers.
The online forum is a place for members to discuss topics like gang bangs and public sex.
To make matters worse, her picture was all over her jilted-lover's profile.
'His justification was that it was a password-protected site, but the site has over 60,000 members,' she said.
'I never thought (revenge porn) was going to be in my world.'
The quickly apologetic ex immediately took down any compromising photos of his former partner.
Though for Ms Harper, the nerves are still raw.
She said she felt cheated and never thought he would take such lengths against her.
However she said she was not totally 'bitter and twisted'.
She filed a complaint with the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Networ, and Far North Queensland police followed up the submission with a call later on.
But Ms Harper decided to not press charges and leave the matter where it is.
On a side note, Ms Harper learned jurisdiction would be an issue with the photo.
As the compromising image was taken in Fiji, uploaded to a New Zealand based website and taken from the camera belonging to a Canadian now living in South Australia, the process of pressing charges would be long and difficult.
At the very least, Ms Harper wants to use her experience as a cautionary tale to other women.
Though three weeks after the breakup, Ms Harper found a photo of herself plastered on website NZ Swingers (pictured)
The visit comes amid protests in the region against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
PM Modi is on a two-day visit to Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura which began on Friday. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)
Guwahati: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation stones of several projescts worth over Rs 4,000 crore in Arunachal Pradesh. PM Modi is on a two-day visit to Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura which began on Friday. The visit comes amid protests in the region against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
I am happy to inaugurate and lay foundation stones for projects worth over Rs 4,000 crores. Besides this, work on projects worth Rs 13,000 crores is taking place at a fast pace in Arunachal Pradesh, the PM said at a meeting at Indira Gandhi park near state capital Itanagar.
PM Modi said the projects launched on Saturday would not just improve connectivity in the state but also strengthen the power sector, would boost health sector and help in promoting states culture.
Modi laid foundation stone for the Greenfield airport at Hollongi near Itanagar and inaugurated the retrofitted Teju airport in Lohit district.
He inaugurated a 110 MW hydro electric project at Pare, launched Arun Prabha a Doordarshan channel exclusively for Arunachal Pradesh and 50 health and wellness centres.
He laid foundation stone for a film and television institute at Jote, seven electric sub stations and the Sella Tunnel and its approach road in Tawang.
PM Modi said, Arunachal Pradesh is a strategically important state related to national security. But still not much focus was given by earlier government to improve facilities in this state. Our government made continuous efforts to change this.
The PM is slated to address a rally at Changsari near Guwahati and another at Agartala in Tripura later in the day before departing to New Delhi.
Mississippi Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves took part in his fraternity's Old South parties where members often wore Confederate costumes, his spokesperson confirmed Friday.
Republican Reeves, 44, joined Kappa Alpha at the private Millsaps College in Jackson in 1993.
That same fraternity was disciplined for wearing afro wigs, Confederate battle flags and shouting racial slurs at black students in October 1994.
Despite those involved being ordered to attend sensitivity classes and being put on social probation from November 1994 to March 1995, a 1995 yearbook photo from Reeves' time in the fraternity shows members dressed in Confederate outfits and seemingly sporting blackface.
Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, 44, was in a fraternity that wore Confederate costumes to parties
A 1995 yearbook shows photos of Kappa Alpha at Millsaps College seemingly wearing blackface (bottom right) and parading the Confederate flag (top left and bottom right)
Millsaps put Kappa Alpha (pictured in 1995 yearbook) on social probation from November 1994 to March 1995 and ordered members to take sensitivity classes. They were disciplined for wearing afro wigs, Confederate battle flags and shouting racial slurs at black students in 1994
Reeves (right) appears in the same 1995 yearbook spread with sensitive images but it is not suggested he appears in any of the said photos
This group shot shows members, dressed in costume, in front of a Confederate flag
Above that is a group picture featuring the Confederate flag. On the adjacent page is what appears to be an image of a casually-dressed in a checked shirt Reeves with a friend.
Reeves - who has been in statewide office since 2003 - is also pictured in a formal solo photograph from the 1995 yearbook.
The American Ledger reported, Reeves featured in a 1996 yearbook photo with a reference that read: 'Are Justin and Tate at the Robert E. Lee bar?'
Reeves appears in 1995's Millsaps yearbook
Two members of Kappa Alpha seemingly appear blacked up in an image at the frat's luau while wearing grass skirts in 1993, the publication adds.
There is no suggestion Reeves appears in the offensive images.
His spokeswoman, Laura Hipp, on Friday did not answer questions about whether the lieutenant governor had any connection to the 1994 events, since 2011.
As for whether Reeves wore Confederate costumes to Old South parties, Hipp said in a statement: 'Like every other college student, he did attend costume formals and other parties, and across America, Kappa Alpha's costume formal is traditionally called Old South in honor of the civil war veteran who founded the fraternity in the 1800s.'
The website for Kappa Alpha Order shows the fraternity was not founded by Confederate veterans.
But, the group honors Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was president of Washington College in Virginia when the fraternity was founded on that campus in December 1865.
The American Ledger reported, Reeves featured in a 1996 yearbook photo with a reference that read: 'Are Justin and Tate at the Robert E. Lee bar?'
Men are dressed as Confederate soldiers in a photo of the 1997 traditional Kappa Alpha Old South event in a shot (far left) in the fraternity's pages in the 1998 Millsaps College yearbook, from the school's online archive
The Confederate flag appears in a center image from the college's 1997 yearbook
Kappa Alpha fraternity pages in the 1993 Millsaps College yearbook, as seen in the school's online archive. Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves had not yet pledged the fraternity in 1993
His spokeswoman didn't say whether Reeves had connection to the 1994 events or appeared in the offensive 1995 yearbook images. Her statement said: 'Like every other college student he did attend costume formals'. Reeves is pictured January 15
Reeves presided over the state Senate on Friday in Jackson but did not stop afterward to speak to reporters who tried to ask him questions.
Millsaps told DailyMail.com in a statement: 'Recent media reports have raised questions regarding Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves and his membership in Kappa Alpha fraternity at Millsaps College from 1993-1997, particularly related to fraternity activities that included displays of Confederate memorabilia and confrontations with students of color.
'Millsaps College engaged with these issues at the time by facilitating conversations between the Black Student Association, the administration, and the fraternity, and today we continue to confront the difficult and important issues of truth, racial healing and reconciliation.'
They added in a statement that they've eradicated the use of 'Old South' for these reasons and said about blackface images published, 'The decision to publish those and any other similar photographs was a mistake. Those actions and images were offensive to African-American students, and not in line with our values at Millsaps College.'
The resurfacing of the images comes after several Virginia governors, and politicians outside of the state, faced accusations due to of racist pictures in their university yearbooks.
These include blackface, fake lynching scenes and pictures depicting terrorists the Ku Klux Klan.
Reeves is running for governor this year and has raised more money than any candidate in the race.
He has been elected four times to statewide office - two terms as state treasurer and two as lieutenant governor.
Hi fraternity and Kappa Sigma pledges were seen wearing afro wigs and rebel flags by African-American students in 1994.
She explained: 'Kappa Alpha's costume formal is traditionally called Old South in honor of the civil war veteran who founded the fraternity in the 1800s'
One of the students who saw the white pledges taking part in the behavior is Kiese Laymon, who is now an author.
In his 2018 memoir Heavy, Laymon wrote that some of the fraternity members used racial epithets against him and one of his friends.
Laymon wrote in a piece for the Millsaps College student newspaper in the 1990s: 'At Millsaps, I know weve overcome racism, and if the word "n****r" is ever muttered, it could only be echoed from the walls of the Kappa Alpha house.'
The writer who was recently awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, wrote opinion pieces including some that said the Confederate flag is racist.
One of the students who saw the white pledges taking part in the behavior is Kiese Laymon, who is now an author
Old South symbols and images are prevalent in Mississippi, with statues of Confederates soldiers standing outside many county courthouses.
Mississippi is the last state that still features the Confederate battle emblem on its flag, but all eight of the state's public universities and several cities and counties have stopped flying the flag amid criticism that the battle emblem is a racist reminder of slavery and segregation.
Supporters of the flag say it represents history.
Mississippi has used the same flag since 1894 and people who voted in a 2001 statewide election chose to keep the rebel emblem on it.
The Republican speaker of the state House, Philip Gunn, said the emblem is 'a point of offense that needs to be removed.'
Reeves has not advocated change, saying voters chose to keep the flag.
Reeves spoke in 2013 at a Sons of Confederate Veterans meeting in Mississippi, and his Facebook account posted a photo of him behind a row of different designs of Confederate flags.
Reeves has been in statewide office since 2003 and has been lieutenant governor since 2011. He's pictured celebrating Sen. Thad Cochran (right) holding on to his seat after a narrow victory over Chris McDaniel at the Mississippi Childrens Museum on June 24, 2014
Reeves spoke in 2013 at a Sons of Confederate Veterans meeting in Mississippi, and his Facebook account posted a photo of him behind a row of Confederate flags
A caption on the photo read: 'Remembering our history and the lessons learned should be passed to future generations.'
Even after neo-Confederate gunman Dylann Roof shot dead nine black worshipers are a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015, he remained a supporter of the flag.
'No symbol or flag or Web site or book or movie made him evil,' Reeves insisted.
Reeves also said in 2017 that Mississippi should 'stop apologizing and start bragging' about accomplishments.
After neo-Confederate gunman Dylann Roof (pictured center) shot dead nine black worshipers are a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015, Reeves remained a supporter of the flag
During a special US Senate race in 2018, photos surfaced of Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith holding a rifle and wearing a Confederate-style military hat. The photos were taken in 2014 when she was state agriculture commissioner and was on the Mississippi Gulf Coast
During a special US Senate race in 2018, photos surfaced of Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith holding a rifle and wearing a Confederate-style military hat.
The photos were taken in 2014 when she was state agriculture commissioner and was on the Mississippi Gulf Coast visiting Beauvoir, the last home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
In her Facebook post of the photos, Hyde-Smith remarked: 'Mississippi history at its best.'
Hyde-Smith then defeated Democratic challenger Mike Espy in the November election.
In this year's race for governor, Reeves will face at least one challenger in the Republican primary, and fourth-term Attorney General Jim Hood will face at least one challenger in the Democratic primary.
Candidates have a March 1 qualifying deadline. Primaries are in August, and the general election is in November.
Google has reportedly agreed to start censoring searches in Russia after years of refusing to cooperate with Moscow, it is claimed.
The California-based tech company will now comply with Russian law passed in 2017, that requires any websites banned by the government to be omitted from search engine results.
Google will be working in close proximity with Russian regulatory agency Roskomnadzor (ROSCO), who currently work to block sites including child pornography, drugs and suicide.
However, according to the Moscow Times, ROSCO is widely criticized for being mouthpiece for the government for its perceived favoring of state censorship.
Google has agreed to censor its searches in Russia, according to a local newspaper
The supposed independent body has previously been found to have blocked access to corruption investigations against government ministers.
Google was fined $7,500 by Russia in 2018 for not complying with regulation laws.
But the search-engine extraordinaire insist it won't surrendering to the Russian government's electronic-blacklist, and they will continue to review removal requests on a case-by-case basis - as is their policy across the world.
According to local paper Vedomosti, Google has already began deleting 70 percent of the sites blacklisted by the Russian government.
It's said 175 requests have been made by Russian officials to delete specific sites, in a Google Transparency report from last-year.
Russia also accounted for 75% of all global requests to delete content, according to the report.
Alexander Zharov, the head of the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) apparently told a news agency they've established 'constructive dialogue' with Google
The RIA Novosti news agency quoted head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, as saying it has established a "constructive dialogue" with Google.
'We're committed to enabling access to information for the benefit of our users in Russia and around the world,' Nu Wexler, a google spokesperson said in a statement.
No comment was made directly about the alleged deal reported by Vedomosti.
Facebook and Twitter are said to be next in the Russia firing line, after their repeated breach of data and online access laws.
A federal judge shouldn't bar longtime Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone from making public statements about his criminal case in the Russia investigation, his attorneys said Friday.
Lawyers for Stone, a political consultant who has made a career out of attention-seeking, bare-knuckles politics, say in a new court filing that any limits on their client's public comments would infringe on his First Amendment right to free speech.
They made the argument as U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson is considering a gag order preventing both sides in the case from making public statements that could prejudice potential jurors while allowing Stone to publicly opine on other matters.
Jackson raised the issue last week after she warned Stone not to treat his criminal case like a 'book tour.'
She was referring to several post-indictment talk show appearances Stone made, attacking special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation as politically motivated.
In the filing Friday, Stone's attorneys write that his comments don't merit a 'clear and present danger to a fair trial.'
They also downplay his fame, citing as evidence that his Instagram following is only a fraction of celebrity Kim Kardashian West's.
'While Roger Stone may be familiar to those who closely follow American politics, he is hardly ubiquitous in the larger landscape of popular consciousness,' Stone's attorneys wrote.
FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2019 file photo, former campaign adviser for President Donald Trump, Roger Stone, leaves federal court in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Stone's legal team, which includes Bruce Rogow, a noted First Amendment attorney who previously represented the rap group 2 Live Crew in an obscenity case, also urged Jackson not to curtail speech based on 'conjecture or speculation' about its possible impact on jurors.
'Roger Stone has faith in the jury system and in the mechanics of jury selection which are designed to ensure a fair trial.
Any attempt to foresee the future effect of free speech on jury selection is a hazardous endeavor,' they wrote.
In filing later Friday, prosecutors said they wouldn't oppose Jackson issuing a 'narrowly-tailored' gag order that seeks to keep Stone from using media coverage to his advantage in the court case.
Prosecutors are not asking for a blanket ban on Stone appearing publicly or discussing matters unrelated to his case.
Stone, 66, was arrested in an early morning FBI raid at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home last month.
He is charged with lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering related to discussions he had during the 2016 election about WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that released material stolen from Democratic groups including Hillary Clinton's campaign.
U.S. intelligence agencies have said that Russia was the source of the hacked material, and last year Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence officers in the hacking.
Prosecutors have tied that case to Stone's, saying they share a common search warrant and involve activities that are 'part of the same alleged criminal event or transaction.'
But they have not accused Stone of being directly involved in any Russian election conspiracy.
Jackson was assigned Stone's case because of its relation to the hacking case in which she also presides.
But in a separate filing Friday, Stone argued prosecutors have not produced sufficient evidence to show the relation. And Stone, who has pleaded not guilty, asks that the judge allow his case to be randomly assigned.
Stone, who remains free on $250,000 bond, has denied having any direct contact with WikiLeaks. He has said he only sought to encourage voter interest in the group's public disclosures. He also has denied discussing the issue with Trump.
Fifteen years after 21-year-old Maura Murray disappeared following a car crash in rural New Hampshire, her father he may finally have found her remains.
Fred Murray never stopped looking for his daughter after she vanished on February 9, 2004.
Now, he believes he may have found a clue to her whereabouts, after being granted access to the basement of a home near where Maura crashed for the first time, since the property was bought by new owners.
He said cadaver dogs and a radar scan indicate she may be buried under the basement floor.
The University of Massachusetts-Amherst nursing student was last seen on a road in Haverhill, New Hampshire, that leads to the White Mountain National Forest on February 9, 2004.
Professors at her university say she claimed, falsely, that there had been a death in her family and that she needed to leave.
Her damaged car was later recovered but Maura has never been found.
Fifteen years after Maura Murray went missing, her father, Fred Murray, believes that that her remains may finally be found in the basement of a house where she was last seen
Nursing student Maura was last seen on a New Hampshire road after crashing her car in 2004
Fred believes his daughter is dead, the victim of a crime.
Others theorized that Maura fled, possibly to Canada, or was injured, wandered off into the woods and died of exposure.
The case has been the subject of podcasts and a documentary.
Fred had long suspected that his daughter's body may be in a home near to the crash site. The area outside the home had previously been searched for her body but nothing was found.
Fred had never been able to gain access until the end of last year, after the property changed hands.
Murray said two separate visits by cadaver dogs and a radar scan last fall identified something underneath the basement floor.
'It's been 15 years and I haven't let up,' said Murray, now 76, said in a phone interview from Hanson, Massachusetts, this week. 'The point is, two dog hits and a radar hit. ... That's my daughter, I do believe.'
Fred Murray (pictured with Maura) believes his daughter was the victim of a crime and is dead
Maura's car which she crashed on a New Hampshire road before she disappeared. Police found a box of wine on the back seat and a strong odor of alcohol
These ATM photos are the last known photographs of Maura, taken the day she disappeared
The tree that Maura's car hit on the day that she was last seen before she disappeared
Maura was driving down this road when she lost control of her car and crashed. A couple who lived near the area and a passing bus driver called police
Murray said the information was shared with state police in December.
Jeffery Strelzin, associate attorney general, said the case remains open and active.
'We are aware of the allegations regarding a home's basement in that area and have considered and are considering next steps,' he said. 'That area was searched by law enforcement in the past, including with dogs, and nothing of significance was discovered.'
Strelzin said the area outside the house was searched.
Maura Murray's family and some investigators believe she just wanted to get away for a few days. She had recently resolved a criminal matter involving use of a stolen credit card and caused extensive damage to her father's car during a crash.
A few days before she disappeared, she was working her security job at UMass-Amherst when the phone rang, and she burst into tears. The caller and the subject of the call remain unknown.
When Maura Murray lost control of her car and hit a tree, a couple who lived nearby called police. A school bus driver who also lived nearby asked her if she wanted him to call police. She said no, but he called anyway.
A police report says the windshield was cracked on the driver's side, both air bags deployed and the car was locked. There was a box of wine on the back seat and a strong odor of alcohol.
'I just want the poor kid to have her own grave,' Murray said. 'I just want somebody to help her.'
Brazilian police shot dead at least 13 suspected drug traffickers on Friday during a shootout in a slum in Rio de Janeiro.
The confrontation broke out when officers were greeted by gunfire as they approached where the group were hiding in the bohemian neighborhood of Santa Teresa, according to police spokesman Col. Mauro Fliess.
The cops returned fire, killing 11 at the scene and injuring several others. Police said later Friday that the death toll had increased to 13 after two wounded suspects died in the hospital.
He said that no police were hurt.
Brazilian police shot dead at least 13 suspected drug traffickers on Friday during a shootout in a slum in Rio de Janeiro. Photos of the scene show a pile of bloody bodies in the back of a pick up truck
Brazilian military police search several men during an operation targeting drug traffickers in the Santa Teresa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Feb. 8
Brazilian police block access to the scene of a confrontation between alleged traffickers and a special operations unit in the Santa Teresa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
Officers seized drugs, rifles, guns and ammunition during the anti-drug trafficking operation.
Photos of the scene show a pile of bloody bodies in the back of a pick up truck.
At one point a shot was heard ringing out from a house and moments later two heavily armed officers were seen carrying two bodies shrouded in blood-soaked sheets to the truck.
Another photo, taken by The Associated Press, showed a desperate woman running down a narrow street and the photographer said she was yelling that the police were getting ready to 'execute' people inside a nearby house.
A woman yells that the police is going to execute several alleged traffickers during an operation
A woman carries a baby as she walks past police searching several men, during an operation targeting drug traffickers in the Santa Teresa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro is one of the world's most violent cities with frequent shootouts between police and drug gangs and an annual homicide rate of around 50 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Brazil's new far-right President Jair Bolsonaro campaigned with promises to crackdown on rising crime and said that police who kill criminals should be given medals not face prosecution.
In December, Human Rights Watch said in a report that police killings were at a 'record high' in Rio.
'Military-style security operations that leave a trail of death in poor neighborhoods do not enhance public security,' the report said. 'On the contrary, they make communities fear the police and much less likely to collaborate with the police in the fight against crime.'
'While Rio police sometimes kill people in legitimate self-defense, research from Human Rights Watch and other groups shows that many killings are, in reality, extrajudicial executions,' the report said.
Labor's plan to slash negative gearing will result in thousands of Chinese investors snapping up 'bargain' Australian homes, a property expert claims.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said negative gearing would be restricted to new homes and the capital gains tax discount halved if the ALP wins the federal election.
The existing policy gives housing investors a tax break if they make short-term losses on real estate investments, providing an incentive for property buyers who can thus sustain short-term losses for long-term profits.
A Labor reduction in the tax breaks meant there would be fewer local buyers in the real estate market, and the drop-off in demand could reduce house prices.
Labor's plan to slash negative gearing will cause thousands of Chinese investors to snap up 'bargain' Australian homes
Douglas Driscoll, chief executive of Starr Partners, said it would instead push more property into the hands of overseas buyers
However, Douglas Driscoll, chief executive of Starr Partners, said any such price fall would make the local market more attractive to foreign investors.
'Labor's proposal will create opportunities for foreign buyers looking to capitalise on a "softer" market,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'They are already seeing Australia as a bargain and I'm expecting to see this kind of investment gain further momentum this year.'
Mr Discoll said Australian property buyers would be scared off by negative gearing changes as they wouldn't be able to write off their property losses on tax.
The resulting lower demand would cause prices to 'stagnate', creating a market ripe for mass buying up by overseas investors
China's biggest property website Juawi said last month the country's investors were already eyeing off Australia's market as property prices started to slide last year
The resulting lower demand would cause prices to 'stagnate', creating a market ripe for mass buying by overseas investors.
'As they won't be able to recuperate their losses through negative gearing, they are going to be more reluctant to buy, and perhaps walk away from property altogether,' Mr Driscoll said.
'If our own investors are impeded further, this is likely to lead to more competition from foreign buyers.'
Labor is expected to win the upcoming federal election, and anticipation of the negative gearing changes had been cited as a factor in price downturns in the major markets of Sydney and Melbourne in recent months.
With prices dropping off record highs, foreign buyers - principally Chinese - were expected to come into the local market in big numbers.
China's biggest property website Juawi said last month the country's investors were already eyeing off Australia's market as property prices started to slide.
Juwai's 2019 outlook report said a 'desire to get a bargain while the market is soft' would drive increased investment in Australian homes this year.
An apartment block in Sydney with writing in Mandarin showing it was aimed at Chinese investors, causing uproar
This was combined with China's wealth-per-adult quadrupling over the past six years. Half of all Chinese wealth was invested in property.
'China and India have a burgeoning upper middle class, whose wealth is rapidly growing, and these are the kinds of people looking to invest their assets in attractive overseas property developments,' Mr Driscoll said.
What is negative gearing? Negative gearing refers to the situation where investors make an investment (mostly in property) that loses money in the short term (e.g. loan and related costs are greater than rental income), in the expectation of making capital gains in the future. The investor can deduct any losses associated with the investment from their salary and wage income. For example: James buys a unit as investment property, and his expenses for the property are greater than rental income, resulting in a $10,000 loss. James can use that $10,000 loss to reduce his $130,000 income to $120,000, providing a $3,700 tax subsidy to James. Source: ALP policy platform Advertisement
'When you bring something foreign into any ecosystem, it naturally has an impact. More often than not, it's a detrimental impact.'
Mr Driscoll said 400,000 Australian homes were already owned by overseas investors, and that could more than double to more than a million in coming years.
With increasing numbers of properties in foreign hands, and negative gearing changes turning locals away from real estate, it will become harder than ever for first-home buyers to get on the property ladder.
He said a new Labor government would come under pressure to provide housing for younger buyers.
'At the very core of any Government's objectives is the need to ensure that their citizens are healthy, educated and have a roof over their heads,' he said.
'All of a sudden, if a certain group presents a challenge to that idealism of security, then the government needs to put more stringent measures in place.
'New Zealand and Canada, for instance, have really cracked down on foreign property investment, and have instituted some of the biggest foreign-buyer taxes in the world.
'It is a genuine balancing act, as the government need to ensure prudence, but also ensure that we maintain good relations with some of our biggest trading partners on the global stage.'
The cousin of three Aboriginal boys from the same family who took their lives at the height of the suicide crisis says alcohol and drugs are killing kids, and tearing apart families.
Johnny Divilli, 23, grew up so close to his three male cousins they were more like his brothers.
The tight knit group of four of were all born at the same hospital, before going on to attend the same primary school where they were all in the same class.
But somewhere along the line Mr Divilli's three cousins lost their way. While he went off to 'whitefella' private school, they remained living in the Kimberley.
Mr Divilli told Daily Mail Australia how they saw no future for themselves and one day became so desperate they decided to take their own lives - something he blames on drugs, alcohol and a lack of support.
Johnny Divilli (pictured) grew up in The Outback with a close knit group of three male cousins. But while he went off to boarding school in Perth, over a three year period they all saw no way out other than to commit suicide
Mr Divilli blames drugs, alcohol and a lack of support for the deaths of his three cousins. Since leaving school he has returned to the Kimberley where he works with youths to teach them the ways of their ancestors
'I got a big shock and we have never been able to work out why. They never talked to us about what was wrong,' Mr Divilli said.
'One was 14, one was 15, one was 17. They just had no support and it's a problem in a lot of families out here in the Kimberley.
'It's mainly alcohol and drugs. Parents get drunk on school nights and the kids don't go to school because they have been kept up all night, plus their parents don't care.
'They get no support - most of the kids don't have their parents to talk to, they think nobody loves them and what's the point of living, so they commit suicide.'
From 2012 to 2016, a total of 13 Aboriginal youths committed suicide in The Outback.
One girl who died in March 2016 was only 10 years old.
Last week the findings of a 2017 inquest were handed down, with the coroner Ros Fogliani calling the youth suicides: 'profoundly tragic, individually and collectively'.
Among the other findings of the inquest Ms Fogliani said it was now widely accepted that colonisation had a deleterious effect on an ancient and traditional culture.
Mr Divilli (right) and his mother Rona Charles (centre) claim that a lack of support for Outback communities means that generations of Aboriginals follow the same life path, littered with drug and alcohol abuse, plus domestic violence and sexual assault
Ms Charles believes programs like the one her son (right) runs teaching Aboriginal children the ways of their ancestors are the key to fixing the problem, not the government's 'box-ticking' solutions
Between 2012 and 2016, a total of 13 Aboriginal youths committed suicide in the Kimberley (pictured)
She also said that many youths who took their own lives experienced sexual abuse at the hands of family members, which was often not reported.
THE 13 YOUNG ABORIGINALS WHO TOOK THEIR LIVES: - 19/20 November 2012: 18-year-old man. Violet Valley station - 8 January 2013: 13-year-old girl. Kalumburu - 14/15 February 2013: 12-year-old girl. Wyndham - 7/8 January 2014: 16-year-old boy. Mud Springs Community - 11/12 January 2014: 12-year-old boy. Halls Creek - 26 September 2014: 13-year-old boy. Kununurra - 12 December 2014: 17-year-old boy. Kununurra - 4/5 April 2015: 17-year-old boy. Broome - 7 May 2015: 24-year-old man. Broome - 22 May 2015: 21-year-old man. Halls Creek - 5 January 2015: 20-year-old man. Near Wungu Community - 6 March 2016: 10-year-old girl. Looma Aboriginal Community - 24 March 2016: 23-year-old man. Mud Springs Community. Advertisement
The case of the 10-year-old girl was particularly distressing.
The inquest hearing her death in a remote community came three years after her sister took her own life.
While his cousins grew up in The Outback, Mr Divilli's mother Rona Charles enrolled her son at a boarding school in Perth.
Despite being a 37-hour drive away from her son, she in no way regrets her decision to send him - and her five other children - off to the prestigious Guildford Grammar.
She claims if her children had not gone off to boarding school they too would have grown up surrounded by domestic violence, sexual and substance abuse.
They, like their cousins and peers, may have seen the only way out to be taking their own lives.
'It was important to me that they had every opportunity, because you don't get the same support out in rural areas like ours,' Ms Charles said.
'I grew up in a community in a similar rural community and my parents didn't know how to read or write, so I had to teach myself.
'I wanted them to understand how the western world works, so that they could see things from both sides and get access to the best opportunities.
'They got a better education and have come back to help other people back home.'
Since finishing high school Mr Divilli has joined his mother on her crusade to teach Aboriginal children their lives are worth living.
The best way they have found is to take the kids back to their ancestral roots through traditional dancing, hunting, fishing and stories.
This, the mother and son team say, is far more effective than any government's plan.
The findings of a 2017 inquest were handed down last week, with the coroner Ros Fogliani calling the youth suicides: 'profoundly tragic, individually and collectively' (Stock image)
In one of the worst cases of youth suicide in the Kimberley a 10-year-old girl took her own life after being sexually assaulted. Her death came just three years after her sisters death in similar circumstances (Stock image)
'A lot of the things that people say need to be done are not appropriate for our rural community,' Ms Charles said.
'Imagine how it feels when people come to our area and say: "I've got a big piece of paper here, this is how we're going to run the program".
'We need people to work with us in the community to produce and develop our own programs. We need support so we can be the ones delivering it to our own people.'
The mother and son team say if the right support is not provided things will continue to go around in circles, whether it be drugs, alcohol, domestic violence or suicides.
'For generations we've seen the system fail our communities,' Mr Divilli said.
'So when kids see their parents drunk and abusive, they think that's what it is to be a parent... and so that's exactly what they do when they have their own kids.
'We need a lot of support, for kids to realise they have a chance in life and for parents to learn how to help themselves and their children.'
Crime matriarch Roberta Williams has provided a never-before-seen look into the life of her controversial family during the height of Melbourne's gangland war.
Roberta, the outspoken wife of crime boss Carl, shared images of her family from the early 2000s to Instagram this week after digging out her old photo albums.
Her convicted murderer husband and their daughter Dhakota, then a toddler, feature prominently, as does Carl's trusted right-hand man and infamous killer Andrew 'Benji' Veniamin.
Infamous gangster Carl Williams (right) hugs his young daughter Dhakota (left) in never before seen photos posted on Instagram by the family's matriarch Roberta
A young Dhakota smiles happily in one of the images as she plays with her father Carl's right-hand man Andrew 'Benji' Veniamin (right)
'I miss my life': Of this photo of Carl Williams (left), Andrew 'Benji' Veniamin (centre), George Williams (right) and Dhakota Williams (front), only the teenage girl is still alive
In one image Carl can be seen holding a young Dhakota in his arms as he kisses her on the cheek.
'Daddy's princess,' Roberta captioned the photo.
The image, taken in late-2001 at Dhakota's christening at Melbourne's Crown Casino, could have depicted any father and his daughter.
But the toddler's baptism was by no means a normal one.
Not only did it cost $150,000 and feature popstar Vanessa Amorosi as the major act, the crowd was littered with some of Melbourne's most serious criminals - at a time when the deadliest gangland war Australia has ever seen was being waged.
Chief among them were Williams - who was convicted of murdering four men during the 12-year war - and his trusted right-hand man Veniamin, who's suspected of killing a total of seven people.
One photo shows Dhakota smiling happily as she plays with Veniamin, while another captures the toddler poking her tongue out at the camera as she sits in the hitman's arms.
'Your faces tell the story. How happy we were,' Roberta wrote alongside the photo.
Veniamin features in several more images, firstly alongside the family matriarch.
Veniamin, who was shot dead by fellow crime heavyweight Mick Gatto in 2004, was believed to have been responsible for murdering seven men during Melbourne's 12-year gangland war
''What an amazing team we were. I will love you forever': Roberta Williams (right) poses next to her husband's most trusted adviser Veniamin at daughter Dhakota's christening in late-2001
Another photo from the event shows Veniamin (left) and Danielle Stephens (right), the child of Roberta Williams and her first husband Dean Stephens
Carl Williams kisses his daughter after being granted bail in December 2003, as wife Roberta watches on smiling
'What an amazing team we were. I will love you forever,' Roberta wrote.
Danielle Stephens, the daughter Roberta had with her first husband Dean Stephens, also appeared in the photo album alongside the killer.
'She was your shadow and you loved it. Where you went she was, no matter what, nothing came before her,' the photo was captioned.
Veniamin died on March 23, 2004, after he was shot dead following a struggle with fellow crime heavyweight Mick Gatto.
Gatto was charged with his murder, but later cleared on self-defence grounds.
Also appearing at the extravagant christening was popstar Vanessa Amarosi, who at the time was one of the leading acts in Australia.
Amarossi could be seen in one photo holding a young Dhakota as she sang on-stage at the Casino for the crowd.
Australian popstar Vanessa Amorosi holds a young Dhakota (pictured) as she performs for the large crowd gathered at the $150,000 event, held at Melbourne's Crown Casino
Dhakota controversially returned to the casino last year and was allowed into the exclusive Mahogany Room, despite being aged just 17
Carl and Roberta Williams are pictured outside court during one of his many appearances in the early 2000s
'It was absolutely amazing,' Amorosi told radio station Nova in 2009 of the party.
'They had a room in the casino all done up. I remember during the show thinking no one will get up and dance and if I start singin' bad I'm just gonna get shot.
'I was like, "Let's make sure it's a killer show, guys, or it could be a killer ending".'
The family chose the casino because they believed it had the best security in the state.
Carl and his associates gave the same reasoning for staging secret meetings at the venue until then police commissioner Christine Nixon banned him in April 2004.
Dhakota returned to Crown in 2018 and made headlines for the wrong reasons, after being allowed into the exclusive Mahogany Room - despite only being aged 17.
The teenager posted a photo of herself and a friend inside the gaming room, but the casino was later cleared of any wrongdoing by the gambling authority.
Carl Williams (pictured) was convicted of murdering four men during the 12-year underworld war, but in 2010 he was killed just inside Barwon Prison where he was serving a life sentence
Roberta (left) and Dhakota (right) arrive at the Supreme Court in Melbourne in December 2018
Williams was killed in 2010 while behind bars at Barwon Prison, but the family have continued to make the news since.
Most recently Roberta and Dhakota failed in their bid to keep ownership of the home where Carl and his wife raised their daughter.
The house was given to the Australian Tax Office, who sold it to claw back some of the $959,714 owed to them by Carl's late father George Williams.
George, like his son, had made his fortune from crime - with a major focus on dealing and importing drugs.
Three families are facing the prospect of the cold-blooded killer who executed their father, son, husband and brother soon walking free from prison.
Relatives of each of the three men Berwyn Rees murdered four decades ago were forced to look into his wonky eyes on Friday when they confronted his face in court.
Rees, who has spent 38 years in jail, appeared by audio-visual link before the NSW State Parole Authority (SPA), which has already 'formed an intention' to set the 69-year-old free.
The public gallery in the hearing room within the Sydney West Trial Courts complex at Parramatta was filled with the families of Rees's victims and their friends.
Tracy James, whose father Raymond was shot dead by Rees when she was a toddler, looked up at him on the screen and felt physically ill.
'It's very strange looking at a man that murdered your father and caused so much devastation in so many families,' she said.
This was the second time the group had assembled to learn if the gun-mad murderer would die in jail or be allowed back into the community.
To their frustration, the authority again did not make a final decision on the 69-year-old killer's fate, instead adjourning his case until a date to be fixed.
Three families are facing the prospect of cold-blooded killer Berwyn Rees walking free from prison. Betty Greenfield's son Christopher was shot dead by Rees at a gun shop in Sydney in 1977. She attended his parole hearing on Friday with her daughter Michelle (both pictured)
Tracy James (left) attending the parole hearing for Berwyn Rees, who murdered her father Raymond in 1977. 'This time I've resigned myself to the fact that he's definitely getting out,' she said. 'I've set the bar low, knowing that he's going to be released. It's just when now'
Gun-mad triple murderer Berwyn Rees, now 69, has been called 'one of the most cold-blooded killers ever to enter a New South Wales prison.' His senseless crimes shocked the nation
Anne Haydon (left), whose husband Sergeant Keith Haydon was murdered by Berwyn Rees near Newcastle in 1980, attended Friday's parole hearing with her daughter Kathy (right)
Ms James had come down from Brisbane at her own expense, forking out more than $1,000 for flights and accomodation.
'I can't believe that they've adjourned it again,' she said. 'We shouldn't be in this situation to start with.
'I think the only good thing that came out of this today is he's still in jail.'
Ms James, who was just two when her father was murdered, has been privately warned that Rees might not be in prison much longer.
'This time I've resigned myself to the fact that he's definitely getting out,' she said.
'I've set the bar low, knowing that he's going to be released. It's just when now.'
Ms James received a letter from the SPA in September last year telling her Rees was being considered for release.
She has been receiving letters about Rees's possible parole since his minimum prison term expired about a decade ago and attended his first parole hearing on November 16.
The 44-year-old was joined on Friday by the mother and sister of another Rees victim and the widow and two children of a third.
Rees has been called 'one of the most cold-blooded killers ever to enter a NSW prison.' Two of the men he murdered were shot dead in a gun shop while the third was a policeman.
'I can't believe that they've adjourned it again,' Tracy James (left) said. 'We shouldn't be in this situation to start with. 'I think the only good thing that came out of this today is he's still in jail'
Betty Greenfield is hugged by a supporter at the parole authority hearing for cold-blooded triple killer Berwyn Rees, who shot dead her 26-year-old son Christopher in August 1977
In 1977 Berwyn Rees shot dead Raymond James and Christopher Greenfield at Bondi Junction in Sydney. Mr James's wife Mirjana and their daughter Tracy are pictured left. Mr James and Mirjana are pictured right on their wedding day. Tracy is now 44 and wants Rees to die in jail
Peter Haydon's father Sergeant Keith Haydon was murdered by Berwyn Rees in bushland near Newcastle in 1980. Mr Haydon (pictured) has attended Rees's past two parole hearings
The judge who sentenced him to three life terms for the 'mindless slaughter of three young men' described his crimes as 'wanton and merciless killings'.
As well as the three life sentences, Rees was sentenced to a further 10 years in prison for the malicious wounding of another policeman while trying to evade arrest.
Rees's murders were passionless and marked by the fat loner's obsession with guns.
On August 4, 1977 he walked into a gun shop at Bondi Junction in Sydney's eastern suburbs and shot dead store manager Raymond James and customer Christopher Greenfield.
The men had been ordered to lie on the floor then were executed with shots to the back of the head. They were both 26.
Pictures of Raymond's two-year-old daughter Tracy with her grieving mother Mirjana were splashed across the front pages of newspapers after the murders.
Rees, who had stolen 18 firearms as well as ammunition from the gun shop, went into hiding and was living at a caravan park at Raymond Terrace in the Hunter Valley when he killed again.
Sergeant Keith Haydon, pictured on the day of his wedding to Anne, was responding to reports of gunfire in a forest when he was murdered by Berwyn Rees. Mrs Haydon attended Rees's parole hearing in Parramatta on Friday with the couple's children Kathy and Peter
Raymond James, pictured with his toddler daughter Tracy, was 26 when he was shot in the back of the head by triple murderer Berwyn Rees in 1977. His killer is now seeking parole
On November 24, 1980 police responded to reports by forestry and Telecom workers of a firearm being discharged in bushland at Mount Sugarloaf, about 25km west of Newcastle.
Rees, then 31, had gone to the secluded spot with six handguns and a quantity of ammunition to shoot at cans, as he had done about once a month for three years.
When confronted by Sergeant Keith Haydon, Rees shot him three times in the body with .38 Smith & Wesson revolver he had stolen from the Bondi Junction gun shop.
Rees had then attempted to move Sergeant Haydon's police vehicle but the heroic officer had removed the keys from the ignition. Rees shot the 37-year-old in the back of the head.
After executing Sergeant Haydon, Rees was confronted by Constable Alexander Pietruszka and other police who pulled him over at Beresfield, about 20km away.
Mr Pietruszka told A Current Affair last year that Rees fired at him 'without warning'.
Tracy James was just two when her father Raymond (left) was murdered. 'I had to grow up a bit quicker compared to other kids,' she said. 'It was hard but I guess it was all I knew'. Christopher Greenfield (right) was murdered in a Bondi Junction gun shop alongside Tracy's father
Sergeant Keith Haydon, 37, had been a police officer for 16 years when he was murdered by Berwyn Rees near Newcastle in 1980. He was shot three times in the body and once in the head
'The first bullet went through my hair,' the now retired officer said.
'The second bullet flicked my ear and because I was turning sideways the third bullet... luckily hit the rib and bounced out rather than in.'
The young officer had been able to fire two shots back at Rees, who had never shown the slightest emotion while trying to kill him.
'This bloke was nothing,' Mr Pietruszka said. 'I can't explain to somebody how cold he was, how expressionless, just - just evil.'
THE HORRIFIC CRIMES OF BERWYN REES August 4, 1977: Berwyn Rees shoots dead Raymond James and Christopher Greenfield inside a gun shop at Bondi Junction in Sydney's eastern suburbs November 24, 1980: After three years in hiding, Rees is confronted by Sergeant Keith Haydon in bushland at Mount Sugarloaf, near Newcastle. He shoots Sergeant Haydon dead. Later that day Rees shoots Constable Alexander Pietruszka at nearby Beresfield. Constable Pietruszka survies and Rees and is arrested April 13, 1981: Justice Colin Begg sentences Rees, 31, to three life terms for the murders of Mr James, Mr Greenfield and Sergeant Haydon and 10 years for the malicious wounding of Constable Pietruszka September 28, 2018: The NSW State Parole Authority forms an intention to grant Rees parole at a private hearing February 8, 2019: The NSW State Parole Authority to hold a public hearing and determine whether Rees, now 69, should be released Advertisement
Rees was arrested that day and has been in custody ever since.
He pleaded guilty to the three murders and malicious wounding before Justice Colin Begg who sentenced Rees to life in prison in April 1981.
Justice Begg told Rees he seemed to have had 'an obsession with firearms since you were small child' and said 'you have lived a somewhat lonely and solitary life.'
Mr Pietruszka believed Rees was still a very dangerous man.
'This man didn't kill these three people,' he said. 'He executed them.
'I believe that somewhere deep inside him, there is still evil lurking.'
Sergeant Haydon's widow Anne told A Current Affair she was convinced Rees would kill again if released.
'If he gets out, if he gets in a corner, he'll kill again,' she told the program.
Ms James was stunned when she received the letter from the parole authority to state it intended recommending release.
'I think I was in shock,' she said. 'I still am.
'I'm just in shock that they're planning to grant him parole.'
Ms James had to grow up without her father and her memories of him are largely confined to photographs and stories told by other family members.
'I had to grow up a bit quicker compared to other kids,' she said. 'It was hard but I guess it was all I knew.'
Constable Alexander Pietruszka, pictured being treated by ambulance officers, was lucky to escape with his life after being shot in the stomach by Berwyn Rees who was resisting arrest
A spokeswoman for the State Parole Authority said the body had formed an intention to grant Rees parole at a private hearing on September 28 last year.
'If the offender is granted parole he will be subject to strict conditions set by the SPA for the remainder of his life,' the spokeswoman said.
'SPA took particular note of the offenders' prison performance, program participation to address offending behaviour and suitable post-release plans.'
Ms James said Rees was highly intelligent - completing a Bachelor of Arts Degree with a double major while incarcerated - but cold and calculating. He had shown no remorse for his crimes.
Sergeant Keith Haydon, who was killed by Berwyn Rees, in uniform beside his police car
'All he's doing is saying exactly what they want to hear so he gets let out,' she said.
Ms James began a petition on change.org to keep Rees locked up; as of Friday afternoon it had almost 25,000 signatures.
'What I would like to see is justice prevail for a change,' she said.
'As far as I'm concerned, originally it was three life sentences plus 10 years for the attempted murder.
'Thirty eight years is nowhere near enough time. That's an average 10 years per offence.
'They were cold blooded executions. They were shot in the back of the head at point blank range. It was all premeditated, it was all planned.
'This grub murdered three people. He's also attempted to murder another policeman.
'He gave them all life sentences. He gave each of the family members life sentences and I think it's only just and fair that he receives exactly the same thing.'
The NSW Commissioner of Corrective Services, Peter Severin, opposes Rees being released.
Israeli student Aiia Maasarwe was allegedly raped and bludgeoned with a hammer before being set on fire.
Daily Mail Australia has been told the horrifying alleged details of the 21-year old's terrifying last moments.
The revelations come as Ms Maasarwe's father Saeed considers taking action against the university where his daughter lived because of the 'poor lighting and security' near the accommodation and in the surrounding streets.
Aiia Maasarwe was allegedly murdered with a hammer by wannabe rapper Cody Herrmann
Codey Herrmann (pictured) was charged over the murder of Aiia Maasarwe
Codey Herrman upon his arrest by homicide squad detectives last month
Ms Maasarwe's body was found half-naked near the Polaris Shopping Centre, in the north Melbourne suburb of Bundoora, last month after she was attacked while walking home the night before.
She had moved to Melbourne on a one-year exchange program to study at La Trobe University.
Codey Herrmann, 20, of Bundoora, has been charged with the rape and murder of Ms Maasarwe.
High-profile criminal lawyer George Balot, of Balot Reilly Criminal Lawyers, said he had offered Ms Maasarwe's family pro bono compassionate legal assistance to help them understand the criminal justice process in Victoria.
'It was modestly in line with the great compassion and solidarity exhibited by the Australian public. Her father was grateful for my support and the support of the wider community,' he said.
Mr Balot said Saeed Maasarwe had expressed dismay with the safety and lighting in the streets adjoining the Bundoora campus where his daughter was killed.
Aiia Maasarwe's sister Noor has taken to social media to speak of her heartbreak at losing her sister
Aiia Maasarwe and her sister Noor in a photo posted on Instagram this week
Aiia Maasarwe had only been in Melbourne a matter of months when she was allegedly murdered
'He thought she would be safe living in a lodge recommended by the university. He thought she would be safe walking the streets adjoining the university and lodges nearby,' Mr Balot said. 'Little did he know about the lack of lighting in those streets and the danger that presented itself and the tragedy that followed.'
Mr Balot said he was working hard to explain to Mr Maasarwe Victoria's justice system, which can often see trials pushed back more than a year.
'Such delay may be seen as unacceptable for families of victims of crime. The delay can only be resolved by additional funding by government for additional judicial appointments,' he said.
'One can only imagine the frustration that the delay causes victims of crime.'
High-profile criminal lawyer George Balot is assisting the family of Aiia Maasarwe, who was allegedly raped and bludgeoned with a hammer before being set on fire
Mr Balot said he anticipated hundreds of victim impact statements would be compiled by family and friends of Ms Maasarwe.
Noor Maasarwe's, Aiia's sister, took to Instagram again this week to speak of her pain at losing her beloved sister.
She had previously taken to social media to rail against male brutality, writing that 'violence against women is not a women issue, it is a men issue'.
Recalling the place and exact time she heard the shocking news, Noor told her followers of the frantic moments upon fearing her sister was in trouble.
'In here I was praying and hoping that ... that woman is not Aiia,' she wrote. 'In here is where I saw the news ... where I saw her phone ... I saw her shoes.'
Noor said she had been counting down the days to visit her sister when she was horribly murdered.
'In here is where I had a break down ... In here where I was broken ... as if I were made of glass,' she wrote.
Noor said she would fondly remember going to the library with her sister.
'I will try my best to remember ... to remember her while we were there, the good time we had together, her smiling, her whispering,' she wrote.
Daily Mail Australia revealed last month that Hermann had penned a series of disturbing rap lyrics that were found in his abandoned home.
The Bundoora house where Cody Herrmann penned rap lyrics before allegedly killing Aiia Maasarwe
Cody Herrmann signed off the rap lyrics with 'MC Codez'. They were found under a filthy blanket by Daily mail Australia at his Bundoora home
Tucked under a blanket in a filthy bedroom of a Bundoora home, in Melbourne's north-east, were a collection of poorly written lyrics seemingly scribbled on old shopping dockets.
'I always got your Back Jack Dont believe me watch me punch on in the city off my chops knockin (sic) the lights out of any heavy by myself, bringing in empty bullets to impress at show an tell,' he wrote.
He will appear in court later this year.
Kangana also schooled Alia and said that her success did not mean anything if she could not raise her voice.
Mumbai: Kangana Ranaut has once again slammed Alia Bhatt for not supporting "Manikarnika", a film which she says promotes "women empowerment and nationalism".
Kangana's response comes after Alia on Thursday said she will apologise to the actor on personal level if she was upset with her for not supporting "Manikarnika".
Kangana, in an earlier interview, had said while she had turned up for the screenings of "Dangal", "Secret Superstar" and "Raazi", Alia and Aamir Khan did not attend the screening of her film.
To which, Alia said, "I hope she doesn't dislike me and I don't think she dislikes me. I don't think I have done anything intentionally to upset her. If I have, I will apologise to her on a personal level."
When a leading daily asked Kangana about Alia's statement, the actor said, "...Hope she understands the true meaning of success and her responsibilities. Nepotism gang life is simply restricted to give and take favours. Hope she rises above that."
Kangana had earlier claimed that the industry had ganged up against her for her "nepotism" comment but she was not afraid of bullies.
A father-of-two who has covered 99 per cent of his body with tattoos has no regrets.
Brett Cross has spent about 750 hours under the needle to tattoo his body from head to toe - burning a hole of $90,000 in his pocket along the way.
But there is no turning back for the 42-year-old who serves as a reminder to never judge a book by a cover.
The father from Braidwood, in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, said his tattoo addiction started after he got his first one as a romantic gesture for his wife Dorothy.
'When I was about 25, almost 20 years ago, I wanted my wife's name on the small of my back and I thought ''I just want one tattoo'' but once I got it I wanted another one and another one and then it became an addiction,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
Brett Cross (pictured with seven-month-old Bastien and 12-year-old Anamae) has spent about 750 hours under the needle to tattoo his body from head to toe
'The tattoo artist said if you're going to keep getting tattoos go big or go home because you'll look a bit silly with little tattoos on you.'
'So we went big.'
There is only one part of his body that remains uncovered - and it's quite a sensitive and special area.
Mr Cross said he is brave enough to ink the area but is more concerned about how it would affect his friendship with tattoo artist George Siatos who has been tattooing him for 18-years.
'I do want to get it tattooed but the boss said not yet,' Mr Cross said.
'We're close but not that close,' he joked.
The addiction started simply for Mr Cross who wanted to get his first tattoo as a romantic gesture for his wife Dorothy
While some would argue the sensitive tattoo would be Mr Cross' most painful ink yet, he was quick to disagree.
'I still remember my first tattoo as being my hardest and nowadays I could sit through it,' he said.
'They could probably saw my arm off and I'd sit through it.'
Aside from his first tattoo, Mr Cross said his palms caused the most pain.
When asked if Mr Cross regretted any of his tattoos, he responded cheerfully: 'none, I love them'.
'I'm sure sometimes it makes people think poorly of me when they see me but when they speak to me it becomes a whole different story,' he said.
'They're like ''oh he's so good'' and I think sometimes I get given a bit more attention then I should.'
'If I didn't have tattoos they'd just see me as another normal person on the street.'
When asked if Mr Cross regretted any of his tattoos, he responded cheerfully: 'none, I love them'
Mr Cross loves the attention his bright and colourful skin brings and wants people to look at his artwork.
'With people staring at me, I know exactly what they're staring at and it's all good and well. I love it,' he said.
Most recently, Mr Cross tattooed his seven-month-old son's name, Bastien, on his back, over some background.
Also the father of 12-year-old Anamae, Mr Cross is adamant people don't judge his role as a father figure because of his ink.
'I think everyone sees it as cool,' he said.
Mr Cross said he would respect his children's choice to join the tattoo club, permitting they didn't choose anything offensive.
Mr Cross is adamant people don't judge his role as a father figure because of his ink
'I wouldn't mind at all (if his kids were tattooed) as long as they've got their life in order,' he said.
'I don't want them tattooing anything offensive.'
Mr Cross has an anime character on his forehead, stars on his nose and flowers on his arms - among a range of vivid designs.
'I was born in the year of the dragon so I've got a few dragons on me,' he said.
'I love anime characters so I've got a few of them on me as well.'
'I love anything that's bright and colourful.'
'It takes longer under the needle. Because you're basically doing it black and grey and then you're going over it with colour so it takes sometimes two or three times longer.'
A Chinese man has suffered extreme burns to most of his body after his wife allegedly doused him in petrol and then set him on fire in his sleep.
Police were called to a house in Melbourne's west at 6am on Wednesday after reports a man had suffered serious burns to his face, hands and feet.
It's believed the couple's 11-year-old son woke up to the piercing sound of his burning father screaming, before emergency services arrived at the home.
The man was hosed down in the stairwell, before being sent to Melbourne's Alfred Hospital where he remains in a critical condition.
An investigation is underway at a property in Melbourne's Macleod after a fire erupted earlier this morning
Burnt bedding (pictured above) was recovered from the Wattle Road property and is being used as evidence in the police investigation
The wife, 36, is under police guard in hospital.
The 11-year-old boy is in a stable condition after being sent to Austin Hospital for observation after inhaling smoke.
The woman is currently being held in police custody as an investigation is underway.
Dramatic images from the scene show the smoldered remains of a mattress dumped on the front lawn.
The fire has been deemed as suspicious, however no charges have since been made.
The motivations of the accused currently remain unclear.
Police investigations are currently underway after deeming the incident as suspicious, and have urged the public to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 with any information
Police are urging members of the public to come forward with any information on the incident by calling Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
This comes as Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report, 1 in 16 men in Australia have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by a current or previous partner.
For resources and more information on seeking domestic violence help, head to Lifeline on 13 11 14 or 1800Respect at 1800 737 732.
A spokesman for Victoria Police told Daily Mail Australia no one had been charged over the incident as of 5pm.
A desperate search is underway for a woman who went missing after a night out in Melbourne.
Hayley Dent, 28, has not been seen since leaving a venue in Prahan at 2.50am on Sunday.
Ms Dent did not have her phone or wallet with her, and her disappearance is out of character, according to friends.
A desperate search is underway for a woman who went missing after a night out in Melbourne
Police have released her photo, and said she is described as being about 155cm tall, of a medium build, with a fair complexion and long blonde hair.
John Young, a close family friend, said her family was 'sick' with worry, The Herald Sun reported.
'She was getting ready and was her usual, happy self. Hayley has never not been in touch with us for this long, or ever,' he said.
'Even when she was overseas, Hayley checked in with her mum every day to make sure she was okay and doing well. We just want her home and home safe.'
'I've known Hayley for a very long time and this is very out of character,' said another friend of the missing woman in a social media post appealing for help.
'My thoughts are with you guys hopefully she is home soon,' said another worried friend.
Anyone who has seen Ms Dent or who has information is urged to contact Pakenham Police Station on (03) 5945 2500.
Its latest recruitment videos have been at pains to tell potential recruits that it is fine to cry, pray and show their emotions.
But soldiers were once attracted to the military by videos showing battle-hardened warriors dodging enemy fire and running in dangerous terrain.
Other videos from the past feature scenes of tanks driving through the mud a stark contrast to the Army's controversial new 1.6million 'belonging campaign'.
The campaign's cost is 107 times the 14,931 annual salary of a soldier in the Army during training, and 85 times that of a 18,488-a-year private upon finishing training.
The new adverts have been made by an achingly trendy agency called Karmarama, which won the Army marketing account from J Walter Thompson in October 2015.
An Army clip in 2014 showed heavily armed soldiers on the frontline in war-ravaged countries
This recruitment video from 2014 focused on combat, with a huge explosion seen above
Karmarama is behind the series of adverts for car insurance website Confused.com featuring James Corden, one of which features him trying to pull off a parallel park.
Strong links between Karmarama's chief creative officer Nik Studzinski and top military marketing staff are said to have helped the agency win the Army contract.
Mr Studzinski, 47, who lives in a 1.6million terraced home in Hackney, East London, created award-winning work for the Army with Saatchi & Saatchi in the 1990s.
Karmarama, based in Farringdon, won Campaign of The Year at the Recruitment Marketing Awards last July for its 2017 'This is Belonging' adverts for the Army.
The firm, which is one of 20 agencies owned by 36billion-a-year consulting giant Accenture Interactive, claims to be 'the UK's most progressive creative agency'.
Karmarama, which has a team of 260 staff and was founded in 2000, has also produced adverts for the BBC, Confused, Halfords, Honda, Just Eat and Unilever.
In 2001, a Royal Marine Commando advert told potential recruits not to join unless they could survive gruelling physical exercises
The video showed muddy troops looking visibly exhausted and pained as they ran through woodland and waded through swamps before swimming through a tight gap underwater
The company's office entrance has a neon arrow with the sign 'good karma this way', and it claims on its website that the phrase 'guides the way we work and behave'.
Karmarama started off its Army adverts with the 2016 'Become a Better You' campaign, before creating its new series based on the 'desire to belong'.
It says in its blurb on the campaign: 'A decision to join The Army is a decision to change your life, so we had to look beyond traditional advertising to reach our goals.
'Qualitative interviews, quantitative research and data analysis revealed a key powerful emotional driver that attracted people to the Army beyond skills and adventure.
'The notion of belonging to a brotherhood and sisterhood, of experiencing powerful bonds that support you, give you purpose and encourage you to grow.'
The company also worked on transforming the Army website into a 'conversion-led, mobile-first digital hub where potential recruits could take bespoke paths'.
In 1992 the Army used the example of a soldier given the name 'Frank' who fought alongside his comrades and travelled the world
The white male was followed around as he fought on the battlefield, windsurfed, skied and abseiled down a cliff
Karmarama was previously in hot water over a Costa Coffee advertising campaign that 'seven out of ten' coffee lovers prefer its drinks, after a complaint by Starbucks.
Starbucks claimed the poll only applied to cappuccinos and not all products, but the Advertising Standards Authority cleared Costa and Karmarama of wrongdoing.
The trendy approach to Army recruitment videos is a major contrast to clips showing combat scenes released as recently as 2014.
These displayed heavily armed soldiers on the frontline in war-ravaged countries and hiding from the enemy in camouflage.
In 1992 the Army used the example of a soldier given the name 'Frank' who fought alongside his comrades and travelled the world.
The white male was followed around as he fought on the battlefield, windsurfed, skied and abseiled down a cliff.
Karmarama, whose chief creative officer Nik Studzinski (left) helped the agency win the Army contract, has offices in London (right) with a neon arrow and the sign 'good karma this way'
Nearly a decade later, in 2001, a Royal Marine Commando advert told potential recruits not to join unless they could survive gruelling physical exercises.
The video showed muddy troops looking exhausted as they ran through woodland and waded through swamps before swimming through a tight gap underwater.
As it showed different sequences the clip said 'what's your limit?' followed by 'don't even fill in the form'.
The recruitment video ended with the caption: '99.9 per cent need not apply.' Military sources said it did not work because many people did not apply as a result.
A century ago there was the unforgettable moustached face of Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War in 1914, his stern face and pointing finger above the words 'Your country needs YOU!'
Since 1993 Army adverts and its online presence were accompanied by the tagline Be the Best with crossed swords.
Karmarama is behind the series of adverts for Confused.com featuring James Corden (above)
The firm has worked with the car insurance website as well as many other well-known brands
A recent rebranding exercise to replace this because it was deemed 'elitist' was only ditched by new Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson after a furore.
An Army source said: 'While people may think they want aggressive macho adverts that look like the Call of Duty to attract them to the Army, it does not always work.'
Critics have warned that the new adverts produced by Karmarama could undermine Britain's fighting strength and demonstrate weakness.
The radio, TV and online adverts seek to address concerns potential recruits might have about revealing their anxieties, practising their religion or revealing their sexuality.
The adverts, all voiced by serving soldiers, are part of the Army's 'belonging campaign' which aims to diversify the service by widening its target base.
Five short clips which were leaked online on Tuesday before their official launch showed a crying soldier, troops comforting each other, and soldiers praying in-between training.
WHAT IF I GET EMOTIONAL? This 40-second video shows soldiers comforting each other on the front line and ends with a soldier crying. The voiceover of the serving soldier says: 'It feels like, as a man, you can never express your emotions. I thought joining the Army would be a thousand times worse. That any sign of emotion would be a sign of weakness. 'But once you are in, you realise no one is a machine. The Army is family.'
Troops who are gay, female and Muslim are the chosen voices for the campaign. Each video tells the story of someone who began believing the army was not the right place for them, but ends with them realising it was the ideal choice.
One video features a Muslim recruit saying he feared he wouldn't be given a chance to pray, before concluding: 'The army embraces the fact you have come from a different faith.'
Another features a gay medic describing wanting to join the Army after his brother served in Afghanistan, and revealing that 'within days' he was 'more than confident' about being himself.
In the video, he says: 'I'm not afraid to talk about having a boyfriend. I thought I'd have to hide it, but once you've done it you think: 'Why did I have to make it such a big thing for so long?'
Yesterday however, the head of the Army was forced to defend the adverts amid criticism from ex-troops who said they made the force look 'weak' and 'soft' because of 'PC madness'.
General Sir Nick Carter admitted the Army was not fully manned and that to boost numbers the military's recruitment campaign had to better reflect the demography of the UK.
CAN I PRACTISE MY FAITH? The 60-second video shows a Muslim soldier taking time out of an exercise to pray. The Muslim recruit says: 'The Army embraces the fact you have come from a different faith. Even on exercise, there's always a quiet moment to go into a cabin...and do your prayers there. 'My faith is such a part of me, that doesn't change when I put on a uniform.'
He said in Britain today there are 25 per cent fewer white 16 to 25-year-old males, who formed the force's traditional recruitment base. This had forced a rethink of how to address a personnel shortage.
Sir Nick told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Combat ethos and fighting power remain the British Army's highest priority post-Iraq and Afghanistan, and I can't remember a time in my career when we've had a more combat-hardened Army.
'But what this campaign is about, frankly, is a recognition that we don't have a fully manned Army at the moment, that the demography of our country has changed, and that we need to reach out to a broader community in order to man that Army with the right talent.'
Sources close to Mr Williamson said he believed that for the Armed Forces to be the best it needed to appeal to all backgrounds.
A source said: 'He believes our Armed Forces are the best in the world and that to be the best we need to appeal to and recruit people from all backgrounds across the UK who bravely want to serve their country.'
Army sources said the 'teaser adverts' were a product of market research and aimed at a specific target audience that they were struggling to recruit.
WILL I BE LISTENED TO? The 40-second clip shows a woman deciding to join the military after working a normal civilian job. It shows her on the battlefield and her leading a team of 30 after she is commissioned as an officer. She says: 'Men at work would often talk over me, I felt like I didn't have a voice. So I decided to go for it and I joined the Army. It feels good to finally have my voice heard.'
A serving soldier said: 'I have seen people kill people and cry at the same time. Some people see their friends chop their friends chopped in front of them some people cry.'
But others said the 'soft' adverts risked neglecting those recruits most likely to sign up and want to fight wars.
Former corporal Brian Wood, who was awarded the Military Cross for outstanding bravery during a bloody firefight in Iraq, said: 'We are showing weakness to the enemy.
'People who join the military do so to serve and protect, not worry about being gay, praying and being emotional. PC madness.'
Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded forces in Afghanistan, said: 'We should be projecting an image of rough, tough troops ready to fight, not people who are worried about if someone will listen to them or whether they can pray or not.
'They may be important but we also need to think about potential enemies.'
CAN I BE GAY? The 40-second video begins with two men chatting at a bar then jumps to uniformed men in a warzone. A soldier rests his hand on another's shoulder. A gay Army medic says: 'I was really worried about whether I would be accepted, but within days I was more than confident about being who I was. I'm not afraid to talk about having a boyfriend.'
He added: 'The Army has two priorities, to fight and to deter, and a series of moves within the army, imposed by political correctness by civil servants undermines the deterrence effect of the army.
'Soldiers have got to be tough, they have got to be rough and they have got to be prepared for action. If they are not they are not going to be effective soldiers.'
Retired army officer Major General Tim Cross said the army was 'really struggling' with recruitment and should not be trying to be 'jolly nice to people'.
He said he was in favour of recruiting from a broader base to boost the number of soldiers, but stressed they must be able to deliver high-intensity fighting power capable of 'duffing up the Queen's enemies'.
He said: 'The concern, I think, for a lot of people - and it's an understandable concern and to some degree I have some concern as well - is that you end up with an Army that's not capable of doing what you want to do and when you send it away on operations it's not able to deliver.
'So we must ensure that we reach out to people, we must ensure that everybody knows that they have an opportunity of joining the British armed forces and joining the Army in particular, but we are not going to be soft and we are not going to be nice to people.'
DO I HAVE TO BE A SUPERHERO? The video begins with a slim man working in a bar, then jumps to a scene of muscly men carrying weights and grunting. During the 30-second clip, the slim man wearing glasses gets progressively fitter and works in a team to get the job done. The former barman says: 'I kind of thought everyone was going to be a super-fit machine. 'I started off slow because obviously I was unfit, it was a struggle, but everyone in your troop helps out.'
But others disagreed and said it was right that the army appeal to potential recruits from other demographics and just because they cried did not make them a formidable soldier.
Former Army officer Johnny Mercer said: 'Change of tack in army recruiting is easy to knock, but (we) mustn't hammer the Army for not hitting targets and then criticise them for research-led recruitment efforts. Proof is in the pudding.'
A century ago there was the unforgettable moustached face of Lord Kitchener in 1914, his stern face and pointing finger above the words 'Your country needs YOU!'
The Conservative MP told Sky News: 'Is the army going soft? No of course it is not. We should get behind them and get on with it.'
The wider 'belonging' campaign was launched early last year and the army said it has helped recruit tens of thousands of soldiers so far.
But the military is still suffering from a recruitment crisis, with the Army running at more than 30 per cent short of its annual recruitment target according to a report last year.
The size of the regular Army has plummeted from 159,100 in 1980 to 83,561 in 2017, official figures show.
The campaign comes just weeks after plans to scrap the Army's 'be the best' slogan for being 'dated, elitist and non-inclusive' were halted by Mr Williamson.
Sir Nick said 'Be the best' remained the Army's 'institutional slogan' but the current advertising campaign focused on notions of 'belonging and team-building'.
A sign written completely in Mandarin out the front of a new $35 million apartment complex has been covered up with black garbage bags and tape, just a day after it sparked controversy.
The large sign out the front of the recently completed apartments on Cliff Road in Epping, in Sydney's north, caused a stir over the weekend for being completely written in a foreign language.
Developers of the five-storey apartment block admitted the sign and other symbolism inside the complex was a deliberate tactic to target Chinese investors, claiming it made the building more 'spiritual'.
A sign written completely in Mandarin outside a $35 million apartment complex has been covered up after it sparked fury over the weekend
The large sandstone construction was named after a Chinese centre of educational excellence, Han Ling Yuan, in the hope to create a 'spiritual' feel
'This is using our schools to sell apartments to people who do not speaking our language; it is offensive,' Cr Lorraine Wearne said.
'It really bothers me and clearly bothers residents in Epping.'
The council approved an application for the sign to be installed with Chinese characters, but specified it should not be visible from the street.
A spokesperson for the council told Daily Mail Australia they had not covered up the sign.
'Council is continuing its investigation into this matter and will consider what action is necessary at the conclusion of its investigation,' a spokesman said.
Nearby resident Kate Chivers was angered by the sign, suggesting a crude message to Australians could be written on it with no-one's knowledge.
Parramatta Council has launched an investigation into the sign, and one councilor labelled it 'offensive'
While the sign at the front of the building had been covered up, Mandarin symbols at the doors to the complex can still be seen
The series of enormous apartment blocks in Epping, north of Sydney, targeting Chinese buyers
'Every time we look up the street we are greeted with this glaring sign in Chinese. As far as I'm concerned the sign could say 'stuff you Aussies'.
The complex sits in the federal seat of Bennelong, where more than 20 per cent of residents have Chinese ancestry - making it the dominant ethnic group.
Also included as part of attempts by developers to make the apartment block more appealing to overseas buyers is a large courtyard with a yin and yang symbol and a traditional fish pond.
It came as one local resident who has lived in the neighbourhood for the past 20 years told Daily Mail Australia they were left feeling 'uncomfortable' by being unable to read the sign.
'I have travelled to China and Hong Kong a lot and have never had an issue, because all the street signs are in Mandarin and English,' the woman said.
More apartment blocks appear set to pop up right across the road, with houses surrounded by temporary fencing and marked for demolition
Its close proximity to schools and universities, as well as public transport access to the city, has made Epping a hub for overseas investment
'But my issue with that sign is it's completely in Mandarin and I looked at it and thought: 'I don't know what that says'.
'If it's courtesy in China to also have English on signs, why isn't it the same here?
'If it says 'happiness' or something that's fine, put it underneath so I know and feel more comfortable.'
A quick look around the area revealed that the covered up sign out the front of the apartment complex isn't the only one not to be written English.
Billboards at the front of other already completed unit blocks in the quiet residential street are covered in Mandarin symbols.
On one a real estate agent appeals to Asian buyers as a priority using symbols on the upper half of the sign, before copying the message into English as an afterthought.
A quick look around the area reveals the sign out the front of the apartment complex isn't the only one not to be written English
On another sign nearby a real estate agent appeals to Asian buyers as a priority using symbols on the upper half of the sign, before copying the message into English as an afterthought
Businesses in one of the main retail precincts in the suburb have also followed suit, displaying their names on shop fronts with symbols and also English.
Parramatta Council has launched an investigation into the sign, with one councilor labeling it 'offensive' and calling for English to be added.
The building was named by developers Arise Constructions after an ancient Chinese centre of educational excellence, Han Ling Yuan, The Daily Telegraph reports.
A spokesman defended the company's decision to leave off an English translation - drawing a connection with the complex's close proximity to education institutions.
'There are lots of high ranking schools in the Epping area and that is why we put the name on the project,' John Zhang said.
'It is spiritual. It is a wish for people who stay in these apartments to have a good education. Most of the clients are local Chinese.'
Clearly targeting international tenants and investors, a local real estate agent said many of those who have already snapped up the units were from overseas.
Several other businesses in the area hang non-English signage out the front of their stores
This business listed their shop name first in Asian symbols before also writing it in English
She said the proximity of the one, two and three bedroom units - which will sell for up to $1.5 million each - to schools, university and public transport had made them hot property.
'You're in the school zone with both primary and public schools nearby,' the agent said.
'A lot of people from China are buying and coming over with their kids or sending their kids over.
'Also students at (Macquarie) University are often looking to rent because it's close to trains and buses too.'
And it seems that the Gondon Elysee block is only the beginning, with more large scale developments set to spring up alongside it in the area.
Houses directly opposite the apartments and on neighbouring streets have been recently snapped up by developers, with temporary fencing signaling imminent construction.
A beauty queen and part-time law student who claims she suffered third degree burns when police threw a 'flash' grenade during a drug raid has had her charges downgraded.
Felicia D'Jamirze, 28, was sleeping inside her Susan River home, near Hervey Bay in Queensland, with her suspected bikie ex-boyfriend Dean O'Donnell, 35, in February when police raided the house.
The former Miss Australia International and Miss Tourism Queen Australia was charged with 'ice' trafficking, but on Wednesday the two charges were downgraded to drug production in the Brisbane Supreme Court, The Courier Mail reported.
Felicia D'Jamirze, 29, was sleeping inside her Susan River home, near Hervey Bay in Queensland in February when police raided the house
She claims police threw a 'flash' grenade, leaving her with horrific third degree burns
The police raid was conducted on a number of homes in the area and officers allegedly discovered 2kg of the drug ice, meth oil and steroids in the house where D'Jamirze and O'Donnell were sleeping.
Police also allegedly uncovered seven high-powered illegal weapons and two silencers.
O'Donnell was also charged with drug trafficking and weapons offences.
D'Jamirze said she suffered horrific burns to her face and hands after a grenade exploded during the raid and she spent a number of weeks in hospital.
She is continuing to recover in Sydney while on bail.
The former Miss Australia International and Miss Tourism Queen Australia was charged with 'ice' trafficking, but on Wednesday the two charges were downgraded
D'Jamirze said she suffered horrific burns to her face and hands after a grenade exploded during the raid and she spent a number of weeks recovering in hospital
On Wednesday, the court heard the prosecution case was based on hidden cameras in the home.
D'Jamirze's lawyer Chris Ford said it comes as no surprise to him the charges were downgraded.
He said the make-up artist plans to sue the Queensland Police Service for damages.
In February, Mr Ford told Daily Mail Australia police treated the raid like a 'military operation,' which was 'entirely unnecessary'.
'There was a high level of both physical and electronic surveillance. The police must have known my client was sleeping in a confined area when they tossed the stun grenade into her bedroom,' he said at the time.
On Wednesday, the court heard the prosecution case was based on hidden cameras in the home
HMV will be profitable by the end of the year despite having lost money for almost a decade, said its new owner.
Doug Putman, the entrepreneur who heads up Sunrise Records, told Retail Week magazine it would return to profitability by overhauling its website, improving customer service and selling more vinyl records.
Closing down: HMV is shutting 27 stores, including its flagship on Oxford Street in London
He is also shutting 27 HMV stores, including its flagship on Oxford Street in London, which was called His Master's Voice when it was opened in 1921 by composer Sir Edward Elgar.
Asked when HMV would become profitable, Putman, 34, said: 'By the end of the year.'
HMV made an 8.7million loss in 2017.
It may not be a medical term than rolls off the tongue but for an estimated six million Britons plantar fasciitis pronounced fash-ee-eye-tis is impossible to ignore. Its the most common cause of heel pain, responsible for at least 80 per cent of cases and can leave sufferers unable to walk or even stand.
But increasing numbers are now benefiting from a most unlikely treatment radiotherapy, which is normally associated with blasting away tumour cells in cancer patients.
Although the option is still not in widespread use, one pioneering NHS doctor is offering it to patients in much lower doses than is used to attack cancer.
Patients undergoing the new treatment have the affected area blasted by X-Rays
The new treatment could provide relief to 80 per cent of patients, new research claims
Research suggests the ten-minute targeted treatment soothes discomfort in 80 per cent of patients with plantar fasciitis, which is caused by a ligament running along the bottom of the foot becoming inflamed. It has been discovered that the X-rays used in radiotherapy at a tenth of the strength used to treat cancer dampen down these swollen tissues.
About one person in ten develops plantar fasciitis at some time in their life and, although it is most common in people aged between 40 and 60, it can occur at any age.
Now, Dr Richard Shaffer, consultant clinical oncologist at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, has become the first specialist in the UK to offer radiotherapy to patients with the condition, with outstanding results. He says: Radiotherapy is a good treatment. We use it for cancer at the moment but there are other things we can use it for as long as we are very aware of the risks versus benefits.
About eight in ten heel-pain sufferers get better using ice, heat or over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medicines, creams or gels.
A fifth have injections of the steroid cortisone, although any relief they get from this lasts only a couple of months.
Surgery to slice through the plantar facia ligament to ease pain has a success rate of only about 60 per cent.
Dr Shaffer first used radiotherapy to treat more than 400 patients with Dupuytrens contracture, also called trigger finger or claw hand. This condition leads to one or more fingers becoming permanently bent in a flexed position due to problems with the hand ligaments. Later, he came across research on the role of X-rays in treating plantar fasciitis.
A 2016 study in Radiation Oncology, by scientists at Saarland University Hospital in Germany, found that patients experienced significantly lower pain after radiotherapy. On a scale of one to 100 where 100 is the maximum pain they could feel most saw scores decline by over 40 points in the three months following treatment.
Guidance from the Royal College of Radiologists says radiotherapy can be used in plantar fasciitis if patients have had it more than six months and not got better with standard treatment.
Dr Shaffer, who carries out the treatment privately at a cost of 3,000 per foot at clinic chain Genesis Care, says: Ideally we will have patients approaching us at an earlier stage when radiotherapy will be even more effective.
Kathy Lloyd, 62, had the treatment after years of foot and ankle problems. The financial services worker from Surrey ended up with agonising plantar fasciitis after five bouts of surgery for a broken left ankle.
I could only get around with crutches or a mobility scooter even lightly pressing my left foot on the ground left me in pain.
For the first three weeks after treatment, I was actually in more pain than ever because of the healing process, she explains.
By week seven the pain started to lessen, and after six months, it had almost completely gone. I had to pinch myself that it was real.
Now I can walk with just one stick and feel like I have my life back again.
Plantar fasciitis is often known as policemans foot because it is traditionally associated with lots of walking and standing. Putting too much strain on the ligament over an extended period is the most common cause and pain is often felt just forward of the heel.
Dr Shaffer says: The problem is that once the ligament inflames and starts to break down, it can quickly worsen until walking or standing is unbearable.
Despite fears that radiotherapy can cause cancer, Dr Shaffer insists: People worry about the cancer risk but that is so small.
Current evidence shows using low doses in peripheral areas such as the feet or hands doesnt pose a significant risk.
Dr Tom Roques, a cancer specialist at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals and spokesman for the Royal College of Radiologists, says although there is a lack of evidence to support widespread use of radiotherapy in non-cancerous conditions, the risk to patients is low.
The doses are very small and side effects are minimal. Research suggests well under one in 1,000 patients is at risk of developing cancer as a result.
Thousands of men over 65 could be suffering from a fatal condition that could cause them to bleed to death in minutes, but dont know they are at risk because one in five doesnt attend a free NHS health check that can spot the problem.
Abdominal aortic aneurysm, or AAA, is a swelling of the bodys biggest blood vessel, the aorta, which runs directly from the heart to the lower body.
Often likened by doctors to a blowout in a car tyre, there are no symptoms until it is too late and the aorta bursts, causing catastrophic internal bleeding.
Thousands of men are at risk of suffering catastrophic blood loss by not availing of a free NHS test to check for an abnormal aortic aneurysm, pictured
One in five men fail to have this condition checked which could lead to a major rupture, with most victims dying before they could make it to the hospital
A shocking 80 per cent of those who suffer such a rupture die most before even making it to hospital. And only half of those who get to the operating theatre for emergency surgery to repair the aorta survive.
Experts now warn that fear of knowing the truth may be driving men to ignore their invitation to screening even though treatment slashes in half the chances of dying.
In 2016, 1,670 British men aged 65-plus were killed by aneurysms that suddenly burst, making it a bigger cause of death than many cancers including skin, testicular or thyroid.
The condition is rare in younger patients but is thought to affect one in 100 men aged 65-plus.
For this reason, since 2009, men aged 65 have been invited to have a free ten-minute ultrasound scan, carried out by their GP, which can spot AAA.
Along with age the blood vessels become less flexible as we get older smoking and untreated high blood pressure are the major risk factors.
During screening, an ultrasound probe is run quickly and painlessly over the abdomen, giving immediate results in much the same way a pregnancy scan provides an image of an unborn baby.
It can spot any swelling in the aorta which is the main sign of an aneurysm. If one is found, depending on the size, doctors may monitor patients or, if there is a higher risk of rupture, offer surgery.
This includes fitting a large stent, or tube, inside the aorta to support it.
Despite this, just 81.1 per cent of men in this age bracket attended screening in England in 2017, meaning that more than 53,000 eligible men, or one in five, are missing out.
According to experts, screening for an AAA can cut the risk of an incident by half
Women are not currently screened as AAAs are up to six times more common in men, but NHS watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is considering including women aged 70 who are or have been smokers and have health conditions that raise their aneurysm risk, such as poorly managed high blood pressure.
Firearms dealer Tony Kennedy underwent an emergency operation on his AAA in 2012 after almost throwing his screening invitation letter in the bin. He had been feeling well and the scan fell on his only day off for a fortnight.
But Tony, 71, from Launceston, Cornwall, was encouraged to go by his wife Angela, and it is a decision that almost certainly saved his life. The routine check revealed that he had a dangerous bulge the size of an orange in his aorta. The blood vessel is usually about an inch in diameter. The aneurysm was just weeks away from bursting.
I was shocked as I had no symptoms whatsoever, recalls Tony, who was told to go straight to Plymouths Derriford Hospital. The thing about aneurysms is you dont know theres anything wrong with you until you drop down dead.
Tony had keyhole surgery to fix his aorta in December 2012 and was discharged a week later, on Christmas Eve.
He had little pain and was back in his office two weeks after his operation and able to drive about a fortnight after that.
A former smoker with an 80-a-day habit as a young man he now feels 100 per cent and wants as many men as possible to know about the importance of getting screened.
If I hadnt gone for screening that day, the aneurysm would probably have ruptured within a couple of weeks, doctors told me, he says. That was the luckiest day off Ive ever had.
Professor Matt Bown, a consultant vascular surgeon at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, which was one of the first places in the UK to screen men, says: Screening can detect an aneurysm early, before it ruptures, and surgery can be offered when necessary to prevent rupture, yet tens of thousands men dont attend.
This could be because they cant get time off work, they are scared about what will be found or they simply dont understand how serious the condition could be.
Prof Bown added: Screening reduces the risk of dying from an aneurysm by half. An invitation for screening doesnt save lives but attendance does.
Thanos Saratzis, a lecturer in vascular surgery at Leicester University, adds: Suffering a rupture is a catastrophic event. Screening is quick, painless and saves lives.
If the scan reveals there is no swelling, men need never be screened again because aneurysms take decades to form.
Professor Anne Mackie, who heads the abdominal aortic aneurysm screening programme at Public Health England, says: If the aorta pops, if theres a rip or a problem with it, you bleed to death very quickly indeed. I would urge all men of 65 to consider screening. Dont ignore the letter when it arrives. Screening is quick, painless and could save your life.
Since the programme was launched, 1.8 million men have been tested and more than 5,000 have had surgery.
The UK death rate, which was the highest in Europe before screening was introduced, has dropped by a third. This is due to earlier detection and treatment, as well as the reorganisation of hospital services and a general improvement in heart health.
Described as a major public health success story, the figures for AAA screening compare with an uptake of 59 per cent for bowel cancer screening, 71.1 per cent for breast cancer mammograms, and 71 per cent attendance for smear tests recently at an all-time low.
Despite this, experts say more lives could be saved if all eligible men went for their scan.
If an aneurysm is discovered, the goal of treatment is to prevent it from rupturing.
Treatment options are medical monitoring or surgery, which is decided depending on the size of the aneurysm and how fast it is growing.
A small aneurysm measuring 3cm to 4.4cm across will be monitored with annual ultrasounds to check if it is getting bigger.
A medium one of 4.5cm to 5.4cm requires an ultrasound every three months, and a large one of 5.5cm or more needs urgent referral to a specialist who may recommend surgery to stop it getting bigger or bursting.
About five in every 1,000 men screened has surgery.
During open surgery, the damaged part of the aorta is opened up through a 30cm-long incision in the abdomen and replaced with a polyester graft.
In keyhole surgery, a metal stent with a polyester graft wrapped around it is inserted into a blood vessel through small cuts in the groin and carefully guided to the aneurysm.
Once in place, it opens and unfurls, keeping the aorta open and taking the pressure off the artery wall.
Prof Bown is researching the feasibility of adding other health checks to screening appointments, which at the moment contain only an abdominal scan.
The professor, who is also studying what makes aneurysms grow, says: What wed really like to do is something to stop their aneurysm growing and needing surgery at all. Thats the holy grail of aneurysm research.
John Cowin, 74, of East Goscote, near Leicester, was shell-shocked when screening detected an aneurysm. He describes his decision to have surgery as a no-brainer and adds: Im not the sort of person who ever had to consult their doctor much. I thought I was bulletproof.
I would advise other men to go along for screening. Its not going to cost them anything, except perhaps a little bit of worry, but it might save their life.
A neonatal nurse wowed her husband with her chic new look after receiving a dramatic ambush makeover that left him crying tears of joy.
Brandi Alarcon, 46, from Amarillo, Texas, traveled to New York City with her family this week for her son's interview, but they came a day early just so she could have a chance to score an ambush makeover on the Today show after watching the segment for more than 30 years.
Her husband Joe and sons Ashton and Preston sweetly woke up early on Thursday morning to join her at the Today show plaza, where celebrity hairstylist Louis Licari and Today fashion expert Jill Martin plucked her from the crowd.
Scroll down for video
Then and wow! Brandi Alarcon, a 46-year-old neonatal nurse from Amarillo, Texas, was chosen for an ambush makeover on the Today show Thursday
Look of love: Her husband Joe got tears in his eyes while gushing about how 'beautiful' she looked
Brandi must have been feeling lucky on Thursday, because she had all of her co-workers at the hospital tuning into the show to see if she had gotten chosen.
'He was so sweet to do that for me. This has been on my bucket list forever,' the mom said of her son coming to the Big Apple a day early for her.
'I love your hair color,' she told Jill. 'I've had the same hair color, Jill, since I was 16 same cut, everything. I would love a new style.'
'Well, my hair color used to be yours, so just tell Louis,' Jill replied, bringing her in for a hug.
Brandi was all smiles as she strutted on stage sporting bombshell blonde hair and a sleek new outfit.
Feeling lucky: The mom traveled to New York City with her family for her son's interview, but they came a day early just so she could have a chance to score a makeover
Family: Brandi's son's Ashton and Preston were also wowed by her new look
Her husband and sons were both stunned when they saw her new look for the first time, and she was just as surprised when she turned around and looked at herself in the mirror.
'Oh my goodness,' she said as she threw her hands up in the air.
Louis was able to give Brandi the exact shade of blonde that she wanted, explaining: 'Before, she had her hair colored very light and it was over-yellow blonde that looked a bit artificial.
'So, what I did is I toned it down by working in darker pieces of blonde [and] lighter pieces of blonde. She looks a bit more like Jill don't you think?'
Today anchor Hoda Kotb pointed out that Joe was crying, and Brandi gushed that her boys were 'so sweet' to get up with her this morning.
Loving it: 'Oh my goodness,' Brandi said when she looked in the mirror and saw her new look for the first time
Transformation: Celebrity hairstylist Louis Licari gave Brandi the exact shade of blonde she wanted
'She's awesome. I just love her, and it's awesome to see how beautiful she is,' Joe said of his wife. 'I promised I wasn't going to cry. You did it to me. She's beautiful. She's so beautiful.'
Not only did Brandi look stunning, but she was also decked out in a hot new outfit made up of a gray motorcycle jacket, black skinny jeans, and snakeskin pumps.
Sandy Curtis, 65, from Austin, Texas, also received an ambush makeover on Thursday morning's show.
She and her husband Tim were in New York City celebrating their four year wedding anniversary.
'It is so wonderful. We were here four years ago on our honeymoon, and we got to go over to the plaza and do the trivia game with Kathie Lee [Gifford],' Sandy told Jill.
Beautiful before and after: Sandy Curtis, 65, from Austin, Texas, also received an ambush makeover on Thursday morning's show
A way with words! 'You make perfect look even better,' Sandy's husband Tim said of her new look
Looking good: Sandy was excited to get a brand new look on their four-year annviersary
'So, we flew back from Texas yesterday. We're here. Today is our wedding anniversary. Four years ago we were married.'
Sandy was excited to get a brand new look on her anniversary, and she looked like she was ready for Valentine's Day when she stepped on stage modeling a red lace dress.
'Oh my word,' he husband said when he saw her makeover for the first time. 'You make perfect look even better. That's just amazing.'
The Today show hosts couldn't help but be impressed by Tim's adorable reaction to his wife's transformation.
Stylish: Sandy was rocking a brand new haircut by Maryann Campo, and Louis said it was proof that 'short hair can be glamorous'
'You know, that might be, in all these years I've been here, the best line ever,' Kathie Lee said.
'She's such a natural beauty,' Tim added. 'You just brought it out.'
Sandy was rocking a brand new haircut by Maryann Campo, and Louis said it was proof that 'short hair can be glamorous.'
As for her hair color, Louis said he lighted her locks and made the color a bit warmer.
Jill, meanwhile, dressed Sandy in a red lace dress with bell sleeves, topping off the romantic look with a pair of black patent leather heels.
In January 2018, the inflow into equity mutual funds and equity-linked savings schemes (ELSS) totalled Rs 15,390 crore.
Mumbai: Inflows into equity mutual funds saw a further drop in January to Rs 6,158 crore, as the equity market remained volatile. Inflows were came in lower compared to the figure of Rs 6,606 crore in December, if balanced funds outflow of rs 952 crore is also counted, data released by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) showed.
The total mutual fund industry asset rose to Rs 23.37 lakh crore from Rs 22.86 lakh crore in December on account of big inflows in debt mutual funds, of which Rs 58,637 crore went into liquid/money market mutual fund schemes. Income funds also saw inflow of Rs 2,080 crore.
In January 2018, the inflow into equity mutual funds and equity-linked savings schemes (ELSS) totalled Rs 15,390 crore. Contrary to outflow from balanced funds last month, last year in January balanced funds had seen an inflow of Rs 7,665 crore. The exchange traded funds (ETFs) category saw an inflow of Rs 721 crore.
January 2019 inflows into ELSS scheme surged to Rs 1,244 crore from Rs 841 crore in December as retail investors invest lump sum in ELSS towards the close of the financial year to claim tax exemptions on their annual income.
N S Venkatesh, CEO, AMFI, commenting on the monthly data, said, "Despite acute market volatility owing to credit events and global uncertainty, retail investors continue to repose their faith in the India growth story. This is quite evident from the SIP flows and folio numbers, which continue to rise sequentially. On the debt AUMs (assets under management), with RBI easing the rates, we expect to see flows rise in the coming weeks.''
What items do you carry every day to work?
While you might think that everyone carries a phone, wallet or purse and set of keys, there are other items that give away a clue as to what you do for a living.
Posting on a Reddit thread called Everyday Carry, people have shared photos of their everyday essentials - and the jobs that mean they have to carry them.
So can you spot the profession from the bag contents?
This bag (pictured) contains a Samsung 64GB memory stick, keys, Fujifilm X100F mirrorless camera, Kobo Clara HD e-book reader and a hard cover notebook
The first bag shared contains a Samsung 64GB memory stick, keys, Fujifilm X100F mirrorless camera, Kobo Clara HD e-book reader and a hard cover notebook.
The stylish essentials come in a monochromatic theme, suggesting an organised profession.
The owner: A graphic designer
This person is a bit younger, their items include: a small notebook / pens, sketchbook, Canon 70D DSLR, Google Pixel 2 XL, 13' Macbook Pro and a Nintendo Switch
This person is a bit younger, and their items include a small notebook and pens, sketchbook, Canon 70D DSLR, Google Pixel 2 XL, 13' Macbook Pro and a Nintendo Switch.
The owner: A still-in-training student film maker
The bag contains cameras, an iPad, a battery bank, iPhone, portable HDD, passport, 13' MacBook, a wallet holding business cards and a camera bag
The third bag in question is obvious, but for a very specific profession.
The bag contains cameras, an iPad, a battery bank, iPhone, portable HDD, passport, 13' MacBook, a wallet holding business cards and a camera bag.
The owner: A wedding photographer
Another instant giveaway, this person's bag includes a stethoscope, a clipboard with forms, a pocket guide, pulse oximeter, trauma shears and lots of gloves
Another instant giveaway, this person's bag includes a stethoscope, a clipboard with forms, a pocket guide, pulse oximeter, trauma shears and lots of gloves.
The owner: A student anesthetist
Items in this include bolt cutters, protective clothing, a chain saw and an oxygen tank with a mask
The large red truck gives this one away. Items include bolt cutters, protective clothing, a chain saw and an oxygen tank with a mask.
The owner: A firefighter
Items include a sleeping bag, toothbrush, mail of rail lines, solar shower bag (used to heat water), two man tent and waterproof matches
This collection has a little bit of everything - and it will make sense when you find out why as the bag doesn't specifically belong to someone with a job.
Items include a sleeping bag, toothbrush, mail of rail lines, solar shower bag (used to heat water), two man tent and waterproof matches.
The owner: Vagabond travelling across the US
Items include a bulletproof vest, assault rifle, knife, knee pads, magazines and a helmet
This bag does belong to a soldier, but what kind and where? Items include a bulletproof vest, assault rifle, knife, knee pads, magazines and a helmet.
The owner: A soldier for the Israel Defense Forces
A quick sketch by this person how has drawn their everyday items
This person chose to draw their everyday items.
Items include a pen, pencil, a small knife, water brush pen, paint, eraser and the paper it's on.
The owner: An illustrator
Items include a spacey- looking helmet, night vision goggles, multi-tool, pen, flashlight and wallet
This one might stump some people. Items include a spacey- looking helmet, night vision goggles, multi-tool, pen, flashlight and wallet.
The owner: A helicopter pilot on the night shift
The items included in the bag are pens, penlight, bandage scissors, Cerave healing ointment, Casio watch, ID badge with retractable holder and a stethoscope
Can you guess what this one is?
The items included in the bag are pens, penlight, bandage scissors, Cerave healing ointment, Casio watch, ID badge with retractable holder and a stethoscope.
The owner: A nursing student
Items include a wireless keyboard, a phone and a card holder
Items in this one include a wireless keyboard, a phone and a card holder.
The owner: A web developer
The Duchess of Sussex has been re-imagined as a Simpsons character in a series of creative cartoons.
Pregnant Meghan, 37, is seen dressed in some of her most memorable ensembles in the images, created by Italian pop artist Alexsandro Palombo, 45, of Milan.
Alexsandro, an artist and activist, created 30 different digital pieces featuring Meghan.
Pregnant Meghan, 37, is seen dressed in some of her most memorable ensembles in the images, created by Italian pop artist Alexsandro Palombo, 45, of Milan. Pictured, Alexsandro's re-imagining of the duchess in the Rouland Mouret gown she wore in London last month, right
The Duchess of Sussex in Givenchy for her first solo royal engagement. She visited the Royal Academy of Arts in September last year, right. Left, the artist even put the bows on her shoes
The purple and red colour combination that Meghan wore to Birkenhead last month, right, is perhaps even more striking in Alexsander's cartoon illustration, left
The white Givenchy dress Meghan wore to Ascot last year is also immortalised in the cartoon
In some she is joined by other members of the royal family including the Duchess of Cambridge, the Queen and Prince Harry.
Alexsandro, who has previously given stars including the Beckhams and the Kardashians the Simpsons treatment, said he hopes Meghan will use her position to give voice to women around the world.
He said: 'We need many Meghan Markle in our world, a strong and determined woman, able to impose her ideals and make her voice heard.
'We still need to do a lot concerning gender equality, this is why women like Meghan are important.
The Givenchy gown Meghan wore to the British Fashion Awards, right, was enough to inspire Alexsandro to create a cartoon, left
In another portrait the artist recreated Meghan Markle's visit to Westminster Abbey for a a service to mark the centenary of the Royal Air Force in July last year
The navy, white and black of Meghan's coat and trousers really pop in Alexsandro's illustration, left. Right, the Duchess of Sussex in the outfit in Birmingham in March last year
One sketch of the Duchess of Sussex alongside Prince Harry was inspired by a photo taken at Frogmore House during the evening of their wedding day
'From her privileged position, she can give voice to women all over the world and her commitment can be a great educational message to the new generations as were the many battles carried out by Lady Diana.
'I think that Meghan Markle's personality has a great impact on people. Her style and personality are bringing fresh air into the Royal Household.
'She will able to bring innovation into tradition.'
The Duchess of Sussex is seen dressed in standout outfits including her evening wedding dress and the sparkling Rouland Mouret gown she wore to the Royal Albert Hall last month.
Contemporary pop artist AleXsandro Palombo, 45, from Italy has spent the past few months working on a series focused on the Duchess of Sussex (portrayed left alongside Princess Diana, the Queen and Kate Middleton)
The artist hopes Meghan (depicted right with Princess Diana and Kate Middleton) will be able to bring innovation to tradition
Alexsandro also drew Meghan as the woman at the centre of the Second World War 'We Can Do It Poster' produced by J. Howard Miller.
The artist, who boasts more than 5,000 followers on Instagram, lost his leg to cancer five years ago and uses his artwork to raise awareness of problems faced by those with disabilities.
His most famous series include 'Break The Silence' in which celebrities are depicted as victims of domestic violence, and 'Survivor' which portrays cartoon characters as breast cancer survivors.
With Valentine's Day just around the corner, lovers across the UK will be putting the final touches to their plans for a perfect proposal.
While some might pop the question over a candlelit dinner at home, others prefer to pull out all the stops with a public setting to go down on one knee.
Here, employees at some of the country's most popular engagement spots reveal what it is really like to share in a couple's magical moment.
Scroll down to read their stories...
SEA LIFE LONDON
Emily Hope, 28, of Bristol, is an aquarist who helps with proposals at Sea Life London.
Sound is muffled for Emily, meaning she has to rely on guesswork to know when to hold up the sign. Pictured: aquarists Jack (left) and Emily taking part in a proposal
Emily Hope, pictured, is an aquarist at Sea Life London and dives into the tank to hold up a 'will you marry me?' sign as part of their proposal package
Emily Hope, from Bristol, has a very special - but difficult - job at Sea Life London as an aquarist who helps out with proposals from within the tank.
While the proposer prepares to get down on one knee, she has to swim around the tank, waiting for the perfect moment to hold up a 'will you marry me?' sign.
As sound is muffled under the water, Emily has to rely on guesswork and facial expressions - but so far, she's never got it wrong.
She told Femail: 'Weve had quite a few opposite sex proposals - the female proposing to a man - so thats quite nice but the main one I remember was one of the guests held up a piece of paper and was clearly reading from a speech or a poem, but obviously we cant hear because were underwater.
'He was reading it out for about ten minutes and I was in the tank trying to work out when was the right time to hold up the sign.
'[The sound is] mostly muffled, I can usually hear applauding at the end which you can just about make out, but you literally go by watching them and judging their expressions.'
She added: 'Id never get bored of it, its a real privilege to be part of someones life changing moment and its really great to be part of that experience and experience that joy theyre feeling once they say yes' (file photo)
Although she's seen more than 30 proposals over the past three years working at the aquarium on the South Bank, Emily says she'll never get bored of it.
She said: 'Id never get bored of it, its a real privilege to be part of someones life changing moment and its really great to be part of that experience and experience that joy theyre feeling once they say yes.
Sometimes they look quite shocked, as youd expect, and its always fun to work out what their answer is based on their expressions - and usually it turns into a big smile.'
HOT AIR BALLOONING IN BRISTOL
Jo Bailey is a hot air balloon pilot in Bristol. She is responsible for proposals that happen high in the air.
Jo Bailey, who co-owns Bailey Balloons in Bristol with her husband, has been working as a pilot since 1994 and has seen hundreds of proposals in that time
As long as you don't have a fear of heights, and aren't likely to get sweaty hands, a hot air balloon soaring through the sky is a great place to pop the question.
Jo Bailey, who co-owns Bailey Balloons in Bristol with her husband, has been working as a pilot since 1994 and has seen hundreds of proposals in that time.
Speaking of the wonderful proposal, Jo said: 'Ive seen lots of proposals, probably hundreds over the years, including my own. My husband Clive proposed to be at 8,000 feet above Bath.
'I think its very special, even if you dont [fly hot air balloons yourself], although it was more special for us.
Clive proposed to Jo in a hot air balloon and they left their wedding together in one too. She said: Its always very special, and its always very different. Some people are very shy, others make a big thing out of it'
'It was quite funny actually, as when he did it we were heading towards a danger area which is why we went up so high.
'He proposed and then he said "Come on Jo, youve got to say yes or no". Then I had to take over flying while he started navigating to avoid the danger, the other passengers found it very amusing.'
She added: 'Its always very special, and its always very different. Some people are very shy, others make a big thing out of it.
'Its lovely and its very touching to be part of somebodys very intimate moment. Some want to do it in front of other passengers, others hire an exclusive balloon and just do it in front of it, but seeing someone get down on one knee its very beautiful.'
THE VIEW FROM THE SHARD
Suzan Kerlo, 27, is an events manager who helps plan engagements at The View From The Shard, a viewing room in London's tallest building.
The View from the Shard even offer a proposal package for couples which sees the room filled with rose petals and candles
Suzan Kerlo, 27, pictured, is an events manager who helps plan engagements at The View From The Shard, a viewing room in London's tallest building
Proposing over a glass of bubbly as you admire the views from 1,017ft up seems like an obvious choice for many Londoners.
Capitalising on their romantic nature, The View from the Shard even offer a proposal package for couples which sees the room filled with rose petals and candles.
Staff subtly clear out the area - so your partner is none the wiser - and put on a personalised playlist, making sure everything is perfect for that special moment
Events manager Suzan Kerlo, 27, has been in charge of organising these packages for the past four months, having worked at the Shard for around two years.
PUNTING ON THE RIVER CAM Punting along the River Cam is easily one of the highlights of any trip to Cambridge, and the romantic college backdrop means it attracts plenty of proposals. While you can punt your own boat, getting down on one knee while trying to steer probably isn't the best idea, so many loved-up couples opt for a guided tour. One punter, who wanted to remain anonymous, told a story of a young man who decided to propose in the middle of a shared boat tour with 10 other strangers on board. The woman, quite rightly, turned him down, and the rest of the lengthy journey back to shore was spent in a very uncomfortable silence. He also saw one proposal with a Haribo ring. He added: 'Sometimes theyre really in love and its obvious theyve been dating for a long time and you know its a yes, but other times youre thinking do these people really know each other? Is this a good idea?' An anonymous punter on the River Cam has revealed a young man decided to propose in the middle of a shared tour with 10 other strangers on board, and was promptly turned down, leading him to describe it as 'like punting a funeral' (file photo) Advertisement
Since then she has helped with at least five or six proposals a month, and helped book out the whole of December.
She told Femail: 'To be honest I thought before I started this role this would get really cheesy, but its so nice to see how much thought and effort the men put in, it gives me a little bit more faith in the male race.
'It made me realise that a lot more men than I thought can be incredibly thoughtful and caring!
'I have an influx of proposal requests every day and they all have creative ideas of how they want their night to go for their partner, its really lovely and when I speak with them over the phone to discuss the ideas they have thought of everything right done to the colour of the petals they would like as a trail to lead up to their dressed area of the venue.
'Its amazing to hear about how their night was and to get positive feedback so I dont think Id ever get bored of it.'
ROYAL OBSERVATORY GREENWICH
Brendan Owens, 32, is an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, in south east London.
If you think your relationship was written in the stars, where better to propose than at a planetarium?
One of the employees helping with these picture-perfect proposals is Brendan Owens, 32, who has worked at the Royal Observatory Greenwich for eight and a half years.
He and his co-worker Nick keep partners in the dark by coming up with a cover story, complete with printed tickets for a fake show, ahead of the loved-up person getting down on one knee.
Brendan and the proposer then come up with a personalised show - which can include anything from stars that turn into hearts or a tour outside of the Milky Way - before coming up with a trigger word for the special moment.
He said: 'Having gone from boyfriend to fiance and now husband, I really appreciate the nerves the person proposing feels and Ive only become more invested in making the couples moment as magical as possible.
Brendan Owens, pictured, has seen more proposals than he can count but says it's a joy to see that special moment
'Its a joy for me to see their dazed look of amazement after the show and Im very happy to have played a part in their special day.'
Although Brendan has seen more proposals than he can count, sometimes it's the personal touches that make all the difference.
He said: 'While I have many happy memories of smiling faces after I bring the lights up, sometimes its the personal touches from some helping hands that stand out in my mind.
'I remember one couple who came out after their moment under the stars to be faced with some of their nearest and dearest friends putting on a fantastic dance for them outside in celebration.'
Overall, Brendan feels incredibly lucky and honoured to work at the observatory and to be able to help out with proposals on a regular basis.
Brendan added: 'I have to pinch myself sometimes and realise that though this is my workplace day-in day-out, for those coming to the visit its a gateway to the stars and a perfectly romantic way of popping the question!'
Philip Green is not the unmitigated ogre he is often painted, but a mix of belligerence, naivety and at times a certain gruff charm.
His moods are like the English weather. In every encounter Ive had with the Topshop tycoon in the more than two decades Ive known him, the climate has shifted from glowering storms to sunshine and back again with disconcerting rapidity. He can also be very, very funny, sometimes intentionally.
His abuse of journalists is legendary and worn by some on the receiving end almost as a badge of honour. For many young business reporters, getting the hairdryer treatment from Sir Philip is an unavoidable initiation.
Yet his attitude to the Press is deeply contradictory. He is a creature of the media, with the highest profile of any businessman in Britain. He will pick up the phone and talk even to the lowliest retail correspondent, whilst at the same time professing contempt for the trade.
Philip Green is not the unmitigated ogre he is often painted, but a mix of belligerence, naivety and at times a certain gruff charm
Write anything, no matter how anodyne, about him, and you can bank on an expletive-flecked phone call from the man himself.
Unlike most corporate chieftains, he does not insulate himself behind an army of spin-doctors mouthing bland platitudes, which at least makes him more entertaining than many of todays colourless breed of chief executives.
His phone call to the Telegraph, where he threatened to bankrupt the editor and referred to a female journalist as your girl is vintage Green in its bullying bombast, bravado, aggression and arrogance.
When I interviewed him last spring, it only took 20 minutes for him to threaten to walk out because he didnt like a line of questioning about why, when he is such an astute businessman, he sold BHS to a serial bankrupt for 1. But soon after that, the snarling died down and he had transformed into a cheeky-chappy raconteur, telling a string of stories about his early days in business.
After the piece was printed, he called me and said: Well honey, I knew I couldnt expect any sympathy. The word comes between s*** and syphilis in the dictionary. Tasteless, yes, but I confess it made me laugh.
Despite his frequent blood-curdling threats of legal action, going to court is not Greens usual style. He prefers to rant and rave, then move on to his next row if nothing else, it saves him a fortune in legal costs. He backed down in this case with the Daily Telegraph because the last thing he will have wanted was to be dragged away from his home in the tax haven of Monaco to appear in a court in London, with all the attendant bad publicity.
HE will also have wanted to put an end to the embarrassment for the sake of his wife Tina, who is not happy about the latest episode in her husbands eventful business career.
Despite his aggression and hair-trigger temper, Green usually sees himself as the victim in his confrontations.
In the row over the BHS pension fund, he became obsessed with the idea he was being persecuted by the veteran Labour MP Frank Field, who was a vociferous opponent.
Despite his aggression and hair-trigger temper, Green usually sees himself as the victim in his confrontations
In this new dispute, he believes the villain is Labour peer Peter Hain, who used parliamentary privilege to break the injunction, and named him as the anonymous businessman behind the accusations of sexism and bullying. And, of course, he blames The Daily Telegraph. In his own mind, he is more sinned against than sinning.
When I spoke to him yesterday after the court verdict, he was slightly subdued, saying he feels sad and disappointed about the case. Within minutes, though, he was back to his usual sarcastic self. Throughout the case, Greens supporters have insisted it is not about claims of sexual assault, abuse or violence by former employees, but is merely Philip being Philip.
By this, they mean swaggering, swearing and generally acting like a character from the TV series Life On Mars, set in an era when political correctness had not been invented.
He seems genuinely unable to understand why his behaviour has created any upset, or why he is being criticised for sexism. As he sees it, he has spent 45 years in business working with tens of thousands of people, and hardly any have complained.
On the sexism charge, he certainly doesnt restrict his boorishness to women. He operates an equal opportunities policy when it comes to rudeness: hes just as likely to be offensive to men. He also does have some loyal female employees, including his assistant Katie, a no-nonsense Irishwoman who has worked for him for more than 20 years.
In a concerted Meghan-style PR effort, three senior women yesterday phoned my office saying they had each worked for Green at his Arcadia fashion empire for more than ten years and wanted to defend their boss.
We have a huge amount of respect for him. Of course he loses his temper, people do. Its been said he makes women feel uncomfortable. But we are all strong, experienced women and I dont recognise this person I am reading about, one of them said. We wouldnt work for someone who did behave like that. We are appalled because its so disruptive to the business, which is 98 per cent women. I feel it is very one-sided.
He can be obnoxious, theres no doubt about that. But depending on which Philip Green turns up, he is capable of kindness friends of his say he goes out of his way to help people, often anonymously.
ALTHOUGH he will have found this latest row an unpleasant experience, perhaps more so even than the one over the BHS pension fund, it is unlikely to prompt him to change his ways.
When I asked him if he will behave differently in future, he swatted away the question and hit back at the Daily Telegraph.
I am sad and disappointed that people want to conduct their business in this manner. Every single journalist I have dealt with knows if you call up, I answer my phone. I tried very hard to call the editor of The Daily Telegraph, who refused to engage, he says.
To try to undermine or encourage people to breach a non-disclosure agreement or a confidentiality agreement they had signed cannot be the right way to run a business.
Greens whole demeanour his deep brown perma-tan, the colour of a basted roast chicken, his salty language, his uncensored stream-of-consciousness rants and his shameless ostentation make him a one-off in the increasingly restrained world of the City.
When he was making his name as a brash young fashion trader, his behaviour unacceptable though some of it may be in the modern workplace might barely have raised an eyebrow. The trouble for Philip Green is that he never saw the need to evolve and in this case, that has been his downfall.
Michael is the Daily Emerald's Editor-in-Chief. He started at the Emerald as a reporter in 2017 and has held the roles of senior news reporter and associate news editor. He has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Portland Tribune and Eugene Weekly.
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Ethos is a nationally recognized, award-winning independent student publication. Our mission is to elevate the voices of marginalized people who are underrepresented in the media landscape, and to write in-depth, human-focused stories about the issues affecting them. We also strive to support our diverse student staff and to help them find future success.
Ethos produces a quarterly free print magazine full of well-reported and powerful feature stories, innovative photography, creative illustrations and eye-catching design. On our website, we also produce compelling written and multimedia stories.
Ethos is part of Emerald Media Group, a non-profit organization thats fully independent of the University of Oregon. Students maintain complete editorial control over Ethos, and work tirelessly to produce the magazine.
Since our inception as Korean Ducks Magazine in 2005, weve worked hard to share a multicultural spirit with our readership. We embrace diversity in our stories, in our student staff and in our readers. We want every part of the magazine to reflect the diversity of our world.
Conemaugh Township to vote on pre-COVID measures
The Conemaugh Township school board is planning to vote next month to return the upcoming school year with a mask optional policy.
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recruitment of a consultant to elaborate a complaint handling system for the National Commission for Human Rights in Djibouti (CNDH) a Djibouti
Consultancy to elaborate a complaint handling system for the National Commission for Human Rights in Djibouti (CNDH)
Terms of Reference
Background
The objective of the Better Migration Management (BMM) program is to improve the migration management in the East and the Horn of Africa in response to the needs identified by the African countries of the Khartoum Process and in particular to address the trafficking of human beings and the smuggling of migrants within and from the Horn of Africa.
The BMM program has four components:
Policy Harmonization;
Capacity Building;
Protection of Vulnerable Migrants; and
Awareness-Raising.
The program is commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and co-financed by the European Commission. . It is currently in its third year of implementation. The implementation is facilitated through an implementing partnership consisting of IOM, UNODC, CIVIPOL, Expertise France, British Council, the Italian Department of Public Security, and the lead agency GIZ. The programmes interventions target countries in the Horn of Africa region, i.e. Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, South Sudan, Sudan,Somalia and Uganda.
In the framework of implementing its component 3, that focuses on protection, GIZ-BMM strengthen the capacity of the national institution for human rights (CNDH) in promoting and protecting migrants rights in Djibouti.
In parallel of implementing a monitoring system for human rights violations system, the CNDH can instruct and provide all legal assistance to any person (migrants and citizens) who believes that his/her fundamental rights have been violated to stop it.
Although having this mandate, the CNDH has so far never been able to respond effectively to the few complaints received and has never been able to communicate on this investigative power due to a lack of clear and precise procedure.
Based on this situation but also on the several human rights violations cases informally observed, GIZ-BMM has undertaken to strengthen the organizational capacities of the CNDH in order to allow an internal reorganization to enable on the one hand a better inclusion of migrants as one of the priority target and on the other hand to create and operationalize a a complaint handling system.
It is within this framework and with a view to enabling the CNDH to implement fully its attributions related to the protection of Human Right that GIZ seeks to engage an international Human Rights Expert to develop a complaint handling system for Djiboutis National Commission of Human Rights.
To this effect, GIZ-BMM is seeking to engage a national human rights expert to support with an internaltional one the establishment of a complaints handling system for the CNDH.
Consultancy:
The assignment aims to contribute to the reforms currently undertaken by the CNDH, by assisting in the creation and implementation of a complaints mechanism.
As part of this consultation the expert in the CNDH,under the supervision and collaboration of an international expert,will be responsible for reinforcing the capacities previously identified and strengthening its mandate of investigation and sanction regarding rights violations. .
This work has to be done in accordance with the requirements of the laws and regulations in force in the Republic of Djibouti, to enable CNDH to deal effectively with complaints and other cases of human rights violations.
The national expert will also be responsible for facilitating communication and meeting between the selected international expert, the CNDH and its partners.
Outcomes of the consultancy
Collect, in a desk and field research, all kind of national data necessary for carrying out the mission of the international expert in general. This includes the legal data on the organization, respective competences of all state administrations able to receive complaints from citizens, organizational data of the different administrations receiving complaints, all texts governing the judiciary system (powers, organizations, procedures) and more generallyany data that the international expert might deem necessary to obtain.
Help the international consultant to frame the work of the CNDH in the reception and the management of the complaints, in accordance with the balance sheet carried out previously so that it is not in contradiction with the procedures/attributions of the courts provided for by the laws and regulations.
Support the development of a complaint handling manual in French;
Provide a comprehensive report with clear recommendations in soft and hard copy.
Working languages
All written reports, presentations, and trainings related to the consultancy will be in French. To communicate with the international expert, English is also compulsory.
Duration and timeframe for the consultancy:
Timeframe: The mission has to be executed in March 2019
Total working days: 30
Consultancy requirements:
Advanced University Degree from an accredited institution in law or human rights or related disciplines;
Minimum of 10 years work experience in the field of administration of justice or in legal counsel;
Work experience in Djibouti desired;
Excellent command of French and English;
Excellent analytical and organizational skills;
Good communication and mediation skills.
To apply, please send your resume, financial and technical offert at these email adress before the 16th of february.
Emplois & Services, Emplois
9 fevrier, 2019
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Recent economic reports have detailed a recovery you can believe in. The Connecticut unemployment rate has reached near an all-time low of 4.0 percent. In 2018, the number of residents employed grew by nearly 20,000 and our labor force grew by more than 11,000.
It sounds encouraging, but the numbers understate and mask a significant challenge to our future prosperity. I believe that our skill shortage is more acute than it has ever been in our history. Its not a people shortage, it is a job-ready critical thinker shortage and its a crisis. In my view, the skill shortage poses the greatest threat to achieve a full economic recovery.
Connecticuts challenge is structural it took years to happen and will take years to reverse. Our population has declined over the past five years to a level lower than 2010. Between 2010 and 2040 the number of Connecticut residents age 65 years and over is on pace to increase by 57 percent. However, the working-age population is projected to grow less than 2 percent. Further, our future technology-savvy workforce which is currently under the age 18 is projected to decline by 7 percent.
These factors alone will discourage entrepreneurialism and skew business plan projections for the next several years. The aging population will continue to be consumers of goods and services but they will not drive business innovation. We need to retain our young workforce and encourage migration of young skilled workers from other states to Connecticut.
Educators, workforce-development folks and employers must come together to cultivate a workforce of critical thinkers in every growing sector of our economy. The private sector has added jobs slowly and steadily over the last few years, but a significant percentage of new jobs in Connecticut are concentrated in lower-wage industries. During the economic recovery following the recession (2010-2016), Connecticut only regained 8,200 higher-wage jobs after losing 54,400 during the recession. During the same period the state grew 52,100 jobs in lower-wage industries. Job gains led by lower-wage, lower-skill occupations, without opportunity for career advancement, militate against progress for individuals and business.
According to a recent study by ManpowerGroup, technology is redefining, rather than replacing, in-demand roles. As companies digitalize, automate and transform, finding candidates with the right blend of technical skills and human strengths is more important than ever. The skills transformation we are experiencing does not necessarily require a college degree. There will be good-paying jobs for workers with a desire for learning and a willingness to continuously upgrade their skills. Businesses can help by creating a culture that values learning and equipping people to adapt. There are many ways to acquire knowledge and lifelong learning is fundamental to success. A successful workforce is not focused on learning in a specific moment and time, it is an activity and mind-set that occurs on an ongoing basis.
The WorkPlace has opened a dialogue through four employer roundtable discussions during February and March. We will gather ideas on improving the regions workforce system to better support employer efforts to cultivate a skilled workforce. If the state fails to recognize and address the skills shortage, economic growth will be impeded and Connecticut will continue to lose population and opportunity.
We need to shed partisanship, think strategically and act with determination. It wont be easy, it wont happen with dispatch and it wont be cheap. Our task is to reinvent and reinvigorate our economy. Gov. Ned Lamont has assembled an outstanding team of accomplished leaders to carry out his economic plan. He deserves our patience and support.
Joseph Carbone is president and CEO of The WorkPlace, which provides workforce development services for employers and job seekers. It is based in Bridgeport.
ANKARA -- President Donald Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria has triggered a scramble among international powers and local forces to figure out how to fill the potentially destabilizing vacuum the Americans will leave behind.
But as the diplomacy drags on, it is becoming clear there is no readily apparent arrangement that will satisfy the competing concerns and agendas of all the parties involved - and that none seems likely to emerge soon.
Turkey, Russia, the United States' Syrian Kurdish allies and the Syrian government all have a strategic interest in any arrangement for the future of northern Syria, yet most of their demands are diametrically opposed. That they are not all talking to one another only compounds the difficulty of reaching a solution.
Turkey considers the Kurdish forces to be terrorists and wants to create a Turkish-controlled buffer zone to keep them away from its border. The United States' Kurdish allies, who fear persecution at Turkish hands, want the Turks kept out.
The Trump administration wants to satisfy both sides, making good on its contradictory promises to protect its Kurdish allies and to give Turkey a stake in the area.
The Kurds would prefer a return of Syrian government authority in the area they control. But one of Syrian President Bashar Asad's closest allies is Iran, and the Trump administration object to any plan that allows the Iranians to maintain - much less extend - their influence in Syria.
The various positions are "irreconcilable," said Aaron Stein, director of the Middle East program at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute. "They are massive issues. The U.S. is throwing a lot at this, but they are just irreconcilable."
The Pentagon still has not announced a date for the withdrawal, but the questions of how and when it will happen is gaining urgency as the Islamic State's once vast "caliphate" dwindles. The Kurdish led-Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by U.S. airstrikes, have the ISIS holdouts pinned down in one last village in the southeastern Syrian desert.
After initially announcing in December the troops would be pulled out right away, Trump subsequently said they would remain until the last pocket of Islamic State territory had been vanquished - and that could come as early as next week, he said on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the U.S. military is eyeing an April deadline for the troops to leave.
U.S. officials say they are committed to negotiating a handover agreement, but they also stress the troops will pull out regardless.
"We are withdrawing. There should be no doubt to that," said a senior U.S. official.
That raises the prospect of a no-deal withdrawal that could plunge the region into chaos and, potentially, conflict as the competing powers pile in to stake their claims. Turkey is threatening to invade the area if its demands are not met. The Syrian government has deployed troops to the south of the region, and the Islamic State is already trying to regroup in areas from which it has been pushed out. A power vacuum or new conflict could help ISIS make a comeback, military officials say.
To avert such an outcome, intensive diplomacy is underway between the United States and Turkey, aimed primarily at fulfilling Trump's promise to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in their December telephone conversation that the area of northeastern Syria where U.S. troops are currently located is "yours." James Jeffrey, the U.S. envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, has been traveling to Turkey, and Turkish officials have visited Washington for talks there.
The focus of these discussion is on meeting Turkish demands for what both sides are terming a "safe" zone in Syria along the Turkish border. But the talks have revealed only that the United States and Turkey have vastly differing interpretations of what counts as "safe."
"The United States wants a safe zone to protect Kurds from the Turkish army and for Turkey it is the exact opposite," said Nihat Ali Ozcan, a military analyst with the Tepev think tank in Ankara. "How can two countries cooperate when their goals are that much opposed."
Washington is meanwhile also exploring the possibility of maintaining overall American control without U.S. troops on the ground, U.S. officials say. Under that scenario, small contingents of British and French troops, who are already operating alongside Americans, would remain in the area together with the Syrian Democratic Forces and perhaps also with private U.S. military contractors and United Nations observers, while the United States provides air cover.
That is the outcome the Kurds say they would like most. But otherwise, they have stated a clear preference for a return of Syrian government authority over any arrangement that gives Turkey a role.
It is not clear however whether Damascus is prepared to make the kind of concessions the Kurds are seeking to guarantee the autonomy they have secured recently with the support of U.S. troops.
In January, the Kurds asked Russia to mediate between them and the Syrian government. The Kurds have prepared a list of demands, which include allowing them to maintain their control over local government and security forces. A delegation from the Syrian Democratic Council, a coalition including Kurds and local Arabs, visited Damascus to present those demands.
But there has been no response, either from the Syrians or the Russians, said Saleh Muslim, a senior officials with the PYD, the main Kurdish political organization.
"The matter is very complicated," he said. "Everybody is waiting to see what steps the other side is going to take. And we are waiting for everybody."
Russia, as Assad's most powerful ally, also favors restoring Syrian government control and has proposed reviving the 1998 Adana agreement between Turkey and Syria under which Damascus would be responsible for keeping militant Kurds away from the Turkish border. The agreement committed Syria to preventing the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its affiliates from using Syrian territory as a springboard for attacks against Turkey and forced PKK fighters based in Syria to take refuge at their headquarters in northern Iraq's Qandil mountains.
Some of those fighters are now fighting alongside U.S. troops in the PKK-affiliated YPG, which is the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Turkey, however, is wary of having Syrian government forces return to its border after eight years of war, without a broader settlement to the Syrian war. The conflict, which has seen the Syrian government regain control over large swaths of territory once in opposition hands, has turned Assad and Erdogan into bitter foes because of Turkey's support for the rebels seeking Assad's demise.
"This will not help," said Burhanettin Duran, who heads the SETA think tank in Ankara. Cutting a deal with Assad that neglected an overall solution to the war "will just empower him and make him very happy," he said. "But it won't solve the problem, and the future of Syria will be unstable, uncertain and the way will be open to conflict including the return of ISIS."
Turkey also opposes the Kurds' preference for some form of no-fly zone in northern Syria, which they fear would only facilitate the further evolution of the Kurdish autonomous region taking shape under U.S. tutelage.
"If this means a new kind of northern Iraq on our borders, Turkey will not accept that," said Duran, referring to the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq that emerged from the no-fly zone imposed there by the United States in the 1990s.
Turkey's preference remains, he said, for a buffer zone along the border to be controlled by the Turkish military and Turkey-backed Syrian rebels. But that approach does not satisfy the United States' concerns for the safety of its Kurdish allies or Russia's desire to restore Syrian government control.
---
The Washington Post's Kareem Fahim in Istanbul and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed.
Amazon.com is reconsidering its plan to bring 25,000 jobs to a new campus in New York City, according to two people familiar with the company's thinking, following a wave of political and community opposition.
Hailed as an economic triumph when it was announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, D, the project now faces withering criticism from some elected officials and advocacy groups appalled at the prospect of giving giant subsidies to the world's most valuable company, led by its richest man. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)
In the past two weeks, the state Senate nominated an outspoken Amazon critic to a state board where he could potentially veto the deal, and City Council members for the second time aggressively challenged company executives at a hearing where activists booed and unfurled anti-Amazon banners. Key officials, including freshman U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., whose district borders the proposed Amazon site, have railed against the project.
No specific plans to abandon New York have been made. And it is possible that Amazon would try to use a threat to withdraw to put pressure on New York officials.
But company executives have had internal discussions recently to reassess the situation in New York and explore alternatives, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the company's perspective. The company has not leased or purchased office space for the project in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, making it easy to abandon its commitment.
Unlike in Virginia, where elected leaders quickly passed an incentive package for a separate headquarters campus, and Tennessee, which has embraced plans for a smaller facility, final approval from New York state is not expected until 2020.
"The question is whether it's worth it if the politicians in New York don't want the project, especially with how people in Virginia and Nashville have been so welcoming," said one person familiar with the company's thinking.
Asked to comment on the possibility that the New York deal might founder, Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth said: "We're focused on engaging with our new neighbors. . . . Whether it's building a pipeline of local jobs through workforce training or funding computer science classes for thousands of New York City students, we are working hard to demonstrate what kind of neighbor we will be."
- - -
Amazon has hired a lobbying firm and a public relations firm in New York and recently advertised for a "senior community affairs manager" to "focus on developing a positive partnership with local stakeholders, community groups and nonprofits."
At the same time, the two people said company executives may be reaching an inflection point as they prepare for a third City Council hearing and a session of the state's Public Authorities Control Board, which typically would have to OK the project.
"I think now is the time for Amazon to make a decision because it has to start hiring," said one person. "At some point, the project starts to fall behind."
New York state and city officials have played down the chances that the deal will fall through. They point to opinion polls showing strong public support for the project and say Cuomo and de Blasio will fight hard for it.
But officials are furious at the nomination of Sen. Michael Gianaris, D-Queens, who is deputy majority leader of the Senate and a strong opponent of the deal, to the Public Authorities Control Board, where he could effectively kill the project.
Cuomo, who has not said whether he will accept Gianaris's nomination, called the Senate action "governmental malpractice."
"It's a very small group of politicians who are pandering," Cuomo said Friday after The Washington Post reported Amazon was reassessing its plans. "The problem is the state Senate has adopted that position, and that's what could stop Amazon. And if they do, I would not want to be a Democratic senator coming back to my district to explain why Amazon left."
Gianaris described the possibility that Amazon would pull out of the deal - which totals up to $3 billion in state and city incentives - as akin to blackmail.
"Amazon has extorted New York from the start, and this seems to be their next effort to do just that," he said. "If their view is, 'We won't come unless we get three billion of your dollars,' then they shouldn't come."
The resistance in New York contrasts with the warm welcome Amazon has received in Virginia, where Gov. Ralph Northam, D, signed a law on Tuesday authorizing up to $750 million in state subsidies for the Arlington headquarters.
Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, D, and Attorney General Mark Herring, D, have been engulfed in recent days by scandals involving past personal behavior. But the two people familiar with Amazon's plans said company leadership is not concerned those controversies will hamper their project.
It's unclear what Amazon might consider as a Plan B if the New York project falls through. It could forgo the incentive package and hire employees on a smaller scale, as competitors including Google are doing. Or Amazon could search for another jurisdiction to get some or all of the jobs.
"We always welcome more great jobs to the commonwealth," said Stephen Moret, chief executive of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the state's top Amazon negotiator.
- - -
Resistance to Amazon in New York is well organized and energetic, based in unions and community groups. Canvassers have gone door-to-door to warn people in Queens of looming rent hikes and displacement, much as Seattle experienced during the company's explosive growth there.
In addition to Ocasio-Cortez and Gianaris, opponents include City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, D-Manhattan, and Deputy Leader of the City Council James G. Van Bramer, D-Queens.
Gianaris, Van Bramer and some others who previously supported bringing Amazon to the city have changed their position, partly because they were unhappy that the deal was structured to bypass City Council approval.
Critics portray the New York struggle as a national test for populist forces confronting big companies' influence, and for the contest within the Democratic Party between its grass-roots and business-friendly wings.
"We are dealing with an era of unprecedented corporate power in this country," Gianaris said. "This Amazon deal represents a tipping point that is going to set the stage for what this country is going to be going forward."
Amazon surprised the nation in November by announcing that it would split its much-publicized second headquarters between Arlington and Long Island City, with employees at each site earning an average of at least $150,000 a year. Initially, the company said it planned a single location with all 50,000 jobs.
The divergent reactions in New York and Virginia arise from political and economic differences between the two, officials and analysts say. New York is a pro-labor city, whereas Virginia is a right-to-work state where employees cannot be obliged to join a union as a condition of employment. Amazon has opposed attempts to unionize its workforce and said it would do the same in New York.
"What Amazon is looking to do is come in and change the values of our city," said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
New York also is straining from the effects of rapid economic growth, while Arlington is eager to attract investment to Crystal City to offset the loss of thousands of federal government jobs over the past 14 years.
The community around Long Island City is home to legions of grass-roots organizations that were already unhappy about gentrification. Some also fault Amazon for selling facial-recognition technology to law enforcement agencies and partnering with companies that work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The activists have occupied an Amazon store in Manhattan, marched in Albany and demonstrated at the office of Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, D-Queens, who supports the deal.
"The geography in New York has brought together a lot of threads of activism who were really ready to react to this kind of announcement and were particularly outraged," said Deborah Axt, co-executive director of Make the Road, an organization of low-income immigrants and communities of color.
Northern Virginia, Axt said, does "not have quite the pool of amazing champions ready to jump into the fray as we're fortunate to have here in New York."
- - -
In Virginia, almost all state and local leaders support Amazon's arrival, despite opposition by Tenants and Workers United, Our Revolution Arlington and some members of Indivisible Arlington, which have staged small protests at community meetings.
The Arlington County Board is putting final touches on a proposed $23 million local incentives package, which it is expected to approve in March or later.
"Most people think this is a great opportunity," Board Chair Christian Dorsey, D, said.
The board is pressuring Amazon to sign a project labor agreement that ensures a living wage, proper job classifications and safety standards for all those employed by construction contractors and subcontractors. "They have emphatically not promised anything," said board member Erik Gutshall, D. "But I didn't get the sense that any of those things was a non-starter."
Residents of the neighborhoods around the Arlington site worry about rent increases, spiking property taxes and paralyzing traffic. But neither they nor the progressive groups lobbying against the company appear to have enough political clout to block the deal.
In New York, critics are hoping that Amazon will tire of devoting time and money to fighting a battle it didn't expect.
"The way these fights work, you push on each and every little thing," Van Bramer said.
That approach was sure to worry Amazon, whose vice president for policy, Brian Huseman, told the recent City Council hearing, "We want to invest in a community that wants us."
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Video: Amazon is now reconsidering a second headquarters in New York City after backlash from several protestors and New York politicians.(Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)
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BRIDGEPORT One client was accused of possession of narcotics with intent to sell.
Several others were accused of murder, sex assault and other violent, heinous crimes.
And in the early 2000s a bad time for Bridgeport there was the one accused of corruption.
Several were acquitted and the rest earned lighter sentences the work of a lawyer who has a way with judges and juries.
Attorney John Gulashs reputation precedes him.
Gulash, known to nearly everyone as Bob, has signed on to represent Joe Tiago, the deputy public facilities director fired earlier this month amid the FBIs scrap metal probe into city government.
Although Tiago hasnt been formally accused of anything, hes hired one of the citys most prominent and successful defense attorneys.
Hes just a very, very well-respected guy that, when youre in a jam and you need a serious lawyer, Bob would be right up there at the top of the list, said Ed Gavin, another defense attorney whos been in courtrooms alongside Gulash for nearly three decades.
Gulash speaks little outside of the court room stories about his cases are rife with no comments and for this report he didnt return an interview request. But hes known by his colleagues as one of the top criminal defense lawyers, not only in Bridgeport, but in the state.
We all know the feds are investigating and, if youre Joe Tiago, you want to be in a situation where youre represented by someone thats experienced and has been through this process before, said Gavin. I dont know what hes accused of doing, but certainly it would be very, very appropriate to have someone like Bob Gulash representing him at this juncture.
As of Friday, federal authorities have subpoenaed the city for three years worth of records on scrap metal sales and dealings with three local contractors who may have been associated with Tiago. Federal agents have at least twice on Jan. 17 and again Tuesday visited the downtown government center and, specifically, the Public Facilities, Finance and Law departments.
Track record
Some of Gulashs more recent clients include ex-Bridgeport Police Lt. Steven Shuck, who was arrested last year and charged with stealing overtime; former Fairfield Detective Stephen Rilling, the son of Norwalks mayor, who pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the Fairfield Police Department; Kimberly Brown, a state Department of Motor Vehicles worker who stole $80,000 from her employer; and Raymond Neuberger, an ex-Fairfield politician and one-time candidate for state representative imprisoned for abusing two dogs.
In 2001, Gulash represented Alfred Lenoci Jr., a prominent developer who pleaded guilty to corruption charges during the investigation into Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganims first administration.
Hes no stranger to investigations relating to the city of Bridgeport, said Eugene Riccio, who worked alongside Gulash as a public defender for 25 years. Hes certainly had his share of doing that ... Unlike a lot of lawyers today, his victories have come in the courtroom as opposed to the newspaper or the television.
If youre Tiago, Riccio said, You want to retain somebody whos got a lot of experience in federal criminal investigations and who has a good working relationship with the United States Attorneys Office, and Bob has both of those qualifications.
Gulash, who lives in Fairfield, runs the Bridgeport-based law firm Gulash and Associates. His son, Alec, is also a lawyer at the firm, and his wife, Susan Hanken, is a former public defender.
His daughter is also a lawyer. And just last week Gulash became a grandfather for the first time.
Born and raised in Bridgeport, Gulash graduated from Stetson University School of Law in Florida in 1976 and joined the Office of the Public Defender in Bridgeport that same year.
He entered private practice in 1981, and has focused primarily on criminal defense since then. Hes admitted to practice law in both Connecticut and Florida.
His approach in the courtroom is measured, calm and even a bit charming, said Hugh Keefe, a New Haven-based defense attorney.
Hes got a real pleasant but firm attitude, Keefe said. Hes graceful under pressure, he never seems to lose his cool, hes got a great smile and he gets good results because of that.
As for whether hell handle a corruption case the same way he would a murder trial, Keefe said he has no doubt Gulash has the temperament to handle any kind of case.
If youre a good trial lawyer, if you know the rules of evidence, if you have a personality that is attractive to jurors and if judges like and respect you, those traits are going to carry over regardless of if its murder or white collar crime, Keefe said. Trials are works of impression and thats what hes great at.
This story includes reporting by Brian Lockhart.
kkrasselt@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2563; @kaitlynkrasselt
Contributed Photo / Contributed Photo
BRIDGEPORT City firefighters quickly put out two small fires in the old Waltersville School on Friday, officials said.
Around 5:30 p.m., fire units responded to an abandoned school on Steuben Street, the old Waltersville School, said Deputy Chief Lance Edwards.
Photos of the Saga Sapphire, which is wrapping up her Saga Cruises career in 2020 as the brand welcomes two new purpose-built 1,000 guest ships.
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Ross Ewing: Lets face it. In practice, Chope was wrong about this FGM Bill. But in principle, his broader point is right.
Ross Ewing is a Senior Parliamentary Assistant in the House of Commons.
So here we are again. Christopher Chope has single-handedly blocked a Bill that has widespread support across the country. The Christchurch MP yesterday shouted object to a Private Members Bill (PMB) designed to protect children at risk of suffering female genital mutilation (FGM). Cue the Twitter storm of Conservative backbench MPs and Cabinet Ministers lining up to put on record how outraged they are by Chopes objection, and the subsequent delay to the passage of this Bill.
Of course, his behaviour is not new. Everyone will have known for some time that Chope was going to object to this Bill passing seamlessly through its Second Reading in the Commons including the ministers who were quick to communicate their horror at what took place on a quiet Friday in the Commons.
Let me make this clear. FGM is a despicable criminal practice that has no place in society. The law of the land should come down extremely hard on those that carry out this sickening practice, and every effort must be made to prevent it being carried out in the first place.
Campaigners on this issue deserve our respect too. They have brought this issue to the front pages, and they have made our lawmakers sit up and take notice. It is quite right that a proactive and free-thinking MP such as Zac Goldsmith shoud be the man who brought this piece of legislation forward.
Backbenchers such as Goldsmith only have so much power in our legislative process. PMBs are curious things that very few MPs really engage with. The green benches are usually sparsely attended on a Friday morning, when PMBs are being debated and most MPs seem to think that there is very little point in speaking on or supporting a PMB when there are so many opportunities for legislation to fall.
There are of course some regular attenders on Fridays. Peter Bone usually has a long list of proposed Bills which seem never to get debated, are always objected to by his own party whips, and appear usually designed to clog up the system of PMBs anyway.
Chope is another one of those regulars. His intentions for PMB Fridays are akin to those of Bone. Chope doesnt believe that PMBs are a suitable vehicle for legislation to be brought forward, especially on contentious issues or topics about which a great deal of scrutiny is required in order to ensure that the Bill has its desired effect. Hence his objection yesterday though, curiously, he doesnt often object to PMBs proposed by his like-minded colleagues.
But although I think he was wrong to object to this Bill, I struggle to disagree on his broader point. Objections to PMBs are a matter of routine by party whips and, even when Bills pass, the Government often wont bring forward money resolutions to coincide with them. This effectively ends the progress of the Bill in question.
Furthermore, Chope has a history of this sort of activity, and everyone involved in politics knows that. Readers of this site will remember that he recently blocked a Bill that would criminalise the act of upskirting. The uproar over his objection caused the Government to act and bring forward legislation themselves.
It was the sensible thing to do at the time and it would be the sensible thing to do now for this Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill.
Were the Government so committed to bringing forward this legislation, then Ministers could do it easily themselves. After all, the past few weeks have seen very little Government business brought forward. The Government appears to be paralysed in Parliament, due to ongoing Brexit wrangling: fear of destabilising defeats looms over every vote.
So instead, we have enjoyed various general debates on anti-social behaviour, sport in the UK and other topics. Next week, MPs will spend government time in the Chamber on tributes to the Clerk of the House, followed by another general debate on connecting communities through charities and volunteers. Important topics though these are, these debates will achieve very little.
In short, the Government has the power themselves to make this important change in the law a reality. Ministers also have the power to alter the rules that govern PMBs, so that these are more effective, and prevent a lone MP, such as Chope, from delaying the progress of an important Bill. Were Ministers to take up this Bill, it would achieve cross-party support, and the measure would gain the necessary clout to make it onto the statute book. What else has the Commons got to debate at the moment anyway?
Britain and Europe: A Short History by Jeremy Black
Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.
Keyness insight applies with equal force to the European issue. Practical politicians who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct theorist or historian.
Jeremy Black is not defunct. He is the author of over a hundred works of history. Here is a scholar unafraid to range with breezy confidence across the centuries.
In 210 pages he covers Britains relationship with Europe from Roman times to the present day. In the medieval period, he reminds us, the Church ensured that there was an international European dimension to everything. William the Conqueror flew a papal banner at the Battle of Hastings.
Five of our kings William I, Henry I, Henry II, Richard I and Henry V died in France. Henry VIII broke with the papacy: as Black says, defiance of Continental authority and power rings clearly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The English and then the British were formed as a Protestant culture, upheld by a national Church and Parliament. This did not, however, mean England (and from 1707 Britain) were cut off from Europe. Foreign monarchs William III, George I were welcome so long as they were Protestant, so could be relied on to defend liberty,
The Glorious Revolution of 1688-9 was seen, Black observes, by most British and many foreign commentators as clearly separating Britain from the general pattern of Continental development.
Black touches on Macaulay as an exponent of the Whig interpretation of history, with a phenomenal world readership. But he does not mention that Macaulay gained those readers by writing in an extraordinarily lucid, witty and trenchant manner, successfully aspiring to make his History of England as entertaining as the latest fashionable novel.
Todays novelists have little to fear from Black. His style is quite often unbelievably clumsy. The three sentences which he devotes to his illustrious predecessor end with the words: Macaulays influence contributed to earning him a peerage.
It is true that the perfection of Macaulays style could lend him the fraudulent air of hitting every nail on the head. Black avoids that fault. He does not offer a heart-warming tale of national progress towards an ever more perfect parliamentary democracy, or indeed towards an ever more perfect European Union.
British identity became bound up with the British Empire, which within 20 years of the end of the Second World War had vanished from the map. Harold Macmillan decided, in the early 1960s, that Britain had better after all join the Common Market, in which countries such as Germany, France and Italy, which a few years before had suffered harrowing defeats, were now prospering.
And as Black says of Macmillan: The entire policy failed. De Gaulle vetoed British entry. This ground is covered more elegantly, and at far greater length, by Hugo Young in This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair, published in 1998.
Like many members of the British Establishment, Young thought we had made a dreadful mistake by not going into the Common Market at the start. Black adopts a more detached position. He is rightly appalled by the level of the present debate on Europe, with both sides indulging in gross simplifications, suppressions and distortions of the historical record:
Britain is a European country, but that does not dictate any particular political arrangement. Unfortunately, this proved unhelpful to polemicists and was therefore widely ignored. The emotional weight of the issue did not encourage measured restraint. Indeed, the virulence of some academic commentators proved particularly notable.
This brief and thought-provoking account reminds one that Britain joined the Common Market because of a widespread (though by no means uncontested) sense that we were a nation in decline. And for different reasons, the German and French elites decided their nations had become unviable.
The European Union is a collection of failed nation states which needed to make a new start. Germanys recent history was unbearable. The only way for German politicians to convince themselves, and show their neighbours, that they had really changed, was for them to become good Europeans.
Otherwise the smaller countries which surround Germany would become afraid of resurgent German power, and would form an anti-German alliance.
The only way for the French to be sure this time of keeping the Germans in order was to build a new Europe, run by a bureaucracy constructed on the French model.
These points are not made by Black, nor would it be fair to criticise him for leaving them out, for his book is admirably concise. He has almost nothing to say about Germany.
But he does observe that it is still not clear what kind of European Union we are being urged to remain members of, and what type of Europe the EU will propose and offer in forthcoming years.
For however much some Remain voters in the United Kingdom may feel they have become European,
The EU has certainly failed to replace the nation states of Europe as a focus for popular identity and thus loyalty or potential loyalty. If this is a measure of its failure, it is also a cause of it, if failure is to be defined as an inability to proceed to federalism. The central political problem in any community is the eliciting of consent. This is not simply a question of defining acceptable policies and selecting leaders who will be judged competent, but also reflects the nature of identification between people and government, which is a question of history, symbolism, and a sense of place and purpose. These, in turn, combine to produce an ideology that is more potent than the more intellectual and abstract creeds usually designated by that term. This is arguably strong in Britain, because of its political and institutional continuity with its 19th-century past, which is unusual within Europe.
Britain will always be concerned by what is happening on the other side of the Channel, and in that sense, leaving looks like a riskier option than remaining.
But perhaps the British are less frightened of independence than we were in the 1970s, when Edward Heath at last managed to lead us into the Common Market. Perhaps we have adjusted to the loss of empire, our maritime past as a small but daring nation has started to reassert itself, and we are starting to feel a bit more confident.
U.S. President Donald Trump meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is shown on television screens at an electronics retail store on June 12, 2018 in Seoul, South Korea.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that U.S. diplomats had a "very productive meeting" with North Korean officials, and he announced his summit later this month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be held in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump said on Twitter.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said.
Earlier this week, Trump announced the dates for the second summit with Kim and said it would be held in Vietnam, but the city had not been disclosed.
Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, held three days of talks in Pyongyang to prepare for the summit, the State Department said on Friday.
It said Biegun had agreed with his counterpart Kim Hyok Chol to meet again ahead of the summit.
In their talks in Pyongyang, from Wednesday to Friday, Biegun and Kim Hyok Chol "discussed advancing President Trump and Chairman Kim's Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming U.S.-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula," the State Department said.
Its statement, which referred to North Korea by the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, gave no indication of any progress in the talks.
Just weeks ahead of the planned summit to follow on from an unprecedented first meeting between the leaders in Singapore last June, the two sides have appeared far from narrowing differences over U.S. demands for North Korea to give up a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States.
Biegun said last week his Pyongyang talks would be aimed at seeking progress on commitments made in Singapore and mapping out "a set of concrete deliverables" for the second summit.
He said Washington was willing to discuss "many actions" to improve ties and entice Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and that Trump was ready to end the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam speaks with reporters at a press conference at the Governor's mansion on February 2, 2019 in Richmond, Virginia.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam maintained on Saturday that he is not the person featured in a decades-old blackface photo that's upended the state's politics, but intends to spend the remainder of this term focused on racial reconciliation, The Washington Post reported.
Northam was hit with calls for his resignation from Republicans and Democrats alike after it was revealed that his 1984 medical school yearbook page included a racist photo of a person in blackface, standing next to another person wearing a KKK hood.
In his first interview since the photograph came to light on Feb. 1, the 59 year old governor elected in 2017 continued to defy widespread calls for his resignation. He said that he "overreacted" after the photo was first made public, and that "If I had it to do over I would step back and take a deep breath," he told the publication.
After a "horrific" week in which three of the state's top-ranking Democrats were engulfed in scandals of their own, Northam told The Post that he's was working with his staff on specific proposals to begin expanding access to health care, housing and transportation.
"It's obvious from what happened this week that we still have a lot of work to do. There are still some very deep wounds in Virginia, and especially in the area of equity," The Post reported him as saying.
"There are ongoing inequities to access to things like education, health care, mortgages, capital, entrepreneurship. And so this has been a real, I think , an awakening for Virginia. It has really raised the level of awareness for racial issues in Virginia. And so we're ready to learn from our mistakes," he added.
Northam's fate has become an even bigger question after two women accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, a rising star in the Democratic Party, of sexual assault over a decade ago.
Lawyers for one woman, Meredith Watson, made the accusation in a statement that also called on Fairfax to resign from office. Another woman, California university professor Vanessa Tyson, had recently accused Fairfax of sexual assault in an incident nearly 15 years earlier.
The next person in the line of succession after Fairfax, Attorney General Mark Herring, admitted that he, too, wore blackface at a college party in 1980.
If all three Democratic leaders resigned, then Republican Kirk Cox, the speaker of the House of Delegates, would become governor.
--CNBC's Kevin Brueninger contributed to this report.
The Washington Post's full story can be found on its website.
Ousted CBS CEO Les Moonves is running a new company, and his former employer is paying for his office space, The New York Times reports.
In December, CBS fired Moonves after a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct. Once considered one of the most powerful figures in media, Moonves is starting his second act by leading a new venture, Moon Rise Unlimited, out of one of West Hollywood's tallest buildings, The Times reported.
It's unclear what exactly the new company does, but the office arrangement is unusual, given that Moonves is currently waging a battle in arbitration over his CBS severance package. Moonves believes he was wrongfully terminated, and CBS concluded there were grounds to fire him for cause--thereby denying him a $120 million severance package.
Still, Moonves' exit agreement with CBS stipulates the company must pay for Moonves' "office services" for no less than a year, The Times reported.
CBS did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. A spokesman for Moonves confirmed to the Times that Moonves had an office in the building, but declined to comment further.
Read the full New York Times story here.
There are a lot of scary cybersecurity headlines, and many shiny new solutions from vendors that promise to address those threats.
Ignore them and look at history instead. That's the advice of Google's Heather Adkins, who has served for 16 years as the head of information security and privacy at the tech giant.
Adkins has witnessed many landmark cyber events from the front lines. She says the attacks, methods, motivations, tools and even criminals themselves are the same as they've been since the 1980s. History is a better teacher for businesses than a frightening pitch deck from a vendor, she says.
U.S. government-backed research papers from as early as the 1960s started to outline the problems we would see today, she told CNBC. Government workers back then spoke of new threats they saw as the government went from single-use, big mainframe computers to shared environments.
Here are a few examples of how things have evolved -- and how they haven't.
Nation states attacking weak links. One landmark for Adkins was Clifford Stoll's 1989 book, "The Cuckoo's Egg". Stoll, a computer lab worker at U.C. Berkeley, discovered that hackers from East Germany were systematically trying to break into university computers to capture military secrets.
"What happens today is still very similar," she said, "especially when we are thinking about the root causes of attacks, including things like the Equifax hack."
In other words, nation-state hackers target companies like Equifax, banks or universities to get important secrets, rather than wasting all of their resources on the more heavily fortified government agencies themselves.
Old methods of attack keep resurfacing. The methods for distributing malware and viruses have grown and become easier, but they haven't changed that much on a technical level.
Take for example the Morris Worm, one of the first internet worms distributed widely over the web. A computer worm is a piece of malicious software that can replicate itself, sometimes very rapidly, distributing itself across connected computers.
Worm attacks largely fell out of practice, but then came back in style in 2017 when criminals attached worms to ransomware -- which shuts down a user's computer until a ransom is paid -- in attacks like WannaCry and NotPetya. These worm-style attacks spread globally in very rapid fashion, causing havoc at companies like FedEx and Maersk.
The vehicles for transmitting hostile software may be roughly the same, but their availability and ease-of-use has exploded, Adkins said.
"At the time of the Morris worm, the people exploiting [computers] were mostly just curious people. But today, it's different. There's an extraordinary amount of knowledge available -- you don't have to know very much. You can go out and for $20, buy a spying kit, and use that for your own purposes," she said.
In another example, email schemes have become far more sophisticated than the "Nigerian prince" schemes of 15 or 20 years ago. But attacks convincing people to wire money or enter their bank credentials are still going strong, and the basic idea remains the same: A scammer sends a fake email that tries to trick a recipient into providing information they shouldn't.
This slow evolution provides an advantage for the back-end machine learning tools Gmail uses to identify them. The company has gotten better about catching the these attacks and providing more information about them, like whether the fraudulent message was sent by a nation-state.
The old rules are the best rules. Adkins said sometimes the marketplace suffers from a "proliferation of cybersecurity professionals" offering conflicting advice on passwords, antivirus software, safety practices and so on.
But the best rules for individuals looking to secure their personal information are the classics, Adkins said.
Keep your software up to date, and don't re-use the same password. Criminals rely on simple hacks that exploit old software problems, and when a company is breached, data stolen frequently includes passwords and usernames. If you use those same terms elsewhere, criminals can easily break into your other accounts.
Here are some more of Google's up-to-date email security rules to consider as well.
"Things have grown and changed so much, but really so much of what we do has stayed the same or is based on these very well used concepts," said Adkins. "Doing these well-known basics can still go a long way in being more secure."
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren formally launched her presidential campaign on Saturday at a rally in her home state of Massachusetts, marking the final step in a process that had been underway for months.
Warren made little secret for years of the fact that she was considering a White House bid, and the former Harvard Law School professor has been considered a top contender among Democrats ever since she was first elected to the Senate in 2012.
Warren's announcement Saturday in Lawrence, Mass., was the first event in a seven state tour of early voting primary states. After Lawrence, Warren's campaign said she planned to travel to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and California.
Even before Warren's formal announcement, President Donald Trump's reelection campaign sent out a statement lambasting the senator and her policy positions.
"We are here to take on a fight that will shape our lives, our children's lives and our grandchildren's lives, just as surely as the fight that began in these streets more than a century ago," Warren said, in a statement posted to blogging site Medium.
"Because the man in the White House is not the cause of what's broken, he's just the latest and most extreme symptom of what's gone wrong in America," she added.
So far, there has been little reliable polling on the 2020 Democratic presidential field, which is growing on a near daily basis. But there is some good news in the numbers for Warren. A recent Politico-Morning Consult poll showed that more than half of all Americans already support what is expected to be a pillar of Warren's candidacy: Higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy.
"This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone. I am in that fight all the way," Warren said on Saturday. "And that is why I stand here today: to declare that I am a candidate for President of the United States of America."
An Oklahoma native who moved to Massachusetts as an adult, Warren has already staked out the issues of economic equality and anti-corruption, well ahead of the rest of the Democrats expected to run in 2020.
Both are subjects that Warren is uniquely positioned to tackle, given her experience as both a professor and her legislative record as a senator.
This fall, Warren introduced sweeping new ethics legislation, no doubt with an eye toward her 2020 campaign platform. The Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act would place a lifetime lobbying ban on former presidents and vice presidents, Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress and federal judges. It would also require presidential candidates to release at least eight years of tax returns President Donald Trump has refused to release any of his tax returns.
Also this fall, Warren introduced the Accountable Capitalism Act, which would require, among other provisions, that employees be given seats on the board of directors at some of the nation's biggest companies.
Considering an associate's degree? Then take note: There's a slate of well-paying, fast-growing gigs for those with just two years of schooling. CNBC Make It combed through data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to identify 11 occupations that pay workers more than $55,000 a year and require only an associate's degree. It turns out that certain jobs (like those in the healthcare industry) are growing at a rapid pace. Each of the jobs on this list will grow faster than 7 percent, the average rate of job growth in the United States. Some will grow at three or four times that rate. These in-demand jobs are also well-paying, as employers compete for workers. All the jobs on this list earn thousands more than the $41,496 average annual salary those with associate's degrees typically earn, according to the BLS. In fact, one of these gigs pays almost double that wage. So, if you're looking to outearn your friends, pick an associate's degree that readies you for one of these 11 in-demand occupations.
Nuclear medicine technologists
Monty Rakusen | Getty Images
Median annual wage: $75,660
Projected job growth through 2026: 10 percent
What they do: These healthcare workers prepare radioactive drugs for patients to assist with imaging and operate the equipment used to diagnose and treat patients. They may also help physicians in researching the uses of radioactive drugs.
How they train: Nuclear medicine technologists typically need an associate's degree from an accredited nuclear medicine technology program. Some technologists become qualified if they have a degree in a related health field and complete a 12-month certificate program. Some states may require a license to practice.
Radiation therapists
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Median annual wage: $80,570
Projected job growth through 2026: 13 percent
What they do: These workers are an important part of the healthcare teams called in to treat cancer. Radiation therapists operate the machines that deliver concentrated radiation therapy to a patient's tumor. They are also responsible for explaining treatment plans to patients, determining the region of the body receiving treatment, and checking for unusual reactions.
How they train: Employers usually prefer to hire applicants with at least an associate's degree in radiation therapy, though some companies accept those who've completed a certificate program. In most states, radiation therapists must be licensed or certified.
Cardiovascular technologists and technicians
andresr | E+ | Getty Images
Median annual wage: $55,270
Projected job growth through 2026: 10 percent
What they do: According to the BLS, these healthcare workers operate special imaging equipment helping them document and conduct tests on the heart and lungs of a patient to help physicians diagnose that person's medical condition. They can assist with cardiac catheterization, monitor a patient during open-heart surgery and during the insertion of pacemakers and stents, run EKG testing, or monitor and test a patient's lungs and breathing.
How they train: Most employers want cardiovascular technologists that have a professional certification, though some accept applicants who intend to earn one shortly after being hired. Most in this profession obtain at least an associate's degree in cardiovascular and vascular technology, though one-year certificate programs are also available from colleges and some hospitals. Employers tend to favor graduates of programs accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Program and who also have a basic life support certification.
Physical therapist assistants
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Median annual wage: $57,430
Projected job growth through 2026: 31 percent
What they do: These workers aid patients who are recovering from injuries and illnesses regain movement and manage pain. They work under the supervision of physical therapists and are typically responsible for helping patients do specific exercises as part of their treatment plan, messaging and stretching a patient's body, and educating patients on at-home care post treatment.
How they train: All states require that physical therapist assistants have an associate's degree from an accredited physical therapist assistant program and be licensed or certified. To get a license, as is required in many states, you typically must also pass a national exam, and some states further mandate continuing education courses to keep that license.
Radiologic technologists
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Median annual wage: $58,440
Projected job growth through 2026: 12 percent
What they do: Also known as radiographers, these healthcare workers perform diagnostic imaging examinations on patients using X-ray and computed tomography (CT) imaging. They are also responsible for protecting the parts of a patient's body not being imaged and maintaining the equipment. Some are also in charge of preparing mixtures for patients to drink to allow soft tissue to be viewed on the images they take.
How they train: To become a radiologic technologist, you need an associate's degree, and you must be licensed or certified in most states. To get licensed, technologists usually need to graduate from an accredited program and pass a certification exam from the state or obtain a certification from a certifying body.
Occupational therapy assistants
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Median annual wage: $59,310
Projected job growth through 2026: 29 percent
What they do: These workers help people regain or develop the skills necessary for daily living. They work with patients to complete therapeutic exercises and stretches, engage children with developmental disabilities in play activities to help with coordination or socialization, and teach patients how to use special equipment that will make tasks, such as eating, easier. They work with occupational therapists to create and implement each patient's treatment plan.
How they train: Occupational therapy assistants need an associate's degree from an accredited occupational therapy assistant program, which can be easily found in most community colleges or technical schools. All states regulate occupational therapy assistants and most require a license as well as passing a national exam.
Dental hygienists
Dental Hygienist Portland Press Harold | Getty Images
Median annual wage: $74,070
Projected job growth through 2026: 20 percent
What they do: Dental hygienists remove tartar, stains, and plaque from a patient's teeth, check for signs of oral diseases, apply sealants and fluorides, take dental X-rays, and remind you how to brush and floss correctly.
How they train: Dental hygienists need at least an associate's degree in dental hygiene as well as a license to practice. The college programs they take typically last three years and a passing grade on clinical examinations is required for licensure in most states.
Magnetic resonance imaging technologists
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Median annual wage: $69,930
Projected job growth through 2026: 14 percent
What they do: As their title suggests, these technologists operate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners to create diagnostic images used for determining medical diagnoses and the staging of diseases.
How they train: Many MRI technologists start out as radiologic technologists. An associate's degree is a common education requirement for this post but few states require a license.
Respiratory therapists
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Median annual wage: $59,710
Projected job growth through 2026: 23 percent
What they do: These workers look after and care for patients who have trouble breathing due to a chronic respiratory disease (such as asthma or emphysema), undeveloped lungs or diseased lungs. They can also provide emergency care to those who've just suffered a heart attack, been rescued from drowning or are in shock. Their day-to-day responsibilities could include: creating treatment plans with physicians, performing diagnostic tests such as measuring lung capacity, and treating patients via chest physiotherapy and aerosol medications.
How they train: To become a respiratory therapist in most states, you'll need an associate's degree and a license, one that's typically obtained by passing a state or professional certification exam.
Web developers
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Median annual wage: $67,990
Projected job growth through 2026: 15 percent
What they do: These tech workers design and create websites, ensuring a company or client gets the look they desire as well as the performance and traffic capacity needed. Their job can range from helping a client determine what information the site should contain, to writing code or testing applications.
How they train: While there is no technical degree requirement for this job, many in the field have at least an associate's degree in web design. Those who complement their design skills with programming languages also easily break into the industry as employers tend to favor developers with those skillsets, according to the BLS.
Diagnostic medical sonographers
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President Donald Trump participates in the signing ceremony for the First Step Act and the Juvenile Justice Reform Act in the Oval Office of the White House December 21, 2018 in Washington, DC.
February brings the most significant series of tests yet of whether President Trump can transform his disruptive U.S. foreign policy into concrete outcomes.
The four to watch most closely are:
negotiating a trade deal with China
denuclearizing North Korea
rallying an international community to contain Iran
democratizing Venezuela.
Trump's trade team, led by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, will visit China early next week seeking progress toward a trade deal before a March 1 deadline, ending a 90-day truce agreed to by the two country's leaders at the G-20 in Buenos Aires.
That would not only head off the increase of tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent, but it would also show markets that the world's two leading economies can find mutually beneficial ways to settle trade differences. More important over time will be to see whether the two sides can as well navigate even more difficult disputes over future technologies and regional security issues.
On North Korea, Trump in his State of the Union address otherwise light on foreign policy issues said he would meet for his second summit with Kim Jong Un on February 27-28 in Vietnam. "If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea," Trump said in the speech.
The meeting will be a test of whether the "great chemistry" Trump says he has developed with Kim will help him achieve gains toward denuclearization, building upon the release of three American prisoners and the remains of 55 American soldiers. While his intelligence community, in a report to Congress last week, said North Korea is "unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability," Trump aims to show he is correct that there is a "good chance" of a deal because Kim so badly wants to engineer an economic turnaround.
This week, on February 13-14, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will host in Warsaw, Poland, an international conference on peace and security in the Middle East, even as the U.S. pulls its troops out of Syria by April. Media reporting is skeptical about whether the meeting can produce more pressure on Iran, garner support for an emerging Trump administration Mideast peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians, or lay the groundwork for an alliance of Arab states to advance common interests.
What the conference, involving more than 40 countries, underscores is the continued U.S. ability to convene, even if many countries won't be sending ministerial level representatives. What I'll be watching:
Interactions among Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, the UAE and Saudi Arabia particularly given US efforts to promote warmer Israeli-Gulf relations.
Progress toward a new Arab defense coalition, referred to as a "historic alliance" by Pompeo. In an interview this week with Fox Business, Pompeo said "a big number of countries (would) announce that they want to be part of this here in the not-too-distant future, and we'll develop an outline that isn't reactive."
Although Palestinians weren't invited, the Trump administration "peace team" will be there senior advisor Jared Kushner and special envoy Jason Greenblatt. On Thursday morning, they will brief and field questions during a session hosted by Brge Brende, the former Norwegian foreign minister and now-World Economic Forum president.
February will likely also be a decisive month in Caracas. My CNBC column last week argued that Venezuela has become the first battleground in a new era of great power competition. As such, the outcome of this contest will be an indication of whether democracies or autocracies will be the dominant forces that will shape the future. The coming month will show whether the interim President Juan Guaido alongside the U.S. and its regional and European allies can leverage public dissatisfaction, international isolation and sanctions to create serious cracks in Maduro's regime.
Conversely, if Maduro weathers with the support of Cuba, China and Russia the most intense public, diplomatic and economic pressures ever to face his autocratic system, it would mark the most severe setback to U.S. global interests during the Trump administration.
There's also much more in play, stretching the bandwidth of a U.S. administration in which so many foreign policy jobs remain unfilled. For example, the United States on February 2 triggered a six-month withdrawal period from the INF Treaty on short and medium-range land-based ballistic and cruise missiles in Europe, and a NATO defense ministerial this week will discuss consequences and next steps.
There is also some disruptive Trump foreign policy thinking less likely to gain traction.
The largest U.S. delegation of all time, including over 40 members of Congress, is heading to Germany this Friday for the Munich Security Conference, a symbolic opposition to any steps Trump would take to weaken U.S. commitment to NATO or, at the very worst, withdraw from the alliance.
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The House of Representatives has passed legislation that is engineered to "ring fence" Trump on NATO, and the Senate is preparing to do the same.
For his part, the president in his State of the Union altered his tone on NATO, speaking of how for years "the United States was being treated very unfairly by NATO," but that he now had "secured a $100 billion increase in defense spending from NATO allies."
What confounds Trump critics, as illustrated above, is his success at identifying real foreign policy problems and then taking them on with characteristic rhetorical gusto and tweets. A less bold American president wouldn't have made the progress he has achieved on a host of issues that seemed previously immovable. And his most ardent opponents won't be able to complain much if in February he shows progress in addressing China's unfair trade practices, toward denuclearizing North Korea, in rallying support to counter Iran's malevolent behavior, and in replacing Venezuela's odious dictatorship with democratic change.
What should concern his supporters, however, is his disdain for the sort of allies, strategies and process that he'll need to address all the above challenges. With their level of risk and complexity, Trump isn't going to score lasting wins on any front without allies. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis' resignation letter was all about differences he had with Trump on that central issue.
It won't make it any easier that he's dealing with a cabinet that lacks the many decades of experience lost through recent departures. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan observes in her weekend column that, when Mattis, John Kelly and H.R. McMaster left the Trump White House, "a cumulative 123 years of military and diplomatic experience left with them."
To steer all the above issues across the finish line and beyond may take a more strategic actor and thinker than President Trump.
Let's see where we are at the end of this month.
Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, prize-winning journalist and president & CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the United States' most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked at The Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant managing editor and as the longest-serving editor of the paper's European edition. His latest book "Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth" was a New York Times best-seller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his look each Saturday at the past week's top stories and trends.
For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam speaks with reporters at a press conference at the Governor's mansion on February 2, 2019 in Richmond, Virginia.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam told his top staff Friday that he is not going to resign over the racist photo that has roiled state politics, despite intense pressure to step down, according to a top administration official.
Northam called a Cabinet meeting Friday afternoon to announce his intention to stay, the official said. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity
The announcement comes at the end of an unprecedented week in Virginia history that has seen the state's three top Democrats embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals.
The tumult began last Friday afternoon, when Northam's medical school yearbook page surfaced with a picture of one person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.
Northam immediately apologized for appearing in the photograph, saying he could not "undo the harm my behavior caused then and today." Most of the Democratic establishment called for his resignation by the end of the day.
On Saturday, though, the governor reversed course and said he wasn't in the picture. He said he wasn't going to resign immediately because he owed it to the people of Virginia to start a discussion about race and discrimination and listen to the pain he had caused.
"I believe this moment can be the first small step to open a discussion about these difficult issues," Northam said. But the governor left his long-term plans open, saying he would reassess his decision not to resign if it became clear he had no viable path forward.
The pressure on Northam reached a crescendo Saturday when almost the entire Virginia Democratic establishment, as well as nearly every Democratic presidential hopeful, called on him to resign. That pressure has tapered off as a cascade of scandals involving top politicians has rocked the state.
California college professor Vanessa Tyson publicly accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of forcing her to perform oral sex on him at a hotel in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Fairfax, who would replace Northam if he resigned, has cast the allegations as a political smear.
And Attorney General Mark Herring in line to become governor if Northam and Fairfax resign admitted putting on blackface in the 1980s, when he was a college student. Herring had previously called on Northam to resign and came forward after rumors about the existence of a blackface photo of him began circulating at the Capitol.
Although the Democratic Party has taken almost a zero-tolerance approach to misconduct among its members in this #MeToo era, a housecleaning in Virginia could be costly: If all three Democrats resigned, Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox would become governor.
Northam's decision to stay in office comes despite many fellow Democrats in Virginia and beyond reiterating their calls for him to resign as recently as Friday.
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a 2020 presidential hopeful, said Friday that he still thinks Northam should step down.
"I think it dredges up very hurtful, painful things from the past. ... I think he's betrayed the public trust, and he should resign," Booker said in response to a reporter's question during an appearance in Iowa.
And in statements Thursday night, the state legislature's Black Caucus and Virginia's Democratic congressional delegation reiterated calls for the governor to step down, while the state House Democrats who also previously called for Northam's resignation said they remain disappointed in him.
In a positive sign for Northam, even before he announced his plan to stay in the job, a lawmaker from Virginia's Democratic-leaning D.C. suburbs said Friday he won't call on the besieged governor to resign.
"I will not request the Governor's resignation," State Sen. Chap Petersen, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Nor will I request any other official to resign until it is obvious that they have committed a crime in office or their ability to serve is irredeemably compromised."
There has also been little appetite among lawmakers to use official means to force him out. Cox, the House speaker, himself said Monday that there was "a rightful hesitation" among lawmakers to seek Northam's impeachment or removal. He called on Northam to resign, saying "that would obviously be less pain for everyone."
Regarding the allegation against Fairfax, the district attorney's office in Boston declined to say whether it is investigating. Under Massachusetts law, the statute of limitations is 15 years for rape and several related crimes, an interval that would expire this summer for the woman's accusation.
Jeff Bezos explained his ambitious vision for Amazon in a 1999 interview.
He made clear the company's focus was on "great customer service" and discussed his real estate strategy.
Bezos said, "There's no guarantee that Amazon.com can be a successful company. What we're trying to do is very complicated."
He added, "Scale is important to us and we're going to go after that kind of scale."
Watch the video above to hear from the founder and CEO of Amazon, before he became the richest man in the world.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee (R) speaks during a business session with state governors hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump (L) in the State Dining Room at the White House February 26, 2018 in Washington, DC.
LOS ANGELES Washington Gov. Jay Inslee's gun control record could help him broaden his base of support beyond climate advocates if the Democrat decides to enter the 2020 presidential contest.
Certainly, Inslee isn't the only declared or potential 2020 Democratic presidential contender to advocate stricter gun control laws. But his personal experience on the gun issue is somewhat unique and he almost lost his political career over it.
Nearly a year ago, Inslee challenged President Donald Trump at the White House on a hot-button issue: arming teachers with firearms.
"I did confront him on that, and by the way, he needs to be confronted more personally to his face," Inslee told CNBC in an interview this week. "That doesn't happen enough, frankly."
In an event carried on live TV, Inslee stood up and confronted Trump over the president's solution to school shootings adding more guns to schools to make them safer. The clash took place at a White House meeting with governors to discuss school safety following the Feb. 14, 2018, mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
"I have listened to the first-grade teachers that don't want to be pistol-packing first-grade teachers," Inslee told the president. "I have listened to law enforcement who have said they don't want to have to train teachers as law enforcement agencies which takes about six months."
As Trump stood, Inslee told the president that teachers should be allowed to educate and "not be foisted upon this responsibility of packing heat in first-grade classes." The governor concluded by suggesting "we need a little less tweeting here, a little more listening, and let's just take that off the table and move forward."
Inslee's clash with Trump made national headlines, boosting the governor's profile outside the Evergreen State. Inslee said this week that Trump's idea of arming teachers is a "nutty idea" and the governor added that he expects to make a decision on whether to throw his hat in the ring for the 2020 presidential contest "in weeks, not months."
The governor already has gained a reputation as a "carbon warrior." He wrote a book about the climate issue back in 2007 when in Congress.
Inslee served more than a decade in Congress, and from two different districts. He also is a former criminal prosecutor and was a state legislator in Olympia before getting elected Washington's 23rd governor in 2012 and re-elected in 2016.
"Inslee actually lost his congressional seat because of a vote that he took on the 1994 assault weapons ban," said Ron Dotzauer, a Seattle-based former Democratic consultant who now runs the public relations firm Strategies 360. "He then represented the central part of Washington state, and there's a lot of gun racks in the pick-up [trucks there]."
In the end, Inslee was targeted by the National Rifle Association for voting in favor of the 1994 federal legislation that barred the manufacture, sale and possession of combat-style assault weapons. A Republican took his seat in 1995 in Washington's 4th Congressional District, a rural and conservative area of the state.
The 10-year assault weapons ban was signed into law in 1994 by then-President Bill Clinton but has since expired; attempts to bring it back have failed.
"He was in my office that day when he said he would take that vote [on the assault weapons ban]," recalled Dotzauer. "I said, 'whoah OK' you got a problem."
At the time, one Washington state paper described voting for the assault weapons ban as "political suicide" for politicians from rural areas. Some even blame the gun issue for contributing to Democrats' loss of the House in 1994.
Yet talk of gun control has heated up again with the 2020 presidential contest and several mass shootings in the past year. Also, support for stricter gun laws remains historically high.
A Gallup Poll conducted in October 2018 found 61 percent of Americans support stricter laws on the sale of firearms, although that was off a recent high of 67 percent in March in the immediate aftermath of the Parkland school shooting. Still, the support for stricter gun laws remains higher than it was during the time Obama was in office.
"From my discussions with legislators since November and with folks who are interested in running, they see the transformational shift that I think started really in earnest with the reaction that our nation had to the Parkland shooting," said Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
As for Inslee, he staged a comeback after losing his seat in the rural district. He returned to Congress four years later in the 1st Congressional District, a liberal-leaning district north of Seattle. He held the seat for more than a decade before running for governor in 2012.
Outside California, Washington has some of the toughest gun laws enacted among the states. Inslee campaigned successfully for Initiative 1491, a 2016 measure that made it more difficult for "high risk" individuals to obtain firearms. The measure allowed family, police and household members to obtain a court order to temporarily prevent someone from getting access to guns if were deemed a danger to themselves or others.
Last year, Washington voters approved Initiative 1639, a measure Inslee supported that raised the age to purchase semiautomatic rifles to 21, from 18. The initiative also expanded background checks for rifles and added other new regulations, including firearm education and new standards for secured gun storage.
"Many in D.C. remain in the grips of the NRA," Inslee said Jan.15 during a state of the state address. "We are the state that stands up for common-sense gun safety reforms."
The new age limits for purchasing assault weapons went into effect in January although other major regulations under I-1639 do not begin until July. Some county sheriffs in the state have said they won't prosecute violators, and the measure is being challenged in the courts.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the F8 Facebook Developers conference on May 1, 2018 in San Jose, California.
Facebook on Friday announced its acquisition of GrokStyle, a San Francisco start-up that uses artificial intelligence technology to help users shop for furniture.
"We are excited to welcome GrokStyle to Facebook," Facebook spokeswoman Vanessa Chan said in a statement. The company did not disclose a purchase price. "Their team and technology will contribute to our AI capabilities."
GrokStyle published a goodbye post for its customers, users and investors, saying the company would be winding down business. On the Ikea mobile app, users can snap a photo of a piece of furniture and use GrokStyle's technology to receive matches for similar products.
"Today, we are excited to share that we are moving on as a team," GrokStyle announced on its website. "Our team and technology will live on, and we will continue using our AI to build great visual search experiences for retail."
The deal was first reported by Bloomberg.
WATCH: Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok have a massive underage user problem here's why it matters
Monday: Restaurant Brands, Norfolk Southern analyst meeting
Restaurant Brands: The Burger King and Popeye's parent kicks off the week's earnings wave on Monday morning with its quarterly results. Cramer saw the stock as having greater value than the stock of competitor McDonald's. "It's got a 3.2 percent yield, it's incredibly well-run and it's got a superior growth trajectory," he said. "Let's hear what they have to say." Norfolk Southern: An analyst meeting at Norfolk Southern could see the railroad operator unveil its own version of precision railroading, a train-scheduling system that aims to improve service while eliminating waste, Cramer said. "Both CSX and Union Pacific have adopted ... precision railroading, and I bet Norfolk Southern will have something similar up its sleeve," he noted. "That should allow its stock to roar like the other rails."
Tuesday: Under Armour, Molson Coors, Occidental Petroleum, Twilio, Activision Blizzard
Under Armour: Cramer still preferred competitor Nike's stock over Under Armour's ahead of the latter's Tuesday earnings report. "It's Under Armour's bad luck that they compete against one of the best-run businesses on earth," he said. Molson Coors: The "Mad Money" host also didn't expect much from Molson Coors' quarterly results, though he did note that the beer brewer's report could affect pot stocks. "I think the cannabis stocks could be in play because this company understands it may need to take a bigger plunge into the marijuana market than the tire-kicking it's done so far," he argued. "See, the Canadian cannabis stocks started to roll over this week after an incredible run, but the fact is they are really serving as beer replacement[s] in a lot of states." Occidental Petroleum: Even though he called Occidental "one of the healthier ... oil companies" out there, with "fabulous" properties in Texas' oil-rich Permian Basin, Cramer preferred a different energy play. "I like BP more if you want to own an oil because it has a higher, 5.8 percent yield," he said. "That's a full percentage point above [Occidental]. Believe me, with oil looking like it is going back to the $40s, you're going to need some yield protection." Twilio: The action in shares of Twilio, a cloud-based communication enabler that works with the likes of Airbnb and Lyft, concerned Cramer ahead of the company's Tuesday earnings report. "[Twilio] represents, I think, maybe the best growth stock in tech right now," he said, adding that he'd like to buy shares for his charitable trust. "But [...] the stock is running right up into what we call 'the print' it gained more than 4 [basis] points today alone." "I want this stock to be lower to buy, but I bet the quarter's a legit blowout like the last one," he added. Activision Blizzard: Could this video game maker be capitalizing on the battle royale trend set by Fortnite like some of its peers? Cramer's eager to find out when Activision issues its quarterly results Tuesday evening. "Activision's stock has lost nearly half of its value since October, but I think EA put a floor under the group today, which means this one might be worth speculating on," he said.
Wednesday: Barrick Gold, Cisco Systems
Barrick Gold: The new combination of Barrick and Randgold is "the best of the lot" when it comes to gold stocks, Cramer said ahead of its Wednesday report. "I like the gold stocks here, as you know, even as the price of gold's been stalled as the dollar's been getting higher," he said. "I bet CEO Mark Bristow yes, of Randgold fame delivers a good quarter." Cisco: Cramer was more concerned about Cisco's guidance than its quarterly results, which he figured would be "fine." "I am concerned about the forecast because so many hedge fund managers own this one ... and they are a mighty hard group to please. We already own it for the charitable trust, but if you don't own any, I suggest now you've got to wait [and] see what happens," he said. "If Cisco pulls back, that might be your buying opportunity."
Thursday: Coca-Cola, Nvidia, Applied Materials
Coca-Cola: "I'm expecting still one more strong quarter from [Coca-Cola CEO] James Quincey" on Thursday, the "Mad Money" host said. "Only a strong dollar could impede what I expect will be mid-single-digit worldwide growth." Nvidia: Nvidia's "really bad" earnings pre-announcement may have successfully "de-risked" the stock ahead of the chipmaker's actual quarterly report, Cramer said. "You don't slam yourself again after that kind of guide-down. You get much more muted," he said. "However, Nvidia has major exposure in China and it's also got some gaming issues, so it's kind of caught up in a couple of negative themes right now." Applied Materials: Cramer was less confident about Applied Materials' results. "We know this semiconductor equipment maker has had its share of hardship of late," he acknowledged. "I don't expect a good number, but I do expect a more upbeat appraisal than what we've heard from them in the past."
Friday: PepsiCo, Deere, Newell Brands
PepsiCo: PepsiCo's Friday earnings report will see a big change from past quarters: former CEO Indra Nooyi will not be on the post-earnings conference call. "I will miss Indra, who did such a fabulous job reinventing this company to stay current by offering good-tasting and good-for-you items, as well as great-for-you profits and dividends," Cramer lamented. "I think PEP will put up good numbers. [But] I want to hear how new CEO Ramon Laguarta handles himself before I make a judgment." Deere: Cramer expects a strong report from this manufacturer, so much so that he recommended buying shares ahead of the quarterly results. "Demand is very strong for farm equipment, and right now, that means Deere's stock is poised to go higher," he said. "Only the lack of a resolution in the trade talks with China keeps me from being even more aggressive." Newell Brands: But "it's still too risky" to get into this consumer products stock ahead of the company's Friday earnings release, Cramer warned. "CEO Mike Polk is earnest. He's been trying to de-lever ... from all the debt he took down to acquire Jarden. It's been a very tough road," he explained. "Given how many moving parts there are here and how much there is still for sale in the portfolio, I think it's still too risky to buy Newell ahead of the quarter, even though it's got that 4 percent yield. We're just going to listen."
WATCH: Cramer's game plan for a trade-tinted earnings week
The biggest banking deal since the financial crisis has more to do with technology than any traditional bank metric, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Friday of BB&T's pivotal $66 billion commitment to buy rival SunTrust Banks.
"To me, this BB&T merger of equals with SunTrust is about keeping up with the Joneses in this case, keeping up with the Wells Fargos, the J.P. Morgans and especially the Bank of Americas," he told investors. "These financial titans can spend fortunes to build out terrific cloud-based customer relations platforms that have done a phenomenal job of adding new clients. On their own, neither SunTrust nor BB&T can really compete with the big boys when it comes to technology."
But the analysts covering BB&T don't seem to understand that, the "Mad Money" host said after listening to management's conference call about the deal.
On the call, they mostly asked about "the old nuts and bolts of banking" topics like capital ratios, regulation, loan growth, the two banks' cultural fit rather than focusing on what's next in banking technology, he said.
"I think technology specifically, the need for customer relations management software is a crucial part of what drove this deal," Cramer argued, pointing to what he saw as Bank of America's lead in the digital banking arena.
In its most recent quarter, Bank of America reported 36 million active digital banking users, versus 31 million three years ago. The bank also said that 77 percent of its consumer deposits were digital, up from 67 percent three years ago.
"Right now, Bank of America is the king of mobile. They have an incredible app, and they have Salesforce to help them figure out what their customers want and when they want it, and they integrate it together," Cramer explained. "That's why Bank of America has such strong account openings [and] such big deposit growth, because people want to bank on the app, not [at] the brick-and-mortar branches these have become expenses, not investments."
And the people opening accounts at Bank of America aren't just tech-savvy millennials, Cramer said; they're people transferring from other banks, which the "Mad Money" host called "the best kind" of customer acquisition.
"I think this SunTrust-BB&T deal may be more about playing digital defense than offense," he said. "It's about giving the combined company the scale to invest more heavily in technology, and less in brick-and-mortar, in order to keep those clients happy in a digital world and get some new clients keep them from migrating to Bank of America."
The problem? Wall Street is choosing to focus on traditional success metrics and turn a blind eye to the power of companies like Salesforce when it comes to cutting costs by upgrading tech, Cramer said.
"My conclusion? If you want to understand the future of the banking business, you need to understand the technology that's transforming the industry. Otherwise you'll miss what's really going on," he said. "These analysts, they don't get the digital imperative, and that's the force behind, I think, what's happening with this transaction."
BB&T's stock traded lower on Friday, sinking 0.44 percent to $50.24 a share by day's end. SunTrust's stock also shed roughly 0.54 percent, closing at $64.37 a share. Their all-stock deal, which will create the country's sixth-largest bank, is expected to close later this year and will likely undergo a series of regulatory hurdles for federal approval.
WESTLAKE, Ohio -- Heroin charge, I-90: An officer stopped an SUV Feb. 2 on the highway near Columbia Road for a violation.
The operator was driving under suspension and had active warrants from both the Lakewood and Middleburg Heights police departments. While being arrested for these violations, the 35-year-old Cleveland man said he had been driving back from Elyria, where he bought what he believed was heroin.
Officers found a small bag of the suspected drug, a digital scale and a marijuana grinder.
Police charged the man with possession of heroin and possessing criminal tools.
Promoting prostitution, I-90: A Lakefront Lines employee called police at 2:40 p.m. Feb. 5 to report that one of their buses pulled over on I-90 at Crocker.
A woman on the bus told the driver that she was being held against her will by a male passenger.
The Illinois woman told police that she was being directed as a prostitute by the man on the bus. They had traveled through several states while "working" before ending up on the side of the road in Westlake.
The 27-year-old Peoria, Ill., man denied the woman's claims and said he and the woman were a couple who liked to travel.
Officers arrested the man on a felony charge of promoting prostitution. The Westlake Police Department is working with detectives from the Cuyahoga County Human Trafficking Task Force to continue gathering evidence.
Theft, Detroit Road: A business owner told police Feb. 1 that he was unable to account for several of his bank deposits.
The business was missing several thousand dollars. A former employee is considered a suspect, according to police, who are continuing their investigation.
Theft, Columbia Road: The YMCA Jan. 27 reported the theft of a small amount of money from its cash drawer. Employees did not know when the money disappeared.
Aggravated menacing: The staff at Westlake Village Retirement Community called police Jan. 29 reporting that the husband of one of the residents made threats about shooting an oncologist caring for his wife.
Police arrested the man at his North Olmsted home and charged him with aggravated menacing. The Rocky River Municipal Court issued a temporary protection order.
Disorderly conduct, Main Street: Police responded at 7:45 p.m. Jan. 31 to Bar Louie regarding a man who was in and out of consciousness.
The 26-year-old Norwalk resident appeared intoxicated and argued with officers.
Police confirmed that he had a warrant for a drug-related probation violation. Officers arrested him for disorderly conduct while intoxicated. They took him to a hospital and released him to medical staff with a court date to appear.
Receiving stolen property, Settlers Reserve Way: A resident called police at 3:15 a.m. Feb. 7 to report he heard his car alarm and looked out to see a man in a hoodie walking away from his car.
Officers found the suspect hiding in some bushes. The man was slurring his speech and claimed he was hiding in the bushes from an angry girlfriend.
Dubious officers charged the man with being disorderly while intoxicated and found a woman sitting in a running car a short distance away on Sperrys Forge Trail. The woman admitted being with the man found hiding in the bushes. The woman also appeared intoxicated and officers charged her with physical control of a car while impaired.
Officers found items including pills, a purse and credit cards in the car. The items had been reported as stolen during car break-ins in Bay Village and Westlake. Officers charged the man and woman with felony counts of receiving stolen property.
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CLEVELAND, Ohio There was a time when Kelsey Grammers run as a television star was as close to prime-time perfect as the medium had seen. That time lasted for an amazing 20 years, during which he won four Emmys for lead actor in a comedy series, three Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild award.
All of that 1984-2004 success, of course, was from playing one character pompous but lovable psychiatrist Frasier Crane first on Cheers, then on Frasier. One role, two series (three if you count Frasiers guest appearance on another NBC comedy, Wings).
The last 15 years, however, have been far more hit-and-miss for Grammer. Its a point driven home by the realization that Foxs Proven Innocent, premiering at 9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 15, is the TV veterans 12th series as a regular or semi-regular.
Ten non-Frasier series? Is that possible?
Remember Back to You? Hank? Partners?
Well, they were pretty forgettable. How badly did those three comedies miss? Put it this way, while Grammers combined Cheers and Frasier stints amounted to 466 episodes, the combined episode count for these three flops was (ready?) 37.
Thats not to say Grammer has failed to strike gold away from the Frasier realm. Indeed, he has added two golden statuettes to his Emmy total since 2006 (both for animated series).
But perhaps the spotty overall track record just speaks to how fortunate Grammer was to start his series career with a wonderfully written role he embodied so perfectly on two of TVs most-celebrated comedies. With that in mind, here are the 10 shows not named Cheers or Frasier:
The Simpsons (Fox): Grammer began providing the voice of Sideshow Bob in 1990. The recurring character was introduced as the long-suffering sidekick of TV host Krusty the Clown. Grammers work on the long-running animated show won him a fifth Emmy in 2006. His episode total to date, 23, is the fourth highest among his 12 shows.
Gary the Rat (Spike TV): This short-lived animated cable series actually premiered and was canceled before Frasier completed its NBC run. It started as a web cartoon in 2000, then jumped to Spike in June 2003. It was gone by the end of the year after only 13 episodes. Grammer provided the voice of the title character, Gary The Rat Andrews, a ruthless lawyer transformed into a giant rat.
Kelsey Grammer Presents: The Sketch Show (Fox): Grammer was the host for an American version of Steve Coogans British sketch show. Only six episodes of this comedy series were completed, and two of those never aired.
Back to You (Fox): Teaming the Emmy-winning stars of Frasier and Everybody Loves Raymond, this high-profile comedy was considered the cant-miss newcomer of the 2007 fall season. It missed, dropped by Fox after 17 episodes. Grammer and Bay Village native Patricia Heaton played co-anchors at a Pittsburgh television station.
Hank (ABC): Both Grammer and Heaton attempted to rebound from Back to You with fall 2009 ABC comedies. Heaton hit with The Middle. Grammer missed with Hank, playing a a New York CEO who loses his job and relocates his family to a small Virginia town. Ten episodes were completed, but the network gave Hank the hook after five.
Boss (Starz): Grammer opted to go the drama route, playing Tom Kane, the Chicago mayor diagnosed with a degenerative neurological disorder. It lasted two seasons (2011-12), voted out of office after 18 episodes.
Partners (FX): It was back to comedy for Grammer, co-starring with Martin Lawrence in this 2014 cable series about two Chicago lawyers from vastly different backgrounds. They decided to become partners after meeting in court on a disaster day for both of them. FX ordered 10 episodes. If they clicked with viewers, the show would have been rewarded with an order for 90 more. They didnt click.
The Last Tycoon (Amazon): Grammer played studio boss Pat Brady in this streaming series version of F. Scoot Fitzgeralds posthumously published and unfinished novel. It premiered in July 2017. It was canceled in September.
Trollhunters (Netflix): Premiering in 2016, this has been Grammers third most-successful series in terms of acclaim and episode count (52 to date). He won a sixth Emmy for providing the voice of Blinky, the wise six-eyed troll mentor in the computer-animated fantasy series created by Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water).
Proven Innocent (Fox): Grammer returns to the drama side of the prime-time street, playing prosecutor Gore Bellows, the nemesis of lead character Madeline Scott (Rachelle Lefevre).
HAMPTON, N.H. Theres a common word that people keep using to describe Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat considering running for president, as he continues his swing through the early states: electable.
Brown kicked off the second leg of his Dignity of Work listening tour through the 2020 early primary states Friday at a roundtable on paid family leave in Hampton, New Hampshire. Reminiscent of his trip to Iowa last week, attendees seemed intrigued at a Democrat who they thought could seriously challenge Republican President Donald Trump.
He is kind of nicely centered in his position on the political spectrum, said Gary Patton, an 81-year-old retiree and co-chair of the New Hampshire Democrats senior caucus who attended the event. Hes liberal enough for people on the left and conservative enough for people in the center. Its very logical that he would run, because it almost calls to him and says, You ought to be running because youve got all these positives next to your name.
How Brown is finding a way to occupy both a liberal-populist and moderate lane is a strange phenomenon. Hes often rated one of the most liberal senators and a longtime supporter of abortion rights for women, increasing the minimum wage and Wall Street reform.
But moderate, populist or whatever label, Democrats at Browns Hampton event, like Mark Mitchell, a 69-year-old retired state police detective from nearby Barrington, seemed more interested in winning than in a litmus test.
Theres a purity test with the Democrats for some reason, Mitchell said. They eat their own a lot of times. I hope we learned our lesson.
Browns profile has also grown some since hes started teasing a presidential run after his November 2018 Senate re-election victory. Hes made the rounds on national news programs, including a Sunday appearance on NBCs Meet the Press where he called Trump a racist.
Weve seen him countless times on television, Mitchell said. I admire him from a stance that he seems to be able to speak the truth to power, which was sorely lacking for a long time.
Thats all a good sign for Brown as he continues to mull his 2020 prospects. Many Democrats have increasingly called for a true liberal to run in the election, fed up with the incremental approach of some politicians in their party and with other higher-profile names in the race.
The warm reception Friday in New Hampshire will likely embolden Brown, who has four stops in the state on Saturday.
Similar to Iowa, Brown is starting out with smaller towns before his biggest event as the keynote speaker for the New Hampshire Young Democrats in Manchester.
Unlike in Iowa, he started in solid Trump country.
Hampton is in Rockingham County, an older, wealthier community that includes the states entire seacoast. Its about 40 minutes away from Manchester and an hour away from Boston the tenth largest metropolitan area in the country.
With a population of more than 300,000, its growing (Hampton itself has a population of about 15,400). The median household income is just more than $85,000 while the poverty rate is at 5.1 percent.
Only three Democratic presidential candidates have won the county in the past 100 years Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2008. There are liberal enclaves in the county like Portsmouth, but Republicans have generally dominated local elections as well.
Compare that with Cresco, Iowa, Browns first stop during his trip last week. Howard County in rural Northern Iowa has a population of just 9,228 (Cresco itself has a population of 3,776). The closest top-100 metropolitan area is Des Moines at more than three hours away. The median household income was around $51,000 and the poverty rate is almost double at 10.1 percent.
Hampton is a different type of economy than Brown typically preaches to. The town swells in the summer months when tourists flock to nearby Hampton Beach. Roadside motels, restaurants with folksy small-town signs and small independent businesses dot the main strip. There is some industry with nearby Foss Performance Materials, a synthetic fiber manufacturer that employs about 420 people.
The closest Ohio comparison is probably Vermilion, a quaint Lake Erie community 45 minutes outside Cleveland with a maritime vibe.
Whether Brown can raise his profile enough in a state like New Hampshire -- especially with regionally popular Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont likely entering the race -- is still the biggest question. People cleveland.com spoke with around Hampton before the event mostly had no idea who he was.
But the whole thesis of Browns dignity of work message is that it works anywhere, whether it is rural Iowa or seaside New Hampshire, and his playbook, for now, seems to be working: visiting smaller towns and generating buzz as the Democrat who won in Trump country by being his liberal self instead of moderating his stances. Four of the five counties hes visiting voted for Trump, including Laconia in Belknap County, which swung for the president by almost 17 percentage points.
Hes done well in Ohio, and Ohio is not a blue state, said state Sen. Scott Sherman, who was on the panel with Brown. New Hampshire is a state that really values people who have an independent mind who advocate for personal responsibility, but we also take care of each other and I think he seemed to get that.
Along the way, Brown is courting New Hampshire power brokers. Former House Speaker Terie Norelli and her husband, Allen, are holding an invitation-only house party Friday night for the senator with the help of former state Sen. Burt Cohen, per WMUR Channel 9 in Manchester.
Norelli served as 2008 New Hampshire campaign co-chair and 2008 Democratic National Committee Delegate for then-Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. In 2016, she served as a senior adviser on the Clinton presidential campaign and was elected a presidential elector.
Cohen, a longtime activist in the state who supported Sanders in 2016, said in an interview with cleveland.com that Brown was one of the only candidates who could resonate with Democrats in both the coastal areas and the heartland, adding he hopes the Ohio senator will officially jump in the race.
Asked about some Democrats refusal to back a primary candidate who doesnt support certain issues like Medicare-for-all, Cohen said winning the presidency was more important.
Weve got to connect with the majority and were not going to get perfection, but we can get good, Cohen said. We can get good.
Even the few in the Hampton crowd who were interested in some of the deal-breakers were receptive to Brown. Liliana Margan, a 19-year-old student at the University of New Hampshire, asked about the Green New Deal a proposed series of reforms from the liberal wing of the party to combat climate change.
I want to spend more time looking at this bill, Brown told her. Like I said earlier, aggressive climate change is one of the most important issues of our time. Weve got to get way more aggressive on it.
Unlike Browns interaction with an activist in Iowa, who chastised him over his support for a Medicare-at-55 system as opposed to a Medicare-for-all style health care system, Margan said she was happy with Browns response, though she did want a little more.
I think that I would like if he was a bit more solid on it because its important to me and the people I know, she added.
Most importantly, she said shed consider voting for him.
CLEVELAND, Ohio The Ohio Division of Wildlife is an agency that had worked hard over the years to benefit fish and game, and the hunters, anglers and outdoors-minded people who care about wildlife. Seldom splashy or political, the wildlife agency had simply hunkered down for decades to do what was best for Ohio.
That mission statement seemed badly broken during Gov. John Kasichs administration, undone by the governors negligence and an overbearing Director Jim Zehringer of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which oversees the ODOW and many other divisions.
In a major surprise, incoming Gov. Mike DeWine let sportsmen know last month he had been listening to a litany of complaints about the ODNR, and wanted the problems fixed.
DeWine quickly put his long-time statehouse lawyer Mary Mertz from the Attorney Generals office in charge of the ODNR. A key staffer for DeWine, Mertz knew her way around the legislature, and grew up loving the outdoors.
Mertz appointed long-time wildlife official Kendra Wecker as the first woman to be chief of the Department of Wildlife. Wecker had worked with past chiefs, advising them on legislative issues concerning hunting, fishing, trapping and the shooting sports.
The appointment of Mary Mertz to ODNR director is being praised by Ohio outdoors enthusiasts. (State of Ohio photo)
Retired ODOW Chief Mike Budzik, who left the job as adviser to Kasich in 2017 because of a drastic change in direction at the ODNR, was asked to return as an advisor to Mertz. Retired ODOW Chief Steve Gray was appointed an assistant director of the ODNR.
Its nice to have people who hunt, fish, trap, bird watch and who really care about wildlife conservation involved again, said Wecker.
How could it have all gone so wrong?
It came to a head in the summer of 2017, when top wildlife officials, sportsmens organizations and the Ohio legislature tried to save the agency from itself. The wildlife agency faced a projected $220 million budget shortfall over the next decade. With the Columbus-based Sportsmens Alliance pushing Ohio legislators, the Ohio House and Senate voted to increase non-resident hunting and fishing license fees despite opposition from the ODNR.
The ODNR took political revenge. It removed ODOW assistant chiefs, filling one post with a political appointee. Chief Ray Petering, one of the most respected administrators in the country, was fired. Many top wildlife officials were demoted or shuffled away from their areas of expertise.
Ohio sportsmen and women had become increasingly concerned ODNR leadership has intentions of raiding the wildlife for of sportsmens dollars that are intended for fish and wildlife conservation, said Evan Heusinkveld, president and CEO of the Sportsmens Alliance.
In the good, old days, wildlife officers and managers settled in for the long run. They became career employees who loved their jobs. Sportsmen wont have to wait to see if Chief Wecker wants to return to that era.
Wecker chose wildlife veterans Peter Novotny and Todd Haines to be her assistant chiefs. They are a pair of dedicated officers who were noted for their years of work in the field, followed by an ability to work well with others after becoming ODOW district managers.
DArcy Egan, the long-time Plain Dealer outdoors columnist who retired in 2015, will occasionally write columns to appear in The Plain Dealer and on cleveland.com. He can be reached at darcyegan@roadrunner.com
No one considers the Ohio House of Representatives a good-government seminar. But the Republican-run House made operational moves this week, orchestrated by Republican Speaker Larry Householder, of Perry Countys Glenford, in the direction of bipartisanship a stark contrast to presidential and congressional chaos in Washington.
Meanwhile, also as part of this weeks session, Ohio House Democrats formally chose the new caucus leader they designated in January, Rep. Emilia Sykes, of Akron. She replaces Rep. Fred Strahorn, of Dayton. Sykes House Democratic leadership team includes Reps. Kristin Boggs, of Columbus; Kent Smith, of Euclid; and Rep. Paula Hicks-Hudson, Toledos former mayor.
The Houses moves suggest that Householder, a crafty politico, may think Washington-style confrontations are becoming a losing proposition. And for Householder, forward thinking matters, because hes eligible to be re-elected House speaker in 2021 and 2023. Given the chance for a three-term speakership the first since Reynoldsburg Republican Jo Ann Davidsons highly successful 1995-2000 speakership Householders apparent goal, with an eye on his prospects, is to build, not burn, bridges.
In January, in a 52-46 vote, Householder, speaker from 2001 through 2004, made a stunning comeback by defeating fellow Republican Rep. Ryan Smith, of Gallia Countys Bidwell, who was House speaker last session from June 6 through Dec. 31.
Republicans now have a 61-38 House majority. Householder won last month with 26 Republican votes (of the 60 Republicans then in the House) and 26 votes from the Houses 38 Democrats. Unions wanted Democrats to back Householder, whos not seen as a union-buster.
In December, Smith and his allies had slated their proposed 2019-20 House leadership group. For example, Rep. Rick Carfagna, a Westerville Republican, was Smiths choice for speaker pro tempore the Houses No. 2 office. Instead, a Householder ally, Rep. Jim Butler, an Oakwood Republican, landed that job last week.
Three other Smith allies slated for leadership slots also found themselves on the outs Thursday: Reps. Sarah LaTourette, of Chesterland; Thomas Patton, of Strongsville; and Bill Reineke, of Tiffin. Replacing them are two Republicans whod backed Householder, Reps. Anthony DeVitis, of Green, and Jay Edwards, of Nelsonville, and a Republican whod voted for Smith, Rep. Laura Lanese, of Grove City.
Rep. William J. Seitz, a suburban Cincinnati Republican, slated by Team Smith to become House majority floor leader, voted for Smith on Jan. 7. Still, the House elected Seitz majority floor leader last week. That couldnt have happened without Householders OK. Maybe Householder thinks Seitz, a Statehouse ally of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), can more easily be managed inside Householders tent than outside it.
The House also tweaked its rules. Among other features, the new rules, crafted by a committee chaired by Rep. Jamie Callender, a Concord Township Republican, require that House Democrats co-chair each of three House subcommittees criminal sentencing; primary and secondary education; and energy generation (in plain English, electricity prices). Having Democrats chair a Republican Houses subcommittees has to be a new departure for Ohio.
The rules also abolish the Houses Government Accountability and Oversight Committee. Good riddance. The committee sat on a payday loan reform bill for 13 months in 2017 and 2018, during Clarksville Republican Cliff Rosenbergers speakership. On April 12, facing a federal investigation, Rosenberger resigned from the speakership and the House.
On June 6, the House elected Ryan Smith as its new speaker. On June 7, the House finally passed the payday loan bill in a 71-17 vote. (Butler and Seitz were among the noes.)
Thanks to Smith, the payday loan reform, House Bill 123, sponsored by Reps. Kyle Koehler, a Springfield Republican, and Michael Ashford, a Toledo Democrat, didnt end up in a Statehouse shredder. On July 30, Kasich signed the pro-consumer bill into law.
At this stage of the 2019-20 session, its easy for sweetness and light to prevail before the House tackles the 2019-21 state budget Republican Gov. Mike DeWine will propose. And reintroduction of a heartbeat abortion ban will stoke vigorous dissent.
But on various levels, Ohio House Republicans are now taking House Democrats into account. Given Republicans Statehouse antics in the recent past, thats huge.
Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.
To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@cleveland.com, 216-999-4689
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NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio - Petty theft, Brookpark Road: Police arrested two men about 12:25 p.m. Jan. 26 near Great Northern Mall after a Home Depot employee called to report a theft.
The Home Depot employee said two suspects fled in a car toward the mall. Police located the suspects and boxed in their car, according to a police report.
A Home Depot employee reported seeing the men enter the store. One of them picked up $430 in tile and attempted to return the tile for a refund. The men fled when confronted and drove away from the scene.
Police charged both suspects with petty theft. The driver also is charged with possession of marijuana and failure to reinstate his driver's license.
Petty theft, Brookpark Road: Officers responded at 5:40 p.m. Jan. 26 to Walmart regarding a suspected shoplifter being detained by store security.
A loss prevention officer said she observed the woman walking through a closed cash register with a cart full of bagged merchandise and out the doors of the store. Security recovered 50 items totaling nearly $312 in value.
The suspect denied to police that she completely exited the store, but she failed to explain how the merchandise, for which she did not have a receipt, ended up in Walmart plastic bags.
Police charged the woman with petty theft.
Possession of marijuana, Lorain Road: An officer stopped a car about 12:50 a.m. Jan. 28 near the intersection of Lorain Road and David Road for having obstructed license plates.
The officer, while approaching the car, smelled suspected marijuana. Police searched the car and recovered a partially smoked marijuana blunt, which is a cigar wrapper containing marijuana.
Police charged the woman with possession of marijuana, and the improper display of license plates.
To comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comment section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland native and actress Monica Potter told WKYC on Friday she was not cast in the 1999 film The Cider House Rules because she refused to engage in sexual activity with its producer and infamous #MeToo offender, Harvey Weinstein.
When WKYCs Will Ujek asked Potter if there were any roles she regrets passing or missing out on, she seems caught off-guard and spoke cryptically at first.
I didnt do something, so therefore I missed out on it, Potter said of the role in The Cider House Rules, based on John Irvings 1985 book by the same name. Charlize Theron starred as the movies lead female role.
Im not saying the person who got it did, Im just saying I didnt," Potter said.
Potter said Weinstein made sexual advances toward her on three occasions - twice in New York and once in London. She did not indicate which attempt was in connection with the movie role.
Potters response to Weinsteins proposition? I belted him. I flat-out belted him," she said. I really hit him where it hurt... in his bathrobe.
After the incident, Potter told her father and manager, who asked if Potter wanted to issue a statement or talk about it. Potter declined and had not discussed it publicly until Friday, 20 years after the film debuted.
Ive never spoken about this, really, what Harvey did, you know? Potter said. Its out there with everybody.
The New York Times published a story on October 5, 2017 detailing decades of allegations of sexual harassment against Weinstein. Five days later, the New Yorker magazine published allegations from more than a dozen women, three of whom accused Weinstein of rape. In total, more than 80 women have accused Weinstein of engaging in sexual misconduct.
Im so grateful for all the women that stood up, Potter said, naming Rose McGowan in particular. These women are amazing.
Weinstein has consistently denied the accusations and claimed all incidents were consensual.
Weinsteins representatives issued a statement to WKYC:
Mr. Weinstein said that Ms. Potter is fabulous and talented actor for whom he has great respect. The final cast decisions on Cider House was the creative teams alone. Close to 100 people auditioned and it came down to two people, which is a pretty good position to be in. There has never been anything other than respect and professionalism between Weinsteins company and Ms. Potter, stemming from The Very Thought of You in 1998, and they have only had a friendly and cordial relationship over the years, and any suggestion or allegation otherwise is simply false.
Potter doesnt see it that way, telling Ujek that Weinstein and his company retaliated against her after the incidents.
I lost out on that role because of that hairy pig," Potter said, laughing.
Arturo Garino said one of his constituents told him about the razor wire on Saturday night.
Garino knew the military had installed a line of wire across the top of the fence that divides Nogales, a border town of about 20,000 in Arizona, from its sister city in Mexico, after troops were deployed to the border by President Trump before the midterm election. The resident, who lived just steps from the border, was calling Garino, the mayor, to complain that troops had been out again to deploy more wire across the 18-foot fence over the weekend.
What Garino saw when he arrived at the fence surprised him: Row after row of razor wire had been strung on the fence so that it covered nearly the entire surface in parts. Photographs show as many of six separate coils of wire typically made from steel and studded with hundreds of razor-like barbs covering portions of the fence, lending it the appearance of a war zone or a high-security prison.
Garino said he was confused. Trumps push was for a wall, which the town already has. So what was the point of the wire?
This is overkill, Garino said in a phone interview. "Its way over the top.
Trump has painted a vivid picture of life on the border: Lawlessness; hordes of people seeking to cross; horrific crimes committed after immigrants make it into America. That is the universe created in the presidents Twitter feed and speeches, on cable news shows and partisan blogs. But the border is its own world a nearly 2,000 mile stretch of land that exists mostly quietly and undisturbed. And towns like Nogales share the space that has been thrust into center stage of the presidents political ambitions.
The razor wire is what happens when those two worlds meet when heated talk becomes policy in the real world. And on the ground in Nogales, it is not being received well.
The towns city council passed a resolution unanimously on Wednesday to formally condemn the wire, and demand that it be taken down over safety concerns. Residents and business owners have told local reporters that it makes the town feel like a war zone an inquisition, one said and worry about the effect on its life and commerce downtown. Local newspaper columnists have panned it; a letter writer, Allen Zale, who said he served with the Army, said it reminded him of his time stationed in Berlin.
Garino said hes concerned that the wiring is more of a danger than a safety feature because of the way it is installed down to the ground. The towns code prohibits the use of the wire, which is also known as concertina wire, except in industrial parks and storage areas. Even then, it has to be at least six feet off the ground, he said. The wall it adorns stretches through many residential areas in the city, as close as 10 feet in some places to peoples property.
The tensions with the town have been exacerbated by the fact that federal authorities have shut out local officials from the process, Garino said.
They should have the respect to call my office and call our police and fire chief and says these are our plans, Garino said. They didnt call anybody, they just went and did it. They are not being good stewards in our city and thats not right.
He shared his concerns during a sit down with three agents from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday, but said they had a ready made response, speaking about rapists, murderers and drug dealers, and telling him that they had had a lot of incidents with people jumping the fence, he said.
But that was strange, because the police chief, assistant chief and deputy city manager were there, and we dont know of those things happening, Garino said. I dont know where theyre getting their stats.
The experience had left him with the feeling that the government wasnt installing the wiring for safety reasons but for some other motivation.
They cant say theyre putting something up to protect us, he said. "Theyre putting up something thats lethal all the way to the ground.
A draft of the Nogales City Councils resolution had noted the dangers posed by the wire, too.
Placing coiled concertina wire strands on the ground is typically only found in a war, battlefield or prison setting, and not in an urban setting such as downtown Nogales, Arizona, it said. Placing coiled concertina wire that is designed to inflict serious bodily injury or death in the immediate proximity of our residents, children, pets, law enforcement and first responders is not only irresponsible but inhuman.
The wire is an example of the work being done by the thousands of active-duty troops and National Guardsmen who were sent to the border by the president in 2018. The number of forces on the border numbers about 6,550: about 4,350 active duty troops and 2,200 National Guard forces.
Pentagon to send 3,750 troops to Mexico border
The Pentagon announced Feb. 3 it will deploy 3,750 additional troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to support Customs and Border Protection agents for three months. (Reuters)
William Speaks, a Defense Department spokesman, said that the military had installed more than 70 miles of concertina wire along the southern border, adding that it was working on an additional 160 miles. It said the military had spent $132 million so far supporting CBP. But estimates indicate that the cost of both deployments could tally about $1 billion by the end of the 2019 fiscal year.
In a statement distributed by spokeswoman Meredith Mingledorff, the Customs and Border Protection said that it was the process of adding four to six additional lines of concertina wire in high-risk urban areas commonly exploited by criminal smuggling organizations. It said that the locations it was installing the wire were on U.S. government property, outside of the towns jurisdiction.
Currently there are no plans to remove the concertina wire, the statement said.
Safety fencing has been installed around the fence in places where the wire is low to the ground, along with warning signs in Spanish and English, it said.
In locations where there is high pedestrian activity, the concertina wire is limited to only the upper portion of the wall, the statement said. Hardening of current infrastructure specifically in high-risk locations of the urban area help reduce the illicit activity, to include violent criminals, in these areas and increase the public safety.
It declined to provide any specific statistics about border related crime in the area. Border Patrol agents seized 254 pounds of fentanyl and 395 pounds of methamphetamine in a record bust last week in Nogales, but the narcotics were being smuggled in a truck heading through a port of entry.
And the area has long been known to be the most popular target on the U.S. border for illicit tunnels. A 50-foot long tunnel into the city from across the border, suspected of being constructed to run drugs, was discovered in December before it was completed.
Evan Kory, whose family owns businesses in downtown Nogales, told the Arizona Daily Star that militarized operations near the border wall had felt like a threat.
You hear on the news that an invasion is coming, but in fact," he said, border communities have been invaded by our own government.
Scott Zimmerman, the CEO and founder of K17 Security, a Maryland-based security consulting company, said in an interview that the safety concerns of local officials did not strike him as hyperbolic.
When you look at that amount of wire that is something youd most frequently see around a high-security prison, a nuclear facility, things along those lines, he said. Not something we commonly see here in the U.S.
U.S. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, a Democrat who represents the area, joined local officials in calling for the wiring to be removed.
The additional wire is nothing more than a spectacle by the Trump administration to reinforce his twisted narrative of rampant lawlessness at the border, he said in a statement. Border residents know that this mischaracterization couldnt be further from the truth, and will not stand for the lies perpetrated by the Trump administration."
Garino said that life in Nogales differs sharply from the way the border has been portrayed in the political world in recent months.
The citys fate is closely connected to Nogales, Mexico a bustling city of a few hundred thousand on the other side of the fence with which it exchanges millions of dollars of goods and other commerce every year, Garino said. This symbiosis has given rise to a name that marries the two cities, despite the boundary between them: Ambos Nogales, or Both Nogales in Spanish.
I always say this is one city of 400,000 people divided by a fence. But now its divided by concertina wire, Garino said. If the president gets his billions of dollars theyre not going to spend it in Nogales. Weve had a wall. Now we have a wall with concertina wire."
MEDINA, Ohio -- South Broadway Street between Lafayette Road and Grant Street is set to be reconstructed this year, and adjacent property owners will receive a letter soon about their potential pavement options, as well as the amount they could possibly be assessed.
City Council decided to do so at the Streets & Sidewalks Committee meeting on Feb. 5, where they discussed the fate of the brick road -- one of only two remaining in Medina. A block of North Elmwood Avenue just north of City Hall is the other.
Due to a referendum passed in 1983, the city's red brick roads have to remain that way, unless 60 percent of the adjacent property owners file a petition requesting use of a different material. Council also has the authority to assess the property owners for the cost.
"Right now, the property owners really have the authority to decide," City Engineer Patrick Patton said at the meeting. "The way it's in our ordinances is (it) has to be brick, unless 60 percent of them submit a petition saying they want another type of pavement."
According to Patton, using red brick in the reconstruction would cost the city $433,000, while using standard concrete pavement would run $200,000. The pavement costs are part of the larger cost to reconstruct the road, which Patton estimated at $1.2 million, if standard concrete pavement were used. The city has received a $478,000 grant from the Ohio Public Works Commision to help fund the project.
The city is also considering a third option: red-dyed-and-stamped concrete made to look like brick. That option would cost close to $245,000. Patton said the city has used the stamped concrete for decorative crosswalks, but hasn't used it for roads.
The letter sent out will show the costs for the pavement options, as well as how much each property owner could potentially be assessed. Patton said if council did assess the property owners, it would most likely be for the difference in cost among pavement options. The assessment would be based on each lot's linear footage -- how much of an owner's property directly touches the street.
The council agreed at the meeting that the ultimate goal of the letter is to have the property owners meet with City Council, which would let council members hear their thoughts, as well as make them aware of what they would have to do if they don't want to use brick.
"I think you also need to make sure they understand it takes 60 percent of them to agree they want something different," said Ward 4 Representative Jim Shields. "Because if we don't get 60 percent, it's going to be brick."
While the council can assess the residents, members haven't decided yet about whether or not they will. Shields pointed out at the meeting that all of the city voted on the 1983 referendum, but the cost of the assessment would only fall on the property owners adjacent to South Broadway.
"I don't know that it's completely their fault that somebody years ago voted on this," Shields said. "The whole city voted on this. It's not those 30 homeowners that voted on this.
"I'm not ready today to say absolutely they're getting assessed for it," he said. "I'd like to hear what their thoughts are."
North Elmwood Avenue's brick section will soon need to be replaced, as well. Patton said he expects to reconstruct that road within the next five years.
MEDINA, Ohio -- Feb. 11 marks National 2-1-1 Day, a day designated to recognize the individuals who provide free assistance for anyone who needs health and human services information.
The United Way of Greater Cleveland's 2-1-1 helps to connect people to the services and support they need but may be unaware of. Navigating solutions for social service needs can be complicated; 2-1-1 simplifies the process.
A three-digit phone number accessible to all, 2-1-1 is a gateway to social services to 3.5 million people in 26 counties in Ohio, making it easier for people to find, understand and access community resources.
Free, confidential and available 24 hours a day, every day of the year, 2-1-1 reviews a client's options for help, develops a plan and acts as an advocate in the face of barriers to service. 2-1-1 HelpLink provides accurate and timely assessment, information and service navigation to help people understand their options, resolve problems and improve their lives.
In 2018, 2-1-1 Community Resource Navigation Specialists assisted 264,949 people with a total of 324,798 needs. While the top-served areas were Cleveland and Toledo, calls came from all over the state.
In Medina County, a total of 2,103 people with a total of 2,755 needs were assisted in 2018.
Medina County calls were broken down as follows:
Housing and shelter: 23 percent
Health care and mental health: 15 percent
Utilities: 14 percent
Clothing/household needs: 9 percent
Food: 8 percent
Income support/tax assistance: 7 percent
Individual and family support: 7 percent
Legal, consumer and public safety: 7 percent
Transportation: 4 percent
Other: 4 percent
Education and employment: 3 percent.
The United Way of Greater Cleveland is a local, independent nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting poverty. For more information, visit unitedwaycleveland.org.
LAKEWOOD, Ohio - Fraud, W. 117th Street: Police responded about 3 p.m. Jan. 29 to the Check Smart store regarding a suspected fraudulent check that was presented. Police confiscated the check.
Theft, Sloane Avenue: Police responded Jan. 28 to a man's complaint that someone stole two of the three portions of his W-2 tax form that had been left in his mailbox.
Felony theft, Lakewood Avenue: Police responded Jan. 28 to a caller's complaint of felony theft. The man had a gash on his forehead from an incident that happened at a Lakewood Avenue apartment building about a week earlier. The initial event report doesn't contain additional information about what happened.
Dangerous drugs, Nicholson Avenue: Lakewood police Jan. 28 cited a woman for drug abuse.
Disorderly conduct, Lake Avenue: Police about 2 a.m. Jan. 27 arrested a woman for disorderly conduct while intoxicated after receiving information about an intoxicated woman who was out of control and running around with a knife.
Driving under the influence, Belle Avenue: Police stopped a car about 3:20 a.m. Jan. 27 on Belle near the railroad tracks and arrested the male driver for operating a vehicle while impaired.
Disorderly conduct Detroit Avenue: Police responded about 1 a.m. Jan. 26 to a report of a man lying on the ground with two other men taking photos or video of him with their phones. Police arrested the one man for disorderly conduct by intoxication. The two men found standing nearby said they were trying to assist the man on the ground and did not know him.
Criminal mischief, Detroit Avenue: Police Jan. 26 reporting finding graffiti painted on a building.
To comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comment section.
INDEPENDENCE, Ohio--The Garfield Heights Municipal Court will be changing how they handle "not guilty" pleas that come from the Mayor's Court in Independence.
Garfield Heights Municipal Court has jurisdiction over cases that arise in Brecksville, Cuyahoga Heights, Garfield Heights, Independence, Maple Heights, Metro Parks, Newburgh Heights, Valley View and Walton Hills.
The Mayor's Court in Independence handles Misdemeanor Traffic and Criminal Offenses. It has five members that make up the court personnel including the Mayor, a prosecutor, clerk of court, chief deputy clerk, and a deputy clerk. They can impose fines as well as jail time, or participation in a program.
There are two ways in which cases are sent to Garfield from the Mayor's Court. The first relates to Section 1905.032 of the Ohio revised code which states that if a person who is charged with a violation of a law or ordinance is brought before a Mayor's Court, and the violation is not within the jurisdiction of the court, then the Mayor will transfer the case to the appropriate court. This could be municipal, county, or common pleas depending on the severity of the violation. The person will also be required to appear before that court.
Cases outside of the jurisdiction of the Mayor's Court include 2nd offense DUIs, DUI suspensions, Financial Responsibility Suspensions, domestic violence, and stalking.
If the Mayor's Court does have jurisdiction over the violation at hand, the Mayor may still transfer the case at any time prior to the disposition. The Mayor's court and outside municipality would then have joint jurisdiction over the case. The violator would still be required to appear before the court to which the case was transferred.
The second way a case is sent to Garfield is the method that will be undergoing some changes. If a person pleads "not guilty" to an offense, then the case is transferred to Garfield Heights Municipal Court. Previously, when a "not guilty" case was transferred to Garfield, the Mayor's Court would provide the offender with a court date. Now, the Municipal Court will assign a judge and schedule a pretrial instead of an arraignment date.
Presiding Judge for Garfield Heights Municipal Court, Deborah J. Nicastro, explained that, "Before the new policy, the person would have 2 hearings: an arraignment and a pretrial. Now the person only has to have one hearing before trial and that will be a pretrial."
She continued by saying that she in conjunction with the other Judge for Garfield, Judge Jennifer Weiler, made the decision to implement this new policy.
"The reason for the change is to reduce the number of court appearances required," said Nicastro.
This will not significantly affect the Mayor's Court as they will simply no longer assign a court date. Independence Clerk of Court, Angie Zidanic said, "We will verify the offender's name and phone number and inform them in writing that Garfield Heights Municipal Court will notify them of their court date."
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Local and federal authorities are asking for the publics help in identifying a man who robbed a Cleveland bank Friday afternoon.
A man entered the Key Bank on Chester Avenue near East 36th Street just after 1 p.m. Friday, FBI spokeswoman Vicki Anderson said in a press release.
He approached a teller and demanded $50 and $100 bills, saying, I dont want to hurt nobody but Im capable," according to the FBI. The teller handed over an undisclosed amount of cash.
The man left the bank without hurting anyone or displaying a weapon, Anderson said.
Investigators believe he walked or drove to the area of East 47th Street and Payne Avenue, Anderson said.
Anyone with information about the suspect should call the Cleveland Division of the FBI at 216-522-1400, the Cleveland Division of Police at 216-623-5000, or CrimeStoppers of Cuyahoga County at 216-252-7463.
Reward money is available for the successful identification and prosecution of the person responsible, Anderson said. Tips can remain anonymous.
Cleveland police and FBI agents are searching for a middle-aged man with a greying mustache and goatee who robbed a Key Bank near downtown Cleveland on Friday afternoon.
To comment on this story, visit Saturdays crime and courts comment section.
Cancelling backlog part of government plan to improve processing times and tailor immigration to labour needs
Quebec moves to terminate backlog of 18,000 Skilled Worker Program applications Cancelling backlog part of government plan to improve processing times and tailor immigration to labour needs
Quebec moves to terminate backlog of 18,000 Skilled Worker Program applications Cancelling backlog part of government plan to improve processing times and tailor immigration to labour needs
Quebec moves to terminate backlog of 18,000 Skilled Worker Program applications Cancelling backlog part of government plan to improve processing times and tailor immigration to labour needs CIC News Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif
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The Government of Quebec is moving to eliminate outstanding applications to the Quebec Skilled Worker Program submitted prior to August 2, 2018.
The plan calls for cancelling all applications submitted before that date that have yet to be approved, refused or rejected, effectively clearing the current backlog of around 18,000 applications and refunding the government processing fee.
Eliminating the Quebec Skilled Worker Program (QSWP) backlog is one of numerous proposals contained in a new immigration bill tabled Thursday, February 7, by Quebecs new Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government.
Among other measures, the new legislation introduces changes to Quebecs Immigration Act that emphasize an immigrants responsibility to learn Quebec values and French.
The CAQ government also introduced the possibility of imposing conditions on permanent residence a move that could land Quebec in court.
The goal, the government says, is ensuring that immigrants to Quebec are better integrated and therefore better equipped to succeed in Quebecs labour market.
Matching immigrants to actual labour needs in Quebec
Quebecs Immigration Minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette, said eliminating the QSWP backlog is essential to this effort.
Doing so, he said, would allow his ministry to better tailor immigration to actual labour needs in the province through the QSWP and cut application processing times from 36 months to six.
Its a strong measure, he acknowledged, but its the only one capable of breaking a stalemate that we can no longer accept.
He noted that the backlogged applications were submitted when the QSWP operated on a first-come, first-served basis, which he said was not in touch with Quebecs workforce needs.
This approach changed in August 2018, when Quebec switched the application process to a more merit-focused Expression of Interest model.
Under this approach, foreign workers register a profile with Quebecs Immigration Ministry (MIDI) that details their education, training, work experience and language abilities.
MIDI then invites candidates to apply for a Quebec Selection Certificate (Certificat de selection du Quebec, or CSQ) based on a variety of considerations, including labour needs in outlying regions of the province where worker shortages are more acute.
Jolin-Barrette said the Expression of Interest system is a better fit for the governments efforts to tailor the selection of skilled workers in order to address these shortages.
Individuals affected by the move to cancel pending applications submitted under the old first-come, first-served model can re-apply through the new Expression of Interest system.
Conditional permanent residence?
One potentially controversial amendment in Bill 9 is the introduction of the Ministers right to impose possible conditions on permanent residence.
Bill 9 says conditions may be imposed on the basis of public health, regional and sectoral labour needs or the foreign nationals linguistic, social and economic integration, among other things.
The proposal could spark a showdown with Canadas federal government, which has jurisdiction over the granting of permanent residence in Canada.
According to Radio-Canada, the Canadian government has already replied that it will oppose conditions that require immigrants to work in a certain region of the province, saying such a move would violate mobility rights enshrined in Canadas Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Jolin-Barrette, however, argued Thursday that Quebec has the right to impose conditions on permanent residence.
Quebec has to exercise and will exercise its full rights on immigration, which is an important issue for the people of this province, he said.
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Former U.S. Senate candidate Beto ORourke confirmed that he will be part of a community rally in El Paso on Monday that is aimed at countering President Donald Trumps visit to the city.
Trump is scheduled to lead a rally at 7 p.m. at the El Paso Coliseum to promote his call for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. At the same time, ORourke, a Democrat who is considered a potential 2020 presidential contender, is expected to take the stage just three miles away at what is being called a celebration of El Paso or the March for Truth.
Trumps visit to the states most western major city comes just days after his State of the Union address when he specifically pointed to El Paso as evidence that walls work.
The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nations most dangerous cities. Now, immediately upon its building, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of the safest cities in our country, Trump said.
That statement brought immediate reaction from many El Pasoans who objected, noting FBI crime statistics show violent crime in the city has dropped significantly since the 1990s, well before the wall was built. Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, a native of the border city and a former El Paso county judge, sent Trump a letter asking for an apology.
In a statement to the media put out by ORourkes former campaign spokesman announcing his participation, it says the event ORourke will be part of will show the reality of the border city: a vibrant, safe, binational community that proudly celebrates its culture, history, diversity and status as a city of immigrants.
ORourke did not organize the event. Dozens of community groups and election officials in and around El Paso are part of the event that will start with a march about a mile away at 5 p.m. El Paso time. El Paso is in the Mountain Time Zone.
Speculation has been growing that ORourke is poised to get into the race for the White House. During an interview Tuesday with Oprah Winfrey, ORourke said he would make a decision about whether he will run by the end of the month.
Trumps rally in El Paso will take place five days before a Feb. 15 deadline to break an impasse with Democratic leaders in Congress over $5.7 billion for a border wall. It also comes as a caravan of about 1,800 Central American immigrants arrived at the Texas-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, hoping to enter the United States.
In going to El Paso, Trump will be in a city where he had one of his worst showings in the 2016 election. Trump won just 26 percent of the vote in El Paso County.
jeremy.wallace@chron.com
Members of the Texas Organizing Project gathered outside Harris County District Attorney Kim Oggs office Friday to add their opposition to her plan to hire 102 additional assistant district attorneys and more than 40 support staff.
During the demonstration, advocates urged people to ask their commissioners to vote against Oggs proposal as they chanted and shared personal stories of incarceration.
Ive been in Harris County Jail and know what its like to be caught up in the system that doesnt seem to care about your life, and this is what has brought me here, said Rosie Mccutcheon, a four-year member of TOP. The judge didnt sign my arrest warrant because I didnt pay my ticket, didnt care if I had the money to pay for it or not. So they put me in jail and deprived my grandchildren of their primary caregiver.
TOP, a nonprofit that helps organize black and Latino communities in Dallas, Bexar and Harris counties, wants to pause the process so more options can be considered.
I immediately, in my gut, knew that this was wrong for Harris County, said Gracie Armijo, community organizer for TOP. The $20 million we would spend on these prosecutors equals the entire budget for mental health. $20 million for treatment of mental health just doesnt seem enough and adding another $20 million to law enforcement seems too much.
The Harris County Jail provides more people with mental health care than any other mental health hospital in Texas.
TOP originally supported Ogg during her campaign by making 1.2 million door-to-door visits and phone calls and providing almost 2,500 rides to the polls, according to its website.
We would like to stop the clock and take time to consider other options, primarily looking at funding for mental health issues, organizer Terrance Koontz said.
Koontz said TOP is looking at housing options for nonviolent offenders who may need to reset their lives.
Were talking about individuals who are being arrested for minor drug charges or being homeless on the street or having a mental problem, and they definitely shouldnt be sitting in jail, Koontz said. We are not here to attack D.A. Ogg, we just want more time to consider our options.
Harris County District Attorneys Office spokesman Dane Schiller said the department has a duty to seek justice for crime victims.
Ensuring that the justice system is fair requires enough prosecutors to review cases and make decisions in a timely manner, such as whether someone should be given an opportunity to get help, and avoid a criminal record that might keep them out of the work force, or whether a person is such a danger to society that they should be imprisoned, he said.
Doug Murphy, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, agrees with Oggs proposal.
Having witnessed the daily reality of their lack of manpower what were seeing is Harris County was the fastest moving docket in the country, we called it the rocket docket, and it slowed it down to a snails pace, said Murphy. What we got is bloated dockets because they dont have the manpower to work these cases up and marshal the evidence.
Murphy believes more prosecutors would help pick up the pace of getting cases to trial, resolved and even dismissed. If I werent witnessing daily the backlog and the frustration, I would be in total agreement with the other organization, Murphy said.
Koontz still worries that more prosecutors would ultimately mean more arrests and more people wrongly incarcerated.
We just want to consider other viable options outside of just hiring the prosecutors, Koontz said. Because although it does not seem like putting more people in jail, at the end of the day we feel like more people will end up in jail than not and at the end of the day its black and brown people who are overwhelmingly being incarcerated.
The father of a teen held at Fort Bend County Juvenile Detention Center says officials failed to protect his son from a volunteer who allegedly sexually assaulted the boy hundreds of times during one-on-one visits, including attacks captured on video by guards.
Supervisors became aware of the situation between the mentor and the boy, then 17, after about a year. The staff cut off the visits after witnessing physical contact on video in May 2018, and Deborah Helen Sutter, 64, of Rosenberg, the volunteer mentor assigned to the boy, was arrested and charged with two counts of indecency with a child by sexual contact.
Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls has called the case disturbing and disgusting, and labeled Sutter, who had passed a background check, as a predator who took advantage of a vulnerable child.
Even in the wake of the arrest, however, Nehls did not take the boys needs into consideration, according to a civil rights lawsuit the father filed this week in Houston federal court. The lawsuit accuses multiple officials of neglecting their obligation to address the teens physical safety and medical and psychiatric needs. The father filed under the name John Doe, sued on behalf of his son, Frank Thomas, also a pseudonym. Both live in Harris County.
The suit seeks damages from Sutter and eight county officials who it says violated the childs rights to equal protection and due process and showed deliberate indifference by failing to follow mandated reporting procedures.
The officials should have intervened and provided support sooner, they argue. In addition, the teen spent many months in the countys care following Sutters arrest without obtaining any services related to sexual abuse, the lawsuit says.
The assaults left the boy deeply traumatized and he has since been diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression, said the fathers lawyer, Taft Foley. The young man has been suicidal, Foley said, and wont come out of his room.
Hes a broken child. He wont make eye contact, Foley said. When you speak to him, he rocks back and forth.
The fact that the Fort Bend County Juvenile Detention Center treated a child within their custody with such blatant brutality and inhumanity is an outrage to contemporary society and violated contemporary standards of decency, Foley wrote in his pleading.
The Fort Bend County Attorney's Office did not respond to a request for comment Saturday. They later declined, through their lawyer, on Monday to respond to particular details of the case.
"The county and individual county defendants are assessing the suit and will file the appropriate motions before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake," said Justin C. Pfeiffer, who represents the defendants for the Fort Bend County Attorneys Office.
Pfeiffer said, "The ongoing criminal prosecution of the criminal defendant makes it inappropriate to comment outside what will be filed in the federal district court."
The boy was arrested for a nonviolent offense at age 14. His case was adjudicated and he was sent to the facility in March 2017, when he was 15. It was his second time being sent there. His working-class parents, who both juggled two jobs, decided to practice tough love and decided not to visit their son in juvenile detention, Foley said.
Thomas was lonely and was set up with Sutter as his volunteer mentor. She visited him weekly to provide general support and friendship. Instead, the lawsuit says, she began grooming him. She met with him two times a week and routinely touched his genitals. She also encouraged him to touch her genitals and breasts, which he did on some occasions. The lawsuit says a conservative estimate is that the sexual abuse occurred 312 times.
The father says Sutter threatened that if he told anyone about the intimate contact, she would tell authorities he had initiated it, adding something along the lines of, Who do you think theyre going to believe: me or you?
The interactions were subject to video surveillance, but the facility did not retain video records prior to March 2018, according to a sworn statement by an officer.
On May 16, the detention director, Kenny Johnson, was viewing live video footage of a visit between Sutter and Thomas and noticed they were sitting side by side rather than across from each other as mandated. He looked more closely and observed that Thomas was touching Sutters waist area. The staff reviewed several videos and observed Sutter reaching into Thomas pants and touching his exposed penis.
Sutter admitted to the sex acts during a subsequent interview, according to a news release from the sheriffs office.
The fathers lawyer said the boy was coerced into sex acts and has suffered mental anguish as a result.
Victims of child molestation never heal, they just learn to cope, Foley said.
The suit is seeking damages from Sutter for allegedly preying on Thomas, but also from Nehls, two sergeants, a sheriffs deputy and a detective, the detention director, the Prison Rape Reform Act coordinator and a forensic interviewer, who all knew about the acts and failed to provide Thomas help, according to court documents.
They stood idly by and let it happen, Foley said. They didnt supervise this animal. They threw this meat to a lion.
gabrielle.banks@chron.com
Islam: The West's 'Most Formidable and Persistent Enemy'
At the height of Western dominance over Islam in the early twentieth century, the European historian Hilaire Belloc (b. 1870) made a remarkably prescient observation that may have seemed exaggerated at the time:
Millions of modern people of the white civilization -- that is, the civilization of Europe and America -- have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past (from Belloc's The Great Heresies, emphasis added).
Anyone who doubts that Islam has been the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, should familiarize themselves with that civilization's long militant history vis-a-vis the West.
According to Islamic history, in 628, Muhammed, the Arabic founder of Islam, called on the Byzantine Emperor, Heraclius -- the symbolic head of Christendom -- to recant Christianity and embrace Islam. The emperor refused, jihad was declared, and the Arabs invaded Christian Syria, defeating the imperial army at the pivotal Battle of Yarmuk in 636 (see my MA thesis on this battle, which one prominent historian described as the world's most consequential).
This victory enabled the Muslims to swarm in all directions, so that, less than a century later, they had conquered the greater, older, and richer part of Christendom, including Syria, Egypt, and North Africa.
Their drive into Europe from the east was repeatedly frustrated by the Walls of Constantinople; after the spectacularly failed siege of 717-718, many centuries would pass before any Muslim power thought to capture the imperial city. The Arabs did manage to invade Europe proper and conquered Spain but were stopped at the Battle of Tours in 732 and eventually driven back south of the Pyrenees.
For more than two centuries thereafter, Europe continued to be pummeled by land and sea -- untold thousands of Christians were enslaved and every Mediterranean island sacked -- in the ongoing Muslim quest for booty and slaves, as what historians have dubbed the Dark Ages descended on the continent.
The vicissitudes of war ebbed and flowed -- the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) made a major comeback against Islam in the tenth century -- though the border largely remained the same. This changed when the Turks, under the leadership of the Seljuk tribe, became the new standard bearers of jihad. They nearly annihilated eastern Anatolia, along with Armenia and Georgia, in the eleventh century and, after the Battle of Manzikert, 1071, overran Asia Minor.
By now, however, Western Europe's military might had so matured that when the Pope called on the knights of Christendom to come to the aid of the Christian East, the First Crusade was born. Western Christians, led by the Franks, marched into the beast's lair, defeated their adversaries in several encounters and managed to establish a firm presence in the Levant, including in Jerusalem, which they recaptured in 1099 -- only to lose it less than one hundred years later, in 1187, after the fateful Battle of Hattin. By 1297, the Crusader presence was eliminated from the Middle East.
But if it failed in the East, the Crusade succeeded in the West. A handful of years after the Muslim invasion and conquest of Spain around 711, fugitive Christians holed in the northern mountains of Asturia began the Reconquista; by 1085 it had proven effective enough to prompt two new Muslim invasions from Africa to counter it. Again, the ebb and flow of war dominated the landscape, but by 1212, at Las Navas de Tolosa, Spain's indigenous Christians gave Islam its death-stroke, so that by 1252 it was confined to Granada at the southernmost tip of Iberia.
Around that same time, a violent but relatively short-lived Mongolian storm overwhelmed much of the east; both Christians (notably Russians) and Muslims were pummeled. A new Turkish dynasty arose from the Seljuk ashes; the Ottomans -- whose identity revolved around the concept of jihad more their predecessors -- renewed Islam's perennial war on Christendom. They managed to enter Eastern Europe, defeated a combined army of Crusaders at Nicopolis in 1396, took much of the Balkans, and crowned their achievement by fulfilling Muhammad's desire of conquering Constantinople -- and enslaving and raping thousands of its inhabitants in ways that ISIS tries to mimic -- in 1453.
But mourning was soon tempered by joy: to the west, Spain finally conquered Granada in 1492, thereby snuffing out Islam as a political power; to the east, the most overlooked chapter of Muslim-Christian conflict was also coming to an end. The Russians, who had lived under distinctly Islamic rule for nearly two centuries, finally cast off the Tatar Yoke in 1480.
Even so, the Ottomans continued to be the scourge of Christendom; they continued making inroads into Europe -- reaching but failing to capture Vienna in 1529 -- and sponsored the seaborne jihad originating from North Africa. While the Muslims largely failed to capture new European lands, Barbary pirates and Crimean slavers captured and sold approximately five million Europeans.
In 1683, over 200,000 Ottoman jihadis attempted to take Vienna again. Even though their failure marked the Ottoman Empire's slow decline, Muslim slavers of the so-called Barbary States of North Africa continued to wreak havoc all along the coasts of Europe -- reaching even Iceland. The United States of America's first war -- which it fought before it could even elect its first president -- was against these Islamic slavers. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbary's ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, the ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners...
Finally the Colonial Era came with Europe's triumph over the Barbary States in the early 1800s. By 1900, most of the Muslim world was under European control; by 1924, the more than 600-year-old Ottoman caliphate was abolished -- not by Europeans but Muslim Turks, as the latter sought to emulate the successful ways of the former. Islam was viewed as a spent force and virtually forgotten, until recent times when it reemerged again.
Such has been the true and most general history between the Islamic and Western worlds.
The above map should give an idea of how far-reaching and multitentacled the perennial jihad was. The darkest shading represents Western/Christian nations that were permanently conquered by Islam; the lighter or gray shading represents those Western/Christian nations that were temporarily conquered by Islam (sometimes for many centuries, as in Spain, Russia, and the Balkans); stripes represent areas that were raided, often repeatedly, though not necessarily annexed by Islam; the crossed swords mark the sites of the eight most landmark battles between Islam and the West.
From a macrocosmic perspective, the consequences of the historic jihad are even more profound than first appears. After writing, For almost a thousand years, from the first Moorish landing in Spain [711] to the second Turkish siege of Vienna [1683], Europe was under constant threat from Islam, Bernard Lewis elaborates:
All but the easternmost provinces of the Islamic realm had been taken from Christian rulers North Africa, Egypt, Syria, even Persian-ruled Iraq, had been Christian countries, in which Christianity was older and more deeply rooted than in most of Europe. Their loss was sorely felt and heightened the fear that a similar fate was in store for Europe.
The loss of North Africa and the Middle East was sorely felt by premodern Europeans because they thought more along religious and civilizational lines than nationalist ones. And before Islam burst onto the scene, most of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East were part of the same religio-civilizational bloc. As such, Islam did not merely invade and eventually get repulsed from Europe; rather, Muslim armies conquered three-quarters [or 75 percent] of the Christian world, to quote historian Thomas Madden.
Thus what is now called the West is actually the westernmost remnant of what was a much more extensive civilizational block that Islam permanently severed, thereby altering the course of Western history. And once Muslims overran Africa and the Middle East, most of its Christian subjects, to evade fiscal and social oppression and join the winning team, converted to Islam, thereby perpetuating the cycle, as they became the new standard bearers of jihad against their former coreligionists north and west of the Mediterranean.
Such are the rarely noted ironies of history.
Returning to Hilaire Belloc, one can also see how an accurate understanding of true history -- as opposed to an indoctrination in mainstream pseudo-histories -- leads to an accurate prognosis of the future. For Belloc was not only correct about the past but the future as well:
It [Islam] is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past The whole spiritual strength of Islam is still present in the masses of Syria and Anatolia, of the East Asian mountains, of Arabia, Egypt and North Africa. The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power, may be delayed -- but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed (emphasis added).
Note: The historical portion of this article follows the outline of my recent book, Sword and Scimitar, which, in 352 pages copiously documents -- including from little known or previously untranslated primary sources -- the long and bloody history between Islam and the West, in the context of their eight most landmark battles. American Thinker reviews of the book can be read here and here.
As we announced a few weeks ago HERE, the Royal Air Forces world-famous Red Arrows aerobatics display team will be visiting North America this year for the first time since 2008. Yesterday, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) released a preliminary list of locations where the team will be performing, although additional events are likely to be added in the coming weeks.
As we mentioned in our previous piece, the Reds last air show in England before beginning their Western Hawk 19 tour of North America will be the Royal International Air Tattoo (July 19 21) at RAF Fairford. Following a period of maintenance and preparation, the team will then set out for Canada, on or about August 8th.
Display locations confirmed for the forthcoming tour to North America by the Red Arrows.
As the MOD press release mentioned related, As well as displaying at locations and shows across North America, the team will also attend several engagements on the ground, coordinated by the Department for International Trade (DIT) and the UK Governments GREAT campaign.
The first air show dates/locations being confirmed for where the Red Arrows will display are:
Other public events, display locations and flypasts are still to be set, with engagement opportunities planned from coast-to-coast. Further announcements will follow as confirmations are made.
The Red Arrows will be heading to Canada and the US in August. Image by SAC Rose Buchanan.
Preparations are already being carried out to create a memorable and visually-exciting display to be enjoyed by people watching throughout the latest deployment.
Squadron Leader Martin Pert, Red 1 and Team Leader of the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, said:
Confirming this initial group of display locations where we will perform in North America is not just exciting for those people hoping to attend these events but also for the whole Red Arrows team as well. Air and ground crews are now hard at work, preparing the display which will be seen by audiences in the UK, US and Canada this summer, while detailed planning is well underway to carefully, and safely, plot our overseas tour.
With these airshows announced, we can now join friends and fans alike in visualising what people will be able to enjoy when the Red Arrows make our biggest ever visit to the US and Canada. Red 1
However, the air display is only half the story much of our activity in support of UK interests overseas is centred on considerable ground engagement. As a team, we are particularly enthusiastic about meeting so many individuals, from business leaders and military counterparts to young people and airshow crowds.
For event inquiries surrounding the Red Arrows tour to the US and Canada contact: Crissy.Pascual@mobile.trade.gov.uk
We will endeavor to bring updates to this schedule as and when information becomes available!
The Bexar County District Attorney's Office has released graphic crime scene photos and videos depicting the aftermath of a road rage shootout last year involving an intoxicated off-duty police officer in the parking lot of a northwest San Antonio strip club.
The material, which includes prosecution documents, was made public in a rare move by former District Attorney Nico LaHood, according to current DA officials. It provides new insight into the chaotic gun battle outside the Allstar's Gentleman's Club on May 29 that left 26-year-old Demontae Walker paralyzed and resulted in a 15-day suspension for San Antonio Police Officer Dezi Rios.
According to a prosecution guide detailing the shooting and body worn camera footage of the crime scene and Walker's testimony, the incident began at about 9:30 p.m. when Rios sped past Walker on Interstate 10 onto the Callaghan Road exit. Rios was heading home from a cadet dinner at Ajuua Restaurant, where he estimated he had had about five mixed drinks.
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Both men pulled into the Allstar's parking lot. Walker was taking his cousin, Destiny Rhodes, to the club so she could dance, and Rios told investigators he pulled over to call his wife.
At some point, both men got out of their cars and got into a verbal altercation. Walker, a firearm enthusiast who often carried a pistol on him, told investigators he put his pistol in his pocket and went to check on Rios to see if he was okay.
"It was just a coincidence that we went to the same parking lot," Walker later told a detective from his hospital room. "So, I'm guessing he thought like, I wanted to fight or something."
"He looked amped," Walker said during the same interview, noting Rios used a racial slur while yelling at him and never identified himself as a police officer. Walker told investigators he remained calm during the confrontation. Rios later told investigators that Walker had been aggressive.
"Hey, motherf----r, you know you almost killed me back there?" Walker said, according to Rios' statement to detectives.
"Obviously, I f-----g didn't because you're still here," Rios said he retorted. "You're a f-----g dumbass for pulling over. Get the f--k out of here."
RELATED: Former UTSA-area barber cleared of charges in shootout with off-duty officer outside S.A. strip club
During the confrontation, Walker said he saw Rios reach for something near his waist so he shot him.
"I go to the gun range every week. I could've shot him in the face," he told a detective. He didn't want to kill Rios, he said, so he aimed for his pelvis and below.
He struck Rios multiple times, then ran to his car to call 911. Rios then crawled to his own car, grabbed his Glock pistol and shot at Walker through his vehicle. Walker was shot while on the phone with 911 operators and Rhodes was grazed in the head.
Rhodes ran to the club to ask for help, and Rios stumbled to the front door, where he was detained by a security guard until authorities arrived.
RELATED: Father left with questions after son accused of shooting off-duty police officer in San Antonio
Officer Matthew Robles was one of the officers who responded to the scene. His body warn camera footage shows him running to Rios and helping paramedics treat him.
"He shot me, man," Rios says repeatedly. "I shot him back. I had to."
Paramedics took all three to University Hospital for treatment. Walker was later charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, one charge relating to Rios's injuries, and one related to Rhodes, though he did not shoot her. A grand jury later dismissed the charges.
"It's very hard for a prosecutor to take the position of someone other than a police officer," Walker's Houston-based defense attorney Charles Adams told MySA.com after his client was cleared. "I have a lot of admiration for the Bexar County District Attorney's Office. It really was very admirable, their dedication to the truth and justice."
Rios was issued a 15-day suspension for the road rage dispute and being intoxicated "to the extent that he was rendered unfit to report for duty."
Rios made a full recovery from his injuries, but Walker is now a paraplegic and is unable to support himself.
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More than 20 Houston-area Catholic parishes were found to have at least three priests who have been accused of sexual abuse of children over the last 70 years, according to information released by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
INTERACTIVE LIST: Search the "credibly accused" list by priest, church or diocese
The list includes the names of 42 local Catholic priests who have been accused of sexually abusing children, 10 of which served at a single church in Houston, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis. The slideshow above includes a ranked list of churches where the highest number of "credibly accused" priests worked.
The Galveston-Houston diocese joined 15 others across the state when it decided to publish the list of accused priests on its websites last Thursday. The Houston Chronicle has since compiled an interactive database where readers can search the list by priest, church or name.
The Chronicle also published all available information we have on each priest on the list, 20 of whom of have since died.
Click through the slideshow above to see which church had the most "credibly accused" priests...
Julian Gill is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | julian.gill@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here.
Fiction
1. Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens. A woman who survived alone in the marsh becomes a murder suspect.
2. Crucible
by James Rollins. Monk Kokkalis and Cmdr. Gray Pierce use arcane clues in hopes of preventing an apocalypse.
3. An Anonymous Girl
by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. Jessica Farris life unravels when she signs up for Dr. Shields psychology study.
FOR HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM SUBSCRIBERS: Zimbabwe genocide haunts Houston author Novuyo Rosa Tshuma's 'House of Stone'
4. Liar Liar
by James Patterson and Candice Fox. Detective Harriet Blue has become a dangerous fugitive from the law as she pursues murderer Regan Banks.
5. The Reckoning
by John Grisham. A decorated World War II veteran shoots and kills a pastor.
6. Turning Point
by Danielle Steel. Four U.S. trauma doctors face difficult choices when they join a mass-casualty training program in Paris.
7. The Golden Tresses of the Dead
by Alan Bradley. Flavia de Luce, a 12-year-old detective, is on the case when a human finger ends up in her sisters wedding cake.
8. Fire and Blood
by George R.R. Martin. The first volume of the two-part history of the Targaryens in Westeros.
9. The Only Woman in the Room
by Marie Benedict. Hedy Lamarr flees to Hollywood where she becomes a screen star and develops technology that might combat the Nazis.
10. The New Iberia Blues
by James Lee Burke. Detective Dave Robicheaux and his new partner Bailey Ribbons investigate the death of a young woman by crucifixion.
Nonfiction
1. Becoming
by Michelle Obama. The former first lady describes how she balanced work, family and her husbands political ascent.
2. Educated
by Tara Westover. The daughter of survivalists leaves home for university.
3. Maid
by Stephanie Land. An unexpected pregnancy forces the author to navigate challenges faced by the working poor.
4. The First Conspiracy
by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch. The story of a secret plot to kill George Washington in 1776.
5. The Truths We Hold
by Kamala Harris. A memoir by a daughter of immigrants who was raised in Oakland, Calif., and became the second black woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate.
6. The Point of It All
by Charles Krauthammer, edited by Daniel Krauthammer. A collection of essays, speeches and unpublished writings by the late conservative columnist.
7. The Library Book
by Susan Orlean. The story of the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library provides a backdrop to the evolution and purpose of libraries.
8. Bad Blood
by John Carreyrou. The rise and fall of the biotech startup Theranos.
9. Churchill:
Walking With Destiny
by Andrew Roberts. A biography focusing on what motivated the war leader and how he learned from his mistakes.
10. Women Rowing North
by Mary Pipher. Reflections on the ageism, misogyny and loss that women might encounter as they grow older.
New York Times
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Dear Abby:
My wife and I have been married for 36 years and have five adult children. We have a loving, caring and mutually supportive relationship.
We recently had dinner at a restaurant, and she became very flirty and familiar with our male server, who was one-third her age and a complete stranger. She complimented him on his handsome looks, his trim waistline and his smooth and reassuring speaking style. I thought she was out of line, and on the ride home, I told her so. She became defensive and angry and said she was only kidding around with him. Whats the best way to avoid this type of dust-up in the future?
Jim in Maryland
Dear Jim:
What your wife did was inappropriate. Could she have had one pre-meal cocktail too many? Because her behavior made you uncomfortable, she owes you an apology. And if this sort of thing happens again, perhaps you should request a female server if possible.
Dear Abby:
Im a sophomore college student who has finally settled in with a group of friends I love and really connect with. However, one girl in our group throws full-on temper tantrums where she cries, storms off or exerts negative energy to the point that it ruins the night for the rest of us. These fits of temper seem to be caused by anything and everything, and have reached a point where my friends and I feel anxious being around her. What do we do? And how do we deal with someone who cries at the tiniest of perceived slights?
Exhausted in College
Dear Exhausted:
The behavior you have described isnt normal. The girl appears to be extremely fragile emotionally. Whoever is closest to her should point out to her privately that all of you are concerned that her outbursts may be a sign of depression, and suggest she talk to someone at the student health center about them.
Dear Abby:
A dear friend and her husband were at a Broadway theater production. Because of a spinal cord injury, she uses either a walker or wheelchair. During intermission, when she went into the ladies room, the line was quite long. Not one woman offered to let her move ahead. Whats the protocol? I thought each person in there should have deferred to her.
I had tickets the same night, and when I saw her in line I walked up and asked her if I could intervene to move her in faster, but she said she didnt want to bother anyone. I stayed with her and didnt speak up because I didnt want to embarrass her. I would appreciate your view on this.
Trying to Help
Dear Trying To Help:
My view is that someone with an obvious disability should be offered the next available stall, and if the person uses a walker or a wheelchair, the handicap stall should be offered to her.
DearAbby.com
Dear Abby
P.O. Box 69440
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Andrews McMeel Syndication
President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili has visited Georgian troops in Afghanistan, - InterPressNews reported citing the Administration of President.
According to them, the President visited the military bases, where Georgian troops are stationed.
Salome Zurabishvili, together with Defense Minister Levan Izoria and Commander of the Defense Forces, General Major Vladimir Chachibaia, visited the Bagram aviation base and got acquainted with the tasks of Georgian peacekeepers.
The countrys Commander-in-Chief thanked the peacekeepers for their contribution to the world security and underlined the importance of their activities for Georgian military and the importance of their activities to the country.
At Bagram Military Base the President laid a wreath on the memorial of the Georgian military servicemen killed in the ISAF and visited the church built by Georgian soldiers.
Women who don't believe trans people should share their spaces are 'not welcome in the Liberal Democrats'
Liberal Democrat peer Lynne Featherstone has said that women are not welcome in the party if they are opposed to trans people having access to their spaces.
In a blog on the Liberal Democrat website, the former Equalities Minister said that she was fighting for trans people 'to be seen as people and welcomed into all spaces' as she blasted those who did not support opening up women-only spaces to trans women.
In the controversial piece, written in celebration of LGBT History Month, Featherstone said that those who sought to exclude trans women from women-only spaces were 'not feminists' and had no place in the party.
'I also have a message to those people who believe they can restrict trans women's rights, deny their human rights, or exclude them from women-only spaces in the name of feminism: You are not feminists. Your views are not welcome in the Liberal Democrats,' she said.
She boasted that the Lib Dems were fighting to introduce gender neutral bathrooms and gender neutral school uniforms, as well as a third 'X' gender designation on passports and official documents for those who did not wish to identify as male or female.
She also voiced support for proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act that would allow people to self-identify their gender without the current requirements for medical evidence or proof that they have been living as their acquired gender for at least two years.
Feminists and rights groups have been among those campaigning strongly against any changes to the current law, warning of the risk to women and girls.
The Oxford Human Rights Hub has previously warned that allowing gender self-identification is open to abuse by sexual predators and could be problematic not only for survivors of sexual violence but also for people of faith, for whom sex-segregation is in some instances a religious requirement.
'Self-identification is also open to abuse by men seeking to access women's spaces and women's bodies,' it said.
'We are already seeing people who were born and still live and present as men claiming that they are trans-women in order to gain access to women's spaces, including convicted sex offenders demanding to be housed in women's prisons; individuals videoing women and girls naked in women's changing rooms; and individuals seeking to join all-women candidate lists in local or national elections.'
It added: 'Allowing self-identification of trans people will enable and embolden these types of activities.'
The Scottish Government recently revealed that the most frequent objection raised by respondents to its consultation on the changes concerned the safety of women and girls.
In a report into the consultation findings, it said that respondents feared 'abuse, exploitation and false declarations' and that women would be put at risk if they had to share toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards and shelters.
'Where respondents explained their concerns, it was often to suggest that the proposal would allow 'any man', 'predatory men' or 'biological men' to gain access to women's spaces where they could pose a potential threat to women's safety,' the Scottish Government report said.
What is the Great Commission and why is it so controversial?
A majority of church-going American Christians are unfamiliar with the term, the "Great Commission," a recent survey found.
Even among those familiar with it, 25 percent recognized the phrase but could not explain what it was. Only 17 percent were familiar with the phrase and its meaning.
So what exactly is the Great Commission? And why is it a controversial idea for some?
A Christian obligation
Briefly, the Great Commission is a concept that has been used to support the missionary activities of many Christian denominations.
The Great Commission refers to several passages in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus Christ urges his apostles to make "disciples of all the nations" and "baptize" them.
The word "disciple," which is "mathetes" in Greek, literally means "pupil" but also "follower," as in "follower of Jesus."
"Baptize" refers to the Christian practice of using water to remove the "original sin," an inherent fault that Christians believe marks all human beings at birth. Baptism is an important sign of entrance into the Christian faith.
The Great Commission, therefore, is usually interpreted to mean spreading the Christian message and converting others to Christianity.
The Gospel of Matthew does not specifically use such a term. In fact, the phrase "Great Commission" does not appear until late in Christian history. Some scholars argue that it was coined by Baron Justinian von Welz, a 17th-century Lutheran nobleman, who argued that the words in Matthew 28 meant that all Christians were required to spread the faith, not just Jesus' closest disciples.
Von Welz proposed a missionary organization called the Jesus-Loving Society to spread Protestant Christianity throughout the world. It is thought that the term "Great Commission," or certainly the basic concept, was central to von Welz's argument for bringing Christianity to foreign lands.
Two centuries later, the Englishman Hudson Taylor is believed to have used the idea of the Great Commission to justify Christian missionary efforts, particularly the China Inland Mission that he founded in 1866. Taylor's mission attempted to bring Christianity to China's inland provinces. This was dangerous work and 79 China Inland missionaries were killed later, in what is referred to as the Boxer Rebellion.
Hudson is often cited by Protestant missionaries, in the quote: "The Great Commission is not an option to be considered, but it is a command to be obeyed." There does not appear to actual evidence, however, that he actually spoke these words.
A controversial idea
Christian missionary activities predate the use of the term "Great Commission." The Apostle Paul was influential in establishing Christian churches throughout the Mediterranean after the death of Jesus.
Much later, Catholic religious orders, such as the Society of Jesus, attempted to spread Christianity throughout the world, usually with the help of powerful nations such as Portugal and Spain.
The Great Commission certainly motivated Protestant efforts to convert nations and peoples in Africa and Asia in the 19th century. It also fueled more recent efforts by evangelical Christians to "missionize" Catholic Latin America. Indeed, Latin America would not have become so Catholic without indigenous peoples being dominated by European imperialism and colonialism.
Missionary efforts sometimes served economic interests relating to trade and resources as well religious ones. Additionally, converting conquered peoples was a powerful way of extending political control.
Converting others to Christianity raises a fundamental question about whether religious diversity is a reality to be celebrated or an obstacle to be overcome. Given the complex history of missionary activity, the meaning of the Great Commission will continue to be a subject of debate as Christianity confronts a rapidly changing world.
Mathew Schmalz, Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy Cross This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Justin Bieber says he and wife Hailey Baldwin stayed celibate until marriage
Justin Bieber has talked about the benefits of abstaining from sex until after marriage in an interview with Vogue alongside his wife Hailey Baldwin.
The Canadian pop star, who surprised the world by tying the knot last year, spoke candidly about his 'legitimate problem with sex' that led him to embark on a self-imposed season of abstinence.
He believes that the decision led him closer to God and that marrying Baldwin was a reward for his efforts.
'He doesn't ask us not to have sex for him because he wants rules and stuff,' Bieber, a Christian, told the magazine.
'He's like, I'm trying to protect you from hurt and pain. I think sex can cause a lot of pain. Sometimes people have sex because they don't feel good enough.
'Because they lack self-worth. Women do that, and guys do that. I wanted to rededicate myself to God in that way because I really felt it was better for the condition of my soul. And I believe that God blessed me with Hailey as a result. There are perks. You get rewarded for good behavior.'
Baldwin, a model and the daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin, admitted that marriage had its challenges but that she also believed it was worth the hard work and effort.
'I'm not going to sit here and lie and say it's all a magical fantasy. It's always going to be hard,' she told Vogue.
'It's a choice. You don't feel it every single day. You don't wake up every day saying, "I'm absolutely so in love and you are perfect." That's not what being married is.
'But there's something beautiful about it anywayabout wanting to fight for something, commit to building with someone.'
Bieber took some flak for his decision to go celibate, with The Telegraph's Rebecca Reid writing that it was a 'terrible idea' that he 'shouldn't preach to his fans'.
Others defended him, though, with Harry Benson, research director at the Marriage Foundation, saying in response to the piece that there was 'a ton of research on sex before marriage and cohabitation before marriage, mostly concluding that there are negative knock-on effects on happiness/stability unless you cohabit with plans to marry'.
Is assisted suicide now homicide in the Netherlands?
Officially, the Netherlands is a safer country to live in than the United States. Its gun homicide rate is about 4 percent that of the United States, and its official murder rate is less than one-fourth that of the United States.
The key word in that statement is "official." Because, as a recent report in the Guardian tells us, there's a lot of killing going on in the Netherlands that doesn't involve a gun and isn't classified as murder, although it should be.
An article in the January 18 edition of Britain's Guardian newspaper asked the question "Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far?"
Now to be clear, the Guardian is the British Left's paper of record. It's a far more liberal publication than any mainstream American newspaper. So for the Guardian to ask whether euthanasia has "gone too far" suggests that things could be a lot worse than the public has been led to believe. And the area of focus for the piece was The Netherlands.
The Guardian found that in 2017 "well over a quarter of all deaths... in the Netherlands were induced." "Induced" means that the person died at his or someone else's hand, instead of by illness or accident.
By way of comparison, during the same period in the United States approximately 65,000 deaths out of more than 2.7 million were "induced." This includes approximately 17,000 homicides, 45,000 suicides, and 1,300 deaths via physician-assisted suicide. That's only 2.5 percent.
So, which one is the more dangerous country again?
As I noted, the Netherlands official homicide rate is one-fifth that of the United States, and its suicide rate is about a third lower. So, who's "inducing" all these deaths? The troubling answer is... doctors.
We've talked a lot on BreakPoint about the ever-expanding euthanasia-industrial complex. We have told you about how the so-called "right to die" eventually becomes, in effect, the "duty to die." We've also told the stories of doctors so eager to end life that it isn't clear in some instances if it was what the patient actually wanted.
Still, even in the context of all of those realities, what the Guardian found was shocking. For example, Dutch doctors commonly practice what's known as "terminal sedation." This is "a slow-motion euthanasia wherein patients not in the active stage of dying are put into artificial comas and denied all sustenance until they dehydrate to death."
This is different from "palliative sedation," which is "a rarely required procedure in which patients near death are sedated to control pain or other symptoms such as severe agitation or air hunger that cannot be alleviated in any other manner."
While approximately 6,600 Dutch were officially euthanized and another 1,950 people killed themselves in 2017, the Guardian found that "the number of people who died under palliative sedation in theory, succumbing to their illness while cocooned from physical discomfort, but in practice often dying of dehydration while unconscious [that is, terminal sedation] hit an astonishing 32,000."
Add it all up, and in 2017 more than 40,000 of the 150,000 deaths in the Netherlands were induced.
While the Guardian was astonished, Wesley J. Smith wasn't. He's among those telling anyone who will listen that in places like the Netherlands the line between palliative sedation and terminal sedation has been blurred for some time.
As he wrote in the National Review, "Since euthanasia was first decriminalized in the Netherlands, the country's doctors have traveled a very dark road." The category of people deemed candidates for induced death has steadily grown. And while a theoretical line has been crossed, Dutch officials do nothing.
It could hardly be otherwise. As Smith put it, the Dutch aren't "horrible, ghoulish people." But they are logical. Once they "accepted the premise that killing is an acceptable answer to suffering," they're now simply taking "that belief precisely where it leads."
Which makes the Netherlands a lot more dangerous than official stats suggest. And which makes me ask, "Americans, is this what we really want?"
Resources
Doctors Induce Twenty-Five Percent of Dutch Deaths, Wesley J. Smith | National Review | January 21, 2019
How Physician-Assisted Suicide Endangers the Weak, Corrupts Medicine, Compromises the Family, and Violates Human Dignity and Equality, Ryan T. Anderson | Heritage Foundation | March 24, 2015
When Is It Right to Die? A Comforting and Surprising Look at Death and Dying, Joni Eareckson Tada | Zondervan | 2018
Originally published at Breakpoint.
From BreakPoint. Reprinted with the permission of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or distributed without the express written permission the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. "BreakPoint" and "The Colson Center for Christian Worldview" are registered trademarks of The Colson Center for Christian Worldview.
Appeal to orthodox bishops to attend Lambeth Conference despite differences
The archbishop overseeing plans for the next Lambeth Conference is pleading with orthodox bishops threatening to boycott the event to come in spite of their differences.
Bishops from Nigeria and Uganda have said they will stay away from the once-in-a-decade meeting out of opposition to Provinces that have adopted an increasingly liberal interpretation of the gospel.
This week, GAFCON chairman Archbishop Nicholas Okoh said the same-sex wedding of a suffragan bishop in the Church of Canada last December 'underlines the urgency of our advice in the Jerusalem 2018 "Letter to the Churches" warning against attending the 2020 Lambeth Conference as currently constituted'.
He also criticised the appointment of Dr John Shepherd as the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy to the Vatican over his views of the physical resurrection.
'With great sadness we therefore have to conclude that the Lambeth Conference of 2020 will itself be an obstacle to the gospel by embracing teaching and a pattern of life which are profoundly at odds with the biblical witness and the apostolic Christianity through the ages,' Archbishop Okoh said.
The Archbishop of Cape Town and chair of the Lambeth 2020 design group, the Most Rev Thabo Makgoba, however, is pleading with all bishops to set aside their differences and participate in the conference.
'I know people talk about the fabric of the communion as torn, but we are all fallible human beings in need of God's love and grace, and we need each other,' he said in a new YouTube video.
'Whether you agree with where the communion is, whether you don't agree, come and express your difference in this beautiful space which is a gift from God. Don't just stay at home and say "I'm not going".
'We want to hear that voice. It's not a conference of like-minded people; it is a conference of Anglicans. I mean, for God's sake, Anglicans, from our inceptions, we've always had push and pull. So push and pull should not be a distraction, but it should be celebrated.
'It's what I call at home, 'celebrating the gift of difference'. So I encourage all bishops and their spouses to make every possible effort to come and see what God is doing through us in his world.'
In a previous video posted to the Lambeth Conference website, the Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, the Most Rev Justin Welby asked Anglicans to pray for those they disagree with.
'Pray for those you disagree with and resist the urge to be swayed by gossip and rumour. So when you hear something, don't necessarily believe it, turn to God and say 'if that's true, I pray for him or her'. But also, try and find out the truth.'
Trump to faith leaders at National Prayer Breakfast: 'I will never let you down'
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President Donald Trump started off his speech at Thursdays National Prayer Breakfast assuring faith leaders, I will never let you down Never.
Among his list of actions and vows to the faith community, the one that received the most enthusiastic applause was his commitment to protect the unborn.
All children, born and unborn, are made in the holy image of God, Trump said to a standing ovation as he vowed to build a culture that cherishes the dignity and sanctity of innocent human life.
Every life is sacred and every soul is a precious gift from Heaven. As the Lord says in Jeremiah, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.
His words come as more states are introducing bills that would allow abortion up to birth. New York passed such a law last month to the horror of pro-lifers and the faith community. While similar legislation was voted down in Virginia, Rhode Island and Vermont are now considering bills to remove restrictions on abortion until the moment of birth.
Trump highlighted the miracle of a premature baby, Grayson Watkinson, who was born during a snowstorm in Virginia at 24 weeks, weighing just 1 pound, 11 ounces. To the surprise of doctors, he not only survived but improved over the next few months.
Grayson just celebrated his first birthday and is a healthy boy today.
As his mom Nikki has said, he was put on this earth to do big things. He may be here someday, Trump said, pointing at his position at the podium. Nikki, he already has and he will do more and more as he grows older.
During his 20-minute speech, Trump also vowed to protect religious liberty, including that of faith-based adoption agencies which have been challenged in various states to either allow children to be placed with same-sex couples or shut down.
St. Vincent Catholic Charities is currently in the midst of a court battle after the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state of Michigan on behalf of two lesbian couples. The lawsuit seeks to end funding to faith-based agencies that do not place children with same-sex couples.
Becket, which is representing St. Vincent, argued, ACLUs lawsuit is not about helping kids. Its about scoring cheap political points at the expense of kids. The only thing that the ACLUs lawsuit would accomplish is fewer homes for children, especially minority children and those with special needs.
Citing St. Vincents case, Trump stated Thursday, We will always protect our countrys long and proud tradition of faith-based adoption. My administration is working to ensure that faith-based adoption agencies are able to help vulnerable children find their forever families while following their deeply-held beliefs.
Trump lauded charities and faith-based groups for their works in aiding people in need.
Every day, the people in this room demonstrate the power of faith to transform lives, heal communities and lift up the forgotten, he told those at the prayer breakfast, including Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders.
As president, I will always cherish, honor and protect the believers who uplift our communities and sustain our nation to ensure that people of faith can always contribute to our society.
Praising the work of International Justice Mission, whose president, Gary Haugen, gave the keynote address, Trump also noted his administrations efforts to end human trafficking.
Last year, Trump directed the State Department to cut off aid to countries that do not commit to combating human trafficking. He also signed bills that would bring human traffickers to justice and support survivors of modern slavery.
Together, we will end the scourge of modern-day slavery that, because of the internet, is at levels that nobody can believe, he stated.
Other notable statements from Trump's speech included the acknowledgment of second lady Karen Pence, who was the target of the media recently over her decision to work as an art teacher at a Christian school.
"She is a Marine Corps mom, a tremendous woman, a proud supporter of military families and she just recently went back to teaching art classes at a Christian school. Thank you, Karen. Terrific woman."
He also quoted John 16:24, saying, "As Jesus promises in the Bible, ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete."
At the end of his speech, Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Chris Coons, D-Del., prayed for the president.
Phil Robertson: 10 lies the devil is using to 'destroy' America
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Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson has come out with a new book that aims to blow the lid off the lies that are destroying America.
The conservative Christian reality TV star spoke with The Christian Post to talk about the book and how coming to Christ at age 28 helped him leave his sinful life in the past.
The 72-year-old patriarch of A&E's hit reality series and the co-owner of the Duck Commander Company released his new title The Theft of Americas Soul on Tuesday.
The book purports to expose what he says are 10 essential deceptions and schemes being used by the devil to steal, kill and destroy Americas soul. The new book also shares what Robertson calls 10 counter-truths to those lies.
In the interview, Robertson explained that he was inspired to write the book after witnessing how prevalent issues of drug addiction and sexually transmitted diseases are in todays American society.
Robertson said he fears that United States as it backs away from its founding on Judeo-Christian principles will one day dissolve because God could leave the country to wallow in its own wickedness.
I hope America wont be like the Roman Empire, Robertson said as he proceeded to quote Romans 1:28: Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done.
Robertson said the idea of the book is simple: to get people to embrace living a godly life and to get them to love God and love their neighbor.
You go out and get a job and you work and you feed your family. You are the father and you have a mother and you raise your children and you teach them, correct them and rebuke and them and train them, said Robertson after noting how millions of Americans are suffering from some type of drug addiction that has left them hopeless.
We have lost that in America across the board and we are looking at the results of it. I am just trying to remind people that if we keep this up, this whole things is going to fall down upon us.
The 10 lies being used to destroy America that Robertson highlighted in the book are:
-God is dead -There is no devil -The truth is relative -God did not create life -Sex is for self-gratification -Virtue is outdated -Laws can be ignored or changed if they are inconvenient -Unity is not possible -Church participation and day-to-day life should be kept separate -Christians should shut their traps
When asked about the lie of sex being for self-gratification, Robertson noted that the Centers for Disease Control has reported that there are as many as 110 million sexually transmitted infections in the United States.
As STD rates continue to rise to record levels, Robertson believes that this is because too many people are not following Gods design for their lives.
I am just trying to gear people toward the safe way of one-man-one-woman [marriage]. We are not going to sleep around and we are going to keep our sex between each other and no one will ever catch a sexually transmitted disease from that formation, Robertson contended. Why is it that sexually transmitted diseases follow immoral conduct? Well, the writer of Romans, the Apostle Paul, said that it's Gods wrath. He is saying to you, Don't do that.
Robertson was also critical of the many Christians who feel like their faith can be lived out just by going to church on Sundays.
Robertson, who has baptized hundreds of people in a river near his Louisiana home, asserts that Christians are not to keep their mouths shut in the public square but rather are supposed to live out their faith in a 24/7 fashion.
They misunderstand Christianity. The American model is build a [church] building and everybody goes up there at least one time a week, he said.
However, Romans 12 says something different.
If you think about it, the biblical outline of worship is in view of Gods mercy, offer your body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual act of worship, Robertson paraphrased.
Biblically, [faith is more than just] going to church one day a week and calling it a wrap and worship is over. There is 168 hours a week. So if you went to church for a couple hours [on Sunday], there is another 166 hours of what are you doing? It has to be a 24/7-type thing.
Robertson admits, however, that he was not always a professing Christian and didnt always follow Gods design for his life. In fact, he said, there was a time he could barely tell Jesus apart from a billy goat.
I used to get drunk, get high, get laid, Robertson admitted. I was immoral.
Robertson said he began investigating God at the age of 28 in the mid-1970s.
When I read about him, I said, Goodness, there is a way out of here alive, Robertson recalled. I repented and since that time, as amazing as it sounds, now here I am as a multimillionaire if that means anything. How in the world did you go from a nobody and do what you do now? I put my faith in God and I did not waver and I left my life of sin and good things came out. It was either luck or what God said all along.
Robertson said he was driven to look for a deeper purpose in life because, at the time, he felt as if he was as dog chasing his tail.
So I repented and got on my knees before God for the first time. I am 72, so I have been at this for about 44 years now, he said. The more I have studied about God and the more I read my Bible, I realized that this is true and really happening. There is a way out of here alive.
Robertsons book has drawn some criticism. Publishers Weekly criticized Robertson for what was deemed excessive use of religious rhetoric. In its review, the outlet argued that the book suffered from a lack of nuance [that] will turn off many readers.
At the time Robertson responded in a statement saying the review was what he hoped for.
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. It is the one in them, the evil one were the friction comes, Robertson told CP when asked about the review. The Bible says repeatedly, everyone who lives a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. So Jesus said to jump for joy and be happy when people hate you, when they exclude you or insult you or reject your name as evil because of Him. We can take a little flak from time to time. We just smile and we love them and we go on.
Duck Dynasty' Star Phil Robertson Warns America Will 'Collapse' If It Continues To Turn Its Back On God
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The reality show "Duck Dynasty" might have already wrapped up, but that does not mean its patriarch Phil Robertson is done spreading the message of God.
Robertson rallied for Judge Roy Moore in Alabama recently, according to Breitbart News, and during the event, he raved about Moore's Christian faith. "Roy Moore's a godly man," Robertson said, "or I wouldn't be here."
Back in the 1990s, the conservative judge decided to hang the Ten Commandments plaque on the wall of his office. Robertson approved of this act, and so did many others since Moore won the race for Chief Justice of Alabama's Supreme Court in 2000.
However, Moore was ousted after he adamantly refused to remove a 5,280-pound granite Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state judicial building. Robertson is proud that Moore stood up to his faith, and he lamented that other Americans are not the same.
"When you look on our streets in America, you see people running around with signs on top of their head, all puffed up ... won't even acknowledge the flag of the United States of America the national anthem! You say what in the world's going on? They're senseless! Faithless!" he said.
"Remember, as soon as you get God out of your psyche, He's giving you a list after list ... of what people do," Robertson added, quoting Romans. "They not only do these things, but they approve of those who practice them."
Robertson issued a dire warning for people who continue to turn their backs on God and condone abortion. "When a nation slaughters its offspring one million a year they always collapse those nations do you can't do that!" he said.
The former reality star has four sons with his wife Kay - Alan, Jase, Willie and Jep. With their Christian upbringing, Robertson is proud that his sons have grown up to be respectable members of society and dedicated fathers and husbands to their own families.
"They were raised up around biblical instruction. That mixed with discipline the discipline code, I call it," he told The Christian Post. "They just had a lifestyle of seeing their parents do good things. I think maybe me loving their mother and me loving my neighbors around me had a profound impact on them. And what came out of that was four sons who are all married to their original wives."
Interview: Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson, 'Fame Is Fleeting; What Matters Most Is Jesus Christ'
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Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the Robertson family whose Duck Commander business is the backdrop for A&E's hit program "Duck Dynasty" will release a new book on May 7 titled, Happy, Happy, Happy, in which he shares his faith in Jesus Christ, his knowledge about the founding fathers, and how he's grown Duck Commander into a multimillion dollar business.
The hour-long season finale of "Duck Dynasty" was the most-watched program on television Wednesday night, beating out American Idol with 9.6 million viewers, which is a record for A&E.
Robertson credits all of his family's success to their faith in Jesus Christ and their devotion to living a Christian lifestyle. He told CP on Thursday that his family has managed to stay humble, amid all of the fame, because they know that all blessings come from God; and in the end, everyone's going to the same place: a six-foot hole.
"Fame is rather fleeting, as you know, or should know," Robertson said. "Money can come and go, and fame comes and goes. Peace of mind and a relationship with God is far more important, so this is the precedent that we've set in our lives. The bottom line is, we all die, so Jesus is the answer. Many have told me through the years: 'I think I'll take my chances without Jesus.' And I always come back and say, 'so what chance is that?'"
Robertson wasn't always a follower of Jesus Christ. In fact, for the first 28 years of his life, he said he lived a "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll lifestyle," and rejected his sister's efforts to bring him to the Lord, until he read a sign in the Atlanta airport that stopped him in his tracks.
"I'm walking through the airport in Atlanta, and there was a large sign on one of the terminal walls and the question on it said: 'Were you born between the years of 1945 and 1965?' And as I was walking through, I stopped and said, 'oh, well that would be me.' I read on and the sign said: 'Report to the Centers for Disease Control immediately, because you're in the highest risk group on planet earth for hepatitis C.' The point is that for the first 28 years, I was in that group of individuals," Robertson said.
"Fortunately, no debilitating disease fell upon me," said Robertson who attributes his walk with Jesus Christ for all of the success he's achieved in the last 38 years.
Robertson told CP that his book, Happy, Happy, Happy, is an extended version of the speeches he's been giving across the country for the past 25 years.
"Basically, the book is about my life story," he said. "I've been speaking all over the United States about duck calling, the founders of the country, and the Gospel. Once I started doing that, people started asking me: 'How can I get a copy of what I just heard, why don't you write a book?' The book is just about that: ducks, founding fathers, and my faith in God. And the rest of the story is about how it all turned out went from rags to riches, as they say."
Robertson also attributes his wife, Miss Kay, for the success of Duck Commander, and for being a Christian example to their four sons who are married and raising families of their own.
"I told Miss Kay we need to make sure our children don't turn out like I turned out," he said. "So they were raised up around biblical instruction. That mixed with discipline the discipline code, I call it. They just had a lifestyle of seeing their parents do good things. I think maybe me loving their mother and me loving my neighbors around me had a profound impact on them. And what came out of that was four sons who are all married to their original wives. And they're acting godly and I think Miss Kay and I had a hand in that."
"So basically, I would recommend that to all parents. You have to discipline your children, or they won't respect you, law enforcement or God, or anyone else. But I would say, overarching, I made sure they knew that we loved them, their mother and myself. They were loved, they were given biblical instruction, they were seeing their dad and mom reach out to their neighbors around them, helping them, whether it be financial or marriage problems."
Robertson quoted 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 and cited it as being one of the scriptures he likes to share with people. "So basically, I don't ever move too far past the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, because it's of first importance. And I make sure it's of first importance with anyone I'm talking to. It all comes down to that, really, when you get right down to it. So it's not complex. Jesus removed our sins and guarantees we can be raised from the dead. I'm still waiting on someone to enlighten me on what story beats that one."
Part of the Christian lifestyle is the Christian work ethic, and Robertson achieved his dream of getting his duck call on the market by setting goals, maintaining his focus, and holding fast to his unwavering faith in God.
"I worked hard," Robertson said about his job as a commercial fisherman, catching catfish and buffalo while he worked to get his small business off the ground. "The first year, my gross sales totaled $8,000 in the duck call business. The second year was like $13,000, and the third year was $22,000. Simply put, I set a goal, stayed the course, and trusted in the Almighty. I did what was right, and the result is for everyone to see now."
Speaking about his book, Robertson said: "All I would tell people is the first 28 years of my life I wasn't going anywhere very fast. The last 38 went beyond anything I could've asked for or imaged. So it was either luck I was just lucky, as the atheists probably would say or I was blessed by the Almighty. I'm leaning toward blessings came once I was converted."
"I would tell anybody who was listening, 'Hey this is my story, a lot of good came out of it.' The second half has been far better than the first half, I can tell you that."
Si Robertson and Miss Kay will also release new books this fall, along with a Duck Commander Devotional.
Anne Graham Lotz to go through final round of chemo after feeling God healed her
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Nearly four months into receiving chemotherapy, evangelist Anne Graham Lotz believes she will be healed after her seventh treatment next week.
The 70-year-old evangelist revealed in an update on her blog this week that she felt God had healed her after her fifth treatment and was pondering whether to stop.
While praying with my two daughters following my fifth chemo treatment, God seemed to indicate He had healed me. Cleansed me. Removed cancer from me. I pondered in my heart what I believe He had said, she wrote.
She sought God in prayer to confirm whether to continue with chemo. That day, her daughter, Rachel-Ruth, shared the biblical story from 2 Kings 5. In it, an army commander named Naaman was healed of leprosy after washing himself seven times in the Jordan as instructed by Gods prophet.
That story was an answer to Lotzs prayer.
I could hear the clear whisper of the Spirit, answering my prayer, confirming that I was to continue chemomy next and last full treatment would be my seventh time! So as much as I resist the muck and mud, in obedience to Gods leading to complete the seventh infusion on Feb. 14, I am committed to seeing these treatments through to the end, she said.
Lotz was diagnosed with breast cancer last August and began receiving chemotherapy in October. She has been open about the difficult process, including the daunting side effects.
Though she had prayed that the cancer would be gone after her surgery last year, the cancer was still there and had also spread to the lymph nodes.
During a December interview on "The Drew Marshall Show," she was asked if she ever shook her fist at God. Lotz never did.
She expressed her belief that the devil is alive and after Gods people and did find it bizarre that her diagnosis came on the anniversary of her husbands death (and within the same time frame).
Though she doesnt understand everything that happens, she stressed that her faith in God remains strong and vibrant and she has found peace in knowing that the blood of Jesus trumps death, disease [and] the devil.
Whether you work for the Lord or whether you dont, people get cancer, people have their husbands die, people have their daddies die; thats part of life, she said.
Life isnt about being easy, about being comfortable, about taking no risk. Life is about triumphing over the obstacles, she added, pointing to the Apostle Paul and Jesus as examples of those who suffered in life and overcame.
I dont want Him (God) to give me what I want, I want Him to give me what He wants to give me and I feel like Hes giving me a journey thats a challenge but its a blessing at the same time because Im closer to Him and I have something to share with other people going through the same journey.
She considers her breast cancer battle a new aspect of her faith journey and one in which she is experiencing God in a new dimension.
At the same time, it gives me the opportunity to turn around call back to people behind me who are suffering and dont have that relationship with the Lord or they dont have a strong faith or theyre confused and angry. God has given me multiple opportunities to encourage other people who are on the same journey.
Lotz emphasized that she spends time with the Lord every day and is thus able to get through this difficult stage in her life.
Her doctor told her, Anne, you have an indomitable spirit. And Lotzs reply was: Yup, and his name is Jesus.
In her interview, Lotz also addressed the eyebrow-raising comment she made earlier about her breast cancer being a possible warning sign that Israel could be in danger of being attacked.
Though she admitted that she doesnt know if there is a connection between her and Israel, she said she has always felt her life was somehow entwined with the nation of Israel, given that Israel was reborn the same month and year as her birth.
God told me years ago that my messages, I would live them out, she explained.
Why would I get cancer? Nobody in my family has cancer, she recalled thinking. To my mind, was this the message I was to live out?
I wondered at 70, I was suddenly attacked with cancer Is she (Israel) going to be suddenly attacked in a way that will be life-threatening for her as a nation?
When the thoughts first came to mind, she decided to put that on the shelf for a week, knowing that it sounded bizarre.
But feeling that God would hold me accountable and not wanting to be disobedient, Lotz said she decided to write about her cancer and Israel in a blog.
My urge to Israel is its time for Israel, as Joel says, to return now to the Lord and repent of your sin and who knows He (God) can protect Israel if shell turn to the God of her fathers.
She also urged Christians to pray for Israel. Were commanded in Scripture to pray for the peace of Jerusalem so I issued that challenge.
Two teenagers, detained by police in Gori, charged with carjacking, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia reports.
It is clarified that the detainees, born in 2003 and 2004, are the citizens of Georgia.
The young carjackers tried to escape in a stolen car, but were detained by the law enforcement officers at the entrance to Gori.
They pleaded guilty. A criminal case has been initiated for stealing under article 177, Sputnik Georgia reports.
According to Rustavi2, the teenagers reached Borjomi on the stolen car and then returned where they were detained.
The Haines Sheldon Museum opened its doors to the public last week after being closed for several days after a staff member found a WWII-era Japanese mortar in its collection.
Staff contacted local police who got in touch with an army explosive ordinance disposal unit out of Fairbanks. Military personnel arrived in Haines on Thursday and x-rayed the mortar. They found remnants of explosive powder.
They determined that the only course of action was to destroy the ordnance, a museum press release stated. As stewards of history, the staff at the Sheldon Museum are unsettled and sad about the loss of this object. Our primary concern as a museum and public institution has always been the safety of all the objects in our care.
Norm Smith Senior donated the mortar in the early 1990s. His uncle brought it back from Japan after WWII, museum staff said.
Smiths son, Norm Smith, said the mortar was at his house for decades. Hes skeptical the mortar was dangerous.
Explosive powder is explosive powder, Smith said. It doesnt go away. I dont think there was enough in there to detonate by itself. It certainly blows up when you add C4 to it.
Kail Lowry | Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Reality TV stars encounter their fair share of controversy and the young mothers of Teen Mom 2 are no exception. Kail Lowry recently incited a social media firestorm of criticism after she revealed that she has no plans to vaccinate her youngest child. As one of the original stars of 16 and Pregnant, Lowry understands how to live life in the spotlight but likely couldnt have expected the harsh feedback that came her way after her vaccination revelation.
Who is Kail Lowry?
Born in 1992, Kailyn Lowry was raised in Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania. Her time in high school was derailed when she became pregnant with her first child in 2009. The father was her then-boyfriend Jonathan Rivera, and while the relationship didnt last, she has been open about how much joy her son from that relationship, Isaac Rivera, has brought her.
She first entered the public eye in 2010, when she was cast in 16 and Pregnant, the show that famously followed a group of teen mothers as they navigated the trials and tribulations of raising families while still trying to organize their own lives.
In 2013, Lowry married Javi Marroquin, and gave birth to her second child, Lincoln Marshall Marroquin, later that year. By this time, Lowry was appearing on the spin off to 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom 2. The show documented Lowrys struggles with marriage and motherhood, and by 2015, she and Marroquin were no longer a couple. They suffered through a long and contentious separation process and finally announced their divorce in late 2016.
During the breakdown of her marriage to Marroquin, Lowry struck up a relationship with Chris Lopez, and in August 2017, Lowry gave birth to her third child and her first with Lopez, Lux Lowry. It was the medical history of her youngest son, Lux, that she mainly discussed on her popular podcast, Coffee Convos.
What are her views on vaccination?
Kailyn Lowry isn't backing down. https://t.co/W7VGFEPC4E Us Weekly (@usweekly) January 27, 2019
On the late January podcast, Lowry and her co-host, Chrisley Knows Best star Lindsie Chrisley, took a deep dive into a hot-button issue vaccines for children. On the podcast, Lowry revealed that while she followed the doctor-recommended vaccination schedule with her oldest son, Isaac, she has chosen not to vaccinate her youngest son, Lux, at all. Lowry stated that after she had her second child, she started to research the topic of vaccines online, and between the research she did and the various health documentaries she watched, she had come to the conclusion that vaccination was not a course she wanted to pursue. She also admitted that she doesnt judge decisions that other parents make.
People immediately took to social media to take Lowry to task for not following the medically-recommended vaccination schedule. Various social media users called her irresponsible, and that it was unwise to use a platform such as a podcast to share views that are widely considered to be uneducated.
As a rule, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend a robust vaccine schedule for all children under the age of 18, but especially for very young babies, in order to prevent the spread of contagious diseases such as measles, influenza virus, and Hepatitis B. While certain cases of children with very compromised immune systems might follow an adjusted vaccination schedule, based on doctor guidance, the guidelines are a fairly standard rule.
In the past several years, it has become a hot topic among parents and the medical community, with some people claiming that they dont see the necessity for vaccines and that they prefer to take a more natural approach to their childrens health. The counter-argument is that vaccines prevent the spread of disease, and are necessary to control crippling illnesses. Lowry might not have anticipated the effect that her words might have, but theres no doubt that shell be hearing the feedback for weeks to come.
Weve been watching the Food Network for decades, and while some of our favorites (like Giada De Laurentiis and Bobby Flay) have been there from the very beginning, fans have also fallen in love with some of the newcomers. Ree Drummond has been The Pioneer Woman since 2011, and over the years, fans have loved seeing her cook and hearing about her stories of life on the ranch. Weve even gotten to know all about her husband, Ladd, and her four kids.
While the Drummonds seem ultra wholesome, it seems Rees personal life has been rocked with scandal in the past. Heres what happened.
Rees mother allegedly cheated on her husband with the familys pastor
While Ree has talked at length in the past about how she wished to live the big city life, she originally grew up in Oklahoma and when she met Ladd, thats also where she ended up staying. The Pioneer Woman went through adolescence with her parents marriage still intact as well. But drama between Rees mother, Gerre, and Rees father, William, rocked their town and Rees life back in 1996.
According to In Touch Weekly, Rees mother, Gerre, was cheating on William with the familys pastor, Doug Schwert, shortly before Rees wedding in 1996. Gerre and Doug reportedly started off as just friends and often were seen doing volunteer work together. While they were both married at the time, the community started to notice that something was amiss. As one former parishioner told In Touch, It wasnt right. People were talking. They even went as far as to call it a scandal.
Rees parents then divorced just a month after their daughters wedding
Ree had a wedding to plan, so the combined stress of her nuptials along with her parents scandal was certainly enough to throw her for a loop. According to In Touch Weekly, Ree was particularly upset when her parents decided to divorce. As one local resident told the publication, Ree was crushed. She kept begging [her mother and father] to stay together. And just a month after Ree tied the knot, Gerre filed for divorce due to irreconcilable differences.
Unfortunately for Gerre, it seems William didnt want the divorce to happen at all, which made matters much more difficult. According to documents obtained by In Touch, he wanted to continue living in a loving and supportive marriage though he ended up dropping this stance and going through with the divorce in 1997. Today, like Gerre, William has also remarried.
Ree still seems ultra close with her parents today
No matter how difficult the scandal and divorce was for Ree, its all in the past now and it seems shes maintained great relationships with her mother and father today. Back in 2014, we remember when she posted all of the amazing qualities she sees in her mother on her blog. Southern Living also reminds us that Ree is constantly posting throwback photos of her mother on her Instagram and reminding us all of Gerres best qualities, which include kindness and always seeing the good in everyone.
We may not hear about William as much, but Ree has still featured him in some blog posts as well. Back in 2010, she wrote about visiting her father and his wife, Pat, for Memorial Day. Ree also added a bit about her dads background, as he served in Vietnam something shes stated shes ultra proud of. Were sure even more stories about Rees family are to come in the future, as they still all live relatively close to each other and are making memories with Rees four kids.
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Remember Brangelina? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are officially divorced now, which leaves their kids in a bit of a complicated situation. Its not easy for families of divorce, period. But when its a Hollywood couple with a blended family of adopted and biological children? Things can get very tricky.
One of the biggest mysteries in the family is Angeline Jolies oldest son, Maddox Jolie-Pitt. He was adopted by the A-list actress from Cambodia back in March of 2002. Now the adorable little boy is fully grown into a man and will even head off to college soon. So whats up with Maddox, and how is he handling the divorce? Read on to find out.
Angelina Jolie, Zahara, Brad Pitt, and son Maddox | STR/AFP/Getty Images
Billy Bob Thornton was Maddoxs first dad
Fans likely remember the headline-grabbing romance between actor Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie. The pair was technically married in 2002 when Jolie decided to adopt Maddox, and they even made a joint announcement once the adoption became finalized. However, their relationship was rocky by that point. They broke up soon after.
Still, for a short while Billy Bob Thornton could have become Maddoxs father. Weird, right?
His adoption almost didnt get approved
Angelina Jolie with Maddox | Mat Szwajkos/Getty Images
International adoptions are expensive and complicated. Even when you happen to be a Hollywood actress with millions of dollars, theres still plenty of red tape involved.
When Angelina Jolie was in the process of adopting her son, all Cambodian adoptions were temporarily halted due to child trafficking concerns. Also, Jolies adoption agent was convicted for visa fraud and money laundering. The whole thing was a big mess.
Luckily for all parties, it worked out in the end. But it still came close to getting canceled, in which case Maddox would have had a very different life.
Theres tension between Brad and Maddox
Brad Pitt formally adopted Maddox in 2006, but it hasnt been smooth sailing for them over the years. First there were rumors of a physical altercation after Brad had been drinking on a private plane. Then theres the custody agreement.
Brad and Angelina came to a custody agreement that allowed Pitt to see his seven children and maintain relationships with them. But since Maddox is a teenager, he was allowed to make his own choice. Itll be up to him to determine how often he sees his father. Some sources claim he never wants to see his dad again. Others say theyre working it out, though.
Brad Pitt and children Pax Jolie-Pitt, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt and Maddox Jolie-Pitt | Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
There are rumors that Brad Pitt was banned from Maddoxs birthday party
Its not confirmed, but rumors swirled that Brad Pitt wasnt allowed to attend his sons sixteenth birthday party in 2017. As one source said, Brad is upset that he will miss out on this first big milestone event since the divorce. He is doing his best to work around Angelinas wishes for the children, but this is one instance where Brad is really hurt.
He helps with his siblings
Eldest children are often expected to help out with their younger siblings. When youre in a family of seven kids? Its all but inevitable. But sources say that Maddox is an excellent big brother, often going above and beyond to help take care of his siblings.
So sweet!
He may be influencing his siblings, too
Maddox Jolie-Pitt, Pax Jolie-Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, Knox Leon Jolie-Pitt and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt | Valeria Macon/AFP/Getty Images
Its no secret that the younger kids look up Maddox. But that may not be such a good thing for Brad Pitt, especially if things are as tense between him and the kids as the media portrays.
Maddox may definitely influence the other children, but he still has a right to his feelings to do what he needs to do to feel some sense of safety and comfort in his own life, Dr. Deborah Sweet, a family therapist said during an interview with Hollywood Life.
This does not have to ruin the relationship between Brad and Maddox and likely is just a phase. But there must be repair in the relationship.
He might go to college in Korea
One source claims that Maddox is looking into attending Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. But his mom might not want him to go to college at all. She leans on Maddox and genuinely enjoys his company, and like any mom, shes having a hard time letting him go.
Maddox Jolie-Pitt Angelina Jolie | Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Maddox is super close to his mom
Maddox and his mom were close to begin with. Now that his parents are divorced, the two are even more attuned to one another, with some sources describing Maddox of being the man of the house now.
He also got a chance to work with Jolie professionally when he helped with the film, First They Killed My Father. Angelina was the director of the project, which was shot in Cambodia and based on a memoir from a survivor of the Cambodian genocide.
He described working with Angelina by saying, [Shes] fun, funny, and easy to work with. Shes a wonder.
No matter where Maddox ends up, its clear he will always look up to his mother.
When it comes to famous families that seem genuinely endearing to viewers, the Roloffs are certainly up there. We remember when we first met Amy and Matt Roloff, a married couple with dwarfism, over a decade ago on Little People, Big World and fans were instantly interested in their family dynamics. The Roloff kids Molly, Jacob, Zach, and Jeremy are now all grown with partners and lives of their own, but there continues to be one member of the family fans are interested in. Thats the black sheep, Jacob.
Jacob has publicly condemned the show in the past for portraying his family in a dishonest light, and hes always had different opinions of the program from his siblings. While he wont ever return to LPBW again, we are interested in his fiancee he features all over his Instagram, Isabel Rock. Heres what we know about her.
Its believed Jacob and Isabel met through their art
Its no secret Jacob left production with a bang. We remember when he posted his reasoning for leaving the show on his Instagram back in 2016 and fans have been interested in what hes been up to since then. Judging from his postings, it appears hes quite the active writer, as hes already created two books, Verbing and Out to See. In Touch Weekly notes he wrote in regards to Verbing, This is my exploratory experiment with writing to get my feet wet with the process and establish the subject(s) I would like to write on in the future.
While fans are still unsure of exactly how Jacob and Isabel met, it seems likely that their art brought them together. From the looks of Isabels Instagram, shes a visual artist, and shes also discussed her love of photography in the past. We imagine she and Jacob crossed paths for their shared interest in the subject and quickly fell in love from there. They also have a website together where they share their art with the world titled Rock & Roloff.
Their wedding is set for 2019
Isabel and Jacob keep their relationship relatively private, but according to People, we do finally know when their wedding is going to be. The publication notes theyre set to marry in September 2019. Isabel announced their wedding date in an emotional Instagram post about how she was feeling overwhelmed with the business of her life and the changes that were taking place. As she said, Planning a wedding, going back to school, finding a place to live that fits us and gives us a sense of community, always fixing our beloved van, while also trying to manage an art business has felt a wee bit overwhelming for me at times.
As for when they got engaged, People reminds us Jacob asked for Isabels hand in marriage while they were on a trip to Iceland at the end of 2017. In an Instagram post in the beginning of 2018, Jacob announced, we got ENGAGED! It happened in Iceland on the frozen pond, Tjornin, late on Christmas. The announcement came less than a half a year after older sister Molly Roloff tied the knot as well.
Does she get along with the rest of the Roloffs?
While Isabel has managed to fly somewhat under the radar for LPBW fans, we do know that she seems incredibly close with her family. In Touch Weekly notes she often posts about her dad and brother Nico. And though her mother passed from breast cancer back in 2014, fans see a lot of posts about their relationship as well, which appeared to be very tight.
Jacobs had a rocky relationship with his family through his teen years and early adulthood, but now that hes had some space from the show, fences seem to be mending. As for Isabel, she seems to get along very well with the Roloffs, too. The publication notes shes often seen hanging out with Jeremy and Audreys Roloffs baby girl, Ember, and we frequently see her in many of the Roloff family photos around the holidays as well. Were excited to see what married life brings to Isabel, Jacob, and the rest of the Roloffs in the future.
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Ree Drummond is a television star who may be better known as the Pioneer Woman. In fact, thats the name of the popular Food Network show that shot her to fame. Drummond started out as a stay-at-home mom who enjoyed blogging about her life. But more than a decade later, shes a television super star with various business ventures under her belt. But how much does Food Network actually pay her for her show?
Ree Drummond | Getty Images/Monica Schipper
Drummond has built an empire out of the Pioneer Woman franchise
When Drummond got her start, she did not have the intention of the blog turning into anything more than a fun way for her to talk about her life and family. However, what started as an interesting project in 2006 quickly gained a massive following. She previously said in an interview with The New Yorker that by 2010, the blog was making more than $1 million annually. The blog then turned into a Food Network show, which has seen several successful seasons and counting. From there, Drummond began writing cookbooks and going on book tours; everything was tied into The Pioneer Woman the name of her television show.
Shes independently worth an estimated $50 million
On her own, Drummond has accumulated a net worth estimated around $50 million. But thats not the only wealth in the family. Drummonds husband, Ladd Drummond, comes from one of the biggest land-owning families in the country. His net worth is estimated around $200 million. But while Ree Drummond may have set out to write about her life as a stay-at-home-mom, but thats hardly how things turned out. She went on to become a household name, and shes especially known for her use of the words scrumptious and phrases such as gloriously decadent and nice and golden brown. Shes even poked fun at herself on Twitter over her word usage.
In other news, I'm getting ready to film more shows in a couple of weeks, and I'm going to try to avoid saying the following: Yum, Delicious, Scrumptious, Nice and Golden Brown, Definitely, Oh My Goodness. But will there then be any audio on the show? Ree Drummond The Pioneer Woman (@thepioneerwoman) January 5, 2019
Her Food Network salary is not disclosed, but she likely makes somewhere between $8 million and $25 million per year
Food Network chefs dont all make the same amount. The salaries mostly have to do with ratings, so some chefs make much more than others. However, Drummonds individual Food Network salary has not been disclosed, but a range can be inferred based on what other Food Network chefs have made annually. Rachael Ray, arguably the most famous female celebrity chef to come from the Food Network, was pulling in around $25 million annually during her most successful years. Guy Fieri has always been consistently popular on the network and earns an estimated $8 million per year. Drummond probably doesnt make quite as much as Ray, but with her several cookbooks and ever-popular television show, shes probably making more per year than Fieri.
She also owns a restaurant and hotel in her home town
Besides having one of the most popular cooking shows on television, Drummond has gotten her feet wet in other entrepreneurial endeavors. She recently opened up both a restaurant and a boutique hotel in downtown Pawhuska, Oklahoma, where she lives. Shes written several cookbooks and continues to film her television show. Although her children are growing up quickly, and her family dynamic may change once theyre all away at school, she doesnt appear to be slowing down any time soon.
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Sam H. Powell, 86, of Signal Mountain, who devoted his whole life to the building of hiking trails, conservation and improvement of the environment, died on February 8, 2019.
He was married to the late Emilie Ervin Powell for 61 years.
A native of Tarpon Springs, Fl., he was the son of the late William Marshall Powell and Margaret Harvey Bomar Powell. He grew up in Florida and Haley, Tn., and served in the U.S. Army from 1953-54 during the Korean War. He received a bachelors degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK) in 1958. He worked his entire life in the electric utility industry, starting as a lineman with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in West Tennessee and Kentucky in 1951. Following graduation from UTK, he came to Chattanooga in 1959 to join TVA where he worked 40 years, retiring in 1994 as manager of co-generation and small power production.
He was active in the UT Alumni Association for many years, serving as president of the Hamilton County Chapter, was a two-term member of the General Alumni Board of Governors and in the 1960s led a group of UT Alumni in Hamilton County to contact Dr. Andrew Holt, president of the University of Tennessee (UT), to ask that UT establish a campus in Chattanooga. Working with Third District legislators and Paul Kinser, the governors representative in Hamilton County, the group was able to get the University of Chattanooga to become the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1968. Sam served a term on the UTC Chancellors Roundtable.
Sam was a member of the Tennessee Conservation Commission for five terms (15 years), he was a founding member of the Cumberland Trail, which runs from Signal Mountain 300 miles across the state to Cumberland Gap. This trail continues to grow with additional parts that spin off to connect various parks. In addition, he was chairman of the Cumberland Trail Conference, and was a founding member and longtime director of the Tennessee River Gorge Trust.
Preservation of the environment was very important to Sam and in addition to the many other groups he was active in he served on the Tennessee State Committee on Off-Highway Vehicles and the Tennessee Riverpark Advisory Committee which oversaw Hamilton County Parks for many years.
On Signal Mountain he served as chairman of the Parks Board, was an environmental monitor for the construction of Shackleford Ridge Recreational Park, obtained grants and led development of four miles of hiking trails within Shackleford Ridge and directed the building of a trail system connecting Green Gorge with Rainbow Lake and the Cumberland Trail. Sam spearheaded the building of two bridges in the Green Gorge section of the Mountain.
Other groups Sam was active in included: the Chattanooga Engineers Club, the Association of Energy Engineers (International) and the International Cogeneration Society. He served as president of the Chattanooga Audubon Society for two years and for 16 years was Scoutmaster to Boy Scout Troop 130 on Signal Mountain. He even assisted the Signal Mountain Police department as an auxiliary officer for many years.
Awards given to Sam included: the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservations Lifetime Environment/Conservation Achievement Award for 2002, the Tennessee Governors Greenways and Trails Award for 1999, the Cumberland Trail Award for 1998, the Chattanooga Engineers Club People-To-People Award for 1990, the Tennessee Division of Forestry Friend of Forestry Award for 1986, the Signal Mountain Junior High Father-of-the-Year Award for 1982, the Tennessee Trails Association Trails award for 1980 and the Boy Scouts of America Award of Merit and Eagle Scout.
In honor of Sams dedication to his community, the town of Signal Mountain dedicated Sam Powell Trail as a new road through Shackleford Ridge Park. It is now the official address for Signal Mountain Middle High School.
He is survived by his daughter Julia Powell Rafter, her husband Michael and son Jaden Powell Rafter of Milton, Georgia; sisters-in-law Nancy Ervin Powell, Wartrace, TN, and Susan Ervin Callis, Findlay, Ohio; brother-in-law Nat Ervin and his wife Bonnie of Ashland City, TN; and Judy Ervin (wife of brother-in-law Kimery Ervin), Columbia, TN. He is predeceased by sisters Marie Powell Bragg, Tullahoma, TN, and Rose Powell Clinard, Shelbyville, TN; brother Robert Stone Powell; and brothers-in-law Larry Callis, Carey, Ohio and Kimery Ervin, Columbia, TN.
A Celebration of Life service will be held at 12 p.m. (noon) on Tuesday, Feb. 12, in the chapel of Hamilton Funeral Home with Brother Richard Floyd officiating. Military honors will conclude the service.
His family will receive friends from 47 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 11, and from 11 a.m. 12 p.m. (noon) on Tuesday, Feb. 12, at the funeral home prior to the service.
In lieu of flowers, please consider contributions to one of these charities that were all very important to Sam: Cumberland Trails Conference, The Land Trust for Tennessee or the Tennessee River Gorge Trust. You can learn more about these organizations, and where to donate, through their websites.
We invite you to send a message of condolence and view the Powell family guestbook at www.HamiltonFuneralOptions.com.
Arrangements are by Hamilton Funeral Home & Cremation Services, 4506 Hixson Pike, Hixson, 423 531-3975.
Three civilians died as a result of shelling of the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor by the coalition led by the US.
It is specified that the village of At-Tayana was targeted by the coalition.
Note that the coalition regularly shells the province of Deir ez-Zor. So, at the end of last month, Syrian journalists reported that more than 30 local residents were killed as a result of the bombing of the village of Baguz. The Syrian Foreign Ministry then sent letters to the UN demanding to take action against the coalition, RIA Novosti recalls.
The brothers Sami and Larbi Naceri arrived in Magas, the mayor of the Ingush capital Beslan Tsechoev announced.
The audience knows the stars of French cinema, first of all, by the roles in the films Taxi and District 13.
The actors arrived in Ingushetia at the invitation of the Magas Mayor. Sami will act in a video about the bicycle taxi in the role of a taxi driver in the capital of Ingushetia.
It became known that the stars went sightseeing and expressed admiration for the innovative bus stops and heated benches, AiF Stavropol reports.
The second meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will take place in Vietnam's capital Hanoi on February 27-28, Trump wrote on his official Twitter account, TASS reports.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump said.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he added.
Photo: CTV News Three people died in an apartment fire in Longueuil, Que. Friday night.
Officials say three members of the same family died and 11 others were injured after a fire broke out in an apartment in Longueuil, Que.
The fire broke out in an apartment building with several dozen units early Saturday morning.
Longueil police say 14 people were taken to hospital, where a couple in their forties and a woman in her sixties died.
Const. Ghislain Vallieres says some of the others in hospital were injured jumping from their balconies to escape the flames.
Police say one tenant is still missing, but there's no indication that person was at home when the fire broke out.
Officials say strong winds in the area made it harder for firefighters to battle the blaze, but it was finally put out at 8:30 a.m. more than seven hours after the flames sprung up.
Vallieres says police officers were working their way through the rubble, but the process was slow-going because the building had been weakened in the fire.
The cause of the fire has not yet been released.
The presidents of Russia and Kyrgyzstan, Vladimir Putin and Sooronbay Jeenbekov, held an informal meeting in Sochi, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov said.
During the talks, the sides discussed issues of development of the bilateral relations and regional issues. "The heads of state discussed in detail the course of development of bilateral relations, exchanged views on a number of regional issues," the Kremlin spokesman said.
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A truck driver has been charged over the death of a Canberra cyclist after a crash on the NSW-ACT border on Saturday, police say. The cyclist, a 49-year-old New Zealand national who lived in Canberra, died at the scene after the accident on the Federal Highway at Sutton about 8.15am, Saturday. "A 49-year-old man rode his push bike along the breakdown lane in a southerly direction. At the same time a 38-year-old Sydney man drove a pantech truck in the same direction. Police allege the truck veered into the breakdown lane colliding with the cyclist, resulting in the cyclist sustaining critical injuries where he passed away at the scene," police said in a statement. "The driver of the truck, a 38-year-old man, wasnt injured but was taken to Queanbeyan Hospital for mandatory testing. "Following inquiries by the Lake Illawarra Crash Investigation Unit, the man was arrested and taken to Queanbeyan Police Station where he was charged with dangerous driving occasioning death, and negligent driving occasioning death." Several hours after the incident, a damaged bicycle was still visible on the side of the road, with a plain white truck parked further up while police attended the scene. Riding along the Federal Highway after the incident was Greg Little, who said he had ridden that stretch of road for five years and hadn't experienced any issues or seen any close calls with cyclists. "You get the odd moron that honks their horn," Mr Little said. "Most drivers are pretty good though, especially in Canberra with the new road rules." The highway was closed until about 2pm Saturday, creating long delays for traffic. The truck driver, from Glendenning, was given bail to appear at Queanbeyan Local Court on Monday, March 25.
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Police are appealing for help to find a missing man who was last seen leaving Canberra Hospital on Tuesday evening. Adam Cruickshank, 43, is described as being of Caucasian appearance and slim build, with brown hair and hazel eyes. Police said he was currently "considerably slimmer" than in the image accompanying this article. Police hold serious concerns for Mr Cruickshank's welfare because he has a medical condition and may be having trouble walking. Anyone who has seen Mr Cruickshank or who has any information about his whereabouts is urged to contact ACT Policing on 131 444 and quote reference number 6361877.
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Writing about what I had hoped my daughter had learned after 13 years of school last week prompted me to start thinking about what I had learned. What, after so many years, had I (and I consider myself an engaged parent) taken on board? So many of you are posting photographs of firsts: first day at preschool, of big school, of high school, of new schools. Theres not a manual for new-school parents. Theres not an induction day, or any kind of transition period. So here are some lessons I have learned. Theres no one quite as enthusiastic as a first-time kindergarten parent. Or maybe that was just me. You need help with readers? Count me in. You need help with sport lessons? Let me find my runners. Canteen? Ill even bake some allergy-free muffins to sell. Fete Day? Ive blocked out the whole day. Im a doer. Ill admit that. A hopeless volunteer whos been putting her hand up for way too long. But you have to remember youre in this school business for the long haul. Sure, schools need you less and less as the years go by, but there are always opportunities to help. You dont want to burn out too early. Pick one thing a year and volunteer for that. Find your niche. I think it pays to volunteer at your childrens school because it gives you an insight into whats going on in the classroom, or the playground, first-hand. See that pushy kid in the canteen line? Keep an eye on him in class. Heres the thing. If you feed your kid Vegemite and cheese sandwiches 2600 times (if youre going on four 10-week, five-day terms, times 13 years) no one is going to die. Chuck in a banana, a water bottle, and theyll be hungry enough to eat the nutritious meal youll be serving them for dinner. And bake. Its always nice to get a homemade treat. A little bit of mums love to be ingested every day. Ive upset the allergy people many times over the years. Be careful. But dont go nuts. I still remember bananas being banned one year; we even had to remove banana Paddlepops from the school canteen. This girl was not in my childs class; they werent friends. I continued to send in the occasional slice of (homemade) banana bread. No one died. If youre lucky youll make some lifelong friends. Most of them wont be, though. Youll meet plenty of people where the only thing youll have in common is that your kids are at the same school. But youll have to put up with them on the sidelines, at assemblies, at various school functions. You might even have 13 years with these people. Tread carefully. Youll meet some memorable people over the years. The woman who admits she doesnt own a book. The one who looks at your energetic toddler and says she has no idea how you handle him. The father who makes inappropriate comments about some story youve written about swimming naked at Kambah Pool. I told him to f*** off. And so too the bloke who tried to mansplain how to barbecue a sausage on a rugby afternoon. Maybe Im the parent that theyve met. Oh well. And while the parents are fighting theirs, remember the kids have it coming from all fronts. Youll know when you need to step in. But step back for a while. Let the kids sort it all out. Dont force them to be friends with anyone, dont fight their battles, dont help them with homework (too much), but have your kids back. Theres a line. And dont be afraid to have the teachers back too. Too many times we forget the important role they play. Support their efforts and theyll support your kid in return. I reached a point, somewhere in early high school I think, where I stopped caring. Well, not caring as much as hovering. For years I knew the due date of every assignment, made sure they were on track, provoked conversations that sparked interest - sometimes, Ill admit, helping when things were falling behind. After a decade or so in the classroom I remembered I wasnt actually in the classroom. It didnt hurt me one bit if someone failed to hand in an assignment. The kids need to learn they are responsible for their own actions and the consequences that may befall them. I knew one set of parents who, from the outset, had no idea what their kids were up to at school. They didnt care. Were not in school, they said. It horrified me. But I kind of get it now. Will anyone remember if you spent three days making a Bumblebee costume that actually transformed out of organic cardboard and edible non-allergenic paint for Book Week? No. They will not. Thats all you need to know.
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The NATO Agile Spirit drills to strengthen security and coordination between the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance with the participation of about three thousand soldiers will be held in Georgia.
The military drills will be held in Tbilisi from July 27th to August 9th, 2019.
The exact number of the military equipment units that will be involved in the drills is still unknown, Gazeta.ru reports.
NATO military exercises Agile Spirit held in Georgia annually, starting from 2011.
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ACT environment minister Mick Gentleman asked the federal government to intervene in NSW's decision to protect feral horses. Federal environment minister Melissa Price ignored the letter written to her in November in which Mr Gentleman asked "if there are any actions that [she] could take under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act". Mr Gentleman told Ms Price saying the horses would have a significant negative impact on the ACT. "The ACT government is extremely concerned that the legislation passed in New South Wales will not just lead to significant negative impacts on the ACT's ... ecosystems but will also result in significant additional costs to management," Mr Gentleman said. He requested a meeting with Ms Price in November but a spokesman for Mr Gentleman they never received a response. When contacted by The Canberra Times in January, a spokesman for Ms Price said the minister had received the letter, was in the process of responding and was quite happy to meet with him. Ms Price said she was waiting for NSW to complete its draft brumbies management plan but said NSW had provided assurances it would engage with Victoria and ACT to manage the impact of feral horses. "I welcome the ACT government's approach to managing feral horses and protecting the listed values of the Australian Alps National Parks ... including Namadgi National Park, " Ms Price said. Mr Gentleman also wrote to his NSW counterpart, NSW environment minister Gabrielle Upton, saying "the scientific evidence is clear, and cannot be contested, the feral horses are having a detrimental impact on the environment". The 6000-strong population of feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park were given protection by the NSW parliament last year, a decision contradicting its own scientific advise. Just recently, the Australian Academy of Science called on NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to visit the park. The academy said the impacts of brumbies in the park were mounting and the protections granted them contradicting the whole reason for Kosciuszko State Park in 1944. Canberra's park rangers are wary of the 1000-strong feral population established in Tantangera, NSW, just across the ACT border. They fear the brumbies will eventually move into the Namadgi National Park as early as 2025, destroying the delicate water catchment areas which provide the capital with 80 per cent of its drinking water. Since writing the letters, Mr Gentleman declared the wetlands endangered due to concerns over the feral horses. The wetlands are internationally recognised and protected, housing the critically endangered native corroboree frog while serving as a habitat for the migratory Latham's Snipe. "The current large feral horse population in New South Wales adjacent to Namadgi National Park in the ACT poses a significant threat," Mr Gentleman said. According to Mr Gentleman, 24 feral horses were removed from the park between 2007 and 2011, with the odd transient brumby wandering through since. The NSW government now sees feral horses as heritage animals and allows only non-lethal methods to control their numbers, including rehoming. Before the laws protecting brumbies were passed in NSW last year, a draft control plan for the NSW government suggested reducing Kosciuszko's 6000 feral horses down to only 600 using methods including aerial and ground shooting. The two other states overseeing the Australia mainland's only alpine environments, Victoria and the ACT, both recognise brumbies as pests and have strict control measures in place. Mr Gentleman also wrote to NSW deputy premier John Barilaro, who holds the Monaro state electorate across the border in Queanbeyan and spearheaded the controversial new laws. Mr Gentleman asked how the new non-lethal control measures in place would work in Kosciuszko's northern end, as well as the Bimberi Nature Reserve, which straddles the ACT's western border. Mr Barilaro said he would establish a community advisory panel and a marketing blitz to promote rehoming brumbies out of the park.
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Elizabeth Lee didnt realise how much she wanted a baby until she lost one. The Canberra Liberal MLA is 20-weeks pregnant with her first child. Until now shes been hesitant to share the news too widely as her first pregnancy ended in miscarriage and this one is deemed high risk. But being halfway, its getting a bit tricky to hide. Her first pregnancy, the one that ended in miscarriage in June last year, was a harrowing experience. Having never been pregnant before I dont even think it entered my radar, and then when it happened to me, I started talking to girlfriends and close friends and there was so many women who said theyd had one or two miscarriages, or however many it might be. I realised that it is a lot more common than anyone thinks it is, Ms Lee said. For me it was during the estimates period and I was on the estimates committee. She said it was surreal fronting up to work the very next day to question the minister. But Ive got a job to do, and thats what you have to do," she said. Ms Lee said she was lucky to have the support of her partner, Nathan, and her friends and colleagues during that time. Prior to that experience, children were never really on the table; but they were never off it, either. Its funny because I dont know if this is unique to migrant children or not, but when youre younger you have this view of that white-picket Aussie dream, and you just assume the natural order of things is going to be to go to school, go to university, get a good job, get married and have kids," she said. As I grew older I realised 'hold on, I can make a decision about this'. I saw myself pursuing more of a career-driven path in the beginning. Kids werent on the agenda, but I assume most women around their mid-to-late 30s start to consider their options. The 39-year-old said it was during months of discussion with partner Nathan about whether or not to have children that she accidentally fell pregnant for the first time. While that pregnancy ended abruptly, the longing continued. I didnt realise I wanted a baby until I lost one, if that makes sense. It sort of really honed it in. Coming in to the second pregnancy, the couple was nervous but excited. In November, less than a month after they found out she was expecting, Ms Lee was targeted by the teachers' union for speaking out against violence in schools. She received thousands of robocalls accusing her of using personal stories of violence in the classroom for political point scoring after she cited the experiences of educators in Canberra - including one of a pregnant teacher who was punched in the stomach repeatedly by students. It was just a lot of worry in the beginning and it also didnt help that the second half of last year was professionally probably the most stressful time that Ive experienced, so I was very conscious of not letting that impact the health of my unborn child, Ms Lee said. At 11 weeks, the couple found out theyre having a baby girl. Ms Lee said her daughters upbringing will be very different to what she experienced. The childhood I had was a really big mix, I grew up in a Korean monoculture and moved to Australia where back then at the school I went to there wasnt many Asian faces, so I think I was a little bit intriguing to the other children. My childs experience of course will be very, very different. She will be carrying with her some Korean heritage, as well as Australian heritage and, way back, some Scottish heritage from my partner. I really hope shell be able to embrace those cultures. She will have probably some of the most doting grandparents in my parents in the world, as its their first grandchild so theyre pretty stoked. Ms Lees two younger sisters and her parents live in Sydney but she said they visit all the time. She expects them to do so even more often when the baby is born. The support will prove helpful when she returns to work in the Legislative Assembly. The first challenge when the baby is born is that it will be June, smack bang in the middle of estimates. Ms Lee said shes been seeking advice from the mums and dads in her office - and while shes had to reassess her thoughts on coming back to work almost immediately after the birth, shes keen to return for the sitting weeks at the end of July or those in August. As soon as I can. It is going to be tough, Im not unrealistic, and there are a lot of variables as well, but I'm up for the challenge," she said. Shes very mindful that her position impacts her constituents in Kurrajong. Im very lucky that we have so many parents in the Legislative Assembly, on both sides. We've had a lot of pioneers in terms of being able to get some advice on how to manage parenthood, especially with babies and working life as an MLA." She said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was a role model for all women, particularly those in politics or those thinking about a career in politics. Its got to be a pretty crazy life, but thats pretty empowering I think for many women," she said. Its all about balance. I was very lucky that my mum stayed home to look after myself and my sisters full-time, but I am in a different situation. I have a responsibility and a duty to the people of Kurrajong. I would hope that my daughter will grow up to admire that, to see me as hopefully a good role model for her to pursue her dreams, no matter what they might be.
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By Mo Yelin / Feb 09, 2019 03:33 PM / Business & Tech
The government of Thailand has partnered with Huawei to launch a 5G mobile telecommunications test bed, defying the U.S. governments call not to use the Chinese telecom giants gear due to security concerns.
The fifth-generation (5G) test bed in Thailand, one of U.S.s allies in Asia, will be Huaweis first in Southeast Asia, Reuters reported on Friday. It will be located in Chonburi, which housed the Thai military governments $45 billion economic project the Eastern Economic Corridor.
The U.S. government has for years urged its allies not to use Huawei technologies out of concern that Beijing could use the companys equipment for espionage. Huawei has denied such allegations. The company, however, has recently faced increased international scrutiny, with setbacks to its 5G technology in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, and the U.K.
For Thailand, security concerns over Huaweis gear is secondary to its competitive pricing versus that of U.S. firms, the Reuters report said, citing an official from the Information Technology Industry Club of the Federation of Thai Industries.
Related: China Defends Huawei After Latest Attack from Norway
The CBI began questioning the Kolkata Police chief on Saturday at highly secured agency's office here in connection with chit fund scam cases, officials said.
Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, his counsel Biswajit Deb and senior IPS officers Javed Shamim and Murlidhar Sharma arrived at the probe agency's office at 11 am, they said.
Kumar's counsel and the two IPS officers were asked to leave the CBI office within 30 minutes, they said.
The development comes after a showdown between the central agency and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on February 1 after a team of CBI officials, en route to take Kumar in custody, was apprehended by Kolkata police. Following the tussle with Kolkata police, and much political brouhaha, the CBI had approached the apex court with a contempt plea. In its judgement on Tuesday, the Supreme Court had asked Kolkata's Commissioner of Police to cooperate in the investigation and appear before the CBI at its Shillong offices.
Kumar is being interrogated at the highly secured CBI office at Oakland area in the Meghalaya capital where three senior CBI sleuths from Delhi reached on Friday.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday had directed the Kolkata Police chief to appear before the CBI and "faithfully" cooperate in the investigation of cases arising out of the Saradha chit fund scam, while making it clear that he will not be arrested.
The CBI had alleged in the Supreme Court that Kumar, who was leading the SIT probe into Saradha chit fund scam, tampered with the electronic evidence and handed over documents to the agency, some of which were "doctored".
The apex court directed him to appear before the investigating agency at a neutral place in Shillong "to avoid all unnecessary controversy".
CBI officials had gone to Kumar's residence in Kolkata to question him on January 3 but their attempt was thwarted by the police, following which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee staged a three-day dharna.
Also read: Saradha chit fund scam: CBI summons Kolkata top cop Rajeev Kumar to Shillong
(With inputs from PTI)
Global ratings agency Moody's has upgraded Russia's rating to Baa3 with a stable outlook.
Moody's said in a report that Russia's rating was upgraded from Ba1 to Baa3, while the outlook was changed from positive to stable.
"The upgrade of Russia's ratings reflects the positive impact of policies enacted in recent years to strengthen Russia's already robust public finance and external metrics and reduce the country's vulnerability to external shocks including fresh sanctions. The stable outlook reflects evenly balanced upside and downside credit risks," the agency said, TASS reports.
By upgrading Russia's rating, global ratings agency Moody's has acknowledged apparent successes of Russia's economic policy, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters on Saturday.
"I am glad that obvious successes of Russia's economic policy were acknowledged by Moody's. Now all three global ratings agencies will recommend their clients to invest in our country. This is a fair decision, even though somewhat late. It was based on the high quality of Russian authorities' macroeconomic, fiscal, monetary policy," Siluanov said.
"The Russian government will in turn create new prerequisites for further improving the country's rating," TASS quoted Siluanov as saying.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered a money laundering case against Pakistan-based outfit Falah-e-Insaniyat (FIF), a front for banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the agency said on Saturday.
It said a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) has been filed by the central probe agency for the outfit's "involvement in money laundering through various hawala channels."
The ED said it took cognisance of a National Investigation Agency (NIA) FIR, filed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) last year in September, to file its own case against the Falah-e-Insaniyat.
The NIA has carried out searches in this case in the past and has seized over four dozen SIM cards, phones and Rs 1.56 crore (suspected) cash and arrested four people till now in the case.
The ED said one of the arrested accused in the case, Delhi-based Mohammed Salman, was in "regular touch with a Dubai-based Pakistan national, who in turn was connected with the deputy chief of FIF."
Salman is alleged to have received funds from FIF operators through hawala and he and other persons were reported to have received money illegally from various persons of Pakistan and UAE among others.
"These funds were utilised to carry out terrorist activities and create unrest in India," the ED said in a statement.
The agency said its probe will "establish money trail and identify proceeds of crime that are suspected to be generated out of the criminal activities."
Also read:Robert Vadra appears before ED for third time in money laundering case probe.
Also read:Karti Chidambaram appears before ED in money laundering probeKarti Chidambaram appears before ED in money laundering probe
Chief Minister of Karnataka HD Kumaraswamy, who also hold the finance portfolio, presented the maiden budget of the JDS-Congress government since its formation in 2018. On expected lines, the state budget envisaged comprehensive sops and new programmes in the agriculture and irrigation sector. On the back of the prevailing drought situation in the state, the government expects the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) to grow a tad bit slower than last year. GSDP is expected to grow at 9.6 per cent this fiscal against 10.4 per cent in 2017-18. However, the industrial sector is expected to grow to 7.4 per cent from 4.7 per cent last year. Services sector is expected to remain flat at 12.3 per cent, the same as last fiscal.
Boosting agriculture
To tackle the twin problem of productivity and pricing, the state government in its budget announced a slew of measures. Earlier in the day, taking on Prime Minister Modi, Kumaraswamy urged the opposition parties to unite in calling out 'lies' with respect to the remarks made by prime minister Narendra Modi on farm loan waiver scheme in Karnataka. Laying out the complete details of farm loan waiver in the budget, the government said that as announced in July 2018 budget, out of the provisioning of Rs 6,500 crore made in 2018-19 for commercial banks, so far only Rs 2,850 crore has been released to 6 lakh beneficiaries . For the cooperative banks, the entire budget provision of Rs 2,600 crore, meant for crop loan waiver scheme, has already been released reaching 5.97 lakh farmers. Under the current budget, a provisioning of Rs 6,500 crore for commercial bank crop loans and Rs 6,150 crore for co-operative bank crop loans has been made to meet the entire loan waiver target. The government also expects the co-operative loan waiver process to be completed by June 2019 and commercial bank loan waiver by fiscal year 2019-20. Chief minister also stated that a representation had already been made to the Central government to provide Rs 2,434 crore package for Kharif crop, but only Rs 950 crore has been sanctioned. The government has again sought Rs 2,065 crore for the Rabi crop in the wake of the drought in several districts of the states.
Other sops to the agriculture sector include:
Rs 250 crore subsidy for Krushi Bhagya Scheme for construction of farm ponds to provide conserved water to dry land farmers.
Rs 40 crore allocated to continue Zero budget farming.
Rs 35 crore for encouraging organic farming.
Rs 145 crore for Israel model of micro irrigation system to grow crops profitably by utilizing less water.
New "Raitha Siri" scheme encourage growing minor millets with assistance of Rs 10,000 per hectare via DBT
Assistance of Rs 7,500 per hectare to motivate farmers to cultivate paddy under the scheme called "Karavali package" with Rs 5 crore grant.
Special package of Rs 150 crore to improve the economic condition of grapes and pomegranate growers.
Also read:CM Kumaraswamy releases audio clips, claiming BJP trying to topple Karnataka govt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors are reviewing whether National Enquirer parent company American Media Inc violated an earlier agreement granting it legal immunity in exchange for cooperation given the tabloid's handling of a story about Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. Citing two people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg said prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan had been given information about the company's exchanges regarding Bezos. Bezos, in a blog post on Thursday, accused the publication of extortion over his ...
By Drazen JorgicISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan will meet International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde in Dubai on Sunday for talks on issues which have held up bailout negotiations, a Pakistani minister said on Saturday.Pakistan is seeking its 13th bailout since the late 1980s to deal with a current account deficit that threatens to trigger a balance of payments crisis, but talks have been delayed by difficulties in reconciling IMF reform demands with Islamabad's fears the push is too drastic and could hurt economic growth.Information Minister Fawad ...
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch government said on Saturday it was in talks with 250 companies about moving operations to the Netherlands from Britain ahead of Britain's exit from the European Union, scheduled for March 29.The Economic Affairs Ministry said in a report that a recruitment programme had brought 42 companies or branch offices and 1,923 jobs from Britain to the Netherlands in 2018. The report named Japanese investment bank Norinchukin, media company TVT Media, financial services providers MarketAxess and Azimo, and maritime insurer UK P&I Club among movers."In 2019, several ...
Twelve tanneries have been allotted land by the West Bengal government to shift from Kanpur, following restrictions imposed on them by the Uttar Pradesh government ahead of the Kumbh Mela, business representatives said.
The applicants were told by West Bengal authorities two weeks ago to collect their allotment letters on Friday, Javed Iqbal, Regional Chairman, Council for Leather Export (Central Region) said Saturday.
UP Leather Industries Association vice-president Iftikharul Ameen said he got his own letter during the Bengal Global Business Summit, which ended Friday.
This is the first phase of approval of applications by the West Bengal government and more are expected to get their letters soon, Iqbal said.
About 80 industrialists had applied for land in the Bantala leather industry cluster near Kolkata.
According to Iqbal, the Kanpur industrialists will together invest about 1,000 crore there.
There are 400 tanneries in the leather industry hub in Kanpur and 40 in neighbouring Unnao district.
The BJP government had issued a directive to shut these tanneries from December 15 last year for three months to stop waste disposal in the Ganga, claiming this was necessary to keep the river clean during the Kumbh now on in Allahabad.
Reacting to the development, UP Industries Minister Satish Mahana said only Kanpur can provide the excellent environment for the industry. "In Kolkata, there is no favourable atmosphere for the tannery industry.
West Bengal has the worst political system in the whole country, he charged, suggesting that the ruling Trinamool Congress workers are goons,
But Iqbal said Kolkata is a better bet than Kanpur-Unnao.
What will the industrialists produce and what will they sell as the tanneries here have been asked to remain closed till March 15?" he asked.
UP Leather Industries Association (UPLIA) president Taj Alam said since the change of government in the state, business has been hit hard.
He claimed the tanneries being falsely accused of polluting the Ganga.
Foreign businesses have also started looking at nations like Pakistan, Bangladesh and China for leather, Alam claimed.
According to Igbal, each applicant has been allotted a plot measuring 3,000 square metre in Bantala. The allotment letters were issued by that state's Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises and Textiles Department
The land has been provided at a low price of Rs 2,700 per square metre, he said.
UPLIAs vice-president Iftikharul Ameen said he had applied for 5,000 sqm of land and was allotted a 3,000 sqm plot during the business summit.
The rate of Rs 2,700 per square metre includes the cost of a common effluent treatment plant to be build soon, he said.
We chose to shift our tanneries to Kolkata as there was a threat of complete closure of tanneries here, Taj Alam said.
In addition, he said, Kolkata is a metropolitan city with an international airport. Skilled and unskilled workers are easily available, he added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Regina Cassandra, who played the love interest of Sonam Kapoor in "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga" was earlier in two minds for picking up this offer as it was not a quintessential film.
The film chronicles the love story of Sweety (Sonam) and Kuhu (Regina) as they struggle to find acceptance in family and society.
"I had liked the story when I heard it. The only reason why I had to think about it for a long time is because it was my first Hindi film and I was looking at doing something in Bollywood for a little while.
"The concern was that it is not your quintessential Bollywood debut. 99 per cent people have made their debut with a hero-heroine kind of a film so that was the only thing. We did go little back-and-forth," Regina told PTI.
The actor said she did not have any fear of getting tyepcast.
"I look forward to do author backed roles."
Regina, who has been acting in south films, was to make her debut initially with the sequel to Amitabh Bachchan starrer "Aankhen". The actor said she was not disturbed when the film did not go on floors as per the schedule.
"I have been doing films since 14 so I have grown up learning and figuring out things. At the age of 28, it is not too much of a surprise or shock. It is part and parcel of your work life. You learn how to say ok and let's move on to the next thing," she added.
She said there are so many big projects that get shelved with big stars even in south.
Regina has acted mainly in Tamil and Telugu movies and she is open to the idea of acting in different language films.
Talking about what brings her to Bollywood she said, "I would like to act in more languages. Hindi has a bigger platform in terms of films being showcased. There are lot of nice filmmakers and stories. The people here like to reinvent themselves. I do believe with time one has to keep changing.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A clash between two groups of prisoners sparked a riot in Faizabad divisonal jail where at least eight inmates were held hostage and badly assaulted during the standoff that lasted six hours on Saturday, according to police sources.
The violent inmates threatened to blow up cooking gas cylinders which they took from the jail kitchen and pelted stones on security personnel as reinforcements were rushed to restore order.
Faizabad District Magistrate Anil Kumar Pathak said that a magisterial enquiry has been ordered into the incident.
The trouble started at around 9 am when a jail functionary complained to the Superintendent about some under-trial prisoners talking on mobile phone, police said.
Miffed with his action, a group of prisoners thrashed him. When some other prisoners objected to it , the group attacked them too and held them hostage.
The rioters also broke CCTV cameras installed in jail as chaos reigned.
Additional forces were called, which used drone cameras to take stock of the situation, they said.
After more than six hours, the security forces were able to free the eight badly injured hostages who were shifted to Faizabad district hospital, they said.
According to sources, the jail has a capacity of 4,000 inmates but over 8,000 prisoners are lodged there.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Pravin Togadia's Antar-rashtriya Hindu Parishad (AHP) came face to face Saturday over the ownership of a building being used by the AHP as its office at Paldi locality here in Gujarat.
Deployment of a large number of police personnel at the spot prevented any untoward incident.
While the VHP claims that the AHP has taken possession of Dr Vanikar Smarak Bhavan without a valid permission from the owner trust, the AHP said VHP members tried to evict them from the building "despite they having permission of a court to use it as their office".
The incident occurred on a day Togadia, who had served as VHP's international working president before quitting it last April, announced the launch of his new political party, Hindustan Nirmal Dal (HND), in New Delhi.
Gujarat unit VHP Secretary Ashok Rawal claimed the Hindutva organisation is the rightful owner of the building, a claim contested by Togadia who said the AHP is the legal owner.
Togadia alleged he was being targetted by the ruling dispensation, as he has launched a new political party.
Rawal said, "First of all, this is not the office of the AHP. The AHP made this its office without taking the permission of the trust (which owns the building) and used it for a political purpose. We opposed this and registered a complaint with charity commissioner".
He said though no political activity is allowed by the trust, the AHP has planned to use the building to form a political party, which is wrong.
"Of the total 15 members of the trust, 10 are with the VHP," he told reporters.
However, Togadia alleged the VHP's action was aimed at creating hurdles in the announcement of his new political venture, and to defame him.
He alleged that police have vandalised his office.
"When I was announcing a new political party in Delhi (Saturday), more than 200 police personnel took control of Vanikar Bhavan in order to hinder the announcement, and defame me. They entered the room that I used as my office, broke the lock and vandalised the place. The possession of the building is with us by court's order," he said.
Togadia demanded that police vacate the place immediately.
"Police have no right to interfere, as we have a court order regarding its possession," he said.
When contacted, Deputy Commissioner of Police R J Pargi said the police personnel were deployed as a precautionary measure, after members of the two outfits came face to face at the site of the said building.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian forces said Saturday they have launched a final push to defeat the Islamic State group in the last tiny pocket the extremists hold in eastern Syria.
Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman Mustafa Bali tweeted that the offensive began Saturday after more than 20,000 civilians were evacuated from the IS-held area in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour. An SDF statement said the offensive was focused on the village of Baghouz.
The SDF, backed by US air power, has driven IS from large swaths of territory it once controlled in northern and eastern Syria, confining the extremists to a small pocket of land near the border with Iraq.
Scores of IS fighters are now besieged in a small area consisting of two villages, or less than once percent of the self-styled caliphate that once sprawled across large parts of Syria and Iraq. In recent weeks, thousands of civilians, including families of IS fighters, left the area controlled by the extremists.
"The decisive battle began tonight to finish what remains of Daesh terrorists," Bali said, using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS.
US President Donald Trump predicted Wednesday that IS will have lost all of its territory by next week.
"It should be formally announced sometime, probably next week, that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate," Trump told representatives of a 79-member, US-led coalition fighting IS.
US officials have said in recent weeks that IS has lost 99.5 per cent of its territory and is holding on to fewer than 5 square kilometers in Syria, or less than 2 square miles, in the villages of the Middle Euphrates River Valley, where the bulk of the fighters are concentrated.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that since the SDF began its offensive against IS in the area on Sept. 10, some 1,279 IS gunmen and 678 SDF fighters have been killed. It said 401 civilians, including 144 children and teenagers, have been killed since then.
Earlier Saturday, IS militants attacked SDF fighters near an oil field in the country's east, triggering airstrikes by the US-led coalition.
The Observatory said 12 IS gunmen attacked the SDF and clashed with them for several hours until most of the attackers were killed early Saturday. It said 10 attackers were killed, while two managed to flee.
Other activist collectives, including the Step agency, reported the attack, saying some of the attackers used motorcycles rigged with explosives.
The fighting was concentrated near al-Omar field, Syria's largest.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ethnic identity, being an integral part of the social identity of an individual, plays an integral role in formation of the migrants national enclaves in their host countries, which, in turn, affect the internal political processes in the receiving states, the analyst of news agency Vestnik Kavkaza, Ekaterina Vinnik told in the National Question program on Vesti.FM
National Question is a weekly program on Vesti.FM, during which various aspects of national relations, primarily in Russia, are discussed.
The expert noted that today the most striking example of such influence is the United States, where the number of immigrated Mexicans and Latin Americans exceeds the total number of migrants from all European countries. "According to the government estimations, in two generations 25% of the country's population will be of Latin American origin. In addition, Latin American culture, already in the early 90s of the 20th century, became an integral part of the US populations life. Clothing, music, architecture, literature, cuisine - literally every sphere of life of Americans were influenced by Mexicans and Latinos. That is, this group of migrants not only managed to preserve their ethnicity but also instilled their traditions and culture in the population of the country where they found shelter," she noted.
"If we talk about Europe, an obvious example is Germany, where the vast Turkish community influences not only culture but also the country's policy. Already in the 1970s, Turks began to actively participate in the political life of the country, creating associations and federations based on the Turkish political tradition. And today in Germany, among Turkish migrants, support for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party is even higher than in Turkey itself, the analyst Vestink Kavkaza said.
Speaking of Russia, Ekaterina Vinnik noted that the country's ethnic diversity is largely due to a significant number of migrants from the South Caucasus and Central Asia, which is the basis of multiculturalism. "This, in turn, strengthens interethnic and interfaith relations in the Russian Federation. In this case, the ethnic identity of migrants from other countries living in Russia makes it possible to form a single Eurasian space as opposed to atlantism and Europeanism in the world politics, she said.
Thus, it is obvious that the ethnicity of migrants not only does not weaken with moving to another country but has a significant impact on the internal and foreign political processes of the receiving state, Ekaterina Vinnik concluded.
The UK government has begun hiring for jobs in a new crisis command and control centre to be set up to tackle with a chaotic no-deal Brexit next month, a media report said Saturday.
Briefing notes, seen by 'The Guardian', have been issued by the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to recruitment agencies to seek potential recruits for the so-called EU Exit Emergencies Centre (EUXE).
"The EUXE centre is designed to be a temporary measure and the authority expects its lifetime to last about six months, with a potential for further extensions in three-month periods, should an ongoing need arise, potentially up to two years," the job description reportedly reads.
Applicants are expected to be recruited on a six-month contract with an option for three-month extensions up to two years.
Their qualifications must include an "unflappable" approach while briefing ministers and the UK Cabinet Office on any unfolding emergencies in a no-deal scenario.
They could earn between 300 and 400 pounds a day and must be prepared to start by the end of this month, as the March 29 Brexit deadline nears.
According to the report, DEFRA is recruiting for at least three different roles: briefing emergency centre officers, liaison emergency centre officers and situation emergency centre officers.
The emergency control centre will have a team of officers producing briefing notes for ministers "at pace" and checking the "battle rhythm" for emerging urgent policy changes.
The department will also have to deal with water quality issues that may emerge if there is a shortage of purification chemicals and will have to liaise with local resilience groups on any civil reaction to shortages in the shops as deliveries are adversely hit across borders.
The recruits for EUXE must be able to "see the emergency trends with little or no information and act appropriately at pace".
They must also be "a horizon scanner someone who is looking up and out into the working environment to spot early indications of approaching issues or emergencies".
"As you'd expect, DEFRA and departments across government continue to work hard preparing for the UK's exit from the EU," a DEFRA spokesperson said, without confirming or denying reports of the recruitment drive for such an emergency centre.
"It's the job of a responsible government to ensure we're prepared for all scenarios, and we continue to recruit and prioritise our resources accordingly," the spokesperson said.
Preparations for a no-deal Brexit, without an agreed withdrawal agreement with the European Union (EU), have intensified since British Prime Minister Theresa May lost a historic House of Commons vote over her plan last month.
This week she has been travelling between Brussels and Ireland in an attempt to seek changes to the controversial "backstop", an insurance policy to ensure an open border between the UK and EU member-country Ireland post-Brexit.
While the EU member countries have insisted there can be no change to the legally binding clause in the withdrawal agreement, pro-Brexit MPs in Britain remain dead-set against it on the grounds that it could be used to keep the UK tied to EU rules even after it has formally left the 28-member economic bloc.
Britain's Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay is set to hold a fresh round of talks with the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Strasbourg on Monday, as the Brexit negotiating teams from both sides thrash out proposed changes to the deal.
Prime Minister May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker are then set for a follow-up meeting before the end of February to review progress on a withdrawal agreement more acceptable to all sides.
The British Prime Minister is then expected to put the deal to another vote in the Commons towards the end of February, with just a month before the March 29 deadline.
She will hope that there are substantial changes or assurances around the "backstop" clause in order for her to get the backing of MPs in the UK Parliament and avert the looming crisis of a no-deal Brexit, which would throw all border arrangements and trade agreements into chaos.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two men were arrested after over 7,000 bottles of smuggled liquor were seized from a truck in the Masuri area along Eastern Peripheral Expressway here, police said Saturday.
Jitendra and Raju, both natives of Dhaulpur district of Rajasthan, told the police that the consignment of 655 cartons containing 7,860 bottles, procured from Karnal in Haryana , was to be delivered in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, DIG Upendra Agarwal said.
At least 61 people died due to the consumption of spurious liquor in two adjoining districts in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. UP chief secretary Saturday directed the excise and police departments to conduct raids to check the manufacturing of hooch and stop smuggling of liquor in the state.
Agarwal said raw material used for making hooch was destroyed following raids by the police and excise teams in the Loni area here Saturday.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
All roads led to Sangam city where devotees gathered ahead the third and the final shahi snan on Basant Panchami, falling Sunday, during which more than two crore people are expected to take a holy dip at the Kumbh Mela.
The festival of Basant Panchami heralds the arrival of spring and is dedicated to Goddess Saraswati.
Allahabad Mayor Abhilasha Gupta Nandi told PTI, "Basant Panchami is the third and last shaahi snaan of the Kumbh. By taking three dips on this day, a devotee gets the blessings of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers. Hence, it holds tremendous significance for people."
Kumbh Mela Adhikari Vijay Kiran Anand told PTI Saturday that more than two crore people from different walks of life are likely to arrive here to take a dip on the occasion of Basant Panchami.
Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP) president Narendra Giri said there were three shahi snan or royal baths and three 'parv snaans' during the Kumbh Mela.
The Mela commenced on January 15 on Makar Sankranti, the first bathing day, and the Mahashivratri on March 4 will mark its last bathing day.
"Shahi snan is the central highlight of the Kumbh Mela and the most important part of the celebration. It is only after the completion of 'shahi snan' that people are allowed to take the holy dip, he said.
Prior to Basant Panchami, shaahi snaans were held on Makar Sankranti on January 15 and Mauni Amawasya on February 4.
Lucknow-based astrologer, Trilokinath Singh highlighted the significance of the festival.
"It marks the onset of spring (Basant), and also marks the start of preparation for Holi, the festival of colours, which occurs around 40 days later," he said.
Ashutosh Varshney of Ram Sewa Trust, who set up his camp in Sector 6 in the Mela, said, "It is said that by making a donation, of one's choice, to river Ganga on Basant Panchami, a person stands to gain knowledge."
Dhrubo Bhattacharya, a priest, said that many families, especially Bengalis, mark this day by sitting with their babies and young children, encouraging them to write their first words with their fingers, while some others study or create music together.
"In temples and educational institutions, statues of Saraswati are dressed in yellow and worshipped," he said, adding poetic and musical gatherings are also held in some communities for Goddess Saraswati.
Security personnel have been deployed at different crossings and parts of the city for Kumbh Mela. The Uttar Pradesh police too has geared up for a seamless and incident-free Kumbh, spread over 3,200 hectare land in the Sangam City.
Security arrangements would be three-tier -- in the Kumbh mela region, in Allahabad and in the adjacent districts.
"The whole region has been demarcated into nine zones and 20 sectors with the deployment of over 20,000 police personnel, 6,000 homeguards, 40 police stations, 58 outposts, 40 fire stations, 80 companies of central force and 20 companies of PAC," UP's Director General of Police (DGP) OP Singh had earlier told PTI.
Besides, there would be three police lines, one traffic police line, three women police stations and 317 police response vehicles to tackle an emergency situation with a response time of less than 10 minutes, he said, adding that mounted police would also be there.
With a view to counter any terrorist activity, Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) commandoes, anti-sabotage commandoes with snipers, bomb disposal units, sniffer dog squads and intelligence units have also been pressed into service, Singh said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The outside broadcasting (OB) van of Marathi channel TV9 was Saturday damaged by unidentified persons in Pune, police said.
The van was pelted with stones in the evening when it was parked near the Patrakar Sangh office in the city's Navi Peth area, a Faraskhana police station official said.
"The windscreen and side windows of the vehicle was damaged. It happened around 7:30pm," said a staff from the TV channel.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The death toll from the collapse of an apartment building in Istanbul rose to 17 as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that authorities have "lessons to learn" from the incident.
The eight-storey block in the Kartal district on the Asian side of the city collapsed on Wednesday but the cause is not yet clear.
Erdogan Saturday visited the site and said the death toll had risen to 17 with 14 injured. The toll is up from a figure of 15 on Friday with 13 injured.
"We have a great number of lessons to learn from this," the president told reporters. "We will take the necessary measures".
Dozens of rescuers worked at the site, as a crane lifted huge blocks of concrete to clear the rubble to search for the remaining victims.
The president also went to the hospital to talk to the survivors, and then attended the funeral of the nine members of one family who lost their lives in the disaster.
Turkish authorities said 43 people were registered as living in the building. Turkish media said three of the eight floors had been illegally built -- a common practice in the metropolis of some 15 million people.
The collapse fanned criticism of a government amnesty granted last year to people accused of illegal building -- a measure announced ahead of municipal elections this March.
Engineers and architects regularly sound the alarm against illegal additional storeys to buildings which they say weaken the constructions' structure, and put them at greater risk in the event of an earthquake.
A four-storey structure in Istanbul crumbled last year following violent thunderstorms. In January 2017, two people died when another building collapsed in a working class part of the city.
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US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for a second much-anticipated summit in Hanoi, as preparations kick into high gear for the peace talks.
Trump announced the exact location on Twitter -- only the country, Vietnam, was previously known -- for the follow-on to the leaders' summit in Singapore last year as he hailed "very productive" preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un," Trump said.
"It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" The US State Department said the special US envoy for North Korea will meet again with Pyongyang officials ahead of the Trump-Kim talks -- hours after he returned to Seoul from talks in the North on the summit's agenda.
In a statement, the State Department said talks during Stephen Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula." Biegun landed at Osan US Air Base late Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Noh Kyu-duk told AFP.
The State Department confirmed Biegun agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the leaders' talks.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with the top brass of the Korean People's Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernize the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
Biegun is expected to share details of his Pyongyang meetings with his South Korean counterpart Lee Do-hoon and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on Saturday.
Attention will focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward denuclearization.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war." The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South.
The US envoy was also likely to have discussed with his counterpart protocol and security matters for the upcoming Trump-Kim summit.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula." But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV.
Trinamool Congress MLA Satyajit Biswas was shot dead by some unidentified assailants inside a Saraswati puja marquee on Saturday evening in Nadia district, police said.
The ruling TMC alleged that it was a planned attack by the BJP, while the saffron party claimed that it was the result of the ruling party's infighting.
The incident occurred around 8 pm when 41-year-old Biswas, representing Krishnaganj constituency in the assembly, along with his party workers, were at the Saraswati puja marquee at Phoolbari in the Hanskhali police station area in the district bordering Bangladesh.
The TMC leader was shot from point blank range when he was coming down from the dais, the police said.
The MLA was immediately taken to a local hospital where doctors announced him "brought dead".
The police were suspecting that two assailants were present at the spot and one of them fired at him.
A firearm suspected to have been used in the crime was found in a nearby area.
A high-level inquiry has been ordered into the killing, the police said.
TMC Secretary General Partha Chatterjee said the party was shocked at the killing of the "popular youth leader".
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee directed the party leaders to stand beside the family of the victim, he said.
Claiming that the attack was a conspiracy by the BJP, Chatterjee said those involved in it would be punished after a full-fledged inquiry.
He said the saffron party was trying to create disturbances ahead of the Lok Sabha polls and resorted to politics of murder by singling out leaders having mass bases.
"It was a pre-planned murder by the BJP. They have hired goons to carry out the murder," the party's in-charge of Nadia district Anubrata Mondal alleged.
BJP state president Dilip Ghosh denied the charges and claimed that the killing might be the result of infighting in the TMC.
"The allegations are baseless. The BJP is not at all involved in the case. Those who are blaming us are actually trying to hide their own sins," Ghosh said.
Senior BJP leader Mukul Roy also termed the allegations as baseless.
Reacting to the killing, state Congress president Somen Mitra said it showed that "complete lawlessness and chaos" prevailed in the state.
"The chief minister claims that law and order is good in West Bengal, but this incident shows the true condition...It's complete lawlessness and chaos that are prevailing in Bengal. We demand the CM give an explanation on how could a sitting MLA be murdered," Mitra, who is in Delhi for a party meeting, said.
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Trinamool Congress MLA Satyajit Biswas was shot dead by some unidentified assailants on Saturday evening in Nadia district, police said.
The incident occurred when Biswas representing Krishnagar constituency was present at Saraswati puja at Phoolbari under Hanskhali police station area.
He was immediately taken to a local hospital where doctors announced him "brought dead".
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: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami Saturday announced a solatium of Rs 5 lakh to the kin of a priest who recently died after falling off an elevated platform at the Lord Hanuman shrine in Namakkal.
Conveying his condolences to the family of the priest, Palaniswami said he has ordered the solatium considering the deceased person's family circumstances.
The solatium would be paid from the 'Thirukoil Nidhi,' (temple fund), he said in an official release here.
On January 27, Venkatesh accidentally fell off the platform in front of the 18-foot-high main deity Lord Hanuman and sustained severe head injuries.
He was rushed to a local hospital and then to another in Salem where he succumbed to injuries.
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: Trade bodies - Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)- have termed the Tamil Nadu budget presented by deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam Friday a 'comprehensive and balanced budget benefiting all stakeholders.'
The budget 2019 is a 'pragmatic' and an 'inclusive' one aimed at achieving 8 per cent economic growth, chairman of CII southern region R Dinesh said in a press release here.
The CII-Tamil Nadu congratulates the Deputy Chief Minister for presenting such a budget, the release said.
The allocation of Rs 28,757 crore for education, Rs 18,274 crore for rural development and Rs 10,550 crore for agriculture was in the right direction as it would supplement the growth of the economy and job creation, the release quoted Dinesh as saying.
Chairman of CII-Tamil Nadu state council M Ponnuswami said in the release that the proposal on the Centre of Excellence would promote skill development and create more employment opportunities.
Chairman of FICCI-Tamil Nadu Kavitha Dutt, in a separate press release, said the proposal of the government to introduce electric buses as a 'futuristic move.'
"Even though there were great expectations that new schemes may be announced keeping an eye on the general elections, the Deputy Chief Minister has submitted a balanced budget," she said in the release.
She too welcomed the proposal to set up a centre of excellence that would harness artificial intelligence, big data and machine-learning.
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Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Saturday said the death toll in the residential building collapse in the Turkish city of Istanbul had risen to 18, Ahval reports with a reference to the pro-government daily Sabah.
An eight-storey apartment building collapsed in Istanbul's Kartal district on Wednesday, killing several people and leaving others injured or trapped. Rescue teams continue clearing the rubble.
The cause of the disaster is not yet known, however, officials have said three stories of the building were constructed illegally. Turkish prosecutors have opened an investigation into the incident. An illegal buildup of the top three floors of the building is considered to be a possible reason behind the collapse.
Turkish authorities have imposed a restriction on reporting the incident which took place in the citys Kartal district, where rescuers continue to work around a mound of debris.
Thai Princess Ubolratana's unprecedented attempt to become the country's next prime minister was abruptly nixed Saturday after her party agreed to comply with a command from the king opposing the plan.
The party's announcement effectively blocking Ubolratana's candidacy came after an extraordinary rebuke by her brother King Maha Vajiralongkorn, and removes a hurdle for the ruling junta to hold onto power after the March 24 vote -- the first since a 2014 coup.
The Thai Raksa Chart party, affiliated with the powerful Shinawatra political clan, had announced the princess as their candidate Friday morning.
The move rattled the status quo and threatened the ambitions of the generals who have controlled Thailand since they toppled the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra almost five years ago.
But the Thai king torpedoed his sister's bid in a sharply worded statement the same day that said bringing senior royal family members into politics was against tradition and "highly inappropriate".
Thai Raksa Chart responded swiftly, cancelling a campaign event Saturday and issuing a statement saying it "complies with the royal command".
Thailand has some of the most severe lese majeste laws in the world and the king's word is seldom challenged.
Royalist Thais and celebrities praised the intervention on social media after the order, writing "long live the king".
Others expressed unhappiness with groups such as Thai Raksa Chart linked to Yingluck and her brother Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.
An activist who called himself Champ 1984 said he was "disappointed" with the idea of a pro-democracy party enlisting a royal family member and would now vote for a different party.
Analysts say the events of the past day will help the military to consolidate power and tilt the odds in favour of junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha.
Prayut is standing as premier for the Phalang Pracharat party, a group aligned with the regime.
The military has "gained the upper hand", said professor Anusorn Unno from Thammasat University, adding that it is poised to perform well in the vote.
Even before Thai Raksa Chart's reversal, many warned the palace statement had ended the princess' chances.
"The palace disapproval invalidates her candidacy," said Puangthong Pawakapan, professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University.
An Election Commission official said it is reviewing all candidate applications and will finish the process this week, though few expect it to divert from the royal order.
Historian Chris Baker said that while he could not predict what would happen next, the language in the palace statement was strong and "very firm".
Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has not had a royal run for frontline office since 1932.
The 67-year-old princess has yet to address the rebuke head on.
She thanked supporters Saturday on her widely followed Instagram account, saying vaguely that she wanted Thailand to "move forward".
The king did not criticise the princess directly and seemed to focus blame on political party members who brought her on board.
Both Yingluck and Thaksin live in self-exile to avoid charges which they say are politically motivated.
Observers had said Thaksin and the party would not have teamed up with the princess without royal approval.
But the bold play appears to have backfired dramatically on Thaksin.
"After last night the king's intervention had an effect of discrediting Thaksin," Anusorn said.
Ubolratana is the first-born of former king Bhumibol Adulyadej.
She gave up her royal titles when she married an American in 1972, but they divorced and she moved back to Thailand.
Ubolratana is an unusually public figure for a royal, having starred in movies and maintaining an active social media footprint.
While she said she was exercising her rights as a commoner to stand for prime minister, the statement from the palace said she is she is "still a member of the House of Chakri," referring to the name of the dynasty.
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A Thai political party will obey a command from the king blocking the candidacy of Princess Ubolratana for prime minister, it said in a statement Saturday, in a dramatic reversal only a day after putting her forward for the position.
"Thai Raksa Chart party complies with the royal command" with loyalty to the king and all members of the royal family," it said in a message to reporters.
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The Telangana government Saturday suspended Vikarabad district Collector as per the directives of the Election Commission for allegedly unauthorisedly opening a strong room where EVMs used in the recent assembly polls in a particular constituency, were kept.
"The Election Commission has recommended to suspend hi...for unauthorisedly opening the strong room (where EVMs were kept) which he was not supposed to do, a senior state government official told PTI.
An election petition (vis-a-vis December 7 Assembly elections) was pending in courts involving the EVMs.
The Collectors explanation was that he was not aware about the election petition filed with regard to the particular assembly segment, the official said.
The Commission, however, did not agree with the explanation, he said.
The Commission asked the state government to issue orders for his suspension before 5 PM on Saturday and the government complied with it, the official said.
The Congress had on February 2 demanded the suspension of the Collector after officials allegedly removed seals of the EVMs used in the polls to the constituency, the result of which has been challenged in court.
Telangana Congress Legislature Party leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka had demanded that the EC order an inquiry against the officials concerned.
Congress nominee G Prasad Kumar had moved the Telangana High Court, challenging the win of his TRS rival, alleging large-scale irregularities in the polls.
In a petition to the EC, he alleged that the officials' actions were in gross violation and in defiance of the instructions of the Election Commission "with malafide intentions with an ulterior motive to defeat the due legal process to deny me justice."
He requested the EC to immediately place the officers under suspension and order an enquiry.
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Chastened by the Supreme Court's order to vacate his bungalow, RJD leader and former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav on Saturday said he would "respect" the order while asserting that his fight was against the Nitish Kumar government's "arbitrary and spiteful" action and it would continue.
He, however, alleged that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar himself was occupying "two residences" created by clubbing six bungalows here.
The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Yadav's plea, challenging a Patna High Court order asking him to vacate the government bungalow meant for the deputy chief minister and ordered him to shift to an accommodation for the leader of the opposition.
The apex court also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader for pursuing a litigation up to the top court even after two benches of the high court dismissed his plea.
Yadav said people may not know that as the leader of the opposition in the state assembly, he is entitled to the same type of bungalow as the one he is now occupying.
"I have even been allotted a bungalow of the same category. But it is the state government's arbitrary, spiteful and partisan attitude against which I had put up a fight and my democratic fight would continue," he said.
The Supreme Court had asked him to vacate the bungalow at 5, Deshratna Marg to make way for Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi.
Yadav, who lost the deputy chief minister post upon Nitish Kumar's exit from the grand alliance in July, 2017, also accused the chief minister of being in occupation of "two residences by clubbing together as many as six bungalows".
The chief minister's official residence is 1, Anne Marg, while Kumar is living at the adjacent 7, Circular Road which had been allotted to him in his capacity as a former chief minister after he stepped down for a few months in 2014-15.
Following objection by the Patna High Court to this last month, the 7, Circular Road bungalow has been allotted to the chief secretary. However, the top bureaucrat is yet to shift there since "repairs and renovations" are reportedly taking place inside.
The state government wants Tejashwi Yadav to shift to 2, Polo Road which was occupied by the current Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi. He vacated the bungalow last month. The senior BJP leader had lived in that bungalow for long and had kept it under occupation during the four-year period when he was not the deputy chief minister.
In his statement, Yadav also alleged that Kumar wanted him to move elsewhere since the bungalow he is currently occupying is adjacent to the chief minister's residence.
The RJD leader claimed that Kumar, also the JD(U) national president, felt uneasy as he remains cut off from the people but they have access to the RJD leader's bungalow.
Yadav also inveighed against Kumar having a bungalow allotted in his name in New Delhi besides a special suite reserved for him at the Bihar Bhavan, the state guest house, in the national capital.
At least 10 MLAs and former ministers were in illegal occupation of ministerial bungalows in Patna, he claimed.
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Hindu Rashtra Sena (HRS) chief Dhananjay Desai, an accused in the 2014 Mohsin Shaikh murder case, was Saturday released from the Yerawada Central Jail here, weeks after he was granted a conditional bail by the Bombay High Court.
A large number of Desai's supporters gathered outside the jail to receive him this afternoon.
Desai was among the 21 people who were arrested in the murder case. All of them, except Desai, were subsequently released on bail.
Desai has been in the jail since his arrest after the crime in June 2014.
Seeking bail on parity, Desai had submitted an undertaking in the HC stating that he would stay away from the activities of the HRS, and would not presureise the witnesses in the case until the probe is over. He was granted bail on January 17 this year.
Desai's lawyer Milind Pawar told PTI Saturday that the HRS chief walked out of the jail this afternoon, after completing the legal procedure related to the conditions imposed by the HC.
Shaikh (28), a software professional, was attacked and killed on June 2, 2014 allegedly by HRS members in Hadapsar area, when communal clashes had broken out after the circulation of objectionable pictures of Shivaji Maharaj and Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray.
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Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar Saturday exhorted BJP workers to stand united to help Prime Minister Narendra Modi retain power in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Parrikar, who has been undergoing treatment for a pancreatic ailment for several months now, was addressing workers as part of the BJP's 'Atal Booth Karyakarta Sammelan' here in the presence of party chief Amit Shah.
"We should be together for the sake of the country, forget minor differences and re-elect PM Modi. Ignore the rumours that would be floated in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections. Our aim should be iss baar Narendra Modi (this time Narendra Modi)," he said.
He kept his speech short and said, "I will not be speaking much today. I am reserving my lengthy speeches for the (LS) election."
Taking a swipe at the Congress, Parrikar said the party would share the same fate as that of Sri Lanka.
He, however, did not elaborate on his statement about the neighbouring country nor give its context.
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An Army soldier was injured on Saturday in sniper fire apparently from across the border along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district, officials said.
The soldier was manning a forward post in Kalal area of Naushera sector when he was hit by a bullet apparently fired by a Pakistani sniper, they said.
The officials said the injured soldier was administered first aid at a local military hospital and later airlifted to the Army's Command Hospital for specialised treatment.
There have been frequent ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the LoC in the twin districts of Rajouri and Poonch since the beginning of 2019.
Some violations were also reported from the International Border last month.
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Setting a target of winning 45 out of 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, chief told party workers here Saturday that Baramati, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar's bastion, should be one of them.
Shah addressed workers at a review meeting for three constituencies in the district -- Pune, Baramati and Shirur -- ahead of the coming polls.
"In Maharashtra, if our alliance wins less than 45 seats, it will not be deemed a victory," Shah said.
While the Shiv Sena and had contested the last Lok Sabha election together, it is not yet clear whether the alliance would continue this time given their strained relations.
"I want my party workers to win me 45 seats from the state, and to achieve that we will have to win Baramati seat. If we win Baramati, the number 45 can be achieved," the BJP chief said.
Baramati, Pawar's home turf, is at present represented by his daughter
"Not a single seat should go to the people who were involved in corruption in .. not a single seat should be left to the people who talk about human rights of immigrants," the BJP said.
State BJP chief Raosaheb Danve in his speech expressed confidence that they would win 43 seats, one more than in 2014.
Chief Minister said the BJP was ready to fight elections alone. "We are ready to fight on all 48 seats with full strength... the 43rd seat Danve talks about is Baramati," he said.
Last time Rashtriya Samaj Paksh leader Mahadev Jankar, an NDA ally, lost from Baramati by a small margin, he said, adding, "Had there been the lotus symbol, we would have won Baramati. This time we will not make that mistake. Our candidate will fight on the party symbol.
Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu Saturday launched a scheme with an objective to provide a platform for women Self Help Groups (SHGs), and a competition to boost entrepreneurship at the district level in Maharashtra.
The scheme, 'Hirkani Maharashtrachi', and 'District Business Plan Competition' will be driven by the Maharashtra State Innovation Society (MSInS), which comes under the state departments of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, with execution support from the respective districts.
Addressing Collectors of all 36 districts of Maharashtra through a video conference, Prabhu said, "Under the 'Hirkani Maharashtrachi', women's SHGs will pitch their business plan at taluka level".
Ministers of State, district guardian ministers, MPs, MLAs and Zilla Parishad presidents from respective places also attended the video conference.
"Altogether 10 groups will be selected from each taluka and Rs 50,000 will be given to each SHG to implement their idea while five SHGs at district level will be selected and Rs 2 lakh will be given to each SHG to take the idea forward," the Union minister said, adding that the scheme will be completely backed by the Central government.
He also underlined the importance of women's participation in implementing the scheme.
According to a legend, 'Hirkani' was a milkmaid who lived at the base of the Raigad fort during the times of Chhatrapati Shivaji. She is known for climbing down the vertical Raigad cliff to breastfed her baby.
Under the District Business Plan Competition, competitors at district level will pitch ideas, out of which five ideas will be selected from agriculture, social service, and miscellaneous categories, and work order worth Rs 5 lakh will be given to the five selected ideas, Prabhu said.
He said such ideas could not be materialised in the past due to lack of funding and platforms.
"Through these schemes and competition, the best ideas will be shortlisted and such entrepreneurs will be given work order by the government," he said.
Assuring the Centre's support for the programme, Prabhu said the winners of the District Business Plan competition will get a chance to interact with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Ram Nath Kovind and Vice President Venkaiah Naidu.
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Robert Vadra, Congress President Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law, was on Saturday questioned for about eight hours by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a probe into allegations of money laundering to purchase assets abroad as he appeared before the agency for the third consecutive day.
Vadra arrived at the central probe agency's office at Jamnagar House in central Delhi at about 10:45 AM in his private vehicle and left around 8:15 PM. He was given an hour-long break for lunch.
This is the third consecutive day that the businessman appeared before the agency. It was not immediately clear if he has been asked to depose again.
After two sessions of questioning on February 6 and 7, officials said the investigating officer (IO) of the case wanted to put across more questions to Vadra in connection with the case and hence he was asked to depose again on Saturday.
While Vadra was quizzed for about five-and-a-half hours on Thursday, he was grilled for about 9 hours the next day.
Sources said Vadra was questioned on various aspects of his personal and business finances during the latest session.
It is understood that the last time Vadra was "confronted with" documents that the agency has obtained or seized as part of its probe in the case, including those linked to absconding defence dealer Sanjay Bhandari.
Vadra has also shared documents with the investigating officer of the case and has assured some more will be provided as and when he gets them, official sources had said.
The case against Vadra relates to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property located at 12, Bryanston Square worth 1.9 million GBP (British pounds), which is allegedly owned by him.
The agency has told a Delhi court that it has received information about various new properties in London which belong to Vadra. These include two houses, one worth 5 million GBP and the other valued at 4 million GBP, six other flats and more properties.
Vadra has denied the allegations of possessing illegal foreign assets and termed them a political witch hunt against him. He said he was being "hounded and harassed" to subserve political ends.
Sources said Vadra's statement was recorded under Section 50 (powers of authorities regarding summons, production of documents and to give evidence) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), as was done on the last two occasions.
His appearance before the acquired political overtones after his wife Priyanka Gandhi, recently appointed Congress general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, accompanied him to the investigating agency's office on Wednesday while she picked him up after questioning on Thursday.
Vadra is also expected to depose before the on February 12 in Jaipur in another money-laundering case related to an alleged land scam in Bikaner. The Rajasthan High Court has directed him to cooperate with the agency in the case.
The President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan affirmed the protocol between the Turkish and Azerbaijani governments on the exchange of military personnel, Trend reports.
The document is aimed at developing the military and educational activities and cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries.
The protocol determines the personnel of the Turkish and Azerbaijani armed forces, which are to be involved in joint activities of the parties, and the military units, organizations and institutions in which they will take place.
The other goal of the protocol is to establish the basis for the exchange of personnel between the Turkish General Staff and the Ministry of Defense and the State Border Service of Azerbaijan, as well as to determine the positions, powers and responsibilities during the exchange period.
Days after nuns protesting against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mullakkal were asked to move out of their convent, the Jalandhar Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church has assured them that there will be no move to oust them as long as they as they are needed for the court case.
An e-mail in this regard was sent to five nuns, who are staying with the rape survivor nun, by current apostolic administrator of Jalandhar diocese Bishop Angelo, one of the nuns said here Saturday.
The Bishop has assured the nuns that "there will be no move from the diocese of Jalandhar to oust" them from the Kuravilangad convent in Kottayam district as long as they are needed for the court case, she claimed.
Copies of purported e-mail sent by the Bishop was made available to the media.
Earlier, the head of their congregation, Missionaries of Jesus under the Jalandhar diocese, had issued transfer orders to four nuns who took part in the protest demanding the arrest of the bishop.
Another nun, Sister Neena Rose, who is staying with the rape survivor, was asked to report to the Missionaries of Jesus congregation's Jalandhar convent and meet its Superior General Sr Regina Kandamthottu on January 26.
The congregation of nuns -- Missionaries of Jesus -- had directed the nuns to join their previously-assigned convents, according to the transfer orders issued between March and May last year.
The nuns Alphy, Anupama, Josephine and Ancitta were served notice by the superior general, urging them to take up their assigned responsibilities as befitting members of the congregation.
Meanwhile, Peter Kavumpuram, PRO of the Jalandhar diocese, issued a clarification statement late in the evening, saying even though the congregation of Missionaries of Jesus is of diocesan right, the internal running of the congregation is left to the Superior General and her council.
"The Bishop of Jalandhar does not normally interfere unless the overall interests of the church demands such interference. By this clarification the Apostolic Administrator has not interfered in the internal affairs of this congregation, therefore the order to return to their rightful communities by the Mother General is not cancelled but stands," said the statement quoting Fr Kavumpuram.
The statement, however, did not have mention of the purported email sent to the nuns by Bishop Angelo.
The four nuns had earlier written to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan seeking his intervention to ensure that their transfer orders were not effected till the trial of the case was over.
The survivor nun had also written a separate letter to the chief minister, seeking his help in the matter.
"Their aim is to single me out and to harass and torture me. My life will be in danger if such a situation arises," she said in her letter.
In her letter to Rose, the superior general had warned that failure to comply with the advice to report in person as instructed would be construed as a deliberate refusal to abide by the legitimate order of her Mother General, thereby challenging the authority canonically bestowed on her.
Meanwhile, the nuns Saturday joined 'Save Our Sisters' forum to stage a protest against the transfer orders issued by the congregation. A tense situation prevailed at the protest site when a group of people opposing the nuns' protest reached there and raised slogans against them.
The group was removed from the spot, police sources said.
The protest led by the nuns and the Catholic reformist forums in Kochi in September last year had led to a public outrage and demands for action against the bishop.
Bishop Mulakkal, a senior member of the Roman Catholic clergy in India, was arrested last year following allegations by a nun that he repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted her at the Kuravilangad convent between 2014 and 2016, a charge denied by him.
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Days after nuns protesting against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mullakkal were asked to move out of their convent, the Jalandhar Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church has assured them that there will be no move to oust them as long as they as they are needed for the court case.
An e-mail in this regard was sent to five nuns, who are staying with the survivor nun, by current apostolic administrator of Jalandhar diocese Bishop Angelo, one of the nuns said here Saturday.
The Bishop has assured the nuns that "there will be no move from the diocese of Jalandhar to oust" them from the Kuravilangad convent in Kottayam district as long as they are needed for the Court case, she said.
Authorities of Jalandhar diocese could not be reached for their comments despite efforts.
Earlier, the head of their congregation, Missionaries of Jesus under the Jalandhar diocese, had issued transfer orders to four nuns who took part in the protest, demanding the arrest of the Bishop.
Another nun, Sister Neena Rose, who is staying with the survivor nun, was asked to report to the Missionaries of Jesus congregation's Jalandhar convent and meet its Superior General Sr Regina Kandamthottu on January 26.
The congregation of nuns-- Missionaries of Jesus-- had directed the nuns to join their previously-assigned convents, according to the transfer orders issued between March and May this year.
The nuns Alphy, Anupama, Josephine and Ancitta
were served notice by the superior general, urging them to take up their assigned responsibilities as befitting members of the congregation.
The four nuns had earlier written to the Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan seeking his intervention to ensure that their transfer orders were not effected till the trial of the case was over.
The survivor nun had also written a separate letter to the chief minister, seeking his help in the matter.
"Their aim is to single me out and to harass and torture me. My life will be in danger if such a situation arises," she said in her letter.
In her letter to Rose, the superior general had warned that failure to comply with the advice to report in person as instructed would be construed as a deliberate refusal to abide by the legitimate order of her Mother General, thereby challenging the authority canonically bestowed on her.
Meanwhile, the nuns Saturday joined 'Save Our Sisters' forum to stage a protest against the transfer orders issued by the congregation.
A tense situation prevailed at the protest venue when a group of people oppposing the nuns' protest reached there and raised slogans against them.
The group was removed from the spot, police sources said.
The protest led by the nuns and the Catholic reformist forums in Kochi in September last year had led to a public outrage and demands for action against the bishop.
Bishop Mulakkal, a senior member of the Roman Catholic clergy in India, was arrested last year following allegations by the nun that he repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted her at the Kuravilangad convent between 2014 and 2016, a charge denied by him.
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The "Gully Boy" team of Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, director Zoya Akhtar and producer Ritesh Sidhwani visited India Pavilion at the Berlin International Film Festival and released the IFFI 2019 brochure.
The film's team interacted with the visiting Indian delegation, who informed them about the efforts being made by the organisers for the golden jubilee anniversary of International Film Festival of India, which will be held in Goa later this year, said a press release from Press Information Bureau.
"Gully Boy" will have its world premiere at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival. The film will be screened at the Berlinale Special Gala segment.
The Indian Pavilion at Berlinale has been organised by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in association with Confederation of Indian Industry. Over 75 Indian film companies are participating at Berlinale 2019.
The Indian delegation members at Berlinale also met with over half a dozen film festival heads and key senior executives of the film industry.
Nadia Dresti, deputy Artistic Director and head of Locarno Film Festival, met the delegation and was told about the government's efforts towards promoting ease of filming and curbing piracy.
Dresti said she had visited IFFI Goa last year and emphasised that she will be participating in the 2019 edition as well.
The delegation from Israel visited the Indian Pavilion and expressed its keenness to produce a film with an Indian producer under the Indo-Israeli Co-production treaty.
The representatives talked about a much wider and active collaboration for IFFI 2019.
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BJP president Amit Shah hit out at Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Saturday, saying he had stooped very low by lying about and trying to politicise his visit to ailing Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar.
Shah was addressing the BJP's booth-level workers in the presence of Parrikar here.
"I felt good when Rahul Gandhi went to meet Parrikar, our leader who is battling a disease, to wish him (well)," the BJP president said.
"But in the evening, he (Gandhi) claimed that during the meeting Parrikar spoke about the Rafale issue. This is a very low level of politics," Shah said.
He accused Gandhi of mocking Parrikar's illness by "speaking lies".
"Next day, Parrikar wrote a letter and clarified that he had not even uttered the 'R' of Rafale, let alone (talk about) Rafale and Rahul Gandhi was lying," Shah said.
Gandhi had met Parrikar, who is suffering from a pancreatic ailment, on January 29 to enquire about his health.
The Congress chief later claimed that the former defence minister had told him that he had nothing to do with the new Rafale fighter jet deal. Parrikar denied it.
Shah said the "Congress president had broken all norms of politics" by stooping to an unprecedented low.
"I want to say this to the people of Goa, while your beloved leader is fighting a disease, the Congress is trying to play on it," he said.
The BJP chief also showered praise on Parrikar.
"When I went to his house, I asked (him) whether he would like to join the meeting where there will be several leaders. He said, 'even if for two minutes, I would like to go and meet my workers'," Shah said.
"If you want to see how a party worker should be, look at Parrikar," he added.
Even now the Goa chief minister calls Delhi every second day to follow up on the pending work of his state, including the mining ban issue, Shah said.
"In my entire life, I have never seen such a dedicated chief minister," he said.
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West Bengal Congress president Somen Mitra said Saturday that party president Rahul Gandhi has "agreed" with their views of not forging any alliance with the Trinamool Congress in the state in the coming parliamentary election and that he has left it to the state leadership to decide the electoral strategy.
Mitra said Gandhi has given them the go-ahead on initiating talks with democratic and secular forces in the state.
"Our party president has agreed with our views that aligning with TMC would be a disaster for the party in the state as it is because of TMC that BJP is gaining ground in Bengal. Rahulji has told us to prepare our own strategy and he has told us that he would agree with it," Mitra told PTI from New Delhi.
Asked if this will open the door for forging alliance with the CPI(M)-led Left Front in the state, Mitra said they would discuss the matter in the party.
"We would talk to secular and democratic forces, including the Left. But before initiating talks we would discuss the matter within our party," he said.
Majority of the state Congress unit is against forging any sort of alliance with the TMC in Bengal as they feel TMC since its rise to power in 2011 has worked towards weakening the Congress by poaching on its elected representatives.
Gandhi held a meeting with state Congress chiefs and Congress Legislature Party leaders in Delhi on Saturday to review the party's preparedness for the Lok Sabha polls.
Gandhi asked senior office-bearers of the party to aggressively raise the Modi government's "dictatorial style" of governance and "burning issues" such as farm distress and unemployment in the Lok Sabha poll campaign.
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Queen Elizabeth II's 97-year-old husband Prince Philip Saturday surrendered his driving licence after causing a car crash that outraged the media and stirred a debate about old age and driving.
Buckingham Palace said Philip, formally known as the Duke of Edinburgh, took the decision on his own after rolling over his Land Rover last month.
"After careful consideration the Duke of Edinburgh has taken the decision to voluntarily surrender his driving licence," Buckingham Palace said in a brief statement.
Police in the eastern part of England where the accident happened outside a royal residence said they had passed Philip's file to prosecutors to determine whether anyone should be charged.
"Norfolk Police can confirm that the 97-year-old driver of the Land Rover involved in the collision at Sandringham ... voluntarily surrendered his licence to officers," said a police statement.
"The investigation file for the collision has been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for their consideration."
A CPS spokesman said the service "will take this development into account" as it studies Philip's case.
Few royal watchers seriously expect the duke to be punished by the police.
A witness told British media that Philip had emerged unharmed but "shocked and shaken" from the collision with the much smaller Kia hatchback. Police said a nine-month-old baby in the back seat of Kia was uninjured. One woman in the vehicle broke her wrist and the other cut her knee.
The duke was forced to follow standard police procedure and take a breath test.
Police said the results "provided negative readings" for both drivers.
Philip came under days of media criticism for failing to quickly and publicly apologise for causing the crash.
The same witness said Philip had told police he was "blinded by the sun" when he turned onto the road without seeing the oncoming car.
Two days after that accident, the duke was photographed driving a replacement Range Rover without a seatbelt, which is illegal in Britain.
James Brookes, of the Royal Central site, said Philip was a "strong-willed" individual who was probably not swayed by the public backlash when deciding to hang up his key.
"He wants to enjoy his retirement but he was very shaken by the crash," Brookes told the BBC.
But Brookes conceded that Philip would have "obviously" been aware of the bad press.
Philip's behaviour also raised questions about why he was still driving instead of being chauffeured around by his entourage.
"There will be some surprise that the duke still drives himself on public roads," BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond wrote last month.
Dymond also called Philip a "fiercely independent" person who "would have resisted any suggestion that he be denied the right to drive himself".
Philip retired from public life in 2017 and underwent a hip replacement operation last April.
He is famous in Britain for his forthright manner and his love of speed.
The royal family website says the duke learned to fly all types of aircraft after passing a Royal Air Force test in 1953.
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The Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi Saturday cautioned people against "misleading calls" claiming deletion of their names from electoral rolls, a day after a BJP delegation met the Chief Election Commissioner and alleged that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had been making such phone calls.
The statement from the poll panel drew sharp reaction from AAP national convener and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who said the Election Commission "must not be allowed to become agent of a political party".
The office of the Delhi CEO, in the statement, said it had been brought to its notice that "large number of calls have been received from unknown persons/entities/sources by many citizens of Delhi telling them that their names have already been deleted in the electoral roll and the callers will get the same restored in the electoral roll".
"The citizens of Delhi are hereby advised to beware of such misleading calls coming from unknown persons/entities/sources. The only authority to add or delete a name in the electoral roll is Electoral Registration Officer... Separate legal action as required/deemed appropriate is being taken," the statement said.
The BJP delegation led by Union minister Vijay Goel had on Friday requested the Chief Election Commissioner to issue clarification on "bogus claims" by the AAP that names of 30 lakh voters in Delhi were deleted from electoral rolls.
The Election Commission should come out with a press statement to "expose" lies spread by the Arvind Kejriwal-led party, Goel had said.
After the poll panel came out with the final voter list in January, the AAP has launched sustained attacks on the BJP alleging its hand behind the "deletion" of names of 30 lakh voters, particularly of Purvanchali, Muslims and Bania communities, since the assembly election in Delhi in 2015.
Reacting sharply to the statement by the poll panel, Kejriwal said on Twitter, "Incumbents come n go. EC is too precious an institution for Indian democracy. EC's integrity n credibility ought to be protected. EC must not be allowed to become agent of a political party (sic)."
In a series of tweets, he said, "EC shud answer- 1. 22 lakh names wrongly deleted in Telangana- Didn't EC apologise? 2. Why were Jwala Gutta n her family names missing at polling centre tho they existed on EC website? (sic)."
"EC gave AAP list of 24 lakh names deleted in Del 1. Del govt enqries in some deletions found them wrong?Why EC protecting those officers? 2. Why EC not allowing Del govt to do enquiries in all deletions? EC itself didn't conduct enquiries AAP won't allow telangana it in Del (sic)," he tweeted.
AAP spokesperson Raghav Chadha asserted that Kejriwal is fighting with the Election Commission and he will get every voter's name added to the electoral rolls that has been illegally deleted at the behest of the BJP.
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India and Russia are discussing "point-by-point" provisions of proposed agreement regarding mutual recognition of degrees and diplomas, said Yelena Afanasyeva who headed a delegation of Russian senators to promote cooperation between the two countries through Parliamentary Friendship Group.
Many Indian students, especially the ones who go to Russia to study medicine, are affected by the absence of this mutual recognition agreement. India and Russia have been discussing the proposed agreement regarding mutual acceptance of degrees and diplomas for many years now.
"The representatives of the governments of both sides are now discussing the point-by-point provisions of this document," she told PTI.
"One of the difficulties that we have discussed with our colleagues is that the necessity of urging our governments to sign an agreement of mutual acceptance of the diplomas and degrees, especially in the medical sphere," Afanasyeva said.
"There was such a document - but between the USSR and the Republic of India. So, we have this kind of experience. But the USSR is no more, so we need a new one (agreement document)," she said.
Afanasyeva said around 9,500 students are studying in Russia and more than 100 of them are studying at the expenses of the Russian government.
The Russian Senators' delegation visited India from February 5 to February 7 and met Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh Narayan Singh, BJP's National General Secretary Ram Madhav, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and other leaders.
The delegation also met BJP Lok Sabha MP Hema Malini, who chairs the India-Russia Parliamentary Friendship Group.
According to a statement by the Russian Embassy here, both sides "stressed the necessity of early signing the agreement of mutual recognition of diplomas between Russia and India".
"When such kind of documents are agreed upon, it goes through very different branches of power, very different authorities. And us, being the representatives of the will of the people, it is our job to urge the government to make it matter," Afanasyeva said.
Under the Parliamentary Friendship Group, there are various committees to discuss matters related to a number of issues, including economic policy, legislation, agriculture, education.
Others Russian Senators such as Elena Perminova, Deputy Chair of the Committee on Budget and Financial Markets, and Vyacheslav Timchenko, First Deputy Chair of the Committee on Economic Policy, were also part of the delegation for this three-day visit.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a public rally at Guntur on Sunday in his first visit to Andhra Pradesh after the ruling TDP severed its ties with the BJP, even as Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu asked his party cadre to observe protest day across the state.
Besides addressing the public meeting of the BJP, the Prime Minister will dedicate two petroleum and gas projects worth Rs 6,825 crore to the nation.
He will also lay the foundation-stone through remote control system for construction of a coastal terminal of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited at Krishnapatnam in SPS Nellore district.
This will be built at a cost of Rs 2,280 crore, according to BJP MP G V L Narasimha Rao.
The two projects the Prime Minister would dedicate to the nation include ONGC's Vasishta Gas Field in the Krishna-Godavari basin, set up at a cost of Rs 5,700 crore, and a storage facility of ISPRL, an undertaking of Petroleum Ministry, built at a cost of Rs 1,125 crore, the MP said.
Meanwhile, the Chief Minister said Sunday would be a 'bad day' and a 'dark day' for the state and asked the TDP cadre to sport yellow and black shirts besides releasing black and yellow balloons into the sky as a mark of protest against the prime minister's visit.
Huge hoardings from Gannavaram airport -- where Modi will land at 10 am were put up along the National Highway up to Guntur, saying Modi, No Entry' while protests were organised in some parts of the state against the visit.
The BJP lodged a complaint with police seeking action against those who put up the hoardings against the Prime Minister.
The Congress too called for observance of black day on Sunday over Modi's failure to honour the promises made to Andhra Pradesh post-bifurcation, party sources said.
In Vijayawada, the CPI and the CPI-M organised a demonstration Saturday protesting the Prime Ministers visit.
Reports said similar protests were held in Guntur, Kadapa and Kurnool districts as well.
Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh Minister for Information and Public Relations Kalava Srinivasulu told PTI at Tirupati that Naidu will go on a 12-hour-long fast, 'Dharma Porata Deeksha' (protest for justice), from 8 am in New Delhi on February 11.
The protest would be to highlight the failure of the BJP-led NDA government in not meeting many a genuine demand of the state, including special category status, he said.
The Minister said several ministers, MPs, MLAs, MLCs from the state and members of other friendly parties in Delhi would also take part in the agitation.
Narasimha Rao alleged that the TDP was spending over Rs 1.30 crore of public money to organise three special trains to New Delhi for taking people to the Chief Ministers 'deeksha' programme.
"They are talking about blocking the Prime Ministers visit. If they try it, the consequences could be serious," the Rajya Sabha member warned.
"We should feel sorry at the TDP leaderships state of mind. They are doing mean things by grossly abusing power," he said.
The TDP had severed its ties with the BJP in March last year alleging that the NDA government had failed to discharge its constitutional responsibilities in implementing the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act,2014 in letter and spirit.
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Prime Minister Narendra Saturday took a dig at the local newspapers saying that instead of highlighting development works they were giving prominence to other issues.
''When I saw today's newspapers in the morning, I thought there is something........but people are still coming in thousands to attend this rally'', the Prime Minister ambiguously said about the prevailing situation in the state.
''People are still coming in thousands and next time a bigger field has to be arranged.In recent times, I have addressed four rallies in North East recently and the enthusiasm in Assam is increasing with each rally breaking its earlier record but today's mammoth gathering has broken all previous records'', Modi said as he began his speech.
''I am, however, confident that the papers published from Guwahati tomorrow will not carry any of these details. You must be knowing the reason why'', he chuckled.
''The reporters present here are working very hard but their newspaper owners will not allow their hard work to bear result'', he said.
''The love and blessings, I receive in Assam is due to Ma Kamkhya and nothing is possible without her benevolence'', he added.
The Prime Minister, peppering his speech with sentences in Assamese, paid rich tributes to states icons Srimanata Sankardeva, Madhavdeva, Azan Fakir, Chaolung Sukapha, Lachit Barphukan, Gopinath Bordoloi and Dr Bhupen Hazarika.
He said the previous governments had failed to honour these icons and it was the BJP government who took the initiative of conferring the Bharat Ratna on Assam's first Chief Minister Gopinath Bordoloi during Atal Behari Vajpayee's term and now to music legend Dr Bhupen Hazarika.
The Prime Minister profusely quoted Hazarika in his 40-minute speech and ended with an ode to the state on the banks of the mighty Brahmaputra by the legendary musician.
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The negotiations between the presidents of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, require serious preparatory work, the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov reported.
He also noted that, no matter how difficult the relations between Russia and the United States are, the talks between the leaders always have a positive effect on the international situation. Of course, today it is difficult to say where and when contact between leaders is possible, he said, stressing that the effectiveness of negotiations depends on their preparation.
A Pakistani journalist was arrested Saturday for uploading "defamatory and obnoxious" posts against the judiciary, government institutions and intelligence agencies.
Rizwan Razi, who hosts a talk shown on Din News, was arrested from his residence in Lahore by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
The FIA said the initial investigation had revealed that Razi's social media posts were made through his Twitter account.
He was allegedly uploading "defamatory and obnoxious posts against the armed forces, judiciary, government institutions and intelligence agencies of the country", it said.
"Razi earlier had joined the investigation and in his statement he confessed to having uploaded obnoxious posts against the judiciary and other departments through his twitter account since 2011," it said, adding that the suspect had apologised.
However, he did not stop this practice, the FIA said.
The forensic data extraction report has been obtained and it established Razi uploaded "derogatory/humiliating posts against the judiciary, government institutions and intelligence agencies through social media", it said.
He has been booked under the sections 11 and 20 of the new cyber law PPECA, a cyber-crime law which had been widely criticised by civil rights campaigners as 'draconian' at the time of its passage by the Nawaz Sharif-led PML-N government.
The sections 11 pertains to hate speech and can carry a prison sentence of up to seven years, as well as a fine.
Section 20 pertains to "offences against the dignity of a natural person" and carries "imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years or with fine which may extend to Rs 1 million".
The journalist bodies as well as the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) have condemned the arrest of Razi and demanded his immediate release.
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The Pakistan government on Saturday rejected prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter and son-in-law's requests seeking removal of their names from the Exit Control List (ECL), which is preventing them from flying abroad.
In October last year, Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Mohammad Safdar had separately applied to the Interior Ministry seeking removal of their names from the ECL, the Geo News reported.
In their petitions, the trio argued that the Exit From Pakistan Rules 2010 did not apply to them as they were not involved in corruption, misuse of authority, terrorism or any conspiracy and thus their names should be removed from ECL.
The Ministry of Interior rejected the petitions of Nawaz, Maryam and Capt (retd) Safdar, the report said quoting sources.
The decision to place the names of the Sharif family on ECL was taken on August 20 last year during a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan.
In July 2018, an accountability court in Islamabad convicted Sharif, Maryam and Safdar in the Avenfield properties case and sentenced them to prison terms of 11 years, eight years and one year, respectively.
ALSO READ: Shift Nawaz Sharif to hospital, Pakistan's Punjab govt orders jail admin
On September 19, Sharif, Maryam and Safdar were released from jail after the Islamabad High Court suspended their sentences in the Avenfield case.
In December last year, the Accountability Court in Islamabad sentenced 69-year-old Sharif to seven years of rigorous imprisonment in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills graft case, but acquitted him in the Flagship Investments case. The former premier is serving the jail term in Kot Lakhpat prison since then.
Newly appointed general secretary in-charge of eastern Vadra will have her hands full during her four-day visit to as she will meet senior leaders and office bearers of the party.
This will be Priyanka Gandhi's maiden visit to after she formally entered politics last month.
She will arrive in the state capital, Lucknow, accompanied by her brother and and general secretary in-charge for western on Monday.
The party in Uttar Pradesh is seeing the visit as the virtual launch of the Congress campaign in the state, ahead of the coming Lok Sabha elections.
In-charge of 42 of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, will meet senior leaders and office bearers of the party constituency-wise during her visit till February 14, Congress spokesperson Anshu Awasthi told
Lists of leaders, including former MPs, MLAs and other people's representatives, have been sought from the district unit presidents. Each constituency is being allotted a different time to meet the senior leadership, during which all issues related to their areas will be discussed in detail, he said.
Besides, the district and city unit presidents, office bearers and other senior leaders will also be meeting and Scindia during their visit, Awasthi said.
is likely to return the same day after a meeting with the state leaders, he added.
Preparations are underway to accord a grand welcome to the three leaders on their arrival, Awasthi said.
They will be welcomed by party workers and leaders at nearly 37 points on the 10 km-route from the airport to the Nehru Bhawan Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) headquarters, he said.
He added that Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Scindia are likely to garland statues of and on their way to the party office. The route was finalised after a meeting with the district administration.
The UPCC office is being spruced up and new hoardings have come up all the way from the airport, welcoming Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Scindia.
A team of Special Protection Group (SPG) also visited the UPCC headquarters on Thursday and met senior Congress leaders to make necessary security arrangements ahead of the visit, party sources said.
"Congress workers are excited about the visit of party leaders and we are awaiting to give them a rousing welcome... we hope that with her (Priyanka Gandhi) joining active politics, the state will also get a new energy," chief state Congress spokesperson Rajiv Bakshi said.
"This is a very auspicious time for us and a good omen for the party," he said.
As many as 538 people, including 319 GATE aspirants, were airlifted in separate sorties by the Indian Air Force (IAF) between the twin capital cities of Jammu and Srinagar, a defence spokesman said Saturday.
The IAF launched the special sorties of C17 Globemaster and came into assistance of GATE aspirants, the locals and tourists who were stuck in the twin capitals due to the closure of Jammu-Srinagar national highway, the only all weather road linking Kashmir with the rest of the country owing to the recent heavy snowfall, he said.
He said a total of 319 students appearing in Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) on February 10 onwards were airlifted from Srinagar airport to Jammu airport on Friday and Saturday.
While 179 students were airlifted from Srinagar to Jammu, 180 civilians struck in Jammu were airlifted to Srinagar on Friday, the spokesman said.
Similarly, he said 179 persons comprising of 140 students and 39 locals and tourists were airlifted to Srinagar to Jammu on Saturday.
"The students were specially relieved by this humanitarian concern of the armed forces and conveyed their special thanks to them for this timely effort which in long way will shape up their career in times to come," the spokesman said.
He said civilians and stranded tourists were also very appreciative and thankful of the humanitarian activities of the armed forces along with guarding the frontiers at all times.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday hit out at the opposition, saying the main job of the 'mahamilawatwalas' is to deride him and it seems they were all competing in an Olympics of hurling abuses at him.
Calling the opposition a 'mahamilawat' (great adulteration) again, he said its leaders are only involved in "holding each other's hands in meetings in Delhi and Kolkata for photographs".
"The job of the 'mahamilawatwalas' is only to hurl abuses and more abuses on Modi. It is as if an Olympics is on to deride Modi," he told a rally here.
Continuing his tirade, Modi said political parties who cannot see eye to eye in West Bengal, Kerala or Tripura are now uniting to "abuse" him.
"They (opposition parties) are dreaming of forming a government in Delhi as soon as possible which will only be involved in corruption, malpractice and nepotism ... They cannot form a 'majbut sarkar' (strong government) but only a 'majbur sarkar' (helpless government)," he said.
"The results of the coming Lok Sabha elections will show what it takes to lie to the people," Modi said.
Hitting out at the Left Front without naming it, he said it was not interested in doing anything for the unorganised sector or the farmers when it was in power in the state.
Noting that sufficient funds were provided to Tripura in the last four and half years under NDA rule at the Centre, he said the money was not properly utilised due to the attitude of the erstwhile Left Front government in the state.
The present BJP government is taking development of Tripura to newer heights, he claimed and appealed to the people to "identify and unmask" those leaders who had not fulfilled their task in developing Tripura.
"Despite tall talks (by former LF government) about welfare of farmers, it is now for the first time in Tripura under the BJP government that paddy is being procured at the minimum support price. Besides, the recommendation of the Seventh Pay Commission was implemented," he said.
"Tripura, the state that was deprived of development on the pretext of being a landlocked region, is now being made gateway of the South East Asia," he said.
The NDA government at Centre has lived up to its promises of HIRA (highways, i-ways, roadways and airways) model of development made before the 2018 assembly elections in Tripura. The Agartala-Sabroom national highway, the second terminal under construction at the Maharaja Bir Bikkram Airport here, new express trains like Humsafar and Deoghar Express are part of it, Modi added.
During his whirlwind visit to Tripura, the prime minister unveiled a life-size statue of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur, the last independent ruler of Tripura, inaugurated a new complex of Tripura Institute of Technology (TIT) in West Tripura and a 23.5 km stretch of railway line from Garjee to Belonia in South Tripura.
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Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi Saturday claimed that digitising Haj-related processes has ensured that the annual pilgrimage remained inexpensive despite the absence of subsidy and made the system "pro-pilgrim".
The Haj subsidy provided by the government was removed last year in the light of a Supreme Court order of 2012.
"Making the entire Haj process completely online/digital has not only ensured that the pilgrimage has become inexpensive even after removal of Haj subsidy, but also made the process absolutely pro-pilgrim," a statement quoted the Minority Affairs Minister as saying.
He made the remarks while inaugurating a two-day training camp of 'Khadim-Ul-Hujjaj' (those who assist the pilgrims during the Haj) here.
In 2018, even after removal of the subsidy, pilgrims saved about Rs 57 crore in airfares, he said.
"GST on Haj pilgrimage has been reduced from 18 per cent to 5 per cent this year, which will ensure that about Rs 113 crore will be saved by Haj pilgrims during the 2019 Haj. Reduction in GST on Haj pilgrimage will ensure significant decrease in airfare from various embarkation points," he added.
Airfare from Srinagar will be reduced by Rs 11,377, while from Ahmedabad Rs 7,305 will be saved.
Naqvi added from Aurangabad, fares will be reduced by Rs 9,373, from Delhi by Rs 7,967, from Gaya by Rs 11,027, from Guwahati by Rs 13,049, from Ranchi by Rs 11,946, from Kolkata by Rs 9,787 and from Hydebarad by Rs 7,204 this year.
He said for the first time in post-Independence era, a record number of 1,75,025 Indian Muslims perform the Haj last year and that too without any subsidy.
Of these, 48 per cent were women, he said, adding that this year too, equal number of Indian Muslims are likely to perform the Haj, he said.
The Modi government had last year lifted the ban onwomen going to Haj without Mehram (male companions), leading to around 1,300 Muslim women going for Haj without any male companion.
Naqvi added that 2,340 Muslim women will go for Haj this year without Mehram.
"This year, too, on the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji, the minority affairs ministry has made arrangement to send these women on Haj without lottery system," he said.
A total of 538 'Khadim-ul-Hujjaj', including 13 women, participated in the training programme.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid widespread protests in the Northeast over the contentious citizenship bill, National Peoples Party (NPP) president and Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma Saturday threatened that his party will quit the NDA if the proposed legislation is passed in Rajya Sabha.
The NPP, which is in power in Meghalaya and backs the governments in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland, adopted a resolution to this effect at its general body convention here Saturday, he said.
The NPP leaders of all the four northeastern states were present at the meeting.
"The party took a unanimous resolution to oppose the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016 and based on that decision a resolution passed. If the bill is passed, the NPP will break its ties with the NDA," Sangma told mediapersons here after the meeting.
"This decision was taken today at the general body meeting," he added.
The bill was passed in Lok Sabha on January 8 and the government is expecting to get the Rajya Sabha nod in this session.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu on Saturday claimed that foreign investments are eluding the sensitive border state owing to objections raised by a neighbour, a reference to China, and urged the central government to address the issue.
Khandu was speaking at a function where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also present.
"Arunachal Pradesh has a lot of potential but due to objection of the neighbouring country, foreign investment is not coming," Khandu said at the event at Indira Gandhi Park here.
Although Khandu did not take China's name, the reference was obvious as Arunachal Pradesh shares a 1,080-km long border with China which has refused to recognise India's claim on the region. New Delhi has consistently maintained that the state is an "integral and inalienable part" of India.
On Saturday too, China opposed the prime minister's visit to Arunachal Pradesh but India dismissed it saying its leaders visit the state like they travel to any other part of the country.
"I hope in coming days under your (Modi's) intervention, the issue will be resolved so that we can convert our potential into capital," Khandu added.
Khandu did not cite any specific instance of foreign investment getting blocked, but sources said that the chief minister was hinting at the objection raised by China in June 2009 after a mega Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded irrigation project got scrapped.
The ADB board of directors and member countries had endorsed a Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for 2009-12, which included the irrigation project.
Although the ADB member countries had backed a document which included a flood management project in Arunachal Pradesh, pressure from China "forced" the bank to withdraw the project in 2009.
In 2010, India dropped Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim from a World Bank loan proposal to avoid running into Chinese objections over multilateral financial aid to projects in the border areas, an official told PTI on condition of anonymity.
"The initial proposal for a Rs 11,000 crore loan to strengthen electricity transmission and distribution in the northeastern region covered Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim. After excluding the two states, the loan amount was around Rs 8,115 crore," the state government official said.
Khandu, however, said that Arunachal Pradesh was getting more attention from the Centre ever since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power in 2014.
"The region which remained neglected for years together got its due recognition after Modi became the prime minister of the country.
"The seriousness for the region has gained momentum which is evident from the fact that every month at least three ministers visit the states of the region," Khandu said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The NCP Saturday hit out at BJP chief Amit Shah for asking his party functionaries to work towards winning Baramati Lok Sabha constituency, for long a bastion of Sharad Pawar.
Pawar was first chosen as MLA in 1967 from Baramati and was also Lok Sabha MP from there for several terms.
Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule is currently the Lok Sabha MP from Baramati.
It dared the BJP to declare its candidate for the seat first, with NCP national spokesperson Nawab Malik asking the ruling party whether it will field Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah or Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis from the constituency.
"Fadnavis ji and Shah have said that they would win 45 of 48 seats in Maharashtra, including Baramati. It would not have been surprising even if they had claimed that they will win 50 seats of 48 in Maharashtra," Malik said.
"They said they are going to win Baramati seat too. Who will be there candidate? Mr Modi, Mr Shah or Mr Fadnavis? If you have guts, declare the candidate," Malik added.
His party colleague and Leader of the Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Council Dhananjay Munde also slammed the BJP.
He said the BJP continues to dream notwithstanding its defeat in the Assembly polls in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh held recently.
"The chief minister boasting about winning the Baramati seat reminds the story of a frog bloating his stomach. People will not sit idle till they burst the bubble of their dreams," Munde said on Twitter.
Setting a target of winning 45 out of 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, Shah told party workers in Pune Saturday that Baramati should be one of them.
Shah addressed BJP workers at a review meeting for three constituencies in the district -- Pune, Baramati and Shirur -- ahead of the coming polls.
"I want my party workers to win me 45 seats from the state, and to achieve that we will have to win Baramati seat. If we win Baramati, the number 45 can be achieved," the BJP chief said.
Fadnavis also exuded the confidence that the BJP will win Baramati seat.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The National Women's Party will contest on all 25 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan and field 13 women candidates in the upcoming general elections.
In the remaining seats, the National Women's Party (NWP) may field male candidates, party president Shweta Shetty told reporters here.
She said her party will contest on 283 seats in the country in the elections.
"To ensure participation of women in the national and state politics, the party has decided to field 13 women candidates in the state in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections," Shetty said.
She said the party has chosen the 13 seats based on the dominance of women population there.
The party was registered in 2012 and has seven lakh members in southern India, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Delhi.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russian-Chinese conference "From iscussions About Shock Therapy to Search for Optimal Economic Model" was held yesterday in the Institute of Asian and African Countries of the MSU. It was attended by economists, political scientists, international affairs specialists and orientalists of the two countries. Justin Lin Yifu, former Vice-President of the World Bank, one of the founders of the Chinese Economic Research Center at the Peking University, answered questions of Vestnik Kavkaza at the sidelines of this event.
- Economists define "new structural economy" as somethings built based on "factor of ownership of resources" and taking "advantage of underdeveloped state". What does this mean in practice?
- The new structural economics is the third generation of developing economics.
The first generation was structuralism, which allowed developing countries' governments to use direct resource mobilization and giving them opportunity to build up capital. Its like Russia in the Soviet Union period.
The second generation of developing economics is neoliberalism - developing countries remove all government integration through privatization, liberation, and stabilization to build up advanced market institutions like in developed countries. Thats Russia in the transitional period.
And the third generation is the new structural economics. The reason we need to have a new version of developing economics is because even though intensions of older developing economics like structuralism or neoliberalism were certainly good, but overall, results of those kind of ideas brought all kinds of challenges and difficulties to developing countries or transition economies. So this theory helps us to understand economic development better, and even more importantly, this theory can help us to improve economic performance. It gives us better understanding of successes and failures of developing countries. Advanced countries were always used as a reference in the past. But as historical materialism taught us, economy is the foundation of every country, and development at different stages is different. That's why approaches to it should also be different. Market and government should perform in an organic way in order to improve the economic performance. And the new structure economics can help with that.
- What do you think about prospects of economic cooperation between Russia and China?
- I think that China and Russia certainly have various competitive advantages, but their economies are complementary to each other. So economic cooperation would be beneficial to both Russian people and Chinese people. And all our people hope that we can have peaceful, friendly, and cooperative relations to achieve common goal of improving wellbeing both in Russia and China. In the new structure economics, government can help private sectors to develop their economies based on their competitive advantages in the market system. This way any country is able to grow economically for several decades, especially countries rich with natural resources.
If you have good management, you can use recourses with transparency and even lend natural resources to facilitate structural transformation from resource to non-resource industry and support continuous structural transformation through technological innovations and industrial improvement. As resource rich country, Russia should be able to perform better than resource poor country. I think that as long as there will be right ideas, Russia can expect bright future.
Justin Yifu Lin is one of the most famous Chinese economists. He got his dgree in economics at the University of Chicago. In 20082012, he served as chief economist and Vice President of the World Bank, developing recommendations on monetary policy, conditions of Chinas accession to the WTO, solving food, land and housing problems. He's a co-author of the "New Socialist Village" development program, founder and first director of the Chinese Economic Research Center at the Peking University. His works were also published in Russian.
Top Taliban leader Mullah Baradar who now leads the peace efforts with the US, was released by the Pakistan at the behest of the Trump Administration, an US envoy said.
The special envoy on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told a Washington audience that Pakistan had a very crucial role to play in the reconciliation process with the Taliban but has "historically not played a positive role".
But there is "a positive change" in Pakistan's attitude in recent times, he said when asked about the role of Islamabad in his ongoing efforts to bring peace in this war-ravaged country.
"The release of Mullah Baradar, which was my request... they (Pakistan) accommodated that, because Mullah Baradar has reputation of being more open, more pro-peace," said the top American envoy who is leading the Trump Administration's efforts to have peace talks with the Taliban.
Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and his successor President Ashraf Ghani have said that Baradar can play a pivotal role in the peace process and that he has tried to facilitate talks between the Taliban and the US, Khalilzad said.
Pakistan, he said, favours inter-Afghan dialogue including between the Taliban and the government.
So, the release of Baradar is a very positive thing, he said.
"We always would like Pakistan, like other countries to do more, but we appreciate what they have done so far and I have indicated and Secretary (of State), (Mike) Pompeo and the president that we want to have good relations with Pakistan, better relations with Pakistan," he said in response to a question.
"What they (Pakistan) do on Afghanistan to facilitate peace and reconciliation, which has been a burden on the relationship, that will be removed," he added.
"Pakistan is an important country with which we want to have better relations," he said.
"The role that Pakistan has played in terms of its relationship with the Taliban and the Haqqani network has been a burden on this (US-Pak) relationship. They say they want peace. We welcome that. We want them to, to play a positive role," said the US diplomat who has had several rounds of talks with the the Taliban in Doha.
"Most of the meetings we have had with the Taliban have not been in Pakistan. It has been in other countries. I think the message that I have here is a peace in Afghanistan will help our relations with Pakistan," he added.
"Peace in Afghanistan will help Afghan-Pakistan relations... regional connectivity. Pakistan will be a beneficiary of that. Let's seize this opportunity, this moment for the region for Afghanistan, especially for the obviously long suffering people of Afghanistan," Khalilzad said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On a whirlwind tour of the Northeast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday addressed rallies in three states, assuring that the citizenship bill won't harm the interests of the people of the region but will provide succour to those who have "embraced the idea and ethos of Mother India".
Visiting the northeast for the first time after the bill was passed by Lok Sabha on January 8, Modi crisscrossed Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Tripura during the day and unveiled several projects.
Though Modi sought to assuage fears in Assam and the northeast over the bill, in Meghalaya BJP's coalition partner National Peoples Party (NPP) threatened to quit the NDA if the proposed legislation is passed in Rajya Sabha.
At a meeting of party leaders of four northeastern states, the NPP adopted a resolution to oppose the bill and break its ties with the NDA if it is passed," NPP president and Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said.
Addressing a rally at Changsari in the assembly constituency of Assam Health minister and BJP-led NEDA convenor Himanta Biswa Sarma, Modi said, "It is a national commitment to the people of the Northeast that they will not be harmed in any way and citizenship will be only granted after due investigations and recommendations of the state governments."
It must be understood that there is a difference between those who forcefully entered the country and those who were "forced to flee their homes to save their lives due to their religion. Both are not the same", he said.
"We are committed to providing shelter to those minorities - Hindus, Christians, Parsis, Jains and Sikhs- in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who had to leave everything due to atrocities inflicted on them. They have come to our country and have embraced the idea and ethos of Mother India," the prime minister added.
He also alleged that there are certain sections which have taken the country to the path of ruin and are now trying to "mislead people on the citizenship issue for their self interests leading to misunderstanding. It is necessary to know these people who sit in Delhi and oppose us in Parliament. They should have come here today to see what the reality is".
The citizenship bill is awaiting clearance in the Upper House of Parliament where the ruling coalition is short of numbers.
The bill which seeks to provide Indian citizenship to non-Muslims from Bangaldesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, has triggered widespread protests in Assam and other northeastern states, including those under the rule of BJP and its NEDA allies.
Modi's visit to Assam saw nude protests, a bandh, raising of black flags and burning of effigies by AASU, KMSS and other organisations agitating against the bill.
Modi further said that the BJP was fully committed to implement the 36-year old Assam Accord and a committee on the implementation of the Clause 6 of the Accord is a step in that direction.
It may be mentioned here that several members of the committee have opted out of it.
Modi also said the NDA government is committed to protecting the language, culture, resources, hopes and aspirations of the people of Assam and the committee will take this into consideration while making the report.
Without naming the Congress, Modi alleged that it was "not sincere in implementing the accord".
"The accord was signed 36 years ago but is yet to be implemented. They have done injustice to the people of Assam. Let me assure you that our government will implement the accord in letter and spirit," he added.
Referring to the problem of infiltration, Modi said his government was committed to complete the work of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is being conducted under the supervision of the Supreme Court, within the stipulated period.
"The BJP is committed to solve the infiltration issue and will complete the sealing of the Indo-Bangla border at the earliest," he said.
In Arunachal Pradesh, though opposition Congress staged protests over the bill during his visit, Modi did not speak on the citizenship bill and kept himself to development issues of the northeast.
He inaugurated and laid foundation of projects worth Rs 4,000 crore in Arunachal Pradesh.
On the last leg of his visit, Modi reached Tripura capital Agartala and hit at the opposition, calling its proposed alliance as "mahamilavat" (great adulteration) whose leaders' main job was to compete in an Olympics of hurling abuses at him.
He said its leaders are only involved in "holding each other's hands in meetings in Delhi and Kolkata for photographs".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Meghalaya Cabinet has decided to rename the Dikkibandi stadium in Tura town after former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno A Sangma.
The state Cabinet meeting Friday presided over by Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma approved the recommendations received from the state naming authority tasked with the job to name roads, and institutions after personalities, Home Minister James K Sanga told reporters.
The Home minister said the Dikkibandi Stadium (formerly known as MP stadium) and a junction leading to AMPT road in Tura have been renamed after P A Sangma.
Purno A Sangma is also a former chief minister of Meghalaya. He was elected from the Tura Lok Sabha seat a number of times. Conrad K Sangma and James K Sangma are sons of Purno A Sangma.
He said the name MP stadium was not official and it was only in 2014 that the state government had renamed the stadium as Dikkibandi stadium.
"There was a popular demand going to the fact that majority of the money spent on the construction of the stadium was initiated by PA Sangma during his tenure as Tura MP. Today the state government has decided to honour the contribution that he (PA Sangma) made towards the construction of that stadium," he said.
The state Cabinet has also decided to name a road leading from Mawlai-Mawroh to Madan in honour of Saint Teressa.
Two roads under Greater Laban area in the city have also been renamed after two former MLAs. Howel Road was renamed Thranghok J Rangad Road while Zikzak Road was renamed as Ardendu Chaudhuri road.
The Batti Bazar road at Laban was also renamed as Roland Lyngdoh Road, Sylhetipara Road at Laban as Krepsing Swer Road and Jackson Trace Road at Lower Lumparing as Melington Kharkongor Road, the Home minister said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday assured that the textiles ministry to provide all support for promoting silk in global markets.
Swaraj said that silk is a strong commodity and there is huge demand for it in the international markets.
"I assure you that the ministry of external affairs will become a facilitating ministry" to take silk to global markets, she said at a textile ministry function - Surging Silk.
"You increase production, market is there," she added.
Talking about the popularity of India made silk saree, Swaraj said her counterparts during the United Nations General Assembly meetings, often ask about the wide variety of colour, pattern and different designs of these fabrics.
The textiles ministry distributed machines to weavers in order to eradicate thigh reeling practice in tasar silk sector and to ensure rightful earning to the rural and tribal women reelers.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj give away Buniyaad Tasar Silk Reeling Machine to a woman, as Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani looks on during 'Mega Silk event Surging Silk', in New Delhi | Photo: PTI
On the target of eradicating thigh reeling and replace it with 'Buniyaad' reeling machine by end of March 2020, Swaraj said the ministry should strive for eliminating this practice this year only by distributing these equipment.
Further, she said that there could be political differences between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, but the mulbery silk award today, brought the two states on a single platform.
Speaking at the function, Textiles Minister Smriti Zubin Irani said that silk production has increased by 41 per cent since 2013-14.
During the event, best achievers in silk industry across various segments of sericulture were honoured. Awards were also given to the best performing states.
A mobile application was also launched for quality certification in silkworm seed sector.
India's silk production capacity is expected to reach about 38,500 tonnes by 2020 from the current level of 32,000 tonnes. Increasing production will help in reducing imports.
India is the second largest producer of silk after China and the largest consumer of silk.
A 45-year-old food vendor died under mysterious circumstances in outer Delhi's Mangolpuri area with his family alleging that he was thrashed by cops, a charge denied by the police, officials said Saturday.
To ensure a fair probe, a magisterial enquiry has been initiated into the matter, Seju Kuruvilla, Deputy Commissioner of Police (outer), said.
Local AAP MLA and deputy speaker in Delhi Assemblly Rakhi Bidlan reached the police station and sought a fair and speedy investigation into the matter, they said.
The deceased, identified as Virender, a food vendor, lived with his family in the Mangolpuri area, police said.
On Friday at around 12.30 pm, Virender, along with his family, approached the Rajpark police station to resolve some issue between his son and his girlfriend. The families of both the parties were at the station, a senior police officer said.
On Saturday, Virender's wife alleged that he was thrashed by police officials inside the station which led to his death.
However, police said he died at his residence Friday night.
The exact cause of the death will be ascertained after the post-mortem report is available, the officer said.
On the basis of the report, the magistrate will decide on the further course of action, he added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Lt Gen Kanwal Jeet Singh Dhillon has taken over as the 48th Corps Commander of Army's Srinagar-based strategic 15 Corps, which mans the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, a defence spokesman said Saturday.
Lt Gen Dhillon took over the command of the 15 Corps, also called the Chinar Corps, on Friday from Lt Gen A K Bhatt.
"A befitting farewell was given to Lt Gen Bhatt who has moved to New Delhi as Military Secretary (MS) at the Army Headquarters," the spokesman said.
He said Lt Gen Bhatt's tenure saw many successful operations neutralising the highest number of terrorists in a year over a decade. As many as 259 terrorists were eliminated and other 64 local militants neutralised through apprehensions and surrenders, he added.
"This achievement assumes a greater significance in view of imposition of Non-Initiation of Combat Operations during the holy month of Ramzan, prolonged period of Amarnath Yatra for 60 days and peaceful conduct of Local Urban Bodies and Panchayat elections. Along the Line of Control, the strategy of swift and robust punitive response to Pakistan's ceasefire violations and other provocations proved to be effective," the spokesman said.
In his farewell message, Lt Gen Bhatt complimented all ranks of the Chinar Corps for their dedication and thanked the J&K police, CRPF, BSF and other security forces, civil administration and the people for their support.
Lt Gen Dhillon was commissioned in December 1983 and has had an illustrious military career spanning 35 years during which he held varied prestigious command, staff and instructional appointments, the spokesman said.
The General Officer has an incisive understanding of J&K, having served in the state for five tenures since 1988, notable being Sector Commander of the Rashtiya Rifles and Brigadier General Staff of the Chinar Corps.
A graduate of the Defence Service Staff College, Wellington, and the National Defence College, Delhi, Lt Gen Dhillon is credited with important appointments at the Army Headquarters and instructional appointments at the Infantry School, Mhow, and the Indian Army Training Team abroad.
Before taking over as the Chinar Corps Commander, the General Officer was tenanting the prestigious appointment of Director General Perspective Planning.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
: Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy Saturday said he would retire from politics if it was proven that the audio clip released by him about BJP state unit president B S Yeddyurappa's alleged toppling game was mimicry and concocted.
Sticking to his charge that Yeddyurappa had tried to lure a JDS MLA with bribe and other offers, Kumaraswamy hit back at the state BJP strongman, who had said that the audio clip was 'fake' and a 'concocted story.'
Facing turmoil in the ruling coalition that has cast a shadow over the stability of his government, Kumaraswamy had Friday released the audio clip in which Yeddyurappa is purportedly trying to lure JDS MLA Naganagouda through his son.
"I am stating from this place... if it is proved that it was not Yeddyurappa who had spoken and that it is mimicry or parody by Kumaraswamy, then it is not about his retiring, I will retire," the chief minister said at Dharmastala, a holy place in Dakshina Kannada district.
Kumaraswamy also said that those who "played games" with the presiding deity of Dharmastala, Lord Manjunatha, would incur his wrath.
"Invoking the name of Lord Manjunatha Swamy, he could not get protection... he (Yeddyurappa) had to resign within one month (as chief minister)," the Chief Minister said.
Kumaraswamy was apparently referring to a "truth test" face off between him and Yeddyurappa in 2011, when the latter was the chief minister.
Yeddyurappa had challenged Kumaraswamy to prove the allegations of corruption and nepotism against him by taking the truth test before Lord Manjunatha and that he would also do the same.
He later retracted and just offered prayers.
Kumaraswamy, who visited the shrine later, pledged before the deity that he stood by the charges made by him against the Chief Minister in the last six to seven months.
According to the tradition followed at the temple, aggrieved parties stand before the deity and take a pledge on the issues they have been contesting, after payment of Rs 11 as fee.
As per the custom, the temple authorities only facilitate the exercise, but do not interfere.
The political war over charges of horse trading had escalated Friday with Kumaraswamy releasing the audio clip hours before presenting the Congress-JDS coalition government's budget for 2019-2020 in the assembly.
Yeddyurappa, who is at the vortex of the row over his alleged bid to poach the ruling coalition MLAs for the past few weeks, had dismissed the clip as "fake" and a "concocted story".
Kumaraswamy had said that during the purported conversation, Yeddyurappa had also spoken about a "Rs 50 crore offer to book" the assembly speaker.
In the clip, a male voice is heard offering money and ministerial berth, besides assuring Naganagouda's son Sharan Gouda about "taking care" of the Speaker and the judges in case of the anti- defection law being invoked.
Yeddyurappa had dismissed the claim by the chief minister that he had spoken in the audio about a "Rs 50 crore" offer to the assembly speaker.
"I will retire from politics if it (the allegation) is proved. If I had spoken like this (about the speaker), if it is proved, I will resign as an MLA and quit politics," he had said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The CBI will continue the questioning of Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar for the second day on Sunday and former TMC MP Kunal Ghosh will appear in person at the investigating agency's office here for interrogation in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam, officials said Saturday.
Three senior CBI officers questioned Kumar for nearly nine hours on Saturday about his alleged role in the tampering of crucial evidence in the scam, the officials said.
There was no briefing by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the questioning which began at around 11 am at its highly secured office at Oakland here as per the directions of the Supreme Court.
Kumar's counsel Biswajit Deb, who is also the TMC coordinator for Meghalaya, said Kumar is "cooperating and complying" with the CBI.
"He (Kumar) has come here on the orders of the Supreme Court. He has complied earlier and he is complying now as per the orders," he told reporters outside the CBI office.
Kumar led the special investigation team (SIT) formed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to investigation the chit fund scam before the probe was handed over to the CBI by the apex court.
He will be present at the CBI office for the second day tomorrow, said Deb, who met Kumar along with two senior IPS officers from West Bengal -- Javed Shamim and Murlidhar Sharma -- thrice during the day for brief periods.
Ghosh had implicated BJP leader Mukul Roy, who was once the right-hand man of Banerjee and 12 others in the Saradha scam.
The Supreme Court had directed Kumar on Tuesday to appear before the CBI and "faithfully" cooperate in the investigation of cases arising out of the Saradha chit fund scam.
The apex court had also directed Kumar to appear before the investigating agency at a neutral place in Shillong "to avoid all unnecessary controversy" and made clear that he would not be arrested.
The CBI had moved the Supreme Court after its officials were thwarted by Kolkata Police when they had gone to Kumar's official residence in Kolkata to question him on February 3.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had rushed to the spot and had staged a three-day 'Save the Constitution' dharna against the CBI move and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah of plotting a 'coup'.
The central investigating agency had said that its officials had wanted to question Kumar to plug the holes in the Saradha investigation case as he was supposed to be in possession of certain key documents as a member of the special investigation team.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
All unorganised sector workers up to 40 years of age can subscribe to the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan (PMSYM) scheme, which entails a minimum monthly pension of Rs 3,000, from February 15, a notification said.
The scheme, announced by Finance Minister in the Budget for 2019-20, is targeted at unorganised sector workers with monthly income of up to Rs 15,000.
Goyal had said it would benefit 100 million workers in the next five years.
The scheme would provide them an assured pension of Rs 3,000 from the age of 60 years on a monthly contribution of a small amount during their working life.
"This Scheme may be called the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan, 2019. It shall come into force on the 15th day of February, 2019....the unorganised workers have option to become the members of the Scheme, on and from the 15th day of February, 2019," the notification issued by the said.
The monthly contribution by the worker joining the scheme would be Rs 55, with matching contributions from the government.
The contributions would rise at higher age. The worker joining the scheme at the age of 40 years would contribute Rs 200, while workers at the age of 29 years would pay Rs 100.
The scheme will cover unorganised workers who are working or engaged as home based workers, street vendors, mid-day meal workers, head loaders, brick kiln workers, cobblers, rag pickers, domestic workers, washer men, rickshaw pullers, landless labourers, agricultural workers, construction workers, among others.
However, informal workers will not be eligible for the scheme if they are covered under the National Pension Scheme, the Employees' State Insurance Corporation Scheme or Employees' Provident Fund Scheme. Workers who are income-tax assessees are also not be eligible.
The unorganised sector worker who wishes to join the scheme shall be not less than 18 years of age and not exceeding 40 years, the notification said. The worker should also have a savings bank account in his/her name and an Aadhaar number.
The scheme has been brought under the Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act, 2008. The Central government will establish a pension fund to be administered for this scheme.
The scheme also provides that if a subscriber has given regular contributions and died due to any cause, his spouse shall be entitled to continue with the scheme subsequently by payment of regular contribution.
The spouse can also exit the scheme by receiving the share of contribution paid by deceased subscriber along with accumulated interest.
In case of permanent disablement of a subscriber, his or her spouse will be entitled to continue with the scheme or exit by receiving the share of contribution, with interest.
In case of death of a pensioner, his or her spouse shall be only entitled to receive 50 per cent of the pension.
India on Saturday said Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's recent remarks on the treatment of minorities in India were an "egregious insult" to all Indians and asked the neighbouring country to focus on its domestic challenges, rather than diverting attention.
Khan was quoted by the Pakistani media as saying at an event in Pakistan's Punjab province that his government would not allow minorities to be treated like "second class citizens" as is done in India.
Responding to queries on Khan's reported comments, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said his remarks were an "egregious insult to all citizens of India".
Pakistan's Prime Minister has yet again demonstrated his lack of understanding about India's secular polity and ethos, he said.
The Pakistani premier overlooks the obvious fact that adherents of all faiths choose to live under the democratic polity and the progressive Constitution of India, Kumar said.
"India has eminent leaders of all faiths who occupy its highest constitutional and official positions. In contrast, Pakistani citizens of non-Islamic faith are barred from occupying high constitutional offices," he said.
The minorities in Pakistan are often turned away from government bodies such as the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister, even in 'naya Pakistan', the spokesperson said in an apparent reference to the removal of a minority Ahmadi Muslim from a recently set up economic council under Khan's government.
"Pakistan would do well to focus on its domestic challenges and improve conditions of its citizens rather than try and divert attention," Kumar said.
The Pakistani Prime Minister's latest attempts to play with minority sentiment in India will be rejected by the people of India, he asserted.
This is not the first time Khan has made remarks about minorities in India.
In December, Khan had twice compared the treatment of minorities in his country with that in India.
India had slammed him back then saying, Pakistan should be the last country to lecture it on plurality and inclusive society.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
France and Germany have reached a compromise that will allow Berlin to remain the lead negotiator with Russia on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, European leaders confirmed on Friday. "Regarding the gas directive, we have reached an agreement and this was possible because Germany and France worked closely together," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a joint news conference with Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. "Today is a good day, and that is because of French-German cooperation."
As Deutsche Welle reports, the two EU countries have now agreed to ensure oversight will come from the "territory and territorial sea of the member state where the first interconnection point is located." Merkel called the pipeline a "purely economic project" that will guarantee cheaper, more reliable gas supplies. France's Foreign Ministry had earlier signaled its intention to vote for changes to the EU's Third Energy Package Gas Directive regulating gas imports.
'There is no French-German crisis'
France had said it would support EU oversight of new offshore energy pipelines in a move that could have quashed the undersea pipeline plans between Russia and Germany. After the deal was struck, French President Emmanuel Macron's government was keen to stress that "there is no French-German crisis." "The dependence on Russian gas worries us," a spokesman told the dpa news agency. "For that reason, it is important to us to ensure European control so that this dependence does not increase."
The compromise reached on Friday, which is not legally binding until it is approved by the European Parliament, was backed by every member state except Bulgaria. If approved by Brussels, the agreement could complicate things for Russian energy giant Gazprom, which would then have to follow EU regulations and would no longer be the sole operator of the pipeline.
Pipeline opposition
The Nord Stream 2 project faces opposition from many countries in eastern and central Europe, the United States and particularly Ukraine, because it risks increasing Europe's dependence on Russian natural gas. In a guest commentary written for DW, the US ambassadors to Germany, Denmark and the EU warned that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would drastically increase Russia's energy leverage over the EU. "European Union reliance on Russian gas presents risks for Europe and the West as a whole and makes us all less secure," the ambassadors said. "The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will heighten Europe's susceptibility to Russia's energy blackmail tactics."
Along with the planned TurkStream pipeline across the Black Sea, Nord Stream 2 would mean Russia could also bypass Ukraine in providing gas to Europe, robbing it of transit fees and a major strategic asset. The draft compromise addressed these concerns, saying: "We consider a [gas rules] directive in this spirit indispensable for a fruitful discussion on the future gas transit through Ukraine." Construction of Nord Stream 2 has already started and involves companies such as Germany's Wintershall and Uniper, Dutch-British Shell, France's Engie and Austria's OMV.
India ended its campaign at the Fed Cup with a fourth place finish after losing the classification tie 1-2 to Korea as the team badly missed injured Karman Kaur Thandi, who did not play on Saturday.
Captain Vishal Uppal handed national champion Mahak Jain her Fed Cup debut after a groin strain forced Karman out of the tie.
The diminutive Mahak played her heart out before losing steam towards the end for a 2-6 6-3 1-6 defeat against Na Ri Kim.
Like on many occasions, Ankita came out to level the tie as she outplayed Sunam Jiong 6-3 6-3 in one hour and 18 minutes.
The doubles became decisive but Ankita and Prarthana Thombare lost the close rubber 4-6 4-6 to the Korean team of Su Jeong Jang and Kim.
Captain Uppal said India had a good chance to win this tie.
"Big learning curve for Mahak today. She could have won this match but she dropped off at the start of the third set which you cannot afford to do against a good player," Uppal told PTI.
Ankita dominated her match and we could have won 2-0 today or even 2-1 had Karman been fit enough to play."
Uppal said future was bright for the Indian Fed Cup team players.
"As a captain I have seen a lot of good things which we need to build on. I think once we have all our best girls healthy we can become an even more dangerous team. I am encouraged by the fact we are a young team and we will only keep getting better.
"I am probably a bit disappointed about today's result but overall I am very upbeat about our future prospects. I think Ankita can break through to top 100 this year if she stays healthy and keeps playing the way she has played this week," said Uppal.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India remains ready to provide maximum possible support to Dhaka since a prosperous and progressive Bangladesh is in India's national interest, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has said.
In her opening statement at the 5th India-Bangladesh Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) meeting held on Friday, Swaraj said the two sides should continue to deepen partnership in defence and security, including increasing cooperation against terrorist groups.
Swaraj held the JCC meeting with her Bangladeshi counterpart A K Abdul Momen.
She said India accords highest priority to its partnership with Bangladesh.
"I want to reiterate that India stands in full support of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's developmental agenda. We remain ready to provide maximum possible support since a prosperous, secure and progressive Bangladesh is in India's direct national interest," she said.
"This is why our government was able to settle long standing bilateral issues including on our land boundary. This is also the reason that we believe all pending issues can also be similarly brought to amicable solutions," she said.
She noted that close economic cooperation in support of Bangladesh's rapid economic development and creation of cross-border infrastructure links, both in energy and transport, to support economic development in both countries is a fundamental aspect of the partnership.
Swaraj also emphasised on a greater cooperation in the energy sector, in building roads, railways, ports and inland waterways and in using such connectivity for mutual benefit will create jobs, reduce costs and enhance mobility for both of the nations.
She said India's grant in aid projects and credit lines are designed to support Bangladesh aspirations of becoming a middle income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041.
She pointed out that as many as 90 bilateral agreements have been signed since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Bangladesh in 2015. These also cover new and high technology areas for the first time.
The two sides also inked three pacts, including in the areas of health services and training of civil servants, on Friday.
The three MoUs signed were on mid-career training of 1,800 Bangladeshi civil servants, another between AYUSH Ministry and the Ministry of Health of Bangladesh on cooperation in the field of medicinal plants and the third between the Anti-Corruption Commission of Bangladesh and Central Bureau of Investigation of India.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Taking a swipe at the opposition parties' proposed "grand alliance", BJP president Amit Shah said if it wins the Lok Sabha polls, every leader of the coalition would take turn to be prime minister for a day on six days of a week and the "country would be on holiday on Sunday".
Addressing BJP workers near Panaji as part of the party's 'Atal Booth Karyakarta Sammelan' he asked them to ensure that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is re-elected in the Lok Sabha polls and the party's government would "flush out infiltrators from Kashmir to Kanyakumari to Kolkata".
Shah asserted that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was aimed at identifying the "infiltrators" and said that he wanted to ask Congress president Rahul Gandhi whether the NRC exercise should be held in Goa as well.
The BJP national president said booth-level workers will help the party win the Lok Sabha polls expected to be held in April.
Taunting the opposition parties for trying to cobble up an alliance to oust the BJP from power, Shah said, "The 'mahagathbandhan' will have Mayawati as PM on Monday, Akhilesh (Yadav) on Tuesday, H D Deve Gowda on Wednesday, (Chandrababu) Naidu on Thursday, (M K) Stalin on Friday and Sharad Pawar on Saturday. The country will be on holiday on Sunday."
Earlier, speaking at a party workers' meet in Pune, Shah challenged Pawar to share and compare figures of farm produce procured during the UPA rule and Modi government.
Hitting out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for denying permission to BJP leaders to hold rallies in the eastern state, the BJP chief claimed that in a sting operation an "intelligence officer" had said meeting were disallowed not because of law and order apprehension but because Banerjee was "scared" of the BJP.
He reiterated that the BJP is committed to building the Ram temple in Ayodhya and down played the apprehensions regarding the impact of the SP-BSP alliance in Uttar Pradesh saying his party would win 74 seats (out of 80) in the country's most populous state.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NCP president Sharad Pawar said Saturday that he was "worried" about Union minister Nitin Gadkari as he is being projected as a possible alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Gadkari, a senior BJP leader, was recently in when he was seen as taking swipes at his party's top leadership after the Assembly poll losses in three states.
Talking to reporters at Solapur in Maharashtra, Pawar said to a question, "Gadkari ismy friend. We have worked together. There is talk about his name being pushed (as an alternative to Modi) and because of that I am worried about him."
He did not elaborate further.
Talking about alliances in the state for Lok Sabha polls, Pawar said his party was not engaged in any talks for a tie-up with Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).
"Raj Thackeray has a great deal of support from the youth. But we have not had any talks regarding any agreement pertaining to elections with his party," said Pawar.
He discusses public issues with the MNS chief often, but there has been no discussion about working together in the election, he added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Corruption by governments in BJP-ruled states should be highlighted proactively, Congress president Rahul Gandhi told the party's state unit leaders on Saturday.
At a meeting of Congress state chiefs and leaders of Congress legislature party, Gandhi also discussed candidate selection and alliances for the Lok Sabha elections due this summer, party sources said.
They said Gandhi was of the view that state leaders should proactively highlight cases of corruption of BJP-led state governments.
He felt that the achievements of UPA 1 and UPA 2 need to be highlighted to check the narrative that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has done more for the people as compared to the previous regimes, they said.
"Today I met with our CLP Leaders & PCC Chiefs from all over India to review our election preparedness & strategy in each state. We discussed a wide range of issues related to the upcoming elections," Gandhi said in a tweet.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In view of rising cases of and deaths due to the disease in Gujarat and Punjab, the Union Health Ministry has sent two teams to assess the situation and assist the states in strengthening their response mechanism to contain the ailment.
Fifty-four deaths and 1,187 cases were reported in Gujarat till February 7, while 30 deaths and 301 cases were reported from Punjab, according to data by the Health Ministry.
"Two central teams have been sent to Gujarat and Punjab as they have reported large number of fatalities due to the H1N1 infection," said an official from the ministry.
Both teams comprise a microbiologist, an epidemiologist and a clinician.
The ministry had earlier deputed a public health team to Rajasthan, which has recorded the highest number of cases and deaths due to this year.
Ninty-six deaths and 2,706 cases were reported in Rajasthan till February 7, the data stated.
The states have also been advised to involve district collectors in enhancing public awareness and outbreak response.
The death toll due to in the country has soared to 226 with the H1N1 virus claiming 31 more lives in a week till Monday, while the number of those affected crossed the 6,000 mark.
In a recently held high-powered meeting with senior officials of the ministry, Union health secretary Preeti Sudan reviewed the state of preparedness and action taken to deal with H1N1 influenza cases.
The guidelines for influenza vaccination were shared with all the states and the details of manufacturers of vaccine provided by the Drug Controller General of India was shared with all the states.
Communication material for preventive measures has also been shared with all the states.
"Majority of cases have been reported from 13 states (and majority of deaths have been reported from Rajasthan, Gujarat and Punjab. Deaths have been seen more in persons having comorbidities like diabetes, hypertension etc," the official said.
Regular video conferences are being held to monitor the situation, he said.
ALSO READ: 1,000 swine flu cases in Delhi this year; hospitals report 13 deaths
Advisory for preparedness to seasonal influenza A (H1N1) was issued and Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) and its state units have enhanced the surveillance for Influenza like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI), according to a statement issued here.
The Drug Controller General of India has been asked to coordinate with drug manufacturers and monitor the availability of Oseltamivir, the drug recommended by the WHO in various states, it said.
The ministry has recommended vaccination for health care workers and other priority groups.
There was still some hard work to be done ahead of the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a Washington envoy said Saturday after three days of talks in Pyongyang.
Stephen Biegun, the US Special Representative for North Korea, said preparatory talks had been productive, but more dialogue was needed ahead of the summit scheduled for Vietnam from February 27-28.
Biegun on Saturday briefed South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on his Pyongyang visit, shortly after Trump revealed the summit would take place in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
"We have some hard work to do with the DPRK between now and then," Biegun told Kang, adding: "I'm confident that if both sides stay committed we can make real progress here."
Trump announced Hanoi as the location on Twitter, hailing as "very productive" the preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said.
The State Department said talks during Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula".
It also confirmed Biegun had agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the summit.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with the top brass of the Korean People's Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernise the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
Attention will now focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward denuclearisation.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war."
The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South.
Experts say the most likely scenario in Vietnam is that the concerned parties -- North and South Korea, the US, and China -- to declare a formal end to the war as a political statement.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula".
But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV."
On Friday Trump tweeted that North Korea will become a "great Economic Powerhouse" under Kim.
"He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is," said Trump.
But Park Won-gon, a professor at South Korea's Handong University, said Trump's remarks may not align with Pyongyang's current agenda.
"What Pyongyang wants now, more than anything, is the lifting of the existing sanctions," Park told AFP.
"The idea of being an economic powerhouse may sound too vague and even unrealistic for them at this moment."
North Korea, which holds most of the peninsula's mineral resources, was once wealthier than the South, but decades of mismanagement and the demise of its former paymaster the Soviet Union have left it deeply impoverished.
In 2017 the UN Security Council banned the North's main exports -- coal and other mineral resources, fisheries and textile products -- to cut off its access to hard currency in response to Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gujjar protesters continued their sit-in on the rail tracks in Rajasthan's Sawai Madhopur district for the second day on Saturday, refusing to back off from their quota demand even after a government delegation met them there.
The blockade by Gujjar Arakshan Sangarsh Samiti chief Kirori Singh Bainsla and his supporters has forced the West Central Railway (CWR) to divert, cancel or partially terminate nearly 200 trains in the last two days.
A state government team, which included Tourism Minister Vishvendra Singh and senior IAS officer Neeraj K Pawan, met Bainsla and his supporters, but no no agreement could be reached.
"We will continue the dharna on the rail tracks. No compromise was made with the government delegation. We want a 5 per cent reservation order," said Bainsla.
He said the government had promised 5 per cent reservation to the Gujjars, Raika-Rebari, Gadia Luhar, Banjara and Gadaria communities in government jobs and educational institutions in its election manifesto. Bainsla said the government should give the same now, so that the protesters could "return home gracefully".
Earlier, the tourism minister had asked Bainsla and his supporters to hold talks with a delegation on Sunday, saying the issue cannot be resolved on the rail tracks.
"The government is committed to resolving the issues. I am asking you to move from the track. I am requesting you to hold talks with a delegation tomorrow as the process cannot be done in a crowd and on the rail tracks," Singh said.
Vijay Bainsla, another Gujjar leader, said agitators had also blocked Jaipur-Delhi, Jodhpur-Bhilwara, Ajmer-Bhilwara highways on Saturday.
Train movement continued to be affected due to the blockade on Sawai Madhopur-Bayana railway section in Kota division.
Nearly 200 passenger/mail express trains running in the West Central Railway (CWR) zone were either diverted, cancelled or partially terminated in the last two days due to the agitation, CWR Spokesperson Vijay Prakash said.
NWR Chief Public Relations Officer Abhay Sharma said Hazrat Nizamuddin-Ahmedabad, Hazrat Nizamuddin-Udaipur and Udaipur-Hazrat Nizamuddin trains were cancelled, whereas Firozpur Cantt-Mumbai train was diverted on Saturday.
DGP (law and order) M L Lather said no untoward incident was reported due to the agitation. "Our teams are alert and the deadlock may soon be over," he said.
Currently, the five communities are getting one-per cent separate reservation under the most-backward category in addition to the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla and his supporters continued their sit-in on the rail tracks in Rajasthan's Swai Madhopur district for the second day on Saturday, forcing authorities to cancel three trains and divert one.
The protesters are demanding five per cent reservation to Gujjars, Raika-Rebari, Gadia Luhar, Banjara and Gadaria communities in government jobs and educational institutions. Train movement continued to be affected due to the blockade on Swai Madhopur-Bayana railway section in Kota division.
North Western Railway (NWR) Chief Public Relations Officer Abhay Sharma said three trains, including Hazrat Nizamuddin-Ahmedabad, Hazrat Nizamuddin-Udaipur and Udaipur-Hazrat Nizamuddin were cancelled whereas Firozpur Cantt-Mumbai train was was diverted.
Bainsla, who is staging his dharna along with supporters on the railway tracks in Malarna Dungar of Swai Madhopur district, said he will not move till five per cent reservation was given.
He said the government had promised five per cent reservation to the community in its election manifesto so the state government was liable to give the same "so that the people can return home gracefully".
Vijay Bainsla, another Gujjar leader, said they have been waiting for talks with the government since last 20 days on their demand.
He said agitators blocked Jaipur-Delhi, Jodhpur-Bhilwara, Ajmer-Bhilwara highway on Saturday.
DGP (Law and order) M L Lather said no untoward incident has been reported so far due to the Gujjar agitation. Our teams are alert and the deadlock may soon be over after today's meeting with the committee constituted by the government.
Currently, the five communities are getting one-per cent separate reservation under the most-backward category in addition to the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi will address a rally in Dharampur in Gujarat's Valsad district on February 14, its state unit chief Amit Chavda said Saturday.
Chavda added that a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), to be attended by top leaders including UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and newly-inducted general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra besides the party chief, is also scheduled in the state.
"Rahul ji will visit Gujarat for a public rally on February 14. Our request to hold the CWC meet in Gujarat has also been accepted. In the coming days, Sonia ji, Rahul ji, Priyanka ji, Manmohan ji will visit Gujarat," Chavda said.
The date and venue of the CWC meet is, however, yet to be finalised, he informed.
Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said Rahul Gandhi's rally will be held in Moti Dungri village in Dharampur taluka of Valsad district in south Gujarat.
Party sources said the Congress plans a high-decibel campaign in the state for the Lok Sabha polls and national leaders, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Sachin Pilot and Navjot Singh Sidhu among others, are expected to address rallies.
They said the Congress is also preparing a state-level list of issues for the party's manifesto.
The manifesto committee met on Saturday for the first time, the sources added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Syed Mujtaba
Kashmir is a zone of chaos, among the highest militarised zones in the world. Kashmir is a bone of contention between two Nuclear Countries India and Pakistan.
The partition of India and Pakistan gave the birth to conflicts, chaos, and hatred. The two independent dominions of Pakistan and India were born on 14th and 15th of August respectively. Princely states were a peculiar issue, they were technically free to accede to either dominion or to remain independent, the idea of independence according to Lord Mountbatten, the first and last British Governor General of free India, was merely a theoretical option. Except Junagarh, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir all others chose their dominions. Junagarh and Hyderabad were annexed in the Indian Union subsequently. Jammu and Kashmir till October 1947 was independent. The idea to remain independent by Hari Singh put the future of the state at stake and till date the state is being sandwiched between the two nuclear powers India and Pakistan leading to deaths of millions of innocent persons including unborn babies in the womb of their mothers who were mercilessly killed in several massacres.
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For over 70 years, unarmed Kashmiris, including men, women, school-going boys and girls and aged people have continued to witness mental, psychological as well as physical humiliation and torture. Every day, there are incidents of gashing of eyes, use of ever-new methods during unending curfews, torching of their villages along with crops and destruction of their business as well as economic life, which is in utter defiance of international Human Rights and Humanitarian laws.
The Kashmir conflict is a legacy of the past. The international community had given Pakistan and India many chances to resolve the outstanding issues. Right from partition apart from UN SC resolutions, various agreements, mediations and talks have been articulated between the two nations. Tashkent Agreement, Shimla Agreement, Lahore Declaration, Agra Summit, Peace Process and Confidence Building Measures are the glaring examples. At the bilateral approach, the political leadership of both the countries have failed because prior to every sincere approach towards the resolution, politically motivated opportunistic preconditions are placed which are not acceptable to one or the other stake holders to the dispute . Also, the stake holders incorporate the political interests of their party with the choice of inclusion of stake holders to the dispute and at one time accept different elements as the stake holders but on other instance refuse to recognise them as a party to dispute which maligns the spirit of an unconditional dialogue. In the last three years there have not been any productive and substantive talks between India and Pakistan.
In international politics, there are two basic strategic options:
(a) Defensive posture (b) Offensive posture.
In conflict, States display both offensive and defensive behaviours. Both offensive and defensive behaviours can involve the use of force and aggression. In geopolitical scenario of South Asia, Pak-India animosity is the major subject which has decisive role. The geo-political and strategic importance of Jammu and Kashmir has put India and Pakistan on formidable wars, hostility, and low intensity conflicts. Both nations are nuclear powers and are rivals in non- military issues including economy and politics.
There is no reluctance to say that regional forum like SAARC (the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) is inactive due to various political reasons of members. The members to SAARC have made postponements of SAARC Summits on five occasions: 1991 (6th Summit in Colombo) 1999 (11th Summit in Kathmandu), 2003 (12th Summit in Islamabad), 2005 (13th Summit in Dhaka) and 2016 (19th Summit in Islamabad) and recently in 2018. All regional powers are aware of the fact that the blame game of the two Nations spoils the geopolitical landscape of South Asia instead of making things better domestically. If India and Pakistan want to make South Asia a peaceful and prosperous region, they have to adopt ideology of non-violence.
Kashmir bleeds and for the past seven decades the people of Kashmir remain trapped in this status quo. The baggage of history weighs heavy on us and the change in this shift is possible only through sustained unconditional dialogue dialogue as we all understand is currently the most civilised and humane way to resolve conflicts There remains an urgent need to address past and ongoing human rights violations and to deliver justice for all people in Kashmir who have been suffering several decades of conflict. Any resolution to the political situation in Kashmir should entail a commitment to ending the cycles of violence and unaccountability for past and current human rights violations and abuses committed by all parties and redress for victims. Such a resolution can only be brought about by meaningful dialogue that includes the people of Kashmir
India and Pakistan should resume the dialogue process and engage all the stake holders including the people of Jammu and Kashmir in a sustained unconditional dialogue aimed at resolving Kashmir issue and which will be imperative for lasting peace in South Asian Region. In order to move forward, there should be a proper mechanism.
India and Pakistan should resolve the Kashmir crisis in a manner that future generation should not shun even the thought of taking up arms. The two should learn a lesson from Germany and France who were once bitter neighbours and fought against each other in the two global wars. But are now a part of the strong European Union, sharing a free border, both using the same Euro. India and Pakistan should repair the damage they have done from past 65 years and pledge to cooperate in economic, technological and social areas. This can be achieved by soft hand, making Line of Control as Line of cooperation to diminish and eliminate their mistrust and stubbornness.
Syed Mujtaba, Writer is a Human Rights Activist, observer of socio-political contexts. And can be reached at [email protected]
Elizabeth Warren officially joined Sunday a crowded field of Democrats vying to challenge President in 2020 -- already shaping up to be one of the largest and most diverse ever.
Warren joins a group of White House hopefuls that includes other high-flying female US senators, charismatic military veterans and a young gay mayor.
And it is likely to grow before the US primary season gets underway a year from now. Here are the first entrants in the presidential race, 21 months before the election.
Elizabeth Warren: At 69, the US Senate's consumer protection champion from Massachusetts became the first high-profile Democrat to enter the race when she announced a presidential exploratory committee on December 31.
She officially kicked off her White House run on Saturday. Warren is on the party's left flank, and built her reputation by holding Wall Street accountable for its missteps.
She is considered to have one of the best campaign organizations of any Democrat.
Trump has already taken aim at Warren, mocking her proclamation of Native American heritage.
Cory Booker: The 49-year-old US senator from New Jersey announced his candidacy February 1, evoking the civil rights movement as he promised to work to bring together a divided America.
Often compared to former president Barack Obama, Booker began his career as a community activist and rose to prominence as mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He was elected to the US Senate in 2013, the first African-American senator ever from that state.
A talented orator with a flair for the dramatic, he drew attention for his performance during confirmation hearings of Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Kirsten Gillibrand: This New York senator made a name fighting the battle to end sexual assault, especially in the military, before the #MeToo movement gained national prominence.
The 52-year-old, a fierce Trump critic, is making gender and women's issues a hallmark of her campaign.
Kamala Harris: The barrier-breaking senator from California who aspires to be the nation's first black female president announced her candidacy on a day honouring slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr.
The daughter of an Indian immigrant medical researcher mother and a Jamaican economist father, Harris, 54, began her career as a district attorney in San Francisco before serving as California's attorney general.
Julian Castro: A cabinet member in the Obama era and grandson of a Mexican immigrant, Castro announced his candidacy in English and Spanish on January 12 in the heat of the debate on immigration and border security.
At 44, the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas hopes to become the nation's first Hispanic president.
Tulsi Gabbard: At just 37, this congresswoman from Hawaii would be the first Hindu president if elected.
A supporter of liberal Bernie Sanders in the 2016 race, military veteran Gabbard was criticized for meeting with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad during that country's civil war, and for anti-gay positions that she has since retracted and apologized for.
Pete Buttigieg: Nine months younger than Gabbard is the South Bend, Indiana, mayor who joined the race unveiling a resolutely future-looking and optimistic message to counter Trump's darker vision.
A US Navy veteran who put his mayoral duties on hold to serve in Afghanistan, Buttigieg would become the first openly gay nominee of any major party.
Andrew Yang: The 44-year-old tech entrepreneur launched his campaign with little fanfare in late 2017, warning against the dangers that automation presents to US workers.
He has advocated for a form of universal basic income as a way to reduce inequality.
John Delaney: An affluent Maryland businessman who served three terms in Congress, Delaney was the earliest Democrat to officially launch a bid, back in July 2017. He has crisscrossed the early-voting state of Iowa seeking to boost his name recognition.
Waiting in the wings: Several big Democratic guns have yet to commit, including former vice president Joe Biden and senators Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown. Senator Amy Klobuchar is expected to announce on February 10.
Former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke is considering a run, as are billionaire New York ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Current and former governors are in the mix, too: Washington's Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Steve Bullock of Montana and Virginia's Terry McAuliffe.
: A 14-year-old mentally unsound boy from Madhya Pradesh was reunited with his family after about eight months with the help of Face Recognition Technology, police said here Saturday.
The boy had left his residence in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh in June, 2018.
He was traced at a Government Ashram in Bangalore on December 25 last year, a police release said.
He was subsequently reunited with his family with the help of the Darpan Face Recognition Tool developed by Telangana police, it said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The (ED) has registered a money laundering case against Pakistan-based outfit Falah-e-Insaniat (FIF), a front for banned terror group (LeT), the agency said Saturday.
It said a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) has been filed by the central probe agency for the outfit's "involvement in money laundering through various hawala channels."
The ED said it took cognisance of a Investigation Agency (NIA) FIR, filed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) last year in September, to file its own case against the Falah-e-Insaniat.
The NIA has carried out searches in this case in the past andhas seized over four dozen SIM cards, phones and Rs 1.56 crore (suspected) cash and arrested four people till now in the case.
The ED said one of the arrested accused in the case, Delhi-based Mohammed Salman,was in "regular touch with a Dubai-based Pakistan national, who in turn was connected with the deputy chief of FIF."
Salman is alleged to have received funds from FIF operators through hawala and he and other persons were reported to have received money illegally from various persons of Pakistan and UAE among others, the agency said.
"These funds were utilised to carry out terrorist activities and create unrest in India," the ED said in a statement.
The agency said its probe will "establish money trail and identify proceeds of crime that are suspected to be generated out of the criminal activities.
The Delhi Minorities Commission has started an internship scheme for students seeking hands on experience in the fields of minority rights, law and other related subjects.
The Commission aims to induct 8-10 students from the final year courses of LLB and political science to give them experience in matters of law, minority rights and other such related subjects, said Zafarul Islam Khan, chairman of the panel.
"Students from departments like law and political science can come to the Commission for a week or more, understand its work and how complaints are received and dealt with," Khan said.
The interns will be able to interact with the commission's chairman, members and staff, besides having practical experience of how the panel operates in dealing with matters of legal implications, he said.
"At the end of the internship period, the students will be awarded a certificate and a token honorarium," the Commission chairman said.
Under the scheme, Srishti Verma, a student of the Institute of Law, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, recently completed her internship and was awarded her certificate by the commission.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi government is considering a nearly threefold-hike in the margin money for ration dealers from existing Rs 70 to Rs 200 per quintal, besides paying arrears to them.
Food and Civil Supplies Minister Imran Hussain Saturday said the matter is under active consideration of the government.
"A proposal in this regard will be placed before the cabinet at the earliest for trebling the margin money," Hussain said in a statement.
The Minister also said the demand of ration dealers for payment of arrears of margin money from September 1, 2013 to August 31, 2014 has also been acceded to by the Delhi government. The matter is being forwarded to the Union government for payment of equal amount of arrears as central assistance, he said.
The announcement was made by Hussain after a meeting of office-bearers of the Delhi Sarkari Ration Dealers Sangh which was also attended by the Commissioner, Food and Supplies (CFS), and other officials of the department.
The Delhi government distributes specified food articles to the tune of 3.75 lakh quintals to 72.78 lakh beneficiaries per month under Targeted Public Distribution System as per National Food Security Act 2013.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The death toll in the hooch tragedy that hit two adjoining districts in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh has risen to 70 with more people dying of the spurious liquor they drank at a Haridwar village, officials said Saturday.
The viscera examination on 11 more bodies is yet to be conducted to find out if these too were alcohol-related deaths.
Twenty-four of the victims died in Balupur and its neighbouring villages in Uttarakhand's Haridwar district, state's Additional Director General (Law and Order) Ashok Kumar said.
At least 46 others, who had come home to the adjoining Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh after drinking the spurious liquor in Balupur on Thursday night, are also dead.
Uttar Pradesh officials said 35 of the Saharanpur deaths took place in the district itself. Eleven other victims, who were referred from Saharanpur for medical treatment in Meerut, died at a hospital there.
In Uttarakhand, about 20 more people are still under treatment.
Most of the victims had consumed the liquor Thursday evening after the 'tehravin', the 13th day of mourning ritual, following a relative's death in Balupur, officials said.
Uttar Pradesh police, however, added that a Saharanpur district resident may have brought 30 pouches of the same liquor from Uttarakhand for sale back home.
This may have led to more casualties, official said, but the investigation into this is still on.
Both states have suspended administrative and police officials for alleged negligence and ordered probes.
They have also announced ex-gratia compensation of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of those killed.
Earlier, Saharanpur district magistrate Alok Pandey said people from Nangal and adjoining villages in his district had started falling ill when they returned home from Balupur on Thursday night.
Many of the Saharanpur victims were not immediately admitted to hospital as the area was hit by rain and a hailstorm, he said.
Up to late Friday night, 16 people had died in Haridwar and 18 more in Saharanpur. By Saturday afternoon, the combined death too had risen to 70.
In an unrelated incident, nine people have died over the week in eastern Uttar Pradesh's Kushinagar district, allegedly after drinking spurious liquor.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has ordered departmental action against district excise officers of Kushinagar and Saharanpur, the state government said.
In Uttarakhand, 13 excise department personnel and four policemen have been placed under suspension. Ten policemen were suspended Friday in Uttar Pradesh.
Both states announced drives to curb the sale spurious liquor.
: The death toll in the hooch tragedy that hit two adjoining districts in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh rose to at least 61 with more people dying of the spurious liquor they drank at a Haridwar village, officials said.
Officials fear the number could rise as the viscera examination on 20 more bodies is yet to be conducted to find out if these too were alcohol-related deaths.
Twenty-five of the victims died in Balupur and its neighbouring villages in Uttarakhand's Haridwar district, state's Additional Director General (Law and Order) Ashok Kumar said.
According to an Uttar Pradesh government statement released in the evening in Lucknow, 36 died in Saharanpur district which adjoins Uttarakhand.
They Saharanpur victims had returned home to their villages in the district after drinking the spurious liquor in Balupur on Thursday night.
Earlier in the day, Saharanpur officials had said 46 people from the district died due to the consumption of spurious liquor 35 in the district itself and 11 more at a Meerut hospital to which they had been referred.
In addition, the viscera examination on 11 others was yet to be performed, officials had then said.
In the evening, however, the district authorities said while liquor poisoning had been confirmed as the cause of death of 36 people, the viscera test needed to be performed on 20 more bodies.
The viscera examination is in addition to the routine post-mortem.
In Uttarakhand, about 15 people are still under treatment.
Most of the victims had consumed the liquor Thursday evening after the 'tehravin', the 13th day of mourning ritual, following a relative's death in Balupur, officials said.
Uttar Pradesh police, however, added that a Saharanpur district resident may have brought 30 pouches of the same liquor from Uttarakhand for sale back home.
This may have led to more casualties, an official said, but the investigation into this is still on.
Both states have suspended administration and police officials for alleged negligence and ordered probes.
They have also announced ex-gratia compensation of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of those killed.
Earlier, Saharanpur district magistrate Alok Pandey said people from Nangal and adjoining villages in his district had started falling ill when they returned home from Balupur.
Many of them were not immediately admitted to hospital as the area was hit by rain and a hailstorm, he said.
Up to late Friday night, 16 people had died in Haridwar and 18 more in Saharanpur. By Saturday afternoon, the combined death toll had risen sharply.
In an unrelated incident, nine people have died over the week in eastern Uttar Pradesh's Kushinagar district, allegedly after drinking spurious liquor.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has ordered departmental action against district excise officers of Kushinagar and Saharanpur, the state government said. Four Saharanpur excise officials have been suspended.
In Uttarakhand, 13 excise department personnel and four policemen have been placed under suspension. Ten policemen were suspended Friday in Uttar Pradesh.
Both states announced drives to curb the sale of spurious liquor.
In a fortnight-long drive begun Friday, the UP authorities have so far registered 297 cases after raids, arresting 175 people.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
: Consolidated Shipping Line (CSL Group), a leading third-party logistics operator with an exposure to the Indian defence sector, has projected tripling of its revenue from the current Rs 70 crore by 2021.
CSL is also seeking a strategic partnership involving an investment of up to Rs 60 crore through equity placement, a CSL press release said.
The group has drawn up plans to boost its market share in defence projects by five times, upgrade infrastructure and technology and improve profitability by optimizing costs.
With the strategic partnership, CSL said it aims to leverage its existing platform to bid for larger project contracts that are five times the size of its current contracts.
High value government/PSU contracts require larger reserves - of up to Rs 20 crore - and credit cycles of up to 6 months, but they generate higher margins of up to 30 per cent.
"India spends 13-17 per cent of its GDP on logistics, nearly double the ratio in developed countries.
CSL has spent close to $ 1 million to strengthen infrastructure over the last three years.
The company is poised to execute on market needs, based on its capabilities in warehousing, technology-enabled solutions, logistical parks and transportation strengths", according to Ajai Joseph, CSL Chairman and CEO.
With the group targetting revenues of over Rs 190 crore by 2021, the company has chalked out plans to increase local presence in all key global locations, including the UK, Europe, Africa, Americas and China in 2019 through channel partners and by recruiting international route development managers, the release said.
Plans are also in place to establish offices in Africa, and to invest in trade development agency network.
CSL has achieved a significant share of the Indian defence logistics requirements which now contributes over 12 per cent of CSL revenues.
CSL has focused strongly on Indian military contracts over the past two years and is well positioned to bid for more contracts, company officials said.
On the technology front, CSL said it plans to grow its BPO services 200 per cent before 2020 and build a centralized market place for CSL's global partner network and user groups in the industry this year itself.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress said Saturday that it will not "unwarrantedly interfere" in the functioning of the Madhya Pradesh government on the issue of imposition of the stringent NSA against five people on charges of cow slaughter and illegal transportation of cattle.
The party said law and order is the domain of the chief minister and police.
"Kamal Nathji has categorically said the law will take its own course. Nobody who is innocent will be persecuted or punished in any manner and nobody who is guilty will be spared," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told reporters.
"He is experienced and seasoned enough to see if any officer of the police has made any overreach at the instance of somebody who is previously embedded on behalf of the BJP regime," Surjewala said.
The senior leader said the Congress does not decide on these issues based on the prism of caste or religion.
"Kamal Nathji is also competent enough to see whether the particular offence provides what kind of punishment under the law and I think we should leave it to his seasoned wisdom," Surjewala said.
He said the party will not "unwarrantedly interfere" in the functioning of the state government because that is not the working style of the Congress or its president Rahul Gandhi.
"We will only ensure that no one is unjustifiably persecuted under a law it may not be applicable. We will also ensure that anyone who is guilty is not let off in any manner whatsoever and is given strictest punishment," he said.
On Friday, authorities in Agar Malwa district of Madhya Pradesh booked two men under the National Security Act (NSA) for alleged illegal transportation of cattle and disruption of public peace.
The Kamal Nath-led government in Madhya Pradesh had earlier slapped the NSA against three men accused of killing a cow at Khandwa district.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Congress MLA has written to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath demanding the setting up of an SIT and transfer of the Khandwa district collector for invoking National Security Act (NSA) on three persons accused of cow slaughter.
Bhopal Central MLA Arif Masood, in his letter sent on Friday, termed the NSA move as "one-sided", adding that the kin of the three accused had met him and had alleged that the collector had not heard their side.
He said cow slaughter was "shameful" but reiterated that the collector's move to invoke the stringent NSA was unjustified.
He demanded constitution of a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the case and the collector's transfer in order to have a "fair" probe.
Talking to PTI Saturday, Masood said, "I have written to the Chief Minister and urged him to intervene in the matter. The action taken by police and district officials was on the basis of information given by an informer. The side of the accused should have been heard before invoking NSA."
Masood claimed minority community leaders from different parts of the country have also spoken to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi in this regard.
Earlier last week, authorities had slapped NSA on three accused, identified as Shakeel, Nadeem and Azam, for allegedly killing a cow at Khandwa, and jailed.
Justifying the action, Khandwa Superintendent of Police Siddharth Bahuguna had said Nadeem, alias Raju, was a habitual offender and had been held earlier in a cow slaughter case as well as other criminal cases.
Khandwa is a communally sensitive area and such an incident might affect its peace and harmony and therefore, he had said, such a move was made against the three.
According to Moghat Police Station in charge Mohan Singore, acting on a tip-off that a few persons were indulging in cow slaughter, a team raided Kharkali village near here on February 1.
While the accused fled from the spot, a large knife and beef was seized from there, he said.
The three were arrested on February 2 and Khandwa collector Vishesh Gadpale later invoked NSA against them, Singore had informed.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dubai is set to host the largest-ever World Government Summit starting from tomorrow (February 10) to redefine the future of governments and unite efforts to solve universal challenges facing humanity.
The three-day event will bring together officials of over 140 governments to develop government practices, share experiences, foresee and adapt to future challenges to improve human life and wellbeing.
On the event, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, said, "The human being is the centre of the World Government Summit. Our main aim is to foresee the future of different sectors to improve humanity."
"The summit will unite efforts and ideas to reinforce peoples wellbeing," he stated.
"We have the fundamental opportunity to create dialogue and reflect on how to develop governments to achieve prosperity for people," said Sheikh Mohammed.
"Through the World Government Summit, the UAE seeks to lead the world to a dialogue in technology, future, health and quality of life. Preparing for the future requires flexible governments with greater ability to invest in future tools," he noted.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, said "The World Government Summit is an intellectual and administrative gathering that solidifies UAEs message in building a stable and prosperous human society. "
"Government policies and strategic plans are designed to empower the human being: the pillar of development," he noted.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed pointed out that the summit continues to work on shaping the future of governments, noting that "the event has established a core belief that government learning is a continuous process and that successful government and institutional models could be adopted around the world."
"Dynamic governments seek to learn and adopt an approach to development and innovation. Hosting this global gathering emphasises UAEs regional and international position in establishing a pioneering government model," he stated.
Over 6,000 visitors are expected at this years summit, which is set to host over 200 sessions and 16 forums that will address seven main themes.
The summit will include 600 speakers ranging from heads of states, top thinkers, leaders and delegates and 30 international organisations.
Additionally, 20 reports with latest figures, studies and data will be published during the summit to help decision-makers and officials formulate future strategies.-TradeArabia News Service
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced Saturday that a comprehensive Master Plan would be formulated to convert Hyderabad into a truly global city.
It would be drafted by the city-based Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) in consultation with a team of national and international experts, keeping in view the future needs of the city, Rao said, during a meeting with officials.
Any changes to the Master Plan should be done only with the consent of the cabinet, a release from his office, quoting him, said.
Rao said that instead of depending on a small body like Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority to implement the Plan for the city's comprehensive development, there should be a larger body, with experts from various fields like sewerage, drinking water, power lines, traffic and
Observing that Hyderabad has been growing population wise and also economically, he said the city, however, faced problems like rising pollution, increase in traffic and reduction in green cover.
Rao said it was not only Delhi and Bangalore, but also Beijing that was now not convenient to live in.
Delhi was suffering from pollution and Bangalore has traffic problems.
As of now Hyderabad appeared to be all right, but the situation would be out of control unless the city prepared for the future, he said.
Stressing on the need to promote greenery, he said all pollutant industries must be shifted from the city.
"Industrial estates not in use due to closure are to be converted into green areas and parks. Every vacant place is to be converted into a green area. The 1.5 lakh acres of forest blocks in and around Hyderabad should be rejuvenated as a forest," he said.
He reiterated that the metro rail would be extended up to the international airport.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Greeted with protests and black flags in Assam over the citizenship bill issue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday sought to allay fears about the controversial legislation claiming that it will in no way harm the interests of the people of the state and the Northeast.
Addressing a public rally in this assembly constituency of Assam Health Minister and BJP-led NEDA convener Himanta Biswa Sarma, he said the NDA government is committed to protecting the language, culture, resources, hopes and aspirations of the people of Assam and the Northeast.
This was his first visit to Assam after the citizenship bill was passed by Lok Sabha on January 8. It awaits the approval of Rajya Sabha, where the ruling coalition is short of numbers.
"It is a national commitment to the people of the Northeast that they will not be harmed in any way and citizenship will be only granted after due investigations and recommendations of the state governments," he said.
Modi asserted one should understand that there is a difference between those who forcefully entered the country and those who were "forced to flee their homes to save their lives due to their religion. Both are not the same".
"We are committed to providing shelter to those minorities - Hindus, Christians, Parsis, Jains and Sikhs- in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan- who had to leave everything due to atrocities inflicted on them. They have come to our country who have faith and embraced the idea and ethos of Mother India," he added.
The bill which seeks to provide Indian citizenship to non-Muslims from Bangaldesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, has triggered widespread protests in Assam and other northeastern states, including those under the rule of BJP and its NEDA allies.
Modi's visit saw nude protests, a bandh, raising of flags and burning of effigies by AASU, KMSS and other organisations agitating against the bill.
Six KMSS activists protested nude in front of Janata Bhawan, the state secretariat, and were taken into custody by the police while the Tai Ahom Yuba Parishad called a 12-hour Assam bandh to protest against the prime minister's trip. The impact of the bandh was felt in the upper Assam districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Lakhimpur and Jorhat.
The Asom Gana Parshid (AGP), which recently snapped its ties with the BJP government in Assam over the citizenship bill, held protests after Modi's arrival in Guwahati Friday night by taking out a torchlight procession.
Modi said that the BJP was fully committed to implement the 36-year old Assam Accord and committee on the implementation of the Clause 6 of the accord is a step in that direction.
"The BJP-led NDA government is committed to protect the language, culture, resources, hopes and aspirations of the people of Assam and the committee will take these into consideration while drafting its report," he said.
Without naming the Congress, Modi alleged that it was "not sincere in implementing the accord".
"The accord was signed 36 years ago but is yet to be implemented. They have done injustice to the people of Assam. Let me assure you that our government will implement the accord in letter and spirit," he added.
Referring to the problem of infiltration, Modi said his government was committed to complete the work of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is being conducted under the supervision of the Supreme Court, within the stipulated period.
"The BJP is committed to solving the infiltration issue and will complete the sealing of the Indo-Bangla border at the earliest," he said.
The BJP has taken the initiative to grant Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to six communities- Tai Ahom, Koch Rajbongshi, Chutiya, Moran, Muttock and tea tribes- and has brought a bill in the Parliament accordingly but the interests of existing ST communities will be protected, he said.
He praised Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and his team for "working very hard to free Assam of corruption which the previous government had made a part of the system".
He added the Centre and will extend full support to the Assam government in strengthening the state's economy.
The prime minister also said that the BJP government was committed to make Assam the oil and gas hub of the country and in the last four years, projects worth Rs 14,000 crore were completed.
"Projects worth Rs 9500 crore are moving forward and are expected to be completed soon," he added.
The Rs 1200 crore Biorefinery project of the Numaligarh Refinery Limited will use bamboo leading to creation of biofuel, he added.
Referring to the projects he inaugurated or for which he laid foundation stones prior to the rally, Modi said when completed, these will change and strengthen the economy of Assam and the entire northeastern region.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday assured the people of Assam and the Northeast that the citizenship bill will in no way cause harm to their interests.
Addressing a public rally in this assembly constituency of Assam Health Minister and BJP-led NEDA convener Himanta Biswa Sarma, he said the NDA government is committed to protecting the language, culture, resources, hopes and aspirations of the people of Assam and the Northeast.
"It is a national commitment to the people of the Northeast that they will not be harmed in any way and citizenship will be only granted after due investigation and recommendation of the state governments," Modi said.
It must be understood that there is a difference between those who forcefully entered the country and those who were "forced to flee their homes to save their lives due to their faith. Both are not the same", he asserted.
"We have committed to provide shelter to those who are minorities in neighbouring countries and had to leave everything due to the atrocities inflicted on them. They have come to our country and embraced the idea and ethos of Mother India," he said.
The prime minister also said that the BJP is committed to implementing the 36-year-old Assam Accord and a committee set up on the implementation of its Clause 6 is a step in that direction.
The government wants to make Assam the oil and gas hub of the country and in the last four years projects worth Rs 14,000 crore have been completed, he said.
The prime minister peppered his speech with sentences in Assamese, paid rich tributes to the state's icons Srimanata Sankardeva, Madhavdeva, Azan Fakir, Chaolung Sukapha, Lachit Barphukan, Gopinath Bordoloi and Bhupen Hazarika.
He said the previous governments "failed" to honour these icons and it was the BJP government which took the initiative of conferring the Bharat Ratna on Assam's first chief minister Gopinath Bordoloi during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's term and now to music legend Hazarika.
Prior to the rally, the prime minister laid the foundation stone of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences to be set up at Changsari.
He also laid the foundation of the six-lane bridge over Brahmaputra river connecting Guwahati and North Guwahati.
He laid the foundation stone of North East Gas Grid and the City Gas Distribution Networks in Kamrup, Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj districts and inaugurated the Hollong Modular Gas Processing Plant and LPG Capacity Augmentation of Mounted Storage Vessel in North Guwahati.
He also laid the foundation stone of NRL Bio Refinery at Numaligarh and a 729 km gas pipeline from Barauni- Guwahati passing through Bihar, West Bengal, Sikkim and Assam.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's second day in Assam saw
nude protests, a bandh, raising of black flags and burning of effigies by agitators over the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
Six Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) activists were taken into police custody on Saturday when they stripped naked in front of Janata Bhawan -- the state secretariat here.
The KMSS activists had arrived in cars and stripped naked before holding the protests.
The Tai Ahom Yuba Parishad had called a 12-hour bandh in the state to protest against the prime minister's visit and its impact was felt in the upper Assam districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Lakhimpur and Jorhat with vehicles remaining off the road and shops and business establishments closed.
The bandh was supported by the KMSS along with 70 other organisations jointly protesting against the bill.
The All Assam Students' Union (AASU) claimed that police resorted to mild lathi-charge to disperse its activists who had assembled with black flags and black balloons at the Amingaon-Hajo Road, about 10 km from Modi's rally at Changsari.
The protesters burnt effigies of the prime minister and released black balloons into the air in different districts across the state.
Modi was shown black flags in at least two places here on Saturday for the second consecutive day while on his way to the airport from the Raj Bhawan here.
Protesters, belonging to the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP), showed black flags to Modi at Machkhowa area.
Minutes later, a group of students of the Gauhati University too waved black flags at Modi in the Jalukbari area.
Both the groups were detained as soon as they lodged their protest, police said.
A few students of the Gauhati University alleged that they were manhandled by police.
On Friday evening, the prime minister was shown black flags in at least four different locations as soon as he landed in Guwahati and was travelling from the airport to the Raj Bhawan to spend the night.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill seeks to provide Indian citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after six years of residence in India even if they do not possess any document.
The bill was passed by the Lok Sabha during the Winter Session on January 8 and has been awaiting Rajya Sabha nod.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China on Saturday "firmly opposed" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, asserting that it has never recognised the sensitive border state and the Indian leadership should refrain from any action that may "complicate the boundary question".
Prime Minister Modi Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation stone of projects in Arunachal Pradesh worth over Rs 4,000 crore and said his government was giving a lot of importance to improve connectivity in the border state.
Modi said his government was giving importance to improve the highway, railway, airway and power situation in Arunachal Pradesh, which was neglected by the previous governments.
In New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs reacted sharply to China's remarks, saying the state of Arunachal Pradesh is an "integral and inalienable part" of India.
"Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions," the MEA spokesperson said in a statement.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in response to a question on Modi's visit said, "China's position on the China-India boundary question is consistent and clear-cut. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh' and is firmly opposed to the Indian leader's visit to the East Section of the China-India boundary."
China urges the Indian side to bear in mind the common interests of the two countries, respect the interests and concerns of the Chinese side, cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral relations, and refrain from any action that may lead to the escalation of disputes or complicate the boundary question," she said in her reaction posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website.
China claims the north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet. India and China have so far held 21 rounds of talks to resolve the border dispute.
The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC). China routinely objects to Indian leaders visiting Arunachal Pradesh to highlight its stand.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kolkata police chief Rajeev Kumar has been again called for questioning Sunday, officials said here.
Kumar was questioned Saturday for nearly eight hours in Shillong as directed by the Supreme Court, they said.
The agency may confront him with former Trinamool Congress MP Kunal Ghosh who has also been called tomorrow but a final call will be taken by the investigation officer who is present in Shillong, they said
The CBI is relying on a 91-page letter from Ghosh, who was expelled by TMC, to the Enforcement Directorate, detailing the role of Kumar in handling the ponzi scam probe after the main accused Sudipta Sen and Debjani Mukherjee, both promoters of Saradha group of companies, had fled to Kashmir, officials said in Kolkata.
Sen and Mukherjee were arrested in 2013 from Kashmir.
The CBI is questioning Kumar, a 1989-batch IPS officer, as he was heading the SIT formed by West Bengal government to probe Saradha and other ponzi scheme cases, they said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Oscar-winner Casey Affleck says his new directorial, "Light of My Life", set in a world without women, is not a response to the allegations of sexual harassment against him.
The 43-year-old actor is also starring in the dystopian drama which is set for its world premiere at the ongoing Berlin Film Festival.
The film is set around a "society without women" where "gender roles have to be renegotiated". The story follows a father and his young daughter who are trapped in the woods.
According to Indiewire, at the Berlin press conference, Casey said the film's premise is definitely not about his personal history or his response to #MeToo.
"It's not. I wrote this movie and made this movie before all of those things became part of the conversation. I hope people keep their minds open and be responsible and measured in their reactions. And people can talk for themselves. It's not something I can control," the actor said.
The actor was accused of sexual harassment by two female co-workers while making the 2010 mockumentary "Im Still Here", which he directed.
"Light Of My Life" also features Elisabeth Moss and newcomer Anna Pniowsky.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two IPS officers from Chhattisgarh, including a Special DGP, were suspended Saturday after the Economic Offences Wing registered an FIR against them for alleged criminal conspiracy and illegal phone tapping during the Civil Supplies Corporation scam probe in 2015.
The officers are identified as Special DGP Mukesh Gupta, posted at the Police Headquarters, and Narayanpur Superintendent of Police Rajnesh Singh.
They have been placed under suspension, a senior state Home Department official said, adding that Gupta and Singh will be attached to the state Police Headquarters in Raipur during their suspension.
The case was lodged on the basis of the investigation carried by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the newly-formed Congress government to probe the alleged multi-crore civil supply scam unearthed during the previous BJP government.
Issuing separate orders, the Home Department said the act of the two officers is the violation of the All India Services (Conduct) Rules 1968, and the process to institute disciplinary action against them is underway.
In view of circumstances of the case, the suspension of the IPS officers is necessary and desirable, the orders said.
The two officers were booked on Thursday night by the EOW on a complaint filed by Deputy Superintendent of Police (EOW) Anil Bakshi, who is the investigation officer of the SIT.
The EOW found that some important documents related to the case had been tampered with, an EOW official had said.
EOW Head Constable Johit Ram Sahu allegedly told Bakshi that he had committed the tampering on the direction of then-inspector RK Dubey, he said.
Dubey allegedly admitted to have committed the act under pressure from Gupta and Singh, the official said quoting the complaint.
Dubey also disclosed that the two IPS officers wanted to show certain unlawful phone interceptions as legal, and therefore documents were tampered with and fabricated.
Gupta and Singh were booked under sections 193 (false evidence), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 466 (forgery), 471 (Using as genuine a forged), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and other relevant sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and under provisions of Indian Telegraph Act, the official had said.
Denying charges, Gupta had said all telephone interception were done lawfully and "with the approval of home department in every case".
"The SIT has deliberately ignored the records and FIR has been hurriedly registered on the basis of oral statements of subordinate officers taken under duress," Gupta said in a statement.
The alleged scam was exposed in February 2015 when the ACB and the EOW conducted simultaneous raids at 25 premises of the Civil Supplies Corporation.
The Bhupesh Baghel government on January 8 set up a 12-member SIT under Inspector General of Police, ACB and EOW, SRP Kalluri to probe the alleged multi-crore scam citing that some points, including political involvement, were left uncovered in the previous probe in the case.
The Congress had earlier alleged that then chief minister Raman Singh, his wife and other high-profile people were named as beneficiaries in the diary which was recovered during the raid, a charge refuted by the BJP leadership.
The Congress had been claiming that the civil supply scam works out to the tune of Rs 36,000 crore, and that several high profile people were involved.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Blaming the split within the Chautala family for "weakening" the alliance, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Saturday snapped its nearly nine-month-old association with Haryana's main opposition the INLD and forged ties with the LSP, an outfit floated by rebel BJP MP Raj Kumar Saini.
The development came three days after Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Chautala had claimed that the alliance was intact.
The party had suffered a humiliating defeat in the Jind Assembly bypoll, with its candidate Umed Singh Redhu forfeiting his security deposit and was reduced to fifth position.
On the other hand, the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) which came into existence following INLD split, put up a spirited fight and its candidate Digvijay Singh Chautala secured second position as the BJP won the seat.
The BSP's Haryana in-charge Meghraj on Saturday said, "On the directions of BSP national president Mayawati, the party ends ties with the INLD as the alliance is getting weakened because of the Chautala family split."
"The BSP has forged a new and strong alliance with the Loktantra Suraksha Party (LSP)," he said, adding the decision to snap ties with the INLD was taken by Mayawati after considering the demand of the people of Haryana.
INLD leader Abhay Singh Chautala refused to make a direct comment on the BSP's move.
He said, "We gave more respect to the BSP leaders and workers than ours. Answers to why they broke the alliance and why they separated can only be given by the BSP leaders."
JJP convener and Hisar MP Dushyant Chautala in Ambala said, "To those who used to raise question about our existence and say that this organisation (JJP) cannot work, the people of Jind have shown them that if any alternative exists in the state that is the JJP."Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala too lashed out at both the BSP and LSP, saying any alliance which is based on "opportunism and for gaining power" can never be successful.
The BSP and LSP, under the new alliance, will jointly contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls and the Haryana Assembly elections, due later this year.
According to the arrangements finalised by both the parties, the BSP will field candidates in eight Lok Sabha seats while the LSP will nominate candidates in the other two seats in the state, said Meghraj who was flanked by Raj Kumar Saini.
For the Haryana Assembly polls, the LSP has been given 55 seats to contest while the BSP will field its candidates on 35 assembly constituencies the in 90-member Haryana Vidhan Sabha.
Replying to questions from the media, Meghraj said, "Our leader Mayawati gave them a chance to stay united. When we entered into an alliance, the INLD was one party. But after the Chautala family split, we got a chance to judge them in Jind bypoll and found that if the family fight polls separately then anti-people forces will again come to the fore."
"Out of the around 3,400 votes polled to INLD candidate (in the Jind bypoll), Umed Singh Redhu managed just 1,000 votes and rest of them were BSP votes. Thereafter, we decided to rethink on the alliance. Our votebank was disturbed," he claimed.
In the same breath, the BSP leader, however, said the alliance with the INLD was good and there was no complaint against it.
"But the objective of removing the BJP from the power was not going to be achieved with this alliance."
Asked about the chief ministerial candidate of the new alliance, Meghraj said it will be announced after the Assembly polls. Both parties have decided to hold workers' rally in Panipat on February 17.
Following a family feud within the Chautala clan, Ajay Chautala and his two sons Dushyant and Digvijay had floated the JJP last year.
Saini, a rebel BJP MP from Kurukshetra had last year floated his 'Loktantra Suraksha Party' and the candidate fielded by him in the Jind bypolls had put up a better performance than INLD's Redhu.
INLD and the BSP had entered into an alliance in April last year, which both the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress had described a "marriage of convenience" which they entered into just to "grab power" in the state.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A former Bank of Baroda (BoB) official has been arrested for allegedly embezzling money from deposit accounts of customers, the police said here Saturday.
Niket Kumar, the accused, was working as a "single-window" operator at the Colaba branch of BoB in south Mumbai.
He allegedly transferred a total of Rs 29.5 lakh from 18 Fixed Deposit (FD) and recurring accounts of customers to his friend's account between 2015-17, a police official said.
The embezzlement came to light when a customer recently approached the bank to claim his FD upon maturity and found that the amount was missing.
The bank suspended Kumar following an internal inquiry and also lodged a police complaint.
Kumar was arrested Friday, the police official said.
Upon questioning, he admitted to the scam, the official said.
Kumar was booked under IPC sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by a public servant) and 420 (cheating), and a local court remanded him in police custody till February 12.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 1,200 global industrial academics, defence, security and government specialists will be in Abu Dhabi next week for a major industry event which will discuss the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) on defence, security and offset sectors.
The upcoming edition of the International Defence Conference (IDC) 2019 will run from February 14 to 16 at Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi as a precursor to the 2019 International Defence Exhibition and Conference (Idex) and the Naval Defence and Maritime Security Exhibition (Navdex).
Defence ministers from various countries besides senior government officials, high-ranking military officers, eminent academics and leaders of renowned defence companies from around the world will be among the distinguished speakers participating in IDC.
Aimed at consolidating the status of the UAE as a leading global hub for specialised conferences, the event will focus on four key areas: offset, security and stability, economy, and innovation and artificial intelligence (AI).
It is being held under the theme of Shaping Our Shared Future: Strengthening Our Security and Prosperity through Innovation, said the event organisers.
Idex and the Abu Dhabi International Offset Conference (ADIOC), which is organised by the Tamazun Economic Council, are being combined for the first time to create a comprehensive global forum to examine the latest developments in the defence, security and offset sectors as well as the impact the 4IR may have on these domains, particularly in terms of innovation, manufacturing and human capital development.
Following the opening ceremony, Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, Minister of Economy, will address the topic of economic diversity in the 4IR era, while Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for AI will share insights on AI and innovation.
In addition, on the opening day, Saeed Al Gergawi, the director of the Dubai Future Academy, will moderate a panel discussion titled Leveraging Offset as a Catalyst/Enabler of Economic Diversification, said the organisers.
Panelists will include Tareq Abdul Raheem Al Hosani, CEO of Tawazun Economic Council, Ahmed bin Aqeel Al Khateeb, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Saudi Arabian Military Industries, Mitchell Butta, Sector Director for Global Industrial Positioning at Northrop Grumman, and Professor Ron Matthews, Cranfield University Chair in Defence Economics at the Defence Academy of the UK.
Hadley Gamble, Reporter and Anchor at CNBC, will serve as moderator of the second session, Security in the 4IR Future.
The panel will feature Marko Erman, Chief Technology Officer at Thales Group, Air Marshall Jitendra Kumar Singh, Director General (Systems) at the Indian Air Force, Howard Bromberg, Vice President for Air and Missile Defence Strategy and Business Development at Lockheed Martin, and Martin Sion, CEO of Safran Electronics and Defence.
The third session panel, themed Optimising Innovation Efforts and Aligning Innovation Priorities, will comprise Peter Bergen, Co-director of the Center on Future of War, Sean McGurk, Vice President for Cyber Services at DarkMatter, Professor Uday Desai, Director of the Indian Instituite of Technology Hyderabad, and General Sir Christopher Deverell, Commander of the UKs Joint Forces Command.
The second day will commence with an address on "Security and stability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution" by His Excellency Mohammed bin Ahmad Al Bawardi, Minister of State for Defence Affairs.
Next on the agenda, Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Sciences, will present a talk on Science, Technology and Innovation in light of 4IR, followed by an address by Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics at The City College of New York, on the topic Future World in light of 4IR.
The day will continue with a discussion What is the 4IR Economy comprising panellists Saif Mohamed Al Hajeri, Chairman of the Department of Economic Development Abu Dhabi, Giovanni Tria, Italian Minister of Economy and Finance, and David Johnston, Australian Defence Export Advocate.
Tate Nurkin, the founder and CEO of OTH Intelligence Group, will moderate the second session on Next Generation Stablisation and Reconstruction Missions.
Panelists will include Lieutenant General Steven M Shepro, Deputy Chairman of the Nato Military Committee, Dr Mohamad Maliki bin Osman, Singaporean Senior Minister of State for Defence and Foreign Affairs, and General Joseph Votel, Commander, US Central Command.
Dr Mohamed Hamad Al Kuwaiti, Executive Director of the Signals Intelligence Agency, will moderate the final panel discussion of the conference, themed Understanding the Age of Cognitive Warfare. Emmanuel Chiva, Director of the French Defense Innovation Agency, Herve Guillou, Chairman and CEO of Naval Group, and Micael Johansson, Deputy CEO and Senior Executive Vice President of Saab, will participate as panelists.
Following the conclusion of the conference, Idex/Navdex 2019 will commence at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre from February 17 to 21 under the patronage of HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.-TradeArabia News Service
BJP president Amit Shah Saturday said Bengal and Odisha would be added to the list of the states being governed by his party after upcoming elections.
Addressing a convention of the booth level workers near here, Shah said the BJP has made inroads into the North-East.
Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is not keeping good health, was also present at the 'Atal Booth Karyakarta Sammelan', which was attended by around 10,000 workers.
"Today we have gathered here for the 2019 elections. We are here to resolve that Goa will again give both the seats (South Goa and North Goa) to PM Narendra Modi," Shah said.
He said the upcoming elections are important not only for the BJP but also for the entire country.
"The BJP has now reached up to North East. We are already in 16 states, but after the coming elections we will also be there in Bengal and Odisha," he said.
Lok Sabha elections are due in April-May this year while assembly polls are slated to be held in Odisha during the same period, and in West Bengal in 2021.
The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) are ruling parties in Odisha and West Bengal, respectively.
Shah said: "If we want to spread the BJP in the South till Hind Mahasgar, till Vivekananda memorial, then we will have to win the polls and reelect Modi as the Prime Minister".
"The BJP is the only party which keeps the borders safe and take countrys culture across the globe," he added.
The BJP has emerged as a major political force in the northeast since its victory in Assam in the last three years.
The BJP has since formed governments in four of the region's eight states including Tripura, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Manipur.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India on Saturday asserted Arunachal Pradesh is its "integral and inalienable" part after China opposed Prime Minister's Narendra Modi's visit to the border state.
The said India has conveyed its "consistent position" on the issue to China on several occasions.
"The state of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions," the MEA said in a statement.
Modi on Saturday visited Arunachal Pradesh during which he inaugurated and laid foundation stone of projects worth over Rs 4,000 crore and said his government was giving a lot of importance to improve connectivity in the sensitive state.
In response to a question on Modi's visit, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, "China's position on the China-India boundary question is consistent and clear-cut. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh' and is firmly opposed to the Indian leader's visit to the East Section of the China-India boundary."
"China urges the Indian side to bear in mind the common interests of the two countries, respect the interests and concerns of the Chinese side, cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral relations, and refrain from any action that may lead to the escalation of disputes or complicate the boundary question," she said in her reaction posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website.
China claims the northeastern Indian state is a part of southern Tibet. India and China have so far held 21 rounds of talks to resolve the border dispute.
The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC). China routinely objects to Indian leaders visiting Arunachal Pradesh in an effort to highlight its stand.
BJP president Amit Shah Saturday met ailing Goa Chief Minister and senior party leader Manohar Parrikar at his residence at Dona Paula near here, an official said.
Parrikar, 63, has been in and out of hospitals in Panaji, Mumbai, Delhi and the USA in the last one year, as a result of which he could not attend his office.
Parrikar, who is suffering from a pancreatic ailment, was recently discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.
After arriving in Goa, Shah straightway went to the residence of Parrikar, an official of the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) said.
The BJP president is scheduled to address 'Atal Booth Karyakarta Sammelan' here.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh leader Prakash Ambedkar Saturday said the Congress will have to come up with an "agenda" to "rein in the RSS" before seat-sharing talks could take place between the two parties.
Addressing a press conference in Ravi Bhavan here, Ambedkar alleged that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh does not believe in the Constitution and was running a parallel government.
While one government is being headed by the President of India as per the Constitution, the other was an unconstitutional one helmed by the RSS, Ambedkar claimed.
He said the Congress must come with an agenda to ensure the RSS is brought within the "ambit" of the Constitution.
Speaking on the police probe against activist Anand Teltumbde, the BBM leader claimed the "5000 page FIR" filed in the case did not have any evidence that would stand under the Evidence Act.
"They have filed a 5000-page FIR having no evidence that can stand under the Evidence Act. The documents presented by them (police) as part of the FIR does not have his name anywhere, only the name Anand is mentioned. On this basis, they have made Anand Teltumbde an accused in the case," Ambedkar claimed.
He said an international university mentioned as "a centre of terrorist activities" in the 5000-page FIR could create "cracks" in the relationship between India, the United States and France.
He further alleged the government wanted to create a rift between the Maratha and OBC communities which the Elgar Parishad, held by Dalit organisations on December 31, 2017, prevented.
Ambedkar claimed those associated with the Elgar Parishad started being viewed as Naxal associates by the government after this (creation of rift being prevented).
Teltumbde is an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Koregaon Bhima case which was filed following clashes in Pune on January 1 last year.
On February 5 this year, the Pune police had told the Bombay High Court that it will not arrest Teltumbde till February 12 midnight.
The court was hearing an application filed by Teltumbde seeking anticipatory bail in the case.
He was booked on several charges, including sections under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 25-year-old Indian Engineering Services (IES) officer on Saturday allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in his room in southwest Delhi's Munirka area, police said.
The deceased has been identified as Pranav Tiwari, a native of Rewa district in Madhya Pradesh, they added.
Tiwari was living with his three batchmates -- Dheeraj Pandey, Devender Patel and Vivek -- in Munirka, police said.
On Saturday evening, Pandey and Patel had gone to Saket Mall and Vivek had left for his native place. Pranav was alone at the flat, a senior police officer said.
When Pandey and Patel returned at around 9 pm, they found the door locked from inside.
They arranged a ladder and with the help of neighbourers climbed up the backside balcony and saw Tiwari hanging from the ceiling, the officer said.
He was taken down and rushed to the Fortis Hospital where he was declared brought dead. No external injury was found on the body, police said.
As per his batchmates, he was suffering from depression, they said, adding the investigation is underway.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 14-year-old boy was stabbed to death allegedly by three juveniles in central Delhi over his friendship with the girlfriend of one of the accused, police said Saturday.
The three accused have been apprehended, they said.
When the boy was standing near his house on Friday night, four boys called him to discuss some matter. However, the discussion led to a quarrel following which they allegedly stabbed him multiple times, a police official said.
As the victim screamed for help, the accused fled from the spot. He was rushed to a nearby hospital by his mother where he succumbed to his injuries, a senior police officer said.
During interrogation, the juveniles told police that the girlfriend of one of them became friends with victim. Few weeks ago, the boy was asked not to speak to the girl but he continued to do so, the officer said.
Enraged over this, the accused hatched a conspiracy with his three friends and killed the boy, he said, adding police are still trying to trace another accused involved in the incident.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China's foreign ministry on Saturday condemned Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the northeastern border state of Arunachal Pradesh, also claimed by China, saying it "resolutely opposes" activities of Indian leaders in the region. Modi's visit was part of a series of public meetings in the region aimed at garnering support for his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party ahead on Indian elections that are due to be held by May. Despite recent efforts to improve bilateral ties in both countries, disputes over the mountainous Indo-China border - ...
India's young paddlers stole the limelight in the Bahrain Junior and Cadet Open, clinching a rich haul of four medals, including a gold, two silver and a bronze here.
All three Indian teams in fray in the Cadet Girls' Team category displayed great skill and grit to pave their way into the semifinals of the tournament that is part of the ITTF Premium Junior Circuit.
Team India 2, comprising Yashaswini Ghorpade and Kavya Sree Baskar, faced off against the mighty Egypt 1 team for a place in the final while it turned out into an all-Indian clash in the second semifinal.
Yashaswini led from the front and won both her singles, including the decider to help India 2 to a hard-fought 3-2 victory over Farida Badawy and Hana Goda of Egypt late Friday night.
India 1, comprising Suhana Saini and Anargya Manjunath, proved to be too strong for their compatriots India 3 (Radhika Sakpal and Hardee Patel), beating them 3-0 to set up an all-Indian clash in the finals.
India 3 had to be content with a bronze medal for their efforts.
In the final, the duo of Suhana and Anargya were in red hot form, steamrolling past Yashaswini and Kavya (India 2) 3-0 to clinch the gold medal. India 2 picked up the silver.
India were among one of the five teams in fray in the Junior Girls' category, which was played in a round robin format, with each team bagging two points for a win and one for a defeat.
The Indian team which consisted of Manushree Patil and Swastika Ghosh got off to a flier and recorded a thumping 3-0 victory over Malamatenia Papadimitriou of Greece and Aya Ali of Syria.
They continued their momentum and picked up a hard-fought 3-2 win over Egypt 1 and then scampered past Egypt 2 (3-1) to make it three consecutive wins.
Their run came to an end against Russia, the eventual champions, losing 0-3 to finish with seven points and the silver medal.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 29-year-old American was arrested at the JFK Airport while he was about to leave the country to join Pakistani terror organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which was responsible for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.
Authorities said on Friday, Jesus Wilfredo Encarnacion from Manhattan allegedly told an unnamed co-conspirator in November he wanted to contact the terror group, which was behind the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, the New York Post reported. He was arrested from the airport on Thursday.
"I want to execute. I want to behead. Shoot," Encarnacion told an undercover agent, according to a Manhattan federal criminal complaint..
According to prosecutors, Encarnacion also went online in a bid to join LeT, which has been designated global terrorist organisation by the UN and the US.
"Encarnacion allegedly attempted to travel to Pakistan to join a foreign terrorist organisation and conspired with another individual to provide that organisation with material support," said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.
The co-conspirator connected Encarnacion with a "recruiter" to help him travel to Pakistan and be trained with the terror group, officials said. But the "recruiter" was actually an undercover agent, the complaint stated.
It said Encarnacion told the agent since the 9/11 attacks he has dreamed of carrying out a terror assault. "The terrorist attack. 9/11. I want to be (the) one to attack," he said.
He told the agent that he couldn't wait to go to Pakistan, the papers said.
Encarnacion appeared in the Manhattan federal court on Friday, where a judge remanded him. He was charged with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation and conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation. If convicted, he could get 40 years in prison.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have started the final attacks against the Islamic State (IS) militant group in eastern Syria, Kurdish activists reported.
Following the evacuation of more than 20,000 civilians from the town of Baghouz in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour Province, the SDF on Saturday started the night operation against the last IS-held pocket in the eastern Euphrates region, according to Mustafa Balli, head of the SDF media office, Xinhua news agency reported.
Balli said the battle aims to eliminate all remaining IS militants in Baghouz.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (Enec) and its subsidiaries, the Nawah Energy Company and Barakah One Company, recently hosted an Innovation Majlis, a hackathon, and youth events as part of its UAE Innovation Month activities.
The initiatives were designed to foster and sustain a culture of innovation, future planning and adoption of smart solutions across all of Enecs business units and subsidiaries, said a statement from the organisation.
UAE Innovation Month is one of the largest innovation initiatives in the world. Jointly developed by the government and private sector entities, it aims to strengthen the UAEs global presence and increase its competitiveness on the international stage, in line with the directives of the UAE Government.
As the owner and developer of the UAE Peaceful Nuclear Energy Program, a pioneering programme and the first of its kind in the Arab world, Enec is dedicated to promoting and fostering innovation.
The participation in UAE Innovation Month is in line with Enecs vision and mission to support the economic and social growth of the country by diversifying the UAEs energy sources and supporting talented Emiratis to lead the development of a new local nuclear energy industry.
The programme plays an important role in the future as the nation looks for innovative ways to tackle climate change and create new sustainable sources of electricity. Innovation has played a key role in Enecs success.
Innovations in safety, construction, sustainability and numerous other areas have contributed to excellence across Enecs business units and subsidiaries and enabled the organisation to meet and exceed the highest international standards of quality, safety, and security in its implementation of the UAE Peaceful Nuclear Energy Program.
During the event held recently, Enec employees took part in a wide range of activities on topics such as innovation with partners, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics.
Sessions focused on the importance of intellectual property rights, innovation in sustainability and smart service delivery. There was also an Innovation Majlis and Innovation Festival for students, as well as the creation of a Universities Innovation Center.
The potential for innovation to enhance business practices and contribute to excellence was discussed by a panel of experts as a part of the Innovation Majlis, which took place on the second day of the programme.
The panel discussion was followed by a lecture from Dr Hamad Karki, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research (Kustar), who spoke of the importance of innovation and the role it has played in his research into artificial intelligence.
Dr Karkis lecture took place at the Universities Innovation Center, which included a special area within Enecs headquarters where students from Kustar and Abu Dhabi Polytechnic (AD Poly) displayed innovative projects.
The students involvement in Enecs celebration of UAE Innovation Month is a result of its ongoing student outreach programme, which not only raises awareness about the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy but encourages talented Emiratis to study STEM subjects and consider career paths in the UAEs growing nuclear energy industry.
Students were also invited to take part in an Innovation Festival, consisting of a number of team building activities designed to highlight the importance of innovation. These activities were followed by a special discussion session entitled Innovation in Sustainability, organised in partnership with Beeah, it stated. TradeArabia News Service
The UP governor Ram Naik will laid the foundation stone of new terminal building at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay airport in Agra on February 17, official said here in Saturday.
According to Tourism Guild, the new terminal will allow international airlines to operate direct flights to Agra. The tourists will not have to land at New Delhi and then travel to Agra to see the world famous Taj Mahal.
The Union Environment and Forest Ministry and the National Green Tribunal (NGT) have given their mandatory clearances to the project.
Land for the terminal was acquired by the UP government from farmers in Dhanauli village and handed over to the airports authority.
The new terminal is expected to give a boost to the tourism industry in the historic district.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hours after they were forcibly admitted to hospital, three Maharashtra farmers' daughters on Saturday afternoon called off their agitation, but claimed it was done "under pressure" from the government.
The trio of collegians - Nikita Jadhav (20), Shubhangi Jadhav and Poonam Jadhav (19 each) - were offered a glass of water and fruit juice by Minister of State for Health Arjun Khopkar who rushed here to meet them.
Calling on them at the Ahmednagar civil hospital where they were forcibly admitted by the police, the minister requested and cajoled them to end the hunger strike in view of their deteriorating physical condition.
Khopkar also assured that he would discuss all their demands with the government and even promised to arrange their meeting with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray within a couple of days.
The girls briefly discussed among themselves and reluctantly agreed to call off their agitation, but said nothing about ending the hunger strike.
Later, speaking to mediapersons, the Jadhav girls - who are friends - claimed that they were under severe pressures since the past 24 hours to call off their agitation but finally agreed to do so after the minister's assurances this afternoon.
"However, if our demands are not accepted fully we shall launch another agitation," warned Nikita Jadhav, with Shubhangi and Poonam in tow, as they prepared to return to Puntamba by this evening.
Apprehensive over its political ramifications, the Maharashtra Police and local government officials forcibly broke their six-day long hunger strike in a pre-dawn swoop.
Around 2 a.m., a police team suddenly raided the marquee where the girls, their relatives and supporters were resting, bundled them in waiting vans and whisked them off to Ahmednagar Civil Hospital, around 85 km away.
The police teams also uprooted the marquee, banners, posters and other stuff, after local officials claimed it was "illegally erected", detained protesting relatives and supporters of the girls and chased away onlookers.
Angered by the action, Puntamba village woke up and observed a spontaneous shutdown - the second in three days - demanding that the girls be immediately set free.
Coming back-to-back after social crusader Anna Hazare's weeklong hunger strike in Ralegan Siddhi, the Jadhav girls secured support of several farmers' groups, ruling ally Shiv Sena and the Opposition Congress, and Vasantrao Naik Sheti Swavalamban Mission Chairman Kishore Tiwari.
Nikita, Shubhangi and Poonam launched the indefinite hunger from February 4 after a day's token strike on February 3, for various farmers' demands.
These include full waiver of all farm loans, minimum support price for farm produce, pension for all farmers above 60 years age, free power for agriculture purposes, Goods and Services (GST) waiver on all farm equipment and machinery, raising procurement prices of milk which are now lower than soft drinks available in the market.
The girls' fast grabbed attention from all over, Puntamba observed a "bandh" on February 6, schoolgirls and villagers staged a black flag procession and delegations from neighbouring villages came visiting to express their support.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres here on Saturday called for more coordinated efforts to fight climate change.
"The international community needs more political will to undertake climate change mitigation, adaptation and climate finance activities," Guterres was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.
"We are losing the race for climate change, which could be a disaster for Africa and the world. Africa will pay even higher price because of the dramatic impact in the continent even though Africa doesn't contribute much to the warming of the planet," the UN chief told a press conference on the sidelines of the 32nd ordinary session of the Assembly of the African Union (AU).
Guterres said the UN was undertaking activities to raise awareness of the international community to do more in addressing challenges of climate change, despite inadequate attention given to the threat.
The UN chief also praised African countries for hosting fellow African refugees despite limited domestic resources. On Friday, the AU said Africa was home to over one third of the global population of displaced people.
The theme of this year's AU summit is "Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Towards Durable Solutions to Forced Displacement in Africa."
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Top Twitter officials, including its CEO Jack Dorsey, have declined to appear before a parliamentary committee that had summoned them next week over the issue of safeguarding citizens' rights on social media platforms citing "short notice" period.
Sources said Twitter has written a letter conveying their inability to appear before the committee because of the short notice. The Twitter officials have been asked to appear before the panel on February 11 for alleged bias against "nationalist" accounts.
Twitter's letter has not gone down well with the panel members in what is perceived as "lack of seriousness".
The Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology, headed by BJP Member of Parliament Anurag Thakur, had issued summons to Twitter through a letter sent on February 1. It had said that the head of the organisation has to appear before the panel and may be accompanied by another representative.
The parliamentary panel, which has 31 members, had also summoned representatives from Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and sources said its meeting will go ahead as scheduled.
Twitter had said on Friday that it was proactively working with political parties to verify candidates, elected officials and relevant party officials whose accounts will be active in public conversation.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump has said he will meet for the second time with Kim Jong-un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on February 27-28 in Vietnam's capital Hanoi.
The DPRK will embrace great economic development under Kim's leadership, Trump said.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong-un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump tweeted, referring to Stephen Biegun, US special envoy for DPRK-related issues.
"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," he later tweeted in a separate post.
"He (Kim) may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket -- an Economic one!" the White House host noted.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Trinamool Congress legislator Satyajit Biwsas was shot dead by unidentified assailants at a Saraswati Puja programme in West Bengals Nadia district on Saturday evening, police said.
The Trinamool accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of being involved in the murder, but it denied the charge and called for a Central Bureau of Investigation enquiry, if needed.
Biswas, 37, the lawmaker from Krishnaganj (SC), was fatally shot while attending the puja inauguration programme in Phulbari along with state minister Ratna Ghosh and Trinamool district president Gourishankar Dutta.
The newly-married legislator was fired upon multiple times from close range when he was coming down the stage after the programme.
Biswas, a popular scheduled caste leader, was rushed to a local hospital where he was declared dead.
The Trinamool alleged a BJP hand behind the crime.
"BJP and (its leader) Mukul Roy harboured a deep grudge against him as Biswas became an MLA at a time when Roy had betrayed us. The killing is the result of that conspiracy. We will see its end. There will be an inquiry by the police.
"But whoever has murdered, has done it with the blessings of Mukul Roy. This aspect cannot be glossed over.," Dutta alleged.
BJP state president Dilip Ghosh called the murder "unfortunate", and said it was Trinamool's habit to link his party to every such killing of its leaders.
"This is a very unfortunate incident. Last month, the MLA of Joynagar had a close brush with death. Now the BJP is being made the sacrificial lamb.
"Earlier, lot of murders had taken place in Birbhum district, their workers were also killed . They tried to implicate us in all these killings also. But the victims' families pointed fingers at the factional feuds with within the Trinamool.
"We want the truth to come out. Whoever is guilty, should be punished. This politics of murder should stop in West Bengal," said Ghosh.
He said murderers and anti-social elements have now taken up the Trinamool flag. "These people are committing such murders," he said.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Election Commission (EC) on Saturday ordered suspension of the district collector of Vikarabad, Telangana, for violation of election norms during the recently concluded Assembly polls in the state.
The poll panel asked the Telangana government to place Syed Omer Jaleel under suspension for opening the seal of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) in the Vikarabad constituency even as the matter was pending in the High Court.
The suspension order of Jaleel, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, has come after the Congress lodged a complaint against him.
Jaleel, also the district election officer, allegedly opened the seal of 125 EVMs and VVPATs even as a petition filed by Congress candidate G. Prasad Kumar, challenging the election of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) candidate M. Anand, was being heard by the court.
As per the EC norms, the seal of EVMs and VVPATs should not be removed in case of any litigation.
Anand defeated his nearest rival Prasad by 3,092 votes in elections held on December 7.
Meanwhile, the Congress reiterated its demand that the EC conducts fresh elections in the Vikarabad constituency.
Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, Congress leader in Andhra Pradesh Assembly, said the breaking of seals strengthen their doubts that EVMs were tampered with.
The Congress claimed it found discrepancies in counting in at least eight constituencies as the votes secured by the candidates did not match the votes recorded in VVPAT.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Rajasthan government's attempt to persuade the protesting Gujjars blocking the Delhi-Mumbai railway route failed on Saturday, even as rail traffic remained disrupted on the section for the second consecutive day.
The Gujjars are demanding 5 per cent reservation in jobs and education institutes in the state.
The state government has deputed Tourism Minister Vishwendra Singh and IAS officer Neeraj K. Pawan to hold talks with the Gujjar Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti.
However, the talks could not materialize and the Gujjars decided to continue their stir. Many trains were diverted or cancelled for the second day.
The protesting Gujjars continue to block Malarna Dungar railway tracks on Delhi-Mumbai route.
More than 24 hours after the agitation began, Singh along with Pawan visited the agitation spot to talk with the Gujjars.
Singh conveyed the message of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, inviting them to Jaipur for discussions.
The Minister said the talks needed pointwise deliberation.
Speaking to Col. Kirori Singh Bainsla, the Gujjar leader, Singh said railway tracks cannot be the place to hold such talks.
However, Bainsla reportedly rejected the proposal.
Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday accused the Congress-led Gehlot government of ignoring crucial warnings given by the Gujjar leaders.
"In their election manifesto, Congress had promised reservation for Gujjars," said BJP leader and former Rajasthan Minister Arun Chaturvedi.
"The Congress government has neither given a complete loan waiver to farmers as promised nor has it provided unemployment allowance. They have also failed to deliver on their promise of Gujjar reservation," he said.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan's Interior Ministry on Saturday rejected pleas of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar seeking removal of their names from the Exit Control List (ECL).
In October last year, Sharif, his daughter and son-in-law had separately written letters to the ministry stating that Rule 2 of Exit From Pakistan Rules 2010 did not apply to them as they "were not involved in corruption, misuse of authority, terrorism or any conspiracy" and thus their names should be removed from ECL.
According to the News International, all the three were informed about the rejection of their applications. The report cited anti-corruption body's sources as saying that now all the three had no other option but to approach the court for the sake of removing their names from ECL.
The decision to place the names of the former Premier, his daughter and son-in-law was taken during the first federal Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan on August 20, 2018.
In July last year, an accountability court in Islamabad had convicted the three in the Avenfield properties corruption case and sentenced them to 10 years, seven years and one year respectively in prison.
Sharif and Maryam Nawaz were released from jail on September 19 after the Islamabad High Court suspended their sentences in the case.
However, in December, an accountability court in Islamabad sentenced Sharif to seven years in prison in Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption reference, while acquitting him in the Flagship Investment reference.
The anti-corruption watchdog, while sentencing Sharif, had ruled that Al-Azizia Steel Mills - a Saudi Arabian firm carrying the name of his son - belonged to the former Prime Minister, who was unable to demonstrate how the project was funded.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan has been ruled out of the three-ODI series against New Zealand due to fractured finger.
Shakib injured his left ring finger while batting against Thisara Perera in the final of Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) 2019 on Friday and will be rested for at least three weeks, which implies the tourists will be without him for the entire ODI series, starting on Wednesday in Napier.
"An X-ray was done after the match, which confirmed a fracture on the left ring finger," Dr Debashis Chowdhury, the BCB's chief physician, was quoted as saying by espncricinfo.
"The affected area will have to be immobilised for around three weeks," he said.
The 31-year-old's injury will be a big loss to the tourists in New Zealand, considering the red hot form he was in the BPL 2019. He ended the BPL as top wicket-taker with 23 scalps and amassed 301 runs with the bat.
The three ODIs will be played in Napier, Christchurch and Dunedin on February 13, 16 and 20, respectively.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dubais Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has announced that 83 per cent of the work on Ras Al Khor Street Improvement Project (Ex Al Awir Street) and the upgrade of the entrances of the International City has been completed.
The project, which is being completed in co-ordination with the International City main developer Nakheel, had been undertaken as a result of the traffic impact study for International City and Dragon Mart, especially after the expansion of Dragon Mart, and the expected growth of traffic density in the area, it stated.
Mattar Al Tayer, the director-general and chairman of the board of executive directors of RTA said: "Phase Two of the project, which is expected to be opened this March, includes improvements on Al Manama Street and widening of the junctions, namely the extension of Al Manama-Al Warsan 1 Street (previously Nouakchott Street), Al Manama Street-Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road, and the International City-Al Manama Streets."
"Improvements of junctions also include the construction of bridges and signalised junctions enabling movement in all directions, namely on Al Manama-International City Streets (previously Street 414), Al Manama-Warsan 1 Streets, and Al Manama Street-Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road," stated Al Tayer.
The improvements on Al Manama Street-Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road include widening of the flyover above Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road from three to four lanes in each direction to increase its capacity from 4,500 to 6,000 vehicles per hour., said the RTA statement.
It also includes increasing the number of lanes in the sector from Ras Al Khor Street to Sharjah, and from International City to Jebel Ali and Abu Dhabi, from one to two lanes. The step will double the capacity of slipways from 800 to 1,600 vehicles per hour, it stated.
Al Manama Street will be widened in the sector between Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road and the entrance of the International City from three to six lanes in each direction.
The step will increase the street capacity by 1,500 vehicles per hour per direction. Al Manama Street will be widened in a sector from the entrance of International City up to Sheikh Zayed bin Hamdan Al Nahyan Street from two to five lanes in each direction. These works will increase street capacity from 3,000 vehicles per hour to 7,500 vehicles per hour, said the RTA in its statement.
Phase Two also includes the improvement of the junction of Al Manama Street and the entrance of the International City to a signalised junction enabling movement in all directions, and the construction of a flyover of three lanes in each direction, offering free crossing of Al Manama Street. The step will increase the capacity of the street to 4,500 vehicles per hour, it added.
RTA said the scope of work includes improvement of the existing surface intersection of Al Manama with Warsan Street 1 (previously Nouakchott Street) to a signalised junction enabling movement in all directions.
A two-lane flyover will be constructed to serve the traffic from Warsan Street 1 to the left in the direction of Sheikh Zayed bin Hamdan Al Nahyan Street. It will increase the capacity of the intersection by 3,000 vehicles per hour, it added.-TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir has rejected the attempt to link Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
He told reporters in Washington that the claims were "baseless" and those involved will be held accountable, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday, citing Al Arabiya TV.
Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey's Istanbul in October 2018, and a number of top Saudi officials involved in the case were arrested.
The Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud also ordered to re-structure the intelligence authority. Last month, Saudi Public Prosecution demanded capital punishment against five out of 11 suspects in the murder case.
The operation wasn't authorised, Al-Jubeir affirmed, highlighting "no order was given to conduct this operation."
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and BJP leader Raman Singh is likely to be fielded in the coming Lok Sabha elections.
According to sources, he will contest from Rajnandgaon, which is represented by his son Abhishek Singh. Abhishek may be relocated to some other seat, sources said.
Raman Singh had earlier been elected from Rajnandgaon in 1999 and was the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
There is also speculation that former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Chauhan may contest from Vidisha seat, which is being represented by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. She has declared that she would not contest the next Lok Sabha polls.
Along with Rajasthan, the BJP was defeated in the recent Assembly elections in both the states.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Legendary Bollywood hero Raj Kapoor had agreed to finance auteur Satyajit Ray's cult children's film "Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne"(GGBB), but wanted him to direct his eldest son Randhir Kapoor's first movie in return, says Tinnu Anand, who assisted Ray in the film.
"Manikda (Ray) was unable to get a financier for making GGBB. He had then gone to attend Raj Kapoor's daughter's wedding. There, Raj Kapoor told him he will finance the film, provided he directs his son Randhir Kapoor's first film," Anand said at the sixth Kolkata Literature Festival, organised as a part of the 43rd International Kolkata Book Fair.
However, a young producer in then Calcutta, Asim Dutta told Ray there was no need for him to make the film in Bombay (now Mumbai), as he was ready to produce it.
"We are very grateful that GGBB was born here and not in Bombay," Anand said on the occasion of completion of 50 years of the film.
Recalling the days when he came to Calcutta to assist Ray, Anand revealed that the producers lacked the means to keep an extra assistant director.
But after Anand met Ray, he asked him to join as assistant director, saying he has persuaded the producer to engage him.
Anand said he was touched with the first encounter.
"Ray handed me some papers and said 'Tinu I woke up at 4.30 a.m. and typed out seven pages of detailed synopsis for you'. I was almost shocked. Then he said he has managed to convince the producer. I couldn't believe this could be done by such a big personality for an outsider," he said.
The original Bengali story 'Goopy Gayen' was penned by Ray's grandfather Upendra Kishore Ray Choudhury in 1915 for the children's magazine Sandesh brought out by the family.
"So, in a way, It is not 50 but 104 years of GGBB. When Ray made it into a film, it was very different. There was drama in it and a few characters were created and tweaked by him, packed with many surprises," said Prasad Ranjan Ray, a member of the famous family, and a former home secretary of West Bengal.
Sharing the details of his close association with his famous father, Sandip Ray said: "I had complained that he is only making films for adults where characters are dying. It was then that he decided to make GGBB."
But the making of the iconic film was anything but smooth.
"He had started filming GGBB much before, but the project had to be shelved after the producer backed off. This had pained my father a lot. He switched attention to other films. Later, GGBB was made, but there was mudslinging during the release of the film, which I don't want to go into. But the high point is, the film ran for almost 104 weeks, calculating its run in all the theatres which screened it," said Sandip Ray.
He recalled that the initial reaction of the local audience was not very favourable.
"I had gone for the first show. There is a scene where delicious sweets and other food descend on a battlefield from the sky. As the scene was being shown, I heard a loud shout 'How long do we have to endure this cock-and-bull stuff'. I was crestfallen. But the audience reaction improved from the second day.
"What happened after that is history. The film became a success only through word of mouth publicity, whispering campaign and above all the love that it got from the audience," he added.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A day ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Andhra Pradesh, protests were held at various places in the state on Saturday with protesters raising 'Modi go back' slogans.
Protests were staged in 13 districts of the state by leaders and workers of the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Congress, Left parties, student groups and mass organisations fighting for the special category status for Andhra Pradesh.
Carrying black flags, they took out rallies and staged sit-ins at different places. Some could also be seen shirtless.
Leaders of the Left parties held protests by smashing empty pots in Vijayawada. They also threatened to disrupt Modi's rally in Guntur on Sunday.
Addressing a meeting in the Nellore district on Saturday, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said Modi had no right to visit the state as he betrayed Andhra Pradesh by not fulfilling the promise to accord special status and other commitments made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act 2014.
He called upon the people to register their protests against Modi's visit. Claiming that people boycotted BJP President Amit Shah's visit to the Srikakulam district last week, Naidu said a similar situation awaited Modi in Guntur.
Communist Party of India (CPI) state Secretary K. Ramakrishna said Modi had no moral right to visit the state as he did not honour the commitments made in Parliament.
CPI-M leader P. Madhu said party workers would hold protests with empty pots in Guntur to foil Modi's rally. He recalled how Modi had come to the stone laying ceremony of Amaravati, the new state capital, carrying a pot of soil and water and promised all help to the state. "He has gone back on every promise he made," said Madhu.
State Congress chief Raghuveera Reddy said his party would organise protests with black flags across the state on Sunday. He appealed to all political parties to join the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, security has been tightened in Guntur ahead of Modi's rally. The Special Protection Group (SPG) was busy giving final touches to the security arrangements in coordination with the state police.
State BJP chief Kanna Laxminarayana alleged that the TDP and other parties were planning to disrupt the rally. He said Modi would expose the TDP government's corruption and counter its false propaganda by highlighting the steps taken by the Centre to help the state during the last four-and-a-half years.
This will be Modi's first visit to Andhra Pradesh after the TDP pulled out of the BJP-led NDA last year.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived here on Saturday on a one-day visit, said the previous government had neglected Arunachal Pradesh for decades, but he is "here to change this".
"The previous government neglected this state for decades but we are here to change this. New India can only be built if the Northeast is developed well," he said while addressing a public rally at the IG Park here.
Following his arrival, Modi laid the foundation stones of projects worth Rs 4,000 crore including construction of a greenfield airport at Hollongi, the Sela Tunnel and a permanent campus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).
He also launched a new dedicated Doordarshan Channel for Arunachal Pradesh - DD Arun Prabha - and inaugurated a 110 MW Pare Hydroelectric Plant along with the upgraded Tezu Airport and 50 health and wellness centres in the hill state.
Noting that Arunachal is the "Land of the Rising Sun", the Prime Minister told the massive crowd that the Centre and Chief Minister Pema Khandu's government are taking every necessary step to make this state strong.
"Arunachal gives strength to our resolves. We are working on projects worth over Rs 13,000 crore for Arunachal. These will improve transportation, health care and benefit the state.
"Arunachal Pradesh is the security gateway of the country and we are taking every step to develop this state," he added.
Pointing out that Arunachal has the gift of water resources, the Prime Minister said: "It has the capability to generate electricity. However, these gifts of Arunachal weren't used by the previous governments."
He said the country can progress only when the Northeast will progress. "Working on the lines of 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas', the BJP is trying to develop the state. We will neither limit the budget nor our will power."
While laying the foundation stone for the Hollongi airport, Modi said: "Since independence, there wasn't any airport in the state with modern infrastructure or connectivity. But, the BJP government is dedicating two airports to the state. We are trying that through the 'UDAAN' scheme. The people of the state can now avail cheap flight services.
"The Tezu airport was built over 50 years ago but no government had the vision to connect the people of this state with other parts of the country. We expanded the airport by spending around Rs 125 crore."
Apart from air connectivity, he said the Centre was also connecting the state to the rest of the country through railways and roadways.
"In our bid to connect every capital to railways, we have connected Itanagar to the rail network of the country."
Around 1,000 villages have been connected through roads in the last two years alone and work on Trans Arunachal Highway is also under progress, he said.
"You will soon have a tunnel in Sela, which will reduce the travel time to the India-China border town Tawang by over an hour. This road will be accessible round the year, in all weather conditions," he said
Modi also congratulated the state and Chief Minister Khandu for providing electricity to every household under the 'Saubhagya' scheme. "What Arunachal Pradesh achieved today will soon be achieved by the entire nation."
On the tourism side, the Prime Minister said developing this sector will bring in more employment opportunities for the youth.
"The people will know about the culture of the state. To give a boost to culture and custom of the state, we launched Arunachal's first dedicated TV channel, DD Arun Prabha."
To benefit the farmers of the country, the BJP government has proposed the 'Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi' scheme in this year's Interim Budget, adding that the Centre was also working towards boosting organic farming in Arunachal.
He also informed the audience that the Centre has allocated Rs 44,000 crore funds to Arunachal Pradesh which is double the amount provided by the previous government.
Twelve hydro electric projects of 110 MW were also inaugurated, which according to the Prime Minister, will not only help Arunachal Pradesh but also the adjoining states.
Modi flew into Itanagar from Guwahati earlier on Saturday.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hinting at a more active role in the campaign for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Saturday said he would be making longer speeches on campaign trail.
The announcement comes at a time when ruling BJP leaders as well as those from the Opposition have questioned his ability continue as the Chief Minister and lead the campaign, in view of his prolonged treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer.
"I will not give a big speech. I will reserve those for elections," said Parrikar at a meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) booth workers, chaired by party President Amit Shah, on Saturday.
According to state BJP President Vinay Tendulkar, Parrikar who makes rare public appearances on account of his poor health, was not scheduled to attend the rally, held at the outskirts of Panaji, but reached there in the company of Shah.
Parrikar had to be assisted to climb the stairs to the stage and was accompanied by a government surgeon, who was holding urinary drainage bag attached to a catheter.
The Chief Minister spoke for a barely a couple of minutes, in course of which he tried to pump up the morale of the party workers.
"Let us all come together, forget small difference and let us fight to make (Narendra) Modi our Prime Minister once again," Parrikar said.
Parrikar has been ailing from advanced pancreatic cancer and was recently discharged from the New Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) earlier this week. He has been in and out of hospitals in Goa, Mumbai, New York and Delhi, ever since he was diagnosed with cancer in February 2018.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hours after Twitter declined to appear before a parliamentary committee on information technology on Monday citing short notice, the committee headed by Anurag Thakur has hinted that it will initiate breach of privilage action against it and its brass.
"Of course it can be an issue of breach of parliamentary privilege. They are taking advantage of the world's biggest market and are unwilling to answer," Thakur told media.
He said the reply of Twitter has been taken seriously by the committee, and "we will take a serious note of it".
"It is a very serious subject, and the kind of reply they have given will be discussed in the parliamentary committee, and we will take further action on that," he said.
BJP national spokesperson Meenakashi Lekhi earlier in the day also warned Twitter of "repercussions" and said no agency in any country has the right to disrespect its institutions.
"In this situation, if Twitter is disrespecting the established institution of Parliament, then there are repercussions," she said at a press conference.
"There are repercussions because in any democratic country, institutions need to be respected by the world powers," Lekhi said.
"If there is any violation of any sort, then there are repercussions to those violations...The institutions need to be respected," she added.
The BJP leader's remarks came after top Twitter officials, including its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jack Dorsey, declined to appear before a parliamentary committee on Monday citing "short notice" period.
The panel is deliberating the issue of safeguarding citizens' rights on social media platforms.
Earlier in the day, a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement said: "Given the short notice of the hearing, we informed the committee that it would not be possible for senior officials from Twitter to travel from the United States to appear on Monday."
The Twitter officials were earlier asked to appear before the panel on February 11 for alleged bias against "nationalist" accounts.
However, Twitter's letter has not gone down well with the panel members and is perceived as "lack of seriousness".
"We have suggested that we work with the Lok Sabha Secretariat to find mutually agreed dates for this meeting so that a senior Twitter official can attend," the Twitter spokesperson said.
"We have also offered representatives from Twitter India to come and answer questions on Monday. We await feedback from the government on these matters," said the statement.
The parliamentary committee on information technology, headed by Thakur, had issued summons to Twitter through a letter on February 1. It had said the head of the organisation has to appear before the panel and may be accompanied by another representative.
The 31-member parliamentary panel had also summoned representatives from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The meeting will go ahead as scheduled, sources said.
"We want to reiterate that we not only have deep respect for India's parliamentary process and we are also committed to serving the people who use Twitter in the Indian market," the statement by the microblogging site added.
Twitter had said on Friday it was proactively working with political parties to verify candidates, elected officials and relevant party officials whose accounts will be active in public conversation.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan released Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar at US' request to help expedite the Afghan peace talks, Washington's special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said.
Khalilzad, who returned to the US from almost a month-long peace mission to South Asia and the Middle East, said on Friday that he had discussed conditions for the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan with the Taliban, but there had been no agreement on this issue yet, Dawn news reported.
Speaking at the US Institute of Peace here, Khalilzad acknowledged that the US and the Taliban had reached a framework agreement in Doha last month, but more talks were needed for reaching a conclusion.
Responding to a question about Pakistan's role in facilitating the US-Taliban talks, he said that Islamabad had played a constructive role and released Mullah Baradar "at my request".
Khalilzad said that he requested Baradar's release because he believed the senior Taliban leader could also play a constructive role in the Afghan peace initiative.
Appreciating the role Islamabad was playing in promoting peace talks, Khalilzad said: "Pakistan is an important country and we want better relations with Pakistan."
Pakistan has also said that last month's talks between the United States and the Taliban were a "major diplomatic victory" for all sides.
Mullah Baradar was released in Pakistan in October.
Before his arrest in 2010, he was believed to be the military chief of the terror group, led by Mullah Omar who had died in 2013, although the news was made public only two years later.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Assam witnessed yet another nude protest on Saturday when a group of six persons stripped off their clothes and marched in front of the state secretariat at Dispur, shouting slogans against the Citizenship bill.
The incident took place prior to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's public rally at Changsari, around 50 km away from Dispur. The Prime Minister is in the state to inaugurate several developmental projects including laying of foundation stone of All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) at Changsari.
Police said that six persons marched naked on the Guwahati-Shillong Road before police personnel spotted them near the secretariat and took them into custody. The agitators were identified as members of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), an organization opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016.
On February 1, three persons protested against the bill by standing nude in front of the high security Janata Bhavan in Dispur.
Last month, at least ten youths from Assam staged nude protests in front of the parliament in New Delhi against the contentious Bill.
Both the BJP-led governments at the Centre and in Assam have been receiving flak over the Citizenship bill which has led to protests all over the northeast with people from all walks of life coming out to the streets to oppose the measure.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior BJP leader and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday said no one can question the intention and honesty of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"I know Modi for years, we have worked together. One can allege Modi of not doing much work, but no one can question his intention and honesty," said Rajnath Singh while addressing intellectuals here.
A day after the Congress directly attacked Modi over corruption charges, Rajnath Singh lauded the work done by him in his tenure till now.
"Under the leadership of Modi, our country's image rose like never before. India is now seen as strong and powerful country, thanks to the work done by Modi as a Prime Minister," he said.
Singh said Congress President Rahul Gandhi has been misleading the country on the Rafale issue.
"Rahul Gandhi is spreading false facts and illusion on the issue even after the Defence Minister explained everything in the Parliament."
He said people of the country understand that Gandhi is trying to fool them.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
UAE President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has issued the first two laws of the year - Law No.1 on the establishment of an Abu Dhabi Investment Office (Adio) and Law No.2 on regulating partnerships between public and private sectors.
The new entity will be responsible for executing a comprehensive strategy to increase Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Abu Dhabi.
As part of the emirates Ghadan 21 programme, Adios activities will expand to include key levers to accelerate economic growth such as Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and targeted incentives for Abu Dhabis priority sectors such as technology, tourism, and advanced manufacturing, said a top official.
Saif Mohamed Al Hajeri, the chairman of Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, said, "The formal establishment of Adio is an important milestone for Abu Dhabis economic development. With a growing, diversified economy, it is essential we continue to attract inward investment from international players."
"Abu Dhabi is one of the worlds most attractive investment destinations and I am confident that Adio will drive further progress in line with our economic strategy," he noted
Elham Abdulghafoor Mohamed AlQasim, the acting CEO, said: "Abu Dhabi offers local and international private sector actors a vibrant economy, stable political system and business friendly regulatory environment for investment."
"Our goal is to channel FDI towards priority sectors and enhance private sector participation in strategic projects where there are growing opportunities. We want to boost economic growth and competitiveness by executing an ambitious, targeted FDI strategy and driving partnership across the private and public sectors, where there are global precedents of private sector participation in priority public sector projects," he added.
According to him, Adio will implement the FDI strategy through a range of strategic programmes, including the establishment of a PPP Centre of Excellence.
This platform will be designed to deliver best practice and develop attractive investment models for international and local investors, in line with the Government of Abu Dhabis economic strategy, added AlQasim.-TradeArabia News Service
With its eyes set on returning humans to the moon, NASA is inviting US-based companies to help design and develop lunar landers, reusable systems for astronauts to land on the earth's natural satellite.
"We want to get started as quickly as possible. We are inviting industry and other potential partners to meet with us next week at NASA headquarters to discuss human lunar landers," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote in an op-ed at news site OZY.com on Friday.
The US space agency is planning to test new human-class landers on the moon, beginning 2024, with the goal of sending a crew to it 2028.
Through multi-phased lunar exploration partnerships, NASA is asking American companies to study the best approach to landing astronauts on the moon and start the development as quickly as possible with current and future anticipated technologies.
"Building on our model in low-Earth orbit, we'll expand our partnerships with industry and other nations to explore the moon and advance our missions to farther destinations such as Mars, with America leading the way," Bridenstine said in a statement.
"When we send astronauts to the moon in the next decade, it will be in a sustainable fashion," he said.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) unit in Tamil Nadu is all geared up for a public rally to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Tiruppur on Sunday, a party leader said on Saturday.
This will be Modi's first visit to the state after the presentation of the interim budget for 2019.
"After attending a government function, Modi will address a public rally which is expected to attract 150,000 people. He will address party members and others from seven Lok Sabha constituencies -- Ooty, Coimbatore, Pollachi, Erode, Karur, Tiruppur and Salem," S.K. Kharventhan, President, OBC Morcha in Tamil Nadu, told IANS.
He said Finance Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Finance Pon Radhakrishnan would also be present.
Before addressing the rally, Modi would launch several development projects at Perumanallur village in Tiruppur.
Modi would lay foundation stone of 100-bed Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) health facility at Tiruppur that will cater to medical needs of over 100,000 workers and their family members in the hosiery town and nearby areas covered under the ESI Act.
The Prime Minister would also lay foundation stones for a new integrated building at Trichy Airport and modernisation of Chennai airport.
Modi would also dedicate to the nation, the 470-bed ESIC Hospital and the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd's Ennore Coastal Terminal here.
He would also inaugurate crude oil pipeline from Chennai Port to Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited's (CPCL) Manali Refinery here.
The pipeline, built with enhanced safety features, will ensure reliable supply of crude oil and will cater to the needs of Tamil Nadu and neighbouring states.
In addition, passenger service on the 10-km section of the Chennai Metro Rail -- AG-DMS Metro station to Washermenpet Metro station -- will also be inaugurated by Modi.
The security has been beefed up in Tiruppur for Prime Minister Modi's visit.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Preparations are being made to welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Monday to serve Akshaya Patra's three billionth meal to children.
Akshay Patra Foundation is an NGO that works with the government on mid-day meal schemes. The foundation, incepted in 2000, serves wholesome school lunch to over 1.76 million children in 14,702 schools across 12 states in India, according to its website.
Officials said the Prime Minister would also address a public meeting after the programme.
Divisional Commissioner Anil Kumar, the Inspector General of Policee and other senior officials visited the Akshay Patra complex -- the site of the public meeting -- and reviewed security arrangements.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, local Member of Parliament Hema Malini and Union HRD minister Prakash Javdekar are likely to attend the programme.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated several developmental projects during his one-day visit to Arunachal Pradesh, including two airports, a tunnel and a film institute.
Following his arrival, Modi laid the foundation stones for the construction of the greenfield airport at Hollongi, the Sela Tunnel and a permanent campus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).
He also launched a new dedicated Doordarshan Channel for Arunachal Pradesh - DD Arun Prabha - and inaugurated a 110 MW Pare Hydroelectric Plant along with the upgraded Tezu Airport and 50 health and wellness centres in the hill state.
Modi addressed a huge public rally at the IG Park here, urging people to see what the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government at the Centre has done in the Northeast in the last four-and-a-half years compared to the last 55 years.
"Our government after coming to power, have taken up developmental works. I believe that we can build a strong and better India only when we develop the northeastern region," said Modi.
He said that the Centre has already sanctioned Rs 44,000 crore to Arunachal Pradesh.
"I am happy to inaugurate the two airports today. Never before in the history of Arunachal Pradesh, two airports were inaugurated in a single day.
"The two airpors will help bring more tourists to the state and help the youths with employment opportunities.
"In absence of airports, people from Arunachal Pradesh had to go to Guwahati by road. These airports will provide direct flight connectivity to the people of the state," the Prime Minister said, adding that his government has also sanctioned seven surveys for railway line extension, out of which three have been completed.
Modi said that Centre also approved projects to produce 850 MW of power which will benefit the region.
Modi arrived in Guwahati on Friday evening. On his way to the Raj Bhavan from the airport, protesters demonstrating against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill waved black flags.
While leaving from the Raj Bhavan on Saturday morning to depart for Arunachal Pradesh, a group of students again waved black flags at the Prime Minister.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao announced here on Saturday that a comprehensive master plan would be prepared for converting Hyderabad into a truly global city.
Pointing to the rising problem of pollution and declining green cover, he said all polluting industries must be shifted out of the city.
Hyderabad is growing rapidly adding 5-6 lakh people to its population every year. People from various parts of the state and also other states were migrating to the city as it offers the best facilities and employment opportunities, said KCR, as Rao is popularly known.
If the city was not developed as per the demands and aspirations of the increasing population, the life in the city could become miserable, he added.
The Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) will prepare the draft plan in three months in consultation with a team of national and international experts.
At a high-level meeting with officials, the Chief Minister said expert panels would be set up to implement the master plan and required funds would be made available.
KCR suggested that for better planning, the city should be divided into three parts -- the city within Outer Ring Road (ORR), beyond ORR and within the proposed Regional Ring Road.
"There are enough traffic problems. The population is likely to increase multifold and it is possible that the situation may slip out of our hands," the Chief Minister said.
Industrial estates that are not in use will be converted into green areas and parks. He said 1,50,000 acres of forest blocks in and around Hyderabad should be rejuvenated.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The UN refugee agency has called on Bangladeshi authorities "to continue to allow" into the country people fleeing ongoing violence in Myanmar amid the deteriorating security situation there.
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) issued the statement on Friday amid its concern about the humanitarian impact of continuing violence in southern Chin State and Rakhine State in Myanmar, bdnews24.com reported.
UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic in Geneva said it was aware of reports of escalating violence and a deteriorating security situation in Myanmar's states. "This has reportedly led to internal displacement and a number of new arrivals from Myanmar seeking safety in the Bandarban border region of Bangladesh.
"The UNHCR is deeply concerned about the humanitarian impact of continuing violence in Myanmar and the potential for both further internal displacement and the outflow of refugees," Mahecic said.
He added that as part of inter-agency efforts, the UNHCR was ready to support the humanitarian response in the affected areas in Myanmar.
"The UNHCR has also offered its support to the government of Bangladesh to assess and respond to the needs of people who have arrived seeking safety from violence in Myanmar."
Bangladesh has given shelter to over 720,000 Rohingya who have fled ethnic cleansing since August 2017. The figure has taken the number of Myanmar nationals living in Bangladesh to more than 1.1 million.
But their return plan to Myanmar has been postponed as they do not want to go back fearing their safety and security. The UN agencies, including the UNHCR, have been advocating for safe, voluntary and dignified return to Rakhine State.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Apollo Hospitals Enterprises Ltd has approached the Madras High Court to restrain the Justice A. Arumugaswamy Commission from probing into the adequacy or correctness of the treatment given to late Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa at the hospital.
Jayalalithaa was in Apollo Hospitals here for 75 days in 2016 before she died there due to cardiac arrest on December 5, 2016.
The Apollo Hospitals have also filed a petition in the high court to appoint an independent medical board, if the Commission's terms of reference also cover an inquiry into the treatment given to Jayalalithaa.
"We feel the Commission is going beyond its terms of reference. The terms of reference for the Commission does not intend to go into the adequacy of the treatment given to Jayalalithaa. The inquiry is now changing towards a case of medical negligence," a person close to Apollo Hospitals told IANS.
The Apollo Hospitals had filed the petition on Tuesday and the matter is coming up for hearing on February 11.
The Commission had earlier turned down the request of Apollo to set up a medical board.
In an order issued detailing the terms of reference of the inquiry commission, the Tamil Nadu government had said it would "inquire into the circumstances and situation leading to the hospitalisation" of Jayalalithaa on September 22, 2016 and "subsequent treatment provided till her unfortunate demise" on December 5 that year.
Ever since Jayalalithaa's death, there have been allegations of foul play.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The government on Saturday hit back at Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for his remarks about minorities in India and suggested that Islamabad could do well to focus on its domestic challenges rather than trying to divert attention.
"The Pakistan Prime Minister's remarks are an egregious insult to all citizens of India. He has yet again demonstrated his lack of understanding about India's secular polity and ethos. He overlooks the obvious fact that adherents of all faiths choose to live under the democratic polity and the progressive Constitution of India," Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.
India's attack came after media reports quoted Khan as saying that his government would not allow minorities to be treated like second class citizens like minorities in India.
Kumar said India has eminent leaders of all faiths who occupy its highest constitutional and official positions.
"In contrast, Pakistani citizens of non-Islamic faith are barred from occupying high constitutional offices. The minorities are often turned away from government bodies like the Economic Advisory Council of their Prime Minister, even in 'naya Pakistan'," Kumar said.
"Pakistan would do well to focus on its domestic challenges and improve conditions of its citizens rather than try and divert attention," he added.
The official spokesperson said the Pakistan Prime Minister's latest attempts to play with minority sentiment in India will be rejected by the people of this country.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India on Saturday dismissed China's opposition to the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Arunachal Pradesh, saying the state was an intergral and inalienable part of India.
"The state of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India," the External Affairs Ministry said.
"This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions."
As Prime Minister Modi on Saturday inaugurated several developmental projects during his one-day visit to Arunachal Pradesh, China, which slams visits by Indian leaders and foreign dignitaries to the state which it terms "South Tibet" and claims it as its own, said such actions would "escalate" and "complicate" the border dispute.
"China's position on the Sino-Indian border issue is consistent and clear. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called Arunachal Pradesh and resolutely opposes the activities of Indian leaders to the eastern section of the Sino-Indian border," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in Beijing.
China said such actions would also hurt the progress made by both sides, especially after the pathbreaking meet between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan last year.
In 2017, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh infuriated China, prompting it to rename some towns in the Indian state.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said happiness will not come simply by prosperity and stressed the need for people-centric and nature-centric development.
Stating that focus should be not just on prosperity and but also on the well-being of people, he claimed that the entire world was looking to India not just for economic development but also for spiritual guidance.
He was addressing an international conference on development discourse being co-hosted by the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Research for Resurgence Foundation (RFRF) and other organisations here.
"It is high time to think, what development actually means to the humanity at large. The bottom line seems to be improvement in the quality of life, how healthy and happy and how fulfilling and emotionally satisfying are our lives," he said.
"Prosperity is important. However, there are probably many things that matter in our lives in addition to money. Environment and peace, both external and internal, are critical determinants of the quality of life," said the Vice-President.
He believes that a culture of sharing and caring, of dialogue and understanding, of empathy and compassion can shape a new world. "Preserving culture and nature can pave the way for a brighter future," he remarked.
He noted that while development broadly encompasses improving incomes and living conditions, the focus should be on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals the world has set for itself in 2015.
"For a developing nation like India, the need of the hour is to sustain the momentum of economic growth and dovetail its efforts for increasing prosperity and well-being of the people," he said.
Pointing out that India was growing at 7.3 to 7.5 per cent, Naidu said making agriculture viable, improving farm income, bridging the urban rural divide, eradicating poverty, tackling climate change, harnessing technology, empowering women and creating jobs were all crucial to sustain this growth momentum.
He said the ultimate goal of development had evolved from "struggle for existence to welfare and happiness of majority" and finally achieving "let all be happy".
Naidu underlined the need for living in harmony with nature. He said while doing one's duty gives happiness, going beyond one's duty to serve society, nature, animals and other creatures gives greater happiness.
He said as MP, minister and now constitutional authority, he still engaged in social work through Swarna Bharath Trust.
He called for educating the young generation to live in harmony with nature. He pointed out how the world had taken to India's ancient practices like yoga but some people in India were yet to accept it.
"Yoga has nothing do with religion. It is an exercise of unity of mind and body. Yoga is for your body not for (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi. Modi has only promoted it," he said.
Naidu said some people wrongly interpret the word 'Bharatiya' and believe it is something do with a party. "Because of the colonial rule and mindset, we suspect everything ancient."
Stating that terrorism is enemy of humanity while black money weakens the currency, Naidu said the global community should come together to eradicate the twin menaces of terror and black money.
"The country can achieve rapid progress and bring about a transformation in the lives of both urban and rural people only when we collectively strive to eradicate poverty, illiteracy, caste and gender discrimination as also the twin menaces of black money and terrorism," he added.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
DMCC, a leading flagship free zone and Government of Dubai Authority on commodities trade and enterprise, has signed a MoU with the industrial development body of the government of Indian state of West Bengal, in bid to boost UAE-India trade through Dubai.
With over 15,000 member companies in its Free Zone, DMCC has a track-record providing attractive business solutions in a regulated, business friendly environment, including its much anticipated Uptown Dubai district.
Every single working day. an Indian company joins DMCC and its list now boasts top firms including Tata Group, Reliance, Hakan Agro, Rosy Blue and Adani Group.
This MoU will further cement the strong bilateral trade relations between DMCC and a rapidly growing Indian business community, remarked Feryal Ahmadi, the chief operating officer of DMCC, after signing the deal with Vandana Yadav, the managing director of WBIDC at the 5th Bengal Global Business Summit in Kolkata, India.
Representatives of both Embassy of the UAE in India and Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry attended the ceremony in support of DMCC.
"As we deepen our already strong partnership with the business community in India, DMCC takes pride in collaborating with WBIDC, and the state of West Bengal, to seek new ways to attract, facilitate and promote trade," stated Ahmadi.
"As a result of our relationship with WBIDC, the initiatives outlined in this MoU serve as a launch pad for Indian businesses looking to grow in Dubai and beyond," she added.
Ahmad Alfalahi, the Commercial Attache for the UAE Embassy - India, said: "India is the UAEs second largest trading partner by volume. Both countries are making a concerted effort to strengthen commercial ties, create an environment that is even more welcoming to investment, removes unnecessary bureaucracy and opens the door trade."
"By signing this MoU, we are delighted that DMCC and State of Bengal are clearly embracing this approach and one that will only serve to benefit both countries," stated Alfalahi.
The MoU commits both parties to raise awareness around export promotion, facilitate trade, boost investment interaction and connect businesses from across geographies, sectors and industries, he added.
On the deal, Yadav said: "There is a strong synergy between Dubai and the state of West Bengal. Looking ahead, there is a signficant opportunity to strengthen ties, collaborate further and work even closer together to boost business activity and knowledge transfer."
"DMCC is a strong partner, and will help Dubai, India and West Bengal do precisely that. We look forward to working with the worlds leading Free Zone and meet the ambitious targets outlined in our MoU," she added.-TradeArabia News Service
Commercial flight services at the Veer Surendra Sai Airport in Jharsuguda, Odisha, is likely to resume on March 31, airport director S.K. Chauhan said on Saturday. Low-cost carrier SpiceJet will start operations from the airport to Delhi, Kolkata and Hyderabad.
"As per the tentative schedule, SpiceJet has planned to start flights from the airport in the summer schedule, beginning March 31. The private airlines has decided to launch its flights to New Delhi, Kolkata and Hyderabad," said Chauhan.
A team of the SpiceJet officials on Saturday inspected security and infrastructure facilities at the airport.
The airport, Odisha's second, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 22, 2018. But operations stopped at the airport after scheduled commuter carrier Air Odisha suspended its services on October 6 citing technical reasons.
Later, the Ministry of Civil Aviation cancelled Air Odisha's licence in November 2018 citing poor performance.
Now the airport will be connected to Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Mumbai, Raipur, Hyderabad and Delhi under the 'Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik' (UDAN-3) scheme.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A man and his daughter were killed after a dumper truck lost control and rammed into their house in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district, police said on Saturday.
The incident took place in district's Shayamnagar village early on Friday.
"A dumper truck allegedly lost control and rammed into the house of Maidul Islam, 48, in Shayamnagar. He died on the spot. Later his daughter Asifa Islam, 17, was declared dead at a local hospital," an officer from Kashipur police station said.
"It is not sure whether the accident happened due to over-speeding or any mechanical failure in the dumper. The vehicle has been seized but the driver and the helper of the dumper have fled the spot," he said.
Following the incident, an angry mob agitated with the dead body of Islam and blocked parts of the adjoining Haora road after half an hour before they were dispersed.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has officially launched her election campaign to become the party's presidential candidate for the 2020 United States polls.
Warren on Saturday made the announcement at an event in Lawrence in her home state of Massachusetts, where she took a shot at the current administration and the nation's politics, Xinhua news agency reported.
"We need to take power in Washington away from the wealthy and well-connected and put it back in the hands of the people where it belongs," she said in her speech.
The campaign of Warren, who's on the Democratic Party's left flank, will focus on economic equality, government accountability and reining in big corporations.
She pledged on Saturday to "break up monopolies when they choke off competition" and "take on Wall Street banks so that the big banks can never again threaten the security of our economy."
Warren has faced questions about her past claims of Native American ancestry. Her decision last year to release the results of a DNA test intended to prove her claims drew criticism from Native American groups.
The senator apologized earlier this week for those claims, clarifying that she is not a member of any tribe.
Brad Parscale, campaign manager for President Donald Trump's 2020 re-election, accused Warren of being a "fraud."
"Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected," Parscale said in a statement on Saturday.
Trump has called Warren "Pocahontas" and claimed that she benefited in schools and work from minority status.
Warren, 69, has represented Massachusetts in the Senate since 2013. In November last year, she won re-election to the upper chamber for a second term.
She's now officially joining a crowded field of Democrats seeking the party's nomination to take on Trump next year.
Other prominent Democratic figures who have announced presidential bids include California Senator Kamala Harris, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi's chief electoral officer on Saturday said that they will be taking legal action against those calling to residents of the capital to tell them that their names have been deleted from the electoral rolls and that they will get them restored.
On the other hand, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party said that it has discovered that a large scale operation for fraudulent deletion of voters from Delhi's electoral rolls was underway and asked the poll panel to explain.
In a statement, the CEO's office said the unknown persons have told the people that the callers will get the same restored in the electoral roll, and advised people to beware of such misleading calls.
"Separate legal action as required/deemed appropriate is being taken," it said.
"The only authority to add or delete a name in the electoral roll is Electrol Registration Officer. Any eligible citizen can apply directly to him for the inclusion of his or her name in electoral roll," the CEO's office said.
It also requested people to check the true status of their enrolment from the helpline number, website and their voter centres.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, in a series of tweets, said that the Election Commission gave the AAP list of 24 lakh names deleted in Delhi and his government's inquiries had found deletions to be wrong.
He asked why the Election Commission was protecting the officers responsible and stopping the Delhi government from inquiring into all the deletions.
"Incumbents come and go. Election Commission is too precious an institution for Indian democracy. EC's integrity and credibility ought to be protected. EC must not be allowed to become agent of a political party," he tweeted.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The CPI-M on Saturday slammed the Kamal Nath-led Congress government in Madhya Pradesh for invoking the stringent National Security Act (NSA) in cases of alleged cow slaughter, terming it as an attempt to "appease the communal forces".
The condemnation came during a two-day meeting of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) that concluded on Saturday.
"This stringent legislation was meant to be used against anti-national terrorists. Its invocation over such allegations displays an effort to appease the communal elements," party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said while briefing the media after the meet.
He demanded the revocation of the NSA slapped against five persons in Madhya Pradesh by the Kamal Nath government.
Notably, Congress President Rahul Gandhi too has conveyed his reservations about Madhya Pradesh government's action to Chief Minister.
Asked if 'Mahagathbandhan' or the grand alliance of the non-NDA parties would take shape, Yechury said that alliances and understandings between like minded parties would happen statewise with different dynamics in each state.
He, however, asserted that a coalition would take place after the Lok Sabha elections just as it has happened on several occasions in the past.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Citing purported audio tape conversations allegedly involving former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, the Congress on Saturday accused the BJP of attempting to destabilise the Congress-JD(S) government in Karnataka through corruption and horse trading and sought to link its national leadership - Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President Amit Shah - in the episode.
Addressing a press conference, AICC General Secretary K.C. Venugopal and party chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said the Yeddyurappa tapes now establish a "new low" in the of corruption, bribery and "sinister attempt to misuse the entire judiciary up to the Supreme Court to bring down an elected government in Karnataka".
A scandalous claim has been made by naming Modi and Shah that the Supreme Court judges would be approached to fix the cases of the MLAs who will defect in violation of the anti-defection law, they said.
The audio clip relates to a purported discussion between Yeddyurappa and Shan Gowda, son of JD(S) legislator Nagana Gowda from Gurmitkal constituency, a few days ago.
"In this audio clip, it is said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah will approach Supreme Court judges and take care of any conflict that will arise from this," Surjewala said.
He asked whether the Chief Justice of India would take action and issue notice against BJP for such practices.
The two leaders said another "sensational revelation" from the audio clip was that the Governor was being treated as a "puppet" and was being used to destabilise an elected government in Karnataka and the BJP has "offered" Rs 50 Crore to the Vidhan Sabha Speaker.
"We witnessed the newest low in when not only BJP Karnataka's senior leaders were involved in horse trading and corruption but also revealed the role of Modi and Shah in it," Surjewala said.
He said that the audio clippings were making clear that Yeddyurappa was offering Rs 10 crore to each MLA and 12 people were offered ministerial positions and six were offered the position chairman of various boards.
"Where did this money come from? Is this black money or white money?" he asked.
Venugopal said that the Karnataka government will continue, irrespective of whatever the BJP may be trying.
"We are 100 per cent sure about it. BJP's type of should be condemned," he said.
"From day one, since H.D. Kumaraswamy became the Chief Minister, BJP's national leadership is trying to destabilise the government through horse-trading."
--IANS
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Film: "Cold Pursuit"; Director: Hans Petter Moland; Cast: Liam Neeson, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson, Emmy Rossum, Domenick Lombardozzi, Julia Jones, John Doman, Laura Dern; Rating: **1/2
Starring Liam Neeson in the lead as Nels Coxman, an unassuming, snowplough driver living on the outskirts of the Rocky Mountain ski town of Kehoe, a fictional town about three and a quarter miles from Denver, the film begins with giving an insight into his house which he shares with his wife Grace (Laura Dern) and his son Kyle (Micheal Richardson).
Then not getting into specifics, when Kyle, an airport worker, is kidnapped and killed by drug dealers, the senior Coxmans' marriage falls apart. Nels is forced to investigate his son's murder and he goes on a killing spree to find the crime lord who killed his son.
If you have been following Liam Neeson's filmography, you'd realise that this film is no different from his previous films. Only that it slowly dawns upon you that "Cold Pursuit" wants to be a bloody comedy-of-errors with eccentric characters and a nasty sense of humour.
The criminals all have nutty names like Speedo, Limbo, Santa, Baby Hawk, Eskimo, Bone and whenever one dies, his name appears on the black screen with a symbolic little crucifix.
By the time Nels gets closer to his target, we are actually invested in the characters. The small town police too do their bit of solving the sudden string of crimes. Midway through, the narrative suddenly gets propelled by an ensemble of American-Indian criminals who complicate the plot but work in advantage for Nels.
Given his wounded-heart father routine which he perfected since "Taken", Neeson seems to be walking through his character nonchalantly. He hardly makes an effort to come out of his comfort zone and that's why the film loses its sheen.
The brilliance of "Cold Pursuit" lies largely in its supporting cast who play the oddballs against the ramrod straight Nels. Tom Bateman shines as the suave and dashing drug kingpin Viking. As a father he is exactly opposite of Nels - a cold and calculating control freak who leans towards absurdity yet maintaining a shred of realism.
Domenick Lombardozzi brings a real nuance to the role of one of Viking's assistants, Mustang. And, Tom Jackson offers another shade of fatherhood as White Bull, a Native American drug rival of Viking seeking revenge for his own son.
Director Hans Petter Moland's "Cold Pursuit" is a remake of his Norwegian revenge drama, "In Order of Disappearance", which was released in 2014. And it sticks to its original snowy setting and free flowing bloodshed. But then given Neeson's filmography, this film appears as another generic Neeson-esque drama.
--IANS
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Unfazed by the resistance in the Northeast , Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said his government's intention is to pass the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill but assured the people of the region that it will ensure that the legislation does not cause any harm to Assam and its neighbouring states.
The Prime Minister was addressing a public rally at Changsari near Guwahati while inaugurating several development projects amid protests by various organisations across the region which showed him black flags on Friday.
"The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 is not for Assam or northeastern states. It is for the whole country. The Bill is a national commitment considering the plight of the persecuted minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The passage of the Bill will ensure that those who were left out during the Partition and who still love India more than their lives are accommodated in the country. It is the responsibility of India to accept those people," he said.
"I am here to assure you that the Bill will not harm Assam or any other state in the region. The Bill will only allow those persecuted minorities to apply for citizenship. There is no question of granting citizenship without verification," Modi said.
The Prime Minister said the government is committed to ensuring that there are no illegal foreigners in Assam and the country.
"Our government has started work for updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) under the supervision of the Supreme Court, which the previous government was not doing. Our government is also working at a faster pace to seal the India-Bangladesh border," Modi said.
The Prime Minister attacked the Congress by holding the opposition party responsible for the delay in conferring Bharat Ratna to the late Bhupen Hazarika and Gopinath Bordoloi.
"Although music maestro Bhupen Hazarika and Gopinath Bordoloi were worthy of Bharat Ratna, the conferring of the honour to them was delayed for decades by the previous governments. It is the BJP government during whose tenure Bharat Ratna was conferred to both the worthy sons of Assam," he said.
"I want to ask them why the real jewels had to wait for decades to be recognised as Bharat Ratna, while for some the honour was fixed immediately after their birth," said the Prime Minister, adding that the previous governments in Assam also failed to implement the Assam Accord for over 30 years.
"Our government has already instituted a committee to implement the Clause 6 of the Assam Accord and I firmly believe that the committee will be able to fulfill all the aspirations of the people of the state," he said.
--IANS
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Considering the significant role played by Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in increasing access to higher in India, the Indian government last year announced it would recognise degrees, diplomas or certificates awarded through this mode at par with those obtained through the regular mode of
ODL has led many people belonging to the disadvantaged group, such as those living in remote areas, women affected by gender bias and also many working professionals seeking to upgrade their skills according to the changing market conditions, to enroll themselves in institutes of higher learning.
Recognising the degrees obtained through ODL at par with the conventional system for the purpose of employment, primarily in the public sector undertakings, or for pursuing higher education, will aid in increasing enrolments in distance learning programmes and also help in closing the skill gap the country faces.
In addition to the declaration of degree equivalence of ODL institutions and the regular universities, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the regulatory authority for the ODL in India, as a quality assurance measure, derecognised the distance learning programmes which require hands-on experience, such as engineering, medicine, dental, pharmacy, nursing, architecture, physiotherapy and other such programmes. Further, for professional programmes such as MBA, MCA, B.Ed., M.Ed., Hotel Management, Travel, and Tourism, recognition is no longer accorded without prior approval of the respective regulatory authorities.
For the private universities, the rules for offering distance education courses have changed; they are no longer allowed to run ODL programmes for which similar programmes are not offered in the regular mode of education in the last five years, owing to the lack of experienced faculty in the particular ODL programme offered by the university.
Further, UGC has made mandatory accreditation of National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) for ODL institutions and other higher education institutions providing the distance learning programmes, as a quality assurance measure for higher learning in India. NAAC, is the national accreditation agency for higher education in India, which evaluates the quality of the education institution in terms of various performance parameters, and based on the assessment assigns a Cumulative Grade Point Averge (CGPA) to it. According to the latest UGC guidelines, higher education institutions which have a valid accreditation of NAAC of minimum CGPA of 3.26 on a 4-point scale and have completed five years of existence are eligible to apply for providing distance learning programmes.
To further complement the ODL and regular university education systems, the government launched SWAYAM, a digital programme of learning, by bringing online hundreds of courses taught at the university/college level to the learners from varied backgrounds, and giving them a unique opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills. For a student, the incentive lies in earning credits which could be transferred to the current academic record; for working professionals, the incentive is upskilling at a very low cost.
To assure the quality of the content produced and delivered through SWAYAM, the courses have been prepared by specially chosen faculty from across the country. National coordinators have been appointed for different categories of courses for assuring and managing the quality of the courses - AICTE for self-paced and international courses, NPTEL for engineering, UGC for non-technical post-graduation education, CEC for under graduate education, NCERT & NIOS for school education, IGNOU for out-of-school students, IIMB for management studies and NITTTR for Teacher Training programmes.
According to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), 2017-18, distance enrolment constituted about 11 per cent of the total enrolment in higher education in India. Presently, to provide ODL education in India, there is one Central Open University (IGNOU), 14 State Open Universities, one State Private Open University and 110 Dual Mode universities that offer education through both regular and distance modes. These universities are mainly concentrated in six states, with Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh enrolling 61.3 per cent of distance education students in the country (AISHE, 2017).
Looking at the year-wise trend in the open learning enrolment in India, there has been a decline in enrolment in most of the undergraduate level programmes, except for Masters in Business Administration (MBA), where student enrolments increased by 23 per cent over the period 2016-17 to 2017-18 (AISHE, 2017).
While a majority of the students choose the traditional mode of education, ODL has a tremendous potential to reach the disadvantaged sections of the society, for whom higher education in the traditional setting is inaccessible. In fact, the ODL education can play an instrumental role in achieving the target Gross Enrolment Ratio of 30 per cent in higher education in India by 2020-21.
The recent government initiatives in assuring the quality of ODL education will aid in overcoming some of the challenges faced by this system, and also possibly result in greater enrolments of students who were earlier disregarding the distance mode of learning due to non-recognition of its degrees/ certificates, or due to quality concerns about the institution providing these, or the content of the courses provided and delivered. Increasing enrolments in higher education through the ODL mode is one way the country can increase its pool of skilled labour force and lessen the skill gap induced by technology changes.
(Amit Kapoor is chair, Institute for Competitiveness, India. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at amit.kapoor@competitiveness.in and tweets @kautiliya. Deepti Mathur, senior researcher at large, Institute for Competitiveness has contributed to the article)
--IANS
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When the Marxists were striving to establish their hegemony in West Bengal, one of their favourite targets was the Central Reserve Police (CRP), which they castigated as the centre's "occupation" force.
Something similar is happening now in the state where the combative Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, has decided to take on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a head-confrontation on the grounds that it is violating the federal norms by targeting Kolkata's Police Commissioner in connection with a chit fund scam.
The first phase of this centre-state row involved the Chief Minister sitting on a dharna (a sit-in protest) in the Esplanade area after the CBI officers were prevented from entering the Police Commissioner's residence by the Kolkata police and taken to a thana.
Since then, the Supreme Court has said that the Commissioner can be questioned by the CBI but not arrested. The verdict has been hailed as a victory by both the centre and the state although it looks like a draw.
But it is the second phase of the scrap between the two sides which is worrisome, for the centre has decided to take disciplinary action against those officers of the Kolkata police who were seen on the stage with Mamata Banerjee during the dharna.
Since these are senior officers of an all-India service, any official reprimand will leave a black mark in their career records.
There is little doubt that both the CBI and the Kolkata police have become the unfortunate victims of a political standoff between two aggressive entities - the centre and the state.
Even if the ostensible reason for the centre to send a CBI team to Kolkata was to probe a scam which had been pending for some time, it might have taken care to ensure that the step did not look like a raid on an accused even if the CBI felt that the commissioner was not cooperating or had even destroyed some of the evidence. A measure of interaction with the state was in order.
The state, too, might have overacted by behaving as if the CBI's arrival at the commissioner's residence was tantamount to a violation of its "sovereignty", but such a huffy response was inevitable in view of the tense political relations between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government at the centre and its opponents in West Bengal.
For both, it was patently a matter of prestige where neither wanted to give the impression that it was yielding any ground.
In addition, there are a number of political considerations. While the centre may have been motivated by a desire to show who is the boss in the context of the state's repeated attempts to block, usually ineffectively, the BJP's public rallies, the ruling Trinamool Congress is apparently extra-sensitive about the BJP's political overtures in view of the belief that the party is gaining ground by replacing the Left and the Congress as the Trinamool Congress's main adversary.
One of the reasons for the centre's renewed focus on the chit fund scam was probably to inconvenience Mamata Banerjee at a time when she is emerging as a focal point of the opposition alliance against the BJP as the recent rally of 22 non-BJP parties in Kolkata showed.
However, irrespective of whether there is any truth in the perception that the BJP is using the investigative agencies, as its predecessors did, to harass the political critics, a fallout of such acts can be to give a handle to a state-level ruling party.
It is one thing for the agencies to question P. Chidambaram or Robert Vadra since they are not associated with a ruling party in a state, and quite another for a fairly large contingent from Delhi to descend on a state capital in search of a high officer who was earlier said to be missing.
There is little doubt that Mamata Banerjee will make substantial political capital by describing the episode as an assault on the state's dignity. From this aspect, the political gains which the BJP was making cannot but suffer a setback.
Up until now, Mamata Banerjee had been somewhat on the defensive on several counts. One was the lawlessness which was witnessed during the panchayat polls when a large number of opposition candidates could not file their nominations. The incidents undermined her claims to be a national leader capable of leading the anti-BJP mahagathbandhan (grand alliance).
The other was her seemingly pronounced pro-Muslim stance to keep the minority community, which comprises about 30 per cent of the population, in good humour.
It is no secret, however, that nothing helps a state more than the belief that the centre is out to browbeat it. The Bengalis are no less prone to this kind of parochialism than any other community.
Besides, in Mamata Banerjee, they have a leader who is known as a doughty street-fighter. She routed the Marxists with her belligerence and will not step back from a skirmish with the centre. The BJP may rue, therefore, the CBI's peremptory action in Kolkata.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
--IANS
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The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday assured several welfare measures in Odisha, including permanent land records, jobs to youths and pucca houses, if it is voted to power in the forthcoming elections.
"We will fulfil the dream of Prime Minister Narendra Modi if BJP is voted to power in Odisha. We assure that every poor across the country will get the permanent land record and pucca house by 2022," said Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Pradhan was addressing the party's "Pratisruti Samabesh" here.
He said the BJP will also provide other necessary facilities like drinking water, toilets, electricity and LPG connections to people in Odisha, and targeted the Biju Janata Dal (BJD)-led Odisha government for failing to do so in their last 19-years tenure.
The BJD in its 2014 election manifesto had promised to provide pucca houses to all poor people. But it has failed to fulfil the promise, he said.
He also pointed out that while 20 lakh people in the state don't have land records, about 30 lakh people have no houses yet.
The BJP has has lined up several Central leaders to campaign in the state ahead to the General and Assembly elections.
The BJP President Amit Shah will be addressing a party meeting at Sambalpur on February 15. Union Home Ministers Rajnath Singh, Giriraj Singh and Manoj Sinha, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will be visiting several parts of the state under the campaign "Parivartan Samabesh", which will continue till March 2 in all Assembly constituencies, said state BJP President Basant Panda.
--IANS
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June 19, 2019, Wednesday
All private universities in Uttar Pradesh will now have to give an undertaking to the government, saying that their campuses will ...
The Andhra Pradesh government has hired two special trains to ferry people to New Delhi for Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu's protest against the Centre on February 11, officials said here on Saturday.
The General Administration Department has released Rs 1.12 crore to hire the trains with 20 compartments each from the South Central Railway.
According to the orders issued by the Department, the trains from Ananthapur and Srikakulam will transport leaders of political parties, organisations, NGOs and associations to the national capital to enable them to participate in the one-day 'Deeksha' (protest.
Both the trains would reach New Delhi by 10 a.m. on Sunday.
The protest is against the Centre's refusal to grant a Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh and also its failure to fulfil other commitments made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.
Naidu, who is also the President of Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has appealed to all, including opposition parties, to make the protest a success.
Leaders of non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parties are also expected to join Naidu in the sit-in.
The TDP had pulled out of the BJP-led NDA government last year.
--IANS
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Yellow Vest protestors continued their demonstrations here for the 13th consecutive week on Saturday, despite continued efforts by the French government to meet the protesters' demands.
The Emmanuel Macron-led government had previously scrapped the proposed hike in fuel prices, which had initially triggered the protests. Macron further introduced a string of initiatives, including increasing the minimum wage by 100 euros a month, as part of his 'economic and social emergency plan' unveiled in December last year.
The protesters have continued their agitations regardless, and are now demanding a 20 per cent hike in minimum wages, equal pay for men and women, tax reform, development of public services and just environmental reforms, reports Sputnik.
Saturday's protests turned gruesome when a demonstrator lost his hand after a GLI-F4 instant tear gas grenade blew up while he was holding it, right outside the National Assembly here.
Protestors gathered at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Saturday as tensions remained high between the agitators and law enforcement.
The Yellow Vests have been protesting since November 17 last year, with no end in sight. Similar protests had initially spread to places like Belgium, Netherlands, Taiwan amongst others.
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Launching a fresh attack on the BJP over charges of horse trading in Karnataka, the Congress on Saturday alleged that BJP's BS Yeddyurappa had offered at total of around Rs 200 crore to 18 of its MLAs, in an attempt to destabilise the ruling coalition in the state.
Congress leaders KC Venugopal and Randeep Singh Surjewala addressed a press conference here and alleged that Yeddyurappa had offered Rs 10 crore per MLA and Rs 50 crore to the Speaker.
The allegation comes a day after Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy released an audio clip in which BJP's Yeddyurappa is purportedly trying to lure a JD(S) MLA. Just a few hours before presenting the state budget in the Assembly, Kumaraswamy held a press conference and told media about the audio clip, targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi
KC Venugopal said today, "It (audio clips) states that BS Yeddyurappa is offering Rs 10 crore per MLA and in his deliberation, it is clear there are 18 MLAs. Therefore it comes at the rate of around Rs 200 crore. He is offering 12 MLAs the minister post, six were offered chairman posts in different boards."
"He (Yedyurappa) is also offering election expenses to MLAs after they resign. They are offering Rs 50 crore to the Speaker for not disqualifying his MLAs. Clippings are referring to the names of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi ji for managing here and there through Yeddyurappa himself," he added.
Surjewala also said, "In what capacity is the BJP Karnataka President and former Chief Minister discussing approaching Supreme Court judges to get the case right? Have Narendra Modi and Amit Shah given them such assurances? Has the SC become a 'jebi dukaan' of BJP?".
Meanwhile, Kumaraswamy on Friday removed Congress MLA Dr Umesh Jadhav from the post of the chairman of the Warehouse Corporation and replaced him with Pratap Gowda Patil.
Meanwhile, Congress MLA from Raichur Basanagouda Daddal has been appointed as the chairman of Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Board.
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West Bengal Congress President Somendra Nath Mitra on Saturday ruled out any possibility of an alliance with the Trinamool Congress for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
After a meeting with Congress president Rahul Gandhi and other senior Congress leaders, Mitra said, nobody from the party, including its workers, wanted an alliance with TMC.
According to Mitra, Rahul had said in the meeting "if there is an alliance with dignity, it (alliance) will be there, otherwise, there won't be one. There won't be any alliance with TMC, this is final."
Out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, TMC spearheaded by its chief Mamata Banerjee had won 34 seats in the 2014 General elections.
Currently, there are four Congress Lok Sabha Members of Parliament in West Bengal.
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Death toll due to consumption of illicit liquor in Roorkee touched 32 on Saturday.
Total 31 liquor traders have been arrested in connection with the deaths that occurred due to consumption of illicit liquor. 509 quarters of country-made liquor and 91 litres raw liquor has been seized from them, said an official.
Uttarakhand government has suspended 13 employees of Excise Department including the Excise Inspector of Roorkee region after 70 people lost their lives following the consumption of spurious liquor in the state and Uttar Pradesh.
A show cause notice has also been issued to the higher officials of the Enforcement Wing of Excise Department for dereliction of duty. A magisterial inquiry has already been initiated in the hooch tragedy.
Meanwhile, as many as 46 people lost their lives in Saharanpur and 10 in Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh after consuming illicit liquor.
The authorities also claimed to have seized 965 bulk litre of illicit liquor in just one day (from 8 February to 9 February).
Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh governments have launched a major crackdown to nab those responsible for the distribution of illicit liquor in the states.
Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh Police teams are carrying out joint operations along the UP-Uttarakhand border.
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U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Friday (local time) hoped that the Taliban reaches a peace agreement with the United States before the Afghan Presidential elections slated to be held on July 20.
"It would be better for Afghanistan if we could get a peace agreement before the election," The Hill quoted Khalilzad as saying.
"If there is no progress on the peace track, elections will take place, and we are doing what we can to support the preparations for credible elections," he added.
Despite the long-delayed election schedule, the US envoy said that negotiations between the US and the Taliban can make significant progress in achieving the deal.
"I understand that peace processes are not a straight line. There could be setbacks," he noted.
"Between now and July, there is sufficient time, I believe, where we could reach an agreement. But at least if we have significant progress, that will have a good impact with regard to the future and including the elections," said Khalilzad.
Khalilzad had said the Taliban would guarantee that Afghanistan will never be used as a base for terrorism in return for a full American withdrawal from the country and that Taliban concessions must include a ceasefire and agreement to hold talks with the Afghan government.
During his State of the Union address on February 5 (local time), President Trump advocated the "progress" in negotiations, saying that it means "we will be able to reduce our troop presence and focus on counter-terrorism."
However, the Taliban does not consider the withdrawal being dependent on the American conditions for a ceasefire or direct talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, signalling that Washington's demands may be far-fetched.
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US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun met his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol in Pyongyang this week to discuss the second meeting between the leaders of the two countries.
During the meeting, which took place between February 6-8, Biegun and Kim discussed the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which is scheduled to be held by the end of this month, and "advance further progress on the commitments" made by the two leaders during their first meeting in Singapore last June, according to a statement by US State Department.
"Special Representative Biegun and Special Representative Kim discuss advancing President Trump and Chairman Kim's Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming U.S.-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. Special Representative Biegun and Special Representative Kim agreed to meet again in advance of President Trump and Chairman Kim's second summit," the statement read.
President Trump, on February 6, confirmed he will hold a second Summit with North Korea's Kim on February 27 and 28 in Vietnam.
Trump made the confirmation while addressing the House of Representatives during his annual State of the Union speech.
During the first Summit, held at Singapore's Sentosa Island, both Trump and Kim Jong-un had agreed on a spectrum of issues, the most prominent being the complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
However, the US and North Korea reached an impasse regarding sanctions relief for Pyongyang soon after the first Summit, leading to extremely slow progress on the denuclearisation front.
North Korea has sought relief in sanctions in light of the steps taken by the country towards denuclearisation. The US has repeatedly stated that there would be no sanctions relief until complete denuclearisation is achieved by North Korea.
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Turkey slammed China for its "systematic assimilation policy towards Uighur Turks," labelling it a "great embarrassment for humanity" while urging Beijing to shut down the "concentration camps".
"China's systematic assimilation policy towards Uighur Turks is a great embarrassment for humanity," Anadolu Agency quoted Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) as saying.
"Turkey's Foreign Ministry calls on China to respect fundamental human rights of Uighur Turks and shut down concentration camps," the MFA further noted.
This comes amid a crackdown on Uighur Muslims in China, with the United Nations estimating that over one million Uighurs are being held in internment camps in the Xinjiang province.
Beijing has refuted claims of clamping down on the Uighurs, outlining that only people who have committed minor offences when involved in terrorist activities are made to go through vocational training at "vocational education institutions".
Practising Islam is illegal in some pockets of China. People caught fasting, praying, growing a beard or wearing a hijab attract arrest in the nation.
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United States President Donald Trump on Friday (local time) extended condolences to late Democrat John D Dingell Jr and shared sympathies with Dingell's wife Debbie Dingell and his entire family.
President Trump had passed orders that the US flags would fly at half-staff in a show of respect to the longest-serving member of Congress in the history of the US, The Hill reported. The President further added that the flags would be lowered at all federal buildings, military posts and diplomatic facilities only at sunset on Saturday.
"Deepest sympathies to Congresswoman Debbie Dingell and the entire family of John Dingell. Longest serving Congressman in Country's history which, if people understand politics, means he was very smart. A great reputation and highly respected man," Trump tweeted.
Dingell used his power in the House of Representatives to expose government fraud and defend the interests of his home state Michigan's automobile industry, died on February 7 at the age of 92.
A Michigan Democrat, Dingell announced in 2014 that he would not seek a 30th full term in Congress and was succeeded by his wife, Debbie Dingell, reported The Washington Post.
The office of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced the news of Dingell's demise stating that he had complications from prostate cancer.
The then-President Barack Obama awarded Dingell with Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honour, in November 2014.
Dingell had also served as the representative from Michigan's 15th Congressional District since 1955, when he won a special election to replace his father, John D Dingell Sr, a New Deal Democrat who died of tuberculosis while in office.
Dingell also played a key role in helping pass important legislation such as the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.
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Preparations are on in full swing ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here on Saturday.
Tight security has been put in place for the Prime Minister's visit.
The Prime Minister will on Saturday make a whirlwind tour of northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Tripura during which he will lay the foundation stone of new greenfield airport and Sela tunnel, launch DD Arun Prabha channel and will unveil various other development projects.
Prime Minister Modi will lay the foundation stone of northeast gas grid foundation in Guwahati, and will inaugurate Garjee-Belonia railway line in Tripura, said a statement from the PMO on Friday.
As per the official statement, PM Modi will reach Itanagar from Guwahati on Saturday morning and will unveil a series of development projects at IG Park in Itanagar. He will lay the foundation stone for the construction of greenfield airport at Hollongi.
At present, the nearest airport to Itanagar is at Lilabari in Assam at a distance of 80 km. The airport at Hollongi will reduce the distance by a fourth. In addition to providing better connectivity to the region, the airport will also unravel the tourism potential of the state.
The airport will boost the economic growth of the region and will be of strategically important to the nation. The airport will have various sustainability features like a green belt along approach road to act as a noise barrier, rainwater harvesting, use of energy efficient equipment, and so on.
Prime Minister Modi will lay the foundation stone of Sela tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh, which will provide all-weather connectivity to Tawang Valley for civilians as well as security forces throughout the year. The tunnel will reduce travel time to Tawang by an hour and boost tourism and related economic activities in the region.
A new dedicated DD Channel for Arunachal Pradesh-DD Arun Prabha will be launched by PM Modi at IG Park, Itanagar. The channel will be the 24th channel operated by Doordarshan. He will also dedicate 110 MW Pare Hydroelectric Plant in Arunachal Pradesh to the nation. The project constructed by NEEPCO will harness hydropower potential of the river Dikrong, a tributary of Brahmaputra, and provide cheap hydroelectric power to the North Eastern states, thereby improving power availability in the region.
Foundation stone for a permanent campus of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) at Jote, Arunachal Pradesh will be laid by the laid by PM Modi on this occasion. It will cater to film students especially those from the North Eastern states. PM Modi will inaugurate the upgraded Tezu Airport in Arunachal Pradesh. The airport has been retrofitted and a new terminal constructed for making it fit for commercial operations under UDAN scheme.
From Itanagar, PM Modi will return to Guwahati, where he will lay the foundation stone of North East Gas Grid which will ensure uninterrupted availability of natural gas across the region and boost industrial growth in the region. The grid is part of the government's plan to provide cheap and quality gas to the entire North East Region.
He will also inaugurate a Hollong modular gas processing plant in Tinsukia, Assam. Once inaugurated this facility will deliver 15 per cent of the total gas produced in Assam. He will also inaugurate LPG capacity augmentation of mounted storage vessel in north Guwahati.
The foundation stone of NRL biorefinery at Numaligarh and a 729-km gas pipeline from Barauni-Guwahati passing through Bihar, West Bengal, Sikkim, and Assam will be laid by the Prime Minister on this occasion.
The last leg of PM Modi's visit will be in Agartala, where he will dedicate to the nation Garjee - Belonia railway line through the unveiling of a plaque at Swami Vivekananda stadium here. This line will boost Tripura as the gateway to South and Southeast Asia. He will also inaugurate the new complex of Tripura Institute of Technology at Narsingarh.
Prime Minister will unveil the statue of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur at Maharaja Bir Bikram Airport, Agartala. Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur is widely regarded as the creator of modern Tripura. He is credited with the planning of Agartala city. The unveiling of his statue is in line with the Union Government's policy of honouring the unsung heroes of India, who have contributed greatly to nation-building.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chief Minister Nara on Saturday gave a call to his workers to hold Gandhian protests during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the state on Sunday.
While speaking to his party leaders through a teleconference, Naidu said: "Tomorrow is a dark day. Prime Minister Modi is coming to witness the injustice that was done to by him. Modi is weakening the states and constitutional institutions. PMO's intervention in Rafael is disrespect to the nation. We will do peaceful Gandhian protests with yellow and black shirts and balloons."
The Telugu Desam Party's (TDP) president also accused YSR Congress party president Jagan Mohan Reddy of being in collusion with the Prime minister and said, "Opposition leader in the state Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy won't speak a word against Prime Minister Modi. This proves their collusion."
On February 5, (TDP) leaders and workers of Srikakulam district in Palasa protested against BJP president Amit Shah's tour to the state.
They held a protest at NTR statue and raised slogans against Shah asking him to go back. The workers also tried to set ablaze the effigy of Prime Minister but the police prevented them.
The workers shouted slogans demanding implementation of special category status for
Setting a new tempo for brand expression, Mastercard debuts its sonic brand identity, a comprehensive sound architecture that signifies the latest advancement for the brand.
Wherever consumers engage with Mastercard across the globe - be it physical, digital or voice environments - the distinct and memorable Mastercard melody will provide simple, seamless familiarity. The news comes on the heels of the company's recent transition to a symbol brand and is part of its continued brand transformation.
"Sound adds a powerful new dimension to our brand identity and a critical component to how people recognize Mastercard today and in the future," said Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Mastercard. "We set out an ambitious goal to produce the Mastercard melody in a way that's distinct and authentic, yet adaptable globally and across genres. It is important that our sonic brand not only reinforces our presence, but also resonates seamlessly around the world."
Global Resonance, Local Relevance
To ensure the Mastercard melody would resonate with people the world over, Mastercard tapped musicians, artists and agencies from across the globe, including musical innovator Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park.
The result, a distinct and memorable melody with adaptations across genres and cultures, making it locally relevant while maintaining a consistent global brand voice. In addition, the use of varying instruments and tempos help to deliver the Mastercard melody in several unique styles such as operatic, cinematic and playful as well as a number of regional interpretations.
The Mastercard melody is the foundation of the company's sound architecture and will extend to many assets, from musical scores, sound logos and ringtones, to hold music and point-of-sale acceptance sounds.
"What I love most about the Mastercard melody, is just how flexible and adaptable it is across genres and cultures," said Mike Shinoda. "It's great to see a big brand expressing themselves through music to strengthen their connection with people."
A Digital Brand for a Digital Consumer
With voice shopping set to hit $40 billion by 2022, audio identities not only connect brands with consumers on a new dimension, they are tools enabling consumers to shop, live, and pay in an increasingly digital and mobile world.
"Audio makes people feel things, and that's what makes it such a powerful medium for brands," said Matt Lieber, Co-founder and President, Gimlet. "With the explosion of podcasts, music streaming, and smart speakers, an audio strategy is no longer a "nice-to-have" for brands - it's a necessity. A sonic identity - the audio calling card for a brand - is now just as important as a brand's visual identity."
Melody comes to life during GRAMMY Week
In the lead up to the 61st GRAMMY Awards, Mastercard will launch a new multi-channel marketing program starring GRAMMY-nominated artist Camila Cabello, which will be the first creative output to feature the brand's sound logo.
"I am so excited to be partnering with Mastercard and being able to offer new opportunities to fans," said Cabello.
In addition, the company will showcase its new sonic brand at the Mastercard Sensory Lab at Fred Segal, a one-of-a-kind space filled with interactive experiences and exclusive merchandise from Joe Freshgoods and KYLE that will engage visitors' senses and bring the brand to life in an entirely new way.
"Fred Segal Sunset is Los Angeles' premier destination for new and innovative retail experiences, which is why we are thrilled to be the first retailer that will feature the new Mastercard sonic brand at the point of sale in our store," said John Frierson, president, Fred Segal. "The Sensory Lab will be a uniquely fun and engaging kickoff for the many things Fred Segal and Mastercard are collaborating on this year."
At the Mastercard Sensory Lab visitors can
Hear the new Mastercard transaction sound when they checkout at Fred Segal
Get a sneak peek of the new Priceless Cities skill for voice-enabled assistants
Shop exclusive merchandise by Joe Freshgoods x Super Duper Kyle, available for purchase only with a Mastercard
Located at 8500 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, The Mastercard Sensory Lab will be open at Fred Segal on February 8 and 9 from 11 AM to 6 PM.
Following the U.S. introduction, the Mastercard sound will head to The BRIT Awards in London and then Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Additional activations and sonic integrations will be announced around the world in the coming months, including the launch of Mastercard's first smart speaker skill for priceless.com. This story is provided by NewsVoir.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra was grilled by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for over eight hours on Saturday in connection with a money laundering case.
This is the third time Vadra was questioned this week.
Vadra reached ED's office at Jamnagar House in central Delhi around 10.45 am this morning for questioning. After a two-hour-long break, questioning resumed at around 3 pm and ended at around 8:30 pm.
ED officials had quizzed Vadra on Wednesday and Thursday as well.
On Thursday, his questioning started at around 9.20 am. It was only at around 9.20 pm that his wife and now Congress general secretary Priyanka Vadra reached the ED office and thereafter, the duo headed back to their residence in their heavily guarded convoy as per their entitlements.
Altogether, Vadra was questioned for a total of 24 hours this week by an ED team led by a Joint Director and comprising a Deputy Director and five other officers
Vadra's lawyer KTS Tulsi had earlier alleged that the ED was leaking information about his questioning. He claimed that the probe agency has nothing concrete against his client.
The Patiala House court has granted interim bail to Vadra on February 2 till February 16 in connection with the case.
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Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) chief Upendra Kushwaha on Friday removed the party's executive president Nagmani from his post for praising Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Kumar unveiled the statue of Shaheed Jagdev Prasad near Jagdev Path Murd at Belly Road on Friday, where Jagdev Prasad's son Nagmani was also present.
Praising the Chief Minister, Nagmani said that after independence, Bihar's most spectacular development has happened in his reign.
After this remark, the RLSP chief initiated action against him. As per a statement by the party, "Nagmani has been terminated from the post of President for indulging in anti-party activities."
Upendra Kushwaha has also issued a show-cause notice to Nagmani on this charge and has asked him to respond to the notice within three days.
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Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Friday claimed that Ayodhya's Ram Janmabhoomi is not an issue of custom, whereas Sabarimala is one.
Speaking at an event here, "Ayodhya is not an issue of custom. Do not mix up faith and custom. In Sabarimala, the issue is a custom opposed to modern constitutional values. Ayodhya is a matter of faith that this is the birthplace of Lord Ram. Because of that faith, a group of people are claiming the land."
Substantiating his stance on the Sabarimala issue, he said: "I am not a very religious person. We are not saying that the Supreme Court should not resolve what is amenable to judicial resolution. I accept the Supreme Court judgement, but how can I stop ordinary men, women and party workers from expressing their views."
Elaborating his views on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, he added: "Others are saying a mosque existed several hundred years ago. The question is whether the Supreme Court would resolve issues framed by the Allahabad High Court. Many of those issues are amenable to judicial resolution. But I do not think we can mix the issue of custom and faith."
Expressing his views on the recent arrest made on an alleged case of cow slaughter he stated, "Use of NSA in Madhya Pradesh (against 3 persons arrested on charges of cow slaughter) was wrong. That has been pointed out to the government in Madhya Pradesh. So if a mistake has been committed, that mistake has been pointed out by the leadership.
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The Rajasthan Staff Selection Board (RSSB) on Saturday postponed the Agricultural Supervisor Direct Recruitment-2018 examination which was scheduled to be held on February 10 in Jaipur and Kota.
In a statement, RSSB said: "The examination dates were postponed due to unavoidable circumstances. Candidates are advised to keep checking the official website, that is, rsmssb.rajasthan.gov.in for any latest updates."
The Board, however, is yet to give out clarification for its sudden decision to postpone the scheduled examinations. The RSSB has said that new dates for examinations would soon be announced.
RSSB has also said the examination for the recruitment of Supervisor (Angandwadi workers) which was scheduled to be held in Ajmer on February 10 stands postponed.
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Priyanka Chopra and Farhan Akhtar are all set to shoot for the final schedule of their upcoming Bollywood film 'The Sky is Pink'.
Shonali Bose, who is directing the film, took to her Instagram account to share a post, revealing that the final schedule of the film is going to be shot between March 1 and March 12.
Shonali shared pictures of herself alongside a long caption that read, "Overjoyed to be back in the saddle in my beautiful office in Roy Kapur Films prepping for our final schedule of The Sky is Pink - March 1 - 12."
She continued, "For the first time in my life I didn't feel sad to say goodbye to Viv or to LA and it's only because I had this to look forward to so much. So much that I enjoy every single second of my every day even when I'm angsting over a location, a schedule, the budget, the edit or any number of crises. I am filled with wonder and gratitude to be making the film I wanted to make, such a deep and personal story from the depths of my soul - and be so supported every step of the way by my amazing producer and crew. And of course my wonderful actors. Every single person on this film is special and loved by me. How lucky am I."
"Thank you Ishan Bose-Pyne and Aisha Chaudhary - for sprinkling down stardust from your sky and bathing me in a rosy light with a pink hue," Shonali concluded.
The film also stars 'Dangal' star Zaira Wasim. The movie is based on the life of Aisha Chaudhary, who became a motivational speaker after being diagnosed with an immune deficiency order at the age of 13. It is co-produced by Priyanka, Ronnie Screwvala and Siddharth Roy Kapur.
The filming of 'The Sky is Pink' began on August 8, 2018 and the second schedule began in London in October 13, 2018. Meanwhile, Priyanka is currently gearing up for her upcoming Hollywood film 'Isn't It Romantic', which also stars Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth and Adam DeVine. The film will release in the United States on February 13, 2019 and also on Netflix, February 28, 2019. Farhan will soon start shooting for Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's next directorial 'Toofan'.
Priyanka recently unveiled one of her wax statues at the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in the New York City. She also revealed that her wax figure will also be unveiled in other cities across the world, including London, Sydney and Asia.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Kashi (Varanasi) on February 19 on Magh Purnima and dedicated projects worth over Rs 2,000 crore to the people, said chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
The announcement of the Prime Minister's visit was made after Yogi Adityanath inspected Kashi Vishwanath corridor, Cancer hospital at Banaras Hindu University and City Command Control Center on Friday night.
He told the media here, "Not only in the country, but Kashi will create another identity for itself as a medical hub in the world. I have come for inspection of these projects."
Adityanath informed that around 20 crore people from UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and Nepal will benefit from the health facilities that will be available here.
"We will open two cancer institutes and their super speciality and medical institutes," he added.
Furthermore, the minister also stated that drinking water and dairies dedicated to farmers too will be inaugurated soon.
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Prime Minister NarendraModi on Saturday laid the foundation stone of the Sela Tunnel Project in ArunachalPradesh.
Once completed, the project would provide all-weather connectivity to Tawang and forward areas.
Sela Tunnel Project is estimated to cost Rs. 687 crore. It is being constructed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and is expected to be completed in the next three years. It covers a total distance of 12.04 kilometers and consists of two tunnels of 1790 and 475 meters each.
Upon completion, it will reduce the travel time from Tezpur to Tawang by more than one hour. Also, travellers using the tunnel would be able to avoid the dangerous snow-covered Sela which is situated at a height of 13,700 feet.
It is believed that all weather connectivity to Tawang would prove to be a game changer for the local population and would also provide a strategic edge for India's security forces.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday declared hundred per cent electrification of all households in Arunachal Pradesh, asserting that New India will grow with full potential only when East India and the North East grow rapidly.
Addressing a public rally here, Prime Minister Modi said: "I have repeatedly said that New India will only be able to grow with its full power, when East India, the North East will grow rapidly. Working on the mantra of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas', we haven't let any funds scarcity or willpower come in the way of development of Arunachal and the North East in the last four-and-half years."
Speaking on the full electrification of Arunachal Pradesh, the Prime Minister said: "I would like to congratulate the state and the Chief Minister that almost every household here now has electricity connection under 'Saubhagya' scheme. What Arunachal Pradesh achieved today will soon be achieved by the entire nation."
Outlining the infrastructural development of the region, he said: "About a thousand villages were connected with roads in the last two years. We are also working rapidly on the Trans Arunachal Highway being constructed with a cost of Rs 4000 crore. The Railways is also doing historic work in Arunachal. As part of connecting all state capitals of the North East with railway network, we have already provided train connectivity to Itanagar. A survey is being conducted at seven places to expand the rail network in the region."
Prime Minister Modi also unveiled a series of development projects at IG Park in Itanagar. He laid the foundation stone for the construction of Greenfield Airport at Hollongi. He also laid the foundation stone of Sela Tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh which will provide all-weather connectivity to Tawang Valley for civilians as well as security forces throughout the year.
The Prime Minister dedicated a 110 MW Pare Hydroelectric Plant to the nation and also inaugurated the upgraded Tezu airport.
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Pakistan has rejected former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's request to remove his name from the no-fly list, also known as the Exit Control List (ECL) on Saturday.
Nawaz, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and his son-in-law Captain (retd) Safdar had all requested for their names to be removed from the ECL in October last year - a request which was rejected by Pakistan's Ministry of Interior on February 9.
The trio had claimed that Rule 2 of Exit From Pakistan Rules 2010 did not apply to them, as they were not involved in corruption, misuse of authority et al, reports Geo news.
The three had been convicted by an accountability court in Islamabad in July last year, which sentenced Nawaz to 11 years, Maryam to eight years and Safdar to a year in prison each. Both Nawaz and Maryam were released from jail on September 19 last year after the Islamabad High Court suspended their sentences in the Avenfield properties case.
However, Nawaz was convicted again in December by an accountability court in Islamabad and sentenced to seven years in jail in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case, following which he has been lodged in Lahore's Kot Lakhpat jail ever since.
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Magnani 1404, a quintessential luxury paper, enters the Indian market with its exhibition at India Art Fair 2019 held recently in the national capital. Magnani 1404 is a six-hundred-year-old mill in Italy producing papers for the fine arts, which offers rich quality paper guaranteeing the highest standards. It is available in a versatile range of sizes and in unique square, round and landscape forms.
The brand is stepping into the Indian market with a tie-up with Sona Papers, one of the biggest paper merchant in India. Being an Italian brand, the papers will be manufactured in Italy only whereas, it's distribution throughout India will be done by Sona Papers; the brand which is already known for its premium range of fine paper in India which merges with diverse creative needs.
Speaking at the occasion, Mr. Raju Suneja, Director of Sona Papers and official spokesperson of Magnani 1404 in India said, "We are really excited about Magnani 1404's venture into the Indian market. As India is famous for its diverse culture, arts and artists, hence, it is a great market to expand our for numerous opportunities. With this new range of the finest paper in the world, we are certain to bring a different perceptive for art in India. "
Further talking about Magnani 1404, he added, "The Magnani 1404 paper mill date their origins back to the 15th century and all its substrates are manufactured on cylinder mould machines using a unique combination of tradition and technology. The papers are of 100% cotton and 100% high alpha cellulose for applications like Watercolor, Sketching & Drawing, Oil & Acrylic, and Pastels.
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Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy on Friday proposed a number of measures for farmers and mutts in the state 2019-20 budget.
However, beer drinkers in the state would have to shell out more after the budget comes into effect as Kumaraswamy has hiked the excise duty on draught beer and beer produced at microbreweries.
In the state budget, Kumaraswamy has set aside Rs 110 crore for schemes related to 38 mutts in the state. He has also provided Rs 400 crore for minority communities.
Meanwhile, Kumaraswamy has hiked the excise duty on draught beer and beer produced at microbreweries. The additional excise duty on beer has been increased to 175 per cent from 150 per cent, on draught beer to 150 per cent from 115 per cent.
Excise on beer manufactured in micro-breweries has been doubled to Rs 10 per bottle from Rs 5 earlier, and additional excise has been increased to Rs 25 from Rs 12.5 per bottle.
Kumaraswamy, who holds the finance portfolio, presented his government's second budget, amid high octane political drama that saw the opposition BJP boycotting it.
In the budget of the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition government, the total size of which was Rs 2.34 lakh crore, Kumaraswamy proposed an allocation of Rs 12,650 crore budget for the Congress-JDS coalition government's flagship crop loan waiver scheme.
A total grant of Rs 17,212 crore has been provided to Water Resources Department during 2019-20 in the budget that proposes for various irrigation schemes, tank filling projects, comprehensive developmental works, canal modernisation-development works, Bridge and Barrage construction works, among other things.
One thousand Karnataka Public Schools will be established in Hobli headquarters in the next 4 years, Kumaraswamy said.
Education will be provided under one roof from pre-primary level to the 12th class, he said.
Kumaraswamy also proposed Group Insurance scheme to all Auto and Taxi drivers, as he announced that Drivers Day will be observed by the government in all the districts of the State to identify the good services of the drivers of various sectors.
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Jet Airways flight 9W 703 from Mumbai to Dehradun was diverted to Chandigarh on Saturday. The diversion was necessitated due to a technical reason and the diversion was as per procedure, said a statement.
Furthermore, Jet Airways informed: "An alternate aircraft was arranged immediately for our guests with revised departure time. Refreshments were served and guests were kept informed by the airline's staff while they waited. The incident is under investigation and has been reported to the authorities."
The company also informed that their engineers have been flown to Chandigarh for necessary inspection and rectification of the aircraft.
The incident is under investigation and has been reported to the authorities.
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Indian Air Force on Saturday deployed C-17 Globemaster heavy-lift aircraft to transport 170 people stranded in Srinagar to Jammu.
The Jammu-Srinagar Highway has been closed due to heavy snowfall in the state. Evacuated people also included students who have to appear for the GATE exam.
Multiple avalanches and landslides in the state of Jammu and Kashmir have left the Jammu-Srinagar Highway closed, for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday.
There has been complete disruption of transport services, leading to thousands of people stranded. Some people are reportedly trapped under snow at various locations across the region. As the 300-kilometre-long highway is closed, trucks carrying goods to the state are also stranded.
A commuter told ANI, "We face the same situation every year. The government must do something about it."
Heavy snowfall has also led to depletion of fuel stocks following which administration directed fuel pumps on Thursday not to provide more than 3 litres petrol and 10 litres diesel per vehicle in a day.
Expressing his disappointment, a commuter was of the view that the petrol purchase limit should be increased from 3 litres to 5 litres. "Three litres of petrol is too less for travelling in the state. We are facing a lot of issues because of the restrictions. The highway should be opened soon," the commuter said.
The snowfall has not only affected roads but air traffic also as many flights remained cancelled at Srinagar Airport for the entire day yesterday.
The heavy snowfall in the state has resulted in the loss of crops such as cabbage, apple, potatoes, etc.
In Kulgam district near Jawahar tunnel on the Jammu-Srinagar Highway where an avalanche took place on Friday morning, seven bodies including bodies of five policemen have been recovered. One police personnel is still missing, while two policemen who were rescued in the morning are stable now.
The avalanche that had hit a police post trapped 10 policemen under the debris of snow.
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In a bid to woo the tribal community ahead of the coming Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that his government has not only taken steps to strengthen the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), but would further ensure its self-reliance and adequate staff strength.
"Our government at the Centre has taken a step forward to fulfill the long-pending demand of strengthening the autonomous council (TTAADC). With the amendment in the law, we not only wish to make the council self-dependent but also want to increase the number of officers in the council," Prime Minister Modi said after inaugurating Garjee-Belonia railway line.
Recently, the Union Cabinet approved a Constitutional amendment to increase the powers of the autonomous councils in the northeastern states, namely, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Sikkim, Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, and Meghalaya, which in all have 25 Lok Sabha seats at stake.
TTAADC was constituted under the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India. The Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council Bill, 1979 was unanimously passed by the Tripura Legislative Assembly on March 23, 1979. The Council has 30-members, and takes care of administrative and development needs of the people under its jurisdiction.
Stating that the Central government's interim Budget presented recently in the Lok Sabha has taken care of every section of the society, Prime Minister Modi said: "I have been told that within 11 months, more than 2 lakh new gas connections have been given. Over 20,000 houses and more than 1.25 lakh toilets have been constructed. Our schemes are raising the living conditions of the poor people today."
Hitting out at the previous governments in Tripura, Prime Minister Modi assured the people that the BJP government was committed to the growth and development of the state.
Prime Minister Modi said: "In the last four and a half years, the Central government granted a lot of funds for Tripura but the earlier government did not do any work. But our government is committed to the growth and development of Tripura."
"Tripura, the state that was deprived of development on the pretext of being a landlocked region, is now being made the gateway to southeast Asia," he said.
Talking about development projects in the state, Prime Minister Modi said: "For the first time in Tripura, paddy was procured as per the minimum support price (MSP). Besides this, the recommendations of 7th Pay Commission were also implemented."
He said the infrastructure projects inaugurated on Saturday in the state were a reflection of the HIRA model. "I talked about the HIRA-Highway, I-way, Railway, Airway-model when I visited the state last time during the Assembly elections. All the infrastructure projects inaugurated today are a reflection of the HIRA model.
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BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday quipped that if the "Mahagathbandhan" (grand alliance) forms government at the Centre, there would be a different Prime Minister every day in the week, while on Sunday, the country would run without any Prime Minister.
"If Mahagathbandhan forms a government then on Monday Mayawati will be the Prime Minister, Tuesday Akhilesh will be the Prime Minister, on Wednesday HD Deve Gowda, on Thursday N Chandrababu Naidu, on Friday MK Stalin, on Saturday Sharad Pawar while Sunday would be a holiday," Shah said while addressing BJP booth level workers here on Saturday.
Shah said that BJP is the only party that can secure the country's border.
"BJP is the single party that can secure the country's border. After the cross border surgical strike by the Army we are now considered among the countries like America and Israel who are known for taking revenge for their soldier's blood," said Shah.
He said that if BJP comes to power in 2019, every illegal immigrant would be thrown out from the country.
"Every illegal immigrant from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kolkata to Kutch will be thrown out. We will identify them and throw them out. We have brought NRC for the same," said Shah. "These illegal immigrants are eating our country like termites. They are planting bombs and killing innocent people," he added.
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Hundreds of acres of crops were damaged after hailstorm hit northern India recently.
Light to heavy rainfall had lashed several northern states on Thursday with Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. Hailstorms accompanied by rains and high-velocity winds have left behind uprooted trees and broken branches.
Narrating his ordeal, a Sarpanch from Ludhiana told ANI that a hailstorm damaged potato crops in over half-a-dozen villages. "I had planted approximately 50 kilograms of potatoes. The recent hailstorm has damaged 80 per cent of my crops. We have taken loans also for the same. We are now facing a lot of difficulties," he said.
Jaskreet Singh, a farmer also voiced his grievance, saying, "I had planted potato on 8 acres of land. I have suffered a loss of Rs 40,000. The government must compensate for the same."
A farmer in Uttar Pradesh's Moradabad also joined Singh's contention and stated, "Majority of our crops have been destroyed. I am now under immense pressure as I have to repay the loan. It will be difficult for us to even recover our investment.
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The Greek Parliament approved NATO's protocol for Macedonia's accession to the military pact here on Friday, following a landmark name-change deal last week.
Macedonia's renaming to "The Republic of North Macedonia" was the name issue between Greece and Macedonia, that had kept the Balkan country from joining both the NATO and the European Union (EU), reports Al Jazeera.
"Today's vote closes the most important round of obligations involving Greece," Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was quoted as saying before the vote in the Parliament.
"I'd like to welcome North Macedonia, a country friendly to Greece, a country that must be an ally in efforts to establish security, stability and peace in the region."
"History will judge us. I feel we have carried out our patriotic duty," Tsipras added.
NATO's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg presided over Wednesday's ceremony a NATO's headquarters, where Macedonia was invited to join the pact. Macedonia's Foreign Minister, Nikola Dimitrov, signed the protocol on Skopje's behalf at the event.
The Greek Parliament on January 26 passed the Macedonia name-change deal with a majority of 153 votes in favour of the deal, while the 146 legislators voting against the deal, out of a total 300-seats in the Parliament.
Macedonia has been attempting for decades to gain membership of the North American Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU). However, Greece raised objections to the official usage of Macedonia's name, arguing that it implies territorial aspirations against a northern Greek region with the same name.
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Businessman Robert Vadra was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate on Saturday for the third time in a week here in a money laundering case.
Vadra, son-in-law of UPA chairperon Sonia Gandhi, reached ED's office at Jamnagar House in central Delhi around 10.45 am on Saturday morning.
Earlier in the day, Congress leader and Punjab cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu reached Vadra's residence to meet him.
ED officials had quizzed Vadra on Wednesday and Thursday as well.
On Thursday, his questioning started at around 9.20 am. It was only around 9.20 pm that his wife and now Congress general secretary Priyanka Vadra reached the ED office and thereafter, the duo headed back to their residence in their heavily guarded convoy as per their entitlements.
Vadra's lawyer KTS Tulsi alleged that the ED was leaking information about his questioning. He claimed that the probe agency has nothing concrete against his client.
Vadra was questioned for around six hours for the first time on Wednesday. The probe agency has alleged that Vadra owns several properties in the United Kingdom.
Led by a Joint Director, the ED team comprising a Deputy Director and five other officers questioned Vadra.
The Patiala House court has granted interim bail to Vadra on February 2 till February 16 in connection with the case.
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Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren on Saturday (local time) kicked off her campaign for the post of President in the 2020 elections from Lawrence in Massachusetts.
The Senator from Massachusetts anchored the backdrop of Everett Mills in Lawrence, site renown for the 1912 labour strike led by women and immigrants, to act against the wealthy power brokers who "have been waging class warfare against hardworking people for decades."
"The man in the White House is not the cause of what is broken, he is just the latest and most extreme symptom of what's gone wrong in America," CNN quoted Warren while targeting President Donald Trump during her campaign.
"A product of a rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else. So once he's gone, we can't pretend that none of this ever happened," she added.
Warren is one of the first stalwarts from the Democrats to have announced her candidature for the 2020 Presidential elections, according to The New York Times.
Warren would be contesting against incumbent President Trump, who on one occasion called her "Pocahontas" due to her alleged Native American ancestry.
She has, in turn, labelled him as "a thin-skinned racist bully" and a "wannabe tyrant".
Warren's campaign comes after senators, including Kamala Harris and Cory Booker has already jumped into the race for the Presidential bid.
However, Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, in a statement issued on Saturday, in response to Warren's campaign said, "Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected."
"The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and crush America's middle-class. Only under President Trump's leadership will America continue to grow safer, secure and more prosperous," the statement noted.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress has alleged that BJP was offering money up to Rs 450 crore to ensure switch over of 18 JD(S) MLAs in Karnataka and demanded a probe by the CBI and Enforcement Directorate into it.
Congress leaders KC Venugopal and Randeep Singh Surjewala addressed a press conference on Saturday claiming that there was an audio clip in which BS Yeddyurappa is purportedly trying to lure a JD(S) MLA.
"Did the money come from Prime Minister Narendra Modi or BJP president Amit Shah? Or, which deal did it come? Whether it is a case of money laundering or black money, a case will be filed against those who have attempted to topple the government in Karnataka," said Surjewala.
In a press statement, Surjewala further said: "Will PM Modi promise registration of a case in Prevention of Corruption Act and Black Money Act against BS Yeddyurappa and other party leaders? Will PM Modi conduct ED/CBI raids and register cases against BS Yeddyurappa and other BJP leaders? If not, would it not establish the direct complicity of PM Modi and Amit Shah in this entire corrupt racket?"
"In what capacity is the BJP Karnataka president and former Chief Minister discussing how to approach judges of the Supreme Court to get the case right? Have Narendra Modi and Amit Shah given them such assurances? Has the Supreme Court become a 'jebi dukaan' of BJP?" he added.
Speaking on the same lines, KC Venugopal said: "It (audio clips) states that BS Yeddyurappa is offering Rs 10 crore per MLA and in his deliberation, it is clear that there are 18 MLAs. Therefore, it comes at the rate of around Rs 200 crore. He is offering ministerial posts to 12 MLAs, and six were offered chairman posts in different boards."
"He (Yedyurappa) is also offering election expenses to MLAs after they resign. They are offering Rs 50 crore to the Speaker for not disqualifying his MLAs. Clippings are referring to the names of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi ji for managing here and there through Yeddyurappa himself," he added.
Meanwhile, Kumaraswamy on Friday removed Congress MLA Dr Umesh Jadhav Warehouse Corporation chairmanship and replaced him with Pratap Gowda Patil.Congress MLA from Raichur Basanagouda Daddal has been appointed as the chairman of Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Board.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Saturday hit out at Congress alleging that the rival party did not do anything significant for the country's development while it was in power.
"Rahul Baba's family ruled the country for 55 years but didn't take any significant steps to develop the country. On the other hand, Modi ji worked for 55 months and accomplished what he had promised," he said.
"Apart from the BJP and Narendra Modi, no one in India can make the country strong. We don't do vote bank For us the safety of our citizens and the sovereignty of our country are paramount," he added.
The BJP leader also asserted that in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, BJP will win in Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and Odisha.
Shah reiterated that his political party is committed building Ram Temple on the birthplace of Lord Ram.
"NCP and Congress leaders must make it clear before the commencement of the election whether they are in favour of building Ram Temple in Ayodhya or not," he added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding an independent investigation into the Rafale deal.
Naidu wrote a series of tweets lashing out at the Prime Minister. "PM Narendra Modi's silence on Rs. 59,000 Cr Rafale deal and reports on the possibility of India's Biggest Defence scam directly involving the PMO, speaks volumes of BJP govt's destructive decisions. Modi ji, truth cannot be hidden for long when you cheat the nation," he tweeted.
Naidu also cited Defence Ministry's note on the deal and said, "PMO's interference in the name of "parallel negotiations", bypassing the Ministry of Defense in finalising Rafale deal, undermined the negotiating position of the Indian Negotiating Team. These revelations are shocking. They indicate a lack of integrity and regard within BJP government."
"All latest developments in the Rafale Scam case have strengthened the suspicion over the deal and require to be investigated independently so that truth comes out. This time BJP govt cannot get away with manipulating factual information regarding the negotiations for their benefit," he further added in another tweet.
Earlier on Friday, a combative Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had termed as "incomplete" and "distorted" the news item published by a newspaper about "parallel negotiations" by the PMO in the Rafale fighter deal and wondered whether "doubts" were being deliberately created in the minds of people because of some "corporate warfare".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday assured the people of the state that by 2020 or 2021 he will fulfil Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream of providing each person with a house.
Addressing an event here, Fadnavis said: "We will accomplish the dream of our PM and give a house to every single person in Maharashtra. We have created history in the construction of toilets."
Speaking about the interim budget presented by Union Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on February 1, Fadnavis said: "We should consider this budget as a full-fledged budget and not an interim budget. Very tough structural reforms have been carried out."
Lauding the budget the minister added, "The difference is that this may be an interim budget but it has also chalked out a way towards making India a 10 trillion economy by 2030. Rs. 450 crore were procured in 15 years while we have procured Rs. 8,500 crore in just 3 years."
Elaborating upon the government's plan, Fadnavis stated that the government is focused on keeping sustainability in the agricultural sector.
"The amount of roads has gone up, there is no unman railway crossing, the entire infrastructure is growing," he added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to address a public rally in Guntur, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) Andhra Pradesh president Kimidi Kala Venkat Rao took on the Prime Minister over a number of issues, including special category status.
In a strong-worded letter to Prime Minister Modi, Rao claimed that the former shared "friendship" with Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) chief Jagan Mohan Reddy. He alleged that Prime Minister Modi was behaving "more revengeful" towards Andhra Pradesh since its bifurcation in 2014.
"You and your party members are recapitulating by saying so many things have done to the state. Have you done anything else except unfaithfulness, cheating, dishonesty, revenge to the state of Andhra Pradesh? You are treating the state badly even than rival countries," Rao asserted.
Posing a series of questions, Rao questioned Prime Minister Modi's intention of visiting the state, adding that he was "cheating" the state "with the deception as your theory."
"First time in Tirupathi, you deceived us by saying you are giving the special category status to the state. The second deception you made at the time of laying down the foundation stone for the construction of capital city Amaravati. Are you coming to Guntur to deceive third time?" Rao wrote in the letter.
Talking about Jagan's corruption case, Rao took a jibe at the Prime Minister, questioning the delay in the investigation, stating "how many decades" will the inquiry take to finish, which is happening only on discharge petitions. "The inquiry has not yet initiated on charges of 11 CBI charge sheets," he said.
Rao stated that Andhra Pradesh was given an allocation of Rs 14,310 crore, as mentioned in the status note. "Amit Shah came and said lies by saying Andhra Pradesh was given 10 lakh crore. Now how much are you going to say as you are coming in?" he added.
Accusing the Prime Minister of holding up funds essential for the state's development, the TDP leader said, "The backward districts were given only Rs 1050 crore than the actual amount Rs 24,350 crore that should be given. The last financial year funds also have taken back. Has the PMO office taken back Rs 350 crore without your interference?"
"The Central Educational Institutions have been given only Rs 845 crore whereas it should be given Rs 12,746 crores in fact. With this kind of allotment, are you saying the youngsters to study at their old age? Is it not discrimination that you are denying funds for the construction of capital city Amaravati, but giving thousands of crores to Dholera city in Gujarat and for the construction of Ahmadabad Convention Centre, Patel and Shivaji statues and bullet train?" Rao asserted.
Questioning that Prime Minister Modi was coming to Andhra Pradesh for "begging" for votes ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Rao alleged that the Centre did not take note when Titli and Pethai cyclonic storms ravaged the state.
Prime Minister Modi will address a public meeting titled "Praja Chaitanya Sabha" at Etukuru bypass road near Guntur city on Sunday.
He was expected to visit Guntur on January 6 after a meeting in Thiruvananthapuram, but was unable to make it due to his tight schedule.
Further taking a dig at the Prime Minister over his supposed closeness with Jagan, Rao further said, "Your ministers says Jagan as hero. Jagan praise your party as divine. What are the reasons for backing up now even as you told Jagan is emperor of corruption dynasty?"
"Jagan Mohan Reddy's cases have slowed down after TDP have left NDA. Didn't your hand not there in saying the inquiry should happen from the first charge sheet after the bifurcation of high court? The clean chit was given for Jagathi Publication assets which worth 34.5 crores which were attached by ED. You have stopped the attachment of 4.05 crore worth deposits of Jagan's illegal assets. What is the meaning of these acts?" Rao alleged.
Accusing the Centre's promise of building Kadapa Steel Plant and Visaka Railway Zone in the state as a "double game", Rao claimed that Prime Minister Modi filed the charge sheets in the Supreme Court, saying it was not possible to give land for the construction.
Lashing out at the Prime Minister's frequent overseas visit, Rao asserted, "You have found time to visit 92 countries with the expenses of Rs 2029 crore. Have you find time to visit Andhra Pradesh now?"
The TDP, a ruling party of Andhra Pradesh, pulled out from the NDA last year over the demand of special category status which was promised during the bifurcation of the state in 2014. Since then, ties between TDP and BJP have soured.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Afghan government, which was not invited in last week's Moscow talks, slammed Russia for allowing the United Nations blacklisted Taliban members to take part in the talks.
"They (Taliban members who are on the UN blacklist) do not have the permission to freely travel, and they are on the terrorist groups' list in many countries. Russia allowed the members to enter the country despite them being on the UN's blacklist." MoFA spokesman Sebghat Ahmadi told TOLOnes on Friday.
The ministry's remarks came days after the government lodged a complaint with the United Nations over a recent trip by members of the Taliban to Moscow.
"Individuals such as Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai and his fellows who visited Russia are sanctioned by the UN. We have shared with the UN Security Council's 1988's committee the visit of those Taliban members to Moscow who are sanctioned by the UN," added Ahamdi.
The government has criticised the talks from the beginning, by saying that the talks hosted by Russia were against the spirit of Afghan-led and owned peace process.
The talks, which were held from February 4 to 7, were attended by 40 Afghan politicians, excluding government officials.
A declaration was signed after the three days talks, stating that all parties in the conference have agreed that a dignified and lasting peace is the aspiration of all the people of Afghanistan and this principle has been achieved in Moscow.
A joint statement of the participants, signed after the meeting, reiterated that the intra-Afghan dialogue must continue on a regular basis in view of the current sensitive situation.
Meanwhile, Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, said that the Taliban will reach a peace agreement with the United States before the Afghan Presidential elections slated to be held on July 20.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The number of people in Saharanpur who died after allegedly consuming spurious liquor has risen to 36, police said on Saturday adding that a crackdown against manufacturers of hooch has been initiated in the state.
"We have conducted 46 postmortems in the district hospital. The doctors say that there are 36 clear cases where people died after consuming alcohol. For 10 other deaths, we are waiting for their viscera report," District Magistrate, Alok Kumar Pandey said.
In a bid to crackdown on the producers of spurious liquor, police and excise department teams are conducting raids in various areas.
"We have registered 25 FIRs and seized around 450 litres of liquor. Our teams have been raiding border areas. The source of liquor is in Bhalupur, Uttarakhand. We have raided three to four villages which are near Bhalupur and have got evidence related to liquor in these villages," Dinesh Kumar, SSP, Saharanpur said.
Some people had attended a gathering in Haridwar's Bhalupur village on February 7 where they allegedly drank spurious liquor and brought some back home. 36 people who drank the spurious liquor died while 11 others are still in the hospital.
According to officials, the district excise officer, two excise inspectors, two excise constables along with three police sub-inspectors and six constables have been suspended in the case.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.
Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.
In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.
India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.
Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.
But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?
Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.
If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.
I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.
I want more variation in masturbation
I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.
If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.
What is sex toys for Indian?
Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.
It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.
They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.
Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.
The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.
It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.
In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.
Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.
In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.
Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.
Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.
But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.
More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.
Sextoy situation in India
Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.
In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.
Mumbai
Kolkata
Bangalore
Delhi
Chennai
Hyderabad
These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.
In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.
If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.
If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.
What are Sextoys for beginner?
Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.
Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.
I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.
I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.
If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.
Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.
Advantages of using sextoy for Indians
There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians
You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.
Can have stimulating sex
Can develop new sexual zones
If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.
However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.
You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.
Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.
There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.
This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.
When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.
It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).
For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles
[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...
Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.
Sextoy for beginner men in India
So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.
For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!
The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men
Masturbator
Cock rings
Love Doll
Sex Lubricants
Toys for the prostate
Lets check each one in detail.
Masturbator
The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.
It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.
Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.
They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)
Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.
Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !
Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa SEXToys India PR (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018
Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.
If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here
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[For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien...
Cock Ring
A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.
It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.
It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.
In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.
Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.
It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.
Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.
Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.
Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.
You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.
[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...
Love Doll
Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.
There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.
Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.
The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.
You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.
There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.
You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.
If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here
Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...
Sex lubricants
Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.
It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.
Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.
There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.
Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.
If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.
What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many...
Toys for the Prostate
Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.
The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.
Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.
Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.
What is the prostate?
The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.
You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.
By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.
Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)
The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.
Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.
sextoy for beinner women in India
The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.
The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.
Vibrator.
Dildo
Electric Masserger
Lets check out what each one is in detail.
If you want to check out womens toys, click here.
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Vibrators
A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.
Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.
It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.
Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.
For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.
Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.
Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.
This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.
Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.
When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.
Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...
Dildo
A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.
It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.
A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.
They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.
It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.
A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.
Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.
For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.
This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.
To learn more about dildo, please click here.
What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...
Electric Masserger
A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.
It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.
Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.
Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.
It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.
For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.
It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.
If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?
To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.
What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...
How to choose a sextoy for Indian
Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.
Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points: Does the size fit you (the partner)?
Does the size fit you (your partner)?
Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?
Price range
First of all, the choice of size is quite important.
Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.
For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.
Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.
Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.
If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.
Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.
Finally, there is the price range.
The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.
Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.
Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?
I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.
For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.
If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.
How to buy sextoys in India
The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.
For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.
Sextoy is one of them.
Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.
SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.
They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.
Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.
To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.
ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.
Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.
Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.
Cautions for Indians using sextoy
When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind
Keep sex toys clean
Watch out for electrical leakage
Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy
As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.
Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.
It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.
In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.
Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.
If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.
You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.
Summary
What did you think?
In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.
The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.
As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values.
However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health.
If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try?
Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.
I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it.
Sonys blockbuster share buyback misses the bigger picture at the company. Japans $55-billion electronics giant said on Friday that it would repurchase 100 billion yen, or about $911 million, worth of stock. Coming just days after the company reported disappointing earnings, thats a sign of confidence from its chief executive Kenichiro Yoshida. To boost longer-term returns, though, he needs to convince investors that a much-needed deeper overhaul of the conglomerate is also underway. The buyback will be Sonys largest ever. Just last week, the ...
The phrase cocktail safety may sound like an oxymoron, or the punch line of a barroom joke. After all, were talking about alcohol, and a brandy Alexander is hardly as harmless as a smoothie. But as modern bartenders dig into their cocktail chemistry sets for new techniques and arcane ingredients, Camper English, a drinks writer in San Francisco, decided it was time to create a website to head off potential disaster: CocktailSafe.org. Bartenders today are obsessed with experimentation, which I think is for the best, Mr. English said. But ...
Pakistan has revised its economic growth figures for the last financial year to 5.2 per cent from a previously reported figure of 5.8 per cent, after a sharp cut in the figure for large-scale manufacturing, the statistics office said. The revision of figures reported by the previous government underlines the economic headwinds facing Pakistan which is holding discussions over a possible bailout from the International Monetary Fund. When the original estimate was reported in April by the government of Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, it was hailed as the strongest growth in ...
Edited excerpts: Any civil servants most formative experience is his work as District Magistrate (DM) I was posted as DM at Lakhimpur Kheri in UP 150 kms north of Lucknow, on the India-Nepal border. I served in just one district for my entire term and everything that could happen in a district, happened there: An 18-hour encounter with Sikh insurgents in which we shot down five terrorists; the Babri ...
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Vajpayee government was gone in 13 days. Who asked him to go and take the oath? Can you answer that? He was one of the tallest leaders. He had suffered in those 13 days. Why do you unnecessarily try to provoke me? I was not anxious to become the Prime Minister. The situation was such. After the fall of Vajpayee government all secular leaders met. That discussion went on for one week.
VP Singhs name was mentioned. He declined. Jyoti Basu was the tallest leader. He agreed, but his party Politburo differed. Then, he mentioned my name. I did not want to accept it. It went on for two ...
Dear Reader,
Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.
We, however, have a request.
As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.
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Today
Mostly cloudy skies this morning will become partly cloudy this afternoon. High 91F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph..
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A few passing clouds. Low 76F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
Nearly three years after the West Bengal Assembly passed two consecutive Bills to take over Jessop & Company and Dunlop India, neither could be taken over nor liquidated to settle the outstanding dues of banks and workers. The crux of the problem is lack of clarity over their ownership.
Although the state Assembly passed Bills to take control from the Ruia Group the former owner of Jessop and Dunlop in February 2016, approval from the Centre is still pending. While Pawan Ruia, chairman of the Ruia Group, is not ready to acknowledge that he has control ...
India is the worlds largest producer of milk with an output of 165 million tonnes in 2016-17. Most of the milk comes from rural areas where dairy farming is not easy. Unreliable and erratic electricity supply results in least 3 per cent of the milk being wasted.
This is because milk needs to be cooled at source in order to increase its shelf life, which dairy farmers are not able to do easily. To provide refrigeration, milk producers have to depend on diesel generators that make the cooling process expensive. To reduce the production cost for farmers, and to effectively use ...
Some 3000 people have had to leave their homes as New Zealand's largest forest fire in 64 years continues to burn for a fifth day near Nelson on the South Island.
More than 150 firefighters, 23 helicopters and two planes were on Saturday battling the 2100-hectare blaze near the South Island town of Nelson for a fifth day, with a state of emergency still in place, Fire and Emergency New Zealand said.
Smoke rises from a wildfire coming over the ridge behind a residential area in Wakefield, New Zealand, on Friday. Credit:AP
The fire continued to burn actively overnight and is still not in control.
Presumably the ordeal of many a bullied child comes to Melanias attention, and no doubt in many cases the fallout is as upsetting as that experienced by Joshua, if not more so. Yet of all the bullied kids from sea to shining sea, Melania and her husband asked this one to the capital to hear the Presidents State of the Union address, inviting an outpouring of undeniably deserved sympathy for this child who reportedly likes science, art and history and arguably further traumatising and stigmatising him through official association with a White House likely to be judged among the most ignoble, corrupt, irrational, un-artful and breathtakingly idiotic in US history. Hard for Joshua to deny any link to the President now. And the man could well end up in the can.
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The 11-year-old makes an ideal target for Trumps narcissistic projection. Victimised for bearing the Presidents surname, Joshua is a perfect conduit for Trumps narrative about his own victimisation. See how much people are out to get me! - you can almost hear his nasally lament. Why, the democrats, the elites, Robert Mueller, The Times and The Post have whipped up so much hatred against him that innocent schoolboys suffer the consequences. Thus the bullied Joshua, paraded before America and the world as Trumps sanctified victim of choice, becomes the subliminal flag-bearer and stand-in for a bullying President.
And just to prove the Trumpists dont hold a monopoly on narcissistic projection, Joshua woke from his State of the Union nap to find hed metamorphosed into a meme. His slumbering image gone viral, progressives hailed him as a secret hero of the anti-Trump resistance.
We are all Joshua Trump, the Twitterati gloated, in loving taunts that may niggle at him well into adulthood, though Id hope Joshua will by then have amassed a vast reservoir of resilience from which to draw.
Washington: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said on Friday, Washington time, that he has "not interfered in any way" in the special counsel's Russia investigation as he faced a contentious and partisan congressional hearing in his waning days on the job.
The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee was the first, and likely only, chance for newly empowered Democrats in the majority to grill an attorney general they perceive as a Donald Trump loyalist and whose appointment they suspect was aimed at suppressing investigations of the Republican President. They confronted Whitaker on his past criticism of special counsel Robert Mueller's work and his refusal to recuse himself from overseeing it, attacked him over his prior business dealings and sneeringly challenged his credentials as the country's chief law enforcement officer.
Matthew Whitaker, acting US attorney general, listens during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on Friday. Credit:Bloomberg
"We're all trying to figure out: who are you, where did you come from and how the heck did you become the head of the Department of Justice," said Representative Hakeem Jeffries. When Whitaker tried to respond, the New York Democrat interrupted: "Mr Whitaker, that was a statement, not a question. I assume you know the difference."
Yet Democrats yielded no new information about the status of the Mueller probe as Whitaker repeatedly refused to discuss his conversations with the President or answer questions that he thought might reveal details. Though clearly exasperated he drew gasps and chuckles when he told the committee chairman that his five-minute time limit for questions was up Whitaker nonetheless sought to assuage Democratic concerns by insisting he had never discussed the Mueller probe with Trump or other White House officials, and that there'd been no change in its "overall management".
Bangkok: The Thai princess whose stunning announcement she was running for prime minister was quickly opposed by her brother, the king, thanked her supporters on Saturday, saying she wants Thailand to be "moving forward", but she did not comment on her candidacy.
Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi, 67, shocked the country on Friday when she announced she would be the prime ministerial candidate for a populist party loyal to ousted ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, in a March 24 election.
But her foray into politics breaking with royal tradition looked to be short-lived after public opposition from her younger brother, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, which is likely to lead to her disqualification by the Election Commission.
Thai Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Mahidol announced her candidacy on Friday. Credit:EPA
The Thai Raksa Chart party, which nominated Ubolratana, cancelled a campaign event planned for Saturday but party leaders would not comment on the king's opposition.
Karachi: A five-day multinational exercise hosted by Pakistan's navy has kicked off near the southern port city of Karachi as part of efforts to enhance cooperation in combatting pirates, terrorists and smugglers.
Pakistan personal stand guard during the opening ceremony of Pakistan Navy's Multinational Exercise AMAN-19, in Karachi, Pakistan, on Friday. Credit:AP
Representatives from the navies of 45 nations, including the United States, Britain and Japan, are participating in the exercise titled "Aman", or peace, which began Friday in the Northern Arabian sea.
Pakistan's navy says several countries also sent vessels in addition to sailors to participate in the exercise.
Next week Parliament will resume for two short weeks before it rises, and it likely wont sit again until the second half of the year, when we will probably have a Labor government.
As one prominent Liberal MP said to me recently: There is not a single member of the government who thinks we are going to win the election, and such fatalism can be freeing.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit:ROB BLAKERS
In the face of electoral failure, there is nothing stopping you from pursuing naked tribal and self interest.
If you know you soon have to vacate the joint, you may as well trash it.
Suicide rates among Indigenous children and young people are proportionately much higher than young people and children in the general population.
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And countless statistics emphasise the life expectancy of Indigenous people being shorter than that of many non-Indigenous people.
The Coroners report on the suicides of children in the Kimberley, with its focus on the role that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder plays in these communities, acknowledges many of these children were born facing challenges beyond what many of us can imagine.
But like many reports, it reflects a contemporary tendency to suggest Indigenous people need to "deal with their problems".
"The impacts arent just visual and short term, they are long-lasting and affect biodiversity and regeneration potential." Yarra River Keeper Andrew Kelly said he was alarmed by the erosion he sees. Andrew Kelly, Anna Ridgway and Lawrence Pope are concerned about the environmental damage mountain bike riding is doing at the Yarra Bend Park. Credit:Joe Armao "They're carving trails through the park and stripping off vegetation and creating erosion. The soil is pretty fragile and once surface soil is ripped off and it rains a channel forms, and soil falls onto the road," Mr Kelly said. "It's anarchistic. They cut wires on fences and they build jumps."
Mr Kelly said he had stopped to tell riders to be more careful and that he'd like to see riders on illegally built paths fined. "It makes the park look quite ugly when you hit these badly eroded parts. Runners and walkers do much less damage." While plants has been impacted by mountain bike riding over the past few decades, no culturally significant sites have been harmed, although Mr Sullivan said there is potential for this to happen if the practice continues. Parks Victoria wants mountain bike riding in the park restricted to one trail. "We appreciate the enthusiasm local mountain biking groups have for riding in Yarra Bend and the long standing ties they have with the area," Mr Sullivan said.
"Whilst illegal trail building can damage sensitive ecosystems, Parks Victoria is managing the issue and its associated impacts in collaboration with the community while still providing a great recreational opportunity Penalties for making and riding on illegal tracks in the park start at $178 and rise into the thousands. Parks Victoria said it preferred to avoid a "zero-tolerance compliance strategy" in favour of working with riders to limit the activity to one track. Mr Kelly opposes that approach and wants to see riders fined. "Education and collaboration only goes so far and you need fines and proper deterrence to stop people misbehaving. You need to enforce the laws," Mr Kelly said.
"If you don't enforce the laws then you're saying those laws don't matter. "Parks Victoria needs to step up and protect out parks. It needs to be properly funded to do a proper job." A 2001 report by Parks Victoria into Yarra Bend Park's trail management found there were "four dirt trails where soil conditions allow the use of mountain bikes". However, less than 20 years later, Parks Victoria's position is that there should only be one track where mountain biking is allowed. The 2001 report found "some areas of the park now have an excessive number of trails", a problem which endures to this day.
It's understood a lack of resources hasn't helped Parks Victoria tackle the problem. A group of mountain bike riders has been trying to engage Parks Victoria in collaborating on maintenance, replenishment and regulating the tracks for years. They are aware that rogue riders who build jumps and tracks and continue to ride them are giving the riding community a bad name. Some in the group accept mountain biking in the park should be restricted to just the one track and are happy to share that trail with all other user groups. They will also help maintain the trail. "We dont ride it if its wet. We dont want any disturbance on the soil at all," one of the riders, John Desmarchelier, said. Mr Desmarchelier was recently taken on a tour of the park by one of its rangers to better understand the cultural and environmental significance of the area.
It is not often you see such a textbook case of the power of political donors to shape our lives and subvert our democracy as that which came to its sad end on Friday afternoon in Tasmania.
It is a case that will have profound consequences across the country, particularly in NSW.
A year ago, the Tasmanian Labor Party went to a state election championing a popular and surprisingly courageous policy to remove poker machines from the states clubs and pubs and hunt them back to the confines of Tasmanias two casinos.
Anti-pokies stickers on display in the shop at MONA. Credit:Janie Barrett
The Tasmanian Labor leader, Rebecca White, had arrived at the policy after hearing evidence given in a parliamentary inquiry that poker machine gambling in Tasmania increased rates of suicide and domestic violence and, rather than creating jobs, it sucked money out of communities that might have been spent in more labour-intensive restaurants and bars.
The crowd was in high spirits and everyone was chanting for "Lily f---ing Allen" to come on stage except me.
I was keen to see and listen to the UK singer but after a number of misfortunes on Friday night, failing to master the art of finding a good view among tall giants and Allen being fashionably late on stage at The Tivoli, I was in a foul mood.
Allen powered through the show despite a sore throat, as she did at the Forum in Melbourne earlier in the week. Credit:Rick Clifford
That was, until the music began building and the lights were beaming brightly in my eyes, forcing me to turn my head away but when I looked back, my heart stopped, my mouth dropped and my eyes grew as wide as they could.
There she was. The stunning 33-year-old artist with the cheeky grin and a killer attitude we all have come to love.
An 11-year-old girl has been grabbed by the waist and pulled to the ground by a stranger who then fled in Lawnton, north of Brisbane.
Queensland Police have asked the public for help after receiving a report of the attack on the Francis Road overpass at 3.20pm on Saturday.
The Holden Captiva that the alleged offender is believed to have fled in. Credit:Queensland Police
A man approached the girl and pulled her to the ground before running away toward a dark coloured SUV on Park Lane, police said.
Detectives have released an image of a vehicle of interest, a black Holden Captiva, believed to have been the car that the man fled in.
I dont know how these things work, but its the old domain name theyve somehow taken over.
Apparently it is quite graphic, Father Percy said.
A website purporting to be St Christophers Cathedral in Canberra is now hosting hardcore pornography. Credit:Melissa Adams
St Christophers vicar general Father Tony Percy said the church was horrified and was trying to have the page removed.
A website purporting to be St Christophers Cathedral in Canberra is now hosting hardcore pornography.
Obviously were concerned, if we can get it taken down the sooner, the better.
Father Percy said they had been made aware of the site over the Christmas break when a friend of a church-goer had searched for mass times.
He said it was unlikely people would click on the link. But, when this reporter searched for the church on Google, the pornography website was the third and fourth listings.
The site was reported to police on January 4, however as pornography is not illegal and the site was not hacked, police have no jurisdiction in the matter.
The church had also asked for advice from their current website host.
The ACT's new chief police officer has echoed his predecessor's calls for nationally consistent laws to deal with the threats posed by outlaw motorcycle gangs.
But ACT Attorney-General Gordon Ramsay says the government is "not the slightest bit interested" in introducing "ineffective" anti-consorting laws or criminal organisation control orders like those in other Australian jurisdictions, including NSW, Queensland and Victoria.
ACT chief police officer Ray Johnson, who says he supports nationally consistent laws to deal with outlaw motorcycle gangs. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong
The Canberra Liberals plan to introduce laws modelled on the NSW approach for a second time when the ACT Legislative Assembly sits this month.
The retabling of the laws comes as the opposition's spokesman on attorney-general issues, Jeremy Hanson, warns innocent people will be caught in the crossfire if a string of violent offences linked to bikie gangs continues in Canberra.
A City Services contractor ran over a fellow employee who was picking up litter on the side of the road when he was supposed to be looking out for them, but instead was using his phone behind the wheel.
The May 2018 accident was one of a litany of workplace safety incidents reported to Transport Canberra and City Services.
The TCCS employee was run over while they were picking up rubbish from the side of a Canberra road. Credit:Sylvia Liber
It was one of more than 400 safety risks recorded in 2017-18, 49 of which resulted in compensation being paid out due to injuries.
Other incidents included a bus driver being stabbed with a syringe by a passenger, a Roads ACT contractor receiving an electric shock from a light pole and another Transport Canberra and City Services employee getting an electric shock from a power board in the directorate's Northbourne Avenue office.
Its funny because I dont know if this is unique to migrant children or not, but when youre younger you have this view of that white-picket Aussie dream, and you just assume the natural order of things is going to be to go to school, go to university, get a good job, get married and have kids," she said. Loading As I grew older I realised 'hold on, I can make a decision about this'. I saw myself pursuing more of a career-driven path in the beginning. Kids werent on the agenda, but I assume most women around their mid-to-late 30s start to consider their options. The 39-year-old said it was during months of discussion with partner Nathan about whether or not to have children that she accidentally fell pregnant for the first time. While that pregnancy ended abruptly, the longing continued. I didnt realise I wanted a baby until I lost one, if that makes sense. It sort of really honed it in.
Coming in to the second pregnancy, the couple was nervous but excited. In November, less than a month after they found out she was expecting, Ms Lee was targeted by the teachers' union for speaking out against violence in schools. She received thousands of robocalls accusing her of using personal stories of violence in the classroom for political point scoring after she cited the experiences of educators in Canberra - including one of a pregnant teacher who was punched in the stomach repeatedly by students. It was just a lot of worry in the beginning and it also didnt help that the second half of last year was professionally probably the most stressful time that Ive experienced, so I was very conscious of not letting that impact the health of my unborn child, Ms Lee said. At 11 weeks, the couple found out theyre having a baby girl.
Ms Lee said her daughters upbringing will be very different to what she experienced. The childhood I had was a really big mix, I grew up in a Korean monoculture and moved to Australia where back then at the school I went to there wasnt many Asian faces, so I think I was a little bit intriguing to the other children. Elizabeth Lee and partner Nathan are expecting their first child in June. My childs experience of course will be very, very different. She will be carrying with her some Korean heritage, as well as Australian heritage and, way back, some Scottish heritage from my partner. I really hope shell be able to embrace those cultures. She will have probably some of the most doting grandparents in my parents in the world, as its their first grandchild so theyre pretty stoked.
Ms Lees two younger sisters and her parents live in Sydney but she said they visit all the time. She expects them to do so even more often when the baby is born. The support will prove helpful when she returns to work in the Legislative Assembly. The first challenge when the baby is born is that it will be June, smack bang in the middle of estimates. Ms Lee said shes been seeking advice from the mums and dads in her office - and while shes had to reassess her thoughts on coming back to work almost immediately after the birth, shes keen to return for the sitting weeks at the end of July or those in August. As soon as I can. It is going to be tough, Im not unrealistic, and there are a lot of variables as well, but I'm up for the challenge," she said.
Shes very mindful that her position impacts her constituents in Kurrajong. Im very lucky that we have so many parents in the Legislative Assembly, on both sides. We've had a lot of pioneers in terms of being able to get some advice on how to manage parenthood, especially with babies and working life as an MLA." She said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was a role model for all women, particularly those in politics or those thinking about a career in politics. Its got to be a pretty crazy life, but thats pretty empowering I think for many women," she said. Its all about balance. I was very lucky that my mum stayed home to look after myself and my sisters full-time, but I am in a different situation. I have a responsibility and a duty to the people of Kurrajong.
A Nationals MP's claim that the Land and Environment Court's decision to block a coal mine in his electorate reflected an "ideological position" and "smacked of judicial activism" has prompted a rival MP to accuse him of contempt of court.
After the court on Friday rejected Gloucester Resources' bid to open the Rocky Hill mine on the Mid North Coast because of "climate change impacts", Nationals MP for the Upper Hunter Michael Johnsen hopped on 2GB to vent his fury.
Nationals MP for Upper Hunter Michael Johnsen. Credit:Max Mason-Hubers
The show's host Chris Kenny said: "Here you have a judge in a NSW land and environment court saying that he's protecting the planet from global warming, from climate change".
Mr Johnsen replied: "They are taking an ideological position, again it smacks of judicial activism, and it has nothing to do with the merits of the proposal itself and Im very, very disappointed."
Of all this property travelogue's hosts, Jane Hall wrings the most entertainment value out of the material. She begins this showcase of WA's Margaret River region atop the historic Leeuwin lighthouse, where she promises mystery, intrigue and dreams come true. Sprinkling her fairy godmother magic on a couple of retired tax office workers turned motorbike riders, the seasoned comedian sashays through the merchandise, only just keeping a straight face. The outtakes must be a hoot.
KILLER IN OUR CLASSROOM: NEVER AGAIN
8.35pm, SBS
The infuriatingly staunch position of the NRA in the US gun laws debate is even more staggering to comprehend while watching phone camera footage taken inside the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida that killed 17 students. But that view is reiterated, even by a wounded student, in this distressing documentary about the aftermath of that tragedy. The evolution of the March for Our Lives campaign is incredibly inspiring.
LIVING BLACK SUMMER
THE MAGICAL LAND OF OZ
Series premiere, Sunday 7.40pm, ABC
Barry Humphries might be new to the game but he certainly gives David Attenborough reason to worry about his status as the world leader in nature documentary narration. What our Baz can make of a script about copulating cuttlefish or the mating rites of "a pair of boobies" while still sounding sensible is as almost impressive as the spectacular footage. This is a beautiful and visceral experience directed by Tosca Looby (The Great Australian Fly).
New nature documentary series The Magical Land of Oz is hosted by Barry Humphries.
McMAFIA
Double episode series premiere, Wednesday 8.30pm, SBS
Elevating the mobster drama to a global level is this seductive British series inspired by journalist Misha Glenny's 2008 book of the same. James Norton's boyishly pleasant countenance is perfect for the role of the British-raised son of a Jewish Russian ex-gangster. Through his slick high-flying banker, Alex Godman, we are privy to an international web of corruption and murderous crime spanning luxurious backdrops from London to Prague, Cairo and beyond.
There has been an outbreak of mumps at both Trinity College and Blackrock College in Dublin.
The highly contagious viral infection causes pain and swelling in the cheek and jaw, serious fatigue and fever.
A national rally is taking place today as INMO nurses prepare to enter a third week of strike action for better pay.
It comes despite nine hours of talks at the Labour Court yesterday.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has said that it has heard nothing so far from the HSE that would lead it to averting its upcoming strike.
Talks between the nursing unions and HSE and government officials have resumed at the Labour Court today, February 9.
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PR Newswire
NEW YORK, Feb. 9, 2019
NEW YORK, Feb. 9, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU) co-founder Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon awarded one million dollars (USD) to this year's Sunhak Peace Prize laureates, Waris Dirie and Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina, as part of her philanthropic work. The biennial award honors individuals and organizations who have made significant contributions to the peace and welfare of future generations. The award ceremony took place on February 9, 2019 at the Lotte Hotel World in Seoul, South Korea.
As an agricultural economist, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has been a leader in agricultural innovation for over 30 years. He has contributed greatly to food security in Africa, aimed at improving the lives of millions currently living in poverty throughout the African continent. The Sunhak Committee acknowledges Dr. Adesina's achievements and contributions to Africa's recent dramatic growth and development.
"This Prize is not about me. No one should ever work to win a prize. I serve God and humanity. For my life is only useful to the extent to which it helps to lift millions out of poverty. But when one's effort is recognized, then one is very humbled...The Sunhak Peace Prize is a call to do more for our world and I will," stated Dr. Adesina during his acceptance speech.
Dr. Adesina has been a leader in agricultural innovation in Africa for over 30 years, pioneering major transformations in the agricultural field, including expanding rice production by introducing high yielding technologies, designing and implementing policies to support farmers' access to technologies at scale, increasing the availability of credit for millions of smallholder farmers, attracting private investments for the agricultural sector, rooting out corrupt elements in the fertilizer industry, and assisting in the establishment of major agricultural policies for Africa's green revolution.
The "Africa Fertilizer Summit," which he organized in 2006, was one of the largest high-level meetings in history that had a focus on solving Africa's food issues. During the Summit, Dr. Adesina was instrumental in developing the "Abuja Declaration on Fertilizer for the African Green Revolution," whereby the participants stated their commitment to the "eradication of hunger in Africa by 2030."
He worked with various banks and international NGOs in order to create an innovative financing system, providing loans to smallholder farmers. This move leveraged $100 million in loans and provided opportunities for smallholder farmers to increase their agricultural productivity and their income.
Dr. Adesina currently serves as the president of the African Development Bank Group, which plays a central role in the continent's development. As an "economic commander" of Africa, he promotes the "High 5 Strategy": light up and power Africa; feed Africa; industrialize Africa; integrate Africa and improve the quality of life for the people of Africa.
For more information about the Sunhak Peace Prize and this year's laureates, please visit sunhakpeaceprize.org.
Contact: Nancy Jubb Communications Director212-997-0057 [email protected]
Catherine RestivoIrving Street Rep 973-643-6262[email protected]
View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2019-sunhak-peace-prize-awarded-to-dr-akinwumi-ayodeji-adesina-300792770.html
SOURCE Family Federation for World Peace and Unification
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I am woman, I am strong. No, let me rephrase that. I am woman and I am sick of being told I am strong. Like this is a new thing. It's not that I have any problem with the idea of women (or indeed men) being strong, empowered, pursuing their ambitions, reaching for the stars, whatever. Far from it.
I'm just weary of the constant lecturing from luvvies, 'activists' and commercial enterprises who appear to think this is a revolutionary concept. Which they are the first to champion.
No movie awards ceremony is now complete without some star, her voice wobbly with emotion, telling all those little girls out there how they must be strong while, in the audience, fellow actresses are seen to bubble up with photogenic, moist-eyed emotion.
Which may have less to do with sisterly empathy, more to do with their own angst at not winning the big gong themselves.
Women have been strong since time immemorial. Strong and brave and brilliant. Not just the Elizabeth the Firsts and the Joan of Arcs, the Florence Nightingales and the... um... nominees for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars.
But the unsung 'ordinary' women who with quiet fortitude and no acclaim just got on with it - and still do - through times of conflict, deprivation and great personal challenge.
The fighters, the factory workers, the teachers, the cleaners, the single mums, the campaigners, those who are the bulwark of the health service, the carers at home doing extraordinary things unremarked, unrecognised.
The women who came through two World Wars, often having to hold families together in the direst of circumstances. The women who came through the Troubles.
No. The enduring problem for women isn't that they've not been strong. It's that they've routinely been dismissed as weak and cowering and not half as clever as men.
Since time immemorial we've been patronised.
Now we're being matronised.
Which brings us to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who kicked off this week with a visit to a charity which does great work helping women who sell their bodies on the street.
I hesitate to call these women sex workers because I always think that description suggests a regulated industry with employee care and properly monitored working conditions. As for 'prostitutes', there's the old judgmental sneer implicit there. This charity Meghan was visiting hands out food parcels and other essentials. The women on the streets they work with are often forced there through mental illness, addiction or domestic violence.
During her visit Meghan announced she'd had a lightbulb moment, called for a black marker (which was coincidentally, conveniently to hand) and inscribed, with inspirational tosh, bananas which were to be distributed in the food parcels.
You Are Brave. You Are Special. And, needless to say, You Are Strong.
Inevitably she has since been taken apart by the global commentariat for her 'let them eat regally inscribed bananas' outreach.
Having said that, the charity has possibly benefited from the widespread publicity the story attracted.
And apart from the phallic foolishness, I do think Meghan was well-meaning. She's a former American actress whose first language is T-shirt slogan. So it must have seemed a good idea at the time.
Especially to a royal who along with her sister-in-law now seems to be endlessly trying to do a Diana. Whether to endear herself to the public or to her husband it's hard to say.
But like the Bafta winners she's going about it the wrong way.
We are women. We have enough on our plate. We can do without celebrity banana philosophising and all the other condescending guff.
Zodiac a bit of an animal lottery
Happy new year to all our Chinese friends, this week marking the first in the Year of the Pig. The Chinese zodiac has a 12-year cycle with the year you're born in corresponding to your animal sign. Some, like tiger or dragon, sound better than others. I was out the other evening and in our company we realised were a monkey, a horse, two snakes, an ox and one rat. As I say, some zodiac signs have a more glamorous ring to them than others.
Son in a jam over birth consent
Interesting court case of the week... the gentleman in India who is taking legal action against his parents for giving birth to him without his consent. Your first reaction is to sneer at the very idea. Why must I face wars, he gurns? Why must I feel pain? Why must I work? Oh, come on, get over yourself man! Then he adds another why-must-I. Why must I be stuck in traffic jams? Hmmmm. Good question. He's possibly got a case there.
Never mind the backstop, Leos getting unionists backs up
Whatever happened to Leo Varadkar? Back when he was elected Taoiseach, Leo was seen, both north and south, as a bold breath of fresh political air.
Product of a new generation, he was young and charismatic a Taoiseach for the times, breaking down barriers in a nation evolving from its religion-dominated past into a forward thinking, confident 21st century society. Upon which many of us in Northern Ireland looked with admiration and not a little envy.
But now Leo appears like a bit of a throwback.
Faced with Brexit and wrangling over what to do about the border he has reverted to the sort of intransigence were accused of cornering the market on up here.
Not an inch. Its his way or no way. The backstop, full stop.
You cant fault the man or his government for taking a firm stance in defence of what he and they believe to be best for their country.
Its how Leo has handled the optics of this....
Images of him this week smirking (there is no other word for it) alongside Donald Tusk after the latter made his special place in Hell comments were not a good look.
Whats especially sad is that in recent years there had been a growing warmth between Ireland and Britain. Considerable outreach on all sides.
But now the Taoiseach gives the impression that he couldnt really give a toss about unionist concerns over the potential erosion of their place in the UK. That actually hes encouraging it.
The great irony is that in place of the soft border hes so keen to maintain, Leo Varadkar is now building a new wall of hostility between the Republic and northern unionists.
The top US envoy for North Korea returned from three days of talks in Pyongyang and will meet again with his North Korean counterpart before the second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Earlier, Mr Trump said his planned summit will take place in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.
Stephen Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, met with South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha and Seouls chief nuclear envoy Lee Do-hoon on Saturday to brief them on his negotiations with North Korea.
Our discussions were productive, Mr Biegun, said while meeting Ms Kang.
The president is very much looking forward to taking next steps. We have some hard work to do with DPRK between now and then. I am confident if both sides stay committed we can make real progress here, he said, referring to North Korea by its formal name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
In Pyongyang, Mr Biegun and Kim Hyok Chol, North Koreas special representative for US affairs, to discuss advancing Trump and Kims Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearisation, transforming US-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, the State Department said in a statement.
It said that Mr Biegun and Mr Kim agreed to meet again before the leaders second summit, scheduled for February 27-28 in Hanoi.
Mr Trump tweeted the venue on Friday in Washington, saying Mr Biegun had just left North Korea after a productive meeting on the summit.
Mr Trump added: I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!
The president had previously announced Vietnam as the summit location, but the city had not been identified.
Expand Close Stephen Beigun, left, listens to Kang Kyung-wha during their meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul (Ed Jones/Pool Photo via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook
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Mr Biegun is thought to have discussed specific disarmament steps that North Korea could promise at the Vietnam summit and what corresponding measures the United States is willing to take.
US-led negotiations aimed at stripping North Korea of its nuclear weapons programme has made little headway since the first Kim-Trump summit in Singapore last June, when Mr Kim pledged to work toward the complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, without providing a clear timetable.
Experts say Mr Kim is determined to win relief from US-led sanctions to help revive his countrys troubled economy, while Mr Trump, faced with domestic problems such as the Russian investigation, needs foreign policy achievements.
If the second summit fails to produce a breakthrough, scepticism about the current nuclear negotiations will grow. Some experts say North Korea is trying to use the negotiations to weaken the sanctions and buy time to perfect its weapons programme.
Mr Trump also tweeted: North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse. He may surprise some but he wont surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket an Economic one!
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, right, answers a question from a reporter (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he will decide by the end of the month whether to seek the presidency.
The 76-year-old businessman, one of the richest men in the world, has been openly contemplating a Democratic White House bid since late last year.
In an interview, Mr Bloomberg said he has three more weeks to make his decision in line with his plan to announce his intentions before the end of February.
He also rejected a recent report suggesting he likely would not run if former Vice President Joe Biden enters the race.
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My decision doesnt depend on what other people are going to do, Mr Bloomberg said.
My decision depends on whether or not I think I can make a difference.
Mr Bloombergs decision comes as a handful of high-profile Democrats consider joining the 2020 race.
Mr Biden and former Texas Congressman Beto ORourke, who earlier in the week said he would announce his decision very soon, are the most prominent of those yet to make a decision.
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Should he run, Mr Bloomberg would bring virtually limitless resources and a pragmatic governing approach to the field.
The former Republican stands out for a decidedly more pragmatic governing approach than some of the early 2020 Democratic contenders, who are more aligned with the partys far-left wing.
Mr Bloomberg has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to promote liberal priorities on climate change, gun control and immigration, including more than 100 million US dollars to help elect Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections.
He confirmed on Friday that he would separate myself from his foundation and private business should he launch a presidential campaign, just as he did as New York City mayor.
Im spending more time going around politically now, he said.
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You can see the beginning of a transition.
Initially registered as a Democrat, the Massachusetts native filed paperwork to change his voter registration to Republican in 2000 before his first run for New York City mayor, according to a spokesman.
In June 2007, he unenrolled from the Republicans, having no formal party affiliation until he registered again as a Democrat last October.
While he would walk away from his private organisations should he run, Mr Bloomberg lashed out at those who suggest his private work would present conflicts of interest as a presidential candidate.
Some of the people that say that are legislators who take money from industries where theyre regulating them, he said.
Maybe they should go worry about what theyre doing.
A view of current conditions at the port of Ramsgate in Kent as preparations are made at the site for a no-deal Brexit (Gareth Fuller/PA)
Chris Grayling faced calls to resign after a controversial no-deal Brexit ferry contract awarded to a firm with no ships was cancelled.
The Transport Secretarys decision to award Seaborne Freight a contract worth 13.8 million to run services between Ramsgate and Ostend had attracted widespread criticism.
The Department for Transport (DfT) said it had decided to terminate the contract after Irish company Arklow Shipping, which had backed Seaborne Freight, stepped away from the deal.
This contract was never going to work but this Secretary of State, true to form, blunders from one disaster to anotherShadow transport secretary Andy McDonald
A DfT spokeswoman said: Following the decision of Seaborne Freights backer, Arklow Shipping, to step back from the deal, it became clear Seaborne would not reach its contractual requirements with the Government. We have therefore decided to terminate our agreement.
The Government is already in advanced talks with a number of companies to secure additional freight capacity including through the port of Ramsgate in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Labour seized on the situation to say Mr Grayling should quit or be sacked.
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Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said: As we predicted, the Seaborne Freight contract has been cancelled.
This cannot go without consequence. The Chris Grayling catalogue of calamities grows bigger by the day.
This contract was never going to work but this Secretary of State, true to form, blunders from one disaster to another.
Whilst Theresa May needs the few friends she has right now, we cannot have this incompetent Transport Secretary carry on heaping humiliation after humiliation on our country. He has to go.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn raised the ludicrous situation in a speech in Coventry, saying: Chris Grayling the Transport Secretary claimed the Government had looked very carefully at Seaborne Freight before giving the company the contract, but apparently not carefully enough to notice that it didnt have any ships.
Chris Grayling does have form in other departments.
Brexit-backing Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg questioned whether Leo Varadkars Irish Government had any influence on Arklows decision.
That would be a very unfriendly act of a neighbour to obstruct no-deal preparationsBrexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg
He told the Daily Telegraph: One has to hope that the Irish Government has not leant on or put any pressure on Arklow to persuade it to pull out.
That would be a very unfriendly act of a neighbour to obstruct no-deal preparations and one has to hope very sincerely that this is genuinely a corporate decision.
Mr Grayling last month defended the Seaborne Freight contract, insisting it was not a risk.
It was one of three firms awarded contracts totalling 108 million in late December to lay on additional crossings to ease the pressure on Dover when Britain leaves the EU, despite having never run a Channel service.
The department said it had been Arklow Shippings backing that gave it confidence in the viability of the deal, and that it stands by the robust due diligence carried out on Seaborne Freight.
It added no taxpayer money had been transferred to the company.
Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, said: RMT has taken a number of protests over the fiasco of the Governments Brexit ferry contracts to both the Department for Transport and the ports, and the news this morning comes as no surprise to us.
The whole exercise is a complete and utter shambles with the Government ignoring union calls on what needs to happen. Instead they are blundering on from crisis to crisis.
RMT has set out a package of demands that would guarantee that the Brexit ferry contracts are crewed by British seafarers, on decent pay and conditions negotiated through recognised trade unions.
This Government wing and a prayer approach was always doomed to failure and its time for Chris Grayling to stop attacking RMT and start listening to people who actually know what they are talking about instead of the chancers selling him a pile of old rope they dont even own.
The deal had been part of efforts to ensure extra capacity in the event of a no-deal Brexit (PA)
A controversial no-deal Brexit ferry contract awarded to a firm with no ships has been cancelled by the Department for Transport.
Transport Secretary Chris Graylings decision to award Seaborne Freight a contract worth 13.8 million had attracted widespread criticism.
The department said it had decided to terminate the contract after Irish company Arklow Shipping, which had backed Seaborne Freight, stepped away from the deal.
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A DfT spokeswoman said: Following the decision of Seaborne Freights backer, Arklow Shipping, to step back from the deal, it became clear Seaborne would not reach its contractual requirements with the Government. We have therefore decided to terminate our agreement.
The Government is already in advanced talks with a number of companies to secure additional freight capacity including through the port of Ramsgate in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Brexit-backing Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg questioned whether Leo Varadkars Irish Government had any influence on Arklows decision.
He told the Daily Telegraph: One has to hope that the Irish Government has not leant on or put any pressure on Arklow to persuade it to pull out.
That would be a very unfriendly act of a neighbour to obstruct no-deal preparations and one has to hope very sincerely that this is genuinely a corporate decision.
It's just another example of a major disaster on the hands of Chris Grayling, who actually must now really class as the worst Secretary of State everAndrew Gwynne, Labour
Mr Grayling last month defended the Seaborne Freight contract, insisting it was not a risk.
It was one of three firms awarded contracts totalling 108 million in late December to lay on additional crossings to ease the pressure on Dover when Britain leaves the EU, despite having never run a Channel service.
The department said it had been Arklow Shippings backing that gave it confidence in the viability of the deal, and that it stands by the robust due diligence carried out on Seaborne Freight.
It added no taxpayer money had been transferred to the company.
Shadow communities secretary Andrew Gwynne told BBC Radio 4s Today: Its just another example of a major disaster on the hands of Chris Grayling, who actually must now really class as the worst Secretary of State ever.
Philip was involved in a crash which saw his car flip over (Aaron Chown/PA)
The Duke of Edinburgh has surrendered his driving licence, after being involved in a crash and then being spotted behind the wheel without a seatbelt.
Philip, 97, voluntarily gave up his credentials on Saturday, Buckingham Palace said.
He apologised for his part in an accident on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk when his Land Rover Freelander collided with another car last month, leaving two women needing hospital treatment.
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Whatsapp Broken glass and car parts on the side of the A149 near to the Sandringham Estate where the Duke of Edinburgh was involved in an accident (John Stillwell/PA)
Some 48 hours after the crash he was pictured driving without a seatbelt, prompting criticism.
A statement from Buckingham Palace said: After careful consideration, the Duke of Edinburgh has taken the decision to voluntarily surrender his driving licence.
He surrendered his licence on Saturday, a spokeswoman added.
Philips driving woes began when his car flipped over after he pulled out into a busy A road and collided with a Kia, carrying a nine-month old boy, his mother and another passenger.
He escaped injury, but passenger Emma Fairweather broke her wrist and called for the duke to be prosecuted if he was found to be at a fault.
In a letter dated January 21, Philip wished her a speedy recovery and said he failed to see the car coming, the Sunday Mirror reported.
He blamed the low, bright sun for obscuring his vision, adding he was very contrite about the consequences.
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The crash did not immediately put Philip off driving.
Wearing tinted glasses, he was photographed at the wheel of a replacement Land Rover while not wearing a seatbelt in the ensuing days.
Police issued Philip with suitable words of advice and said any appropriate action would be taken if necessary.
At the time of the collision, celebrity lawyer Nick Freeman said Philip could face a prosecution for driving without due care and attention, which carries an unlimited fine.
But the lawyer, dubbed Mr Loophole, said the duke could avoid prosecution by surrendering his licence.
A Garda officer at the scene of the shooting of John Lawless, who later died in hospital
The Garda does not believe that the murder of a 39-year-old father-of-three in Dublin yesterday was linked to serious organised crime.
John Lawless was shot dead on his way to work around 6.30am in the Darndale area of the city.
He was with a number of other people at the time of the shooting, however this group fled from the scene as the gunman opened fire.
Police said they were anxious to locate these witnesses.
Mr Lawless was treated at the scene by emergency personnel and then taken to Beaumont Hospital where he later died.
The Garda confirmed that it was exploring a number of lines of enquiry, but said the victim was not linked to any ongoing gangland feud in the capital or high-level crime.
One motive being looked at was that the killing was linked to a local issue.
Shortly after the shooting, a silver Ford Focus was found partially burnt-out at Coolock.
It is believed that the car may have been used in the shooting and was stolen in the course of a burglary in the Santry area of Dublin last month.
Supt Gerard Donnelly, of Coolock Garda station, said: "At this stage we have no known motive for this shooting.
"Mr Lawless left his home on the way to work. He is not a person who was known to us for involvement in serious criminal activity."
The senior officer also appealed for any person who may have witnessed the shooting at Marigold Cresent to contact them.
Labour Senator Aodhan O'Riordain described the latest shooting as a "wake-up call" and demanded increased resources to tackle gun attacks in the area.
"This morning's shooting incident in Darndale shows once again that the government is out of touch with the realities of life on the ground across the northside," he said yesterday.
"This latest killing must receive the attention that it deserves."
Mr O'Riordain said that he had called for increased police resources in the area and called for action from the minister for justice.
"He can no longer ignore the escalation in serious crime," he said.
"It is time to take on the escalating number of gun shootings by committing the resources to tackle this once and for all.
"Dismissing these incidents as being an operational matter for the gardai is insulting to the communities who need protection."
Prime Minister Theresa May and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar during a meeting at Farmleigh House in Dublin
Arlene Foster held a "very constructive" meeting with the Taoiseach yesterday and said a Brexit deal is possible, as far greater obstacles were overcome to secure peace.
Leo Varakdar met leaders from the five main local parties in Belfast and later returned to Dublin where he hosted the Prime Minister for dinner, as efforts continued to find a breakthrough.
Following her meeting with the Taoiseach, Mrs Foster said the DUP wanted a deal which worked for "London, Dublin, Brussels and Belfast" and would win support in the House of Commons.
"If there is genuine political will, then a deal is possible. Northern Ireland should stand as a reminder to the Taoiseach of how we have overcome many greater obstacles in the past," she said.
Mr Varadkar said everybody wanted to avoid a no-deal and a hard border and "to continue to have a very close political and economic relationship between Britain and Ireland no matter want happens".
He said: "There is much more that unites us than divides us and time is running short, and we need to get to an agreement really as soon as possible, and I'll be working very hard and redoubling my efforts, along with government, to do that."
He insisted that while the backstop was not up for renegotiation, "we can talk about the joint political declaration and what changes might be made to that and what assurances may be given that would assist this agreement being ratified".
Asked about the controversial comment of European Council president Donald Tusk that there was a "special place in Hell" for Brexiteers without a plan, Mr Varadkar pointed to anti-EU political rhetoric.
"It was only a few months ago that people in the UK Government were comparing the European Union to communism and bear in mind President Tusk spent much of his life fighting to overthrow communism," he said.
"So I think there has been a lot of rhetoric coming from a lot of different quarters and I think the best thing to do is just to rise above it."
The DUP leader said it was important for Mr Varadkar to understand that unionist views on the backstop could not be ignored.
"The EU must respect that, for unionists, a new border east-west is no more acceptable than a new border north-south," she said. "The draft withdrawal agreement was unacceptable because it would cut Northern Ireland off from the rest of the UK and create a democratic deficit in Belfast.
"We will test any new draft withdrawal agreement against its impact on the Union and whether it respects the referendum result."
She declined to be drawn on whether alternative proposals to the backstop had been discussed during the meeting. The DUP leader said she wasn't enthusiastic about extending Article 50 if a Brexit deal wasn't reached by March 29.
"What we are focused on is trying to find a deal. That is where everybody should be focused, and not focused on extending the time further," she said.
"Because I think, as you know, here in Northern Ireland if you give more time often you don't get the outcome."
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds, who also attended the meeting, said he believed a Westminster majority for a Brexit deal could be found with his party's MPs and some Labour rebels voting with the Tories.
Speaking after her meeting with Mr Varadkar, Sinn Fein's vice president Michelle O'Neill said: "I think the Taoiseach has remained firm throughout the negotiation in recognising the need to protect Irish interests, in recognising the need to make sure that citizens in the North are never left behind.
"He restated that commitment to us today. At the end of the day we will hold the Taoiseach's feet to the fire on the issue."
She added: "Any retreat from it would jeopardise Irish interests, the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. With the exception of the unionist parties, there is political unanimity north and south on the need to protect the backstop."
Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann said there must be "realism" in Dublin about unionists' backstop concerns.
"The dismissal of these concerns will inevitably have long lasting consequences for relationships north and south of the border," he said.
"Equating opposition to the backstop as beckoning the return of violence is an extremely dangerous and foolhardy position for the Republic of Ireland's Government to take.
"It is providing justification in advance for those who may attempt to turn the clock back."
Alliance leader Naomi Long said her party had a positive meeting with the Taoiseach and said it was reassuring that he had reiterated his support for the backstop.
Last night's one-on-one between Mr Varadkar and Mrs May came at the request of the British Government at the end of a week when she has travelled to Belfast and Brussels.
Her team was warned in advance by Irish officials that while they were happy to host her, any Brexit discussions could only be interpreted as "talk".
They stressed Ireland negotiates its position through the European Unoin taskforce led by Michel Barnier.
Mr Varadkar said the meeting was an opportunity "to share our perspectives and for us to listen to each other".
"There is much more that unites us than divides us and time is running short," he said.
The Prime Minister is believed to have used the meeting to explain her desire for legally binding changes to the Brexit deal.
This has been repeatedly ruled out by Mr Varadkar and key EU leaders.
How you voted in our online poll
An online Belfast Telegraph poll has found that readers are narrowly against the Brexit backstop.
Our unscientific Facebook poll asked readers to vote for or against the proposal in the Withdrawal Agreement.
Over 4,600 people have taken part in the vote, with 53% saying they were against the backstop and 47% voting in favour of keeping it.
The controversial backstop proposal is intended to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland.
It has become a major sticking point of the Brexit negotiations, with hardline Conservatives and the DUP opposing the plan, which led to the defeat of Prime Minister Theresa May in the House of Commons last month.
The DUP has said that it believes the backstop plan would create a trade border in the Irish Sea and could leave Northern Ireland tied to the EU indefinitely.
It would only come into effect if a trade deal is not reached between the EU and UK during the 21-month Brexit transition period.
Under the plan the UK would effectively remain inside the EUs customs union, with Northern Ireland retaining some elements of the single market until a deal is reached.
The Irish Government and EU have remained steadfast in their view that the backstop is the best way of preventing a hard border in Ireland.
MPs voted to replace the backstop with alternative arrangements, with Prime Minister Theresa May returning to Brussels on Thursday in an attempt to renegotiate her deal.
Mrs May described discussions with EU leaders as robust but constructive and insisted she was determined to negotiate hard over the coming days.
An SDLP MLA has said that potential future "parallel partnerships" with other parties would not be ruled out because of closer ties with Fianna Fail.
John Dallat admitted he "had to be persuaded" in relation to the partnership deal with the southern party, due to be discussed at an SDLP special conference today.
In addition to debating the motion for a new partnership with Fianna Fail, the Newry conference will discuss proposals to build closer relations with Fine Gael and the Irish Labour Party.
If accepted as an amendment to the original motion, the second proposal from SDLP branches in Fermanagh, Upper Bann, and Balmoral would effectively prevent the party leadership developing its partnership with Fianna Fail into a merger.
The Belfast Telegraph understands that it will be debated as a separate motion.
Mr Dallat said that while the only partnership option currently on the table is the deal with Fianna Fail, that would not block partnership relationships with other parties on specific issues going forward.
"We've been building relationships with political parties on the side since our inception," he said.
"I don't see how that is ever going to end just because of a partnership with Fianna Fail on particular aspects of politics.
"The partnership is with Fianna Fail at the minute because that's the one available - it doesn't rule out sometime in the future that there might be parallel partnerships with other political parties.
"But at the minute the only partnership that is on offer is the one with Fianna Fail.
"That will take an enormous amount of endeavour by both parties to achieve it. And it's very specific on what it intends to do.
"If the party comes up with partnerships with other political parties I'll listen to them in the same way I've done with this one and I'll be persuaded, and on this one I am persuaded.
"It's certainly innovative and it's new, but partnerships in themselves are not new. The biggest companies in the world are working in partnerships all the time, so we're applying it to politics."
Mr Dallat said he expects the Fianna Fail partnership proposal to receive the backing of party members today, and that it would help the SDLP become "central to the political world again".
"Like everything in politics, I had to be persuaded, and I am," he said of the political rapprochement.
"I lived in the Republic for a number of years and I never voted Fianna Fail, but the partnership tells me that this is something that's desirable.
"And I have to be flexible enough, if I want to put the SDLP first rather than John Dallat. I need to be flexible enough to bend with that.
"The dynamics of politics is changing so fast.
"I don't think it's a question of survival, it's a question of progress.
"It's a question of becoming central to the political world again, and gaining a stage on the national and international platform, and that's what it will deliver."
Mr Dallat added: "I think every political party has had to change, to adjust to what's relevant today.
"At the moment there is no suggestion whatsoever that the SDLP is losing its identity."
Mr Dallat said he believes that South Belfast MLA Claire Hanna, who has stated she is not convinced of the benefits of the Fianna Fail partnership as it would not reflect her politics, has "an important part to play in the party".
"It's entirely Claire's decision whether she leaves or not," he said.
"Personally, I believe that she has an important part to play in the party. Once you join a political party you've consented to constraint.
"Claire is a mature person, I wouldn't start to advise her what she should do.
"But certainly, if this motion is to fail, then where does that leave (party leader) Colm Eastwood and (deputy leader) Nichola Mallon? I don't know what they would do."
Mourners at the funeral of Alaedin Fejzula in Dungannon yesterday
Mourners at the funeral of Alaedin Fejzula in Dungannon yesterday
Police are investigating an incident in which cars performed "donuts" yesterday at the funeral of a man killed in a road crash.
As mourners filed out of St Patrick's Church in Dungannon following the funeral Mass for Slovakian-born Alaedin Fejzula, three BMW cars appeared and began revving their engines.
The vehicles then "drifted" for 10 minutes, with several men in yellow vests stopping traffic as the cars performed an apparent tribute to the 21-year-old, who was killed on the A29 Dungannon Road outside Moy last Sunday afternoon.
Mr Fejzula died along with childhood friend Patrick Kemenczei.
A third person, Brigid McKenna from Emyvale in Co Monaghan, died as a result of her injuries on Tuesday.
Two people remain in hospital following the three-car collision.
The three BMW cars at the funeral were said to have performed donuts outside the church gates.
Mid Ulster Sinn Fein MP Francie Molloy said mourners were left "shocked" at the display.
The incident left a smell of burnt rubber in the air as the cortege moved off, and the politician said many who had gathered to pay their respects were insulted by the "scandal", which, he added, "glorified speed".
He said: "People were shocked at the behaviour outside the chapel. They (the cars) were doing donuts round and round at the chapel gates and had closed off all three roads.
"People in high-vis vests stood at the junctions to Killyman and Circular Roads and Northland Row while cars drifted in the small area for around 10 minutes before a police car arrived."
At one stage during the display the victim's distraught mother Gabriela Sozanska was led away in tears, and the cars drove off at speed after someone alerted them to police presence.
Fr Cathal Devenney, who conducted the funeral Mass, said he was aware of the incident but had not known it was planned.
"I really don't know anything other than the fact that it happened," he told the Belfast Telegraph. "I didn't even see them as I was already back in the church when it occurred."
The PSNI said enquiries are ongoing. "Police are aware of reports of anti-social driving in the vicinity of St Patrick's Church, Dungannon, this morning," police said.
More than 300 family and friends of the Slovakian, who had made his home here, turned out to pay tribute at his funeral Mass.
At the service Fr Devenney spoke of the community's shock at Mr Fejzula's death.
"There are no words to express the sorrow of a mother who has lost her child at any time, particularly at a time of great tragedy," he told mourners.
A tribute was read out in Mr Fejzula's native Slovakian by a friend.
The only child of Gabriela Sozanska and stepson of Ervin Mindzak, Mr Fejzula lived at Derrycaw Road in Dungannon.
He worked as a mechanic in his adopted home town along with his best friend Mr Kemenczei, also from Slovakia.
The remains of Mr Kemenczei, who had no relatives locally, are to be flown home to Slovakia for burial.
Tom Sullivan, honorary consul for Slovakia, said the embassy in London has been in contact with the families and will be providing assistance.
PSNI Inspector Andrew Archibald appealed for anyone who was travelling on the Dungannon Road in Moy on Sunday, and who witnessed the collision or any of the vehicles involved, to contact police on 101, quoting reference 699 03/02/19
A mural in Londonderry depicting a young boy with a petrol bomb will not be painted over or removed, the chairman of the Bogside Artists has insisted.
The mural is part of a collection known as the People's Gallery painted on gable walls in the Bogside area of Derry and created by Tom Kelly, Kevin Hasson and the late William Kelly.
Bogside Artists' chairman Emmet Doyle hit out at recent suggestions that the petrol bomber mural should be replaced by a more neutral and modern depiction of the city.
He said: "This mural, along with the others that form the People's Gallery, is the narrative of the history of the Bogside and to suggest part of that is removed is to deny what happened.
"It is not a glorification of violence, it, along with the rest of the murals, depict our story and they are going nowhere."
An officer serving at Ballykinler Barracks when a soldier is believed to have taken his own life has recalled the distressing moment he discovered the body of the young man.
Captain David Bell was speaking yesterday at the inquest into the death of Rifleman Darren Mitchell (20), from London, who was found dead at Abercorn Barracks in Ballykinler, Co Down, on February 10, 2013.
The inquest, sitting in Ballymena Courthouse, is also examining the death of Lance Corporal James Ross (30), from Leeds, who died on December 8, 2012.
Both men were serving with the Second Battalion the Rifles and had been previously on active service in Afghanistan.
The were found hanged in their rooms within months of each other.
At the time Captain Bell had been a sergeant major of the B Company, which included Rifleman Mitchell within its ranks.
On the day Mr Mitchell was found dead Captain Bell had just started a new post but rushed to the accommodation site after receiving a phone call.
"It was clear the lads were distraught," he recalled of the scene.
"I went inside and up to the corridor where Mitch lived. There were lads standing outside the door, almost standing guard."
He then entered the room, accompanied by a corporal, where he observed Mr Mitchell's body after which they "immediately left" the room.
Adding that he was "absolutely gutted" by Mr Mitchell's death, the officer described the Rifleman as a "happy-go-lucky kind of lad who always had a smile on his face".
"He was mild-mannered and a good soldier," he added.
Previously the inquest heard the soldier was 6,000 in debt, acting "hyper vigilant" at the end of 2012 and had difficulty sleeping after returning from Afghanistan, where he narrowly missed being injured in an attack.
Asked about this description of Mr Mitchell, Captain Bell - who revealed that he didn't believe the soldier intended to take his life - told Coroner Joe McCrisken: "I would have thought it was a different person."
The inquest yesterday also heard that a nurse had observed Mr Mitchell looking "tearful and tired" in early October 2012, as well as appearing "anxious and withdrawn".
The hearing continues.
Claire Bailey, who became leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland last November
Claire Bailey has said that she will stress the Green Party's global connections when she addresses its conference today.
Ms Bailey, who took over as party leader in Northern Ireland last November, said she is looking forward to the gathering in Belfast, where delegates will also hear from their counterparts in England, Scotland and Wales.
She said she views the key crisis areas as Brexit, the collapsed Assembly, poverty, environmental issues and the number of people who are dying by suicide.
She said these issues are being address by the local Green Party.
Speaking ahead of the conference, Ms Bailey said: "Nothing meaningful is being said at these meetings with Theresa May or the Secretary of State about Brexit, so it doesn't concern me that we are not at them.
"We are working away in the background, talking to the European Greens and putting a really strong case forward for Northern Ireland that has the peace process at the centre.
"We are making our voice heard and that is the message I want people to take away from the conference.
"While other people try to dismiss us, we need to stand up and remind them that it isn't size that matters, it's what you do that counts.
"While the top level of politics might be in chaos, we are coming into local council elections and people are looking for something they can get behind and support.
"As we put forward our candidates for council, I would remind people they are committed activists with an awful lot to offer and they should have the confidence to knock on doors and secure those votes."
Ms Bailey said that she would like to see many more candidates at council level.
She said: "We have new faces, new branding and a fresh image.
"The Green Party here was not born of the conflict, we are part of a wider global movement.
"In terms of climate chaos, we have been given 12 years to the point of no return.
"We hear so much about a new Ireland, but what is that new Ireland going to be?
"And while a new Ireland is coming, we need to be ready for that. We need to renegotiate who we are on this island and how we are going to live together and start planning properly for it."
Theresa May has been given a warning by senior Tories that the monumental problems with her Brexit plan cannot be solved by cursory tweaks.
The Prime Minister is seeking changes to the backstop measure to prevent a hard border with Ireland but was told by former Cabinet ministers that may not be enough to win support in Westminster.
The ex-ministers Remainer Nicky Morgan and Brexiteers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson have been taking part in talks to find an alternative to the backstop following a Commons vote in favour of replacing the measure.
The backstop in anything like its present form is simply never going to pass the Commons, they wrote in the Daily Telegraph.
Their intervention came after Mrs May held talks in Dublin with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
This evening an Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar and Prime Minister, @theresa_may met at Farmleigh House in Dublin to discuss the ongoing political impasse in Northern Ireland and the latest Brexit developments following their respective engagements in Belfast and Brussels. #Brexit pic.twitter.com/MN8GKnAqzH MerrionStreet.ie #StaySafe #HoldFirm (@merrionstreet) February 8, 2019
She was joined for the private dinner at official state guesthouse Farmleigh House by the UKs Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins and her chief of staff Gavin Barwell.
Mr Varadkar stressed that no official negotiations would take place over the smoked salmon and fillet of beef, but instead the meal presented an opportunity to share perspectives on Brexit.
Starter: Cured organic salmon
Main: Fillet of beef, dauphinoise potato, green beans and parsnip puree
Dessert: Selection of Irish cheeses, meringue nest topped with seasonal fruit
Mrs May, who is diabetic, was having fruit for pudding
Mr Varadkar said: I believe ultimately we are going to have to get this deal over the line and I am determined to do that.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox held talks in Dublin with his Irish counterpart, Seamus Woulfe.
Mr Cox has been leading work within Whitehall on providing either a time limit on the backstop or giving the UK an exit mechanism from it.
Expand Close Attorney General Geoffrey Cox met his Irish counterpart (Jonathan Brady/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook
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Both proposals have been rejected by Dublin, which insists the backstop cannot be time-limited if it is to provide an effective insurance policy against the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
And the MPs involved in talks on the so-called Malthouse Compromise stressed that the Prime Minister had been instructed by the Commons to replace the backstop rather than merely seek changes to it.
Writing in the Telegraph Ms Morgan, Mr Duncan Smith and Mr Paterson said: It is almost as if the Prime Minister has forgotten the scale of the original Withdrawal Agreements defeat (by 230 votes) or how unacceptable the backstop proposals remain to significant numbers of MPs on both sides of the House.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that trade talks with Japan on a post-Brexit deal had stalled.
The newspaper said Tokyo has agreed to extend the existing terms for the duration of a transition period if the UK strikes a deal with Brussels but in a no-deal Brexit UK-Japan trade would be on World Trade Organisation rules.
A Department for International Trade spokesman said: Our priority is to avoid disruption to businesses as we leave the EU and more DIT staff have been allocated to no-deal planning.
The Japanese Prime Minister and Theresa May agreed this January both countries would work quickly to establish a new economic partnership between Japan and the UK using the basis of the EPA.
Police said the "vicious and sickening" attack was carried out by three masked men.
A 42-year-old man has been arrested following a paramilitary style shooting in the Creggan area of Londonderry on Friday evening.
He was arrested in the city early this morning and has been taken to the Serious Crime Suite in Musgrave Police Station for questionining.
A 35-year-old man received a gunshot would to his lower leg in the attack shortly after 6pm on Friday.
Police said the "vicious and sickening" attack was carried out by three masked men.
"There is absolutely no justification for this attack and we must all work together to bring those responsible to justice and to stop this from happening to anyone else," Detective Inspector Michael Winters said.
Ollie Jowett made fitness his mission after he was told he had a brain tumour
An inspirational personal trainer has revealed how a terminal cancer diagnosis pushed him to get in the best shape of his life.
Ollie Jowett (22) received the devastating news he had a malignant brain tumour when he was 21, and was given a life expectancy of around five years.
Sharing his journey on social media, he refused to let his illness stop him from achieving his fitness goals.
Through 12 weeks of gruelling workouts, he struggled against fatigue and often debilitating symptoms.
Training for a photoshoot, he shed 10kg in weight to achieve a peak physique.
Speaking to the online fitness company Ultimate Performance, he said: "I've never been in that kind of condition in my life. I've never been 'shredded' with a six-pack. You almost doubt to a degree whether you can even get there."
Ollie moved from his home in Cornwall to Belfast to become a personal trainer, a dream he had held since he was 14.
Within months he received the devastating diagnosis of the brain tumour.
"I was heartbroken, obviously. But it was quite a numb emotion I was feeling," he said.
"I thought: 'What am I meant to do now?' Because you don't prepare yourself for this, certainly not at 21."
Ollie revealed how he had suffered from serious headaches every day from 2016, before an MRI scan in 2017 confirmed the worst.
His age and the location of the tumour means treatment possibilities are limited.
"Surgery isn't really a valid option for me, given where the brain tumour is located. The consultant said it's just too risky, especially given my age," he said.
"The likes of chemotherapy and radiotherapy aren't really options either because it's just so risky and I'm just so young."
Still working as a personal trainer, he shared his story on Instagram. "I put my story out on social media, largely because I wanted to be honest, particularly with my clients," he said.
Along the way he has raised money for charity and helped raise awareness of the reality of living with cancer.
"The prognosis with brain tumours is not great. It's five years. That gives me until I'm 26, so the time is ticking," he said.
"Now I'm just trying to inspire, motivate and inform people."
He said his 12-week transformation, with the help of his trainer Umar was the "hardest process of my life".
"I wanted to give up nearly every single day," he said.
"Trying to find the energy just to train and trying to find the energy just to work is horrendous.
"But despite my health being the problem, it was my health that was my motivation in the first place."
He says his next goal is to compile his experience in a book entitled What Is Your Excuse? How I got Photoshop Lean While Battling Brain Cancer.
The Department for Infrastructure says it will consider whether new powers granted to civil servants can be used to progress plans for a 200m cross-border electricity line.
Planning approval for the North-South Interconnector was quashed at the High Court yesterday after departmental officials conceded the case brought by a group of landowners.
The Northern Ireland side of the scheme, involving a 34km overhead power line on 102 towers, stretching from Moy in Co Tyrone to the Armagh border, is being managed by the Systems Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI). EirGrid is managing the southern end, which connects the line across counties Monaghan, Cavan and Meath.
SONI's proposal was originally approved by the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) in January 2018 in the absence of a minister. It followed a public inquiry and a report published by the Planning Appeals Commission.
The project has always been controversial with landowners in Tyrone and Armagh, with more than 6,000 letters of objection lodged to the original plan.
The legal action brought by SEAT (Safe Electricity in Armagh and Tyrone) was partly based on last year's High Court ruling, which found that a senior civil servant did not have the power to grant planning permission for a controversial incinerator in Mallusk, Co Antrim. DfI said that after considering the High Court ruling and new legislation passed by Parliament, it decided that mounting a defence to SEAT's challenge would not be in the public interest.
"This means that the application will return to the department for its consideration, and this will allow departmental officials to actively progress this high profile application to a stage where it is once again ready for a decision to be made," said a spokesperson.
"At the point where a decision is ready to be made, and if there is a continued absence of ministers, the department will consider whether to issue a decision in accordance with the powers available to it at that time."
Jim Lennon from SEAT said the plan for a new cross-border power line must go back to the drawing board, and harness new technology. The group has always promoted the idea of placing the lines underground on health grounds.
"I think it has to go back to a fundamental consideration of the strategic issues of what Northern Ireland needs to have in terms of an energy policy and where this fits into it," said the Armagh resident.
SONI general manager Robin McCormick said the body was hopeful that the new powers for civil servants would enable its planning applications to be re-determined by DfI without delay.
Business organisations have backed SONI and called for DfI to use the new powers to advance the interconnector.
Construction Employers Federation managing director John Armstrong said yesterday's decision was "highly regrettable" and added: "Urgent delivery is absolutely critical to our economic fortunes into the future."
Chief executive of NI Chamber, Ann McGregor, said: "We strongly encourage the Department for Infrastructure to re-determine the application as a matter of priority."
The car bomb attempt in Eglinton in 2015 for which he was convicted
A dissident republican terrorist who was convicted yesterday of trying to kill a policeman in 2015 was previously linked to the murder of prison officer David Black.
Sean McVeigh (38), of Victoria Street in Lurgan, was yesterday found guilty of placing a bomb under the car of the officer outside his home in Eglinton in June 2015.
He had denied the attempted murder and possession of the under vehicle improvised explosive device during a non-jury trial at Belfast Crown Court.
In court yesterday Judge Stephen Fowler QC said he was "satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt" that McVeigh was the man who planted the device under the PSNI officer's car.
It has now emerged that in 2014 McVeigh was charged with the murder of Mr Black, who was shot dead on the M1 in November 2012 as he made his way to work at the high security Maghaberry Prison.
The 52-year-old father-of-two was the first prison officer in to be murdered in almost 20 years and the killing was claimed by the New IRA.
As well as murder, McVeigh was also charged with possessing an assault rifle with the intent to endanger life. However, the charges were dropped by the Public Prosecution Service.
After walking free from Craigavon Magistrates Court in July 2014, McVeigh signalled his intention to sue the PPS and PSNI for the time he had spent in custody.
But less than a year later the dissident republican targeted the police officer in Eglinton.
The target's wife, also a police officer, told detectives that she was asleep, but woke up and looked out of her bedroom window.
Now retired from the PSNI, she spoke of her "sheer disbelief" at seeing a "skinny man" attaching to her husband's car what turned out to be a new type of improvised under-car explosive device.
She said that she was "so shocked" she rapped so hard on her bedroom window that she bruised her knuckles.
The court heard she immediately rang police and call handlers at Maydown PSNI despatched three response vehicles to the scene.
Officers said they spotted two cars "travelling in convoy" from the Waterside.
The two vehicles were subsequently identified from automatic number plate recognition technology and CCTV cameras as a black Volkswagen Passat and a Toyota Verso, both with Republic of Ireland registrations, both of which had been stolen.
The court also heard evidence from a number of police officers who said they spotted two cars "travelling in convoy" from the Waterside towards the cityside of Derry. As a result, police at PSNI Maydown alerted colleagues in An Garda Siochana based in Letterkenny. The vehicles travelled to Lifford, where the Toyota was abandoned.
The trial heard that as the Passat drove towards Ballybofey, Co Donegal, it was spotted by a specialist Garda armed response unit, who gave chase, stopping the car about a mile outside the village of Killygordon.
Along with the driver and a rear seat passenger, McVeigh was found sitting in the front passenger seat.
In a follow-up search of the route taken by the Passat Garda found three pairs of Tesco Marigold-type gloves, later found to have traces of explosives residue.
In addition, RDX explosive traces were also found on McVeigh's black outer jacket and tracksuit bottoms.
Further traces of RDX were found on swabs taken from the front seat of the VW car, the interior door handles and from the rear seat.
Similar explosive traces were found on the Toyota car, located six days later in the car park where it had been left that night.
Following his arrest under Section 30 of the Republic's Offences Against the State Act, the court heard McVeigh gave his name and date of birth, but refused to answer any Garda questions.
He was subsequently released on bail by Garda detectives. The trial heard that McVeigh was finally arrested over the murder bid in Eglinton by PSNI detectives on a Lurgan-bound train in May 2016.
The judge rejected defence arguments that traces of RDX explosives found on McVeigh's clothing were from an "innocent contamination".
Judge Fowler said he also drew an inference from McVeigh's refusal to give evidence at his trial and said he was satisfied the defendant was a front seat passenger in the car which took him to and from the scene of the planned attack.
He also rejected defence submissions that the device was not capable of detonation and could have been an elaborate hoax.
The trial judge said it was a fully functioning device, containing 322 grammes of Semtex explosives, with RDX being the main component.
Contained inside a black box, measuring 20cms by 15 cms by 20cms, the device was equipped with detonator, battery, circuit board, timer unit, mercury tilt switch, two toggles and a copper cone.
The copper cone was designed so that "on detonation it was deformed by the blast into a 'slug' or rod shaped projectile".
A subsequent field test on a model of car similar to that driven by the policeman "showed that anyone sitting on the driving seat would have sustained serious and possibly fatal injuries".
Judge Fowler said: "I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that this was a viable device.
"I am also satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that this device was constructed and planted under the car with the intent to kill the driver once the vehicle was moved.
"I find the defendant guilty on both counts."
Judge Fowler remanded the defendant into custody and McVeigh will be sentenced on a date to be fixed.
PSNI specialist search team moves in after police launched a murder inquiry at McCrea Park in Clogher, County Tyrone. Picture by Alan Lewis PhotopressBelfast.co.uk
Police have named the victim of a murder in Co Tyrone as 30-year-old Pat Ward.
His body was discovered in an alleyway at McCrea Park at around 8.15am on Saturday.
A post-mortem examination on the body has yet to take place but police are treating the death as murder.
A PSNI spokesperson said Mr Ward was from the Clogher area.
A 23-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman, who were arrested on suspicion of murder, remain in police custody.
Clogher is a quiet rural town. Speaking to local people they are shocked. They would value everyoneas prayers for those impacted. Anyone with information should pass it to the police. https://t.co/1Okea0j46I Arlene Foster #WeWillMeetAgain (@ArleneFosterUK) February 9, 2019
Sinn Fein MP Michelle Gildernew said the local community had been shocked by the incident.
Police are investigating and I would encourage anyone with information that could help to bring it forward," the Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP said.
My thoughts are with the family and friends of the deceased at this time.
Police can confirm that the man murdered in the McCrea Park area of Clogher was 30 year old Pat Ward who was from the Clogher area. Detectives continue to appeal for anyone with information to contact them on 101 quoting reference 403 09/02/19. Police Service NI (@PoliceServiceNI) February 9, 2019
Detective Chief Inspector Peter McKenna, from the PSNIs Major Investigation Team, appealed for anyone with information to come forward.
I am appealing for anyone who was in the area of McCrea Park last night or early this morning and who witnessed any unusual activity or anyone with any information that can assist my investigation to contact detectives on 101 quoting reference 403 09/02/19," he said.
"Alternatively, information can also be provided to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 which is 100% anonymous and gives people the power to speak up and stop crime."
The hit and run occurred in the Milewater Drive area. Credit: Google.
A car crashed into the front of a Newtownabbey home before fleeing the scene in the early hours of Saturday morning.
It was reported that around 5.30am a white coloured Ford Fiesta, VRM KGZ6496, crashed into the front of a house in the Milewater Drive area.
Significant damage was caused to the front of the property. Nobody in the house at the time was injured.
The car made off from the scene and was found by police a short time later in the Ballyearl Close area of Newtownabbey after it had crashed into a fence.
The occupants of the car had made off. The car was reported to have been stolen from Queens Crescent in Carnmoney a short time earlier.
Inspector Paul McCarron is appealing for anyone who witnessed the collisions or anyone who witnessed the Ford Fiesta car being taken from the area of Queens Crescent to contact officers in Newtownabbey on 101 quoting reference 318 09/02/19.
Alternatively, information can also be provided to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 which is 100% anonymous and gives people the power to speak up and stop crime.
A Co Antrim woman suffering from cancer has launched a fundraising campaign in the hope of spending more precious time with her children.
Ashlee Blair (30), from Greenisland, is battling stage 4 cancer, having been diagnosed just days before Christmas.
She wants to explore some alternative therapies to run alongside her chemotherapy treatment.
A GoFundMe page with a 10,000 fundraising target has been set up, which Ashlee hopes will help with the costs of her care and to support her children in the future.
The care assistant and her partner Peter (30) have three children, Amelia (4), Peter (3) and two-year-old Conor.
The young mum says her "perfect life" was thrown into turmoil when in October 2016 she found a lump in her breast.
Two months later she was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer.
Ashlee said: "There are no words to describe how we felt when we heard the doctor say it. I became so scared and worried for my kids.
"It was beyond surreal. One day I was planning a family Christmas and the next I've been diagnosed with cancer.
"My joy and happiness was replaced by fear and uncertainty."
Refusing to give up for the sake of her family, Ashlee began gruelling chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments.
"I looked at my kids and I knew I could not give up. They were counting on me and needed their mum to be strong and fight back," she said.
"The treatment was very hard and took such a toll on me. I was constantly sick, all my hair fell out and I didn't even have the energy to play with the kids.
"I was devastated but I still didn't give up, even when I had to have a double mastectomy on top of everything I was already dealing with."
After her treatment Ashlee was able to return to work and feel like a mum again.
Last year, however, she began to struggle with back and abdominal pain.
Then in July she underwent surgery to remove an ovary and growths. These turned out to be benign, and in August she celebrated one year of being cancer free.
She said: "I finally dared to hope again. It seemed as though my life would now continue on the intended course."
But Ashlee's back pain increased, then she found a lump under her arm and developed pain in her ribs.
Sadly, the week before Christmas, she received the "completely soul crushing" diagnosis that the cancer was in her neck, down her spine, in her ribs, pelvis, hips and thighbones. She said: "I felt as though I was being punished for daring to hope."
Ashlee is currently in Belfast City Hospital as her pain had grown to unmanageable levels, but she hopes to be home again with her family soon.
She has started her fundraiser to pay for alternative therapies to use alongside her chemotherapy, to give her pain relief and help with eating and sleeping.
Ashlee added: "We are also asking for help with the costs of myself being off work and in the foreseeable future my partner Peter also being off work so he can look after me.
"I just want to watch my babies grow for as long as I possibly can. If I were to pass on whilst fighting against this then I would like the donations to go towards my funeral costs and the rest for my kids."
To make a donation, search for 'Our Fight Against Cancer' on the GoFundMe website
The heartbroken boyfriend of Belfast model Mairead O'Neill, who took her own life last October, has set up a special gym programme to help those battling mental health problems.
The 21-year-old, who was from the Markets area of the city, died just 10 months after her beloved mother Karen Phelan passed away from bowel cancer aged just 45.
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Mairead had struggled with her mental health since she was a child and the death of her mother hit her hard.
Now, her boyfriend Keaton Moore (28), a personal trainer at Gym Co in the Finaghy area of south Belfast, is channelling his grief into a project that he hopes will prevent other people suffering a loss such as his.
Speaking publicly for the first time about his girlfriend's death, he says: "Mairead and I were together for 13 months before she died. Her mummy passed away three months after we got together. She really struggled with her mental health after losing her.
"Mairead was unbelievable. She was one of a kind. She was so special, she was different. She had it all. She was a model. She just couldn't see what everyone else could see. If she had only reached down inside herself and looked at herself a bit more she would have been flying. But it was terrible to see someone struggle like that.
"She just couldn't cope without her mummy. She had me, her sister Bronagh and her brother Brendan constantly trying to help her cope.
"Mairead was just 20 years old when she lost her mum and when she died she had just come through her first birthday without her. She just went downhill. She missed her mummy so much."
Recalling the traumatic events that unfolded the evening Mairead died, Keaton reveals how he, her sister and brother raced to Mairead's home after receiving an alarming text from her. Tragically, they arrived too late to save her.
"The night she died she had texted me, Bronagh and Brendan," says Keaton. "We rushed to her straight away and we found her. I tried my best to resuscitate her and bring her back to life, but I just knew that she was gone. It was terrible. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with in my life.
"I pretty much fought the battle with Mairead for the 13 months we were together, alongside her brother and sister. I knew all the feelings she was going through and at times she didn't have the strength to fight herself. I was trying so hard to fix her that I was breaking myself in the process, but I couldn't not have tried to help her.
"That is what you need to do when you love someone. You have to look after them. And I would just feel every bit of pain she did. I've never seen someone fight a battle like that in my life.
"And at times I wish I could have fought it for her. But I couldn't. I always knew in my heart that I would lose her through tragedy. I knew that day was coming but I tried to prevent it as much as I could. But I just couldn't do it. And she couldn't hold on."
Keaton freely admits that the past few months have seen him go to "some very dark places". But he says that he also realised that life was short and precious and, as a means of trying to find something positive amid the heartache, he turned his attention to developing a programme that would help others - and, in turn, help him navigate grief.
"It has just been terrible," he says. "I have never felt a pain or loss like that in my life. There were times I thought to myself I'd be doing well if I saw 2019. But one thing about me is that I am a very positive person. I thought to myself that life is precious. I am living my life for two people now and that is why I started the Move Your Mind Programme.
"I was always going to do the programme. Mairead was going to be my first client. We would have gone out walking, but she just didn't have the confidence to get to the gym. She told me that she wanted to get her mum's first year anniversary behind her in December and then she'd be the first girl in Move Your Mind. But she just couldn't hold on.
"After she died I thought it was time that I started doing everything I was doing for Mairead's mental health, for my own mental health. I know how much physical exercise can boost your mood and energy. I know how important good nutrition is and why it helps to get structure and routine into your week and that is why I created the Move Your Mind programme.
"The steps I have taken to help me get back on track during my hardest days are ones I know can help people in similar situations. And they are steps I want to share with people who need it most.
"I have created a combined mental and physical fitness programme to help deal with the serious mental health issues in our city and beyond.
"The programme is designed to help people in a dark place, struggling with their mental health, in what I believe is the best and most positive way possible.
"Move Your Mind is really about moving your mind from a dark place to a positive one.
"Just one positive thought and step forward is all that it takes to start a new beginning. I want people to take the first step and I'll walk by their side the rest of the way until they are mentally and physically strong enough to regain their balance again.
"People deal with things in different ways. Some people take to drink and drugs. Doctors give out medication, but I think that's just numbing the pain. You need to make a move. You need to get to the gym. And if there is someone there to believe in you and help you along that journey, that makes the difference.
"If someone makes that first step and comes to me, I'll give them the tools to get them back on track.
"I believe that I have that positive energy and strength that not many people have. And I've walked in those shoes."
Keaton wants people to take that first brave step to recovery and vows to be there for them on their journey.
"I started to write a journal, since Mairead passed away," he says. "There were some days when I couldn't even get out of bed. I just started to write down three things each day that I was grateful for. Then three things I wanted to achieve that day, then three things I wanted to achieve that week.
"And once I started ticking that off, it felt amazing. Then I got myself to the gym and developed this programme.
"For every person I help, I help a bit of myself too. Starting this programme will be the hardest step to take, but it will be the most rewarding. Three to six months of putting yourself in positive situations, surrounding yourself with positive people, can change your life."
Keaton says his ultimate aim is to open Northern Ireland's first mental health gym.
"I know I have it in me to help hundreds of people," he says.
"The programme is gym-based at the moment. But come July it will be an online service where I can reach people all over the country. Further down the line I want to have my own Move Your Mind gym, the first mental health gym in the country.
"I'm a personal trainer, which is my absolute passion. I know this programme is a chance for people to trust me and open up about their problems.
"What happened with Mairead was the saddest and toughest time in my life and I owe it to her to give people the opportunity to talk through their thoughts and fears in the hope that my story and my experience prevents this from happening all over again."
For more information on the Move Your Mind programme log on to Keaton Moore - Personal Trainer - Fitness Model Facebook page. If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, contact the Samaritans on 084 5790 9090 or Lifeline 080 8808 8000
Unionists yesterday rubbished claims that a no-deal Brexit would make a border poll more likely in the near future.
The BBC reported that one Cabinet minister warned that the Government "risked sleepwalking into a border poll", while another felt a vote on taking Northern Ireland out of the Union was "a real possibility" if the UK leaves without a formal deal with the EU next month.
But DUP leader Arlene Foster, speaking after a meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, described border poll speculation as "Project Fear" propaganda, aimed at putting pressure on MPs to back Prime Minister Theresa May's unpopular withdrawal agreement, which she is attempting to renegotiate with EU leaders after it was rejected by an historic majority in the House of Commons
"There are many people engaging in Project Fear at this point in time and we all have to recognise that," the Fermanagh MLA said.
"The Belfast Agreement sets out the criteria for a border poll and it hasn't been satisfied and therefore will not be called."
Ulster Unionist MLA Doug Beattie also dismissed the speculation about a prospective border poll.
"Even without the upheaval of the Brexit process, such a poll would inevitably lead to instability and polarisation, and only serve the interests of those who want to hold Northern Ireland back," he said.
"If Cabinet ministers are seriously raising a border poll as an issue, they should talk to their colleague the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, because the relevant legislation states quite clearly that it is her decision as to whether or not a poll should be called.
"As the Ulster Unionist Party has repeatedly said, there is no need for a border poll.
"The Secretary of State has consistently said that the conditions for calling a border poll have not been met, so these unnamed Cabinet ministers should settle themselves."
Pressure for a border poll has been coming from republican and nationalist politicians, with Sinn Fein demanding moves to put one in place.
Yesterday Sinn Fein vice president Michelle O'Neill said she had once again raised the issue with Mr Varadkar.
"We have put the issue of a unity referendum to the Taoiseach, to the British Prime Minister on every occasion on which we would meet them," she said.
"Remember, the unity referendum is built into the Good Friday Agreement, it will be for the people of this island to decide the constitutional future.
"Clearly, we want to see a deal. We do not want to see a crash-out Brexit.
"But if we do find ourselves in the scenario where there is a crash-out Brexit, then the tools which the British Prime Minister and Taoiseach must look to are actually written into the Good Friday Agreement and that is the unity referendum."
Mrs O'Neill said her party intended to keep the pressure on Mr Vadakar over the border poll issue.
"I think the Taoiseach has remained firm throughout the negotiation in recognising the need to protect Irish interests, in recognising the need to make sure that citizens in the north are never left behind," she added.
"He restated that commitment to us today.
"At the end of the day, we will hold the Taoiseach's feet to the fire on the issue."
Richwood, TX (77531)
Today
Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 90F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..
Tonight
Mainly clear. Low 79F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
The house at St Brigids Hill, Armagh, where the man was found dead after a fire
A man in his 50s has died in a house fire in the St Brigid's Hill area of Armagh city.
His body was discovered on Thursday by firefighters, who said they thought the blaze was an accident.
"The thoughts and sympathies of Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service (NIFRS) are with the family and friends of a man who died following a small fire in an end-terrace house in Armagh on Thursday.
"We received the call at 4.10pm to a report of a potential fire in the St Brigid's Hill area. One appliance from Armagh Fire Station attended the incident," the NIFRS said.
"A small fire in the living room had burnt itself out before the arrival of firefighters.
"The fire appeared to have occurred earlier in the day and, tragically, a man in his 50s was confirmed dead at the scene."
Armagh councillor Sam Nicholson said: "Our hearts go out to the grieving family at this difficult time.
"It's one of those things where no one knows what happened - and even knowing won't bring anyone back.
"There'll always be an empty seat at the table.
"It's very sad indeed. A bad day."
A Banbridge man who admitted raping a sex worker after binding her hands and feet with cable ties faces a jail sentence of 10 years or more, his lawyer conceded yesterday (stock photo)
A Banbridge man who admitted raping a sex worker after binding her hands and feet with cable ties faces a jail sentence of 10 years or more, his lawyer conceded yesterday.
Lodging a plea in mitigation on behalf of 49-year-old Gary Doak at Newry Crown Court, defence QC Charles McKay said the "shy and quiet" ex-soldier is "facing a sentence potentially in double digits" over the attack which left his victim traumatised and "undoubtedly degraded".
The lawyer added: "She is entitled to the same protection as any other woman and the fact that she is a sex worker is immaterial, I accept that."
At an earlier hearing, Doak, from Dickson Park in Seapatrick, entered guilty pleas to oral rape, sexual assault involving penetration, unlawfully and injuriously imprisoning the victim, assaulting her occasioning actual bodily harm, and common assault on March 9, 2017.
Yesterday, prosecuting QC John Orr outlined how Doak contacted his victim through an online advert and agreed a fee of 200 for her to come to his home.
He told the court that during the woman's visit, Doak became threatening and, having taken her to the bedroom, "he bound her with cable ties around her neck, wrists and ankles".
He tried to put a sock over her head, eventually putting it into her mouth before carrying out the sexual assaults.
At one point the woman ran to the kitchen and grabbed knives and there was a further struggle with Doak being "slightly injured" by a blade and both biting each other.
The senior barrister told Judge Gordon Kerr QC the ordeal ended "with both parties lying on the kitchen floor and the defendant telling the complainant he had panicked and suffered flashbacks to the war".
The victim suffered ligature marks around her wrists, bruising to her neck, arms and legs and "multiple areas of red marks".
Defence lawyer Mr McKay told the court Doak had used the services of sex workers in the past and had also had normal relationships with women "without any difficulties," submitting that in this "isolated occasion... he lost control of himself".
He said Doak was of below average intelligence and had a "personality disorder of a schizoid nature," revealing that while in prison he had been self-harming.
Remanding Doak into custody, Judge Kerr said he wanted to take account of all the issues before passing sentence.
It's been a good week for serial killer, rapist and necrophiliac Ted Bundy. A tedious documentary series based around the famous 1980s death-row tapes landed on Netflix and elicited gushing swoons from people who consider him "hot".
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, a feature film starring ex-Disney heartthrob Zac Efron as Bundy, premiered at Sundance, sparking controversy over the casting decision and bringing Bundy back into the limelight - exactly where he liked to be.
People are interested in serial killers. Fine. But what's been bizarre is the overriding conversation and reaction about the supposed "hotness" of Ted Bundy and whether it should be up for discussion.
On Monday, Netflix US reproached Twitter users, saying: "(We've) seen a lot of talk about Ted Bundy's alleged hotness and would like to gently remind everyone that there are literally thousands of hot men on the service - almost all of whom are not convicted serial murderers."
Considering that the first episode of Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, repeatedly tells us that he was clean-cut, articulate and good-looking, Netflix was being naive if it didn't think people would pick up on that element.
As it must have expected with the reaction to You, a rom-com horror series that subverts the romantic male hero character and turns him into a serial killer, the series has drawn criticism for romanticising extreme violence by casting a good-looking actor (Penn Badgley) in the main role.
On Twitter, Badgley hit back at some of his fans for fawning over the character. Sample tweet: "Joe can serial kill me anytime."
Why are we so intrigued by violent criminals who don't look like they could "tear girls apart", in the words of Stephen Michaud, the journalist who recorded the tapes? And why do their looks give them a free pass to be lusted over and glorified?
Certainly, we are primed from childhood, in the books we read and the Disney films we watch, to expect monsters and baddies to be ugly. But you'd think, by adulthood, it wouldn't surprise us that good-looking people aren't necessarily good, or that they can inflict great harm.
Why don't we want to believe that beautiful people can do terrible things?
Certain people have always been drawn to those who violate the social contract, parading their edginess by wearing pictures of Charles Manson on their T-shirts, or writing to serial killers in prison.
Perhaps we are also biologically primed to respond to perceived beauty in a certain way, though because - let's face it - Bundy was an average-looking person, that reason only takes us so far.
Perhaps we are still barbarians, really, but dressed up with modern clothes, smartphones and the illusion of a progressive society.
When Bundy is executed in 1989, there's an enormous crowd of mostly young-looking people outside the facility. They let off fireworks and brandish signs saying "Burn, Bundy, Burn" and "Tuesday is Fryday".
They cheer and whoop and grin when he is finally pronounced dead. It made me think that the days when we'd all file out to watch a hanging are not actually that long ago.
It's not just Twitter users in 2019; Bundy's looks blinded people to his actions at the time. He received fan mail during his trial and young women would turn up to see him.
The case was the first time a trial of its nature had been covered by TV and arguably the first 'true crime' media sensation. It allowed the killer to be turned into a celebrity and fed into the evil genius myth that was created around him.
Tellingly, Rhonda Stapley, whom Bundy attacked in a canyon in Utah, doesn't think the casting of Zac Efron as Bundy was a bad thing.
When asked whether it bothered her that he's a sex-symbol, she said: "No, that's what Ted Bundy kind of was."
The series shows how his "devil-may-care bachelor image" manipulated the court. He managed to convince the judge he should be in charge of his defence, despite seeming incompetent and irrational.
He smirked and argued for outdoor exercise, a different menu and access to the library. He turned up in a bow tie and proposed to a friend.
The trial became a ridiculous pantomime conducted by an entitled narcissist who cracked jokes which made everyone laugh as they forgot the bodies of the women and children lying in the ground. "We'll miss you," the judge cooed at one point.
Bundy's supreme arrogance and entitlement is hard to stomach, but even worse is the reaction. The most chilling moment for me was the judge's final address, in which he sucks up to Bundy while pronouncing him guilty. "You're a bright young man. I don't have animosity to you." It is grotesque.
Structures of power and the hierarchy of our society allow people like Bundy to get away with murder.
A good-looking, white, well-dressed, educated man can't possibly be guilty.
He was romanticised and kowtowed to because of his appearance and demeanour.
So, it's not that the Efron film, or You, or Dexter (starring Michael C Hall), or The Fall (with ex-model Jamie Dornan as the killer) shouldn't have been made with obviously good-looking people playing serial killers, but these stories - and our appetite for them - raise questions about what we value.
Who do we value more? The wise-cracking, charming, well-dressed, well-educated necrophiliac mass murderer, or the young women?
After watching these shows and the reactions to them, I'm not entirely sure. Sometimes, I wonder if we just don't mind too much when young women get killed.
Of course, because Bundy's not a threat to anyone now and younger people tend to imagine themselves immortal - I know I did - it is easier, perhaps, to joke.
Glorifying cunning is also nothing new. Look at Aesop's Fables and the stories about the fox who constantly outwits and outsmarts other animals who come to significant harm.
We like to watch cunning, but so soon after he raped, mutilated, tortured and killed these women?
And while their families are still alive?
I couldn't bear to watch much of You, but Penn Badgley was interesting on the character of Joe - and Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl - in an interview with the New York Times.
"He's the very special white man who somehow thinks that he's an outsider and it's like, 'Bro, you're not an outsider, you are the inside; everyone else is on the outside'."
It would be so comical if it wasn't also the generating impulse for so much prejudice, which can get translated into violence. Don't we see this in our society again and again and again?
Growing rates of substance abuse disorders may have triggered a significant increase in the incidence of spinal infections in discharged patients in Washington, according to a study in Spine.
Three things to know:
1. The study authors assessed Washington State Comprehensive Hospital Abstract Reporting System data over a 15-year period, searching for all conditions regarded as spinal infection as well as major known infection-related risk factors.
2. Researchers found the proportion of spinal infections among discharged patients has increased approximately 40 percent since 2012.
3. When the study authors analyzed spinal infection-related risk factors, they found that the rate of substance use disorders and malnutrition had changed the most, with drug dependence increasing threefold during the examined period.
Medical City (Texas) McKinney hospital welcomed orthopedic spine surgeon Shyam Kishan, MD, according to Community Impact Newspaper.
Three things to know:
1. A board-certified pediatric orthopedic spine surgeon, Dr. Kishan's specialties include pediatric spinal deformities, scoliosis surgery and spinal fusion.
2. Dr. Shyam is a member of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America and Scoliosis Research Society, among others.
3. After earning his medical degree from Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research in Pondicherry, India, Dr. Shyam completed his residency at Newark-based University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, which is now Rutgers University School of Biomedical and Health Sciences. Dr. Shyam underwent fellowship training at Rady Children's Hospital of San Diego.
Two physicians have filed lawsuits against Auburn (N.Y.) Community Hospital, alleging the hospital retaliated against them for raising concerns about another physician's dangerous conduct, according to Syracuse.com.
Five things to know:
1. Karen Odrzywolski, MD, filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court in Cayuga County Feb. 6, alleging Auburn Community Hospital officials retaliated against her for blowing the whistle on Jeremy Barnett, MD.
2. Dr. Odrzywolski brought her lawsuit after another former Auburn Community Hospital physician sued the hospital in federal court in December. That lawsuit, filed by Gregory Serfer, DO, alleges Dr. Barnett's subpar care led to one patient's death. Dr. Serfer also alleges the hospital retaliated against him for reporting concerns about Dr. Barnett.
3. Dr. Serfer confirmed to The Citizen that Dr. Barnett is the unnamed physician referred to in a CMS inspection report. The inspection found the hospital improperly responded to complaints about a physician.
4. The inspection found "certain deficiencies related to a lack of oversight and formal documentation when addressing personnel issues," hospital CEO Scott Berlucchi said in a statement to The Citizen. However, he said there were no findings that the quality of care at the hospital was compromised.
5. Regarding the lawsuits, Mr. Berlucchi issued the following statement to The Citizen: "We believe that these assertions are unproven allegations made by former employees and further, that the hospital denies any allegations of quality of care issues or wrongdoing."
More articles on legal and regulatory issues:
Pennsylvania attorney general takes legal action against UPMC over patient access
Texas hospital enters $5M settlement with feds to resolve false claims case
Ex-pharmacy director pleads guilty to defrauding Nebraska hospital of $4.6M
Editor's Note: This article was updated Feb. 11 to include Mr. Berlucchi's statement.
Massena (N.Y.) Memorial Hospital aimed to use money from a state grant to pay off its debt before a planned nonprofit conversion; however, it missed out on the funds, according to the Watertown Daily Times.
The hospital's interim CEO, Charles Gijanto, told board members in November how Massena Memorial planned to use the funds if awarded: "Basically, the whole premise is that, assuming we get the grant, the hospital comes out of debt so there is no liability left with the town should the hospital become a 501(c)(3)," he said. "Basically, the grant goes to cover the debts of the hospital," according to the publication.
Mr. Gijanto noted Feb. 5 that the hospital will apply for another round of funding from the state in May. That funding initiative totals $300 million for the state.
Hospitals in Montana said they will pay a fee on outpatient revenue to continue funding the state's Medicaid expansion, according to The Charlotte Observer.
Four things to know:
1. As Montana's portion of Medicaid expansion expenses is set to increase, officials with the Montana Hospital Association said Feb. 7 that hospitals agreed to pay a 0.95 percent fee on their outpatient revenue to help cover the difference.
2. Lawmakers proposed the fee, which would include payments on outpatient procedures and tests, but not physician or other healthcare professional charges, according to The Charlotte Observer. State- and county-owned hospitals would be exempt from the fee.
3. Bob Olsen, senior vice president for the MHA, told the publication the proposed fee will generate about $30 million over two years. Half of the funding is slated to help fund Medicaid expansion, while the remainder will be earmarked for increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates for providers.
4. Montana officials estimate that hospitals saw their uncompensated care costs drop by about $200 million after Medicaid expansion took effect. The program covered 95,000 adults as of Dec. 1.
More articles on healthcare finance:
Partners posts $463M loss in Q1
Hospitals, not physicians, driving up healthcare costs for privately insured, study shows
Vermont health system cuts jobs, wages to stay afloat
Here are five recent studies and projects with implications for artificial intelligence in healthcare, as covered by Becker's Hospital Review:
New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health is integrating AI software into its EMR at 15 hospitals in an attempt to decrease avoidable readmissions.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's computer science and AI laboratory in Cambridge are working to create an AI algorithm that can "de-bias" other AI systems.
Researchers from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence a Seattle-based research institute funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen created a Pictionary-style game to teach AI "common sense."
A research team has created a new machine-learning framework that distinguishes between low- and high-risk prostate cancer.
Although AI is being promoted as a way to diagnose patient conditions and predict patients' risk of being admitted to an intensive care unit, the use of AI in medicine could worsen health disparities, Dhruv Khullar, MD, a physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, argued in an op-ed.
In 1966, Time magazines Man of the Year was not an individual but a generation: people who were then twenty-five years of age or under. The Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, promised to change the world as we then knew it.
Boomers marched in the Civil Rights movement. They fought in, and protested against, Americas War in Vietnam. They were active in the Feminist movement. They led the fight for LGBT rights and equality at Stonewall and beyond. Many Boomers died before their time: from war or terrorism or crime or other forms of violence; from substance abuse, cancer or AIDS.
But, on the whole, Baby Boomers survived and prospered and changed the world along the way. I was born in 1953, which puts me smack in the middle of the Baby Boom generation. But I am not here to praise my generation. I just want us to retire.
The Baby Boomers moment of triumph came on January 20, 1993 when Bill Clinton became President of the United States. Since then, the Presidency has been held by Boomers: Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Except for Obama, born in 1961, the Baby Boomer presidents were all born in 1946, the first year of the Boom.
Even most of the major losing candidates were Boomers: Al Gore, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton. (John Kerry and John McCain preceded the Boom.) If he is re-elected in 2020 (God forbid!) Trump will be 78 when he leaves office in 2025. I am not saying that old folks cannot be effective leaders. Bernie Sanders would make a good president in 2021 when, if still alive, he will be 79. But it is time for a younger generation to take over, so no more Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.
Fortunately, we have a younger generation candidates in the wings. These men and women are ready, willing and able to take over our countrys leadership. They belong to the two post-Boomer generations: Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980, and the Millennial Generation.
These presidential hopefuls, so far, are all Democrats, since the Republican Party is firmly controlled by Trump (whose likely successor is his Baby Boomer Vice President, Mike Pence). Except for Elizabeth Warren, who was born in 1949, these Democratic hopefuls were born on the edge of or after the Baby Boom years: John Delaney (b. 1963), Kamala Harris (b. 1964), Kirsten Gillibrand (b. 1966), Julian Castro (b. 1974) and Tulsi Gabbard (b. 1981). Even younger is Peter Buttigieg (b. 1982), a veteran of the War in Afghanistan, Mayor of South Bend, Indiana and an openly gay man.
Quite a group to run against the unjustified and ancient Donald Trump.
We who are Baby Boomers have had our day. We fought and died for the rights of all and sometimes we succeeded. But a generation that gave the world Donald Trump or George W. Bush or even Bill Clinton cannot be considered to be a total success.
Perhaps Elizabeth Warren can show us otherwise. Meanwhile, I welcome the newcomers to the political arena, to show us what a Generation X or Millennial can do.
Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance writer and journalist. He has been an active member of South Florida's LGBT community for more than four decades and has served in various community organizations.
Dear Aspirants,
Current Affairs for NIACL AO Main 2018-19:
Knowledge of current news also helps you deal with the PI (Personal Interview) more efficiently so you do not give a mumble jumble answer to the interviewees simple questions. Here is a quiz on Current Affairs to let you assess your Current Affairs Knowledge.
The General Awareness Section of Banking Exams covers numerous sections in it like Banking Awareness, Static GK, and Current Affairs. Most of the questions in GA appear from Current Affairs section. So it becomes important for you all to cover this particular section with sincerity and seriousness. The questions on Static and Banking Awareness are related to the countries, events or anything that has been in news for a while.Here is a quiz on Current Affairs to let you assess your Current Affairs Knowledge.
Q1. Name the longest-serving congressman in US history, who has passed away aged 92.
James Smith
John Dingell
Maria Garcia
Carl Hayden
Ted Kennedy
Solution: John Dingell, the longest-serving congressman in US history, has passed away aged 92. He was first elected in 1955, serving in the House of Representatives for the next 59 years. He retired in 2015.
Q2. GeM (national public procurement platform of Ministry of Commerce and Industries) and Competition Commission of India (CCI) entered into an MoU to enable a fair and competitive environment in the___________.
Agri Marketplace
Retail Market
Wholesale Market
e Marketplace
None of the above option is the right answer
Solution: Government e Marketplace (GeM) and Competition Commission of India (CCI) entered into an MoU to enable a fair and competitive environment in the e-Marketplace.
Q3. The India Pavilion at the _______International Film Festival 2019 was inaugurated by Mr Matthijis Wouter Knol, Director European Film Market (EFM).
Berlin
Brussels
Cannes
Paris
Venice
Solution: The India Pavilion at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) 2019 was inaugurated by Mr Matthijis Wouter Knol, Director European Film Market (EFM). The poster of IFFI 2019 was also inaugurated by the dignitaries during the inaugural ceremony.
Q4. Which of the following city hosted the 'Parmanu Tech 2019' conference to discuss the issues related to Nuclear Energy and Radiation Technologies?
Kudankulam
Tarapur
Narora
Kaiga
New Delhi
Solution: Ministry of External Affairs and Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) organized Parmanu Tech 2019 in New Delhi to discuss the issues related to Nuclear Energy and Radiation Technologies.
Q5. India ranks _______on the International Intellectual Property (IP) Index, 2019.
36th
42th
48th
54th
56th
Solution: India has jumped eight places to 36th position on the International Intellectual Property (IP) Index, which analyses the IP climate in 50 global economies, this year. Indias eight-point jump in 2019 from 44th position in 2018 is the highest increase among 50 nations mapped by the index.
Q6. Who among the following was conferred the Legion dHonneur (Legion of Honour), the highest civilian award of France, in recognition of his work for specially-abled children?
Rosa Parks
Kailash Satyarthi
Francois Laborde
Claudette Colvin
Sedick Isaacs
Solution: Father Francois Laborde, a 92-year-old priest, was conferred the Legion dHonneur (Legion of Honour), the highest civilian award of France, in recognition of his work for specially-abled children.
Q7. Name the app launched by Chennai police that can track the status of stolen two-wheelers and cell phones.
CellCop
Copwheel
SuperCop
FriendlyCop
DigiCop
Solution: Actor Vijay Sethupathi launched the mobile App DigiCop of the Chennai police department at the Commissioners office. Using the App, people can track the status of stolen two-wheelers and cell phones.
Q8. Who among the following notched up a gold (48kg category) medal at the EGAT Cup in Thailand?
Mirabai Chanu
Punam Yadav
Santoshi Matsa
Geeta Rani
Kunjarani Devi
Solution: World champion Indian weightlifter Saikhom Mirabai Chanu notched up a gold medal at the EGAT Cup in Thailand. Chanu won the 48kg category gold with an effort of 192 kg in the silver level Olympic qualifying event.
Q9. The 5th India-Bangladesh Joint Consultative Committee Meeting was held in_______.
Chittagong
Kolkata
Dhaka
Mumbai
New Delhi
Solution: The 5th India-Bangladesh Joint Consultative Committee Meeting was held in New Delhi. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Foreign Affairs Minister of Bangladesh Dr. A. K. Abdul Momen co-chaired the meeting.
Q10. The first meeting of the US-India CEO Forum will be held in _______on February 14.
New York
New Delhi
Washington DC
California
Mumbai
Solution: US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has announced the names of the American private sector members of the US-India CEO Forum among who are MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga and Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf. The first meeting of the forum will be held in New Delhi on February 14.
You can reach Sam Morgen at 661-395-7415 or smorgen@bakersfield.com. You may also follow him on Twitter @smorgenTBC.
Joseph Luiz can be reached at 395-7368 or by email at jluiz@bakersfield.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @JLuiz_TBC.
All are welcome to join us in worship each Sunday from 11 AM to Noon. Shortly before 11 AM, we gather in quiet waiting, to begin worship.
Quakers (a.k.a. the Religious Society of Friends, or Friends), have long supported LBGTQ equality. Friends were among the first to perform same-gender marriage ceremonies.
The Fort Lauderdale Friends Meeting meets in a room called the Reception Center, at the Sanctuary Church: 1400 North Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale FL 33304. To get to the Reception Center, follow the covered walkway leading from the right of the main church building. On the sidewalk, under the covered walkway, will be a sign reading Quaker Meeting and an arrow pointing toward our meeting room.
How We Worship:
There is no outward signal for the beginning of our worship. Our worship begins as we gather together quietly.
As we settle into worship, we let go of all outward and distracting thoughts; and we move into a quiet, waiting attitude of spirit.
Listening, rather than speaking, is our primary activity during worship. We open ourselves to experience the Divine Presence within us and among us, and we listen for guidance and direction in our lives. Quakers cherish time spent in silent communion.
Occasionally, someone may be led to communicate a vocal message, a prayer, a song, or a story with spiritual content. Anyone present may experience a call to such a ministry.
After about an hour, the Meeting for worship closes with the joining of hands. At this time, we greet each other, introduce ourselves, and share announcements.
Quakers believe that within each one of us, a portion of the Divine Light or the Divine Spirit, resides. We strive to nurture that divine presence within ourselves, and within every person.
Quakers have established several regional, and national organizations to help us work in the world. Examples of National organizations are: Quaker United Nations Organization, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Right Sharing of World Resources, Friends World Committee on Consultation, and Quaker Earthcare Witness.
Additionally, regional Quaker organizations mirror the above list. For example, some of the environmental initiatives by Quakers in the Southeast have gained national attention.
Finding Quakers in South Florida:
Quakers in Fort Lauderdale:
Fort Lauderdale Friends Meeting
Meeting for Worship: Sundays at 11 AM
Location: in the Reception Center at:
Sanctuary Church (Second Presbyterian Church)
1400 N Federal Hwy. (U.S. 1)
Fort Lauderdale FL 33304
Web Site: https://www.fgcquaker.org/connect/quaker-finder/fort-lauderdale-friends-meeting
E-mail:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: 954-682-1433
Quakers in Miami:
Miami Monthly Meeting
Meeting for Worship: Sundays at 10:30 AM
Early Worship: 8:45- 9:25 AM
Address:
Miami Meetinghouse
1185 Sunset Road
Coral Gables, FL 33143
Web Site:
https://www.fgcquaker.org/cloud/miami-friends-meeting
E-mail:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Quakers in Palm Beach:
Meeting for Worship: Sundays at 10:30 AM
Address:
Friends (Quaker) Meeting
823 North A Street
Lake Worth, FL 33460-2424
Web Site:
www.palmbeachquakers.org
E-mail:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: 561-313-6838
Trend:
Turkey welcomes New Zealands decision to list the PKK as a terrorist organization, Trend reports referring to a statement of Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Turkey also expects from its other allies that they strengthen their support for Turkey in the fight against the PKK terrorists, the statement reads.
The conflict between Turkey and PKK, which demands the creation of an independent Kurdish state, has lasted more than 35 years, claiming more than 40,000 lives. PKK is recognized as a terrorist organization by the UN and the EU.
Trend:
The Hungarian government has allocated about 450 million euros for the development of business projects in Kazakhstan and Hungary, Trend reports via Kazakh media.
"These funds are intended for Hungarian businessmen in Kazakhstan and for Kazakh businessmen in Hungary. This is a huge amount that should be used to bring our businesses closer and create interesting joint projects," Kazakh Ambassador to Hungary Nurbakh Rustemov said.
It should be noted that the Hungarian oil and gas company MOL invested more than $200 million in the mining sector of Kazakhstan. The company has been present in the Kazakh market for more than 10 years.
The main interest of MOL is the Fedorovsky block, which has promising reserves and potential for further exploration. The company is preparing for further exploratory drilling in the block.
Another important area of cooperation between the two countries is agriculture. Established In 2015, the Kazakh-Hungarian Investment Fund with the authorized capital of $40 million, continues to work successfully.
In 2018, the Fund financed two projects: a greenhouse complex in the Aktobe region with a design capacity of 1,500 tons of vegetables per year, and the creation of new apple orchards on an area of 300 hectares.
Trend:
The work is underway to implement a project for the supply of Turkmen electricity along the Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TUTAP) route, Trend reports with reference to the Turkmenistan State News Agency.
In January, the State Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs of Turkmenistan signed an agreement with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for a sum of $500 million for financing the project of modernization of the energy network of Turkmenistan.
Actively connecting Turkmenistan to a single Central Asian energy system plays an important role in opening up additional possibilities for the increase of the scope of supply of Turkmen electricity within the framework of the international "Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Tajikistan Afghanistan Pakistan" (TUTAP) project.
Earlier, Turkmenistan's Minister of Energy Charymyrat Purchekov presented the report on the implementation of the project for the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan power transmission line to Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.
In his report Purchekov said that the construction is being carried out according to the plan.
Besides, a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the implementation of this project was signed with Turkish Calik Holding A.S. to develop a legal basis for regional partnership for the construction of a 500-kilovolt transmission line along the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline.
At the same time, an agreement on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan power transmission line was signed between the governments of the countries participating in the project.
It was also reported that the total volume of electricity generated in Turkmenistan by 2024 is planned to increase up to 33 billion kilowatt-hours, which is 27.2 percent more compared to the plans for 2018. Turkmenistan sells electricity to Afghanistan and Iran.
Trend:
An Iranian lawmaker believes the establishment of the European financial channel for Iran's transactions is a good approach that might even bring the US to negotiations table.
"The EU mechanism is a good start but it is not enough. It was a hard decision that was made by the Europeans against the US," said Chairman of the Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, Trend reports citing ILNA.
"The important issue is that the US intelligence services stated that Trump had made a mistake by leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and I believe that by reforming domestic management, preventing corruption and establishing constructive relations with the world we can gradually provide a situation that the Americans move towards the negotiations with Iran," he added.
The lawmaker noted: "Some of the European countries and even China and Russia are moving towards this approach."
On Feb. 1, three European countries France, Germany and the UK (shortened as E3) officially announced the creation of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), a special purpose vehicle, to allow them bypass US sanctions on trade with Iran.
INSTEX facilitates non-dollar trade with Iran, allowing European companies to trade with the Islamic Republic without being hit by the sanctions.
By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:
March 15 this year marks exactly eight years since the start of the internal conflict in Syria, which, as a result of the intervention of a number of countries, has led to a series of bloody clashes.
Although in the first years of the military conflict Ankara supported the Syrian opposition politically, in the future, Turkey changed its position in favor of Moscow. However, Moscow also made a number of concessions for Ankara in Syria.
The Operation Olive Branch, which was successfully carried out by the Turkish Armed Forces, and the Aleppo Agreement became possible as a result of Ankaras negotiations with Moscow.
As is known, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting in Sochi on Feb. 14 this year. The upcoming meeting of the presidents of Turkey and Russia can be considered the most important step that will determine the future course of events in Syria.
Against the background of the expected meeting between Erdogan and Putin, the question regarding the start of negotiations between Ankara and Damascus also remains on the agenda. However, at the end of January this year, President Erdogan made a statement that Turkey wont conduct dialogue with Syria at the highest level. He said Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the death of about a million innocent citizens.
This is while earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the absence of diplomatic ties between Ankara and Damascus doesnt mean the intelligence services of the two countries arent in touch with each other. Besides, the consulate of the Syrian Arab Republic still exists in Istanbul.
On Feb. 7, Iranian media reported that Tehran is ready to become an intermediary between Ankara and Damascus, and the representatives of the Syrian and Turkish intelligence services held a number of meetings in Damascus.
So far, Ankara hasnt commented on these reports, but even if Ankara engages in a dialogue with Damascus, it isnt Iran that will mediate in the talks: that will happen only with the mediation of Russia.
It is expected that this issue will be on the agenda during the meeting between Erdogan and Putin. As for Ankaras agreement to start a dialogue with Damascus, much will depend on Russias proposal.
If Moscow gives a full guarantee that after the US withdrawal from Syria the PYD/YPG troops will leave the north of Syria and wont pose a threat to Turkey, Ankara may consider this issue.
Trend:
Kazakhstan will take part in a meeting of the OPEC+ Monitoring Committee in Baku as a member of the group, said Deputy Minister of Energy of Kazakhstan Magzum Mirzagaliyev, Trend reports via Kazakh media.
"We were invited, we will enter the group from this year. The first meeting is scheduled to be held at the ministerial level in Baku in March. We plan to take part in it. We will take part in the meeting of the Monitoring Committee," Mirzagaliyev told reporters after an expanded meeting of the Energy Ministry's board.
The 13th meeting of the OPEC+ Monitoring Committee will be held in Baku on March 18. The Committee was established to monitor compliance with the OPEC+ agreement and make recommendations for its adjustment.
Trend:
The President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan affirmed the protocol between the Turkish and Azerbaijani governments on the exchange of military personnel, Trend reports.
The document is aimed at developing the military and educational activities and cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries.
The protocol determines the personnel of the Turkish and Azerbaijani armed forces, which are to be involved in joint activities of the parties, and the military units, organizations and institutions in which they will take place.
The other goal of the protocol is to establish the basis for the exchange of personnel between the Turkish General Staff and the Ministry of Defense and the State Border Service of Azerbaijan, as well as to determine the positions, powers and responsibilities during the exchange period.
Trend:
Another group of new army recruits took the oath of allegiance to the motherland in the N military unit of the State Security Service of Azerbaijan, Trend reports referring to the State Security Service.
Chairman of the State Security Service, National Hero of Azerbaijan, Colonel-General Madat Guliyev and the participants of the event first honored the National Leader Heydar Aliyevs memory and laid a wreath at the monument to the great leader.
Afterwards, the combat flag was brought to the square. The unforgettable memory of the heroic sons of Azerbaijan, who gave their lives for the independence and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, was honored with a minute of silence. The young soldiers then solemnly took the oath.
Colonel-General Madat Guliyev congratulated the personnel of the military unit and their parents on the occasion of the oath on behalf of the Supreme Commander, wished success to the officers and soldiers in their honorable and responsible service.
Then the servicemen and the new recruits marched past the tribune, accompanied by the military march. Photos were taken in front of the monument to the national leader.
Later, the Chairman of the State Security Service, Colonel-General Madat Guliyev met with the parents of the soldiers, once again congratulated them on this significant day.
The parents expressed gratitude to the country's leadership for the conditions created for military service.
Colonel-General Madat Guliyev familiarized himself with the work on the exemplary and effective organization of the service in the military unit, including mastering the results of modern achievements in the military-technical and combat fields, further increasing the knowledge and skills of the soldiers, the physical training of the soldiers, and giving appropriate recommendations and orders.
The measures taken under the leadership of the Supreme Commander Ilham Aliyev constantly strengthen the defenses of the country and the military-technical potential of the Armed Forces.
It is no coincidence that the Azerbaijani army is among the 50 most powerful armies in the world today, thanks to a deliberate policy pursued at the state level in the field of army building.
Trend:
Azerbaijans State Service on Management of Agricultural Projects and Credits under the Ministry of Agriculture plans to implement a joint project with the EU to issue subsidies, head of the service Mirza Aliyev told Trend.
He noted that this project is planned to be launched from April 15.
Aliyev said that there are a lot of plans and projects, noting suchas the project to increase agriculture employment (AMAL), a joint project with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in organizing information and consulting services and others.
He further noted that this year the service will issue loans worth 10 million manats.
Aliyev said that the same amount of funds was allocated last year. He added that the active portfolio of the service is 95 million manats.
At the same time, he expressed hope that about 50-60 million manats will be allocated additionally for the purchase of agricultural machinery and equipment.
(1.7 manats = 1 USD on Feb. 9)
Trend:
A meeting of the Russian and Azerbaijani delegations took place on Friday, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijan's Ministry of Economy.
The Azerbaijani delegation was represented by senior officials of the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, the State Road Agency of Azerbaijan, the State Customs Committee, the State Border Service and the executive authorities of Khachmaz and Gusar districts, along with the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu.
The Russian side was represented by a delegation including representatives of related structures, headed by the Minister of Economic Development of Russia Maxim Oreshkin, Russian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mikhail Bocharnikov, and Head of the Republic of Dagestan of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vasilyev.
The Azerbaijani Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev noted that the presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia attach great importance to the development of relations between the two countries, and the mutual meetings of the heads of state, official delegations and businessmen are perfect examples thereof.
Mustafayev noted that Russia is the main trading partner of Azerbaijan and ranks first in the import of non-oil products of Azerbaijan. He said the trade between the two countries grew by 20 percent during the last year alone.
The minister spoke about the projects being implemented between Azerbaijan and Russia in transport and transit, and stressed that the construction of a road bridge over the Samur River is of great importance in the development of trade and economic ties, in the development of the North-South International Transport Corridor.
Maxim Oreshkin noted that cooperation between the two countries, based on the political will of the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan, keeps developing. The minister noted the importance of the automobile bridge across the Samur River in terms of an even greater expansion of developing trade relations between the two countries and added that this would contribute to the development of the North-South International Transport Corridor.
The expansion of trade and economic relations between Azerbaijan and Russia, cooperation in transport and transit, and the development of the North-South International Transport Corridor were topics of discussion during the meeting.
The Azerbaijani and Russian delegations examined the Yarag-Kazmalyar and Samur checkpoints at the Azerbaijan-Russia state border and got acquainted with the construction of the road over the Samur River.
In accordance with the agreement signed between the governments of Azerbaijan and Russia, the construction of an automobile bridge over the Samur River at the Azerbaijan-Russia state border is ongoing. The bridge is scheduled to be commissioned in 2019.
Trend:
Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have 20 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said Feb. 9, Trend reports.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
President Donald Trump on Monday announced he will nominate David Bernhardt, a former longtime energy lobbyist, to lead the Interior Department, ending the search for a permanent replacement for embattled and scandal-ridden Ryan Zinke.
Details: Bernhardt became the agencys deputy secretary in summer 2017 and has been leading the department on an acting interim basis since Zinke resigned in December amid several ethics scandals, including one reportedly referred to the Justice Department. Bernhardt worked in the Interior Department under President George W. Bush and has since lobbied on behalf of several companies and organizations with business at his agency now.
A classified Israeli Foreign Ministry report circulated in mid-December among top Israeli government national security and foreign policy officials determined that Saudi Arabia will not support the Trump administration's Middle East peace plan and won't normalize relations with Israel unless the Israeli government makes a substantive concession to the Palestinians, officials who have read the report told me.
Why it matters: The report contradicts the public line from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also Israel's foreign minister. Over the past year, Netanyahu has claimed that Israel can normalize relations with Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia, despite the Palestinian issue.
Details: The report was written by analysts from the Foreign Ministry's Political Research Center and was classified "secret" because it deals with the highly sensitive issue of Saudi-Israeli relations. The report was sent to a small group of ambassadors and national security officials in the Israeli government.
A Foreign Ministry official who read the report told me it said that Saudi Arabia's King Salman had taken back the Israeli-Palestinian file from his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
It stresses that Salman rolled Saudi policy on the issue back to the kingdom's traditional alignment with the Arab Peace Initiative, which states that normalization of relations with Israel will only happen after the formation of a Palestinian state.
What they're saying: The Foreign Ministry official told me, "There was a feeling in the last year that there was a window of opportunity to reach a breakthrough with Saudi Arabia but even if there was such an opening, this window is closed for now."
Former U.S. officials who were briefed on the Jan. 14 meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Salman in Riyadh told me that the Saudi king's messages only strengthened the report's conclusion.
They said Salman stressed to Pompeo that Saudi Arabia will not support the Trump administration's peace plan if it doesn't address Palestinian demands mainly regarding a capital in East Jerusalem.
Go deeper: Israel worried pressure over Khashoggi killing will destabilize Saudi Arabia
Choi has many years experience in teaching hearing-impaired students at Pusan Kuhaw school in the Republic of Korea (RoK). Previously, as a lecturer at the INJE University in Gyeognam province, she decided to retire early to focus on special education in Vietnam.
Ahead of the Tet (Lunar New Year) festival, Vietnam News Agency (VNA)s reporter had an opportunity to talk with Choi at Lang Cafe a community venue for children who are hard of hearing, set up by her and Lam Dong School for the Hearing Impaired.
Choi shared with the reporter some of the latest developments in special education in the RoK and suggested what Vietnam should do to reform its education system towards being more inclusive.
She first visited Lam Dong School for the Hearing Impaired in 2005. After becoming more familiar with the school and highlighting some of its shortcomings, Choi decided to offer her hand to overcome these barriers.
Over the past eight years, Choi and her partners have carried out many activities to help children with disabilities.
Korean special education experts have been travelling to Vietnam to conduct training courses for teachers, Choi said. She has introduced 25 experts from the Korean Wonmyeong Daejeon University to Da Lat, thus far training 80 teachers. In August 2018, 13 special education experts from the RoK held training courses in this field in Vietnam with the participation of 35 schools in the southern region of Vietnam.
Along with education, the Lam Dong School for the Hearing Impaired and the Lam Dong Blind Association have provided music and physical education classes for secondary school students.
Choi said she feels very happy in doing her work, with herself and her spouse often taking part in social activities with the provincial Red Cross Society.
So far, she has called on donators to coordinate with the provincial Red Cross Society to build 13 houses for people with disabilities, as well as buy 269 wheelchairs and over 400 bicycles for poor and ethnic minority students.
My biggest desire in the future is to establish a development centre for children with disabilities so that they can receive appropriate education even before the age of three, she said.
Choi added that in Vietnam, the detection and education of disabled children remains slow, especially as most children do not go to school until the age of six.
Children with congenital disabilities, if found early before the age of three, are likely to overcome their disabilities through early special education, Choi said.
With my efforts and the assistance of Korean and Vietnamese donors, I hope the special education system in Vietnam can be improved, she added.
Vietnamnews
On the coast of South America, just north of Brazil, lies the impoverished former British colony of Guyana, distantly remembered for a bizarre mass suicide four decades ago that begot the term "drinking the Kool-Aid."
Why it matters: The discovery of a massive trove of oil off its shores, including two finds just this week, puts Guyana on the cusp of becoming one of the world's wealthiest nations, in the league of petro-states like Qatar.
What's worrying the experts:
Guyana seems wholly unprepared for the avalanche of cash coming its way. It's in political turmoil, with no plan in place for how to marshal and distribute the money among a population of just 780,000 people.
for the avalanche of cash coming its way. It's in political turmoil, with no plan in place for how to marshal and distribute the money among a population of just 780,000 people. The exploration and production deal, with ExxonMobil, is one of the most one-sided in frontier oil, heavily favoring the company. That makes Guyana rife for future political discontent and local demands for renegotiation.
"There is no way the explosion of money will be managed properly," says Amy Myers Jaffe, director of energy security at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Here you take this poverty-stricken country and make them Qatar in three years."
What's happening: Since 2016, Exxon has made a dozen discoveries in Guyana that now total more than 5 billion barrels of recoverable reserves. This is enormous for perspective, the industry calls a 1-billion-barrel field a "supergiant."
Exxon did not respond to requests for comment. But it plans to begin producing 120,000 barrels a day next year, and to bump that up six times to 750,000 by 2025.
At $60 a barrel, and a roughly 50-50 split of profits with Exxon, Guyana could receive a bonanza of more than $5 billion a year in revenue.
roughly 50-50 split of profits with Exxon, Guyana could receive a bonanza of more than $5 billion a year in revenue. Given how fast energy is changing and an industry-wide push to pull as much oil out of the ground as possible as fast as possible, experts think the company is likely to push production to 1 million barrels a day.
changing and an industry-wide push to pull as much oil out of the ground as possible as fast as possible, experts think the company is likely to push production to 1 million barrels a day. At that production or larger, Guyana could receive $10 billion a year: "The big picture is getting bigger," Riyad Insanally, the Guyanese ambassador to the U.S., tells Axios.
"It's the most recent but rare incident of a brand new petrostate out of nothing."
Bob McNally, president of the Rapidan Energy Group.
But with all that cash on the horizon, Guyana has barely gotten organized for what, in other countries, has triggered a free-for-all of chaos, corruption and war.
The country has been in political turmoil since last year. In December, the Parliament ousted the government of President David Granger in a vote of no confidence. That set in motion new elections within 90 days, but the government is challenging the move in court.
In December, the Parliament ousted the government of President David Granger in a vote of no confidence. That set in motion new elections within 90 days, but the government is challenging the move in court. No plan has been devised for how to begin to build and upgrade the country's roads, communications, and institutions. Neither is there a plan for building up the capital of Georgetown.
to begin to build and upgrade the country's roads, communications, and institutions. Neither is there a plan for building up the capital of Georgetown. No one has determined how to both husband the wealth, and to share it.
Guyana is an enormous triumph for Exxon, which has been battered by the loss of world-class assets in the post-Crimea U.S. brinkmanship with Russia. Its share price is down 16% over the last year, amid questions whether it can still deliver industry-leading profit through thick and thin, as it once did.
Guyana, and the super-fast delivery of production by next year, shows that the company still has what it takes.
The bottom line: For Guyana itself, there is less certainty. Insanally said the reaction in Guyana runs the gamut: "There are people who are excited, people who are apprehensive, and people who think oil should be avoided as a curse altogether."
One crew member has been rescued and another is missing after a cargo plane ditched about 14 miles off the coast of Florida on Friday.The rescued first officer has been identified as Rolland Silva and he is recovering in a hospital in Florida. The missing captain is Robert Hopkins. The search was suspended on Saturday. The Conquest Air Cargo Convair C-131B Samaritan, a 1950s piston twin military transport based on a Convair CV-240 airliner, was on a flight from Nassau, in the Bahamas, to Opa Locka, Florida, when it began losing altitude about 50 miles off the coast.
It flew for another 12 minutes before hitting the water at about 12:15 p.m. The aircraft was destroyed. The company told local media the pilot declared an emergency and reported he was ditching. Conquest operates several Samaritans on daily runs between Nassau and Florida.
Aviation groups are lining up to support a bill that would keep the FAA funded during a government shutdown by temporarily shifting its source of money. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Rick Larsen, D-Wash., introduced the bill on Friday. If passed, the bill would allow money for operations to be taken out of the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, which is normally used for construction, infrastructure and technology projects. While there was no money for wages and other operational expenses during the shutdown, the trust fund remained fully funded. The National Business Aviation Association and National Air Traffic Controllers Association were the first to applaud the proposed legislation.
Aviation is among the nations most regulated industries, requiring oversight and a host of services from the FAA, said NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen. This bill would help ensure that aviationa key component in the nations economy and transportation systemwill avoid a potentially harmful disruption in the event of a government shutdown. NATCA President Paul Rinaldi said that unusual circumstances demand creative solutions and after careful review the organization got behind the move. There is no doubt that the status quo is broken and has been for some time. The 35-day shutdown was just the latest of many instances in which FAA, its workforce and the aviation industry were held hostage by a political fight that had nothing to do with aviation, Rinaldi said. He said stop-and-go funding affects people and projects long after the money starts flowing again and stable funding is a cornerstone of maintaining and operating the system properly.
Local Magazine is here!
The summer 2021 issue of Local Magazine is out. Pick up a copy of your favorite local magazine around town or peruse our e-edition below. Because the best things in life are local.
Gaetano DeMattei, who turns 90 today, in the start gate at Aspen Highlands on Friday. He will be recognized and celebrated today in the Tiehack Room of the Inn at Aspen from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. during an awards reception for the FIS Masters Cup, taking place at Highlands. DeMattei is scheduled to compete in todays giant slalom and Sundays super-G races.
Alcohol-Infused Ice Cream Is Here
Trending News: Haagen-Dazs Introduces Boozy Ice Cream Collection
Cant decide between a night of boozing or diving face first into a whole carton of ice cream? (Weve all been there.) Now you can have your Bourbon Vanilla Bean Truffle and eat it too with Haagen-Dazs new boozy ice cream collection.
Unfortunately, if you were hoping to satisfy your sweet tooth and get tipsy at the same time, youre out of luck. Despite the boozy ingredients, the 14-ounce cartons contain less than 0.5 percent alcohol. Thats similar to a bottle of non-alcoholic beer such as Becks. But still, youll need to be at least 21 years old to indulge in these treats, according to CNBC.
RELATED: Think Tasty Non-Alcoholic Beer Doesn't Exist? Try These
Curious about the flavors? Heres more:
Irish Cream Brownie: Irish Cream infused into ice cream with chocolate brownie pieces and a fudge swirl. Rum Tres Leches: A Latin American-inspired indulgence; white rum infused into ice cream, with ribbons of dulce de leche and chunks of Tres Leches cake. Bourbon Vanilla Bean Truffle: Vanilla bean ice cream dotted with chocolate truffles and swirled with spicy Bourbon. Stout Chocolate Pretzel Crunch: A pub-inspired indulgence; chocolate ice cream infused with stout for notes of toasted malt, then mixed with chocolate-covered pretzels and fudge. Bourbon Praline Pecan: Ice cream infused with smooth bourbon, sprinkled with brown sugar, and given some crunch with praline pecans. Non-Dairy Amaretto Black Cherry Almond Toffee: Black cherry jam and almond toffee pieces folded into the non-dairy dessert thats infused with a nutty Amaretto. Irish Cream Cookie Squares: A chocolate cookie topped with ice cream thats infused with Irish Cream before the entire square is dipped in dark chocolate.
Inventing a delicious ice cream flavored with popular cocktails was no easy feat. Haagen-Dazs flavor developer Aaron Butterworth told Esquire she had a tough time figuring out one flavor in particular: Stout Chocolate Pretzel. She said balancing the malty flavor of the stout was tricky, but adding the saltiness of the pretzel and the sweetness of the chocolate proved to be the solution.
The Haagen-Dazs ice cream obsessed might point out this isnt the brands first foray into alcohol-boosted ice cream. It had previously featured an Irish Cream flavor for a limited time, as well as a Whiskey Chocolate Truffle flavor that was only available in Canada. However, this is the first boozy collection.
If this news encouraged you to scrap your Valentines Day plans and stay in with a carton of ice cream with a loved one (or on your own), youre going to have to be patient. Haagen-Dazs wont debut until April 1, Insider reports. But if you cant wait until then, CNBC reports that select stores will serve the boozy offerings beginning in March.
Better start cutting calories now so youre ready a serious cheat meal or seven.
You Might Also Dig:
9 Valentine's Day Cocktails
Shake Up Your Love With a Delicious V-Day Cocktail
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Valentine's Day means pulling out all the stops, and there's no better way to get date night on the right track than with the perfect mixed drink. These nine simple cocktails dont call for crazy steps, special gear, or 18 different bottles of booze, but they taste so good youll get full credit as a master mixologist.
RELATED: Valentine's Day Gift Ideas for Her
Liquor Lab
"Its a ghoulish reminder of the duality of love itself and scratches my personal love of gangster history itch at the same time," explains creator Freddie Sarkis, the chief cocktail officer of NYC's Liquor Lab. "The cocktail should be both tart with a subtle sweetness and the color of blood."
Ingredients:
1 1/2 oz blanco tequila (from $10.99 on Drizly.com)
1/2 oz mezcal ( from $19.99 on Drizly.com
3/4 oz blood orange puree
1/2 oz vanilla syrup
1/2 oz lime juice
2 slices of serrano pepper
Black lava salt, cayenne pepper, and blood orange slice for garnish
Instructions:
Muddle the pepper in the bottom of a mixing glass, and then add everything except the salt. Fill with ice and shake vigorously for 30 seconds. Strain, over fresh ice into a rocks glass thats been rimmed with a mixture of the black salt and cayenne pepper. Garnish with an orange slice (blood orange if you have)
A luscious combination of Coconut creamer, Raspberry liqueur, Tequila and fresh lemon juice, this cocktail delivers on flavor with its subtle tropical notes, tart raspberry flavors and a touch of citrus," says Ute Londrigan of Heimat New York Handcrafted Liqueurs. "A truly stunning cocktail with a beautiful hue of creamy white and subtle pinks.
Ingredients:
2oz Heimat NY Raspberry liqueur
2oz Coconut creamer*
1oz Tequila
0.25oz Lemon juice
Instructions:
1. For a red-white color combination, add the coconut creamer, tequila, and lemon juice into a shaker and shake until chilled.
2. Pour into a rocks glass with ice and then gently add the raspberry liqueur or shake all ingredients for a cocktail with a beautiful reddish hue.
*For a slightly heavier cocktail, substitute heavy cream for the coconut creamer.
Korbel
"The Blushing Lovebird is a delicious and refreshing cocktail that is perfect for Valentine's Day. This cocktail has a nice combination of black raspberry, cranberry, and is topped with Korbel Brut Rose, which adds a nice touch of strawberry," explains Tim Laird, who created the drink. "What I love about this cocktail is that when you bring it up to sip, your nose will detect all these berry flavors and will be tickled by the effervescence of the sparkling bubbles."
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Pour the Chambord and cranberry juice into a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a wine glass. Top with the rose. Garnish with a strawberry slice or raspberry.
"Both rose and hibiscus are considered aphrodisiacs, and have been used for centuries when you want to chill out and relax," says Cassandra Rosen of Tussock Jumper Wines. "The hibiscus syrup is both sweet and tart, and the floral notes play well with the botanicals of the gin. If you're a Negroni-lover, try this drink as a sexy, sparkling alternative."
Ingredients:
4 oz Tussock Jumper Prosecco (From $12.99 at Drizly.com)
oz hibiscus syrup
1 oz gin
Dash The Bitter Truth orange bitters
Dried rose petals for garnish
Instructions:
Pour the syrup and gin into a coupe glass dusted with rose petals. Top with Prosecco, and dash with bitters.
Campari
The Garnet Sbagliato is a refreshing but bold winter spritz with seasonal fruit and toasted notes that are perfect for the colder weather and cozying up next to your sweetheart," Dante's Stacey Swenson, who concocted the cocktail for Campari Red Diaries, tells us. "The bitterness of the Campari and the tart and rich quality of the shrub together make for a well-balanced and satisfying Valentines aperitivo.
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Build in long-stem cabernet or wine glass with ice. Top with Lambrusco, garnish with three blood orange wheels.
For the Shrub*:
Combine 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup pomegranate vinegar, 4 oz blood orange juice, and 1 oz beet juice. Stir well, let sit in refrigerator for two days.
For the Tincture**:
Place 3 tbsp of caraway seeds on a pan and turn heat to high. Stir caraway seeds until they start to pop. Remove from heat. Allow to cool and place them in a separate container with 6 oz of high-proof vodka. Let sit for two days and strain out the caraway seeds. Add tincture to a dropper bottle.
RELATED: Valentine's Day Breakfast Ideas
Natalies Orchid Island Juice
Natalie Sexton of Natalie's Orchid Island Juice Co. tells us of this tasty drink: "The kombucha pairs very well with chocolate a staple on Valentine's Day and the blood orange juice not only tastes delicious in the mix but it gives the cocktail the most beautiful pink hue."
Ingredients:
2 oz blood orange juice
2 oz Gingerberry Kombucha
1 1/2 oz vodka ( from $8.99 on Drizly.com
Seltzer
Instructions:
Fill a rocks glass with ice. Add juice, kombucha, and vodka. Stir well, and top with seltzer.
Absolut
The Love Buzz is perfect for Valentines Day because its peppy and indulgent!" exclaims Kevin Denton, Pernod Ricard USA's mixologist, of his creation. "Taking inspiration from a box of chocolates, it delivers on decadence. That said, the espresso delivers just enough bitterness to balance the sweetness.
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Shake all ingredients and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a chocolate-raspberry tuille.
Jose Cuervo
"Tree of Hope is inspired by iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, and is a reincarnation of a classic cocktail made with tequila," explains Haley Forest, mixologist for Jose Cuervo. "Its perfect for a cold night with a loved one."
Ingredients:
2 oz Jose Cuervo Tradicional Reposado (from $12.98 on Drizly.com)
1/4 oz agave
3 dashes mole bitters (from $13.99 on Drizly.com)
Orange peel disk for garnish
Instructions:
Add the tequila, agave, and bitters into a mixing glass. Stir for dilution and temperature, and pour into a rocks glass over ice. Express the orange peel over the drink and garnish.
Featuring a highly aromatic and flavorful combination of gin, manzanilla sherry and lavender-infused St. Germain liqueur, this cocktail definitely possesses that it factor," Jeff Wilkins, Mixologist at El Five in Denver, CO. "Floral aromas with grapefruit oil rounds out this martini beautifully while the dry sherry complements the sweetness of the St. Germain. To finish, we add citric acid and an edible orchid to add a little edge.
Ingredients:
1.5 oz Family Jones gin
1oz manzanilla sherry
1oz lavender-infused St. Germain liqueur
1 edible orchid
Grapefruit zest
Instructions:
Add all ingredients to a mixing glass, stir and pour into a coupe. Finish with grapefruit zest and garnish with an edible orchid.
Now get mixing and enjoy (responsibly)!
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Spotify updated its terms of service today, and the new terms of service states that those that are using ad blockers to block the ads that Spotify shows to those on the free service, will be banned from the platform.
The music streaming service only shows ads to those on the free version of its service. This is to help off-set the cost of the service, since these users are not paying for it. Those on Spotify Premium do not see ads, so the ad-blocker change in the terms of service does not affect them.
According to the updated terms of service for Spotify, it says that circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisement in the Spotify Service can result in immediate termination or suspension. Basically, if you are looking to block those ads, dont. If you really dont want to see ads, sign up for its premium service, which is $9.99 per month and there is a student version thats cheaper.
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Reports have recently shown that around two million free Spotify users are using some sort of ad blocker to block the ads from Spotify. That is only about two-percent of the Spotify Free user-base. But that is still a large number, and it has likely grown since then this report came out about a year ago. Spotify had already begun cracking down on users that were using ad blocking tools, but now with this blurb added to the terms of service, it has the right to ban you from using its service. This may seem extreme, but it is needed.
Spotify is one of the first to really crack down on ad blockers, and this is because a lot of other companies are worried about losing customers by doing so. But many know that ads are pretty bad, and not all that intuitive, making the experience far worse. Google has even admitted this, and it is one of the largest ad companies in the world. Ad blocking is bad for the internet, as it takes websites that would normally be free and put them behind a paywall. This is why we are seeing many more companies coming out with subscriptions for stuff that would have been free about a year ago.
The majority of Spotifys users are on the free tier, and dont want to pay $9.99 per month for the service. Spotify would rather you jump to the premium tier since it means automatic payment, and not a range of money being made depending on how much you listen (and see ads) that month. But ads help pay the bill. The other alternative for Spotify here would be to kill the free version of its service or only allow a short trial period before going paid. And that would drastically drop its user numbers, and also drop its revenue numbers. And for a company that just went public in the past year, thats not a good thing to do.
Support for keyboard-based multimedia buttons will be arriving in Chrome 73, ZDNet reports. The feature appearing under the Media Session API in the official Chrome update Schedule with support incoming for desktops and laptops running macOS or Windows. Chrome OS is included in the feature update as well despite that Chromebooks dont generally have media keys on their keyboards. That means users with secondary keyboards in use that have the keys will be able to use them.
Linux wont be supported out of the gate but is planned to have support in the browser at some point in the future.
On top of to support for multimedia keys, the Media Session API allows media to be controlled from outside of the page the media is playing on. So if a user wants to skip or pause playback from another page, that should be possible. The description also enabled media metadata customization by websites, so that site can control the notification and lock screen UI related to playback.
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More media changes coming in Chrome 73
The external media control aspect of the newest release should be at least somewhat familiar to Android users. The Media Session API has been present in Android for some time now since Chrome 57 and is responsible for the notification shade-based media controls originating in Google Chrome.
Another big media-related change scheduled to arrive in Chrome 73 is the inclusion of Auto Picture-in-Picture and a reasonably big change to picture-in-picture. To begin with, video playback in PWAs users have installed will enter or leave picture-in-picture mode appearing in a small pop-out window where appropriate. Specifically, the change is noted as occurring when a documents visibility is altered, most likely when the window is minimized in a fashion similar to Androids picture-in-picture mode.
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The same new mode will be allowed to web apps for video chats or meetings whenever users alter between apps, web apps, or tabs.
Coinciding with Picture-in-Picture mode, a new feature is being added to the minimal playback windows that will allow users to skip ads. That will work just like it does with the skip ad button in other areas of Googles services, notifying the originating site that the ad was skipped.
When will the new features arrive?
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Chrome version 73 is set to land on the browsers Stable Channel in just 32 days on March 12. As is always the case, the update will hit Windows and Linux several days before it begins its slow rollout to Chrome OS and Android. As noted above, most of the new features are going to impact desktop variations of the Chrome browser and wont have much impact on mobile versions.
Primarily, other changes set to arrive with Chrome 73 update will be behind-the-scenes alterations and developer-facing changes that users wont see but which should make the entire experience much smoother.
For the time being, the update doesnt appear to carry the recently reported Chrome dark mode either. The list of incoming features may change in the weeks leading up to its launch, so its not out of the question that the new night-friendly mode could arrive in Chrome 73. At this point, it seems more likely that will be held back until at least version 74.
Was Stacey Abrams really the best the Dems could do?
The Democrat leadership's politically correct, virtue-signaling selection of failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams to be their mouthpiece to rebut President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday night seemed odd to me, so I decided to dig a little. What I've found has me wondering even more why they would pick such a person to be the face of the Democratic Party in a national broadcast with a huge audience. Increasingly, it seems that the Dems have a fondness for phonies and failures, making it seem as if the Democrat leadership is unaware of that old wisdom, "Put your best foot forward." In this case, it appears that the particular foot they picked to boot Trump's butt has a case of political toenail fungus. After but a preliminary search, I was wondering why on Earth the Georgia Democratic Party powers that be had selected a former tax attorney, who doesn't pay her taxes timely, to be the chief executive officer of the state, expected by voters to govern responsibly. Why would they advance a person to head their state, whose major obligation to the citizenry is managing the financial affairs of their state, who obviously cannot responsibly manage her own financial affairs? According to articles out there on the web, candidate Abrams owed some serious money to the IRS, more than $50,000. She had student loan debt in excess of $90,000. And what's even more damning was her personal credit card debt, pushing $80,000. It's doubtful that Ms. Abrams has completely balanced her books since that was reported less than a year ago, although, as a favored Democratic Party figure, the possibility can't be dismissed.
So Abrams appears to have issues when it comes to managing her personal finances, and Georgia Democrat fat cats wanted her to head their ticket, to entrust her with the financial well-being of their state with a budget approaching $50 billion. Did they seriously want voters to believe they could not find, in the entire state of Georgia, a better qualified black female who could check off their requisite identity politics boxes, one, perhaps, who pays her taxes and her credit card bills? Worse is that even though Georgia voters rejected this irresponsible woman and elected a man with a business background to manage their state finances, national Democratic Party leaders still saw fit to select a tax-evader as the face of the party to deliver the SOTU rebuttal, which she did rather poorly and poorly is being charitable. This politically correct farce illustrates the madness that permeates the Democratic Party, wherein qualifications to manage the affairs of our states and our nation take a dismissive back seat to race, sex, and sexual preferences when it comes to candidate selection. For an even better demonstration of this leftist irrationality, one needs only to view the video of that sullen, surly, white-clad gaggle of Democrat women in the House chamber for Trump's address and observe their immature behavior. You'd be hard pressed to find any examples of thoughtful, responsible leadership in that crowd of churlish girls. Yep, I said "girls," because that is exactly the description their adolescent comportment begs for. With their spoiled, snotty, self-serving behavior, they clearly demonstrated to America what the Democratic Party has become: a refuge for know-nothing know-it-alls, who, with the absolute certainty of adolescents, think they can do a better job of managing family affairs than the grown-ups. And these are the women to whom the Democrats expect the voters to entrust the future of this nation? If the Democrat leadership believes that Stacey Abrams represents the very best of this lame-brained bunch of petulant, pussy-hatted politicos, wouldn't you just love to see the financial statements on the rest of these new Democrat "leaders" who will control the trillion-dollar budgets and deficit spending of your nation? Sleep on that thought, America... Image: Barbara Jordan Forum 2012 via Flickr.
Pelosi and the wall
Never before in the history of American politics has an issue like whether or not to construct a barrier between Mexico and the United States been able to expose the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the Democrats and their propaganda partners, the media. Americans just experienced the most extended government shutdown because Democrats altered their assessments as to the importance of border security they now say is not a crisis and a waste of taxpayer funds.
In the recent State of the Union address, President Trump maintained his position that America's safety demands a physical barrier. The childish nonsense spewed by Pelosi that the wall is "immoral" somehow passes as an acceptable counter to the well established facts carefully presented to the nation and Congress by the president. Where else but the Twilight Zone or Washington, D.C. politics could an irrational statement go unchallenged by the media? Not a single newspaper reporter or cable network crew has ever asked the fundamental question as to exactly how a border wall is immoral. That silence is disturbing but proves beyond all doubt that the motivations behind being against the wall are generated by a revolting and grotesque kind of politics. A similar response came from Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who was in favor of a fence when he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. The act authorized around 700 miles of fencing at certain strategic areas at the border between the United States and Mexico. It also authorized the use of advanced technology. In 2009 and 2013, Schumer reinforced his support for a fence. Playing with semantics, Schumer stated that he never wanted a wall and declared that a "fence works" when interviewed recently by CBS2's Marcia Kramer. However, when Trump declared that the border barrier did not have to be a wall and could also be a fence, Schumer inexplicably continued to refuse to fund the president's border barrier request. Once again, the media did not press him on it. If by immoral, Pelosi means that because its purpose is to help stop people from entering the country illegally, then to use her reasoning, all methods, no matter how advanced or inconspicuous, would also be immoral. To further that point, if Pelosi indeed sees barriers as immoral, then it stands to reason that all current barriers should be torn down in the same manner, much like when the "immoral" Berlin Wall was demolished. The lies of Pelosi and Schumer are staggering and can continue only because a corrupt and deceitful media conglomerate supports them. The only way Pelosi could prove she is sincere in her belief that the border wall is immoral is to be consistent and demand from Trump that all forms of border barriers between Mexico and the United States be dissolved. Imagine Pelosi channeling the strength of Reagan, when, in 1987, he demanded that Gorbachev tear down the wall. She could stand before the entire House and, in a booming voice, proclaim, "President Trump, tear down our walls." It would be her defining moment. The only difference would be that President Reagan spoke those words to help unite humanity, while Pelosi's declaration would serve only to accommodate the demise of America.
According to Breitbart News's Frances Martel, he's waddling his very well fed self over to Venezuela's air force troops as they train, in a bid to assure them he's "one of them."
Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro once again posted videos of himself Wednesday appearing to train with his armed forces to prepare for an allegedly incoming U.S. invasion, this time participating in what appear to be cardiovascular exercises and training with the national air force.
The tweeted video is ridiculous.
I'm a soldier more than our worthy #FANB, willing to give my life, if necessary, to defend every inch of our sacred homeland. pic.twitter.com/0L6RqAikRX Nicolas Maduro (@maduro_en) February 7, 2019
Breitbart notes that he isn't exactly able march in step. There are quite a few of these videos on the Maduro Twitter page, and in this Jan. 27 Breitbart report here, too.
It's weird stuff, given Maduro's obese, out-of-shape figure, obviously the product of being one of the few in the country who are able to eat, contrasted with the wiry thinness of the troops, who have been dealing with hunger, same as the rest of the country.
If you wanted to get troops to defect to the side of acting president Juan Guaido, who stands ready to occupy the presidential palace on Maduro's exit, this Maduro act unintentionally might just be the way to do it.
Breitbart notes that air force troops, who are the target of Maduro's waddling affection, are defecting to Guaido, matching other news reports.
Let's hope enough do it to leave this clown to exercise, by himself, in the yard at Gitmo.
Image credit: Twitter screen grab.
A political earthquake is shaking, rattling, and rolling Spain and the aftermath may be good for freedom-loving people in Europe and elsewhere.
In hyper-progressive Madrid, the latest polls show the right-of-center Popular and Vox parties ahead of the ruling Socialist Party just three months before the next local elections meaning that conservatives would retake control in Spain's capital if elections were held today. And this comes just weeks after Vox whose leaders espouse views similar to those of American conservatives captured 12 seats in Andalusia's elections, handing the reins of power in Spain's southern region to a new center-right coalition after 36 years of Socialist rule.
Now, on Sunday, some 20,000 demonstrators are expected to take to the streets of Madrid to protest Socialist President Pedro Sanchez's "high treason" against Spain for his appeasement of Barcelona's separatists. Protesters will demand that Sanchez call for national elections so they can replace him.
"Mr. President: Don't deny the popular outcry ... Stop damaging the nation and damaging yourself. Try to redeem yourself. Let the people vote," counseled an editorial in the right-of-center El Mundo daily on Thursday.
It's a popular sentiment these days, and not just with the right. Emotions are especially high after Sanchez seemed cave to demands from radicals in Barcelona who have proclaimed (unconstitutionally, of course) their independence from Spain. Sanchez even agreed to use an "impartial" mediator in upcoming talks.
Combined with uncontrolled illegal immigration, controversial progressive social laws, and generally ineffective socialist policy, these events have led to a surge of Spanish patriotism and conservatism over the past year.
Across the country, many Spaniards now display the Spanish flag outside their homes or hanging from their balconies, showing their loyalty to their constitution, culture, and country. Yet while all this has been happening, Barcelona's municipality, Catalonia, has decreed that all business signs must be in the ancient Catalan language and has even made learning in Spanish a near impossibility in the public schools.
Most of the media portray the backlash against these authoritarian policies as a "far-right, anti-immigrant" movement led by radical forces. Politico, the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC have all used similar words "far-right," "anti-immigrant," "extreme" to describe the emerging Vox Party after it shocked the establishment in December.
But Vox is not an exclusionary movement, as these progressive critics assert. Indeed, it's a classically liberal, low-tax, pro-family, less-government-regulation, and patriotic party that's exactly the opposite of fascist or extreme. Its slogan: Make Spain Great Again. It does resemble Trump's Republican Party more than any other party in Europe doubtless the reason for the rising fear among those on the left and in the media.
Much like Trump's GOP, the party is not "anti-immigration," just anti-illegal immigration it wants to stop the flood of illegal aliens pouring across the southern border, which in Spain's case means Andalusia's beaches.
There's a good reason to do that. Samuel Linares, who coordinates Red Cross activities near Malaga in Andalusia, told the New York Times that the situation there is at a "critical point that clearly exceeds our infrastructure capacity." In other words, Spain is facing a genuine "humanitarian crisis" along its southern border, to quote a famous American politician.
But it's a problem that the Left apparently believes should be ignored which is what the leftists want to do with the controversies surrounding new "progressive" laws, one of which is often labeled "feminazi" by its opponents for bestowing more rights to women than to men.
The result: Spaniards are fed up, and they're standing up for their freedoms, their constitution, and their country.
Even the establishmentarian, not always conservative Popular Party is sounding more and more like its new ally. Its leader, Pablo Casado, called for this Sunday's protest in Madrid's Columbus Square to "stand for freedom and oppose a government that commits treason against Spaniards," as he put it on Thursday.
Even greater fireworks may be on display later in the week in the nation's Supreme Court. That's when Vox's secretary general, Javier Ortega Smith, begins prosecuting the high-stakes trial of 12 Catalonian separatists who led the illegal effort to secede from Spain in the fall of 2017. The "trial of the century," as it has been labeled by the Spanish media, will have repercussions not just in Catalonia, but also in the northeastern region of Spain, home of the Basque separatists.
Indeed, it's likely to be at the top of the headlines as Spain nears its May regional elections as well as the upcoming national election, whenever that's finally called by the current president.
But for conservatives, a victory has already been won: just the emergence of a new, market-friendly, pro-life, pro-family political party in a "social-democratic" European nation is an unforeseen and unexpected development that may yield substantial and positive economic changes in Spain.
And a more conservative Spain is likely to influence other nations in Europe and elsewhere possibly substantially. For example, it's sure to impact the European Union's policy toward Latin America, since that's an area in which the E.U. often follows Spain's lead.
All of this makes for a unique moment in the history of one of the world's most fascinating countries. Sadly, it's a story the mainstream American media have largely ignored.
J.R. Vidueira is the former editor of NewsMax.com and HISPANIC Magazine, a general-interest glossy that covered the cultures and people of Spain and the Americas.
A 29-year-old bartender and newly elected House legislator launches a half-baked "green" plan for taking over the country, to include ending jet travel, getting rid of cows, replacing every building in the country, reserving cars for the elites, destroying the fossil fuel industry, and every Democrat vying to be the next president jumps onboard.
What are we supposed to think of this?
It's lunacy. How is it that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" can be taken this seriously as Democratic contenders Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and the rest all leap in and say they've signed on? (Bernie Sanders hasn't been mentioned in the reports, but I imagine he's sympathetic.) The whole thing should be dismissed as barstool dreams of a drunk who's had a few too many.
Now this former bartender has got the entire Democratic Party under her thumb, including its leaders with national ambitions, who expect voters to hand them the presidency in 2020.
And a little bartender will lead them?
Don't think the Democratic Party's cynical and competent operatives aren't noticing how grotesque this spectacle is. There actually are multiple reports of alarm from the men who make Democratic victories happen, the professional campaign consultants who know the ins and outs of getting the electorate to vote for left-wing candidates, usually by soft-pedaling their plans and convincing voters that Democrats "care about people like them."
They're actually freaking out.
Here's one from an anonymous Democratic strategist:
As Josh Kraushaar notes in National Journal, a Democratic strategist told him, "We are on an out-of-control roller coaster going 100 miles-per-hour, and we have no functioning brake. No one is leading and that void could not be more clear."
Here's another, Democratic strategist Mark Penn, writing for himself:
Rather than advance the cause of climate change, this legislation could prove more of an easy target for Republicans to discredit the Democrats, who just won over moderate suburban voters in the last election. While many in polls may support something called the "green deal," few Americans will support the details of this legislation once examined and explained. It's not the platform of the Democratic Party and it's up to the leadership of the party to back realistic proposals for a better future, not bumper stickers. Failure to heed this warning could well lead to another surprise upset at the polls.
Those are alarm bells. Anyone with a lick of sense in politics has them. But none of these Democrats falling over themselves to sign on to Ocasio-Cortez's plan does.
What it shows is a lack of leadership, an inability to say "no" to stupidity, a desperate need to seem "hip" and "with it," in the fashionable image of Ocasio-Cortez, who has "image" in spades.
None of these people has what it takes to lead the country.
It's a reminder that Democrats don't really have any leaders. They are ruled by a Jurassic gerontocracy led by old dinosaurs House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, with simmering discontent in the lower ranks, starting with Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated one of the Democrats' other Jurassics.
What's replacing these leaders isn't people with new ideas; it's people with very old and socialist ideas, repackaged with neat ribbons and Vogue photo shoots. Democrats are following that as if they were sheep.
With Democrats in power in the House based only on most convincing voters they were really "moderates," embracing this kind of crazy from the ex-bartender suggests a land mine on the rail track to the presidency.
Independent potential contender Howard Schultz has already exposed the weakness as he talks sensible liberalism and they embrace Ocasio-Cortezism, which is why he triggered such screams from the left.
Now we have the horror going on in Venezuela, with its democratic socialism flowering as citizens flee, store shelves go bare, cars run out of gas, and millions protest. Ocasio-Cortez hasn't been particularly effective at dissociating herself from Venezuela's model of socialism, and a good look at her green plan, with its Bolivarian Circle-style activists appointed to set policy, is actually a duplicate of how Chavista socialism was enacted in Venezuela.
Embracing Ocasio-Cortez's lunatic gibberings at a time like this is the act of a headless monster, which is what Democrats in their desperate quest for power have become. It just goes to show what Trump Derangement Syndrome, combined with a will to power, will do.
A universal basic income has been around as an idea since the 1960s, but few state or local governments in America have actually tried it. That may change in Chicago as a panel of experts assembled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel is recommending that "struggling" Chicagoans be given $1,000 a month, no strings attached.
The idea is to break the cycle of poverty. The pilot program would give 1,000 struggling Chicagoans $1,000 a month. Supporters say people could use the extra cash to cover unexpected emergencies, increase their savings and improve their health. The money would come from a mix of city funds and charity.
Aside from the obvious moral hazard of just giving people cash for nothing, there are practical difficulties as well.
IBD:
Just this week, former President Obama, speaking in South Africa, said that a guaranteed income would be one way to shrink the "yawning disparities" in wealth and education. Do these luminaries know something the rest of us don't? Sadly, no. They're just wrong. There's already an experiment getting under way in deeply troubled Stockton, Calif., once known as the nation's home-foreclosure capital. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes kickstarted that city's program with a $1 million donation. But it will have no more success than other "experiments" with giving money to people not to work. Why are we so sure? It's already been tried elsewhere. Indeed, in April, impeccably progressive Finland decided to end its limited experiment with a UBI that paid 2,000 nonworking people roughly $685 a month. The idea was that it would free up people to look for work, or be creative. It didn't happen. "There is a problem with young people lacking secondary education, and reports of those guys not seeking work," said Heikki Hiilamo, a University of Helskinki professor of social policy. "There is a fear that with basic income they would just stay home and play computer games." Far closer to home, as we've noted before, the U.S. has already tested a closely-related idea, the so-called "negative income tax." Essentially, it's a guaranteed income by another name. And it failed abysmally. "In the 1970s, the government ran four random control experiments across six states to try the negative income tax, a similar policy proposal that was popular at the time," wrote Mimi Teixeira in The Daily Signal earlier this year. "In each text, the work disincentive effect was disastrous. For every $1,000 in added benefits to a family, there was an average reduction in $660 of wages from work."
That's not all. The scheme would not get rid of welfare programs. In fact, it is likely that recipients of a universal basic income would run out of money by the end of the month and still need food stamps and other welfare programs to keep from starving.
A universal basic income ignores human psychology and the reality of poverty. People are poor for a variety of reasons. You can point to bad education, broken homes, drugs, gangs, and all the ills that attend hopeless people.
What the poor lack that others have is the life skills necessary to make it on their own. If you don't know how to dress for a job interview, or what's expected of you if you get a job, you will fail. If you can't budget to stretch your income to cover necessities like food and rent, you will fail. Those kinds of basic skills are lacking in poor neighborhoods and regions like Appalachia. People aren't born with this knowledge it is learned at the feet of their parents or caregivers.
It might surprise you to learn that in our mobile society, only about 20% of those living below the poverty line are poor all year round. Most of the "poor" go on and off welfare because they are seasonally employed, or are independently employed in industries that wax and wane with the times.
The hardcore 20% in poverty the "generational poverty" we're most familiar with have resisted all efforts at reform. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the hardcore poor will suddenly find the life skills necessary to make it on their own just because they get no-strings-attached cash from the state.
It's a seductive idea that ignores the psychology of human beings. If people get something for nothing, they will give nothing in return. That would defeat the entire purpose of a universal basic income an idea that should be permanently shelved.
Millions of modern people of the white civilization -- that is, the civilization of Europe and America -- have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past (from Bellocs The Great Heresies, emphasis added).
At the height of Western dominance over Islam in the early twentieth century, the European historian Hilaire Belloc (b. 1870) made a remarkably prescient observation that may have seemed exaggerated at the time:
Anyone who doubts that Islam has been the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, should familiarize themselves with that civilizations long militant history vis-a-vis the West.
According to Islamic history, in 628, Muhammed, the Arabic founder of Islam, called on the Byzantine Emperor, Heraclius -- the symbolic head of Christendom -- to recant Christianity and embrace Islam. The emperor refused, jihad was declared, and the Arabs invaded Christian Syria, defeating the imperial army at the pivotal Battle of Yarmuk in 636 (see my MA thesis on this battle, which one prominent historian described as the worlds most consequential).
This victory enabled the Muslims to swarm in all directions, so that, less than a century later, they had conquered the greater, older, and richer part of Christendom, including Syria, Egypt, and North Africa.
Their drive into Europe from the east was repeatedly frustrated by the Walls of Constantinople; after the spectacularly failed siege of 717-718, many centuries would pass before any Muslim power thought to capture the imperial city. The Arabs did manage to invade Europe proper and conquered Spain but were stopped at the Battle of Tours in 732 and eventually driven back south of the Pyrenees.
For more than two centuries thereafter, Europe continued to be pummeled by land and sea -- untold thousands of Christians were enslaved and every Mediterranean island sacked -- in the ongoing Muslim quest for booty and slaves, as what historians have dubbed the Dark Ages descended on the continent.
The vicissitudes of war ebbed and flowed -- the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) made a major comeback against Islam in the tenth century -- though the border largely remained the same. This changed when the Turks, under the leadership of the Seljuk tribe, became the new standard bearers of jihad. They nearly annihilated eastern Anatolia, along with Armenia and Georgia, in the eleventh century and, after the Battle of Manzikert, 1071, overran Asia Minor.
By now, however, Western Europes military might had so matured that when the Pope called on the knights of Christendom to come to the aid of the Christian East, the First Crusade was born. Western Christians, led by the Franks, marched into the beasts lair, defeated their adversaries in several encounters and managed to establish a firm presence in the Levant, including in Jerusalem, which they recaptured in 1099 -- only to lose it less than one hundred years later, in 1187, after the fateful Battle of Hattin. By 1297, the Crusader presence was eliminated from the Middle East.
But if it failed in the East, the Crusade succeeded in the West. A handful of years after the Muslim invasion and conquest of Spain around 711, fugitive Christians holed in the northern mountains of Asturia began the Reconquista; by 1085 it had proven effective enough to prompt two new Muslim invasions from Africa to counter it. Again, the ebb and flow of war dominated the landscape, but by 1212, at Las Navas de Tolosa, Spains indigenous Christians gave Islam its death-stroke, so that by 1252 it was confined to Granada at the southernmost tip of Iberia.
Around that same time, a violent but relatively short-lived Mongolian storm overwhelmed much of the east; both Christians (notably Russians) and Muslims were pummeled. A new Turkish dynasty arose from the Seljuk ashes; the Ottomans -- whose identity revolved around the concept of jihad more their predecessors -- renewed Islams perennial war on Christendom. They managed to enter Eastern Europe, defeated a combined army of Crusaders at Nicopolis in 1396, took much of the Balkans, and crowned their achievement by fulfilling Muhammads desire of conquering Constantinople -- and enslaving and raping thousands of its inhabitants in ways that ISIS tries to mimic -- in 1453.
But mourning was soon tempered by joy: to the west, Spain finally conquered Granada in 1492, thereby snuffing out Islam as a political power; to the east, the most overlooked chapter of Muslim-Christian conflict was also coming to an end. The Russians, who had lived under distinctly Islamic rule for nearly two centuries, finally cast off the Tatar Yoke in 1480.
Even so, the Ottomans continued to be the scourge of Christendom; they continued making inroads into Europe -- reaching but failing to capture Vienna in 1529 -- and sponsored the seaborne jihad originating from North Africa. While the Muslims largely failed to capture new European lands, Barbary pirates and Crimean slavers captured and sold approximately five million Europeans.
In 1683, over 200,000 Ottoman jihadis attempted to take Vienna again. Even though their failure marked the Ottoman Empires slow decline, Muslim slavers of the so-called Barbary States of North Africa continued to wreak havoc all along the coasts of Europe -- reaching even Iceland. The United States of Americas first war -- which it fought before it could even elect its first president -- was against these Islamic slavers. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbarys ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, the ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners...
Finally the Colonial Era came with Europes triumph over the Barbary States in the early 1800s. By 1900, most of the Muslim world was under European control; by 1924, the more than 600-year-old Ottoman caliphate was abolished -- not by Europeans but Muslim Turks, as the latter sought to emulate the successful ways of the former. Islam was viewed as a spent force and virtually forgotten, until recent times when it reemerged again.
Such has been the true and most general history between the Islamic and Western worlds.
The above map ( Sword and Scimitar) should give an idea of how far-reaching and multitentacled the perennial jihad was. The darkest shading represents Western/Christian nations that were permanently conquered by Islam; the lighter or gray shading represents those Western/Christian nations that were temporarily conquered by Islam (sometimes for many centuries, as in Spain, Russia, and the Balkans); stripes represent areas that were raided, often repeatedly, though not necessarily annexed by Islam; the crossed swords mark the sites of the eight most landmark battles between Islam and the West.
From a macrocosmic perspective, the consequences of the historic jihad are even more profound than first appears. After writing, For almost a thousand years, from the first Moorish landing in Spain [711] to the second Turkish siege of Vienna [1683], Europe was under constant threat from Islam, Bernard Lewis elaborates:
All but the easternmost provinces of the Islamic realm had been taken from Christian rulers North Africa, Egypt, Syria, even Persian-ruled Iraq, had been Christian countries, in which Christianity was older and more deeply rooted than in most of Europe. Their loss was sorely felt and heightened the fear that a similar fate was in store for Europe.
The loss of North Africa and the Middle East was sorely felt by premodern Europeans because they thought more along religious and civilizational lines than nationalist ones. And before Islam burst onto the scene, most of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East were part of the same religio-civilizational bloc. As such, Islam did not merely invade and eventually get repulsed from Europe; rather, Muslim armies conquered three-quarters [or 75 percent] of the Christian world, to quote historian Thomas Madden.
Thus what is now called the West is actually the westernmost remnant of what was a much more extensive civilizational block that Islam permanently severed, thereby altering the course of Western history. And once Muslims overran Africa and the Middle East, most of its Christian subjects, to evade fiscal and social oppression and join the winning team, converted to Islam, thereby perpetuating the cycle, as they became the new standard bearers of jihad against their former coreligionists north and west of the Mediterranean.
Such are the rarely noted ironies of history.
Returning to Hilaire Belloc, one can also see how an accurate understanding of true history -- as opposed to an indoctrination in mainstream pseudo-histories -- leads to an accurate prognosis of the future. For Belloc was not only correct about the past but the future as well:
It [Islam] is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past The whole spiritual strength of Islam is still present in the masses of Syria and Anatolia, of the East Asian mountains, of Arabia, Egypt and North Africa. The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power, may be delayed -- but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed (emphasis added).
Note: The historical portion of this article follows the outline of my recent book, Sword and Scimitar, which, in 352 pages copiously documents -- including from little known or previously untranslated primary sources -- the long and bloody history between Islam and the West, in the context of their eight most landmark battles. American Thinker reviews of the book can be read here and here.
Fake news media faces a lawsuit for false reporting which caused the high-tech lynching of the Covington Catholic high school students who attended the 2019 March for Life. New York legislators gave a standing ovation to killing babies on the date of birth. The governor of Virginia sought to legalize killing babies after birth. These three attacks have made Americans more aware of Democrats' culture of death and war on the unborn. Abortion is front and center on the international political stage.
A verse in the Bible says, They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Who could have imagined that God would transform the following three attacks on the unborn into a blessing for the pro-life movement?
Since the Roe v Wade abortion-on-demand decision in 1973, 60 million babies have been killed. Pro-lifers are passionately energized to challenge Roe. Praise God!
I was blown away that the majority of the estimated 300,000 who attended the 46th Annual March for Life were teens, pre-teens, and millennials. It was heartwarming and encouraging to see so many young people overflowing with compassion for the unborn. They were extremely excited, upbeat, and joyful about celebrating and defending babies. Many carried signs, I am the pro-life generation.
More pro-life than their parents, over 50% of millennials believe abortion should be illegal in all or most situations.
Every time I lament that my fellow blacks insanely support Planned Parenthood, which targets black babies to kill, I'm flooded with emails from whites. Lloyd, let blacks know Planned Parenthood was founded by rabid racist Margaret Sanger to exterminate blacks. Frustrated, I yell at my computer. I've been telling blacks the truth about Sanger and Planned Parenthood for years to no avail!
Unbelievably, over 20 black religious leaders gathered to ceremonially bless a new Planned Parenthood abortion chop-shop in Washington, D.C. These supposed black shepherds are participating in the genocide of their own flocks.
To stop the black-on-black genocide via abortion, Godly black ministers put up a billboard. The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb. Guess who had a cow and demanded that the billboard be removed? The answer is Rev. Al Sharpton, black civil rights organizations, and Democrats.
Black civil rights leaders have betrayed their people and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Liberalism continues to devastate the lives of black Americans. And yet, black leaders keep preaching the destructive, evil religion of liberalism to their people.
Planned Parenthood demands that womens rights include mothers killing their babies for whatever reason they deem necessary before or after birth. Here is a link to a brief video of an abortion doctor explaining to Congress, in graphic detail, the procedure he used to perform second trimester D&E abortions. Anyone not extremely disturbed by this video is spiritually ill.
President Trump, the most pro-life president in American history, signed legislation to empower states to defund Planned Parenthood. From day one of his presidency, Trump took action to defend the sanctity of life. He reinstated the Mexico City policy, stopping American foreign aid from going to organizations that promote or support abortion around the world.
In his speech to March for Life 2019, President Trump said, Together we will work to save the lives of unborn children so that they have a chance to live and to love Every child is a sacred gift from God.
Trump signed a letter to Congress stating that if it sends any legislation to his desk that weakens the protection of human life, he will veto it.
Carrie Fischer was aborted in 1968, but was born regardless six months later. The failed abortion caused Carrie to be partially paralyzed and facially disfigured. As a little girl, five to seven years old, Carrie had reoccurring dreams of a baby in a womb fighting for her life; trying to get away. Carrie said she felt the baby's pain and heard her screams.
At age 13, Carrie learned that the baby was her. A relative told Carrie her mother tried to abort her. When Carrie confronted her mom who raised her, she confessed and wept deeply. When the abortion failed, Carrie's mother said she was filled with regret and shame. Today, Carrie and her mom are best friends.
Remarkably, Carrie did not suffer brain damage as doctors predicted. Due to her facial disfigurement, Carrie endured horrific bullying by students and teachers. Carrie attempted suicide. Today, Carrie is happily married. She speaks around the country. Carrie said God saved her life to be a voice for the voiceless unborn.
My friend, radio show host (Radio Patriot) Andrea Shea King shared her story with me. Pregnant and unwed at age 15, Andrea chose giving her son up for adoption rather than abortion. Forty-two years later, Andrea received a phone call from her son, which led to a heartwarming reunion. Andrea met her daughter-in-law and her grandkids. Her son is also a conservative like Andrea, his mom.
Andrea's story inspired me to write, perform and record this song titled, Hello Mom, It's Me. Please enjoy the music video.
Download the song, adding it to your playlist. Share it and encourage others to do the same, in defense of the sanctity of life. With abortion zealots outrageously seeking to legalize killing babies even after they are born, a compassionate pro-life song is needed more than ever.
Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Help Lloyd spread the Truth.
After so many waves of propaganda against the wall, many Americans are forgetting why they originally wanted it. It has therefore become necessary to expose these bad arguments so that the Democrats do not succeed in subverting the great gift President Trump is offering the American people. There is an answer to all of these objections, that all Americans, non-experts and experts, can understand.
The liberal argument: An immigrant might go looking for a better life in the U.S., but he leaves his wife and children behind. In time, he can earn money, buy property, and bring the rest of his family into the country as well. However, if Americans build a wall, then that man cannot bring his family into the country, and they must stay separate, or he will be deported while his family is allowed to come in.
Response: This narrative assumes many things. It assumes (1) that illegal aliens are not already subject to horrible exploitation from traffickers, (2) that they are somehow able to find jobs and buy property, (3) that the family will have no choice but to come in illegally as well, and (4) that no one had a choice in any of this and that the U.S. is somehow at fault for this situation.
No doubt, many immigrants will separate from their families out of desperation, but this is nonetheless a choice. They can also choose to stay with their families and seek opportunity where they are and go through the legal process of living in America or emigrate to another country. If they come to America illegally, they will struggle with integrating and finding legitimate work, which will then prevent them from finding a place to live. And if they come here illegally, that doesn't mean their family members have to do the same.
A wall does not separate family members. Family members separate themselves. A wall may prevent them from making a foolhardy decision and may actually do more to keep families together.
2: The wall won't work.
The liberal argument: Studies will show that most illegal immigration happens as a result of people overstaying their visas, not by people walking across the Rio Grande. If conservatives were truly serious about stopping illegal immigration, they would track down people who violate the terms of their visa and deport them. Also, walls can be easily circumvented.
Response: Because "undocumented immigrants" are just that undocumented this makes studies guessing at the number of illegal aliens here because of overstaying a visa and those crossing the border without papers highly suspect. It also throws into doubt the statistics of how many illegal aliens commit additional crimes. People with visas, even expired ones, can be counted. People who bunk at their friends' houses after a bumpy ride on a coyote's truck cannot be counted.
This also brings up another problem: immigrants who apply for visas in the first place are quite different from the ones who don't. Even to visit the U.S., people must do a great deal of paperwork (and pay money) to prove the validity of their stay in the country. They are generally law-abiding, productive people. By contrast, those who cross the border without papers are the ones who have no chance of acquiring a visa i.e., criminals and the desperately poor trying to claim asylum.
Therefore, it is a different matter to deal with aliens crossing the border because there was no wall to block them and dealing with immigrants who overstay their visa because they have integrated into American life. The first presents a security problem, which can largely be addressed with a wall; the second presents a documentation problem, which can be addressed with reform to immigration laws.
Concerning the hypothetical claim that illegal aliens can just build tunnels or pay off border officials to circumvent the wall, actual data prove otherwise. Walls may not prevent all illegal crossings, but they will stop most of them because that's what walls do. As Rep. Crenshaw tweeted: "When you're trying to cross a border, and there's a 20-plus foot steel slated barrier in your way, it seriously inhibits your ability to cross. A sensor tells a Border Agent, miles away, that [he has] to find you now. I wonder which one works better."
3. The wall is immoral.
Liberal argument: Migration is a human right. People in poor countries are entitled to migrate to richer ones that offer more opportunity, and it is only moral and fair that those richer countries let them. Only selfish racists would object to this.
Response: Having open borders or no borders is unsustainable and irresponsible. It is unsustainable because American businesses and government cannot offer jobs and social services to every person who would come, particularly low-skilled workers who consume more and produce less than average. Unregulated illegal immigration would quickly overwhelm the system and turn America into a third-world country.
Eliminating borders would also enable the villains who drive people north in the first place. Latin American governments already do close to nothing for their people, and there would be little reason to change this. The U.S. would absorb their vast underclass and embolden them to be even less responsible. This already happens now, with immigrants seeking asylum from bad governments, yet liberals somehow blame the U.S., not Honduras or Venezuela, for corruption and heartlessness.
4: Let's reform immigration law instead.
Liberal argument: Illegal immigration is a problem because coming in the U.S. legally is such a hassle. If people were really interested in reducing illegal immigration, they wouldn't bother with a wall, but would make it easier to come here legally. Border officials could enforce immigration laws more effectively if those laws were fair and coherent.
Response: The process of becoming an American citizen is tedious and outdated and could use serious reform, but one should remember that its byzantine nature evolved from the idea of testing an immigrant's goodwill and ability to fit into American culture. There would be a tradeoff with making it easier to come and live here legally. If it's too easy and no quota is set, then poor immigrants will overwhelm American communities. If it's too difficult and very limited quotas are set, prospective immigrants will have to paradoxically break the law to have legal status.
All that said, calling for immigration reform in reaction to building a wall is a distraction. A wall is meant to physically stop illegal entry into the country. Immigration law is meant to regulate legal entry into the country. A wall has no bearing on the process of becoming a legal resident, and immigration laws have no bearing on keeping people from walking across a border without permission.
People come into the country illegally because the incentive is high and the difficulty of crossing illegally is relatively low. A wall would significantly raise the difficulty of coming in illegally and thereby encourage prospective immigrants to seek legal means of entry. Instead of making legal immigration easier with laxer laws and a less secure border, the U.S. can at least make illegal immigration harder with a more secure border, which would then make existing laws easier to enforce.
Recommending immigration reform as a solution also inevitably moves the conversation from the clear goal of securing the border to the dense thicket of immigration policy. It complicates a simple concrete idea with questions about immigrant quotas and criteria for citizenship, national interests, and so many other things. This then diverts public attention away from the wall and the media know this, which is why they bring it up only now, when a wall is seriously considered.
Logic and experience prove that a wall on the border is the first step toward a better immigration policy. It will allow Americans to finally determine the quality and quantity of immigrants they would like to take in, which is a nation's sovereign right, and it will validate the immigrants, who followed the rules and show a genuine interest in contributing to their new country. In other words, the wall can go a long way in making America great again.
Liberals know this, and this is why they fight it with every phony argument they can. Americans need to see past the propaganda and trust in their common sense.
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He is the editor of The Everyman and has also written essays for The Federalist and The American Conservative. Follow him on Twitter.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.
As African heads of state and government gather in Addis Ababa this weekend for the 32nd Summit of the African Union, Sudan is deep in its second month of protests sparked by a steep rise in the cost of living. Security forces have killed more than 45 people and caused serious injuries to many more, even firing live bullets and tear gas into a hospital while pursuing injured people.
In Zimbabwe, a sharp rise in the cost of fuel, with consequences for the cost of living, has also spawned widespread protests. In response, security forces have unleashed a deadly onslaught, killing 12 people and arbitrarily arresting over 600. Reports also indicate that many women were raped in the crackdown and many people were left with debilitating injuries. Most of those arrested are denied their fair trial rights in courts, including through arbitrary denial of bail. The internet was also shut down in the wake of the protests, in an apparent attempt to prevent people from supporting or organizing peaceful assemblies.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the just-concluded general election was characterized by palpable tension and pockets of deadly violence, resulting in more than 20,000 people fleeing the country into neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville and Uganda. A UN investigation found 59 mass graves and the killing of over 500 civilians in Yumbi in the western part of the country. In the wake of the elections, the government closed many media outlets and mounted a crackdown on internet and mobile messaging.
In the face of these gross human rights violations, the response from regional bodies, including the African Union (AU) and Southern African Development Community (SADC), has been marked by discordance, delayed reaction or deafening silence.
There has not been a single reaction condemning or calling for an end to the ongoing gross and widespread human rights violations in Zimbabwe, neither from the AU nor from SADC.
It is not much different on Sudan. The last and only statement of concern issued by the AU Commission Chairperson (on 30 December 2018) was soft and lacklustre. Instead of condemning ongoing egregious violations, the Chairperson confined himself to merely calling for restraint on all sides. He opted to remind Sudanese political leaders of their collective responsibility to find peaceful solutions, effectively preaching peace without unmasking the system that perpetrates violence.
On the DRC, the AU and SADC reactions to the post-election contestation were marred with confusion, contradictions and discordance, undermining their own legitimacy and risking an escalation of the political tension and possible violence. But they had one common feature, they made no comment whatsoever on the media restrictions, peaceful protests and internet shutdowns which amounted to an arbitrary denial of citizens rights to freedom of expression and assembly at a time when these were most needed.
As is custom, the AU Summit is expected to assess the state of peace and security in Africa. The latest three crisis situations on the continent DRC, Sudan and Zimbabwe and the long-standing ones in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Sahel and Lake Chad basin region, South Sudan and Somalia are expected to be on the agenda.
Africans, especially those affected by brutal crackdowns by their governments, are watching and wondering whether the AU will continue with business as usual or truly address these crises. Based on past evidence, there is little reason for optimism.
Despite commitments, obligations and progress in establishing structures and mechanisms such as the Peace and Security Council (PSC) and Continental Early Warning Systems (CEWS), the AU remains invested in treating symptoms of conflicts and violence as opposed to addressing the real underlying causes behind them persistent human rights violations and perpetual cycles of impunity.
Examples are many. From CAR and South Sudan, to northeastern Nigeria and Cameroon, the AU and regional bodies have either failed to act or dawdled until the situation reached a tipping point.
Even when the AU has shown concern for human rights abuses, it has repeatedly failed to tackle the issues head-on, lacking the courage and political will to drive change.
For instance, in 2015, the AU was presented with overwhelming evidence of gross human rights violations being committed in Burundi, where President Pierre Nkurunziza was unleashing a brutal crackdown on human rights in his bid for a controversial third term in office. The AU expressed the intention to decisively stop the abuses, only to backtrack before it could take any concrete action. Through the East African Community (EAC), it chose the path of mediation, a process that has completely ignored accountability for the gross human rights violations committed in the country since 2015.
In South Sudan, there is the long overdue promise yet to be realized. It is now more than three years since the signing of the original peace agreement for South Sudan, which provided for the creation of a Hybrid Court for South Sudan (HCSS) by the AU. Despite successive peace agreements, the violence continues. Millions of civilians in South Sudan continue to be killed, displaced and subjected to sexual violence with no justice in sight.
Preaching peace is not enough. It is time the AU made radical changes to how it responds to gross human rights violations and crimes committed in conflict situations. Through its actions and words, the AU needs to be seen as standing on the side of people fighting for justice and their freedoms not the other way around. For talking peace without ensuring justice and respect for human rights risks evolving into advocacy of capitulation.
The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
Guwahati: Vociferous support or strident opposition to the citizenship amendment bill (CAB) is politically motivated, says Suhas Chakma, director of New Delhi based Rights & Risks Analysis Group (RRAG). Interacting with scribes at Guwahati Press Club as part of its 'Meet the Press' programme through video-conferencing from New Delhi on 8 February, he stated that the proposed amendment neither changes the status quo on ground nor does it allay long-standing concerns over the issue of refugees.
Explaining his point of view on the bill that contains only three clauses, Mr Chakma stated that CAB does not introduce any new element whatsoever. The first clause relates to exempting Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Sikhs from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh from being defined as illegal immigrant. But since the Hindus who came from Pakistan and Afghanistan to settle in India's western part have been applying for citizenship and getting it too, there is no reason as to why their counterparts elsewhere in the country cannot do and get the same.
The second clause relates to reduction of waiting period for submitting application for citizenship via naturalization from 11 years to 6 years. It makes no difference as those who had come to India by 2007 can now apply for citizenship. "If CAB does come about, all it will accomplish is to enable those who came by 2012 to apply for citizenship now itself; otherwise, their turn will come in 2023 in due course. The process will continue," Mr Chakma pointed out.
The third clause punishes 'Overseas Citizen of India' card-holders for violation of provisions 'of any law for the time being in force, which is draconian and appears to be a means to stop criticism by OCI card-holders, according to the rights activist CAB does not introduce any new element as per the Citizenship Act, except the exclusion of certain countries and religious groups.
Whether one is included in the NRC or not, those who have fled to India to escape persecution can apply for citizenship like the Pakistani Hindus, Mr Chakma asserted. He also claimed that CAB is all but an inducement to Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan to accelerate the cleansing of religious minorities from these countries. Instead of taking up the issue of protection of persecuted religious minorities with Dhaka, Islamabad and Kabul along with the international community including United Nations, New Delhi is virtually asking these countries to expel the remaining minorities.
Given the continuing persecution, the cut-off date of 31 December, 2014 is illogical and arbitrary, Mr Chakma stated. This is nothing but continuation of the failed policy of Jawaharlal Nehru who remained silent after Myanmar military dictator Ne Win expelled about 3,00,000 Indian origin people following the coup in 1962. Had New Delhi spoken up at that time, Myanmars Rohingya crisis would not have been on the lap of Bangladesh, India and other countries now, he argued.
The rights activist also spoke out against what he termed 'hypocrisy' in Northeast States where some refugee groups are favored to the exclusion of others. "The Mizoram government says nothing about 1,20,000 Chin refugees there while Arunachal Pradesh government has been introducing programmes for Tibetan refugees," he pointed out.
There is no other term to describe people who are fleeing persecution, except that they are refugees. It is high time India puts in place a comprehensive refugee law, stated Mr Chakma, adding that no country governed by rule of law can deny shelter to those fleeing
persecution.
A Birmingham police sergeant has been indicted and arrested on multiple child sex charges involving a young male family member.
Birmingham police late Friday announced the arrest of Sgt. Randy Manuel Martinez. He is a 20-year veteran of the force and was assigned to the North Precinct until allegations against him surfaced.
He was booked into the Jefferson County Jail just after 5 p.m. on three counts of first-degree sodomy and two counts of felony sex abuse.
Sgt. Johnny Williams said Birmingham police officials were alerted that criminal investigations were being conducted by outside agencies and immediately place on administrative duty. Upon receiving word of the charges against him, he was taken into custody where he was working at police headquarters in the burglary division.
The investigation into the allegations against Martinez was led by Fultondale and Kimberly police officers, and began in 2018. Fultondale police Chief D.P. Smith said the alleged incidents reportedly happened in both jurisdictions took place several years ago. Kimberly police Chief Ricky Pridmore said they got the case in early 2018.
Martinez is being held in the Jefferson County Jail on bonds totaling $80,000. This story will be updated.
As civil rights activists call for a full-scale U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the fatal shooting of Emantic Fitzgerald EJ Bradford Jr. by a Hoover police officer inside the Riverchase Galleria, federal officials in Birmingham said they have been involved since the beginning.
This matter has been, and continues to be, under review by various civil rights components within the Department of Justice since these events occurred, U.S. Attorney Jay Town told AL.com Friday. The recent release of a 10-week investigation by the State of Alabama is now a part of that review by those components. Any further comment would be inappropriate at this time.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall earlier this week released his report following a more than two-month State Bureau of Investigation into Bradfords death. Marshall had the option to charge the unnamed officer, clear him or take the case to a grand jury for indictment consideration.
The 24-page report clearing the officer detailed what investigators believe happened the night Bradford was killed. The AGs Office came to this conclusion: After an extensive investigation and review, the Attorney General has determined Officer 1 did not commit a crime under Alabama law when he shot and killed E.J. Bradford and thus the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct preclude presentation of this case to a grand jury, Marshalls report states.
The ruling prompted outrage among activists.
Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, on Thursday said the group is asking for a DOJ investigation into Bradfords shooting and the shooting of so many other young black men in particular.
When you have an epidemic, you allocate resources to try and eradicate the problem, Simelton said. We have an epidemic of young black males being shot to death.
Frank Matthews, president of the Outcast Voters League and chief adviser for the Birmingham Justice League, scheduled a protest for noon Saturday outside the Hugo Black federal courthouse.
Were protesting the decision made by Attorney General Marshall," Matthews said Thursday. "This will start a whole national push as we will criss-cross across the country talking about this decision that was made not to give the case of Emantic Bradford to the grand jury as well as other instances of police violence, brutality all over the country that have been justified.
Activists and civil rights groups also question Marshalls move to assume jurisdiction over the Galleria shooting cases from Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr. In December, Marshall announced his office was assuming prosecutorial jurisdiction after the admission by Carr in a letter to Marshall of the presence of potential conflicts between himself and key parties in the case. Carrs potential conflicts appeared to be his relationships with several of the organizers of ongoing protests over Bradfords death.
The day after the Nov. 7 election, Carlos Chaverst Jr. posted on Facebook two photos of himself with Carr. Chaverst in 2017 had launched a petition for the governor to keep Carr as district attorney, netting more than 1,500 signatures.
Carr on Friday released his first public statements following Marshalls ruling on the death.
If the evidence in a case is clear that the shooting was legally justified, then a prosecutor would be ethically prohibited from presenting the case to a grand jury, Carr wrote. However, it is my belief that every officer-involved shooting, if after a full analysis of the evidence collected there remains any question to the legality of the shooting, then the presentation of the case to a grand jury would be appropriate.
Because my office was not presented with the evidence in this case, he said, I will not comment on the attorney generals decision.
Mr. Bradfords death is a tragedy, Carr added, and my heart goes out to his family and our community as we continue to grieve his loss.
AL.com journalist Howard Koplowitz contributed to this report.
Buc-ees arrival into Alabama has been met with enthusiastic crowds and a welcome mat from politicians.
But 11 days after the Texas-based company opened its first non-Texas travel station, another greeting surfaced: A federal lawsuit from the Oasis Travel Station located a mere 4 miles east on Interstate 10.
Other small-sized retailers are now equally as worried about Buc-ees fuel-pricing strategies. They believe the company, with its innocent-looking beaver logo, wants to sink its buckteeth into the coastal Alabama fuel market, driving away the homegrown competition.
When they first opened, they came in 12 to 15 cents under costs, said Paul Moore, who operates eight convenient stores in Baldwin County and has been in the business for 37 years. That really pissed us off.
Spotlight
The lawsuit has placed the 35-year-old Alabama Motor Fuel Marketing Act in the spotlight, a rarity for a law that has mostly avoided the media glare in recent times.
The law was enacted during the final years of George Wallaces tenure as governor and was backed by Democrats some who would later become Republicans as a way to protect locally owned convenience stores and independent gas stations from predatory pricing.
There is a laymans reaction, if you will, of Whats wrong with cheap gas? said H. Dean Mooty, a Montgomery-based attorney who represents Oasis in the federal court case and who has been involved other related cases over the years. If that were allowed the independent folks I represent and the Alabama-based folks, they could not compete and it would run them out of business.
He added, In theory, the person giving the gas away could set (prices) where they want it and ultimately, the consuming public would suffer.
The Alabama Motor Fuel Marketing Act has been upheld in the courts, and the Legislature hasnt publicly discussed a challenge to it in about 15 years.
Some lawmakers, contacted by AL.com in the past week, were hesitant to comment, being unfamiliar with the law or with the Oasis litigation.
Said state Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Daphne: Obviously, we want to maintain a clear playing field for our businesses. Im a free market guy and at the end of the day, there needs to be a middle ground.
Economists: Bad law
Economists, for the most part, take a negative view on Alabamas law and other laws like it. The state is believed to be one of about 15 with a law regulating retail fuel prices in order to protect smaller competitors from so-called big-box retailers.
The Alabama law, passed in 1984, prohibits big retailers from selling gasoline to the public for less than its costs to buy and transport it.
That prohibits a retailer from selling fuel below cost, or at a cost lower than charged by others within the same general area. The law is aimed at preventing giant retailers from gaining market monopolies.
Carson Bays, a professor emeritus of economics at the Harriot College of Arts and Sciences at East Carolina University who has studied fuel prices laws in other states believes there is no evidence that pricing strategies by big-box retailers allow them to eventually dominate a market, charging what they wish.
Bays said that advocates for laws similar to Alabama believe that if smaller retailers leave a particular market, the predator will then recover the losses by charging a monopoly price and hammering the consumers in the pocket book.
Said Bays, The contention is nonsense. The gas retail industry in the U.S. includes over 100,000 outlets, and entry into the industry is relatively easy. Attempting to raise the price to the monopoly level would attract new entrants quickly and make the strategy ineffective.
Dan Sutter, a professor of economics at Troy University, said economists believe the sales-below-cost laws are meant more to protect some of the competitors in the market as opposed to protecting competition.
Clearly the intent of the law is to try and protect the smaller competitors, which are also locally owned as well, said Sutter.
Sutter, Bays and coastal Alabama-based economist Semoon Chang say that long-established federal law protects consumers from monopolies.
Chang points to one specific federal law the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936 which prohibits anticompetitive pricing by producers and was designed to prevent small stores from being crushed by chain stores.
My point is that Alabama does not need the Alabama Motor Fuel Marketing Act, Chang said. If the problem gets serious, players can fight in the courtroom over the possible application of the Robinson-Patman Act.
Cheap gas prices
Alabamas law, though, has been upheld in the courts including the 1992 McGuire Oil Company vs. Mapco, Inc. case in which the Alabama Supreme Court weighed in. That case involved allegations of below-cost fuel pricing in Mobile during the late 80s.
Mooty said that other cases have been filed over the years involving Costco and Murphy Oil, which provides fuel sales at Walmarts.
And the Legislature has shied away from retooling the law. In 2004, following a Federal Trade Commissions suggestion that the Alabama law restricts competition, the Legislature opted to take a pass before debating whether the law should be rescinded.
Mooty maintains that the law has helped keep Alabama fuel prices low compared to national averages. And he maintains that Buc-ees threw an unfair punch at competitors regionwide when its opened in Alabama on Jan. 21.
According to AAA, the average price of regular gasoline in the Daphne-Fairhope-Foley area was at $2.01 per gallon last week, and $1.99 per gallon about one month ago. The lawsuit claims Buc-ees opened by selling gasoline at a rounded figure of $1.80.
On Wednesday of the past week, a gallon of regular gasoline was selling for $2.13 at the Oasis Travel Station. At Buc-ees, gasoline was selling for $1.90.
The Oasis Travel Center in Robertsdale, Ala., off of Interstate 10 at the Wilcox Road exit. (John Sharp/jsharp@al.com).
We think in the 35-year history of the law, Alabama has had some of the cheapest gas in the country and we maintain what we consider is fair competition has served the public with relatively cheap gas prices than the rest of the country, Mooty said.
Consumers, at least on social media, have been critical of the lawsuit and believe Oasis should lower its prices rather than go to court.
From the consumers standpoint, they care about gasoline and other products at a big-box retailer, said Sutter at Troy University. They want a retailer to be as efficient as they possibly can.
Traviss Cassidy, an assistant professor of economics at the Culverhouse College of Business at the University of Alabama, said that laws like the Alabama Motor Fuel Marketing Act might benefit rural areas, but they harm retailers in more urban areas.
Buc-ees is only about 30 minutes from downtown Mobile, but its surrounded by rural fields. The small town of Loxley, on Jan. 28, annexed the travel station into its town limits as part of a fuel and sales tax-sharing agreement with the company.
In rural areas, there are few retailers, so one small retailer going out of business can greatly increase market concentration and thus prices, said Cassidy, referring to limited scholarly research on sales-below-cost laws on the fuel markets. This is not the case in urban areas, where there are many retailers, so (sales-below-cost) laws may primarily serve to increase profits and prices by discouraging entry by low-cost firms.
Buc-ees case
An attorney with Buc-ees told AL.com that the company is aware of the Alabama law. Texas has no such law.
Those who have followed Buc-ees expansion through Texas believe the company will be difficult to outmaneuver in the Alabama case.
Buc-ees will likely dig their heels in on this, said Venky Shankar, director of research at the Center for Retailing Studies at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University
He said there are several factors working in the companys favor: Oasis is going to have to prove that Buc-ees priced its fuel below cost, that it did so in order to drive out local competition, that it intended to raise prices once local competitors vanished, and that its done this kind of thing previously.
The relevant Alabama law is akin to predatory pricing law and in this case, proving Buc-ees has violated the law will be difficult, Shankar said.
Buc-ees legal team is used to jostling with smaller-sized retailers in federal court but those cases mostly involved trademark disputes.
The company lost a trademark infringement case in federal court last year that pitting Buc-ees against Nebraska-based Buckys convenient stores. The case was filed by Buc-ees after Buckys, which had been in business since the early 80s, opened convenience stores in the Houston area.
But a federal jury ruled in Buc-ees favor last May in a trademark battle between Buc-ees beaver logo and San Antonio-based Choke Canyons alligator logo. Buc-ees, in that case, persuaded jurors that that Choke Canyon a rival travel station in Texas was using a logo that confused highway travelers, causing them to pull off to a Choke Canyon rather than a Buc-ees.
Betsy Gelb, professor of marketing at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, said the fact that they won that suit suggests to me that in the eyes of the jury, they were right.
Gelb said shes unsure how the Alabama lawsuit might play out. But it might not matter, she said, given the popularity of Buc-ees as a highway travel destination. They are just popular, said Gelb. That idea of clean restrooms. Who is against that, right?
Two men were hospitalized with gunshot wounds from a shooting this morning at the Cash America store on Spring Hill Avenue, Mobile police said.
No information was available about their conditions.
Corporal LaDerrick DuBose, public information officer for Mobile police, said in an email that suspects involved in the incident fled in a vehicle.
Police pursued and took four male suspects into custody in the area of Perimeter Road and Avenue O, near Brookley Field. DuBose said the investigation is ongoing and more information would be released when available.
Earlier today, Steven Millhouse, spokesman for the Mobile Fire-Rescue Department, said one of the two people taken to local hospitals for treatment of injuries was a 23-year-old man.
Updated at 1:20 p.m. with information from Mobile police. This story will be updated when more information is available.
Oklahoma authorities say they've arrested a third person in the shooting of a 77-year-old man who was killed during a robbery more than five years ago.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that 33-year-old Jeremy Hugh Scott was arrested Friday near Denver for his involvement in the June 2013 death of Charles Nieman at a convenience store in Boise City, Oklahoma.
Scotts arrest came two days after authorities say they arrested two people in Mobile for their role in the shooting. Zachery Wilson and Timothy Dees, both 28, were being held Friday in the Mobile County jail.
A cold case unit in Oklahoma began reviewing the shooting in December. Authorities say laboratory testing revealed a lead that led to the arrests of the three.
Scott was being held in the Adams County jail in Colorado.
Online jail records for all three dont list attorneys for the men.
The battle against Lewy body dementia continues as I count down my 678 albums with 318 to go as the band Kaleidoscope steps up to the plate.
From the archives, we have the Beatles bootleg story, the Birmingham Community Choir, Scottish band Big Country, and comedian Shelley Berman.
For those tuning in, Im tweaking the format slightly. Every week, Ill have one new review, a blog post or essay and 4 reviews from the archives, in that order. Remember to click on the titles for more in-depth reviews. Click on About Me for more about what Im doing. On to the NP:
Now Playing:
MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$
If you like psychedelic banjo music youll love this. Actually, I do. But its not for everybody. I became aware of this band because Ive long been a fan of David Lindley who has put out some fun, eclectic music over the years on his own. And he also has been a fixture in Jackson Browne recordings and performances over the years. Excellent on guitar, steel guitar, banjo and assorted string instruments you may have never heard of. In his youth, he won the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Competition near Santa Monica, Calif., two years in a row. (Some sources say he won 5 contests in all.) This band, Kaleidoscope, preceded his work with Browne. Its a product of the psychedelic 60s but what separates it from some in this genre is the highly skilled playing of the instruments and its infusion of world music. And banjo.
Non-countdown post from the blog
From the archives Nov. 1, 2017
Another Hugging This Has got to Stop
I hugged my pastor on Sunday.
So did hundreds of others after (and before) the services at First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham on Oct. 29, 2017.
It was the Rev. Shannon Websters retirement service followed by potluck with fried chicken and more pasta salads, fruit plates and macaroni and cheese than you could shake a big spoon at. The abundance was threatened by appetites and attendance.
After more than a decade here, Shannon will be soon leaving Birmingham with his wonderful wife, Lou Ann, a social worker, for his beloved home-state New Mexico. See AL.com story.
Tears flowed as tributes were made.
The church stakes claims on it being the oldest church in the city of Birmingham with roots going back to the 1850s before settling into its current place at 2100 4th Ave. North in the late 1800s, and I couldnt believe that my first attendance was only about two years ago.
Ill soon be a very regular attendee as my wife, Catherine, begins working there as interim associate pastor. Shell be working with the Rev. Catherine Goodrich, acting head of staff.
NOTE: It should be noted that since this was originally posted on my blog, Nov. 1, 2017. Catherine Olivers term as interim associate ended in January, last month. Catherine Goodrich has returned to her job as associate pastor. And the church has hired a new pastor, head of staff, Terry Hamilton-Poore.
Click here for more of this story.
-=-=--=--=-=--=--=-=--
ARCHIVED RECORD REVIEWS ON MY COUNTDOWN
The Beatles (reprise)
ALBUMS: Beatles Alpha Omega (1972), The Beatles/1967-1970 (Blue Album 1973)
MVC Rating: Alpha Omega 4.0/$$$$$; 1967-1970 Blue Album 5.0/$$$$$
Beatles bootleg from early 1970s.
Ill probably write more about the Beatles music before this is all over. But right now Im going to offer up a little look at these two Beatles packages that have an interesting back-story. One of the collections is a box set of four records. The other collection I have is commonly referred to as the Blue Album which covers Beatles from 1967 to 1970. My brother had the Red Album which covered 1962 to 1966. If you have the red and blue albums, 2 records in each set, you have the essence of the groups great work, but I would recommend the separate albums as well, especially Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and the White Album. Now funny thing about the 4-record Alpha and Omega. Its a bootleg or pirated batch of music. Ive heard it called a needle-drop bootleg because the bootlegger recorded these records right off the original records. Dropped the needle on a record on a turntable turned on a microphone and pressed the results in vinyl. The Alpha Omega album was actually sold on late night TV in the US. Apparently copyright laws varied from the UK to USA and gave someone the audacity to just steal these off of Beatles records. There are several versions of this bootleg.
-=-=-=-=
ALBUM: Let God Into You, He Cares for You (Date not listed/Cost to you unknown)
Perhaps because it is Sunday. And perhaps because it is more or less next on my alphabetical list to count down my 678 records, I'm going to give a listen to the Birmingham Community Choir. I remember buying this in Birmingham before I went away, perhaps in 1983 or 1984. I bought it in a predominantly black neighborhood, that if memory serves me, focused primarily on gospel music. This is big booming Sunday-go-to-church music., This choir was directed by Lawrence T. Sneed. It has old school gospel songs, 'I Dreamed of a City 'Called Glory' and the MLK tribute 'Let Freedom Ring' and 'And Jesus is on the Mainline' and 'I'll See You in the Rapture."
The Crossing (1983), Steeltown (1984)
MVC Rating: The Crossing 4.0/$$; Steeltown: 3.5, $$
The fact that I have two Big Country albums means I must have liked them a lot. Or at least the first one to make me buy the second one. I do like Big Country although havent listened to this band in years. They sing in Scottish accents and make their guitars sound like bagpipes in a wall of sound that is rousing and dare I say, war-like. On a scale of their contemporaries the Alarm and the Waterboys, Id place them ahead of the Alarm and behind the Waterboys purely subjective because I like all three.
ALBUMS: Outside Shelley Berman
MVC Rating: 3.5/$
Sounds like a 1950s version of Seinfeld, perhaps crossed with a little bit of Lenny Bruce rage. He euphemizes some sexual content here, very slyly I might add. He died this year but before that he was a character in Curb Your Enthusiasm, a show everyone recommends but I know little about other than Larry David stars. Noted for accusing Bob Newhart of copping his one-sided phone routine where he pretends like hes on the phone with some famous person from history.
About $95 million is expected to be used for conceptual plutonium pit production design at the Savannah River Site, a task led by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, a National Nuclear Security Administration senior spokesperson told the Aiken Standard on Thursday.
The money comes from the NNSA's plutonium sustainment program in the fiscal year 2019 budget.
Once the NNSA selected and funded SRNS for the preliminary work, the management and operations contractor "mobilized" teams to tackle the development of the potential "Savannah River Pit Production Plant" as well as the transition of the waning Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, an SRNS spokesperson said mid-January.
Budget report: Plutonium pit production could cost $9B over next 10 years Fully satisfying the U.S. energy and defense departments' fiscal year 2019 nuclear-related requests would cost $494 billion over the next deca
The conceptual design work done with the help of "plutonium experts" from Los Alamos National Laboratory and "other sites," the NNSA senior spokesperson noted Thursday will inform future decisions and funding, the SRNS spokesperson has said.
"The preliminary plans SRNS is developing show how we will make use of SRS's expertise, existing facilities and infrastructure to start up and carry out this important work, which builds on the site's historical service to the nation's nuclear security," the SRNS spokesperson said at the time.
The NNSA provided the SRS lead contractor a separate $40 million to support MOX termination and transition "activities," the NNSA senior spokesperson said.
SRNS submitted its MOX transition plan on Dec. 21, 2018, according to a same-day NNSA statement.
No less than 80 plutonium pits per year are needed by 2030, according to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. Plutonium pits are nuclear weapon cores, often referred to as triggers.
To meet that modernizing requirement and looming deadline, the NNSA and U.S. Department of Defense in May 2018 together recommended producing 50 pits a year at SRS and another 30 pits a year at Los Alamos, the nation's plutonium science and production center of excellence.
Pit production at SRS would require a major rework of the incomplete MOX facility, according to the joint recommendation. On Oct. 10, 2018, the NNSA delivered MOX termination notices to project contractors and guarantors. The termination was effective immediately.
The next significant pit production buildout milestone will come when the deputy secretary of energy, currently Dan Brouillette, selects a preferred approach.
"The timeline depends on the appropriation of funds, and we will work closely with Congress on this national security imperative," the spokesperson continued. "NNSA remains committed to achieving the Department of Defense's requirement for at least 80 pits per year by 2030."
Missing the 2030 mark would result in higher costs and a greater demand for pits, according to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.
The NNSA is a semiautonomous U.S. Department of Energy agency in charge of the nation's nuclear outfit and related nonproliferation.
SRNS is a Fluor-led company with partners Newport News Nuclear and Honeywell International.
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In fact, other than the claim that over a quarter of the 239 eligible killers studied had definite, highly suspected or possible/probable ASD, the study breaks no new ground in presenting evidence that mass murder is associated with ASD. There are some references to head injuries and psychosocial factors among certain infamous or obscure perpetrators which are not novel, but what is notable and particularly irresponsible is the conflation of older-than-the-hills crimes such as serial murders, domestic violence killings and militant ideological acts of terrorism with the recent historical advent of non-ideological, random mass murder. The researchers thereby sloppily imply that a high percentage of terrorists could have definite autism and an even higher percentage have probable autism. The attempt to find a terrorism gene also isnt new but theres a level of flagrancy in this attempt that hits a new low.
Authors also cite Simon Baron-Cohens work claiming an association between zero empathy killers and autism based in part on the undeniably racist MAOA or warrior gene theory (also discussed in Part 3). The MAOA gene theory has zombied along for decades, mainly due to the fact that it supposedly implicates the role of low serotonin in violencemeaning that it has an automatic serotonergic drug marketing algorithm attached. But one of the problems with the theoryin addition to the fact that it blatantly implies that people with brown skin are more violent, and was used in the 1990s as grounds for a prospective program to psychiatrically vaccinate certain racial groups against violence using medication is that the role of serotonin in mental disorders has repeatedly been debunked as a drug industry PR myth.
The studys authors mention Adam Lanza once in the introduction (apparently justifying the use of Lanzas photo for media coverage). Lanza is not included in tables for some reason, though hed already been mostly confirmed to have high functioning autism by family members. Also in the introduction, authors claim killers such as Norways Anders Breivik and James Holmes of the Aurora, Colorado massacre (both discussed in Part 2 ) had some form of autism spectrum disorder based on Daily Mail articles. Whats good for the goose Daily Mail is the source on Elliot Rodgers medication, though this source quotes a family member while the material on Holmes and Breivik involve no sources close to either. Researchers repeatedly cite the works of Professor Michael Fitzgerald, whose theory that Adolph Hitler had autism (discussed in Part 3 ) has been widely criticized.
The authors admit to using Google as a primary research tool: The name of the killer was entered into the search engine Google followed by AND and each of the following search terms were explored separately: brain; head injury; asperger; autis* and, in some cases, murder if the name alone was failing to produce relevant sites. In these searches, numerous resources were examined in detail including court transcripts; newspaper articles and other online resources.
The authors indicate the research focused only on subjects apprehended for murder after 1985, explaining that the cut-off point was chosen because there has been a dramatic increase in the recognition of ASD since this date. The date also precedes by a year the mass marketing of Prozac, the first SSRI antidepressanta drug class most associated with school shootings, random mass murder and suicide. Researchers do not discuss whether there had been an actual dramatic increase in autism , do not note the expansion of the vaccination schedule which also occurred in 1987, nor the recent research of a connection between SSRI antidepressants and autism (discussed in Part 2 of the Koma series). Authors dont comment on the fact that at least one subject was only an attempted murderer and killed no one, and that another conspired and planned a militant mass murder but did not commit the actual act. There may be more irregularities among other cases listed in the studys tables.
In the recent study on mass murder and developmental disability, Neurodevelopmental and psychosocial risk factors in the development of serial killers and mass murderers , researchers postulate that an extremely diverse category of mass killers had/have autism. Essentially two things are looked at in the work: killing and autism. Killing how, why, how many (or any) and over what time period are simply a grab bag. The study calls for a raking over by experts to formally analyze methods and case definitions, but Ill list a few of the obvious highlights:
Rodger's demeanor in the video segment could be taken for a Sheldon Cooper send-up, but the combined effect of pompous delusions and his view of himself as a living god who will reduce his victims to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood is chilling. His rampage in Isla Vista left two young women and four young men dead. There was no indication from reports that he personally knew the victims, though he stated in the video that he intended to target a particular sorority house. He reportedly shot himself after the killing spree. Family members of both victims and the perpetrator called for stricter gun control in the wake of the crime.
Rodger, like many of the modern random mass murderers, had no history of violent assault but, by all accounts, had recently become increasingly paranoid and withdrawn and had quit school. Members of a chat group the Rodger belonged to described Rodgers violent hate speech towards women and his musings on releasing a virus that would kill off his male competitors. Shortly before the massacre, his family had attempted unsuccessfully to get an emergency commitment for him after learning of a Youtube video in which he described his rage at sexual rejection and social isolation. Rodgers manner of evading police scrutiny during the welfare checkby convincing them that he was a kind and wonderful human being does not jibe with an autism diagnosis but theres no indication in reports that Rodger's diagnosis had been updated. In the video, Rodger vowed to take deadly revenge against those he saw as unfit to live for committing the crime of rejecting him. In his 141 page manifesto , Rodger describes his intended rampage as the Day of Retribution, himself as divine and unambiguously akin to the Second Coming who will rid humanity of the impure and depraved.
On the evening of May 23 nd , Rodger stabbed and shot six people to death in a college town near Santa Barbara, drove his car into another and left six more hospitalized, two in critical condition. Several sources claimed that, according to family members, Rodger had seen psychiatrists for many years and had been on medication . In a video, Rodger explained that hed refused to take Risperdal due to the side effects, though he didnt indicate whether or not he took other prescriptions. Sudden withdrawal from certain drugs is associated with a steep increase in suicidal and homicidal reactions.
The original Koma articles on mass murder, autism and drug side effects were an attempt to illustrate through the views of a range of independent psychopharmaceutical experts, reform psychiatrists and through independent research that, due to the current rate of roughly 1 in 50 boys (and rising) with the condition, autism is still statistically underrepresented among non-ideological mass murderers. But the series also considers that, due to the extremely high rate of drugging among the developmentally disabled with medications that carry black box warnings for violence and suicide up to 90% according to reform psychiatrist and expert witness Dr. Peter Breggin, a drugging rate approximately 1000% higher than the already high American averagewe could eventually see the prophesy of the autistic killer self-fulfilled through the magic bullet drugs meant to treat them. The conjectures made in recent reports on the Santa Barbara massacre appear to be no exception to the general pattern.
On Friday, May 23 rd , 22 year old Elliot Rodger, son of Hunger Games assistant director Peter Rodger, became the latest poster child or horned devila killer with a reportedly identifiable trait, in this case possible Aspergersfor the mass murderer profile. According to CNN , Rodgers mother made a sworn statement in divorce documents that her son had been diagnosed with high functioning autism as a child.
The Frau Koma series I wrote in 2013 was intended to explore questions over politics, genetics, corporate crime and scapegoats in the media campaign to associate autism with mass murder. In light of the current fanfare over yet another research claim of an association between autism and modern massacre as well as another recent mass murder committed by an individual who reportedly suffered from autismthe series is unfortunately relevant again.
The citations used by authors to categorize the subjects according to likelihood of ASD diagnosis are awful, including repeated links to Murderpedia and repeat use of the same Swedish tabloid story as substantiation in their definitive category of killers diagnosed with ASD. No legitimate sources are visible in the tabloid claims, just excited pronouncements that lead nowhere, even when following the material that authors claim using in addition to the tabloid. The fact that the lead author of the study is from Sweden may get around the American Goldwater rule ethically banning mental health professionals from diagnosing individuals theyve never interviewed and without proper authorization. Meanwhile the actual translated text of the Swedish article raises questions either about legitimacy of diagnoses or the categorization and nature of crimes (serial murders and militant terrorism vs. random mass killings; conspiracy, planning and directing vs. committing the deeds).
Regarding the substantiations used for the highly suspected ASD category (which includes ideological and militant terrorists Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh and wily serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer), an Oslo psychiatry professor who admitted in court that hed never interviewed Anders Breivik, a mass murderer with known militant ties and ideology, decided from watching Breivik on TV and at trial that he had Aspergers and got himself an expert witness post and into the headlines in the bargain. The psychiatrist largely based his secondary diagnosis on the observation that Breivik smiled inappropriately during trial but seemed unaware that serial killer Ted Bundyknown for charming victims and investigators alikeinfamously did the same during his own trial, even smiling during his own execution. Breivik laughed during this psychiatrists testimony in court and later denied having ASD. Breiviks personal contacts described him as charming and social but stubborn. Like Breivik, the Exeter bomber in the definite ASD category, Nicky Reilly, had militant ties and had also been heavily medicated prior to the crime and possibly during. But unlike Breivik, who consciously chose his affiliations and actions and had never been diagnosed with autism, Reilly had reportedly been set up in a honey trap and had been under surveillance by MI5 prior to the bombing attempt, leading to discussions of the use of the mentally disabled in intelligence and law enforcement stings as well as by militant terrorist organizations.
The study contains no reference to subjects exposure to psychiatric drugs, though its documented that all but one of the perpetrators mentioned in the definite ASD category had received previous psychiatric treatment, sometimes at several junctures. At least one subject in the definite category was confirmed to have taken psychoactive medication, and multiple names throughout all categories overlap with infamous entries on SSRI Stories, a database of drug-mediated crimes and bizarre acts run by Rxisk.org. Only one so-called mass killer mentioned in the studyNicky Reilly, who, again, injured only himself had been formally diagnosed with autism prior to his attempted bombing. Another among the definitesRobert Napperwas diagnosed with autism in prison.
Its worth mentioning that there seems to be a trend of re-diagnosing adult offenders in prison with ASD that probably warrants more scrutiny than its gotten. There have been rumors for years of diagnostic and research teams going through adult prison systems for this purpose, most notably the Illinois penal system. Some of the cited research in the recent autism-murder study alludes to this and this kind of diagnostic practice could appear to be a manipulative self-fulfillment of the increased recognition theory of autism prevalence. Similar to doubts raised over the use of improper diagnostic tools and case definitions in the Brugha study which found a suspiciously high rate of adults with autism in the U.K., a common concern is that adult-onset prescription or illegal drug-induced dementia, both of which are also epidemic, may be falsely rebranded as autism. Rates of prescription drugging in American prisons are reportedly very high. Parts 1 and 2 of the Koma series cite research on overlaps between symptoms of autism and symptoms of later-onset drug-induced dementia.
Within the definite ASD category, its claimed that no subjects had head injuries. Considering the reported difficulty of diagnosing past closed head injuries, the violent family backgrounds of several subjects and the researchers lack of personal access to subjects, the claim seems a bit glib. But insisting on a lack of mitigating physiological injury in the definite autism division places violent autism squarely in genetic-psychiatric turf, which would not be surprising considering the professional backgrounds of lead authors.
Not only are the authors loose on the definition of autism for the purposes of the study, they alter the FBI standard of what defines mass murder (murdering four or more persons during an event with no cooling off period between murders) by including those who killed none, those who only planned and directed, and serial killers who killed individual victims over a period of years. There are no FBI standards for manipulating terms and statistics to slap a criminal suspect label on an entire diagnostic category of human beings.
The authors include several mass murderers (by which they mean, again, zero to four or more victims killed either in a short timeframe or over a period of many years and on any motive) who would be obscure to American readers, making backtracking the profiles and translating the material a slog. Even if authors offer detailed profiles on request, anyone digging through the pile of horseshit offered as clinical evidence in the study can get a sense of how subjective these profiles might be due to the fact there are few even reasonably confirmed non-ideological mass-murdering autistic ponies in the definite and highly suspected categories.
While authors focus on modern mass crimes on the rationalization that only modern cases provide enough biographical information to (loosely and illicitly) diagnose subjects with autismnot mentioning that, more importantly, a modern time frame may be necessary to find any clusters of both autism and random mass murders in the first placetheres also been a mad dash from the other end: industrial PR front group collectives like the Skeptics have been frantically trying to dredge up older historic cases of school shootings and supposedly random mass murders.
The aim of the historic dredging is to find proof that the crimes could not have been spurred by modern drugs because they occurred before these medications were marketed. But as discussed in Part 1 of the Koma series, between the amphetamine-and-brain-tumor-fueled Bell Tower massacre in 1966 and opium-fueled Malaysian knife rampages in the 18th and 19th centuries that inspired Rudyard Kiplings introduction of the poetic run amok (from the Javan, to kill), pickings are slim for historic non-ideological mass killings which also dont happen to involve substances with clinical associations to violence. But still they try: several commenters on Skeptic sites have recently urged others to bring up Bremen in online discussions of modern school shootings to stump the prescription drug theory of mass violence.
The Bremen amoklauf or school shooting in 1913, which may have been newly discovered when it received media attention in Germany on the 100th anniversary of the crime, was a case of a mentally unstable, unemployed Catholic teacher in Bremen-Walle, Germany, who opened fire on a Protestant school, killing 5 girls and wounding 18 more children and 5 adults. The German coverage ranged from a transparently sensational See! School shootings arent new! tone to more sober reviews which conclude that the perpetrator, though unstable, was also motivated by religious hatred, may have had the support of a local arms dealer, and that the incident followed a rash of religiously-motivated attacks in that region and throughout the period. This also sparked discussion of politicization and bias in defining older-than-the-hills religious murder which is viewed as politicide if performed by government and militant political terrorism if performed by nongovernment entities according to common German definition since media crime coverage would flexibly apply religious motives to murders performed by individuals outside the dominant faith, such as the son of Islamic immigrants who killed his pregnant Christian girlfriend because he didnt want to be a father.
The hunt for the illusive clusters of drug-free non-ideological mass murder in the eras prior to the advent of modern psychopharmaceuticals seems to be continually bogged down by a closer look at individual cases. This is probably why the front groups have resurrected the Scientology smear tactic to silence even the most independent drug critics through fabricated anti-psychiatry cult associations (discussed in Part 1 ) after the CoS smear gimmick nearly died of Grassley a few years ago. For the record, I always take a page from the policy of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights and avoid using citations and resource material that, to the best of my knowledge, stem from the Church of Scientology and associated groups because I also have no affiliation with this organization or any other religious group. I have no comment on the Skeptic biotech front groups attempts to conflate criticism of pharmaceutical products with religious irrationality other than to point out that political media analyst Noam Chomsky designated the Skeptics themselves as a state religion which specializes in rationalizing state atrocities.
Independent from conscious motives to obscure the link between random mass violence and prescription drugs, one reason the born psychopath theories are continually spawned may be because, as the very mainstream forensic psychiatrist William H. Reid noted, Big news about crimes, and especially terrorism, may push psychiatrist interviews from the local feature to the cover story.
Reid goes on to state that Terrorists and their organizations have always been practical. Their principles are older than any government and date to hundreds of years before Christ, and that most terrorists are not mentally ill and probably do not have more psychological flaws than most criminals Even so-called suicide terrorists, who seem foreign to our culture and make us feel helplessly vulnerable, are not difficult to explain on practical, rather than psychological, grounds. Reid argues further that the profile of the emotionally needy followers of a militant scheme would not apply to organizational leaders who tend to have more practical agendas. In other words, there is a vast difference between militant terrorism and random non-ideological mass attacks, not the least of which is that terrorism is an ancient form of violence.
The interim takeaway of the Koma series was that, since both autism and non-ideological mass murderand certainly the statistical explosions in rates of both appear to be genuinely recent phenomena, its hard not to wonder if the fashionable combined autism-mass murder theory kills a few birds with one stone since it simultaneously casts both autism and modern increases in random, non-ideological violence as genetic, which in turn tellingly removes the growing onus on the role played by the pharmaceutical industry in generating both. This type of theory also threatens to make the public care less about modern industrial epidemicstheir causes or abuses and the tragedies which befall victims (discussed in Parts 1 and 3) due to the criminal shadow being thrown over the lot. The fact that media fanfare is being given to a study which now proposes that militant terrorism is also associated with ASD widens the shadow in a disturbing political sense, particularly in view of Homeland Security chief Lisa Monacos recent unveiling of a national program of locally-based envoys to watch for and report signs of radicalization in American children and within communities.
What kinds of behaviors are we talking about? For the most part, theyre not related directly to plotting attacks. Theyre more subtle. For instance, parents might see sudden personality changes in their children at homebecoming confrontational. Religious leaders might notice unexpected clashes over ideological differences. Teachers might hear a student expressing an interest in traveling to a conflict zone overseas. Or friends might notice a new interest in watching or sharing violent material.
But tossing terrorism into the mix also throws a shadow of serious doubt over this kind of generalized psychiatric profiling. As William Reid also wrote,
Although everyone has a personality, and personality is important in behavior, the idea that there are archetypal terrorist personalities or mental illnesses that predispose one to what most people call terrorism is largely a myth. People want terrorists to have particular psychological characteristics, so that we might be able to figure them out and eliminate, mitigate, or at least define the foe. But wishing doesnt make it so. The government is rarely in a position to observe these early signals, so we need to do more to help communities understand the warning signs, and then work together to intervene before an incident can occur, while always respecting our core commitment to protecting privacy and civil liberties. During the past several years, thats what weve attempted to do.
With revelations of mass NSA surveillance which, as it turns out, mostly targets consumer advocates and other domestic activists, not terrorists, its clear how the criminal shadow is spreading over more and more people in the U.S. The Koma series was intended to look into the politicized history of this criminal shadow and wishful hunt for the elusive genetic crime profile that has been the common denominator of every totalitarian political philosophy in the past century.
The Koma series argues that all totalitarian systems are, one way or another, apocalyptic cults, since all cultswhether secular or nonpromise that a period of destruction, constriction of rights and even bloodshed will be followed by a paradise on earth free of disease and suffering and populated by new and improved human strainsonce the bad elements are weeded out. Whoever dictates the weeding is basically Jesus in the scenario. I suppose that, depending on the type of tyranny, either government or corporations are God in this scheme. But according to Noam Chomsky, disputing the difference between forms of totalitarianismwhether its state Bolshevism or corporate fascismis a waste of time because the difference is nil.
Its pretty clear that, in the technological age, the curative weeding is justified by medical and scientific fields through magic pharmaceutical bullets for depraved genetic criminality, through the crowd-control and military-industrial prescriptions of weaponized anthropology and corporate social science, etc.so theres your modern rapture and Second Coming. And since the weeding must be done on the basis that whole groups of people are, due to supposedly identifiable genetic traits (horns or lack thereof), either all evil or all good, the science behind creating these divisions will become more and more absurd and the weeders will tend to cast themselves higher and higher above the great unwashed. From Elliot Rodger's manifesto:
I am Elliot Rodger Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.
The series concludes that the scientists generating and defending the fraud which obscures iatrogenic violence and who harvest false genetic theories from the carnage will, as they maniacally cut through humanity deciding who is genetically fit and unfit (for life, liberty or the pursuit of data) pretty much resemble the drug-fueled monsters they create.
In an age when cellular science often dictates legislation and public policy, commercial science has repeatedly forbidden the public from attempting to interpret scientific research, has called for censorship and even civil and criminal penalties against those who criticize commercial science doctrine. Its akin to medieval church canons banning the laity from translating or owning scripture. Part 1 of the Koma series also discusses the campaign of biopsychiatrists to frame even posttraumatic stress as genetic and to increase the power of practitioners to force patients into drug treatment, even through the use of fraud and perjury. Part 3 discusses the application of genetic psychiatric theory in death penalty cases and the advisory role that psychiatrists have carved out for themselves to pull the strings of life and death.
Through the raising of awareness, each generation might develop a degree of resistance to the previous generations bigoted nonsense, so it might be difficult in an era when so much commercial PR plays to humanitarian impulses to make these institutional designations of who is impure and depraved overtly racist again, although many obviously remain covertly racist. Nevertheless, the lines are being overtly redrawn and are, in fact, a type of racialism. Its just as absurd and dangerous and, to the degree that lies tend to build on lies in a house of cards effect, inevitably ensures that all forms of discrimination are fed and kept alive. But of course if everyone continues to give up rights at the current pace in our apocalyptic march towards progress, by the time its proposed that 2 + 2 = 5or that this group of people with these identifiable traits are inherently evil and must be abolishedno one can safely scoff or protest (totalitarianism); or else scoffing and protesting have absolutely no effect (inverted totalitarianism).
That moment when the can of worms opens and becomes domestically visible seems to have cascaded very suddenly and taken people by surprise at several points in history, and were almost there again. This years worse-than-ever autism-mass murder theory proves it.
These days, even if an analogy is apt, anyone evoking box cars and death camps in a political comparison will be accused of embodying Godwins Law. But its not dystopian visions of human freight and killing fields that represent the turning point: its when no ones laughing at or protesting hard enough against the horseshit. And even if a few do, the horseshit keeps coming back on a bigger silver platter and with bigger headlines.
According to political philosopher and father of the scientific method, Karl Raimund Popper, Platos moral theory of the ideal state, in spite of what Platos academic defenders claim, is the ultimate totalitarian model and totalitarianismis inseparable from racialism. Popper defines racialism as a caste system of inherently inferior/superior strains of human and designates it as the critical center of Platos theory which Platos defenders most tend to euphemize and ignore. Also according to Popper, its the element of racialism itself which generates the need for propaganda which is used in turn to pass inequality and resulting atrocities off as humanitarian. Popper was not a fan of Plato or Platos modern euphemists, whom he regarded as either misled or as veiled defenders of totalitarianism. From The Open Society and Its Enemies:
Summing up, we can say that Platos theory of justice, as presented in the Republic and later works, is a conscious attempt to get the better of the equalitarian, individualistic and protectionist tendencies of his time, and to re-establish the claim of tribalism by creating a totalitarian moral theory And he successfully enlisted humanitarian sentiments, whose strength he knew so well, in the cause of the totalitarian class rule of a naturally superior master race.
In other words, what officially distinguishes totalitarianism from other forms of dictatorial rule is the junk genetic science it uses to raise the select few above the teaming masses by birthright, and to rationalize casting systematic suspicion across wide swaths of those masses, invading their privacy, controlling their access to information and unleashing coercion and atrocities, etc. Plato had his nutty Pythagorean Theorem for proper breeding of the classes, eradication of degenerates to prevent social upheaval and decline, and child displacement to ensure proper class programming. Under Hitler and Stalin, mass killings of an ever-expanding list of degenerate suspects were based on dueling versions of bastardized genetic theory one claiming that bad genes led to bad ideas, the other claiming that bad ideas led to bad genes. Under Franco and then various Latin American juntas, a strange hash of the above bastardized genetic theories also led to mass displacement of children who were stolen from murdered government opponents to lessen the supposed expression of the psychopathic red gene. Todays totalitarian moral theory seems to be hybridizing itself from two disasters: random mass murder and the autism epidemic.
Aside from yet another autism/mass murder research claim, many relevant things have happened since the Koma series was first published. In terms of state child-snatching rationalized on junk science, the case of Justina Pelletierwho was taken from her parents care by Childrens Hospital Boston and the state of Massachusetts exactly one month after the Koma series was published in 2013 has brought more attention to a widespread and eerily Platonic politicized trend in the U.S.: children taken from their families by the state due to medical disagreement with doctors, often when parents resist being herded to the commercial product trough. According to the number of medical marijuana activists placed under investigation by Child Protective Services for public lobbying, children are also increasingly removed to snuff free speech. All of it has cut its teeth on long standing mass child displacement among the poor, minorities and Native Americans. Mass displacement of children has been identified as a form of genocide under international definition. And it all starts with a garbage theory.
In order to create a genetic disease of political views and beliefs, Francos premier psychiatrist, Antonio Vallejo-Najera circumvented having to pick a lane between Freudian psychology and genetic theory by amalgamating his red gene concept with a genetic or bio-psychic rendition of Freudian hysteria, i.e., somatoform disorder. Somatoform disorder was the state of Massachusetts justification for taking custody of Justina Pelletier. Like Vallejo-Najera, many modern mainstream somatoform researchers such as Ioana Simona Bujoreanu of Childrens Hospital Boston who quickly decided that Justina Pelletier had the psychosomatic disorder and claimed the child for her NIH sponsored study with the help of the Department of Children and Families also increasingly believe the condition involves genetic liability. This development completes the circle back to Vallejo-Najeras fascist psychiatric doctrine.
In Justina Pelletiers case, one actual genetic conditionmitochondrial disease (which also has an acquired form)was swapped for another theoretical one that had more moral degeneration overtones that would justify taking her into state protection to rid her of bad ideas contracted from her parents. By this equation, even without the added twist of genetic theory, an idea becomes a disease that can spread like a plague and corrupt the social fabric. It precisely resembles Platos concept of moral degeneration which he described as a sickness requiring strong medicinei.e., force and coercion. Actual medicine, according to Plato, was not for the benefit the individual but for the good of the state and the social fabric.
Another relevant occurrence since the series was published has been the autism advocacy communitys response to the buzz on autism and violence. Many parents of severely affected children have recently become alarmed that a specious autism/mass murder association has made it more risky to seek help for self injury and short-range violent behavior in their loved ones. With Harvards report of a three-a-week death toll among the disabled from use of restraint and seclusion in institutions, parents are keenly aware that the disabled are far more likely to be victims of assault than to commit it (a statistical point which the autism-murder study authors quickly pass over). Nevertheless, some individuals with autism can be aggressive, though this often stems from physical pain and typically impacts mostly the individual themselves, caregivers and family members (discussed in Part 1), which is precisely why it should not be ignored.
But politicized genetic violence theories could lead to more coercive drugging of individuals with autism on a public safety rationalization (discussed throughout the original series). The irony of this is, again, that the common denominator in most modern non-ideological mass murders has been that the perpetrators were either on or had recently withdrawn from certain pharmaceutical drugs at the times they committed the crimes. These theories also threaten to increase institutional abuse and denial of medical care (discussed in Parts 1 and 3). After all, why would anyone waste empathy and resources on born killers? Never mind if the majority of affected individuals are low functioning and many could hardly load a gun, much less elaborately plan a mass public execution: autistic killer theories, since theyre axiomatically based on the genetic conception, must also be predicated on the argument that most affected people are high functioning because this is the only way the increased recognition/they-used-to-hide-in-plain-sight mythology can be palmed off.
Probably the most relevant issue that has come to light since the Koma series is that the postmortem toxicology screen of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer (discussed in Part 2), was finally published after a delay of nearly a year. The toxicology report claims that no drugs, either illegal or prescription, were found in Lanzas system.
Because of the delay in releasing Lanzas toxicology results, the unprecedented secrecy around adult mass murderers medical records in general (Lanzas complete medical records have never been released despite public demand, nor have any mass shooters since Columbine) , industrys long history of fierce political suppression of independent research which demonstrates drug risks, and the suspiciously heavy promotion of these screening results by the usual industry conflicted pundits, many observers were left unsatisfied by the Sandy Hook toxicology conclusions. One professional investigator, who could easily be described as the worlds current leading independent expert in pharmaceutical-related murder and suicide and who has also made a study of coroner corruption in these cases, offered several reasons why toxicology screens should not be automatically viewed as definitive in the absence of complete medical histories:
Given the importance of the issues, and the convincing record of mental health problems and treatments, this issue needed definitive input. This means that, for instance, hair samples should have been taken to establish [the perpetrators] record of drug intake over the prior 6 month period. An apparent absence of anything in the blood at death is compatible with not screening extensively for prescription drugs, or with the vagaries of post-mortem drug distribution, or with the fact that he had stopped recently and the drug had cleared his system and he was suffering withdrawal effects.
The conundrum of disaster capitalism is trying to figure out whether A) the cover up of a manmade disaster resulted haphazardly in having to choose a fall guy for the falloutin this case, clinically established violent side effects of pharmaceutical products leading to statistical explosions in a particular type of crime leading to the scapegoating of autism which mounting evidence argues has genuinely increased due to the side effects of other pharmaceutical productsor B) if the political importance of having a fall guy disincentivizes acknowledging the nature of the disaster and stopping it. Is institutional denial the bigger problem or institutional expedience?
Going back to recent news of mass domestic spying and the also relevant increase in draconian anti-terror legislation in the U.S., so much of which has also been based on fraud from yellow cake and WMD to indefinite detention without trial and the targeting of nonviolent domestic activists it all lends queasy ramifications to the resurrection of the born psychopathand now born terrorist frenzies. The rest should be more or less obvious: Acts of mass violence are convenient to creating a state of emergency justifying incursions on rights. Incursions on rights are convenient when corporations are in the process of capturing government, wrecking the environment, committing humanitarian abuses and economic crimes. In this sense, the degree to which terrorism and school shootings have become convenient could contribute to how fiercely discovery of cause will be discouraged and how much expedient alternative theories will be encouraged. And it all underscores the fact that scientific hypotheses often serve political agendas. As political and not merely scientific events with the potential to effect policy and society, it goes without saying that these theories are fair game to be scrutinized by those who individually stand to pay for them or anyone else concerned with political freedom.
I dont know if Ive been able to make the case that what happens in autism doesnt stay in autism. Others might need more convincing and they can take their chances that theyll remain unaffected. But its clear to many of us that the shotgun diagnostic approach making the bureaucratic rounds as writ and doctrine and mercilessly reducing an entire diagnostic category to a type of dangerous, criminal subclass can strike other targets.
Adriana Gamondes is a contributing editor to Age of Autism. She lives with her husband and recovering twins and is one of the blogs Facebook administrators.
where P Y is the number of patient years, P is the number of patients and Y is the number of years for which patients live after diagnosis. Calculating with the conservative prevalence estimate of 1 in 500, there may be approximately 600,000 ASD patients in the USA alone. These persons may live for an average of 76 years. Using the conservative age of 3 years for the time of diagnosis, PY may be calculated as follows. P Y =600,00073=43,800,000, i.e., almost 44 million patient years.
What if the pharmaceutical industry had a formula for projected drug profits from a massive rise in autism? A formula such as: P Y =P Y And what if the same industry simultaneously rewarded scientists, media companies and organizations which disseminate the concept that there is no autism epidemic, that the rise is false, that the numbers have always been with us, but that theres just increased diagnosis due to increased clinical and public recognition of autism? And what if this industry went on a massive campaign to proselytize the dangers of any treatment methodor any scientific authority which threatened P Y =P Y ? Profiting from something while claiming it doesnt exist is nothing new. According to some historians, the myth of the flat earth was perpetuated by the Phoenicians to prevent maritime trade rivals from voyaging to England to mine tin. Tin, which seems to have been scarce in ancient Canaan, was an essential ingredient to bronze; bronze was the essence of military power and trade at the time. Advantage in the tin trade gave the Phoenicians untold power. As long as the lie held, Phoenician fleets regularly made mining expeditions north, trading freely with the natives of the British Isleswhile neighboring states feared plummeting off the edge of the world if they dared to sail through the Straits of Gibraltar. For the analogy, imagine the existence of the epidemic as England; autism recovery treatments as the Straits of Gibraltar; and maybe psychopharmaceutical drug profits as tin. The epidemic-based profit formula actually exists. It was published in a 2003 study for Eli Lilly by researchers Robert and Julia Gerlai ( HERE ). From the study: Autism: a large unmet medical need and complex research problem The question whether the epidemic status of ASD is due to true increase of incidence of the disease or simply its better detection and diagnosis is debated. Nevertheless, according to a most recent report to the legislature on the principal findings from the epidemiology of autism in California, the M.I.N.D. institute has confirmed that the increase of incidence is real and cannot be attributed to changes in diagnostic criteria or misclassification. Autism was estimated to have a frequency of more than 1 in 500 children, while more recent studies found its prevalence as high as 1 in 150 (for examples, see; also see CDC website HERE ). Researchers, private (e.g., Alliance for Autism Research), and government (e.g., National Institutes of Health, USA) agencies have recognized the enormous need. As a result, funding for research has significantly increased. Surprisingly, however, autism is still not among the neurological or neuropsychiatric diseases onto which large pharmaceutical research companies traditionally focus. This is unfortunate as ASD represents a significant unmet medical need with an enormous market size. Consider the following: ASD may be diagnosed as early as 23 years of age. Some even argue that successful diagnosis may be made at 8-12 months HERE ) Autistic persons can live a normal life span. The market size can thus be calculated as follows: P Y =P Y
To put this number into perspective, let us consider Alzheimer's disease, a disorder that is considered to represent the largest market by big pharmaceutical research companies. Calculating with P=9 million (say 15% of people above 65 years of age will have Alzheimer's disease in the Unites States) and Y=6 (Alzheimer's disease patients live, on average, for 6 years after first diagnosis), PY=54 million for Alzheimer's disease. The actual numbers may slightly vary. The number of Alzheimer's disease patients is actually smaller than 9 million but the disease may be diagnosed earlier and patients may live longer than for 6 years after diagnosis. On the other hand, the number of ASD patients can easily be twice or even three times higher than the presently estimated 600 thousand. Thus, it is clear ASD represents an unmet medical need that is comparable in order of magnitude to the largest neurological disease market, that of Alzheimer's disease. Thus, ASD should be of major interest to pharmaceutical research companies even when the 17-year patent expiration rule is considered.
[Update: Now listen to Pfizers (Geodon, Neurontin, Xanax, Zoloft, Chantix; through Wyeth merger, Effexor, Ativan, Pristiq, Prevnar) Robert Ring, newly partnered with Autism Speaks. echoing the title of the study (HERE ) . Of the partnership, Ring says, This a real opportunity to really make a difference for a huge unmet need using expertise weve acquired over a number of years. In fact were working right now to build a pre-competitive consortium amongst our competitors, including Lilly (original manufacturer of thimerosal; maker of Zyprexa, Prozac, Cymbalta, Symbyax, Stattera), Roche (Valium, Klonopin, Tamiflu), Novartis (Ritalin, Tofranil, Trileptal; vaccines: Fluverin, Menveo), Janssen (Johnson & Johnson: Risperdal, Haldol), and trying to agree that this is an important population to be developing medicines for]
The study abstract was sent to me by Ben Hansen, a Michigan mental health activist and satirical blogger (Bonkers Institute HERE ) Hansen was covered by the New York Times when his Freedom of Information Act inquiry of Michigan Medicaid turned up evidence that an Eli Lilly account executive may have influenced drug prescribing within the program, which had generated a 100% rise in child drug prescriptions in just 10 months.
Just as P Y =PY denotes profit potential, for every child whose DAN-type biomedical treatments result in recovery or significant behavioral improvements and supplant the justification for psychoactive drugs, the formula also represents potential financial loss.
An email written by a friend and tireless warrior mother sums up precisely why non-psychopharmaceutical treatments for autism represent such a threat to industry:
The medication nightmare began when we were so desperate to keep our son in a mainstream situationwe did not even have a computer. He had no real functional language and was a runner. God help me I want a do over...We started down the psych. drug path I can't even remember some of them, he reacted so badly to many and then he ended up on Risperdal, and the side effects from that led to the use of Cogentin, Lamictal, Prozac. I can't believe he could even stand up. We honestly believed that these were going to fix the Autism. We were so uninformed. He is left with what is probably a permanent movement or tic disorder. We thought that Prozac was keeping this under some control but we backed him off of this as well. The tic is no worse without it. Plus when we got him off of the Risperdal and all of the other crap, his language and cognitive awareness exploded! All the drugs were doing was sedating him. Being off of the Prozac has given him a sense of humor! It doesnt just dull anger, or mood. It dulls ALL EMOTION! Once I was connected by a computer, to other parents and ARI in San Diego, things slowly began to change for us. Dr.Rimland actually spoke to me personally at least 4 times. We started the mega dose B vitamins, and fish oil, and over [three years] time we got him off [all the drugs].There have been a few supplements that we have seen real change with. CoQ10 gave him curiosity! Magnesium, probiotics, zinc, VitC and epsom salt soaks have helped (but not eliminated) his constipation.
As the original manufacturer of the mercury-based vaccine preservative thimerosal and the force behind Dick Armeys addition of the Lilly Rider to the Homeland Security bill barring lawsuits against vaccine makers, Eli Lilly and Company is not exactly neutral on the issue of environmental causation for autism. Though the drug maker doesnt currently manufacture vaccines, it maintains public lock step with vaccine manufacturers in terms of defending the perfect safety of vaccines and the genetic nature of autism. Eli Lilly funds such individuals as Dr. Bennett Leventhal (AofA Chicago Trib ;AofA Autism Speaks New Normal) whose response to the claim that the rise in autism rates represents a true increase was once Rubbish! (HERE).
Eli Lilly certainly has an interest in presenting the increased recognition theories, like those championed by GlaxoSmithKline grantee Eric Fombonne, for public consumption. If theres an epidemic, and no epidemic can be solely genetic, then autism is environmental and this brings the magnifying glass too close to Eli Lillys ethylmercury-tainted door. The company may also view children with autism as a repository for a long list of disgraced drugs which have the potential to be re-patented and dumped on expendable populations. The companys blockbuster antipsychotic Zyprexa was the subject of a sting by The New York Times and multiple front page stories when activist attorney Jim Gottstein discovered the company had long suppressed data on side effects, including lethal cardiometabolic disorder (HERE ). Lillys SSRI antidepressant Prozac along with other SSRI antidepressants, has long suffered from rumored association with school shootings (HERE ). Though Lilly has successfully deflected most Prozac murder cases by pouring billions into legal defense and PR, this year a judge in Canada ruled that a formerly peaceful teenage boy would not have killed his friend had it not been for recent exposure to the medication (HERE ). Aside from being associated with such horrifying birth defects as cardiac damage or "omphalocele" (infant born with brain or organs outside the body ), SSRIs have also been recently associated with elevated risk of autism in the offspring of women who take the medications in pregnancy (HERE ). The media frequently misreported the SSRI-autism study when it first came out, inferring that underlying genetic conditions leading to the taking of these medications might lead to elevated risk of autism, failing to mention that risk of autism in the offspring of those who took the drugs was elevated in comparison to women with the same conditions who did not take the drugs in pregnancy.
The association of antidepressants in pregnancy and autism is not a competing theory as far as the cause of the autism epidemic, both due to the fact that relatively few mothers of children with autism were exposed the drug in pregnancy and also because all roads seem to lead to Rome in autism: the most prevalent theories which are held up as alternatives to vaccine-causesuch as the highway study (HERE) or the Depakote association (HERE), invariably point to either substances in common (The most significant source of metals to the atmosphere is resuspension of dust from roads by moving vehicles and from other paved and unpaved surfaces by wind.
SSRI findings may in fact be supportive of the thimerosal theory because the adverse cellular effects of SSRIs share many overlaps with cellular damage by thimerosal, namely mitochondrial injury (mercury and thimerosal in mitochondrial damage: HERE and HERE and HERE ; SSRI-induced mitochondrial damage: HERE );and disruption of the assembly of tubulin in the brain (mercury: HERE ; SSRI: HERE). In the end, SSRIs may merely be a facilitator in a one-two punch effecta substance which wears down infants immune resistance to subsequent exposures.
Eli Lilly, like all pharmaceutical makers, is long practiced at quarantining the blame for a range of adverse effects on bad genes. Regarding Eli Lillys relationship to autism, the company now bears the brunt of being the first American distributor of both thimerosal and SSRI antidepressants. But being in the hot seat for cause is not the only reason pharmaceutical companies cling to the genetic alibitheres also the issue of drug profits lost to alternative treatments. If theres an epidemic and the condition is not genetic, then theres hope for prevention and perhaps recovery. As far as treatment is concerned, why would hopeful families tolerate the side effect profiles for certain psychiatric drugs which only suppress symptoms when other, far safer remedies targeting or preventing the underlying mechanisms of autism and related conditions are available? Imagine another marketing formula in which H is the value of effective treatment + prevention and the sum is future autism drug profits.
HP Y = goose egg
In terms of protecting industrys interests, that just wouldnt do. It would be better if the public were led to believe the increased recognition/genetic model of the disease. Again, this is obviously for a host of reasons a central reason being to protect vaccine manufacturers from litigation, and to protect their freedom to continue piling new combination shots and shots for diseases no one ever heard of onto an already overburdened schedule as old patents run out.
But, in the delicate words of Ronan Gannon, GlaxoSmithKlines executive director of US marketing and member of the National Vaccine Advisory Committees financing working group, the pharmaceutical drug market dwarfs the vaccine market. The global vaccine market was estimated at more than $20 billion last year with surges from Gardasil and the H1N1 scare, up from a mere $6 billion in 2006. Psychiatric drugs top $40 billion in annual sales in the US alone. Vaccine profits are expected to top $56 billion by 2016 and, if the pattern in the past two decades is any guide, drug profits may keep pace proportionately.
As far as autisms impact on the psychopharm market, considering the following:
Psychopharmaceutical sales for the treatment of autism are currently at $3.5 billion a year, largely for the US market, representing 7% of the overall $40 billion yearly psychopharmaceutical sales for 1% of the child population BusinessWeek).
The Lilly study enthusiastically projects that autism could eventually reach Alzheimers rates. Alzheimers rates are reported to be doubling every twenty years.
A significant percent of the 40 fold rise in pediatric bipolar disorder could be due to sub-autistic toxic injuries (another portion would be due to the drugs being prescribed to children themselves: mania is a listed side effect of all classes of psychotropes. See Sharna Olfmans Bipolar Children, chapters by Healy, Whitaker and Landrigan respectively, HERE).
Children diagnosed with bipolar disorder are frequently prescribed the same drugs as children with autism, particularly the newer, on-patent antipsychotics, though many are being treated with autism recovery methods.
Sales of atypical antipsychotics went from $0 to $16 billion a year since the start of the epidemic.
Bearing in mind that vaccine litigation potentially represents a corporate-wrecking proverbial last straw, we have our pick of motives for industrys perpetuation of the genes-only/always been with us/no cure/no epidemic rhetoric.
But the bend sinister is that, at the same time, acknowledgement of an epidemic in certain circles could enliven the psychopharmaceutical drug market. While some people might have thought that National Institute of Mental Health director Thomas Insels recent softening on environmental contributions to autism and admission that the rise is real (HERE ) meant he might eventually concede to vaccine causation, I just assumed he was boosting investor confidence.
Thomas Insel brother of a vaccine maker; chairman of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) who stealthily voted vaccine safety research off the agenda and, under whose oversight, the NIMHs website on autism went from mentioning a few drugs by generic name in 2006 to presently promoting 15 psychiatric drugs by brand and five more by generic name; the man under whose direction IACC consistently leads all its published recommendations with promises to create more psychopharmaceutical drug algorithms for autismis not interested in holding pharmaceutical companies to account. Hes unlikely to be interested in promoting non-psychotrope treatments for the underlying causes of autism. If anything, we may see him cheerleading research forGod forbid an autism vaccine.
Thomas Insel is merely following the tradition of his post. For decades, the National Institute of Mental Health has been under heavy criticism for being a captured agency which acts chiefly as PR wing to psychopharmaceutical manufacturers. Several NIMH leaders have gone on to either lucrative industry careers or lucrative symbiosis. Frederick Goodwin, former head of the NIMH (and front group ACSH advisory board fellow of Paul Offit and Steven Novella) lost his NPR show The Infinite Mind when he was caught taking $1.3 million in supposedly undeclared fees from GlaxoSmithKline and other drug companies to promote drugs like Paxil and Lamictal on the air. Other examples of the NIMH-Big Pharma revolving door, as clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine put it (HERE ), include Lewis Judd, a former NIMH director, who joined the scientific advisory board of Roche Pharmaceutical in 2001 (Klonopin, Valium, Tamiflu); and Steven Paul, scientific director of NIMH, who left to become vice president of Eli Lilly in 1993 (Prozac, Zyprexa, Cymbalta, Strattera, Symbyax).
Its not a matter of whether Thomas Insel will land at a pharmaceutical company once he leaves his current position, but a question of which one.
It would be a different story and wed be living in a different world (one in which childhood vaccines in the US would have been safer and fewer; maybe one in which the epidemic never happened) if the autism remedies being presented by pharmaceutical companies were in any way effective towards underlying disease mechanisms. But the idea that psychiatric drugs correct anything in the brain has been repeatedly debunked. In fact, to date, other than dabbling in prenatal vitamins, etc., Big Pharma simply cant compete with recovery treatment modelsnot fairly, in any case. They wont try either. Developing treatments which work by targeting vaccine injuries is out of the question. And research and development costs for such treatments go far beyond pharmas traditional investment bounds.
That doesnt mean pharma wont occasionally follow the cues of autism recovery research. Once the Lancet paper and its disturbing investigation into gastrointestinal disease, vaccines and autism were knocked out of the way in 2010 (only to be rectified in 2012 with the exoneration of co-author John Walker-Smith: HERE ), a surprising number of industry funded studies cropped up which happily associated GI dysfunction with autism, some even brazenly promoting new symptom reducers. But for many drugs companies, a step in the right direction will only land on another toxic solution: following the discovery that glutamate feedback may be disrupted in schizophrenia and autism (interesting that both mercury and the antiseizure drug Depakotea suspected but rare cause of autisminduce glutamate feedback disruption), drug companies rushed to find chemicals with sedating properties which could be shown to do something to glutamate so that the drug could be called a targeted treatment. The problem is, like past psychopharmaceuticals, these drugs would not necessarily do anything therapeutic to the target. No matter thoughwhatever the drug did do could be spun as clinically beneficial, as has been done for antidepressants and other classes of psychotropes (for one example of lab spin, the testing methods used in killed-animal drug studies cannot distinguish between DNA synthesis in the brain which occurs as a part of supposedly beneficial neurogenesiscell division and proliferation and DNA synthesis which occurs as a part of cell death, yet the FDA looks the other way). Once researchers found a likely candidatein this case, variations of a metabotropic glutamate agonist antipsychotic (HERE ) companies lined up for FDA approval . A small hitch in the approval process has been that glutamate agonists appear to have an even higher level of lethal neuroleptic malignant syndrome than either first or second generation antipsychotics (HERE). Nothing a little spin and a lot of cash cant fix.
Antipsychoticsthe main drug class being pushed for autism were originally brought to the American market for a mere $30,000 research investment. Far more funds were spent on heavy lobbying of government agencies and the press to promote the drugs as a miracle cure which would liberate mental patients from institutions once and for all. Instead the opposite happened. As journalist Robert Whitaker documented in his book, Mad in America, an eight year World Health Organization study performed in the 1960s and 70s (the International Pilot Study, (scroll down to C. HERE) found that outcomes for schizophrenia were three times worse in developed countries which relied primarily on the use of neuroleptics to treat the condition when compared to outcomes in a range of culturally heterogeneous underdeveloped countries which rarely employed the drugs.
In other words, in underdeveloped/developing countries, schizophrenia was knownas impossible as that may seem in the US as a disease with more than a 60% chance of recovery. In developed countries, the reverse was true. The WHO conducted a more surgical follow-up study in response to protests by organized psychiatry, but the original findings were only reiterated.
Although unlike autismschizophrenia is sometimes distinguished as a grab-bag diagnosis (misdiagnosed due to racism, or out of cultural or medical incompetence), the degree to which schizophrenia shows itself to be, like autism, a potentially environmentally mediated condition (HERE and HERE) affecting a subset of susceptible individuals may account for the lower incidence of schizophrenia (at least in the 1960s and 70s) in less industrialized countries. But the WHO five year follow-up to the International Pilot Study firmly demonstrated that severity of onset within agreed-upon parameters of the condition was not the determining factor in recovery rates. This hints that, whereas non-drug environmental factors could have triggered the condition in some, drugging rates almost certainly effected outcomes. At the time of the study, the rates of relapse and direness of outcomes were in direct proportion to the percentage of patients in developed countries who were chronically exposed to the drugs, with the Soviet Union winning the distinction of worst outcomes with a drugging rate of 85%.
The US now drugs the growing population of patients with schizophrenia at a rate of more than 93%; outcomes and relapse rates have worsened accordingly. Other countries have been catching up as well, so that the pool of undrugged schizophrenics is shrinking globally (HERE). In fact, schizophrenic patients have been drugged at such a pace in the past fifty years that most clinical and public concepts of symptoms and outcomes reflect the drugged condition, not the condition itself. For instance, schizophrenias clinical association with violencewhich was not strictly associated with the disease process 100 years ago increased with drugging rates. Though their behavior could be bizarre and disturbing and crimes committed by the mentally disabled may capture more media attention, schizophrenics were once statistically no more violent than members of the general population. Ironically, neurolepticsparticularly on withdrawal have been associated with staggering acts of senseless violence by individuals without criminal or violent histories and the subsequent artificial fusing of violence and schizophrenia in the public mind during the drugging era has led to broad public support for forced medicating and other harmful treatments in prisons and institutions. The same may prove true for autism.
The toxicity of the drugs and their capacity to induce or worsen environmental brain injuries shouldnt be that surprising. Early psychiatric drugs were often derived from various industrial pigments and solvents. Imipramine, for example, was once an industrial dye called Summer Blue. For years, researchers in major academic centers have been confounded over the mystery of why individuals treated with imipramine may actually turn blue (HERE).
Neuroleptics in particular have a questionable history. The drugs were originally used to deliberately induce Parkinsonism under the ham-fisted idea that Parkinsons was somehow antithetical to psychosis. Those with advanced Parkinsons diseaseso the thinking went generally dont show any emotion at all, much less the throes of psychosis.
The dopamine theory still used in marketing antipsychotics was concocted after the drugs had been put into wide use in institutions, and has about as much basis as the generally debunked genetic brain chemical imbalance correction theories used to market antidepressants today (HERE). It was originally thought that neuroleptics worked (at least initially and only when they did) to reduce psychotic episodes by inhibiting dopamine in the brain on the theory that dopamine levels flared during psychotic episodes. That concept never bore out in actual research though: measured dopamine levels could be high, low or indifferent in patients enduring psychotic incidents. Even according to industrys own dopamine theory, neuroleptics dont work in the end because the brain swelling unilaterally seen within weeks of exposure to antipsychotics turned out to be caused by drug-induced mass generation of dopamine receptors, causing the brain to become super-sensitive to the very brain chemical that was assumed to be inducing psychosis to begin with (HERE).
Few are aware that neuroleptics are often used as solely physical painkillers for certain conditions. Its been speculated that the drugs initially reduce disruptive behavior in some (not all) in the honeymoon phase of drug treatment by partly acting as global, emotional-physical painkillers. Sadly, the very painkilling properties of many psychiatric drugs could partly hinge on their capacity to kill brain cells: the sensation that apparently comes with mass brain cell death, as in glue sniffing, is euphoria. This is relevant to autism in that many children with autism, for instance, live with chronic pain from inflamed GI tracts and other physiological injuries which can affect behavior, socialization and cognition. Within reason and depending on the health costs of using certain agents, temporary painkilling could be viewed as having at least partial clinical value.
But doctors not only lose their licenses for overprescribing painkillers, they can go to jail, so the painkiller distinction does not serve the industry financial platforms of overprescription, overmarketing and polypharmacythe practice of adding new drugs to quell side effects of previous drugs, ad infinitum (ad nauseum, ad mortem). This leads to the need for false clinical correction theories for certain drugs.
Painkillers also cant be mandated. Does anyone wonder what happens to the scores of children with autism who are currently being arrested in schools for exhibiting behaviors associated with the disability? Many are routed to psychiatric courts where treatments are decided by judges (HERE).Those treatments tend to fall in line with National Institute of Mental Health guidelines. The mandated drugging of people in institutions and correctional facilities, and among children in foster care (those drugged against parental consent) and remanded juvenile offenders represents a good slice of drug profits.
In any event, the distinction of neuroleptics as painkillers only holds until the side effects kick in. The current generation of antipsychotics the atypicals once marketed as an improvement over the old, bad drugs like Thorazineare nearly identical to older neuroleptics in terms of side effect profiles. Atypicals, like the older generation of drugs, have the capacity to induce agonizing and lethal conditions such as tardive dyskinesia, respiratory dyskinesia (often labeled asthma, COPD, etc.), tardive dementia, tardive psychosis, lethal cardiometabolic disorder, organ failure, GI disorders, mass brain cell death, diabetes, dystonia, suicide, gynecomastia, violence (especially on withdrawal) and much more. Current antipsychotics still induce Parkinsonism: the flat emotional affecta primary, not side, effect of the drugsis merely a larval phase of the condition.
Antipsychoticsold and newalso induce lipid metabolism, demyelinating and mitochondrial disorders which either mimic various genetic conditions (like Neimann-Picks), or which fully add up to conditions previously thought to be solely genetic such as MELAS (Mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes). MELAS shows certain lab findings which overlap with autism.
In patients who take them, regardless of observable manifestation of side effects, neuroleptics induce or increase the appearance of certain proteins in cerebrospinal fluid which are markers for Alzheimers and dementia. These proteins APO-D or apolipoprotein D are abnormally elevated to some degree in those with autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimers who were never exposed to neuroleptic drugs. But after treatment with antipsychotics, the levels of APO proteins among schizophrenics and Alzheimers patients were shown to rise considerably. So here is evidence that neuroleptics actually make some of the clinical dysfunction underlying schizophrenia and Alzheimers worseand its not unreasonable to predict this might also be true for autism.
Making conditions worse isnt a great PR tagline for drug corporations. Insofar as industry does not wish for its drugs side effects to be widely understood, it also wont tolerate the compounded menace of autism recovery science. Autism recovery science doesnt just point to vaccine/environmental cause or pose safer and actually effective treatment options which result in direct treatment competition for pharmas blockbuster drugs. Autism recovery science alsoby incidentally corroborating the overlaps in types of brain damage induced by both vaccines and psychopharmaceuticalspotentially threatens PY for every cognitive, behavioral or psychiatric condition targeted by drug makers.
Furthermore, just as the existence of an unvaccinated population is threatening to industry because it provides the study control for comparison of injury rates, a drug-naive population of children with autism provides a clearer picture of just which cellular processes are being disrupted and what might be causing the disruptions to begin with. Just as important, the existence of a drug-naive population also spoils the pretense that adverse drug effects are attributable to autism itselfa misattribution of contingency thats been played with nearly every drug side effect since mental health drugs were first marketed.
The fact that children within the autism recovery community have such low psychiatric drugging rates when compared to the 70% of developmentally disabled children in the general population is a threat that wont be allowed to stand without a fight. As psychopharmaceutical expert Dr. Grace Jackson argues in her most recent book, Drug Induced Dementia: The Perfect Crime (HERE), distinguishing what underlies certain forms of behavioral disorderswhether these conditions are genetic or environmental, preventable or treatable becomes more and more difficult as drug exposure increases and skews the evidence.
Dr. Jackson, not incidentally, describes herself as a big fan of Dr. Andrew Wakefields elegant theory. Her book is the source for the above information on drug-induced mitochondrial dysfunction, lipid storage disorders and biomarkers for dementia. In 2007, I saw her present a case study of a typical seven year old boy who developed severe symptoms of autism when exposure to the drug Depakote compounded asymptomatic brain damage and mitochondrial dysfunction from chemotherapy treatment several years earlier. For an example of evidence-skewing, according to Dr. Jacksons research, valproic acid apparently has a dozen or so overlaps with the effects of thimerosal and other vaccine toxins on the brain, including elevated serum ammonia, lipid metabolism damage, evidence of Alzheimers Type II astrocytosis; tubulin, glutamate, glutamine and carnitine disruption; myelin damage, alteration of cytokine activity and mitochondrial damage. During the Autism Omnibus, a government attorney admitted that pre or neonatal exposure to Depakote could cause autism. Aside from his excessive confidence in stating age limits of exposure, the attorneys statement was backed up by a 2008 study (HERE).
As long as independent researchers can still differentiate the source of damage from one agent to another, the crime will not be perfect. The FDA helps to obfuscate these imperfections by making the statistical evidence of damage from drugswhich is supposed to be readily available through its Medwatch databasenotoriously difficult to access. Add this to the fact that only about 10% of all adverse drug events are ever reported to Medwatch, and any search for injury and death statistics is a miserable procedure.
Fortunately, an activist and database programmer named Steven Helgeson figured out how to untangle the FDA Adverse Events Reporting System. He created a searchable site for the purpose of consumer education (HERE).
A quick search of the database by drug class, brand or generic drug name brings up the question of whether death is a particularly good selling point for drug corporations. As the autism recovery community finds itself, its doctors and information resources under increasing attacks by media and industry for advocating supposedly dangerous non-psychoactive treatments for autism, its interesting to note that the full dangers of the most common mainstream treatments for autismthe very psychoactive drugs frequently recommended by the industry experts these media sources quote are never mentioned. Or the drugs are mentioned so gingerly and fleetingly one might think the subject had nothing to do with the interactive GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer ads on these publications sidebars or the ads which appear like Freudian experimental poetry embedded in cached blog pages. (Managing Editor's Note, Click photo to enlarge, pardon the pun.)
In fact, while the mainstream media in the UK and US might protest the excessive drugging of certain populations deemed not to need the drugs (note the title of the Chicago Tribune article: Psychotropic Drugs Given to Nursing Home Patients Without Cause, HERE ), the same outrage has been largely absent when it comes to the deadly drugging of more disturbing populations, such as those with autism and schizophrenia. This disconnect on drugs is a media tradition: in the 1970s, the same publications which decried the use of neuroleptics as a form of torture against Soviet dissidents showed only contempt for the struggle of the Mad Rights movement to ban forced drugging in institutions. That members of the media may love grandma and despise designated foes of Democracy is not proof of principled reportingonly that the shape of reality may vary according to agenda and again, the perceived expendability of certain human beings.
Weve all seen the repeated coverage of the tragic and avoidable death of Tariq Nadama in news items denouncing the dangers of autism recovery treatments. Tariq was given the wrong chelator (HERE ), for which his parents rightfully sued the physician responsible. There have been two other reported deaths from hypocalcemia as a result of the same medical mistake in the past seven years, though only the Nadama case involved a child with autism.
Using Steve Helgesons Medwatch-decrypting database, below is a list of US deaths due to just some of the drugs promoted on the NIMH autism website within a four year period. Helgeson reports that some of the cases of death associated with individual drugs were left out due to being listed irregularly on Medwatch, therefore the numbers below are conservative.
Number of deaths by drug between 2004 and 2008:
Risperdal : 308: Abilify: 213: Zyprexa: 417; Geodon: 140; Haldol: 46; Prozac: 371; Celexa: 411; Zoloft: 356; Luvox: 15; Anafranil: 16; Valium: 269; Ativan: 109; Ritalin: 76
The above death statistics include death by suicide, homicide, prenatal/neonatal death and other, such as drug-induced cardiac arrest, stroke, organ failure, etc.
Some might take exception to the use of suicide stats in the overall numbers, even though suicide statistics are far higher for those on the drugs than among unexposed patients with the same conditions. Objections are usually based on yet another goofy industry theory which sounds like something extemporized by a tween. Its called roll-back. The idea goes something like this: people who are depressed dont have enough energy to kill themselves but, when first taking antidepressants or other psychotropesbefore the supposed anti part kicks inthe drugs perk them up enough to carry out their preexisting suicide plans.
The roll-back hypothesis doesnt explain the sudden mania, violence and suicides among people given the wrong drug by pharmacy mistake (i.e., Xanax instead of Zantac; Celexa instead of Celebrex), and those without psychiatric or violent histories who take the drugs for nonpsychiatric purposes (temporary insomnia, etc.). And, as Grace Jackson asks rhetorically in her first book, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs, how much energy does it take to perform the easiest form of suicide goingthe intentional overdose? The theory is stupid, really, and the drugs are known to induce a condition called akathisia, which can range from restlessness to a sense of profound inner torture (HERE). Anything which potentially induces akathisia-like psychosis such as the antimalarial Lariam, the anti-viral Tamiflu, and all classes of psychoactives to varying degrees can induce violence and suicide. Many of the suicides and homicides we hear about in the news involving children in general and children with autism also involved psychiatric drugs (HERE).
Though he says hes working on it, deaths by anticonvulsants and mood stabilizers are not included in Helgesons database yet. According to another breakdown of the FDA AERS website, a total of 1,601 deaths are listed for other psychoactive drugs between 2004 and 2006 (two years less than the softwares search period), among 6,907 reported deaths from all classes of psychopharmaceuticals.
6,907 in two years. Thats two 9/11s or the equivalent of 27 to 28 fully-loaded Boeing 737s dropping out of the sky every year. Since the reported statistics are estimated to be only one-tenth of the actual toll, imagine 69,070 deaths every two yearsthats 278.5 737s fatally crashing to the ground year in, year out.
Every drug war has its casualties. For another analogy, pharma makes Ciudad Juarez look like a resort town. This seems more the case now that the Supreme Court has approved unlimited campaign contributions by what are frequently international corporate conglomerates. The cartels control everything.
In response to my emailed remarks over the Chicago Tribunes pre-Thanksgiving hit piece on autism recovery proponents, scientists and treatments (Autism treatments: Risky alternative therapies have little basis in science), Trine Tsouderos sent me the stock reply that everyone else got, except for one little addendum:
Thank you for your note.
I am sorry we cannot agree on the issue, but we stand by our conclusions, which are based on exhaustive research and talking with some of the most highly regarded, best-credentialed experts in the field. I can assure you GlaxoSmithKline did not have anything to do with these articles.
Best wishes and hope you and your family have a lovely Thanksgiving, Trine
She cant fool me. Theres no Thanksgiving in Juarez. My initial email to Tsouderos remarked on the two Glaxo ads which appeared next to her online article.
Now can anyone guess which psych drug wins the distinction of highest death count according to the FDAs Medwatch database? GSKs antidepressant Paxil. With a once-a-day price tag of over $1,500 a year, Paxil racked up 1,139 reported deaths in a four year period. GSK also has a glutamate-targeting antipsychotic in the pipeline, and is the maker of Tagamet and other tummy meds that children within the vaccine injury movement no longer seem to use to any great degree.
GlaxoSmithKline is the maker of the British MMR and more than 25 other vaccines for the global market, including H1N1, seasonal flu, human papillomavirus and the Engerix B vaccine which contained thimerosal up to 2007 and whichwhen compared to other Hepatitis B vaccines was associated with the highest incidence of CNS inflammatory demyelination (HERE).
GSK also makes the anticonvulsants Keppra, and the blockbuster dual anticonvulsant/sixth-highest-selling antipsychotic Lamictal, with a once-a-day price tag of $1,883 a year. Since Lamictal is not yet listed on Steve Helgesons search site, we can only wonder how many of the 1,601 deaths from other drugs indicated on Medwatch were due to the use of Lamictal as an antipsychotic. I have to differentiate this from Lamictals use as an antiepilepsy drug, both because deaths of children who suffer from seizure disorders would generally not make the FDA drug-death roster (seizures become the alibi for almost any cause of death); and because I know that parents who give these drugs to children for severe seizures have no choice. The death toll among children with seizures and autism is generally attributable to autism itself as the rate of deadly seizure disorders among vaccine injured children rise every year.
This obviously wasnt factored into Eli Lillys profit formula. Many children with autism dont make it to age 9, much less age 76. Add to this the predictable death toll from psychopharmaceuticals, and it looks like PY=PY might need retooling.
I think its as cruel to judge parents cornered into drugging children who try to gouge out their own eyes and gnaw off their fingers as it is to judge parents forced to use anticonvulsants to keep vaccine-induced seizures from killing their children. For one, once in, its murder to get out: withdrawal from these drugs is often extraordinarily dangerous. And though the drugs themselves can induce self-injury, obsessive behaviors and violence, some children with autism intractably self-mutilate prior to drug exposure. I have friends who live under these shadows and I sometimes open emails from them like Im pulling crime scene tape off their doors. I never know when the worst of all possible news might come. But no one hates these medications more than those forced to use them at gunpoint, and who know perfectly well that these drugs are often manufactured by the very companies marketing the vaccines which robbed them of their once healthy children.
In any case, Paul Offiteight figure vaccine profiteer, PR capo, epidemic denier put it well when he said that hope is dangerous. Hes right, it is. He actually indicated false hope, but false to him is real enough to many and the meaning is clear considering whats at stake. Its politically dangerous for scientists and families to provide or pursue hope because this can only be done by exposing cause. Even success brings home the horror of whats been lost by showing that it never had to happen to begin with. And hope undeniably represents dire straits for unregulated industry.
Because industry cant and wont compete with this:
they give us this:
Adriana Gamondes is an Age of Autism Contributing Editor and one of the Facebook administrators. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and recovering twins.
WARNING: Withdrawal from psychiatric drugs and sedatives can often be more dangerous than continuing on a medication. It is important to withdraw extremely slowly from these drugs, often over a period of a year or more under the supervision of a qualified specialist. Withdrawal side effects are sometimes more severe than the original symptoms or problems, though many withdrawal effects resolve with time.
For more information on drug side effects and a professional guide to withdrawal methods and risks, see Dr. Peter Breggins Your Drug May Be Your Problem, often viewed as the PDR of adverse psychopharmaceutical effects.
Pharm-Free Resource List for information on psych drug-free recovery and prevention of autism and related disorders (also see blog sidebar for organizations), drug side effects, media reports, coercive legislation, legislative activism and where to get help:
Special Needs Kids Go Pharm Free: Nutrition Focused Tools to Help Minimize Meds and Maximizing Health and Well-Being by Judy Converse, MPH, LD, RD
Healing and Preventing Autism: A Complete Guide by Jenny McCarthy and Dr. Jerry Kartzinel
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker
Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood Altering Drugs by Dr. Peter Breggin
Pharmageddon by Dr. David Healy
Drug Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime by Dr. Grace Jackson
For a frequently updated interactive database on drug risks as well as a comprehensive adverse events reporting site, Rxisk was created by reform psychiatrist Dr. David Healy, advocacy journalist Robert Whitaker and an international panel of drug and data experts as an alternative to the FDAs increasingly unnavigable Medwatch site.
For a long list of resource links and a media database on drug risks, illegal prescribing practices, news on legislative activism and research fraud, visit Psychrights founded by Zyprexa Papers whistleblower, attorney Jim Gottstein.
Former law librarian and activist Vera Hasner Sharav founded Alliance for Human Research Protection, one of the oldest and most influential medical rights advocacy networks in the US which focuses on corruption in human trials and drug and vaccine risks and marketing fraud. Ms. Sharav contributed a chapter to Vaccine Epidemic by Mary Holland and Louise Kuo Habakus.
Alternative treatment resource list from International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry.
UPDATE: Arthur Caplan was kind enough to respond to Anne's email requesting clarifications. Here it is First, as you know as a polio survivor i am strongly pro vaccine. i watched too many children die around me as a kid to doubt the importance of vaccines. http://www.whyy.org/91FM/tib_caplan.html Second, I have plenty of personal knowledge of autism. But, vaccines are not implicated-- http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/09/27/prse1001.htm Third, there is reason to believe that genetics plays a key role in autism as does parental age-- http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5025556 ; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19567888 As diagnosis of autism moves ahead of the time when vaccines are given, and even becomes likely to be offered as a prenatal test, the reason for concern about vaccines not only fades but is misdirected toward where research and ethical debate ought to go. I know many people in the autism community, talk to them regularly and see that no one position dominates their thinking about cause, treatments or vaccine safety. But, I know that many are deeply concerned that finding a genetic cause will lead to a campaign to eliminate autistic and Asperger's children which i think is a key emerging issue and have written about already. Thank you for writing to me. By Anne Dachel Past horrific human experiments stir concerns of today by Arthur Caplan HERE In this article from MSNBC, Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, is outraged at the actions sanctioned by U.S. government officials in Guatemala and at the Tuskegee Institute in AL. Caplan is right, we should be alarmed over such inhumane experimentation. I struck by the words "Nonetheless, officials knew it was wrong." As a member of the autism community and a writer for the daily online blog, Age of Autism, I recall Caplan telling readers in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2007 that the government approved and mandated vaccine program couldn't be related to the explosion in autism now affecting one percent of U.S. children. He cited numerous studies all clearing the mercury-based vaccine preservative thimerosal from any link to the current autism epidemic. He slammed author David Kirby and activist attorney Robert Kennedy Jr for daring to question the practice of injecting the second deadliest element on Earth into pregnant women and small children. He called the belief that a deadly neurotoxin was causing children to become autistic "an urban legend." According to Caplan, the science is in on vaccines and autism. He wrote, "Science and medicine have not bought the thimerosal/mercury-autism link. For years the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Vaccine Education Center, the National Academy of Sciences, the Food and Drug Administration, and countless other prestigious organizations and scientists have said the data do not support mercury in vaccines as the cause of autism." Caplan was satisfied that the officials who are in charge of the vaccine program have nothing to hide when all their studies show no connection between their dramatically increased vaccination schedule and the explosion in autism.
Caplan allowed CDC officials to have oversight over themselves when it comes to vaccine safety. He was seemingly unconcerned that hundreds of people at the CDC have conflict waivers because of direct financial ties to the vaccine makers.For thousands of parents who believe that an unchecked, unsafe vaccine schedule is behind the devastating plague of autism, the experiments at Tuskegee and in Guatemala come as no surprise.For years, officials have refused to do the one study that would stop the controversy over vaccines and autism. Despite repeated requests from the autism community, no government official has ever called for a study to compare the autism rate in vaccinated and unvaccinated children. If one percent of unvaccinated children were autistic, then the proof would be there for everyone to see. We seriously need to ask why no one wants to see such a study done.Caplan isn't concerned about the revolving door between the vaccine industry and the CDC. A stunning example is the fact that the recent past director of the CDC, Julie Gerberding, a long time denier that vaccines cause autism, is now head of the vaccine division at Merck Pharma.Caplan claimed in 2007 that mercury was no longer used in vaccines. This is not true. It's in horrendous levels in almost all of the flu vaccines available.This vaccine is recommended for pregnant women at all stages of pregnancy by CDC officials, even though the manufacturers state in their package insert that it's never been tested on pregnant women and they don't advise it for them. HERE Caplan's harsh words over the syphilis experiments should extend to the government's actions covering up the evidence linking vaccines to autism. His words, "Nonetheless, officials knew it was wrong," also apply to the issue of using mercury in vaccines. The mercury-based vaccine preservative thimerosal has a history that should call any safety claims into question.Thimerorsal was invented and tested Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company in 1930. The one study done on thimerosal was done by Eli Lilly on 22 adult patients suffering from meningitis. There was no chance for follow-up to observe long-term effects, as all of the patients died. Even if follow-up had been possible, damage to the developing brains of very young children would have remained an unknown. Eli Lilly said it was safe and the medical community just accepted it. After the creation of the FDA, its use was simply continued. This unconscionable oversight failure should call any safety claim into question. In other words, thimerosal was never tested or approved by the FDA for use in our children's vaccines, but health officials are convinced it's done no harm.In his book, Evidence of Harm , journalist David Kirby pointed out that "...many researchers had sent the company [Eli Lilly] documents dating back to the 1930's, each raising a red flag about thimerosal." (EOH 207-209). Mr. Kirby chronologically lists over 70 years of scientific research on the damaging and deadly effects of thimerosal that was willfully ignored by Eli Lilly and the CDC.Our CDC and FDA should be utterly embarrassed to make safety claims based on such a pathetic history of oversight.
In addition, back in 1991, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the top vaccinologists in the world, wrote a memo to the president of Merck Pharmaceutical Co. warning about the high mercury levels children were receiving in their vaccines. That warning was ignored and mercury exposure was only increased with additional vaccines. Myron Levin wrote about this for the LA Times.
If Caplan had read Evidence of Harm, he'd have learned about the closed meeting at a place called Simpsonwood Retreat Center in Norcross GA in 2000. There, 52 representatives from the pharmaceutical industry, along with people from the CDC, and the FDA gathered for two days to discuss the findings that implicated the increase in mercury exposure in vaccines to the explosion in the number of children with autism.
(See Flu insert here)and (See Simpsonwood FOIA here)
"Nonetheless, officials knew it was wrong" resounds in the autism issue. The people with everything at stake in this debate are allowed to deny, deny, deny. Mercury is safe when injected into children, autism hasn't really increased--doctors simply are recognizing it better, and when officials finally admitted that autism is now at an epidemic levels, they're ready to blame any environmental toxin except the known toxins in vaccines.
The recent book, The Age of Autism, by Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill reveals that ever since the 16th Century, doctors have proclaimed the medical benefits of mercury and ignored the deadly side effects. They're still doing it today.
Increasing exposure to mercury is having a dramatic impact on our lives. "Nonetheless, officials knew it was wrong" also means that there's a great incentive to cover up the damage at all costs. There is a real lesson from the Guatemala and Tuskegee experiments. Let's hope it doesn't take 60 years before officials admit what mercury exposure in vaccine has done to our children.
Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.
CHICO, Calif. - The Puzzle Show is an art auction fundraiser that gives people a chance to contribute to the art with the purchase of a puzzle piece.
The gallery will feature an installation designed by Titus Willoughby Woods, Jeb Sisk and David "Sisko" Sisk.
The exhibit encourages people to purchase a puzzle piece for $20 and contribute to the gallery in any way they want.
Puzzle pieces are available for purchase beginning Feb. 1, 2019, at the Chico Art Center. People are then encouraged to decorate the puzzle piece in any way that they want.
Puzzle pieces can be returned on Saturday and Sunday, March 2-3, from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
The show opens for viewing and early bidding on Friday, March 15.
The closing reception and silent auction party will take place on Friday, March 29 from 5 - 8 p.m. Silent auction bidding for pieces will end at 7:30 p.m. Winning bidders can pick up their artwork Saturday and Sunday, March 30-31.
Unsold pieces will be given back to the artists.
Proceeds from the event go to The Puzzle Show creators and the Chico Art Center.
The Chico Art Center is open Monday through Friday from 12 - 4 p.mm. and Saturday through Sunday from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. The center can also be reached at (530) 895-8726.
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On Monday, President Donald Trump will hold his first campaign rally of the year at the El Paso County Coliseum, a Texas arena within a stones throw of the U.S.-Mexico border.
It wont be the only high-profile event in El Paso that night.
Former Democratic congressman Beto ORourke will appear at the March for Truth at a local high school a mile away from the coliseum in the hopes of countering Trumps anti-illegal immigration message.
The President is coming to El Paso Monday. He will promise a wall and will repeat his lies about the dangers that immigrants pose, ORourke wrote Friday on Medium, an online publishing platform that has seen quite the activity this week.
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ORourke, who has publicly mulled entering the 2020 presidential race, announced late Friday he would join El Paso residents in a peaceful march on Monday. Though he avoided calling Trump out by name, it was obvious the protest was intended to coincide with Trumps Make America Great Again rally in El Paso on the same night.
We will meet lies and hate with the truth and a vision for the future from the U.S.-Mexico border, ORourke said Saturday, in a video message alongside his daughter, Molly. Everyone is welcome.
March for Truth is being sponsored by several nonprofit groups including Border Network for Human Rights, and Womens March El Paso as well as more than 60 local musicians, organizers said. Protesters are encouraged to wear white; Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, who won ORourkes former congressional seat, will also speak at the event.
Trumps fixation on a border wall and his distortions of life in El Paso and along the border are unacceptable, march organizers wrote on a Facebook page for the event. Our communities will always stand to include immigrants, oppose racism, and defend the truth. All of us must make a choice about whether we stand up for the truth or allow Trump to degrade our dignity and rights.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Trump touted El Paso as proof that border walls result in lower crime. Data indicate this is false, as The Washington Posts Robert Moore, Philip Rucker and Jenna Johnson reported:
For the past 20 years, a number of published ratings have listed El Paso as one of the nations safest cities, and FBI statistics show that, like most major U.S. cities, El Pasos crime rate has been dropping since the mid-1990s.
The citys rate of violent crime reached its peak in 1993, when more than 6,500 violent crimes were recorded, and that number fell by more than 34 percent over the next 13 years, according to an analysis of crime data by the El Paso Times. From two years before the fencing was built, in 2006, to two years after, in 2011, the violent crime rate increased by 17 percent, the newspaper reported.
By contrast, Ciudad Juarez, El Pasos Mexican sister city just across the border, has at times been one of the deadliest cities in the world and saw an increase in crime last year. There were 543 murders in Juarez in 2016, 773 in 2017 and more than 1,100 last year, according to a tally kept by local media.
There is no dispute that the border fencing has cut down the number of illegal border crossings into El Paso, but local leaders said it is false to suggest the barrier had an impact on violent crime.
In his lengthy Medium post, ORourke slammed Trumps racist, inflammatory rhetoric about the border and laid out reasons he thought U.S. policy had exacerbated immigration-related challenges.
The President, using the same racist, inflammatory rhetoric of years past, seeks to build a wall, to take kids from their parents, to deploy the United States Army on American soil, to continue mass deportations and to end the protection for Dreamers, ORourke wrote. In other words, he seeks in one administration to repeat all the mistakes of the last half-century. And with past as prologue, we know exactly how that will end.
ORourke, who narrowly lost a race for a Senate seat against Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in November, has said he is conflicted about whether to join an already crowded field of Democratic candidates to run for president. In an interview Tuesday with talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, ORourke said he would make his decision by the end of the month.
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. A top U.S. Census Bureau official told an Albuquerque audience Friday that the 2020 survey is ready to head to the printer for deployment this summer, but must await a final decision on one controversial question currently caught up in the courts.
The question in question: Is this person a citizen of the United States?
Addressing attendees of the Population and Public Policy Conference hosted by the University of New Mexico Geospatial and Population Studies, Timothy Olson, associate director for field operations at the U.S. Census Bureau, said the agency faces a hard deadline in June for finalizing questions so questionnaires can be printed.
Results from the 2020 Census will shape how the American people are represented at the national, state, and local level.
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And theres a lot at stake according to Olson, more than $675 billion in federal funds are allocated to states, counties, cities and tribes each year based on census results, influencing how transportation, housing, education, health care and other vital services are delivered to the population.
We will conduct the census with or without the citizenship question, Olson said. My job, and all of my peers job, is to make sure the census is as accurate as possible. Were just waiting for a final decision to go to print. If the decision is delayed, that presents new challenges for us. Were hopeful that firm direction will be provided, so we know which version to print.
A federal judge in New York last month blocked the government from asking about citizenship status on the 2020 census, the Associated Press reported, the first major ruling in cases contending officials forced the question through for Republican political purposes to intentionally undercount immigrants.
In a 277-page decision that wont be the final word on the issue, Judge Jesse M. Furman ruled that while such a question would be constitutional, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner and violated the law.
When Ross announced the plan in March, he said the question was necessary to help the government enforce the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law meant to protect political representation of minority groups.
But opponents fear the citizenship question would discourage residents in households with noncitizens to respond, potentially leading to a population undercount and possibly fewer seats in Congress from places that tend to vote Democratic.
The census is safe, Olson said. Youre information is protected by law. We cant reveal individual responses. Any law enforcement, any government agency ICE cannot receive our data on the personal level.
The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to hear evidentiary-related legal issues surrounding the New York case on Feb. 19. A trial on a separate suit filed by the state of California is underway in San Francisco.
According to the Pew Research Center, a citizenship question was asked in each census of the total population from 1890 to 1950. Until 1920, it was only asked of adult men women and children automatically had the same citizenship status as their husbands or fathers.
The question was not asked in the 1960 census, and since then, the citizenship question has been asked of only a sample of households.
Olson also told attendees that the Census Bureau will take more advantage of technology in 2020. The 2020 Census will be the first to allow residents to complete the survey online and census workers will use secure smartphones to canvass neighborhoods and conduct follow-up interviews. The smartphones will also use apps containing maps and travel plans for employees, he said.
Its an amazing advancement over the billions of pieces of paper that we used in prior censuses, he said.
The bureau must count the population by April 1, 2020, deliver state counts to President Donald Trump by Dec. 31, 2020, and provide redistricting data to the states by April 1, 2021.
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Copyright 2019 Albuquerque Journal
SANTA FE U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, appointed this week to a special House committee to fight climate change, collected $118,000 from political action committees with connections to the energy industry during the most recent election cycle far more than any of his colleagues on the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday appointed nine Democrats to the committee, which will spearhead Democrats work to develop innovative, effective solutions to prevent and reverse the climate crisis, Pelosi said in a statement. It will generate the energy and action required to permanently reduce pollution so that we can honor our responsibility to be good stewards of the planet for future generations.
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According to Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group based in Washington, D.C., Lujan received $74,500 from electric utilities, $23,000 from oil and gas interests, and $6,000 from mining. Another $13,500 came from miscellaneous energy, including $5,000 from Bechtel Group, which until last year helped manage Los Alamos National Laboratory. Another $1,000 came from CH2M Hill, a Colorado-based global engineering company.
Of the electric utilities, the biggest contributors were the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and PG&E Corp., each of which gave $10,000. PNM gave $7,500.
The Huffington Post on Thursday reported that the nine Democrats appointed to the committee received a combined $198,000 from PACs associated with the fossil fuel industry, so contributions made to Lujan represented more than half that total.
Thats $200,000 of potential conflict of interest on an issue of grave concern, David Turnbull, a spokesman for a coalition of groups that oversee the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge, told the Post. If youre going to be talking about the critical issue of climate change, you need to rid yourself of the influence of the fossil fuel industry.
Contacted by the Journal, Lujan provided a statement defending his record.
My values and voting record are clear, he said. Ive been battling climate change and advocating for the generation of renewable resources and energy efficiency since my time as the Chairman of the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission, before I was a Member of Congress. I respect and recognize New Mexicos long history as an energy state, that is why, throughout my career, I have fought to ensure that New Mexico is a leader in our clean energy future.
Lujans office also pointed out that he has earned a 100 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters for his voting record on environmental issues in the past two years. He has a lifetime score of 96 percent since he went to Washington, D.C., in 2009.
By contrast, the committees chairwoman, Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., had a score of 86 percent in 2017, the most recent year for which scores were available, and a lifetime score of 93 percent, though the LCV notes that she missed several votes in 2017 while she was back home in Florida dealing with the impacts of Hurricane Irma.
The committee was created after Democrats won control of the House in the midterm elections. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California will choose five Republicans to serve on the committee.
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Only five remain.
With the passing of Albuquerques Joe Romero, 98, last month, thats how many New Mexicans are left from the 1,800 who were among the prisoners of war forced into what is known as the Bataan Death March.
Altogether, 78,000 prisoners 12,000 Americans and 66,000 Filipinos participated in the march, known for its brutality, following the surrender of U.S. and Filipino forces to the Japanese during World War II. They were stationed on the Bataan Peninsula on the Philippine island of Luzon.
The prisoners were forced to march 65 miles through the jungle. Because the POWs were malnourished and ill, the three-day march took six days, and because they had surrendered they were seen as subhuman and summarily bayoneted, shot or beheaded by Japanese soldiers for getting water out of a filthy ditch, helping a stumbling comrade or falling from exhaustion. Of the New Mexicans who marched, just about half survived to the end of the war.
Theyve shared stories of their experiences of the beatings, the bayonettings, the hunger and exhaustion, and corpses left by the roadside. They have helped make the costs of war real to generations.
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They also have shared the exhilaration of their liberation from prisoner of war camps. And while Filipino and Filipino-American soldiers who served have received the Congressional Gold Medal, the Americans who served, and specifically those who served in Bataan, have yet to receive the highest civilian award Congress gives, according to the office of U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M. The senator plans to again push that legislation, as he has done for a decade.
With literally only a handful of N.M. survivors remaining, its important we not forget the stories of their sacrifices for freedom during a dark time in our worlds history.
This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
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Lets talk about a police practice known as the perp walk. Its the walk of shame for a suspected perpetrator of a crime, usually in a case thats top of the headlines or soon will be.
As police move the handcuffed prisoner from place to place, both the public and the media are allowed to be on hand to shout accusations, take photos and videos of the suspected criminal and ask loaded questions.
Perp walks are known as the crime reporters red carpet because police make it so easy, alerting reporters in advance about the time and place of the event so cameras can be at the ready. Its like a pre-planned scene out of a movie complete with uniformed officers, hand and sometimes leg cuffs and a suspect that is usually trying to hide their face in some dramatic fashion.
The operative word to keep in mind here when we watch a perp walk is suspect. The person on the receiving end of this humiliating walk is only suspected of committing a crime and not yet convicted of one.
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I must admit when I was a young reporter I often took part in perp walk spectacles.
Amy, did you shoot Mary Jo Buttafuoco? I remember shouting at 17-year-old Amy Fisher, aka the Long Island Lolita, as she was transported from the courthouse back to jail, charged with confronting the wife of her much older lover, Joey, and putting a bullet in her head. That video clip would be played repeatedly up until, and even long after, Fisher was convicted and went to prison for seven years.
Perp walks have been a staple in New York since, like, forever. But in the spring of 2011 Dominque Strauss-Kahn, a French politician and then director of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested in Manhattan on charges of sexual assault against a hotel maid. Police subjected him to a forced public walk, and it created an international incident. The French were outraged at the indignity of police parading a mere suspect in front of cameras. The incident caused one New York politician to declare the practice unconstitutional.
Even Mother Teresa dragged out by detectives would look guilty, said Councilman David Greenfield. His legislation to outlaw the tradition went nowhere.
Perp walks are a staple across America. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing I recall the only time we got to see suspect Timothy McVeigh in action was during a quick perp walk orchestrated by law enforcement. Prosecutors were likely thrilled that the publics only image of McVeigh was in an orange prison jumpsuit. In 2011, citizens of San Bernardino County, Calif., were treated to a multiple-man perp walk when four political operatives, dressed in green prison garb, orange plastic slippers and wrist and ankle chains, were ushered before courtroom cameras for arraignment on charges of participating in a $102 million dollar bribery scheme.
More recently in Albuquerque, TV reporters were seen in a scrum around an elderly handcuffed acupuncturist accused of sexually assaulting a patient. While walking next to him, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, a reporter asked Megumi Hirayama, Did you rape her? As the media pressed in the police escorts made no move to protect the cuffed-behind-the-back suspect.
As I watched the video of Hirayamas close encounter with the media, I remembered the perp walk of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963. As police walked him through a public parking area following the assassination of President John Kennedy, a man with a gun appeared. Nightclub operator Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald on live television.
Im sure the Hirayama video has been aired multiple times around New Mexico, perhaps cementing in viewers and potential jurors minds that he must have committed the crimes police and prosecutors say he did. I mean, there he was, being directly asked if he had raped a patient and he did not answer! He must have done it! Perhaps the acupuncturist is guilty, but isnt that for a court of law to decide?
Today, older and, arguably, wiser, Ive become uncomfortable when the media declares its First Amendment free press rights are sacrosanct while ignoring other citizens Constitutional protections. Equally disturbing are those ubiquitous press conferences where police or prosecutors look into the camera and declare that with their latest arrest of a suspect they have taken a dangerous criminal off the street. Cant we wait for due process anymore?
All citizens are supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Everyone has a Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial and an Eighth Amendment right not to be subjected to the cruel and unusual punishment of public shaming.
It is time the entire judicial system takes the overwhelmingly negative effect of perp walks seriously. It is clear prosecutors arent telling police to stop the practice. Its clear judges and lawyers believe they can weed out juror bias by asking a few up-front questions. But to truly be a system fair to all, the practice of perp walks has to be discontinued, like, yesterday.
www.DianeDimond.com; e-mail to Diane@DianeDimond.com.
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WASHINGTON There are three things to note about Sen. Elizabeth Warrens proposed wealth tax. The first is that it wont do what she promises. The second is that it wont happen. And the third is that both of those cavils are almost beside the point.
The Massachusetts Democrat wants to tax fortunes greater than $50 million at a rate of 2 percent of assets a year, with billionaires kicking in an additional 1 percent. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman estimate the tax would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years, all from people most voters dont like very well.
The plan is less realistic than wishful. Saez and Zucman assume perfect implementation, with no broad exemptions that would enable ultrarich people, and their squads of tax attorneys, to structure their wealth around the tax. After a few rounds of legislative horse-trading, any real-world bill would be much more complex than the Warren camp envisions and thus easier to avoid. Which is why most countries have decided to avoid the bother.
Consumption taxes such as sales or value-added taxes are easy to administer and raise lots of revenue. Income taxes are trickier but still simple compared with taxing wealth. Most people regularly receive payments that are easy to track and can be valued at the sum of the payments. But what is the value of a business with one shareholder? A large piece of timberland that hasnt been sold for 50 years? An irreplaceable antique or artwork?
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Taxing those things means creating a lot of administrative capacity to track and price the assets, with the wealthy and their lawyers fighting every step of the way. Thats one reason wealth taxes, once popular among Western nations, are trending toward extinction; the paltry revenue wasnt worth the administrative headache. Nor the capital flight and slower rate of capital formation such taxes tend to induce.
Those problems would be particularly acute with Warrens plan because she has targeted the very wealthy rather than the merely affluent. Doing so mitigates the inevitable wailing about family-owned farms, as well as some of the pressure to lard the tax with those revenue-depleting exemptions. But taxing only the super-rich means taxing people with a lot of unique, hard-to-value assets, and who can confound auditors by shifting their wealth into even more of those assets.
And these are the minor problems with the Warren plan. The big problem is Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which forbids direct taxes on people or property unless theyre apportioned doled out among the states by population.
Instituting an income tax required a constitutional amendment to override that clause, and Warrens plan might well require another. Warrens team, and many other progressives, have offered ingenious arguments for the plans constitutionality. Probably not clever enough, however, to sway a conservative-leaning Supreme Court.
But one suspects that feasibility isnt the goal here. Its of a piece with the Republicans who kept promising to repeal and replace Obamacare without bothering to game out the replace part. Also of a piece with the progressive penchant for ever-larger spending plans based on ever-more-fanciful math. All are symptoms of Congress growing inability to legislate.
If you cant do anything anyway, then why not make your presidential promises really amazing, rather than tepidly realistic? If the plans die in committee, voters may never find out the truth; better yet, they may blame the opposition rather than your excessively vibrant fantasy life.
Political theater has always been a key part of lawmaking, but now that Congress has given up on lawmaking, its all we have left. Fiery monologues wild applause from fans impassioned booing from the peanut gallery then bring down the curtain and start getting ready for the next performance.
Its troubling that Warren is reviving a dusty old policy idea that has failed almost everywhere it has been tried. But its much more troubling that she has decided to focus her agenda on a proposal that almost certainly cannot be implemented without getting three-quarters of the states to vote for a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court that skews to the left. Offering policies that cant possibly be implemented as described, even if all the political winds line up just right, was supposed to be a Trumpian trait. More and more, its becoming business as usual.
Its no way to run a government, but in the current climate, it is, sadly, a pretty good way to run a presidential campaign.
Twitter, @asymmetricinfo. 2019, Washington Post Writers Group.
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SANTA FE The Senate Public Affairs Committee Friday gave a do-pass recommendation a bill that would establish a $50 million endowment fund to produce a permanent funding source for rural libraries.
Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, sponsor of Senate Bill 264 and chairman of the committee, said the proposed endowment is a way to support and strengthen rural life in New Mexico. He said small rural libraries now must raise operating money with activities like carwashes and enchilada dinners.
Funding would come from interest earnings on investment of the $50 million. Ortiz y Pino said the proposal would make use of this one year bonanza of money more than $1 billion in new revenue for the state budget this year thanks to an oil and gas boom to provide a permanent financial solution for 50 rural libraries.
Shel Neymark, who helped found Dixons Embudo Valley Community Library, said rural libraries are often the only organizations around that provide services like internet access, food to replace school lunches in the summer, child care and childrens activities and staging for residents and responders during natural disasters like wildfires and floods.
The $50 million endowment would generate an estimated $45,000 a year for the 50 libraries, enough for better facilities and to pay staff, said Neymark. He said a $5 million endowment proposed by the Legislative Finance Committee would provide just $4,500 per year per library, which would be helpful but would not be the game changer that earnings on $50 million would produce.
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The committee approved an amendment to tweak language so that other libraries beyond the 50 now listed could receive funding in the future if they meet standards.
Also part of the libraries funding plan is a proposed constitutional amendment that would go on the ballot for state voters to consider in 2020. That measure was not up for consideration Friday.
If placed on the ballot and passed, the constitutional amendment would create an exemption to the states anti-donation clause, which bars use of public resources for private entities like nonprofits. Most the 50 rural libraries are owned by public entities but 15 are nonprofits.
Sen. Craig Brandt, R-Rio Rancho, said he couldnt support the bill because he didnt want to carve out an exemption for a single group. Neymark and Sen. Liz Stefanics, D-Cerrillos, said local clinics, economic development groups, agricultural organizations and other entities already are exempt from the anti-donation clause. The vote for Ortiz y Pinos bill as 5-1, with Brandt casting the only no vote. The bill goes next to the Senate Finance Committee.
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Attorneys for President Donald Trumps longtime confidant Roger Stone urged a federal judge overseeing his criminal trial not to impose a gag order, citing his constitutional rights to free speech as a writer and political commentator, and asked to have his case reassigned to a different judge.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington last week warned she might cut off public comments by parties and attorneys in Stones case after he went on a week-long media blitz following his indictment and arrest in special counsel Robert Muellers investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
This is a criminal proceeding, not a public-relations campaign, Jackson said, suggesting both sides argue the case in court, not on the talk show circuit, or on a book tour.
She asked each side to inform her of its position on a proposal to set a gag order by Friday. In their reply, prosecutors with Muellers team and the U.S. attorneys office for the District of Columbia did not oppose an order, citing a substantial likelihood that out-of-court comments will undermine a fair trial.
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Stone, 66, a longtime GOP operative and self-described dirty trickster, has pleaded not guilty to charges of lying about his efforts to gather information about hacked Democratic Party emails that were published by the WikiLeaks organization.
In saying he should be free to comment during his case, Stones defense team played down his celebrity and the impact his comments might have on potential jurors.
While Roger Stone may be familiar to those who closely follow American politics, he is hardly ubiquitous in the larger landscape of popular consciousness, and has no Twitter account. On Instagram, Kim Kardashian has 126 million followers. Roger Stones Instagram following amounts to 39 thousand subscribers, his attorney wrote.
A seven-count indictment unsealed Jan. 25 alleges that Stone sought information about the emails before the election at the direction of an unidentified senior Trump campaign official. He faces charges of lying, obstruction and witness tampering, including by pressuring another witness to lie or refuse to talk to Congress.
In their eight-page response Friday, Stones defense said Stone should be entitled to speak as he wishes absent convincing evidence that his statements would make it impossible to seat an impartial jury.
Roger Stone is a writer and a speaker, wrote his defense team in a filing signed by Bruce S. Rogow and L. Peter Farkas. To foreclose Mr. Stones exercise of his First Amendment rights on any subject would serve no compelling governmental interest.
Stones attorneys added that no court order would limit outside commentators. To silence a defendant who . . . will continue to be the subject, of unrestrained comment, speculation, opinion and criticism by the press would be particularly constitutionally suspect, they said.
Prosecutors in their response noted Jacksons observation that publicity in the case has been fueled in large part by Stone himself as he attacked the merits of the charges, evidence, credibility of witnesses and the prosecutions motives.
Repeating phrases from the judge, the government noted she has said continued statements by Stone would create a substantial risk that a much larger percent of the jury pool will be tainted by pretrial publicity.
In a separate filing, Stones defense also asked that the case be reassigned from Jackson, a 2011 appointee of President Barack Obama who is also overseeing the criminal case of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Jackson drew the Stone case because prosecutors designated it as related to the Mueller probe prosecution of a dozen Russian military intelligence officers indicted in July on charges of hacking and sharing Democrats computers and emails to disrupt the 2016 election.
Prosecutors said the two share a common search warrant, and there are activities which are a part of the same alleged criminal event or transaction, according to Stones filing.
However, his lawyers added, At first blush and without the benefit of discovery, there is nothing about these cases that suggests they are suitably related, other than they are both brought by the Office of Special Counsel.
They said prosecutors should be required to turn over all evidence to support the allegation and asked the case to be randomly reassigned.
Jackson gave prosecutors until next Friday to reply to that request.
Stone, a veteran GOP operative and friend of Trumps for four decades, briefly advised the presidential campaign in 2015 and remained in contact with Trump and top advisers through the election.
Prosecutors allege that in 2016, Stone repeatedly sought to learn when potentially damaging internal emails from Hillary Clintons campaign would be released, but after the election tried to cover up what he had done by lying about it in his testimony to Congress.
In Stones indictment, prosecutors alleged that after the initial release of stolen Democratic emails on July 22, 2016, a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton campaign.
The indictment does not name the campaign official or say who directed the alleged outreach to Stone. People familiar with the case identified Organization 1 as WikiLeaks, the global anti-secrecy group founded by Julian Assange.
Stone has repeatedly denied having any contact with Russia or WikiLeaks. He has said that he had no advance knowledge of what material WikiLeaks held and that predictions he made about the groups plans were based on Assanges public comments and tips from associates.
Stone, WikiLeaks and Assange have said they never communicated with one another.
Stone is free on bond and limited to travel between South Florida, Washington and New York City.
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Copyright 2019 Albuquerque Journal
Authorities on Friday captured a former Archdiocese of Santa Fe priest accused of raping a first-grader decades ago at a church in northern New Mexico and telling the boy, This is how we show Gods love.
Agents with the New Mexico Attorney Generals Office and New Mexico State Police arrested 81-year-old Marvin Archuleta at the Sun Village apartments, southwest of the Big I, around 4 p.m.
Plainclothes officers helped a frail Archuleta, clad in sweat pants and a gray sweater, into a State Police vehicle in the Sun Village parking lot as college students, other residents of the complex and reporters gathered nearby. As the truck pulled away, Archuleta, sitting in the backseat behind a caged window, pulled his sweater over his face.
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He was later booked into the Santa Fe County Detention Center.
Archuleta who had previously fled to Mexico after allegations of abuse surfaced in the 1990s is charged with criminal sexual penetration of a child under 13 and kidnapping in the rape of a 6-year-old boy in the 1980s at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Santa Cruz, near Espanola. Both charges are first-degree felonies and therefore have no statute of limitations to hinder prosecution, according to the Attorney Generals Office.
David Carl, a spokesman for the AGs office, said Archuleta is the first priest to be arrested on state charges after a nearly three-year AG investigation into sexual abuse of children by members of the Catholic Church around New Mexico.
Carl said the investigation is ongoing, and he wouldnt rule out the potential for other charges to be filed against Archuleta or other suspects.
Fridays arrest comes after a lawsuit was filed against Archuleta, the archdiocese and others in October alleging that the victim dealt with mental and emotional anguish, eventually falling into drug and alcohol abuse because of the rape.
Archuletas arrest is the latest chapter in a statewide sex abuse scandal that has spanned decades and embroiled the Santa Fe Archdiocese in controversy.
Cases of child sexual abuse by church officials have become widespread across the United States as victims are now speaking up, the Attorney Generals Office says in a criminal complaint filed in Santa Fe Magistrate Court on Friday. It has since been discovered that the churchs highest-ranking officials contributed to helping contain the known abuse and handle the atrocities internally.
According to the complaint, the rape occurred in 1986 or 1987. The victim and two other boys were pulled out of class at Holy Cross Catholic School by older students who the victim believed to be altar boys, the complaint alleges.
Agents say the three were led to a room where Archuleta and another priest, who is not identified in the complaint, offered them cookies and punch.
The victim told agents the boys ate the treats before the unnamed priest took the other two away and left him alone with Archuleta.
The complaint alleges that Archuleta then made the boy kneel on a chair, removed the boys pants and wrapped a belt around his chest so he couldnt move. According to the complaint, Archuleta poured a cup of water down the boys back, telling him it was holy water and would help with the pain. The victim told agents that Archuleta then raped him as he repeated, This is Gods love; this is how we show Gods love.
He was in tremendous pain and was crying violently, an agent wrote. He is unsure how long the encounter lasted.
Agents say that after the ordeal, the unnamed priest brought the other two boys, who were crying uncontrollably, into the room and all three were sent back to class.
The AGs Office executed a search warrant on the archdiocese last November and found a file that referenced Archuleta and victims he had allegedly sexually assaulted.
Other documents were found that revealed that Archuleta had been credibly accused of such abuse earlier at the Santa Cruz parish, with those victims alleging that the priest preyed on and sexually assaulted them when they were altar boys. One of the victims claimed that the abuse happened inside the church while Archuleta wore his priest vestments.
At some point in the mid-1990s, Archuleta was notified of the allegations against him, and he fled to Mexico, according to the complaint. Some of the civil claims against Archuleta related to the abuse were settled while the priest was believed to be in Mexico.
It is unknown when Archuleta returned from Mexico to the United States, an agent wrote.
The Archdiocese of Santa Fe did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
But after the lawsuit over this case was filed, the archdiocese said in a statement that it continues to be vigilant regarding sexual misconduct and stands firm on its zero tolerance policy. We pray for all who have been victims of the sad reality of sexual abuse.
Archuleta was ordained in 1970 and was immediately assigned to the Holy Cross Church in Santa Cruz, according to the affidavit. Agents say he served as a Catholic priest with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe from 1970 to 1978 and again from 1987 to 1994.
Archuletas arrest comes five months after federal agents extradited former Kirtland Air Force Base chaplain Arthur Perrault from Morocco and charged him with six counts of federal aggravated sexual abuse and one count of sexual contact in the molestation of an 11-year-old boy in the early 90s. Perrault pleaded not guilty to all counts.
We are a start-up business, brand new from Romania and we are looking for clients all over Europe. We can offer you sawn timber, according to the sizes required by you.
Hoping that our offer is interesting for you, we are expecting to contact us with the possibilities to make a strong deal for a long term collaboration.
Newly named Northern State president will focus on growing institution's regional identity
Northern State University's new president, Neal Schnoor, gave his first comments to the Aberdeen community and campus Tuesday afternoon.
From Quillette:
Introduction John P. Wright, Ph.D.
Thirteen years in the making, the American Psychological Association (APA) released the newly drafted Guidelines for Psychological Practice for Boys and Men. Backed by 40 years of science, the APA claims, the guidelines boldly pronounce that traditional masculinity is the cause and consequence of mens mental health concerns. Masculine stoicism, the APA tells us, prevents men from seeking treatment when in need, while beliefs rooted in masculine ideology perpetuate mens worst behaviorsincluding sexual harassment and rape. Masculine ideology, itself a byproduct of the patriarchy, benefits men and simultaneously victimizes them, the guidelines explain. Thus, the APA committee advises therapists that men need to become allies to feminism. Change men, an author of the report stated, and we can change the world.
But if the reaction to the APAs guidelines is any indication, this change wont happen anytime soon. Criticism was immediate and fierce. Few outside of a handful of departments within the academy had ever heard of masculine ideology, and fewer still understood how defining traditional masculinity by mens most boorisheven criminalbehavior would serve the interests of men or entice them to seek professional help.
More here.
We are a start-up business, brand new from Romania and we are looking for clients all over Europe. We produce firewood with length of 25, 33 and 50 cm long with splitting edge between 8 and 25 cm.Packaging is at the latitude of the buyer .Also the species is a component that the buyer can choose from a large variety ( oak, beech etc.). Our capacity of production is between 200 - 500 cubic meters per month. All the splitting and cutting is made with high performance machine that asure a high level of quality of the final product without any defaults.
For the moment we can supply boxes with dimension 1,2 x 0,8 x 1,8 m, with wood between 33 and 50 cm long with splitting edge 8 18 cm, fresh wood beech and acacia, oak, hornbeam, stag, at the price of 90 euro/box. But not only that size of boxes, it depends on customer's requirements. We also can made in boxes of 1x1x1,8. And also in boxes of 1x1x1 - price 60 euro. This price is in our location situated at 45 km from the city of Cluj-Napoca( ICLOD). Hoping that our offer is interesting for you, we are expecting to contact us with the possibilities to make a strong deal for a long term collaboration.
Greg Milner in the New York Times:
Im talking about loudness as a measure of sound within a particular recording. Our ears perceive loudness in an environment by reflexively noting the dynamic range the difference between the softest and loudest sounds (in this case, the environment is the recording itself, not the room you are playing it in). A blaring television commercial may make us turn down the volume of our sets, but its sonic peaks are no higher than the regular programming preceding it. The commercial just hits those peaks more often. A radio station playing classical music may be broadcasting a signal with the same maximum strength as one playing hip-hop, but the classical station broadcast will hit that peak perhaps once every few minutes, while the hip-hop stations signal may peak several times per second.
A loud environment in this sense is one with a limited dynamic range highs that peak very high, and lows that arent much lower. For decades, musicians and engineers have employed dynamic range compression to make recordings sound fuller. Compression boosts the quieter parts and tamps down louder ones to create a narrower range. Historically, compression was usually applied during the mastering stage, the final steps through which a finished recording becomes a commercial release.
More here.
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Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Donald Trump and various entities he has controlled have been subject to a wide array of criminal investigations, some of them quite intricate and complex. That complexity has obscured what is quickly becoming a clear and simple conclusion: Trump used his inauguration to illegally line his own pockets.
The inauguration is under federal investigation, and the story has emerged in dribs and drabs. But enough pieces have come together that we know where the story is going. Lets quickly review.
Last March, WNYC took note of the vast sums spent on Trumps inauguration, which cost twice as much as the previously most expensive inaugural event, yet could not easily account for where all the extra money had gone. In December, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that federal investigators were looking into the inauguration.
At this point, the story appeared to revolve primarily around Trump cronies using the inauguration for enrichment or political influence. Many of the presidents biggest campaign backers were involved in the inaugural fund, the Journal noted. The probe also looked into whether the inaugural fund had accepted foreign money, which is prohibited.
But WNYC found in December that one possible source of overpayments included fees to Donald Trumps Washington hotel. Emails by WNYC found the Trump Hotel manager proposing to charge the inauguration $175,000 a day for use of its ballroom and conference rooms, a rate the manager of the inauguration objected to as exorbitant.
Monday night, ABC News reported that investigators subpoenaed documents from the inauguration committee. Today ProPublica adds another key detail, confirming that the inauguration did pay the exorbitant $175,000 fee to the Trump Hotel. And it quotes tax law experts describing this as an obvious crime. It could be a tax law violation, Brett Kappel, an attorney at Akerman LLP who advises nonprofits, tells ProPublica.
Of course, fees to Trumps hotel go straight into the pockets of Donald Trump and his family. So these apparent tax law violations which amount to embezzling funds from the inaugural committee through self-dealing were carried out for their personal benefit.
Another thing we know about Trump is that he takes a very close interest in his own money, and nothing infuriates him more than the idea that somebody is making money off of him. Chris Hayes told one story of Trump attempting to wring a commission out of a Tower Records store located in one of his buildings:
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/994327183278657536?lang=en
Somehow Trump gets wind of this, and someone from Trump Tower tells their contact at Tower Records that Trump *wants a cut of the $100* from each local band paying to be in the listening station! Donald Trump! The guy with his name on the building wants in on the $100! Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 9, 2018
A more chronologically relevant account comes from Michael Lewis, who has reported about Trumps lack of interest in planning for his presidential transition during the campaign. Trump could not let go of the idea that the money for the transition was somehow coming at his personal expense:
The first time Trump paid attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper. The story revealed that Trumps very own transition team had raised several million dollars to pay the staff. The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon, the chief executive of his campaign, from his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and told him to come immediately to his residence, many floors above. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find Christie seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, yelling: Youre stealing my money! Youre stealing my fucking money! What the fuck is this? Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my fucking money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain to Trump federal law. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump replied: Fuck the law. I dont give a fuck about the law. I want my fucking money.
Did Donald Trump personally direct the apparently illegal scheme to divert inaugural funds to enrich the Trump Organization? That remains to be proven, but the odds would seem to be fairly high that he did.
The US-Mexico Border Wall is once again in the news. US Customs and Border Protection and the military have installed razor-sharp concertina wire fencing in Nogales and the City Council has condemned it. The Council feels it poses a grave danger to citizens because it is lethal and within easy reach of kids. The resolution passed by the Council says such wires are only found in a war, prison or battle setting.
Daily Mail UK reports the population of Nogales is about 20,000 people. This is much less compared to its "Mexican counterpart." However, the economy of the US side depends on Mexican shoppers who Travel for business because of cross-border trade.
Moreover, illegal crossings in that area have reduced considerably in the recent past. Hence, the fencing is superfluous. Mayor Arturo Garino wants the fencing removed and threatened to take action if it remains.
The mayor of Nogales said the city will sue if the razor wire is not removed https://t.co/Zmqoz4fB8q TIME (@TIME) February 7, 2019
Use of concertina wire criticized
President Donald Trump had promised during his presidential campaign to build the US-Mexico border wall. He said it will stop entry of illegal migrants, drug smugglers, and unwanted elements into the country and would be in keeping with his slogan of Make America Safe. However, Congress is not sanctioning the funds and it led to a record-breaking 35-day government shutdown.
The president revealed in his State of the Union address that he has given orders to troops to prepare for a tremendous onslaught and Nogales is one area where the Army troops intensified their work using the deadly material.
The mayor of #Nogales says added razor wire is hurting the city's economy and wants it taken down. The #BorderPatrol says it is needed to help protect our nation's border. What are your thoughts?https://t.co/39H4zLpQTd pic.twitter.com/RAMjwXP9Ca KVOA News 4 Tucson (@KVOA) February 7, 2019
Daily Mail UK adds Mayor Arturo Garino says this fencing is not aesthetic, neither is it conducive to a "business-friendly" community and travel in the region.
Incidentally, incidents of illegal crossings have reduced to a large extent because of intensive patrolling and the administration could review the need for a border wall.
Mexico border wall and the controversial wire
According to the Guardian, US soldiers positioned at the border have installed concertina wire fencing at several places and in late November, the military had sent 36 miles of the material for this purpose.
This is as per the authorities of the US Customs and Border Protection. Controversy has erupted in Nogales, a city divided by the wall.
City officials in Nogales, Arizona, want border wall's razor wire removed https://t.co/NkkPKxaZ8H KFYR-TV (@KFYRTV) February 7, 2019
Its city council has raised an objection and wants it removed on priority because these are useful in battlefields and should not find a place in civil life. Instances of illegal crossings in the area have dropped steeply in the past several years and such inhuman measures could have repercussions.
Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.
When Jacqueline Daniel was 12 years old, she met a 3-year-old girl named Macy who was living with disabilities. Although she did not talk, communicating love came naturally to Macy.
"The more time I spent with Macy, the more I learned from her," said Daniel, a 2004 University of North Georgia (UNG) graduate.
Twenty-five years later, Daniel finds herself offering programs to individuals like Macy and their families. Daniel is the founder of ConnectAbility, a Dahlonega-based nonprofit organization that is creating communities where people of all abilities are valued, included and empowered.
"Having someone with a disability in a family impacts everyone in the family," she said. "We provide them the opportunity for skill building and building social networks."
Daniel said the idea to start her own nonprofit to reach out to people with disabilities began while she was a student at UNG. After volunteering in her home county of Gwinnett, Daniel searched the Dahlonega area for a Special Olympics program to offer her time. She had no luck. Daniel worked with another UNG group to bring a Christmas party event to Dahlonega in 2001.
"One person with a disability showed up along with a handful of college students," she said.
Realizing she needed to build awareness, Daniel diligently worked to build a community of support in the area. In 2010, she founded ConnectAbility.
"We try and break down every barrier to provide access to people of all abilities," she said. "We have no restriction on diagnosis, ages, income level, or geographic location."
Her vision was to bring those of all abilities into the community to experience and share the unique gifts they have to offer. To accomplish that, ConnectAbility provides events accessible to everybody. For example, ConnectAbility hosts an annual race accessible to those with and without physical disabilities.
"Through grant funding, we have been able to purchase a fleet of top-notch racing wheelchairs," Daniel said. "We have taken away the physical barrier to help an individual become part of that cultural experience. There is a thrill of crossing the finish line and an enjoyment of having a group of friends have the same fun that you do."
ConnectAbility's mission is working. In 2018, the nonprofit served more than 3,000 people with and without disabilities.
"We are thriving by creating a community where everybody belongs," she said.
ConnectAbility does not only serve its "friends." The program utilizes students and resources from UNG. Daniel established an internship program for the organization, which has seen six to eight students from UNG working and volunteering for ConnectAbility.
"What's neat about it is, the students come from all over the world," she said. "It's possibly their initial exposure to a person with disability. They take experience with them all over the globe, which impacts the rest of their lives."
Senator Amy Klobuchar. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.
Two more reports of Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchars alleged maltreatment of her staff emerged just two days prior to her likely presidential campaign announcement on Sunday. According to BuzzFeed News, four former staffers claim that Klobuchars behavior regularly left employees in tears. The senator allegedly tossed papers and one aide was accidentally hit with a flying binder, according to a person who was in the room and who noted that the senator did not intend the throw to make contact.
In a similar report from HuffPost, a former staffer to disgraced Minnesota Senator Al Franken recalled an incident in which Klobuchar directed an aide to berate herself:
A young Klobuchar staffer was sent to explain the senators lateness to the Franken staffer.
Im supposed to tell you, she said, with a look of terror on her face, Senator Klobuchar is late today because I am bad at my job.
According to emails seen by BuzzFeed News, Klobuchar consistently rebuked her staff in all caps, often over minor mistakes and at odd hours, frequently sending messages between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. The senator would reportedly become angry if a staffer did not charge her iPad or if they used staples instead of paper clips. Her reputation as a demanding boss was so well known that, in 2015, retired Nevada Senator Harry Reid reportedly told her to reconsider her management tactics.
HuffPost also obtained an eight-page memo from Klobuchars 2006 Senate run, detailing the responsibilities and challenges of Klobuchars body person:
Especially while in the car during a busy day: if she is EXTREMELY upset about something, let her rant through it, DONT interupt [sic] her unless ABSOLUTELY necessary and be careful when trying to calm her down Often she just needs to talk things out in the open and is not interested in other peoples opinions this is something that you will become used to and adjust to its just a note for the first time this happens.
HuffPost spoke to a former advance man the staffer who arrives ahead of time to prepare an event for a politicians arrival who said that the memo was inappropriate at points, like when it tells aides, Only speak when spoken to at events. The memo also requested that the body person hang up clothes she leaves laying on the floor and pick up dirty clothes & place in a basket. Staff are staff, theyre not maids, said the advance man.
Its unclear how much fallout this will create for Klobuchar, who promoted the self-branding Minnesota Nice in her 2015 memoir, The Senator Next Door. In the initial report from Wednesday, HuffPost did reveal that the senators management style has reportedly caused at least three people to withdraw from consideration for the role of Klobuchars campaign manager. (From 2001 to 2016, Klobuchar also had the highest staff turnover rate in the Senate.) Senator Klobuchar loves her staff they are the reason she has gotten to where she is today, a campaign spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. She is proud of them and the work they have done for Minnesota.
Some staffers have claimed that sexism has clouded the controversy around Klobuchars reputation. Women shouldnt be expected to nurture their employees or colleagues more than men, and they should be no less entitled to challenge them, said Asal Sayas, a staffer that Klobuchars office forwarded to BuzzFeed News. But others considered the criticism well-founded. I knew her reputation going in, and I rationalized it, because I thought that was what was going on I thought people were saying that because she was a woman, a former staffer told BuzzFeed News. I regret that now. Another former aide said that I dont think this is one of those situations that can be attributed to sexism. If it were a man doing these things, that story should be written. Either way, the growing allegations may not be great for the 2020 ambitions of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor leader the third word of the state party being the operative one.
The case of a little girl who is paralysed after being raped by her uncle in Sierra Leone has led the president to declare sexual violence a national emergency.
The five-year-old, who is being kept anonymous for her safety, was paralysed from the waist down after her 28-year-old uncle raped her a year ago, crushing her spine.
"She may never walk again, and I want vengeance for what has happened," her grandmother said.
"The man who did this ruined her life and deserves to spend his life in prison."
Her case has outraged the West African country, where reported cases of sexual and gender-based violence nearly doubled last year to more than 8,500.
A third of those involved a minor.
But activists, including President Julius Maada Bio's wife, Fatima, say the actual figures are much higher as most cases are never reported.
The maximum sentence for sexually-motivated crimes was only 15 years in prison, with few cases successfully prosecuted. Many sexual assaults go unpunished.
But after months of campaigning by activists, Mr Bio declared a national emergency and said people convicted of sexual offences against minors would face life in prison.
"Some of our families practise a culture of silence and indifference towards sexual violence, leaving victims even more traumatised," he told a crowd at the State House.
"We as a nation must stand up and address this scourge."
Gender-based violence is traditionally seen as a taboo topic in Sierra Leone. Politicians only passed the country's first gender-equality laws 12 years ago, after pressure from women's groups.
The policies have been implemented slowly, with police hampered by inadequate resources so criminals have been able to get away with it.
In December the first lady led a protest in the capital, Freetown, to raise awareness of gender-based violence.
She has also launched the Hands Off Our Girls campaign to increase awareness of violence against girls across West Africa.
Story continues
Activists support the national emergency move, but say progress needs to continue.
Fatmata Sorie, president of LAWYERS, an all-female group of barristers providing pro-bono legal services to vulnerable women and girls, said: "We still need to think about how services for survivors are not accessible, especially for the poor.
"We've made a big step today, but this is a very complex issue that will require complex and continuing solutions."
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for a second summit in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. Trump also tweeted that he was confident that North Korea would become an 'Economic Powerhouse' under the country's leader Kim Jong Un.North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit.The US State Department said the special US envoy for North Korea will meet with North Korean officials again ahead of the Trump-Kim talks.In a statement, the State Department said talks during Stephen Bieguns three-day trip explored Trump and Kims commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.At their landmark inaugural summit in Singapore last year, Trump and Kim produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.But progress has since stalled with Pyongyang and Washington, which stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, disagreeing over what that means.Critics say that the Singapore summit was little more than a photo-op. The second round with the young and elusive North Korean leader will again offer a change of headlines for Trump amid a barrage of scandalous allegations and a political deadlock that has shut down the US government. (with AFP)
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for a second summit in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.
Trump also tweeted that he was confident that North Korea would become an 'Economic Powerhouse' under the country's leader Kim Jong Un.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit.
The US State Department said the special US envoy for North Korea will meet with North Korean officials again ahead of the Trump-Kim talks.
In a statement, the State Department said talks during Stephen Bieguns three-day trip explored Trump and Kims commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.
At their landmark inaugural summit in Singapore last year, Trump and Kim produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
But progress has since stalled with Pyongyang and Washington, which stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, disagreeing over what that means.
Critics say that the Singapore summit was little more than a photo-op.
The second round with the young and elusive North Korean leader will again offer a change of headlines for Trump amid a barrage of scandalous allegations and a political deadlock that has shut down the US government.
(with AFP)
Nigerias President Muhammadu Buhari greeted supporters in Lagos, Nigeria, on February 9, seven days before the general election.
Buhari will stand for a second term against his main challenger, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar.
Voting card collections in Nigeria were extended until Monday, February 11, after complaints of closed voter centers and intimidation.
This footage shows Buhari wave to crowds of cheering people from a car. Credit: Professor Yemi Osinbajo via Storyful
Nearly half a million Spaniards crossed the border into France after Barcelona fell to General Francisco Franco 80 years ago. Many were detained in makeshift internment camps during a dark chapter of French history that has been all but forgotten. On January 26, 1939, Franco seized control of the Catalan capital of Barcelona, forcing thousands of Republican sympathisers to flee north. Although Frances official position during the Spanish Civil War was one of non-intervention, the country had turned a blind eye to weapons funneled across its border to Republican forces. It now decided to open its doors: Frances government granted entry to Spanish civilians on January 28 and extended this courtesy to Republican soldiers fleeing Francos army on February 5. In a matter of weeks, around 475,000 refugees had crossed the French-Spanish border. The exodus came to be known later as La Retirada (The Retreat). To mark its 80th anniversary, FRANCE 24 spoke to Genevieve Dreyfus-Armand, historian and author of The Exile of Spanish Republicans in France: From the Civil War to Francos Death, who explained this forgotten chapter in history. What caused this massive influx of Spanish refugees? Genevieve Dreyfus-Armand: The immediate cause was the fall of Catalonia. Since the start of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Francos forces (known as Nationalists) brutally repressed Republican sympathisers whenever they seized new territory. They executed unionists, teachers, intellectuals, artists, even workers. When Catalonia fell, there were a lot of people already there who had fled from other regions. They were scared that the repression would be even worse this time around. They chose to leave for France. It was the only escape route possible. How did they make the journey to France? Dreyfus-Armand: They most often left on foot, but sometimes by cart or in a truck. The long column of refugees was the target of intense bombardments by Nationalist and Italian planes. They were running for their lives across the mountains in the heart of winter, in the cold and snow. There are absolutely horrible images of civilians and soldiers marching through the snow. How did the French government react to the influx of Spanish refugees? Dreyfus-Armand: The French government had long been aware that a wave of refugees would follow if Francos forces won the war. But no one was prepared for such a massive influx. The Spanish Republican government still hoped, against all reason, to reverse the situation. Meanwhile, the French government refused to act on what it knew, instead enforcing existing asylum laws. But the country had recently approved harsher rules for refugees, which allowed for asylum seekers from undesirable countries to be detained at internment camps. This meant that families who arrived at the border were separated. Women, children, the elderly and the wounded were relocated to regions across France Soldiers and able-bodied men were escorted to areas such as the beaches in the southeastern towns of Argeles-sur-Mer and Saint-Cyprien, where nothing had been prepared. All that had been set up was a perimeter of barbed wire. At first, there were around 100,000 men on the beaches in Argeles-sur-Mer, and slightly fewer in Saint-Cyprien. But the camps were soon overwhelmed, and others were built in neighbouring regions. It was totally improvised; the refugees didnt have shelter at first. They buried themselves in the sand for protection. They built their own makeshift barracks. There was no drinking water and the mortality rate was extremely high during those initial weeks.What happened in the following weeks?Dreyfus-Armand: The camps emptied out in the spring of 1939. After fighting for nearly three years in Spain, this detention was unbearable for many of the men. But they had limited options. They could return to Spain, where former soldiers were often imprisoned or put to forced labour; immigrate elsewhere, such as Latin America; or enlist in the French military.At the border, French authorities encouraged Spanish Republicans to join the Foreign Legion. Several thousand signed up, but the vast majority were able to escape the camps by finding work. They were hired by farmers or recruited by companies because many were highly skilled workers. By April 1940, there were around 100,000 Spaniards working in the war economy. But after Germany occupied France in June 1940, many Spanish Republicans found themselves again interned in camps. They were forced into foreign labour units or conscripted to shore up defences at the border. Some were deployed to areas in non-occupied France, such as the Pyrenees or the Massif Central, where they cut wood. It was in these regions that they formed small pockets of resistance. In 1944, they took part in the liberation of a number of French regions. The first armoured vehicle to enter Paris in August 1944 was driven by Spanish Republicans. At the end of the war, around 150,000 stayed in France. In March 1945, the Provisional Government of the French Republic recognised them as Nansen refugees (a special status that allowed stateless people to travel between countries). Eighty years on, what remains of this chapter in history? Genevieve Dreyfus-Armand: Its a chapter in history that had a major impact on France. Yet we have a poor collective memory of it. Spanish Republicans didnt expect to be welcomed in three-star hotels, but they also didnt think that they would be humiliated and treated as poorly as they were, because they deeply admired France. For them, it was the country of human rights. Despite everything, they fought for France. Many took part in the war economy, and then the French Resistance. Its an open wound for their descendants, because their actions were never recognised. They have become forgotten soldiers. They had the misfortune of arriving in France at a time when it no longer offered asylum. We soon forgot the tragedy because of World War II, but it has re-emerged in our collective conscience over the last 15 years or so. Its important for their descendants, because this chapter in history has shaped their lives and continues to shape the world today. This article was translated from the original in French.
Nearly half a million Spaniards crossed the border into France after Barcelona fell to General Francisco Franco 80 years ago. Many were detained in makeshift internment camps during a dark chapter of French history that has been all but forgotten.
On January 26, 1939, Franco seized control of the Catalan capital of Barcelona, forcing thousands of Republican sympathisers to flee north. Although Frances official position during the Spanish Civil War was one of non-intervention, the country had turned a blind eye to weapons funneled across its border to Republican forces. It now decided to open its doors: Frances government granted entry to Spanish civilians on January 28 and extended this courtesy to Republican soldiers fleeing Francos army on February 5.
In a matter of weeks, around 475,000 refugees had crossed the French-Spanish border. The exodus came to be known later as La Retirada (The Retreat). To mark its 80th anniversary, FRANCE 24 spoke to Genevieve Dreyfus-Armand, historian and author of The Exile of Spanish Republicans in France: From the Civil War to Francos Death, who explained this forgotten chapter in history.
What caused this massive influx of Spanish refugees?
Genevieve Dreyfus-Armand: The immediate cause was the fall of Catalonia. Since the start of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Francos forces (known as Nationalists) brutally repressed Republican sympathisers whenever they seized new territory. They executed unionists, teachers, intellectuals, artists, even workers. When Catalonia fell, there were a lot of people already there who had fled from other regions. They were scared that the repression would be even worse this time around. They chose to leave for France. It was the only escape route possible.
How did they make the journey to France?
Dreyfus-Armand: They most often left on foot, but sometimes by cart or in a truck. The long column of refugees was the target of intense bombardments by Nationalist and Italian planes. They were running for their lives across the mountains in the heart of winter, in the cold and snow. There are absolutely horrible images of civilians and soldiers marching through the snow.
Story continues
How did the French government react to the influx of Spanish refugees?
Dreyfus-Armand: The French government had long been aware that a wave of refugees would follow if Francos forces won the war. But no one was prepared for such a massive influx. The Spanish Republican government still hoped, against all reason, to reverse the situation. Meanwhile, the French government refused to act on what it knew, instead enforcing existing asylum laws. But the country had recently approved harsher rules for refugees, which allowed for asylum seekers from undesirable countries to be detained at internment camps.
This meant that families who arrived at the border were separated. Women, children, the elderly and the wounded were relocated to regions across France Soldiers and able-bodied men were escorted to areas such as the beaches in the southeastern towns of Argeles-sur-Mer and Saint-Cyprien, where nothing had been prepared. All that had been set up was a perimeter of barbed wire. At first, there were around 100,000 men on the beaches in Argeles-sur-Mer, and slightly fewer in Saint-Cyprien. But the camps were soon overwhelmed, and others were built in neighbouring regions. It was totally improvised; the refugees didnt have shelter at first. They buried themselves in the sand for protection. They built their own makeshift barracks. There was no drinking water and the mortality rate was extremely high during those initial weeks.
What happened in the following weeks?
Dreyfus-Armand: The camps emptied out in the spring of 1939. After fighting for nearly three years in Spain, this detention was unbearable for many of the men. But they had limited options. They could return to Spain, where former soldiers were often imprisoned or put to forced labour; immigrate elsewhere, such as Latin America; or enlist in the French military.
At the border, French authorities encouraged Spanish Republicans to join the Foreign Legion. Several thousand signed up, but the vast majority were able to escape the camps by finding work. They were hired by farmers or recruited by companies because many were highly skilled workers. By April 1940, there were around 100,000 Spaniards working in the war economy.
But after Germany occupied France in June 1940, many Spanish Republicans found themselves again interned in camps. They were forced into foreign labour units or conscripted to shore up defences at the border. Some were deployed to areas in non-occupied France, such as the Pyrenees or the Massif Central, where they cut wood. It was in these regions that they formed small pockets of resistance.
In 1944, they took part in the liberation of a number of French regions. The first armoured vehicle to enter Paris in August 1944 was driven by Spanish Republicans. At the end of the war, around 150,000 stayed in France. In March 1945, the Provisional Government of the French Republic recognised them as Nansen refugees (a special status that allowed stateless people to travel between countries).
Eighty years on, what remains of this chapter in history?
Genevieve Dreyfus-Armand: Its a chapter in history that had a major impact on France. Yet we have a poor collective memory of it. Spanish Republicans didnt expect to be welcomed in three-star hotels, but they also didnt think that they would be humiliated and treated as poorly as they were, because they deeply admired France. For them, it was the country of human rights. Despite everything, they fought for France. Many took part in the war economy, and then the French Resistance. Its an open wound for their descendants, because their actions were never recognised. They have become forgotten soldiers. They had the misfortune of arriving in France at a time when it no longer offered asylum. We soon forgot the tragedy because of World War II, but it has re-emerged in our collective conscience over the last 15 years or so. Its important for their descendants, because this chapter in history has shaped their lives and continues to shape the world today.
This article was translated from the original in French.
FILE PHOTO: Floating excavators prepare an underwater trench for the North Stream 2 pipeline close to Lubmin, Germany, May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union nations backed a plan to regulate Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline on Friday, a move that will likely slow but not rule out its construction.
The long-stalled agreement comes after a last-ditch German and French push to amend the draft and give Berlin a greater say in how to ensure the pipeline to carry Russian gas to Europe under the Baltic Sea complies with EU law.
Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the vote as an example of Berlin's close ties with Paris after the two major European powers, which both have firms invested in the project, were publicly at odds ahead of the EU meeting.
Nord Stream 2 has divided the EU, with German opposition to the new draft rules stalling discussions since it was proposed by the EU executive in November 2017.
Eastern European, Nordic and Baltic Sea countries see the 1,225 km (760 mile) pipeline increasing EU reliance on Moscow, while those in northern Europe, especially Germany, prioritise the economic benefits.
EU capitals overcame difference on Friday over shared geopolitical concerns that it would deprive Ukraine of transit fees that are a lifeline of its economy by doubling the amount of gas that could be pumped under the Baltic Sea.
Such worries have driven fierce U.S. lobbying against the Russian project.
A French official rejected suggestions that Washington's threat to sanction the project led EU nations to break their deadlock. "We don't make decisions based on U.S. bravado," the official said.
The draft law will likely require a change in business model for the project, led by Russian state energy firm Gazprom in partnership with five Western firms - Germany's Uniper and BASF's Wintershall unit, Anglo-Dutch firm Shell, Austria's OMV and France's Engie.
It calls for all import pipelines to meet EU energy market rules by not being directly owned by gas suppliers; applying non-discriminatory tariffs and transparent reporting; and allowing at least 10 percent of capacity to be made available to third parties.
Story continues
Berlin worked overnight with Paris to amend the proposed bill when it became clear that it had lost its blocking minority among the 28 nations. The last-minute changes give it greater say because the pipeline would connect with the European gas grid in Germany.
EU sources say Berlin may now seek an exemption from the bloc's energy rules, or it may cut a deal with Moscow over how the pipeline is operated, subject to review by the EU executive.
The details of the proposal may still shift in talks next week between the EU's three lawmaking institutions to agree the final rules.
If adopted, EU diplomats say the rules will not stop the pipeline but are likely to make its completion more costly and lengthy.
BUSINESS VS GEOPOLITICS
The pipeline plan has become increasingly controversial since Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014.
In an effort to address concerns, Merkel has insisted that gas volumes must continue via Ukraine - the traditional route for supplies that make up over a third of the EU's gas needs.
So far EU-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine have failed to agree the terms of such transits before their current contract expires by year's end.
Any delay to Gazprom's push to complete construction of Nord Stream 2 in 2019 could weaken Moscow's hand in those negotiations.
Western firms invested in the project have so far each financed 600 million euros (526 million) until year's end in what they say is a sign of faith that it will be continued, sources familiar with the matter said.
"It would be fatal, if a fully approved billion-euro project, in which billions have been invested, could suddenly no longer be carried out," OMV CEO Rainer Seele said earlier this week. "That wouldnt necessarily strengthen investor confidence in Europe."
EU imports of Russian gas : http://tmsnrt.rs/2nz1ySg
(This story corrects to say firms have each invested 600 million, adds sourcing, paragraph 19)
(Reporting by Peter Maushagena and Alissa de Carbonnel in Brussels; Additional reporting by Kristi Knolle in Vienna, Gabriela Bacynska in Brussels, Jean-Baptiste Vey in Paris and Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Editing by Jan Harvey)
Sky News
David Nabarro, a special envoy on coronavirus for the World Health Organisation, said more strains are "inevitable". Speaking to Sky News, Dr Nabarro said the "issue of variants is what we are watching all over the world" and they "are going to go on coming". "We will go from Delta to Lambda and then on to the other Greek letters, that's inevitable, and some of these variants will be troublesome," he said.
Following Mays historic defeat on 15 January 2019, with 432 202 MPs voting against the Brexit withdrawal agreement Theresa May negotiated with the EU, she was given a further 2 weeks to present Plan B for a government vote. The options for Mrs Mays government included no deal, a second referendum and renegotiation of proposed Brexit terms among others.
Although May survived a vote of no confidence brought against her by her own government earlier this year, a second vote of no confidence was put forward on 16 January 2019 against Mays government by Corbyn, which she again won with a vote of 325 to 306 votes: keeping her in power by just 19 votes.
Mays winning two votes of no confidence this year suggests a general election is unlikely, as she seems determined to see Brexit through to the bitter end. For better or for worse remains to be seen.
On 29 January 2019, just two months before the UK is due to leave the EU, May came back with her Plan B for Brexit, including amendments to the withdrawal agreement previously negotiated, in the hopes that there would be sufficient changes for a vote in favour the second time around. Although many were hoping Plan B would involve some revolutionary amendments to the proposed agreement, critics were underwhelmed at the changes proposed, with arguments that Plan B too closely resembled the agreement put forward on 15 January.
The amendments to the withdrawal agreement were put forward by various members of parliament and selected by Speaker John Bercow for debate on 29 January.
Amendment One (A): Corbyn
Put forward by Labour frontbencher Jeremy Corbyn, Amendment (A) requests government secure sufficient time to vote on ways of avoiding a no-deal Brexit and pushes for no-deal options to be taken off the table entirely.
Some of the suggestions put forward in this amendment included a Brexit plan which included permanent membership of the customs union and a strong relationship with the single market as well as dynamic alignment with the EU regarding contested areas such as environmental and workers rights.
This amendment also included an option for a second referendum.
Although Corbyn himself has been reluctant to publicly support a second referendum, this would allow a public vote on a deal or a proposition that has commanded the support of the majority of the House of Commons: giving the public a say in any final agreements.
This was rejected at parliament, with 296 votes for and 327 against.
Amendment Two (B): Cooper
Backed by Labour, MP Yvette Coopers amendment involves a vote to delay Article 50 if a Brexit deal isnt passed through Commons by 26 February. Similar to the Corbyn amendment, this Bill hopes to avoid a no-deal Brexit outcome by extending the deadline for the UK to negotiate more favourable divorce terms with the EU.
This proposal was also voted down on 29 January with 298 votes in favour and 321 against.
Amendment Three (G): Grieve
Former attorney general Dominic Grieves proposal suggests allowing MPs six days worth of debates to allow backbench MPs to set the Commons agenda. This would allow backbenchers to test support for amendments and alternatives to the proposed Brexit deal. Although this amendment doesnt specifically involve a delay to Article 50, it still lost by 301 votes in favour vs 321 against, however, this may have been influenced by Mays pledge to allow another vote by 14 February to look again at whether a no-deal Brexit can be avoided.
Amendment Four (I): Spelman
Coming from former environmental secretary Caroline Spelman was an amendment to express overriding objections to a no-deal Brexit outcome.
This house rejects the UK leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement and a framework for the future relationship. This amendment doesnt legally bind the government to avoid a no-deal Brexit but does make it clear that this is not desirable for the UK and was approved with a vote of 318 in favour and 310 against.
Amendment Five (J): Reeves
The next amendment comes from the Business Select Committee chair Rachel Reeves, pushing May to extend Article 50 and postponing Brexit if an agreement cannot be reached by 26 February. This concurs with Dominic Grieves and Yvette Coopers amendments suggesting an extension may be necessary to secure a beneficial deal post-Brexit. Although this tweak had a variety of cross-party support, it was still rejected by a vote of 290 to 322.
Mrs May commented that this proposal could weaken her position in Brexit negotiations with the EU and would be simply deferring the point of decision rather than offering any valuable revision.
Amendment Six (N): Murrison/Brady
Tabled by Conservative backbencher and Northern Ireland Committee chairman Andrew Murrison alongside senior Conservative backbencher Sir Graham Brady, this amendment focuses on the hugely contested Irish Backstop to be replaced with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border. Also seeking to avoid a hard or no-deal Brexit, this amendment was passed on 29 January with 317 votes in favour and 301 against despite leading Brexiters dismissing these amendments as being too vague and a suggestion that the EU will not agree to renegotiate on the backstop.
Amendment Seven (O): Blackford
This amendment was put forward by the SNP and Plaid Cymru to once again request an extension to Article 50 and rule out a no-deal Brexit. The leaders of these two parties highlighted that Scotland and Welsh parties voted overwhelmingly to reject the Prime Ministers deal and that the Scottish 62% Remain vote should be taken into account during negotiations.
This amendment only received 39 votes in favour.
Outcome
In summary, following the debate on 29 January 2019, its looking like any proposition to delay Brexit or extend Article 50 has been overwhelmingly rejected, with the biggest amendment to receive support being a rejection of the Irish Backstop agreement.
The next step is for Mrs May is to return to Brussels to attempt to renegotiate the terms of the withdrawal agreement, taking into account the recent amendment requests.
This still wont be straightforward, however, as EU leaders have made it quite clear that they are unwilling to renegotiate at this stage, and have claimed the UK to be an unreasonable and unreliable negotiator over the course of the last few years. This is likely to cause issues if we want to negotiate more favourable terms without risking a no-deal outcome and will take a lot of discussion in order to reach an agreement everyone is happy with.
Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are convenient targets for Republicans seeking to spread the guilt for their tolerance of Steve King. Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Having chuckled and nodded and otherwise tolerated Steve Kings racist antics for many years, House Republicans finally got shamed into denouncing the old nativist recently when he began identifying himself with global bigotry as a sort of movement of conscience. But now their leader, Kevin McCarthy, is trying to turn this around via a bold false equivalency claim, as the Washington Post reports:
The top House Republican leader slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats on Friday for refusing to denounce what the GOP is characterizing as the anti-Semitic views of some freshman Democratic lawmakers.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters that he viewed the situation as being directly comparable, if no more so, to the firestorm over the racially charged comments of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who was quoted last month questioning whether white supremacy was offensive.
This attack is without question focused on the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Their principal sin, it seems, has been to support the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement aimed at pressuring Israel into fundamentally changing its policies towards Palestinians and occupied territories. BDS, of course, is a red flag to many supporters of Israel, particularly those who identify with the current Israeli governments drift toward abandoning any possible two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the idea that BDS equals anti-Semitism or even anti-Zionism is ludicrous on its face. And so those seeking to go after Ilhan and Tlaib have to toss in random questionable comments and plenty of guilt-by-association:
In 2012, Omar sent a tweet saying that Israel has hypnotized the world, and referred to the evil doings of Israel. Under pressure last month, Omar disavowed the anti-Semitic trope I unknowingly used, which is unfortunate and offensive but stood by her criticism of Israeli policy.
Tlaib came under fire last month after a Daily Caller report identified a campaign supporter, Maher Abdel-Qader, as having posted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on Facebook including to a group that included Tlaib. Another campaign ally, Abbas Hamideh, also made comments critical of Israel in social media posts, referring to Zionist terrorists and asserting that Israel does not have a right to exist.
But heres my favorite attack on Tlaib:
Last month, Tlaib attacked the sponsors of a Senate bill that would undermine the BDS movement by tweeting, They forgot what country they represent. That prompted criticism from Republicans and a few Democrats, who saw in that comment a frequent anti-Semitic insinuation.
Yes, dual loyalty is a common insinuation aimed at Jews who go out of their way to advocate for Israel, though calling it anti-Semitic is a stretch (Irish-Americans, for example, have been legitimately criticized over many decades for letting their antipathy towards England dictate their worldview). But since Tlaib was talking not about Jews, but mostly about gentile United States senators (100 percent gentile United States senators, in the case of the Republicans taking umbrage at her comments), this criticism seems displaced. I consider myself a Zionist, but levied the same criticism at Mitt Romney and other Republicans in 2012 when they went after Barack Obama for failing to simply outsource his Middle East policies to their friend Bibi Netanyahu. Anyone in Congress who favors unconditional support for the policies of any foreign nation has indeed forgotten what country they represent.
The case that Omar and Tlaib are anything like Steve King is, to put it mildly, very weak. But its worth the effort to McCarthy and his allies to make this weak case because aside from spreading the guilt for their tolerance of white nationalist bigotry, its a two-fer, undermining Jewish support for Democrats, and pleasing conservative evangelicals who place an expanding Israel at the center of their world-view and really dont like Muslims. The odds of these two women finding defenders in the circles where Republican Members of Congress travel are vanishingly low.
An admiring Mike Pompeo with Elliott Abrams
It's a sad fact that the full and unconditional pardon given by President George H.W. Bush to Elliott Abrams (a member of the second generation neo-conservative royalty by way of marriage to the daughter of neo-con co-creator, Midge Decter), protected him from disbarment and possible prison. Abrams, who pled guilty to the crime of lying to Congress in the investigation of the Iran-Contra, embraced the plea option reportedly in order to avoid heavier charges from the office of then independent counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, prosecutor in the Iran-Contra cases. Bush is gone, Walsh is gone, but Mr. Bushs Attorney General William Barr is surprise now Attorney General of the United States.
What that portends for future regime change adventures remains to be seen, but the historical record is ominous.
In 1992, when Bush issued the Iran-Contra pardons on the eve of his leaving office after losing reelection to President Bill Clinton, William Barr fully supported the pardons. Presidential pardons are, after all, Constitutional. But, Lawrence Walsh said at the time, reported NPR, "It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences.
Now the Iran-Contra era neo-cons and the Dick Cheney/Iraq Invasion 2003 era neo-cons are marching back into the institution of the Presidency.
Elliott Abrams got a new high level job last month, Special Envoy on Venezuela. Within weeks, the United States recognized a new President of Venezuela while the elected Venezuelan President is still in office. Chatter and rumor from the White House suggests that military intervention is possible. The new recognized-by- the-US-President of Venezuela is a veteran of color revolution type regime change, groomed for service with the help of the snakelike National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Regime change, putting in questionable, if not nefarious new leaders, seems to be Abrams delight: Nicaragua, Iraq while a government official. Many others in his dreams.
In 1986, even before the Iran-Contra debacle was revealed, as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Elliott Abrams told Congress that Nicaraguan Contras involved in drug running didnt have the okay from Contra leaders. It was just underlings. This, while Abrams and company were busy doing end-runs around the Boland Amendment and other Congressional actions that barred military supplies to the Contras. Even Khomeini's Iran was not off limits in getting money for the Nicaraguan fight.
In another time and place, i.e., Saudi Arabia, present day, where regime change in Syria was a high priority, weve heard excuses similar to those made by Elliott Abrams about the Contras, about the responsibility for the killing and butchering of the corpse of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and about the financing and arming of ISIS and Al Nusra terrorists by Saudi Arabia in Syria. Deja vu.
With more neo-cons in the Administration, the trajectory is more wasted blood and treasure.
Four drowned and two went missing as a group of nine ninth graders were enjoying a beach swim in Thang Binh District in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam on Friday afternoon.
The tragic accident occurred at around 3:30 pm, the fourth day of the new lunar year, according to Thang Binh police.
Search was still underway for the two missing students as of the end of Friday.
The nine students of the district's Nguyen Duy Hieu Secondary School went for a swim at a beach some 30 kilometers to the south of their school.
Upon arriving at the beach, only eight went swimming while one decided to stay on the shore.
But all of these eight students began to drown as they swam outside the safe area. Only one of them managed to swim to the shore and shouted for help with the kid who had been staying there.
The body of a victim was taken back home by the family members. Photo: Tan Luc / Tuoi Tre
Local people rushed to the rescue and managed to save one schoolgirl, Nguyen Hoang Ngoc Anh.
She was brought ashore and received first aid at a local medical center before being transferred to the provincial General Hospital.
Of the six students whom rescuers failed to take to the shore, four bodies were found, while the two others remained unaccounted for as of 7:30 pm the same day.
The deceased students were identified as Tran Thi Thuy, Tran Le Ly Na, Nguyen Van Y and Pham Thi Thuan.
The Quang Nam police department has mobilized a rescue vehicle and eight rescuers to dive along the coast to continue the search efforts for the missing students.
Local fishermen also joined the overnight search efforts, scouring the beach with nets and fishing hooks.
Drowning remains one of the major causes of child mortality in Vietnam.
The father of one of the two remaining missing students waits for news of his son. Photo: Tan Luc / Tuoi Tre
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Check out whats in the news today, February 9, the fifth day of the Lunar New Year 2019!
Society
-- Cloudy but sunny weather is in the forecast for the northern provinces in Vietnam while there may be rains in the central and southern regions on Saturday.
-- Four drowned, two went missing as a group of nine ninth graders went swimming at a beach in Binh Minh Village, Thang Binh District, in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam, on Friday afternoon.
-- A passenger bus traveling on a section of the National Highway 1 in Hoang Hoa District in the northern province of Thanh Hoa, collided with a car carrying a blue license plate, which often designates vehicles as being owned by state organizations, causing three deaths, five injuries on Friday morning.
-- An electric cabinet at the Thu Duc 3 water supply plant located in Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City was burned on Friday morning, resulted in a water shortage for households in parts of districts of Go Vap, Binh Thanh and District 12.
Business
-- Resorts in Mui Ne and Phan Thiet, two famed coastal cities in the south-central province of Binh Thuan, were packed with tourists on Friday, the fourth day of the Lunar New Year 2019 holiday. The provincial tourism department estimates that staying visitors to the locality during this occasion will reach 100,000, up 22 percent over the same period last year.
-- Sapphire Princess, one of the world's largest international cruise ships, with port of registry in London, carrying about 2,800 international visitors and 1,080 crew members from Hong Kong, docked at the SP-SSA International Terminal SSIT in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau on Friday morning.
-- The Vietnam News Agency reported on Friday that Co.opXtra Su Van Hanh, an outlet of Vietnam's leading supermarket chain Co.opmart in Ho Chi Minh Citys District 10, has been named in the list of '17 stores you must visit this year,' according to IGD Asia, Asias leading retail research organization.
Lifestyle
-- As many as 500 workers were employed on Friday evening to carry out cleanup for the Nguyen Hue Flower Street in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, an annual event to celebrate the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday that wrapped up the same day after running for a week.
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The second U.S. - North Korea summit will take place in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, later this month, President Donald Trump announced via Twitter on Saturday (Vietnam time).
Vietnam was revealed as the place for the next meeting between the U.S president and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, scheduled for February 27 and 28, during the State of the Union speech Trump delivered to Congress on Tuesday night.
While the U.S. leader did not mention a precise venue then, he gave more details about the summit in a Tweet on Saturday.
My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un, he wrote.
It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!
Trump and Kim met in a historic first summit in Singapore in June 2018.
In a separate tweet also on Saturday, Trump said North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse.
He may surprise some but he wont surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is, the tweet reads.
North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!
The spokesperson of the Vietnamese foreign ministry has said Hanoi welcomes the second U.S. - North Korea summit planned to take place in the country.
The New York Times has reported that the U.S. had been studied the possibility of organizing the summit in the central city of Da Nang, the host city of the 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, but the North Korean side was more in favor of choosing Hanoi.
President Trump and his aides believe Vietnam, with its 1986 reform movement, can be a good example of the potential for economic development North Korea can take reference from.
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A technical undergraduate student in Vietnam is turning trash to treasure by transforming decomposing fish scales into yellow apricot blossoms (known as hoa mai in Vietnamese) a flower typically used as decoration ahead of the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday in southern Vietnam.
Le Ngoc Biet, a junior at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH) is hoping that the apricot blossoms hes designed from fish scales can bring in big bucks as local Vietnamese seek out decorations for the holiday.
Meticulous and patient
Ngoc Biet first became intrigued with fish scales while using them to draw pictures. While studying them in detail to improve his drawings, he realized that, besides the color, the scales were eerily similar to apricot blossom petals.
His attempts at fashioning the scales into apricot blossoms immediately drew attention and he was quick to find a buyer.
The success of his first attempt motivated Biet to take a shot at making peach flowers, a popular Tet holiday decoration in northern Vietnam.
With this vibrant and transparent material a decorated apricot blossom pot can be put on display for five to six years said Biet.
To ensure that the scales are able to stay in such good condition for so long, Biet immerses them in a special enzyme after purchasing them from a fish vendor at Do Dac Market in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City.
The enzyme is meant to eliminate any odors. After drying and dyeing the scales, he applies a silicon adhesive to connect each individual scale to a dry apricot branch.
Though the process isnt particularly difficult, it does require a certain level of diligence in order to achieve the perfect positioning and color.
What I am aiming to create is a unique and one-of-a-kind product, he shared.
The practice demands high concentration and meticulousness at disposal. Photo: Y Nhung / Tuoi Tre
It took a significant amount of experimentation before Biet was able to develop the correct method for crafting the fish scales.
He once dipped the scales into water for an entire month to test their integrity.
Biet also researched which enzymes were suitable for the odors of each kind of fish scale.
At first, the stench was so strong we werent able to use the fish scales. Now, were used to it, Biet shared.
The most challenging part of the flower-making process, according to Biet, is that the scales often begin to curl as they dry. Because of this, he must firmly press then flat while crafting them into flower petals.
Overall though, Biet admits that the process is relatively simple and that, with a little guidance, almost all of his peers could pull it off.
Disregarding profit
Biet currently has over 100 online orders pending for his fish-scale products, including decorated apricot branches, apricot pots, and apricot flowers.
For the pots, Biet uses conventional silk-decorated apricot branches that he buys wholesale for VND150,000 (US$6.47).
Then, he transforms them into his trademark products for sale from VND195,000 (US$8.42) to VND370,000 (US$15.97).
My first priority is to bring them into the spotlight and attract recognition, not to profit, Biet stated.
Generating jobs with this technique is also one my interests, he added.
Hes offered to help anyone with extra time on their get into the profession and so far about 20 undergrads have taken him up on the offer.
A comparison between the conventional silk-decorated apricot pot (left), and Biets scaly version (right). Photo: Y Nhung / Tuoi Tre
Fellow undergrad Nguyen Tuan, who is helping out Biet, agreed that making the handicrafts is not as difficult as people assume.
You just need to connect the fish scales to the branch using a silicon adhesive, and then voila, Tuan said.
This is actually great, since I can do it whenever I have some free time.
But Biets main workforce consists mostly of local residents.
As the young man is fully aware of the poverty in his hometown, he is hoping it will help his neighbors generate wealth.
His ultimate desire is to help solve local unemployment issues and help increase the awareness for his hometown.
Biet also disclosed that he has special scaly products planned for Valentines Day on February 14.
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A cafe owner in Ho Chi Minh City has spent the last four years handpicking the Arabica beans for each cup of coffee he brews, part of his mission to serve each customer the perfect cup.
Nguyen Quang Vinhs Saigon coffee shop isnt just any old cafe.
Rather than just walking in and ordering a cup of coffee, customers need to call ahead and make a reservation so that Vinh himself can be on hand to personally serve his customers coffee made with beans hes personally handpicked.
Only the best coffee beans
Vinhs cafe strictly serves Arabica coffee beans hes picked in Da Lat, a city located 1,500 meters above the sea level in the Central Highlands region.
Getting to the Arabica plants means a long drive down dangerous roads, some just two meters wide, weaving and winding along the lush mountainsides.
After snaking through the mountains, the young coffee shop owner makes it to the Arabica bushes and begins handpicking only the ripe beans, occasionally placing some beans in his mouth to enjoy the concentrated taste of the countrys best coffee.
"As sweet as sugar," Vinh said after popping a bean in his mouth.
"Da Lat coffee has a special taste because it is grown in a higher region with cold weather and good soil," Vinh explained.
As Vinh only picks the ripest and highest quality beans, rather than plucking the whole branch like most farmers do, he is only able to collect a few hundred kilograms per year.
Years ago, Arabica was a popular coffee species to be grown in the Central Highlands thanks to its high price.
Now, farmers have begin cutting down on their Arabica crop in favor of Catimor due to the formers low productivity and inability to withstand droughts.
I want to bring home coffee beans that are truly natural and have not been grown with a single chemical, Vinh explained.
Vinhs love for coffee first started four years ago when he heard about a few old Arabica bushes that were still alive and growing in Da Lat.
He began searching for the bushes and eventually met a local that showed him a few bushes left in his own coffee fields before taking him to a hill full of old Arabica trees with ripe coffee beans.
In order to preserve Vietnamese Arabica coffee beans, Vinh bought the land to ensure that the wild Arabica trees would not be cut down and would continue to be grown without the use of pesticides or other chemicals.
Since then, hes made it his lifes mission to preserving these plants and introduce their incredible taste to others.
Vinh returned to Ho Chi Minh where he left his stable job to open the one-of-a-kind coffee shop where he could turn his dream into a reality.
At the end of every year, Quang Vinh travels to Da Lat to collect coffee beans. Photo: Ngoc Hien / Tuoi Tre
Coffee-sharing space
Unlike most coffee shops, since the customers are required to set up an appointment to enter Vinhs coffee house, it is rare to see customers casually strolling in and out of the cafe.
Instead, customers are welcomed into a closed-door house with a private space featuring traditional furniture typical Saigonese furniture.
In the middle of the room lies a three-year-old Arabica plant surrounded by bird's singing in a space Vinh affectionately calls his "coffee-sharing space".
Getting a spot on the cafes guest list isnt easy. Vinh only serves a maximum of 15 customers per day. Guests who do make the list can choose from coffee and meal sets that see for VND900,000 ($36) to VND1,400,000 ($61).
The limited menu consists only of two options -- either spaghetti or Vietnamese traditional beef noodles, and French pastry madeleines for dessert, all of which are prepared by Vinh.
Only after eating are the customers allowed to indulge themselves in the unique Espresso cups the highlight of the visit.
Vinh prepares meals for his customers. Photo: Ngoc Hien / Tuoi Tre
I opened this shop mainly for myself and just want to share it with others, Vinh said.
Thats why I call it coffee-sharing space rather than a business.
Every customer is asked to drink their brown black cup of Espresso within 15 seconds because if left longer, it loses its unique taste, according to the owner.
Coffees aftertaste is very important so I do not let my customers drink water afterwards, Vinh explained, adding that the lingering sweetness of coffee is crucial to enjoying the beverage.
As the customers enjoy the aftertaste of coffee, they are led into Vinhs world, where he explains how he himself makes each and every cup of coffee and why he left his stable job to dedicate himself to wild Arabica coffee bushes.
Many are surprised to know that not only does the young businessman brew the coffee himself, but he also collects the coffee beans, removes their shells, washings and dries them, and brew the coffee.
When I roast the beans, I have to pay close attention to make sure they do not burn and still attain a dark brown color. I also need to listen for a certain popping sound, which guarantees they are the perfect quality, Vinh said.
Quang Vinh takes care of the old Arabica coffee plant that he keeps in his coffee shop. Photo: Ngoc Hien / Tuoi Tre.
The space, quality, and the owner have kept a steady stream of customers coming back for more.
Besides customers who are knowledgeable and share the same interest in coffee as he does, Vinh has also welcomes many foreign customers who come looking for an original cup of coffee from the worlds top coffee exporter.
Vinhs good understanding of coffee, the English skills he attained throughout his years of studying abroad, and his experience in tasting coffee in different parts of the world has enabled him to appeal to customers from any country.
Hence, it comes as no surprise that Vinhs service can be found with top reviews on many international traveling websites.
Many even call the Vietnamese coffee passionate an unofficial coffee ambassador of Vietnam.
Ripe coffee beans are collected to be brought to Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Ngoc Hien / Tuoi Tre
France, a country known for its coffee culture, is credited with introducing coffee to Vietnam in the 19th century, but not even France has as many coffee shops as Vietnam. Even Brazil, the worlds number one coffee exporter has fewer coffee shops than Vietnam, which ranks second on the list of coffee exporters.
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Theyre about to get tired of winning. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
At about this time one year ago, things werent looking good for the GOP. In the wake of a special Senate election in Alabama in which the Republican Party had rallied behind the failed candidacy of a theocratic ephebophile Democrats had jumped out to a commanding lead in the congressional generic ballot. Money was flooding into Team Blues campaign coffers. Republican incumbents were heading for the revolving doors.
But GOP operatives insisted that the blue wave on the horizon would crest long before November because the Trump tax cuts were about to kick in. Once voters saw fatter paychecks, Republicans would see better poll numbers. And just to be sure that voters noticed all the good Paul Ryan had done for them, the Trump administration reportedly pressured the IRS to err on the side of withholding too little from Americans paychecks so people will see big increases in their take-home pay ahead of this years midterm elections.
This did not work out as planned. Even with (allegedly) light withholding, the the tax bills breaks for middle-class people werent large enough to attract much notice. Between changes in salaries, health-care premiums, and 401(k) contributions, most Americans didnt detect much tax relief in their paychecks. The Trump tax cuts actually became less popular after they took effect. And, of course, Paul Ryans majority drowned in a blue wave.
Now, the bill for the GOPs (reported) withholding shenanigans is coming due: The average Americans tax refund was 8.4 percent lower in the first week of 2019 than it was one year ago (under the pre-Trump tax code). And while Americans have trouble noticing tax changes when theyre dispersed across 12 to 24 separate paychecks, they do typically pay very close attention to the size of their refunds. About three-quarters of the country typically qualifies for a tax refund most years and for many of those households, that check from the IRS is the largest lump sum theyll receive all year.
Ask people how much they paid in taxes, nobody knows. Ask them how much they got in their refund, people know, Howard Gleckman , a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, told the Intercepts David Dayen this week. Everyone focuses on size of the refund, and it does affect perception.
In other words: It looks as though the Republican Party implemented their signature tax bill in a manner that will lead many people who received tax cuts to believe that Donald Trump raised their taxes.
inject this shit directly into my fucking veins pic.twitter.com/XIH43gzZHq Direct Action Bronson (@smarxist_) February 4, 2019
Now, were only one week into tax season. And it isnt 100 percent certain that the IRSs withholding tables were way off. But current evidence suggests they were. And if thats the case, then the GOPs efforts to game withholding wont just lend credence to the Democrats most hyperbolic attacks on the Trump tax cuts they could also depress economic growth as the 2020 campaign gets underway. As Dayen explains:
[Americans] plan consumer purchases, particularly durable goods and big-ticket items, around [tax refunds]. Theres an entire cottage industry of refund advance loans, where filers get refunds immediately from their tax preparer and pay them back when the IRS completes the return 102 million taxpayers received refunds last year, with an average of $2,778. And most of those went out the door for some wish-list item or a crucial household necessity that had been put off.
If refunds do come back lower, experts agree that there will be a decided impact on consumer spending, as those big-ticket items dont get purchased. To the extent that filers rely on their refund for necessities, it could have more dire consequences than just slower economic growth.
Running for reelection on the strength of a failed attempt to throw millions off of health insurance and a tax cut that did a lot for the rich, and only a little for the middle class seems hard. Doing so after youve accidentally led millions of Americans to (falsely) believe that you raised their taxes seems harder.
Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
On Friday afternoon, a second woman came forward accusing Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax of sexual assault. Meredith Watson, a classmate of Fairfaxs at Duke University, claims that he assaulted her in college in 2000 in an attack [that] was premeditated and aggressive. Watson released a statement through her attorney calling for Fairfax to resign:
Another accuser has just come forward to accuse Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax of raping her in college pic.twitter.com/8HSBT3rq4B Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 8, 2019
Fairfax promptly denied the allegations and said he will not resign. In a statement to the Washington Post, he said, I deny this latest unsubstantiated allegation. It is demonstrably false. I have never forced myself on anyone ever.
Earlier in the week, Vanessa Tyson, a professor of political science at Scripps College, came forward with an allegation that Justin Fairfax had sexually assaulted her in 2004, while they were at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Tyson claims that an encounter with Fairfax began as consensual kissing and quickly turned into a sexual assault. Democrats, including Kamala Harris, called for an investigation into the allegation, though many in the party did not call for Fairfaxs resignation because Tyson did not offer corroborating accounts.
But Meredith Watson has. Kaneedreck Adams, a friend of Watsons at Duke who lived across the hall in on-campus housing, said that one day in the spring semester of 2000, Watson entered her room crying. She was upset, said Adams. She told me she had been raped and she named Justin. Watson allegedly told Adams that the assault happened at a fraternity house: She said she couldnt speak, but she was trying to get up and he kept pushing her down. She said he knew that she didnt like what was happening, but he kept pushing her down.
Watsons attorney also produced an email exchange from October 2016 between her client and Milagros Joye Brown, another friend from Duke, that details the alleged assault. Responding to an invitation from Brown to attend a fundraiser for Fairfaxs campaign for Lieutenant Governor, Watson wrote: Molly, Justin raped me in college and I dont want to hear anything about him. Please, please, please remove me form any future emails about him please. The Daily Beast also obtained a Facebook message from March 2017 in which Watson sent an article to a friend about Fairfax: This is absolutely disgusting! This dude raped me.
With a second allegation backed by corroborating accounts, Democratic senators and former Virginia Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe quickly began to call for Fairfaxs resignation, in what could soon become a critical mass:
These credible and troubling allegations from Dr. Vanessa Tyson and Meredith Watson make it clear that Lt. Gov Fairfax should resign. My heart goes out to these brave women and their families. Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 8, 2019
The multiple detailed allegations against the Lt. Gov. of Virginia are deeply troubling. They are serious, credible, and corroborated by others. It is no longer appropriate for him to serve. He should resign. Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) February 8, 2019
With this second serious and credible allegation of sexual assault, Justin Fairfax should resign. This is not a partisan issue. Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) February 8, 2019
The allegations against Justin Fairfax are serious and credible. It is clear to me that he can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia as Lieutenant Governor. I call for his immediate resignation. Terry McAuliffe (@TerryMcAuliffe) February 8, 2019
Meanwhile, despite near-universal Democratic calls to the contrary, Governor Ralph Northam reportedly made it clear to his staff on Friday that he is not going to resign, telling his team in a meeting that he intends to serve out the three years left in his term. Last Friday, a picture of Northams medical school yearbook from 1984 showed the governor either in blackface, or dressed in a Ku Klux Klan hood; the next day, he admitted that on a different occasion, he had darkened his face as part of a Michael Jackson costume around the same time. On Wednesday, Democratic Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring, who is third in line to the governorship, also admitted to wearing blackface as part of a costume in 1980 while at the University of Virginia. Somehow, it has only been a week since the initial Northam scandal broke out.
Thiruvananthapuram: Setting a new benchmark on social media platforms, the number of followers on the official Facebook page of Kerala Tourism has now increased to over two million followers, making it numero uno among the portals of any such tourism departments in the country.
One of the first tourism departments in India to have an online presence, the Facebook page, packed with fascinating information, presents to the followers some of the most engaging visual treats of Kerala's landscape, a release said.
Innovative tourism products and experiences of Kerala such as 'Responsible Tourism' and 'Village Life Experiences' form a part of the daily updates of the page.
Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran said the achievement has brought recognition for Kerala Tourism not just from other parts of India but also from countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, USA, Australia and the UK.
While appreciating the efforts that led Kerala Tourism to achieve the pole position in terms of Facebook followers, the minister appealed to the followers to help spread the uniqueness of the state as a tourism destination, with just a click on the 'Like' and 'Share' buttons.
It was in August 2014 that @keralatourismofficial had crossed the one million mark.
Tourism Secretary Rani George said making a brand presence on social media has been part of their efforts to position Kerala firmly as a tourism destination across all segments of the population.
Social media has helped transcend geographies, she said.
The Kerala Tourism Facebook page played a vital role in communicating to the world that Kerala was tourism-ready after the August 2018 floods through live videos across destinations.
Tourism Director P Bala Kiran said Kerala Tourism page occupies the top slot in a comparison with other tourism pages in the country, ahead of Gujarat Tourism and the Incredible India pages.
While Kerala Tourism has 2.4 million plus likes, Gujarat Tourism has 1.3 million, followed by Incredible India with 1.2 million, he said.
When compared to other international tourism pages, the page ranks fourth, slightly trailing behind 'Amazing Thailand' page.
'Tourism Malaysia' is at the top of the pack with 3.4 million followers, 'Visit Singapore' has 3.1 million followers and 'Amazing Thailand' 2.5 million.
Kerala Tourism, as on date, has 2.4 million plus tourists on board.
Last year, Kerala Tourism had overtaken Jammu & Kashmir and Gujarat Tourism's Facebook pages and secured the first spot in a ranking by Facebook based on total engagement with tourists that included reactions, shares, and comments on the page.
Apart from Facebook, Kerala Tourism has an active presence on Twitter and Instagram.
The Department has been successfully conducting the Kerala Blog Express, an offline digital activity for the past five years.
The Pirate Party's national convention took place at the cultural centre "Op der Scheiss" in Belair on Saturday morning.
Similar to The Greens, the Luxembourg Pirate Party elected two people to the head of the party on Saturday morning: Marie-Paule Dondelinger and Starsky Flor are the new co-presidents of the Luxembourg Pirate Party.
They are taking on the post of Sven Clement, who stood the helm of the party for nine years. Sven Clement was exempt from the elections as sitting MPs can not be nominated for the post of party president according to party rules.
RTL Tele Letzebuerg / Ryck Thill RTL Tele Letzebuerg / Ryck Thill RTL Tele Letzebuerg / Ryck Thill RTL Tele Letzebuerg / Ryck Thill
At the same time as the national convention, the European Pirate Party held a congress on Saturday to discuss the campaign for the upcoming European elections.
Both Luxembourg co-presidents are also candidates in the European elections.
The European Pirate Party will run on 26 May under the slogan "Europe needs more Pirates".
Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle attended an awards ceremony on Thursday evening for the Endeavour Fund, which supports the physical and mental recovery of injured and sick servicemen and women.
The fund was launched by the Royal Foundation of Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, along with Harrys elder brother William and his wife Kate, in 2012.
It says it has since helped more than 5,000 people through 86 projects. The evening, held at Drapers Hall in London, was hosted by British actor Ross Kemp.
Tate Reeves of Mississippi, the next cookie on a growing plate of pols with unsavory racist connections in college. Photo: Rogelio V Solis/AP/REX/Shutterstock/Rogelio V Solis/AP/REX/Shutterstock
In what was perhaps the most predictable collateral finding flowing from Virginias epidemic of white politicians appearing in or publicizing blackface appearances, it turns out that Mississippis Lieutenant Governor and likely Republican nominee for Governor, Tate Reeves, was a member of a college fraternity famous for such shenanigans, along with a general devotion to neo-Confederate emblems. Chad Smith has the story for American Ledger:
Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves college yearbook showed members of his fraternity in what appeared to be blackface and dressed as Confederate soldiers and referred to him being at the Robert E. Lee bar at a time when the fraternitys racism was a major issue on campus.
Reeves, the front-runner to become the Republican nominee for governor, was a sophomore at Millsaps College when he joined the Kappa Alpha fraternity in 1993 and remained a member through graduation, even as the fraternity came under scrutiny for its overt racism.
In the 1995 edition of Millsaps yearbook, a photograph of Reeves appears next to a photo of five other members in fraternity T-shirts and what appears to be blackface three of them also wearing Confederate flags on their heads and another showing dozens of members dressed as Confederate soldiers.
Reeves fraternity was regularly in hot water for racism, as Huffpost discovered:
On Oct. 8, 1994, members of Kappa Alpha and another fraternity donned Afro wigs and tied large Confederate flags around their necks, according to an article in The Clarion-Ledger at the time. Some of them were also reportedly in blackface. The fraternity brothers got into a shouting match over the incident with some black students. The state fraternity leader defended the chapter, saying it was getting a bad rap and blamed a few rogue individuals.
Members of the Black Students Association asked for the fraternity to be suspended.
Theres no photographic evidence, so far, of Reevess personal involvement in racist incidents, but he clearly wasnt allergic to racism if he chose and stayed in KA, as anyone who went to college on a white southern campus in recent (or distant) decades can attest. In an extensive review of fraternity/sorority racism, Kate Dries had this to say about the frat:
This, mind you, was written in 2015. You can imagine how uninhibited such fraternities were in Mississippi two decades earlier, not long after former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke made a strong race for Governor in next-door Louisiana.
Theres no telling who might next get zinged as journalists, oppo researchers, and amateur sleuths continue to trawl through old yearbooks and newspaper articles. Racist behaviors, particularly blackface costumes and skits, haven been epidemic on college campuses all over the country not just in places like Mississippi, where old times are not forgotten. And, we are all gradually realizing that they are too recent to be considered anything other than relevant right now.
Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Congressional negotiators told Politico on Friday that theyre working on a deal that will prevent a second government shutdown on February 15. If they fail or if President Trump again refuses to accept whatever compromise they reach hundreds of thousands of federal workers and subcontractors will find themselves without income once more. The last shutdown ended, in part, because workers revolted: After missing two paychecks, ten air traffic controllers called in sick, an absence significant enough to severely delay air traffic in New York City and Washington. Now, as another shutdown looms, workers are preparing for the worst. Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, told New York on Friday afternoon that her union is working with labor partners to plan a series of demonstrations in major airports around the country on February 16.
Nelson, who called for a general strike in response to the last shutdown, offered manifold reasons for this new call to direct action. Our union has worked really hard to address several safety issues in the workplace that have been longtime priorities, and we actually achieved 18 of those priorities in the FAA reauthorization bill that was signed into law this past October. But those items have not been implemented, because theres been a shutdown, she said. So we cant even get to our parochial issues because weve got this incredible threat to our fundamental safety and security and the entire industrys ability to operate. Nelson previously told New York on January 25 that her union intended to mobilize immediately if the shutdown continued; hours later, legislators reached a compromise that reopened government for three more weeks.
In anticipation of another shutdown, Nelson says that the union will be out leafleting in airports in 80 major cities next week ahead of Saturdays demonstrations. We are also working very hard to get information out to all of our members about whats at stake. We need people to fully understand what the issues are so that we can be prepared to respond potentially with withholding our service, if thats what it takes to stop a continuation of the shutdown, she added.
The AFA isnt working alone. Nelson cites the American Federation of Teachers as a very strong ally in addition to Unite Here, which represents many federal subcontractors who have still not received backpay for paychecks withheld during the shutdown. Reached by phone on Friday afternoon, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, told New York that AFT is very concerned about the shutdowns impact on both the aviation industry and its unions. We are working together to do what is impossible to do alone, she said.
Even if negotiators reach a deal that keepsthe government open, Nelson says there will still be demonstrations on February 16, though those protests may differ in size and scope if a second shutdown does not occur. Subcontractors still need backpay, and the union wants the provisions of the FAA reauthorization bill implemented. We need a government that works. And just avoiding a shutdown that is a risk and a tremendous burden and a betrayal of millions of Americans is a really low bar, she said.
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Credit Suisse Group AG, together with its subsidiaries, provides various financial services in Switzerland, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and Asia Pacific. The company offers private banking and wealth management solutions, including advisory, investment, financial planning, succession planning, and trust services; and financing and lending, and multi-shore platform solutions. It also provides traditional and structured lending, payment, foreign exchange, capital goods leasing, merger and acquisition, syndication, structured finance, commodity trade finance, trade finance, structured trade finance, export finance, factoring, fund management and administration, fund design, custody, ship and aviation finance, securities, cash, and treasury services. In addition, the company offers asset management products; equity and debt underwriting, and advisory services; cash equities, equity derivatives, and convertibles, as well as prime services; and fixed income products, such as credit, securitized, macro, emerging markets, financing, structured credit, and other products. Further, it provides HOLT, a framework for assessing the performance of approximately 20,000 companies; and equity and fixed income research services. The company serves private and institutional clients; ultra-high-net-worth individuals, high-net-worth individuals, and affluent and retail clients; corporate clients, small and medium-sized enterprises, external asset managers, financial institutions, and commodity traders; and pension funds, hedge funds, governments, foundations and endowments, corporations, entrepreneurs, private individuals, financial sponsors, and sovereign clients. As of December 31, 2020, it operated through a network of 338 offices and branches. The company was founded in 1856 and is based in Zurich, Switzerland.
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Independence Holding Company, through its subsidiaries, engages in health, pet, and life insurance businesses. The company's dental portfolio includes indemnity and PPO plans for employer groups of two or more lives, and for individuals; vision plans that offer a flat reimbursement amount for exams and materials; and short-term medical products for people with temporary needs for health coverage. It also provides supplemental products, including hospital indemnity, fixed indemnity limited benefit, critical illness, accident medical coverage, and life insurance products; pet insurance; and occupational accident insurance products, such as accidental death, accident disability, and accident medical benefits for occupational injuries to employees of companies. In addition, the company offers group long-term and short-term disability products to employers; New York short-term disability plan that offers temporary cash payments to replace wages lost; and group term life products, such as group term life, accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D), supplemental life and AD&D, and dependent life products. Further, it provides medicare supplements and advantages; employer group and individual insurance products, including self-funded programs; and affordable care act plans. Independence Holding Company markets its products through general agents, independent brokers, and independent producers. The company was incorporated in 1980 and is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.
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Two years ago, Kansas City Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura was killed in a car crash in his native Dominican Republic. At that time, Ventura had three years left on a guaranteed contract totaling $20.25 million.
According to the Kansas City Star, that hasnt been paid after two years and Venturas estate has claimed in court to be insolvent.
It seems like every time someone dies, its a heartless fight over who gets what. Sometimes its between family, other times (like this) its between a family and an employer. Regardless of the situation, things usually get ugly and the more at stake, the uglier it gets.
That seems to be the case here between Venturas estate and the Royals/MLB. Both sides declined comment to the Star about the process but they found that the mother of Venturas child is executor of Venturas estate and had hired attorneys to get the money owed to them by the Royals. The Royals apparently havent paid and now the estate is broke.
The sole heir of the estate, Venturas five-year old daughter has a $12.6 million life insurance payout but its in a protected trust thats not part of the estate. The estate, and thus the contract money would be going for that time in between now and when shes older and can access the trust.
The Royals insist that they have been in constant contact with Venturas mother, with GM Dayton Moore noting calling her on the second anniversary of Venturas death a couple weeks ago.
The legalities that could be holding up payment may be valid but without knowing for sure, that would only be speculation. According to court records revealed by the Star, Ventura used his money to buy cars for family, pay off debts for friends and save his grandfathers business, putting him in debt, and was to pay $4,000/month in child support. What we do know is that when a family is expecting a regular income (particularly a high one) and it stops suddenly due to an unexpected death to the person making that income, that brings out a lot of issues. Thats what life insurance is usually for but thats in the trust because Ventura smartly felt it was in his daughters best interest to not have access to it until shes older and it was assumed the Royals would pay the $20 million left on the contract. On the surface, the Royals and MLB arent going to get a lot of support for withholding the rest of Venturas money, even if they may actually be in the right.
[Kansas City Star]
The means to further reinforce military cooperation between Morocco and France were at the heart of a two-day visit paid recently by the Inspector General of the Royal Armed Forces Abdelfattah Louarak to Paris.
During the visit, Louarak discussed with his French counterpart a host of issues including the upgrade of the F1 Mirage fighter jets operated by Morocco as well as the maintenance of France-built Mohammed VI frigate that is equipped with anti-submarine missiles
They also discussed training staff in their respective military academies, Moroccan media reported.
The two countries cooperate in the Sahel to counter the terrorist threat. The visit also comes at a context where the Algerian-armed Poliario front hinders the UN mission from carrying out its task in the Sahara.
Morocco is the first client of the French arm industry after China, Singapore, Egypt and the UAE.
Morocco will take part in the 32nd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union due in Addis Ababa Feb.10-11 with a delegation led by Head of Govt Saad Eddine El Othmani.
The summit meeting will be held under the theme: The Year of Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons: Towards Durable Solutions to Forced Displacement in Africa.
The opening ceremony features speeches by president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, Chairperson of AU, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Moussa Faki Mahamat, Chairperson of the AU Commission, and other personalities.
The summiteers will discuss several issues related to climate change, displaced persons, conflicts resolution and migration in the continent.
The African Heads of State will look into African innovative mechanisms to address the underlying causes of migrations, notably natural disasters and extreme weather events.
One of such innovative mechanisms is the African Risk Capacity (ARC) Agency, a Specialized Agency of the AU, which was established in 2012 to help Member States better plan, prepare and respond to extreme weather events and other natural disasters, thereby protecting the food security and livelihoods of their most vulnerable populations.
Historically, migration in the African continent has been caused by political instability, civil insecurity, and poverty. But in recent times, migration is accelerated by the negative impacts of climate change.
Between 2008 and 2015, an average of 26 million people was displaced annually by climate or weather-related disasters.
In 2016, an estimated 1.1 million people were displaced by sudden on-set natural hazards. The increasing frequency of droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events means that migration is expected to grow further. These intersecting climate and migration trends in Africa increase the vulnerability of the poor populations, namely the smallholder farmers that rely on subsistence, rain-fed agriculture and that form the backbone of African economies.
The man accused of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane will keep his identity secret for now.
A High Court judge has reserved his decision on whether the accused can keep name suppression, after lawyer Ian Brookie argued suppression should continue on the basis of fair trial rights.
The 27-year-old's name has remained a secret since his first court appearance in December.
This morning Justice Simon Moore reserved his decision - meaning the man has continued name suppression until a ruling is released.
He pleaded not guilty to the murder charge at the High Court in Auckland on 16 January.
Justice Moore had emphasised that strict suppression orders were in place and he warned people in the public gallery not to take photos.
However, someone in the public gallery at the first appearance took a photo on their phone and it ended up online.
A District Court judge had previously refused to grant the man name suppression at an earlier hearing, but his lawyer Ian Brookie indicated he would appeal that decision.
Google didn't receive the court order until five days later, and by then had already named the accused man in an email to anyone signed up to its "what's trending in New Zealand" service.
Google's naming of the man raised concerns over how breaches of names suppression may affect his future trial.
That prompted the government to call for a meeting with Google's New Zealand representatives to explain the breach. Justice Minister Andrew Little plans to follow up with the multinational company this year.
He lodged an appeal at the High Court on 25 January against a decision by Judge Evangelos Thomas' decision to refuse suppression.
Grace, 22, went missing from a hostel in Auckland on 1 December. Her family in Wickford, England became concerned when the University of Lincoln graduate failed to respond to birthday messages on 2 December.
Her body was found more than a week later in dense bush in the Waitakere Ranges on the outskirts of the city.
The death prompted thousands of people to attend vigils across the country, partly in protest over the violence against women in New Zealand.
Detective Inspector Scott Beard, who led the investigation into her disappearance, was at court for today's hearing.
A police spokesperson says they were aware of the situation and were monitoring breaches of suppression in New Zealand while enquiries into specific incidents were ongoing.
Police have the ability to charge a person for breaching a suppression order, provided there is sufficient evidence to do so.
Six Armenian designers, members of Fashion and Design Chamber of Armenia will participate in the Pitti exhibition in Milan, Pitti Magine reported. The project is supported within the scope of the European Union in Armenia funded SMEDA project under the EU4Business initiative.
The exhibition will be held from February 22-25 and Armenian popular brands such as Z.G.EST, Avagyan, Kivera Naynomis, LOOM Weaving, Shabeeg and Vahan Khachatryan will take part in the exhibition.
It is not the first trip of the Armenian fashion team to Italy. A group of talented designers under the leadership of Vahan Khachatryan and within the EU SMEDA program last year already managed to conquer the Italian public with their interesting projects.
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Story Craft: Reflections on Faith, Culture and Writing From the Author of Hank the Cowdog
By: John Erickson
Maverick Books (October 1, 2009)
168 pages
Story Craft is the literary memoir of John Erickson. When I came across this book initially, I could not put my finger on where I had heard of Erickson. Of course, then the extended title hit me like a rock, for I immediately remembered reading Hank the Cowdog as a child. (Years later, my sister-in-law knew Erickson from church .) In an odd way, I almost see Erickson as a cowboy version of C.S. Lewis. While Hank the Cowdog and The Chronicles of Narnia never explicitly declare theism and Christianity, they are always silently pointing by way of narrative and theme. I loved Ericksons advice Dont write anything that would shame your mother.
Two of my favorite quotes:
That is a common error made by people who have never spent any time in rural America and who often describe us as provincial. Were not provincial. They are. We read their magazines, attend their movies, and listen to their news broadcasts. We know a lot about them. They know nothing about us.
When Im asked how long Ive been writing, I say that I began in 1967, the year Kris and I joined our lives together in marriage. Before Kris, I wrote when I had an idea or felt inspired. After Kris, I wrote every daysame time, same place, a pattern I still follow forty-two years later. This morning, I rose at five oclock, joined my dog Tango at the front door, and walked 400 yards to my little writing office. It was black dark, so I had to use a flashlight. On reaching the office, I turned on the lights, started coffee brewing, and turned on my laptop computer. When the coffee was ready, I poured myself a cup, and started working on this project, while Tango chased moths out on the screened porch.
Crossboundary Energy Access (CBEA), Africas first project financing facilities for mini-grids, is planning to unlock more than $11 billion from investors to bring electricity to at least 100 million people on the continent.
The new financing facility attracted $16 million in its first close enough to fund mini-grids that could connect 170,000 people, according to the organization.
The Rockefeller Foundation, Ceniarth and the Shell Foundation were among the first supporters of the initiative.
CBEA said it will focus in the first round on markets with supporting regulatory frameworks, such as Tanzania, Nigeria and Zambia.
Mini-grids are critical to achieving universal electrification in Africa at the least cost, said Gabriel Davies, head of energy access at Crossboundary.
We believe long-term project finance structures will allow mini-grids to scale. Were building investment portfolios that will attract the long-term, infrastructure-type capital the sector needs from institutional investors, he said.
While the CBEA says it is the first project finance facility in Africa dedicated to mini-grids, it is far from the only organization active in the sector, and sees great potential.
Last month, The African Development Bank Group has approved equity investment of up to $25 million for the ARCH Africa Renewable Power Fund. The investment will be made into a larger equity fund, which seeks to develop 533 MW in the market, which currently has the lowest rate of access to electricity in the world.
The investment will support the banks ten-year strategy, which seeks universal electricity supply in sub-Saharan Africa.
RTHK: Thai king dismisses sister's political ambitions
Thailand's powerful King Maha Vajiralongkorn late on Friday described an unprecedented move to make his older sister Princess Ubolratana prime minister as "highly inappropriate" and against "royal traditions".
Ubolratana, 67, the older sister of Vajiralongkorn, was announced hours earlier as a candidate in the upcoming elections for the Thai Raksa Chart party, which is steered by the divisive Shinawatra political clan.
Her shock entrance into frontline Thai politics was a first by a member of the powerful royal family and promised to reshape the political landscape of the country.
But a late-night statement from the palace left no doubt over the King's displeasure at the move.
"The king and royal family exist in a status above politics," said the statement, published in the Royal Gazette and given blanket television coverage.
The statement did not criticise Ubolratana, instead praising her public work.
But it appeared aimed at those behind her sudden stride into politics.
"To bring a senior royal family member into the political system in any way is against royal traditions and the nation's culture... which is highly inappropriate."
While the monarchy, which is wealthy and protected from criticism by a harsh royal defamation law, has been seen as above the political fray, royals have intervened in moments of political crisis.
In a day of high drama, junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha also declared his candidacy for premier, running for the pro-military Phalang Pracharat party, moments after the princess's announcement.
Election authorities have a week to review which candidates put up by each party are allowed to run for premier after the March 24 poll.
Ubolratana's candidacy had electrified the build-up to the election, which has long seemed poised to return the ruling junta and its proxies to power.
Her involvement gave a royal sheen to the political machine of Thaksin Shinawatra, the self-exiled billionaire whose parties have won every election since 2001.
The princess, who gave up her royal titles to marry a foreigner, took to Instagram earlier on Friday to say she was allowed to run under the constitution as a "commoner" had "allowed Thai Raksa Chart Party to use" her name.
The party falls under the tutelage of Thaksin, who stands at the heart of Thailand's bitter political schism -- loathed by the army and Bangkok elite, yet adored by the rural poor for health, welfare and education schemes.
The announcement appeared set to thrust him back onto the centre stage of Thailand's political drama.
He was toppled in a 2006 coup, while his sister Yingluck was booted from power in a 2014 military takeover and forced into exile to avoid a jail term.
The King's intervention has cast Thaksin's future role in politics into doubt.
Ubolratana, a colourful, public-facing royal in contrast to her more restrained brother King Maha Vajiralongkorn, relinquished her royal titles after marrying the American Peter Jensen in 1972.
But the couple divorced and she moved back to Thailand where she is still considered part of the royal family.
In Thailand, she experienced tragedy, losing her autistic son Poom to the 2004 Asian tsunami.
Known to the public for lead roles in Thai films, onstage singing performances, a vibrant fashion sense and a sizeable Instagram following, Ubolratana is the first-born child of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
The stride into politics by a royal left Thais scrambling to work out what it may mean for the nation's tattered democracy.
"This is quite unprecedented and nobody is prepared for this," Professor Anusorn Unno of Thammasat University told AFP. "I don't think it's the victory for the people, I think this is part of the adaptation of the ruling elite in terms of changing the landscape of politics."
Since ascending the throne in 2016, King Maha Vajiralongkorn has reorganised palace affairs.
The vastly wealthy Crown Property Bureau is now under his personal stewardship, he has appointed several new privy counsellors and established a highly trained personal guard.
Crucially he has appointed a new army chief from a different faction of the military to the ruling junta.
His coronation will be held in May. (AFP)
This story has been published on: 2019-02-09. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Trainer Lance Hudson imported five horses from New Zealand and Australia in late 2018 with the hopes of having a fresh band of competitors for Yonkers Raceways 2019 season. The new pacers included Betterb Chevron, who won her first three races including the distaff feature in her latest start Feb. 1 and Letschasethedream, who ran his streak to three wins before coming up short January 26.
The surprise of the bunch, though, has been Don Domingo. The seven-year-old gelding has won four straight races to begin his Stateside career and will try to extend his streak to five in Saturday nights $35,000 Preferred Handicap Pace at Yonkers Raceway.
I knew he had some ability, I knew he was fast, but he just seems like a horse that gets it done, Hudson said. Ive got a horse that hes training with that I like better, but he hasnt been quite as good. Hes been OK, but he hasnt had four wins in a row like Don Domingo. Don Domingo just seems to be an overachiever right now. Ive got some talented horses in my barn. I didnt think he was a slouch by any means, but I didnt think at this point that hed be four-for-four.
Hudson considered buying Don Domingo after being approached by agent Peter Larkin. Despite Don Domingos form in New Zealand tailing off in late 2018 with two straight eleventh-place finishes at the free-for-all level, Hudson saw potential for Don Domingo to have a successful career in the United States.
Hudson noticed Don Domingo had been racing at distances of 2,600 to 3,000 meters and felt the American Ideal son would benefit from a turnback. In addition, Don Domingo had been keeping company with the likes of Dream About Me and The Fixer, two of the top pacers in the Southern Hemisphere.
An agent called me one day and told me about the horse. Basically, he went and worked him and he thought the horse had good manners and he thought he would be OK at Yonkers, so we purchased him for $63,000 landed and thats how it all began, Hudson said.
He was going distance. He was going basically two miles and he was racing the best over there, Hudson continued. Hes a horse that I dont think is super durable. Hes a horse thats more fit for a mile race than two miles. When you look back in his form, when he wasnt going that distance, he was very competitive when he was going shorter distances.
Don Domingo's final race in New Zealand was October 5 and arrived in Hudsons stable later that month. He arrived healthy and without suffering from any ailments from the long trek north, was ready to qualify in mid-December. However, with Yonkers closing for the holidays, Hudson took a conservative approach for Don Domingos first United States trial.
I knew he had some ability, but there was no other place to qualify at the time. The last week of Yonkers, he was ready, but we started him at Monticello, just a qualifier, and then raced him once just to get him a start and get him acclimated to racing in the States, Hudson explained.
Don Domingo finished second to Texas Terror in his qualifier and won his debut in 1:54.4 in the winners over at Monticello January 2. Hudson then brought Don Domingo to Yonkers where the gelding won three straight; he took two $23,000 overnights in off-the-pace fashion before posting a pocket-sitting victory over Im Some Graduate for $29,000 in his latest outing February 2.
Hes basically done it about any way, Hudson admired. We havent really put him on the front even though weve left the car with him a little bit. Hes been first-over, hes been third-over, and hes sat the two-hole. Hes very versatile, thats for sure. Whatever situation hes in, he always seems to find a way. He just seemed like an average horse, but he always seems to get the job done no matter what hes got to do.
Don Domingo will face his toughest test so far in Saturday nights pacing feature. The competition includes last weeks Open winner Rockathon, last weeks Preferred winner Imarocknrollegend, and Anythingforlove, who will seek his third straight win from post seven off scores in 1:52.4 and 1:51.4. Mighty Mr Sharkey, Stormont Czar, Techtor Hanover, and Bellows Binge complete the field.
Hes definitely in with better horses, but the horse that he beat sitting on his back, Im Some Graduate, is a pretty decent Open horse, Hudson said. A lot of times at Yonkers, its just how the trip goes and how everything goes down, but theyll know hes in there.
Although hes unsure how good Don Domingo is, Hudson expects to find out in the coming weeks. Saturdays race will help determine whether Don Domingo is nominated to the George Morton Levy Series, which closes next Friday (February 15).
We have some options whether to put him in the Levy and that type of thing, Hudson said. Im not exactly sure. Were OK where we are with him for now. Well see what happens Saturday and well have to make some decisions about what were going to do with him.
Live harness racing is featured at Yonkers Raceway every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. First post time is 6:50 p.m.
(SOA of NY)
"It's overwhelming, we're very excited and it sort of caps off an excellent year we had this past year. We hope to do it again in the near future."
Seelster Farms of Lucan, Ont., was a clear-cut winner in the Armstrong Breeder of the Year voting at the 2018 O'Brien Awards. Seelster-bred horses earned in excess of $3.4 million in 2018, and included a number of high-profile stakes performers including OBrien finalists Bronx Seelster and Nirvana Seelster and pacing filly Kendall Seelster. Each of those horses provided Seelster Farms with multiple highlights over the past season and helped propel Seelster to its third win in the breeder category.
"'Nirvana' is just an iron horse. He started right at the bottom and worked his way right to the top. To see the longevity of his career has been great," Seelster's Walter Parkinson told Trot Insider. "Bronx Seelster was a nice horse to watch in the Battle of Waterloo and his OSS Gold victories...Kendall Seelster was an exciting horse for us to watch this past year for three-year-old filly pacers and watching her come up into the aged mare ranks. Overall, it was excellent."
In 2018, Seelster Farms boasted a total of 123 starters that made more than 1,800 starts and won 281 races.
"We had a consistent year in the OSS, had some Grand Circuit luck as well, had a nice yearling sale again so overall I think it was a success from start to finish."
Parkinson also talks about the farm's new foal arrivals and first-year stallions in this interview recorded after the 2018 O'Brien Awards.
This is the fifth in a series of several post-event video interviews with O'Brien Award finalists, sponsored by Horse Racing Alberta.
On Saturday, Feb. 2, Standardbred Canada announced the winners for the 2018 OBrien Awards at the 30th edition of the annual OBrien Awards Black Tie Gala, held at the Hilton Mississauga / Meadowvale hotel in Mississauga, Ont. The OBrien Awards honour Canadas best in harness racing over the past season and are named in honour of the late Joe OBrien, an outstanding horseman and member of the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame. To view the full list of 2018 O'Brien Award winners, click here.
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.
The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.
By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
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Only a week ago, the Russian government voted preliminarily on a bill to outlaw fake news. Now, Russian media are implicating Google in federal efforts to censor the Russian internet: On Feb. 7, Russian news outlet Vedomosti reported that Google has removed links to websites banned in Russia from the Google.ru search results. Various Russian media sites report Google has removed from its search results more than 70 percent of links banned by Russias media watchdog, Roskomnadzor. But whether thats true is unclear right now.
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The new development is part of an ongoing saga. Beginning in 2017, Roskomnadzor asked search engines to filter results to exclude sites on a ban list. Sites can be included in that registry if they are extremist, glorify suicide, advertise drugs or gambling without a license, contain pornography, or display pirated content. While many companies were willing to meet the agencys demands, Google ignored the blacklist. Then, in 2018, new legislation began to allow Roskomnadzor to fine search engines that fail to delete links to sites found in its registry. Google still didnt comply. So, in December 2018, the tech giant was charged approximately $7,500 for refusing to remove blacklisted websites from its search results. The company paid up, though Roskomnadzor press secretary Vadim Ampelonsky told Interfax that Google would be fined again if it didnt begin removing prohibited content within 30 business days.
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Since then, tensions appear to have eased somewhat between Roskomnadzor and the tech company. Constructive dialogue and cooperation between Roskomnadzor and Google has been re-established. At the moment, we are satisfied with the results of this cooperation, Ampelonsky said on Feb. 7.
Others were less satisfied. That same day, BuzzFeed News picked up and disseminated the Vedomosti story, reporting that Google is now cooperating with the Russian government and citing Vedomostis unnamed source, allegedly a Google employee. But Artem Kozlyuk, director of the RosKomSvoboda project, which fights against internet censorship in Russia, is skeptical about the claim that Google has already removed 73 percent of blacklisted content from its search engine. Kozlyuks team tested Google search results when Vedomostis report came out. He told Russian website the Insider that they were still able to find links to sites propagating drug use, suicide, and extremism, which should have been banned under Roskomnadzor criteria. Kozlyuk was even able to access the Chechen rebel website Ichkeria.info, which a court order had officially ordered banned.
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Neither I nor my colleagues were able to model a situation in which Google doesnt show in its search results those links from the registry of banned sites that we checked, Kozlyuk told Novaya Gazeta. Seventy-three percent of links that the company allegedly removed is a large number. (Kozlyuk was speaking in Russian, so Ive translated here.) Kozlyuk explained that it should have been easy for Roskomsvoboda experts to search for particular subjects or sites that would be blocked on Google Search. However, Google searches they conducted included links for many websites that should have been blocked. The only prohibited category of websites that didnt appear in Search was pirated movie sites.
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Google did not comment on its alleged cooperation with the Russian censor. Were committed to enabling access to information for the benefit of our users in Russia and around the world, a Google spokesperson told me via email.
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Vedomosti reports that Google receives a regularly updated list of removal requests. The company then reviews each request and the reason provided for blocking a given site. According to Googles most recent transparency report, from January to June 2018, the three most frequent reasons behind removal requests in Russia were regulated goods and services (11,021 requests), copyright (3,410), and national security (2,159).
Its been an eventful month for the Russian internet. And theres more to come: Next week, the Russian Duma will hold the first reading of a bill that, if passed, would isolate Russian networks from the rest of the internet. Its expected to pass.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
A second woman has come forward to accuse Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault, alleging that he raped her when they were both students at Duke University in 2000, according to a statement Friday from the womans attorney.
In the statement, Meredith Watson said she and Fairfax were friends in college and that her attack had been similar to that described by Fairfaxs first accuser, Vanessa Tyson. The statement, which called for Fairfax to resign, described the alleged attack as premeditated and aggressive.
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Fairfax denied the claim, according to the New York Times, and called for a full investigation into the allegation. He also noted that he had passed FBI background checks and called the allegations part of a smear campaign against him. Fairfax has also denied the previous allegation. He said on Friday that he will not resign.
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Watson, who has worked as a fundraising consultant for nonprofit companies, according to the Times, told friends about the rape in a series of emails and Facebook messages, the statement contended. Watsons lawyers said they had statements from former classmates saying that she had told them soon after the alleged incident about the rape.
At this time, Ms. Watson is reluctantly coming forward out of a strong sense of civic duty and her belief that those seeking or serving in public office should be of the highest character, the statement said. She has no interest in becoming a media personality or reliving the trauma that has greatly affected her life. Similarly, she is not seeking any financial damages.
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After the second allegation surfaced, the support for Fairfaxs resignation grew stronger. Notably, Terry McAuliffe, Virginias former governor, called for Fairfax to resign, calling the allegations serious and credible.
The news followed reports of friends and colleagues coming forward to voice support for Tyson, a Scripps College professor who said Fairfax assaulted her at a hotel room during the 2004 Democratic National Convention. According to her description, Fairfax held her neck down and forced her to perform oral sex on him as she cried and gagged. The Times reported that five people have said Tyson told them in the past couple years about the alleged assault at the convention, and three of those five said she had identified Fairfax as her assailant.
In Virginia, Fairfax is one of several politicians to face calls for resignation. Gov. Ralph Northam, who has repeatedly said he will not resign, is under fire for a blackface photo that appeared on his 1984 medical school yearbook page. (He has said he is not the man in blackface, nor the man dressed in KKK robes in the photo.) The states attorney general, Mark Herring, also admitted that he had, as a 19-year-old college student, dressed in blackface in 1980 at a party.
Virginias Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is seeing his support among the states Democrats evaporate after a second woman spoke up Friday with allegations that she had also been a victim of sexual assault. Meredith Watson alleged Fairfax raped her in 2000 when they were both students at Duke University. She spoke only days after Vanessa Tyson, a political science professor, said Fairfax forced her to perform oral sex in a hotel room during the 2004 Democratic national convention.
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Fairfax has insisted he wont resign and has demanded investigations into the claims of sexual assault. I will clear my good name and I have nothing to hide. I have passed two full field background checks by the FBI and run for office in two highly contested elections with nothing like this being raised before, Fairfax said in a statement. It is obvious that a vicious and coordinated smear campaign is being orchestrated against me.
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Despite Fairfaxs claims of innocence, his support among Virginia Democrats is clearly eroding quickly and even some who had backed him at first are changing their minds. The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus had initially stood by the 39-year-old lieutenant governor but said late Friday that it is best for Lt. Governor Fairfax to step down from his position. Although everyone accused of such a grievous and harmful act must receive the due process prescribed by the Constitution, we cant see it in the best interest of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the Lieutenant Governor to remain in his role, the group said.
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Virginia Legislative Black Caucus Statement on Most Recent Sexual Allegations Against Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax pic.twitter.com/Bbj8sn4gF5 VLBC (@VaBlackCaucus) February 9, 2019
The Democratic members of the Virginia House of Delegates and state Senate also issued a joint statement calling on Fairfax to resign. Due to the serious nature of these allegations, we believe Lieutenant Governor Fairfax can no longer fulfill his duties to the Commonwealth, the statement read. He need to address this as a private citizen. The time has come for him to step down. Fairfax was also removed from his post as chairman of the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association.
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On Saturday, it was the turn of the Democratic Party of Virginia, which issued a statement calling on Fairfax to resign because he no longer has our confidence or support. Considering the credible nature of the sexual assault claims against Lieutenant Governor Fairfax, it has become clear he can no longer fulfill the duties and responsibilities of the post, Virginia Democratic Party Chair Susan Swecker said in a statement. While the Lieutenant Governor deserves due process in this matter, it is in the best interest of the commonwealth that he goes through this process as a private citizen.
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Democratic Party of Virginia statement calling for the resignation of Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax pic.twitter.com/9HILlhVEIx Virginia Democrats (@vademocrats) February 9, 2019
The calls for Fairfax to resign may make sense considering how Democrats have been eager to show a tough line on sexual assault claims. But they also put the states Democrats in a difficult position if Fairfax continues to refuse to step down. After all, will they really push out the African-American leader at a time when two other top state officialsGov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark R. Herringare hanging on to their jobs after they admitted to wearing blackface? The New York Times expands on this difficult position:
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) Investors will have another chance to hear from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger when the two top Berkshire Hathaway executives sit down together for an interview next week.
Remember when President Donald Trump mocked and threatened North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un? For a while, it seemed to be his favorite pastime as he called the North Korean leader everything from rocket man to madman to short and fat. Now the tides seem to have turned and Kim Jong Un has become yet another authoritarian ruler that Trump simply cant resist praising.
Trump said Friday night that North Korea is on track to become a great Economic Powerhouse some day as he unveiled details about his next summit with the dictator he once called a bad dude. U.S. envoys held a very productive meeting in north Korea and agreed that the next summit between Trump and Kim will take place in Hanoi on Feb. 27 and 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace! Trump wrote on Twitter. Trump had already announced the dates for the second summit and said it would be in Vietnam but hadnt disclosed the city.
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My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2019
Merely making that announcement wasnt enough for the president though as he went on to effusively praise Kim. Under the leadership of an authoritarian ruler that has no qualms about killing, torturing, and starving his countrys people, North Korea will become a different kind of Rocketan Economic one! And although some people may be surprised, Trump will be expecting it. I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is, Trump wrote.
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North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse. He may surprise some but he wont surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2019
The State Department also said Friday that Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, held three days of talks in Pyongyang and will be meeting with North Korean officials again before the summit. Biegun and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Hyok Chol, discussed advancing President Trump and Chairman Kims Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming U.S.-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, the State Department said, using the acronym for North Koreas official name.
On Tuesday night, in his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump called for legislation to outlaw abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life, said Trump. On Thursday, at the National Prayer Breakfast, the president renewed his plea. Every life is sacred, he declared. We must build a culture that cherishes the dignity and sanctity of innocent human life.
Abortion is a serious matter. People may disagree on when life begins, but everyone agrees, at least in principle, on the sanctity of human life. Everyone, that is, except Trump. He treats human life as expendable, not just in the womb or in infancy, but in childhood and adulthood. He condones killing people in every context: capital punishment, counterterrorism, assassination, and crushing political dissent. Hes the least pro-life president in American history.
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Other presidents have started or fought bloodier wars. What sets Trump apart is his malicious intent. For him, violence against civilians isnt just a tragic consequence. Its often the objective. As a presidential candidate, he encouraged crowds to punch, rough up, and knock the crap out of protesters. At a campaign rally four months ago, he congratulated a congressman for body-slamming a reporter. Speaking in North Carolina in 2016, Trump warned his supporters that if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, there would be nothing they could do to stop her from appointing judgesalthough the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.
Trump says the United States should deliberately target family members of suspected terrorists. Sometimes he says hed stop short of killing them; sometimes he says hell leave that to your imagination. In a drone strike, the distinction is moot. It doesnt matter to Trump whether these people have done anything wrong. What matters is that by hurting them, we might deter terrorists. With the terrorists, you have to take out their families, Trump argued three years ago. The idea, he explained, was that terrorists may not care much about their lives, but they do care, believe it or not, about their families lives.
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In comments about other governments, Trump explicitly condones murder. During the 2016 campaign, interviewers pointed out that Russian President Vladimir Putin had arranged the assassinations of dissidents and journalists. Trump said he didnt care. Our country does plenty of killing also, he retorted. At least hes a leader, you know, unlike we have in this country. Two weeks after Trumps inauguration, during a Fox News interview, when Bill OReilly reminded Trump that Putins a killer, the president batted the question away. We got a lot of killers, he argued. What, you think our countrys so innocent?
For Trump, violence against civilians isnt just a tragic consequence. Its often the objective.
Last summer, Trump praised North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as a man who loves his people. Again, a Fox News interviewer challenged Trump, citing Kims atrocious record on human rights. He is a killer. Hes clearly executing people, Bret Baier told the president. Trump responded by defending Kim: Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, with tough people. If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean thats 1 in 10,000 that could do that. Baier persisted: But hes still done some really bad things. Trump shrugged, Yeah, but so have a lot of other people.
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Trump doesnt just excuse Kims butchery. He glorifies him. In September, Trump bragged at a campaign rally that Kim wrote me beautiful letters and we fell in love. In October, CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl pressed Trump about that boast. She reminded Trump that Kim had his half-brother assassinated and presides over a cruel kingdom of repression, gulags, starvation slave labor, public executions. This is a guy you love? Trump stood by his man. I get along with him really well, he told Stahl. I have a good chemistry with him.
Over the years, Trump has defended other mass killers: Saddam Hussein of Iraq (Saddam Hussein throws a little gas. Everyone goes crazy. Oh, hes using gas! ), Muammar Qaddafi of Libya (We would be so much better off if Qaddafi were in charge), and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines (who said hed be happy to slaughter that countrys 3 million drug addicts). Lately, Trump has extolled Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whos implicated in the October murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. On Thursday, the New York Times reported additional evidence against the crown prince: A year before the murder, he told an aide that if he couldnt drag Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia, hed go after him with a bullet.
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Trump has worked hard to excuse or minimize the Khashoggi assassination. In November, as evidence of the crown princes guilt piled up, Trump personally dictated a White House statement that downplayed U.S. intelligence in the case, smeared Khashoggi as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (he wasnt), and defended Saudi Arabia as an esteemed client of American defense contractors. Two days later, Trump was asked who should be held accountable for the murder. He shrugged, Maybe the world should be held accountable.
At home, Trump promotes broader use of the death penalty. Among pro-lifers, theres sincere disagreement on that question: Some believe capital punishment is always wrong, while others believe its a proper punishment for taking a life. But Trump wants to go further. He advocates executing people even for nonlethal offenses. Last year, he told an audience that America should follow the lead of countries that have the death penalty for drug dealers. A week ago, he thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping for promising, at Trumps request, to execute pushers. Theyve agreed to do the death penalty for selling fentanyl, said Trump. We really appreciate it.
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Some pro-lifers, despite their revulsion at the presidents advocacy of violence, support him because he appoints judges who are sympathetic to legislation against abortion. But everyone knows Trump is a fake pro-lifer. He has extramarital affairs, doesnt use condoms, and expects his partners not to give birth. Twenty years ago, when he was asked about partial-birth abortion, he defended it. I am pro-choice in every respect, he said.
Trump is an opportunist. He was pro-choice when he thought it would help him as a Democrat. Now that hes a Republican, he calls himself pro-life. To him, its all marketing. He doesnt stand for a culture of life. He stands for depraved indifference.
In his explosive blog post Thursday accusing the owner of the National Enquirers parent company of attempting to blackmail him with salacious personal photos, Jeff Bezos called out his opponent with the excellent title: No thank you, Mr. Pecker.
The Pecker he is addressing here is David Pecker, longtime CEO of American Media Inc. Those who have kept track of the various scandals stemming from the Trump campaign will have some familiarity with the tabloid figure. A longtime friend and admirer of Donald Trump, Pecker worked with Trumps former lawyer Michael Cohen to organize a catch-and-kill payment of $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who has said she had an affair with Trumpwith the express purpose of buying her silence to aid the Trump campaign. (The president has denied the affair.) Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations for not disclosing the expenditure as a politically motivated one, and AMI entered into a nonprosecution agreement with the Justice Department.
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After Bezos new allegations, its hard to know exactly how AMIs standing with the DOJ will be affected. Bloomberg reported Friday that federal prosecutors were looking into whether AMIs behavior would violate that nonprosecution agreement, as not committing any further crimesallegedly extortion, in this casewas a term of the agreement. The potential consequences of that, too, are complicated, but it struck many an exceedingly dumb move for a company in such a dubious position to allegedly try to blackmail the richest man on the planet.
The Enquirer makes no pretense of following journalistic norms, and its parent company has a longer history of ethical indiscretions. The warning signs have been there, from David Peckers early years in magazine publishing.
Planet Hollywood
Peckers publishing scandals began before his time at AMI, when he was president and CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines. He had already earned a reputation in the magazine publishing world. As the New York Times put it in 1998:
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He bought foundering publications and cut the staffs to reduce costs and make the magazines profitable. He offered deep discounts and snazzy marketing ideas for big advertisers. He rejected membership in the Magazine Publishers of America, the industry association. He bought a full-page ad in large newspapers to criticize a competitors ad strategy. And he killed an article in one of his magazines to appease a big advertiser, prompting his top editors to quit.
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Pecker killed an investigation in the movie magazine Premiere into the financial problems of Planet Hollywood, a celebrity-themed restaurant chain with business ties to billionaire Ronald Perelman, who was also a partial owner of Premiere. When reporters complained, he told one, The last time I looked, I am the C.E.O. of this company, and made a business pitch for why investigations were bad for the company, according to a 2017 article in the New Yorker.
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As Mickey Kaus wrote in Slate in 2007, the clash, the last straw after a number of advertiser-focused stunts, caused the editor-in-chief to resign in frustration, and Peckers idea was apparently to turn Premiere into more of a toothless fan mag, ultimately leading to its demise.
Bill Cosby
Peckers ethical inclinations became apparent in 2005 through his work with AMI to secure an exclusive interview with Bill Cosby soon after the first sexual misconduct accusation against the comedian had come out.
As the Daily Beast reported in May, Cosby admitted in a deposition in a civil suit that the tabloid had come to him with allegations from an accuser named Beth Ferrier. Rather than publish her story, the Enquirer and Cosby struck a deal: In exchange for an exclusive interview, the Enquirer would bury the story.
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In the interview, which ran in March of 2005, Cosby essentially accused Andrea Constand of trying to extort money from him. As part of his deal with the publication, Cosby was allowed to see the story before it ran, and AMI agreed not to run any stories for two years about Cosby having affairs or drugging or assaulting women.
Ferrier, who joined in the civil suit against Cosby as a Jane Doe, alleged she had had an affair with Cosby when she was a 24-year-old model in 1984 and that on one night he drugged her and assaulted her. Cosby, who has since been sentenced to three to 10 years in prison for drugging and raping Constand in 2004, admitted to having an affair with Ferrier but denied the assault.
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According to Ferrier, she took a lie detector test at the Enquirers request, and the tabloid promised her $7,500 but never paid her or told her they decided against running the interview. An AMI spokesman also said that Ferrier was never paid. She soon took her story elsewhere and came forward publicly in an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News.
Constand sued the Enquirer for defamation, and in a settlement, AMI paid her $20,000.
Tiger Woods
Two years later, in 2007, AMI landed Tiger Woods on the cover of its magazine Mens Fitness with some similar scheming.
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According to the New Yorker, the Enquirer had received a tip from a woman that her daughter, a waitress named Mindy Lawton, had been sleeping with Woods. Reporters for the Enquirer hid in the bushes behind the diner where Lawton worked and captured evidence of their sexual encounter in the parking lot.
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Mens Fitness had reportedly asked Woods to appear on the cover many times before. After the Enquirer asked Woods for comment on his rendezvous with Lawton, he agreed to negotiate for a cover story.
Donald Trump
Peckers fawning relationship with Donald Trump started long before the scheme to help his campaign.
As the New Yorker noted, Pecker created a custom-publishing division at Hachette when he was president, in which he would produce magazines for clients. He launched and produced Trump Style, a glossy magazine dedicated to Trumps wealth and extravagance, for five years. Through it, he met, and came to admire, the future president.
While the coverage of Trump was consistently sycophantic over the years Pecker ran AMIhe made no secret of looking out for his friendthat devotion crossed into scandal in 2015, when he paid $30,000 to Dino Sajudin, a doorman at Trump World Tower, to stop him from going public with (somewhat dubious) allegations that Trump had had an affair in the 1980s that resulted in a child. AMI sources later told the New Yorker that the company had kept Cohen up to date with its investigation into Sajudin, and Cohen told the Associated Press that he had discussed Sajudins story with the magazine when the tabloid was working on it.
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From there, Pecker and AMI would continue to do what they could to protect Trumps reputation before the election.
And Now: Bezos
The most recent scandal began in early January, when the Enquirer published a 12-page spread dedicated to Bezosa man Trump openly despisesand his alleged affair with former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez. The magazine included intimate texts sent between the two, but not the private photos it later threatened to release. Hours before the Enquirer first teased its big expose, Bezos announced that he and his wife were divorcing.
Its still not clear how the Enquirer obtained the messages between Bezos and Sanchez. Bezos hired private security consultant Gavin de Becker to investigate, and according to the Washington Post, de Becker concluded that Bezos had not been hacked and instead the texts came from a politically motivated leak meant to embarrass the owner of The Postan effort potentially involving several important figures in Trumps 2016 campaign.
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If true, that would be quite the twist. Theres no denying that Trump campaign figures have pushed past the line of decency in their efforts to get him elected. And its on record that Pecker was a co-conspirator in at least one scheme. But campaign officials working with Pecker in this alleged act of extortion just to embarrass the owner of a newspaper the president doesnt like would be an almost cartoonish plot.
Pecker repeatedly brought his philosophy of business to the world of publishing and celebrity, and in doing so helped make the tabloid what it is today. If theres one thing that seems clear from the long list of AMIs unethical behavior, its that the sleaziness that Pecker infused into his businesses has found a much larger place in our national news cycle than he, or we, could have ever predicted.
The following essay is adapted from an episode of The Gist, a daily podcast from Slate about news, culture, and whatever else youre discussing with your family and friends. Listen to The Gist for free every day via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.
The goals of the Green New Deal are impossible. Which is exactly what makes it a great idea.
Huh? Dont you get it? By asking the impossible, the Green New Deal asks us to consider the possibilities! You see, a plans actual workability as a plan is no longer the value of a plan. Plans are good for thinking, and thinking leads to dreaming, and dreaming is the only way that change occursthats just science, folks.
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Weve blown past the era of evaluating an ideas worth by subjecting it to the standard of feasibility. Workability or feasibility is no way to judge any idea put forth by the exciting and innovative Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, says Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Writing in the Atlantic of another of AOCs headline-grabbing proposals, a 70 percent tax rate, Hamid admits he does not have a well thought out position on whether its a good idea.
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It probably doesnt matter whether it is, or whether it would work, he writes. This, though, could be the most important contribution so far of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the new crop of progressive politiciansthe realization that the technical merits of a particular policy arent the most relevant consideration.
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Well, call me a tired old watchdog, or fuddy-duddy fact finderI do not assess policies through the lens of the charismatic and compelling Ocasio-Cortez, who has become the perfect distillation of the Trumpian, big swing, mega-MAGA hashtag, nonconstrained by literalism, postreality-to-accuracy politics age. I tend to judge ideas by considering the opinions of experts who know more than I do. And when it comes to the Green New Deal, almost none of these people think that the United States can achieve its goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.
Pointing this out, however, is passe, or anti-progressive, or nay-saying. GuiltyI am in fact literally saying nay. And if you polled the leading experts or polled even the leading edge of renewable energy optimistic experts, they would admit that it is not possible to get to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. The Union of Concerned Scientists hope we can get to 80 percent by 2050. Stanford professor Mark Z. Jacobson, co-founder of the Solutions Project and 100.orgthe 100 percent clean, renewable energy movementhas estimated that his goal cannot be achieved by 2030 but holds out hope for 2050. By comparison, renewable energy accounts for only 18 percent of total U.S. power generation.*
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Perhaps I am naive when it comes to the way the world works, and I should realize that knowingly unrealistic, which is to say dishonest, goals and proposals that will not work are the best ways to steer us to a better future. Instead, I worry that having impossible goals might dissuade the public and discredit those proposing them. Also, this sophisticated mind-changing technique of endorsing unrealistic goals seems to have little relation to the legislative process, which in the past two decades has been marked by the accrual of power and the crafting of maximalist legislation passed with no accommodation of the minority party.
In her rollout speech, Ocasio-Cortez cited the New Deal and the Great Society as huge ideas that everyone scoffed at. The difference is that those social welfare programs did not have, at their cores, polices deemed unrealistic by the people who knew the most about them. The great progressive gains of American societywomens suffrage, civil rights, gay rightswere not won by making demands or submitting proposals that leaders knew could not happen.
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Maybe Im wrong, and you can cite an example where FDR cleverly proposed two dams in Tennessee when he really wanted only one. But my point is that accurate journalists or news assessors at the time would have been doing their jobs incorrectly if they had failed to point out: Thats one dam too many.
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On an FAQ page released by Ocasio-Cortezs office, the Green New Deal is compared to lofty American ambitions of the past.
It says: If Eisenhower wanted to build the interstate highway system today, people would ask how wed pay for it. Well, theyd be right to, and they also did ask those questions then. In fact, paying for the interstate highway system was a dominant consideration.
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Ocasio-Cortez, in that FAQ, also invokes the moonshot, saying when JFK said wed go to the [moon] by the end of the decade, people said impossible.
Im sure some did. But the best experts didnt, and we know this because JFK asked them. He sought their advice, accepted it, and crafted his policy around it. Famed aerospace engineer Wernher Von Braun wrote to LBJ, saying that while the United States probably could not beat the USSR at having a manned laboratory in space, he estimated that the U.S. had a sporting chance of sending a three-man crew around the moon and that the U.S. had an excellent chance of beating the USSR to a lunar landing.
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The strategy behind the moonshot was not to advocate for what the experts thought we couldnt do in the hopes that it would lead to what we could do.
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Furthermore, in the Kennedy, Eisenhower, or FDR eras, it was not seen as a good strategy to deride observers who accurately cited experts as being small-minded, nit-picky, or not getting the big picture. Thats more a quality of the Trump or George W. Bush eras, where snooty experts fail to see the possibilities.
It is a problem that progressives, cheering on the tactics of Ocasio-Cortez, have rewritten the gains of history to seem like failures, with Matt Stoller of the Open Markets Institute criticizing the Obama presidency as tepidly defined by self-imposed limits. In fact, it was defined by an expansion of health care, a reversal of economic catastrophe, and an improvement of the material circumstances of most Americans. Similarly, there is a jealousy of the detail-free triumphs of the right as expressed by Shadi Hamid.
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One reason that right-wing populists across Europe (and India and the Philippines and many other places) have been surprisinglyor unsurprisinglysuccessful: They seem to have relatively little interest in what works, he writes.
The tactic of the momentof knowingly endorsing daring ideas that do not work as tacticstrikes me as much less clever than its adherents would have us believe. If we no longer think of actual feasibility as a best practice, it is less likely that our actual policies will somehow average out into bold yet feasible improvements on the status quo and more likely that well simply be stuck with failure.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren made it official Saturday, launching her campaign for the White House with a rally in the working-class Massachusetts town of Lawrence. The theme of her campaign was encapsulated by where she chose to make her run official considering it is where textile workers went on strike to protest wage cuts in 1912. It came to the surprise of no one that Warren struck a populist tone in a campaign launch that focused on economic inequality and a call to take on bold action in favor of the working class. This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone, Warren said. And that is why I stand here today: to declare that I am a candidate for President of the United States of America.
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Although she criticized President Donald Trump, Warren also made sure to emphasize that he wasnt the cause, but rather the symptom of a larger problem. The man in the White House is not the cause of what is broken, he is just the latest and most extreme symptom of whats gone wrong in America, Warren said. A product of a rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else. So once hes gone, we cant pretend that none of this ever happened.
This is the fight of our lives: Sen. Elizabeth Warren officially launched her 2020 presidential campaign today among supporters in Lawrence, Massachusetts https://t.co/f01b5BGLZg pic.twitter.com/Ea5Qg0R9px CBS News (@CBSNews) February 9, 2019
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Even though Trumps administration is the most corrupt in living memory, the countrys problems go far beyond the changes he has implemented since moving into the White House. It wont be enough to just undo the terrible acts of this administration, Warren said. We cant afford to just tinker around the edgesa tax credit here, a regulation there. Our fight is for big, structural change.
Recalling the story of what happened in 1912 in Lawrence, Warren said it was time for workers to stand up to the modern version of the mill owners who tried to cut workers wages at the turn of the century. When I talk about this, some rich guys scream class warfare! Warren said. Well, let me tell you something, these same rich guys have been waging class warfare against hard-working people for decadesI say its time to fight back! Warren also noted that the current state of affairs means many working families are struggling and that needs to change. Today, millions and millions and millions of American families are also struggling to survive in a system thats been riggedrigged by the wealthy and the well-connected, Warren said.
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Elizabeth Warren: "Some rich guys scream 'CLASS WARFARE!' But let me tell you something, these same rich guys have been waging class warfare against hard-working people for decades. I say it's time to fight back." pic.twitter.com/6TCIIFxs63 Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) February 9, 2019
In her message that took shots at the extremely wealthy, Warren also outlined a challenge to her challengers in the party. While touting her refusal to accept money from lobbyists, corporate PACs or super PACs in general, Warren called on every other candidate who asks for your vote in this primary to say exactly the same thing.
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Im not taking a dime of PAC money in this campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren says while announcing her 2020 bid for president https://t.co/V6rsqIu7zO pic.twitter.com/pfBQMwS405 CBS News (@CBSNews) February 9, 2019
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Warren launched her campaign at a time when she is trying to move on from the questions surrounding her claims of Native American ancestry. She has repeatedly apologized for releasing the results of a DNA test but this past week served as a reminder of why the issue will continue to play a role in her campaign. The Washington Post revealed last week that Warren had identified as American Indian in her registration card for the State Bar of Texas. Warren later apologized. I cant go back, Warren said in an interview with the Post. But I am sorry for furthering confusion on tribal sovereignty and tribal citizenship and harm that resulted.
Trumps campaign quickly criticized Warren, focusing on her claims of Native American ancestry. Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement . The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas.
Well, Actually is a weekly column by Slates Shannon Palus. Each week, shell test health and wellness products to help readers figure out what they should try, what they should skip, and why.
In the mid-1800s, on an oil well in Pennsylvania, a worker found a gooey waxlike substance forming on the equipment. It gummed up the drilling rigs, but it felt soothing on chapped skin. A young chemist spotted it, the story goes, and figured out an easy way to distill the stuff from oil, and patented it as Vaseline. It could be an oil for leather, a pomade for hair, or a balm for hands, he wrote.
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Today, smears of petroleum jelly or petrolatumthe formal name for that gooey substanceare a staple of the cool-girl makeup brand Glossier. The company launched in 2014 with a skeleton line of goods including a face mist, a foundation, and a small tube of watered-down petrolatum, the Balm Dotcom, branded as a do-everything skin salve. The stuff currently comes in six varieties, from a clear scentless original to a glittery fragrant birthday cake (inspired by the zeitgeisty dessert store Milk Bar).
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Was this stuff, in its understated Instagrammable packaging, all that different from what shows up on oil rigs? In chalking up Glossier products to mere pretty packaging, had I been missing out? I ordered a three-pack of Balm Dotcom to find out.
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I felt perplexed that in all these years, the cool girls hadnt moved on to something more sophisticated. Or at least, more subtle.
The first thing that struck me was just how tiny the tubes are. Each is just half a fluid ounce, around the size of the small chapstick-size tube of Vaseline from the drugstore. But at $12 a pop, or $30 for three, the Glossier version is more than four times the price. I knew the fancy stuff would come at a markup, but I still expected something a little heftier than normal in exchange. Maybe along the lines of Smiths Rosebud Salve, another luxury petrolatum product that, for $7 and not much more product than the Glossier stuff, is at least sold in a tin. Maybe the flavors would be enticing enough to be worth it. Id previously tried out a friends mint Balm Dotcom, which, while not particularly unique, was certainly pleasant.
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For this test, I ordered clear original, red cherry, and coconut (beachy and untinted). I opened the cherry tube first and brought a smear to my face. The tip of the balms is round and utilitarian, like a tube of toothpaste, which prompts oozing it onto a fingertip rather than skin itself. I did that, and was greeted with an icky-sweet scent and memories of elementary schooldebates about whether eating flavored Lip Smackers was advisable, from a time when having a variety of flavored goos was a form of playground currency. I felt perplexed that in all these years, the cool girls hadnt moved on to something more sophisticated. Or at least, more subtle. I didnt find subtlety in the coconut, either, which smelled more like burned coconut to me. I hated both flavors and, after brief trial runs, actively avoided using them on my lips. I turned my attention to the most boring variety: original.
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Despite its relative plainness, the key ingredients list includes the same fancy staples of each of the six Balm Dotcom varieties: beeswax, lanolin, extracts from cupuacu fruit, rice bran, and rosemary. Petrolatum is tucked away under full ingredients, which requires a click-throughthough, at first on that list, it takes up more space in those little tubes than anything else.
And it should. Petrolatum is known among chemists as a gold-standard occlusive agent, meaning its really, really good at keeping moisture in. Its also helpful in repairing skin. Youd be silly to make a lip balm that wasnt in large part the same stuff as Vaseline. Regular ol ChapStick actually brags about its petrolatum content, boasting under the active-ingredients list that the skin protectant comprises 40 percent of the product. (Incidentally, I got a three-pack of ChapStick at Target during this experimentfor less than $5!because Id left the Glossier at home. The main thing I need a lip balm to be is in every one of my coat pockets.)
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Balm Dotcom does offer an ingredient that could, given long-term use, help prevent damage and signs of aging, says Gloria Lu, a former cosmetic chemist for LOreal: antioxidants. But its unclear what amount these are present in, so its impossible to figure out if those benefits would be worth paying for. (It also lacks an ingredient that would definitely be good at preventing that same damage: sunscreen.) Luxury brands often tout magical ingredients that could be present in just a sprinkle, says Lu, who co-founded a blog, Chemist Confessions, that aims to demistify such things. This is our general problem with the skincare industry, she told me. We dont know how much of the good bonus ingredients are added, so its hard to suss out whether theyre worth paying extra for. When it comes to antioxidants in brands like Glossier, Lu met my question of whether they do have long-term benefits with a long Uhhhh That is the sound of uncertainty, and we should all carry that in our heads while evaluating marketing claims.
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She says she used Aquaphor (also largely petrolatum, antioxidant-containing, and a personal favorite of mine) until she and her co-founder created their own small line of productsthink Glossier, but with scienceincluding one called Balm Voyage. At $34 per ounce, it clocks in at a higher price than Balm Dotcom. But you at least get an ingredients list that comes with a full breakdown. (In this case, petrolatum is 48.5 percent, and an extra, Boswellia Serrata extract for calming inflamed skin, is 2.5 percent.) This transparency gives the reader information that would help her to decide if the ingredients are worth the asking price.
Im still using the Balm Dotcom original flavor, which, after all this research, seems exactly like plain Vaseline to me. Thats fine because, like Vaseline, it works very well. But its not worth $12.
Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication.
TOKYO (AP) The Tokyo Olympics, already delayed by the pandemic, are not looking like much fun: Not for athletes. Not for fans. And not for the Japanese public. They are caught between concerns about the coronavirus at a time when few are vaccinated on one side and politicians who hope to s
A bushfire near the New Zealand South Island city of Nelson burned for a fifth day on Saturday, February 9. More than 2,500 people evacuated their homes in nearby areas the day before.
The fire in Pigeon Valley led to the biggest aerial firefight on record in New Zealand, according to the NZ Herald.
The Pigeon Valley fire spanned 2,100 hectares on Saturday, they reported. A second fire was reported on Walters Bluff, to the north of Nelson city center on February 8.
Nelson Tasman Civil Defence posted on Facebook that there were 23 helicopters, two fixed wing planes, a drone team and around 150 firefighters battling the Pigeon Valley blaze, which was the largest forest fire in the country since 1955, according to reports.
This footage shows New Zealand Defence Force personnel assisting firefighters to contain the fires in the region. Credit: NZ Defence Force via Storyful
A Thai political party will obey a command from the king blocking the candidacy of a princess for prime minister, it said in a statement Saturday, in a dramatic reversal only a day after putting her forward for the position. "Thai Raksa Chart party complies with the royal command", it said in a LINE message to reporters. The statement added that the party is ready to do its duty with respect to the "tradition and royal customs" under Thailand's constitutional monarchy. The announcement effectively invalidates Princess Ubolratana's unprecedented bid for prime minister in March elections and comes after an extraordinary rebuke of her candidacy by her younger brother Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn. Thai Raksa Chart announced the princess as their candidate Friday morning in a move that looked to rattle the status quo and threaten the ambitions of the junta that has ruled Thailand since it toppled the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra in a 2014 coup. But the Thai king torpedoed the bid in a sharply worded statement later the same day that said bringing senior royal family members into politics is against tradition, national culture and "highly inappropriate." Thailand has some of the most severe lese majeste laws in the world and the king's word is considered final. Analysts had already forewarned that the palace statement had scuttled the princess' chances. "The palace disapproval invalidates her candidacy," said Puangthong Pawakapan, professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University, before the Thai Raksa Chart announcement. Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has not had a royal run for frontline office since 1932. The 67-year-old princess did not address the royal rebuke head-on Saturday morning, when she thanked supporters on her widely followed Instagram account and said vaguely that she wanted Thailand to "move forward". Junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha, the leader of the coup that toppled the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra, also said he would stand for the top post Friday. Ubolratana's move briefly threw his fortunes into disarray but the palace action made it clear it does not endorse her run. The king did not criticise the princess directly and seemed to focus blame on political party members who brought her on board. Thai Raksa Chart is aligned with Yingluck and her brother Thaksin, who was ousted by the army in 2006. Analysts assumed Thaksin and the party would not make such a move without royal approval.
The renowned French cartoonist, author and illustrator Tomi Ungerer, a lifelong activist who protested against racial segregation, the Vietnam war and the election of US President Donald Trump, has died at the age of 87 in Ireland, his former adviser told AFP on Saturday. "He died in the night and his wife called me this (Saturday) morning on the phone," Robert Walter, his former adviser and a friend "for 35 years" said, adding that Ungerer died at his daughter's home. "He was an all-round genius, a man who was talented in everything. He loved literature. He used to say 'I write about what I draw and I draw what I write'," he said. Originally from Alsace in eastern France, Ungerer lived in the United States and Canada before settling in Ireland. He was obsessed with books from an early age. "For me, if there was a heaven it would be a library," he told AFP in a 2016 interview, adding that he was "brought up on reading". Ungerer's oeuvre ranged from globally celebrated children's books like The Three Robbers and The Moon Man to erotic drawings as well as satirical paintings and political posters. He wrote in three languages: English, French and German. He published over 140 books which have been translated into 30 languages. - 'Subversive' - Ungerer's social activism and his often irreverent writings led to some of his work being branded "subversive" by critics. Born into a family of watchmakers in 1931 in the Alsatian city of Strasbourg, Ungerer lost his father when he was three-years-old. He witnessed the annexation of Alsace by Germany during World War II and the subsequent imposition of German and Nazi ideology in schools, which he recounted later in autobiographical works. After failing the second part of the baccalaureate exam -- in a school report, his headmaster described him as a "wilfully perverse and subversive individualist" -- Ungerer hitchhiked to the North Cape in Norway. After the end of the war, Ungerer travelled across Europe and in 1956, he left for New York with 60 dollars in his pocket and what he later described as a "trunk full of drawings and manuscripts". The following year, after meeting the children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom at Harper and Row, his first children's book The Mellops Go Flying was published and became an immediate success. A range of works followed from the complete Mellop series to several prize-winning books and satirical works including Horrible and The Underground Sketchbook. He then worked for Playboy magazine as its food editor and also did several political posters including drawings for the election campaign of former German chancellor Willy Brandt's SPD party. Ungerer donated more than 11,000 original works of art, sculptures, books and toys to a museum devoted to his work and life, which opened in 2007 in his birthplace Strasbourg. Since then, the Tomi Ungerer Museum has been voted as one of the ten best museums in Europe by the Council of Europe. He was awarded the Legion of Honour by France in 1990 and was elevated to Commander of the Legion of Honour in 2018.
By Conor Humphries and Amanda Ferguson
DUBLIN/BELFAST (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Friday said he believed "a deal can be done" to avoid a disorderly British exit from the EU, after a meeting with a key ally of British Prime Minister Theresa May that he said went very well.
Varadkar, who later met May for a working dinner in Dublin, said talks with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party in Belfast showed there was "more that unites us than divides us when it comes to Brexit," unusually conciliatory language in what has often been an acrimonious relationship.
The DUP, which props up May's government, has been one of the fiercest critics of Britain's exit deal with the European Union, which parliament in London has rejected and more particularly of the contentious "backstop" championed by Varadkar.
The provision is an insurance policy meant to keep the border between euro zone state Ireland and the British-run province of Northern Ireland open under any and all circumstances. The DUP says its terms are unacceptable as they would undermine trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
The EU has said it will not remove the provision or re-open the legally binding Brexit deal agreed with Britain over two years but it has said it is ready to rework the political declaration that accompanies it.
After the meeting, DUP leader Arlene Foster said she had a "good engagement" with Varadkar and that the DUP wanted "to be as helpful as we can to try and get a deal that works for the United Kingdom and also works for the European Union."
She declined to comment on the detail of the talks, saying both sides needed space to complete discussions.
The support of the DUP's 10 members of parliament is seen as key to May winning over sceptical members of her Conservative party and securing parliamentary approval for the withdrawal agreement.
Story continues
Asked by Irish state broadcaster RTE how he envisaged a deal could be done between Britain and the EU after weeks of stalemate, Varadkar cited the common ground between the Irish government and the DUP.
Both sides, he said, wanted to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland, ensure Britain left with a deal and enable frictionless trade.
"Often when you share all the major objectives, it is possible to come to a solution," Varadkar said.
Speaking ahead of his meeting with May, Varadkar said the dinner would aim to "see confidence and trust restored" but would not involve actual negotiations, which are being led by Brussels.
"I think that on balance we will secure a deal - whether it will be by the end of March or after an extension I can't say," he told RTE.
(Editing by Peter Graff and John Stonestreet)
Goldman Sachs's decision to potentially cut bonuses for top executives over the 1MDB scandal reflects an acknowledgement at shareholder and public outrage over the debacle. The prestigious investment bank announced last week that it could withhold millions of dollars in bonuses to former Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and two other retired executives depending on the outcome of ongoing probes into the Malaysian fund. The bonuses were first approved in 2011 and the annual payouts depend on the firm's performance over the ensuing eight years. In Blankfein's case, the bonus began at $7 million and nearly doubled, according to US securities documents. Beyond the bonuses, Goldman also said it could claw back compensation from current chief executive David Solomon and two other current senior executives, president John Waldron and chief financial officer Stephen Scherr. Solomon was paid $23 million last year, including $15.4 million in stock options. The announcement on bonuses was intended as a message for shareholders who are upset at how the corruption scandal has tarred the bank's image at a time when it is working to build up its consumer banking business through the online platform Marcus, according to two people familiar with the matter. The board of directors wants shareholders to know it is not blind to the gravity of the situation, said one of the sources, adding that the message was not meant to be an admission of wrongdoing. Besides Solomon, who also serves as chairman, Goldman's 13-member board includes ArcelorMittal chief executive Lakshmi Mittal. Experts say Goldman Sachs could face a fine of perhaps $2 billion under a criminal case related to 1MDB. - Under scrutiny - In January, Solomon apologized to Malaysia over the scandal and the involvement of former Goldman partner Tim Leissner, who had pleaded guilty to violating US anti-bribery and money laundering laws. Solomon's statement stood out in tone from that of Blankfein, who said during the height of the financial crisis in 2009 that he was "doing God's work" in helping companies raise capital. US authorities have accused a Malaysian financial intermediary, Low Taek Jho, along with Leissner and another former Goldman banker, Ng Chong Hwa, of conspiring to launder billions of dollars from 1 Malaysia Development Berhad, a sovereign wealth fund set up for development of the country. Goldman garnered $600 million in fees and revenues from 1MDB bond transactions. US officials maintain that more than $2.7 billion in funds went to kickbacks and bribes. Pointed questions facing Goldman Sachs include revelations it proceeded with its first transaction with 1MDB to finance a $1.75 billion purchase of power plants despite being warned by rival bank Lazard that the deal looked suspicious, according to a source. Also, a division of the investment bank agreed to do business with Low Taek Jho even though he was rejected in 2011 from opening an account because bank officials could not determine the source of his wealth, a person familiar with the matter told AFP. "The due diligence functions at Goldman Sachs fell apart," said Richard Bove, analyst at Odeon Capital and a frequent Goldman critic. "If you're going to raise $6 billion for someone you better know everything there is to know about that someone." The three transactions were presented to the bank's investment committees for Asia and firm-wide, which required 1MDB to pay a larger-than-usual fee because 1MDB was opposed to a syndicated loan, saddling Goldman with all of the risk, a source said. Goldman declined comment and Lazard did not respond requests for comment.
There was still some hard work to be done ahead of the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a Washington envoy said on Saturday. Stephen Biegun, the US Special Representative for North Korea, said three days of preparatory talks in Pyongyang that ended Friday had been productive, but more dialogue was needed ahead of the summit scheduled for Vietnam from February 27-28. Biegun on Saturday briefed South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa on his Pyongyang visit, also confirming the summit would be held in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. "We have some hard work to do with the DPRK," Biegun told Kang, adding: "I'm confident that if both sides stay committed we can make real progress here. "We don't know where it's going to go, but we are in the midst of a conversation ... our discussions (with Pyongyang) were productive." Kang told Biegun that the US had South Korea's "full support" for the summit. The US State Department said Biegun will meet again with Pyongyang officials ahead of the Trump-Kim talks Trump earlier announced Hanoi as the venue in a tweet, saying: "I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace." At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula". But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means. Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV". On Friday Trump tweeted that North Korea will become a "great Economic Powerhouse" under Kim. "He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is," said Trump.
It was fear of being dominated by a Chinese behemoth that sparked an attempt by large French and German rail companies to join forces to create an European industrial champion. The merger by Alstom and Siemens was vetoed by the EU on Thursday, but concerns about the overwhelming power of vast, often state-backed Chinese companies is not limited to the rail industry. Here are some of areas in which Chinese companies control a large piece of the global market. - Rail - China's state-backed CRRC is the world's largest train manufacturer, with locomotives and wagons ordered across the globe from Boston to Philadelphia, Cambodia to Colombia, and customers including the iconic London Underground and Germany's Deutsche Bahn. Its annual revenues of 26 billion euros (29 billion dollars) alone outweigh the three Western heavyweights Bombardier, Siemens and Alstom, each of which brings in around nine billion a year. - Agrichemicals - The state-owned ChemChina became one of the world's seeds and pesticide producers when it acquired Swiss pesticide giant Syngenta for $43 billion in 2017, putting it in competition with Monsanto and DowDupont. It was the biggest overseas acquisition by a Chinese firm yet, ahead of the $15.1 billion purchase of Canada's Nexen Energy by China's state oil firm CNOOC in 2013. ChemChina also controls Italian tyremaker Pirelli and German machinery firm KraussMaffei. - Energy - The state-run China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) launched its locally developed Hualong One nuclear reactor in 2015 to compete with French and US models, selling to Argentina and Pakistan. Chinese solar panel manufacturers Jinko, Trina and Solar dominate the global market. And Chinese oil companies -- CNOOC, CNPC and Sinopec -- are investing heavily even as their global rivals cut spending. - Aviation - China's state-owned plane-maker Comac expects to deliver its first home-made passenger jet to a customer in 2021, as it seeks to challenge the dominance of Boeing and Airbus. The company says it has received a thousand orders for its 168-seater C919 plane. - Food - The state-owned food giant COFCO is playing an increasing role in world grain trading after purchasing the agricultural arm of Singaporean commodities trader Noble as well as Dutch Nidera. China's WH Group became the world's largest pork producer in 2013, when it purchased major US pork and hot dog producer Smithfield Foods Inc. - Drones - Founded by a Chinese university student in 2006, DJI has become the world's top civilian drone maker with 70 percent of the market, outpacing its French rival Parrot. - Smartphones - Chinese smartphone makers are taking a larger slice of the global market, with Huawei at 15 percent, Xiaomi 8.7 percent and Oppo 8.1 percent. Phone sales by Huawei and Oppo surged by 30 percent last year, defying a downward trend that hit rivals Apple and Samsung. - Home appliances - China's Haier Group is the world's leading manufacturer of home appliances with around 10 percent of the market, ahead of rivals Whirlpool and Electrolux. Haier even purchased the appliances arm of US giant General Electric in 2016. - Batteries - Chinese firm CATL, which supplies batteries for car titans Volkswagen, Ford and Daimler, is battling with Japan's Panasonic for the world's lithium electric car battery top spot. Its production capacity will increase fivefold by 2020 due to a mammoth new factory in China, and the firm has announced a huge factory in Germany to supply European customers. - Freight - The state-owned Cosco Group is the world's third biggest shipping company with 50 container ports across the globe, including Greece's Piraeus and Spain's Bilbao.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (R) speaks with U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad (3rd L) during a meeting at the Prime Minister's office in Islamabad, Pakistan, in this handout photo released January 18, 2018. Press Information Department (PID)/Handout via REUTERS
By Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and Jibran Ahmad
WASHINGTON/PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan, long at odds with the United States over the war in Afghanistan, has begun to play a behind-the-scenes but central role in supporting U.S. peace talks with the Afghan Taliban, including by facilitating travel to negotiations, U.S. officials and Taliban sources told Reuters.
The Pakistani assistance, which has not been reported in such detail before, also includes exerting pressure on Taliban leaders who fail to cooperate, including by detaining members of the militants' families, the insurgents say.
Pakistan's role in the peace negotiations is a delicate one, with Islamabad seeking to avoid demonstrating the kind of broad influence over the Taliban that Washington has long accused it of having. Sources caution its help could be temporary.
The Taliban also do not want to appear beholden to Islamabad, which has long denied U.S. accusations that it provides safe haven and assistance to insurgents as a way to preserve influence in neighbouring Afghanistan throughout its more than 17-year-old war.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly signalled his intention to wind down America's longest conflict, declaring this week in his State of the Union address that "great nations do not fight endless wars."
One senior U.S. official, who declined to be identified, said of Pakistan's role in the talks: "We know it just wouldn't be possible without their support."
"They've facilitated some movement and travel to the discussions in Doha," the official said.
Trump's administration has accelerated talks for a political settlement in Afghanistan. U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad held six days of talks - perhaps the most productive to date - with the Taliban in Doha last month and is due to meet Taliban representatives again on Feb. 25.
Speaking after Reuters reported the shift, Khalilzad confirmed at a forum in Washington that "there is a positive change in recent times" by Islamabad.
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"Pakistan has tried to facilitate talks between the Taliban and the United States and also favours inter-Afghan dialogue including between the Taliban and the (Afghan) government," he said.
Taliban sources said Pakistan's role in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table was instrumental. In one instance, Islamabad sent a message to the militants through religious leaders that they had to talk to the United States or risk a cut-off in ties.
They detained Taliban members' families as a way to pressure them, a Taliban leader told Reuters.
"I haven't seen Pakistan so serious before," the senior Taliban leader said.
The Taliban leader, who declined to be identified, said Pakistan had kept "unprecedented pressure" on the militants and their close relatives over the past few months.
"They made it clear to us that we (Taliban) have to talk to the U.S. and Afghan government," the Taliban leader said.
To be sure, current and former U.S. officials still are highly sceptical of Islamabad and do not see any steps by Pakistan that could not be easily reversed.
Washington appears for now to be sticking to a total freeze in U.S. assistance to Islamabad imposed over a year ago over its suspected support to the Taliban. Trump at the time accused Islamabad of rewarding past U.S. aid with "nothing but lies & deceit."
"There's some self-interest obviously involved here ... I would be wary of taking that and extrapolating off that and saying they're now on board with the peace process," said Jason Campbell, who was the Pentagon's Afghanistan country director until last year and is now at the RAND Corporation think-tank.
Afghanistan's envoy to Washington, Roya Rahmani, said that any Pakistani shift in behaviour was still not apparent from Kabul, which has yet to participate in the talks.
"For us, it still remains to be seen," she told Reuters in an interview.
PULLOUT PRESSURE
Pakistani sources suggest that the driver behind their country's support for the talks is not U.S. aid but growing concerns over the regional economic shockwaves that could follow an abrupt U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.
Those concerns have been strengthened by Trump's surprise decision in December to withdraw completely from Syria, despite objections from the Pentagon.
There are only about 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but their presence ensures a continuous flow of U.S. financial assistance to Afghanistan.
Islamabad, running short of foreign exchange reserves and in talks with the International Monetary Fund over what would be its 13th bailout since the 1980s, says it cannot afford to see Afghanistan slide into chaos just as Pakistan is trying to attract foreign investors to shore up its own economy.
"That is our main worry in all of this," said a senior official who is closely involved in cross-border relations.
"We have enough economic issues of our own to deal with already."
One of the most notable public signs of Pakistan's willingness to aid the negotiations was the release of Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
Now the newly appointed chief negotiator, Baradar is expected to fly from Pakistan to attend the next round of negotiations in Doha on Feb. 25.
Dan Feldman, a former U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said he believed Washington was still hesitant to become too hopeful about Pakistan's change in posture.
"There is cautious appreciation for the fact that Pakistan has seemingly done more than before to be helpful," Feldman said, before adding that it did not "suggest a sea change in Pakistan's position."
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington and Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar, Pakistan; Additional reporting by James Mackenzie in Islamabad and Jonathan Landay and Mohammad Zargham in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish and Grant McCool)
The alarm sounded at 4 a.m. and I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed. We had a long drive ahead of us, and my husband, Led, was eager to get on the water. Before too long, our friends Chase and Courtney arrived and we were ready to hit the road. It is about two hours from our home to Lake
Princess Ubolratana Rajakanyas audacious bid to be Thailands next prime minister appears over after just one day, as her brother King Maha Vajiralongkorn stunned the kingdom with a late-night order vetoing his elder sisters foray into politics.
On Friday morning, it was confirmation of Ubolratanas unprecedented candidacy with the Thai Raksa Chart party that was the stunner. But on Saturday, following the royal decree from the king, the party announced it would comply, effectively ending her candidacy in a dramatic reversal.
Thai Raksa Chart party complies with the royal command with loyalty to the king and all members of the royal family, the party said in a statement.
The Thai Raksa Chart will carry out its duty in accordance with the regulations of the Election Commission, the election law and the Constitution with respect to the tradition related to the monarchy. We are ready to bring forward policies that will lead Thailand to prosperity, with respect for the peoples decision in accordance with the principles of the democracy with the king as head of state.
The party added that it was grateful to Ubolratana for her kindness.
Although the final decision on the admissibility of Ubolratanas candidacy lies with the election commission, the kings decree is likely to weigh heavily on the commission members minds when they deliberate on the matter.
Jarungwit Phumma, a member of the ruling junta who leads the election commission, said on Saturday that a final decision on the princess candidacy will be announced on Monday.
Before Saturdays reversal, observers had suggested the princess candidacy was likely to unify the two-decade turmoil between the wealthy Shinawatras triumphant in all elections since 2001 and royalist urban elites who backed the 2006 and 2014 coups against them.
Thai Raksa Chart is one of several political parties aligned with the Shinawatras that are contesting the March 24 polls the first since the 2014 coup.
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The princess involvement was an unprecedented move: the first time a royal had entered politics since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932.
As the day ended, however, Maha Vajiralongkorn all but extinguished that possibility. In a late-night statement he chastised Ubolratana, describing her move as inappropriate and against the constitution and royal norms.
The palace disapproval invalidates her candidacy, said Puangthong Pawakapan, professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University, before the Thai Raksa Chart announcement.
Ubolratana has relinquished royal titles except for the right to be called princess but Maha Vajiralongkorn said she remained part of the reigning Chakri dynasty.
The siblings are the children of late Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in 2016 after a record-breaking 70 years on the throne.
All royal family members adhere to the same principles and cannot take any political office, because it contradicts the intention of the constitution, Maha Vajiralongkorn said.
Commentators who on Friday assumed Ubolratanas bid had the blessing of her brother the siblings were believed to be close were at a loss for words following the kings rebuke.
These developments are wild and completely unexpected, Tom Pepinsky, a Southeast Asia researcher at Cornell University, told the Post on Saturday.
In a commentary published hours earlier, Pepinsky wrote that Ubolratanas candidacy was much more momentous than, say, [Britains] Prince Harry running for office.
Much of the analysis about developments over the last two days has been speculative, given the opaque nature of palace machinations. Commentary among local analysts meanwhile has been muted due to the countrys strict lese-majeste rules prohibiting criticism of the royals.
Joshua Kurlantzick from Washingtons Council on Foreign Relations suggested the U-turn on Ubolratanas candidacy may have to do with a political deal struck by the exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck also a former premier that had gone awry.
He suggested two scenarios: one in which the royal court had decided against approving Ubolratanas candidacy at the last minute, and another in which the king was unaware of his sisters plans until Fridays announcement.
The princess accepted the nomination of the Thai Raksa Chart party one of several parties linked to Thaksin and his sister Yingluck meaning, the candidacy would at least have needed the telecom-tycoon-turned-politicians endorsement.
Thai Raksa Chart was created as part of a strategy to diversify the clans political assets in case its main vehicle, the Puea Thai party, was dissolved by the junta that deposed the government Yingluck helmed from 2011 to 2014.
The nomination of a royal family member by pro-Thaksin forces was an audacious gambit, potentially undercutting Thaksins ardently royalist foes, and setting up an election showdown with Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who led the 2014 coup and heads the military government.
But King Vajiralongkorns swift rebuke of his sisters bid could backfire on pro-Thaksin forces, who could face retribution if judged by election authorities to have tried to illegitimately use a royal connection.
Fridays events were astounding and have people completely rethinking their assessments and perspectives and the countrys future political trajectory, said Jay Harriman, senior director at BowerGroupAsia, a government affairs consultancy.
The monarchy has semi-divine status in Thailand. Public appearances and statements often pertain to royal duty or events. A disagreement like this has almost never happened in recent memory.
Ubolratana, who on Friday wrote on Instagram that she was a commoner who does not enjoy royal privilege, on Saturday uploaded another post that appeared to ignore her brothers rebuke.
Thank you to all Thais for the love and kindness you have shown, she wrote in a caption accompanying a picture of herself. She said she sincerely wished to see the kingdom progress and for people to enjoy unfettered rights, opportunities and happiness.
The princess and the Thai Raksa Chart had not responded to the kings statement but the party did cancel a campaign event scheduled for Saturday.
Ubolratana, a mathematics and biochemistry graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a reputation for being more accessible to commoners than the rest of the royal family.
Observers have said she has in the past hinted that her political allegiances lie with the Shinawatras, whose political clout draws heavily on support from the countrys northern, Laos-influenced region.
News agency AFP noted in a profile of Ubolratana on Friday that her post accepting Thai Raksa Charts nomination for prime minister candidate featured her wearing a traditional dress from that region. She was also holding red flowers the colour that has come to represent Thaksins supporters, known as red shirts.
This article Thailands Princess Ubolratanas bid to become prime minister doomed after party complies with kings decree first appeared on South China Morning Post
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MANILA, Philippines A Chinese woman was arrested on Saturday (February 9) for disrespecting and assaulting a police officer at an MRT station.
Based on initial report, a Chinese national named Jiale Zhang, 23, was prohibited by security guards from entering MRT Boni Station with a cup of taho (soya) citing the recent ban on drinks and liquids inside the train.
Zhang was advised to consume the drink before entering the station but refused to do so.
The matter was turned over to PO1 William L. Cristobal who explained to Zhang the stations security policy. At this point, Zhang got angry and threw the cup of taho at the police officer.
This prompted P01 Cristobal to arrest Zhang and bring her to the Mandaluyong City Police Station where she was booked for disobedience to agent of person in authority and direct assault.
In a statement, the Department of Transportation MRT-3 stressed that tighter security measures are being implemented inside the trains to ensure the safety and security of the passengers and personnel following attacks in Mindanao. UNTV News and Rescue
Erratum: February 9, 2019
An earlier version of this article quoted the press statement of DOTr MRT-3 which said the Chinese national apologized and was later released by the authorities.
According to the Eastern Police District, Jialz Zhang is currently detained at the Mandaluyong City Police Station for further investigation for prior inquest proceedings.
The post Chinese woman arrested after throwing taho at MRT cop appeared first on UNTV News.
With vigils and concerts outside prisons, Catalan independence supporters for months have shown their backing for 12 separatist leaders who go on trial on Tuesday over their bid to break the region away from Spain. Now that the highly anticipated trial is finally about to get underway at Spain's Supreme Court in Madrid, they have vowed to step up their protests in another show of solidarity. While just 12 leaders will sit in the dock over their role in the failed 2017 independence bid, many Catalan separatists feel they are also being put on trial for having taken part in a banned referendum held on October 1 that year. "I'm a lifelong separatist and I voted on October 1, it's as if I was being tried," said retired teacher Eugenia Fernandez at a recent vigil held for the detained Catalan leaders at the picturesque Plaza de la Vila de Gracia square in Barcelona. "We're here because of the huge injustice that our government is in jail or exile for doing what we asked them to do -- fight to set up a Catalan republic," the 67-year-old said. The vigil Fernandez took part in has been held every Monday evening for the past 15 months at the square in Gracia, a bohemian district of the Catalan capital which is also its most pro-separatist. People held up large black and white images of the Catalan leaders, as well of those who fled abroad after the failed independence bid, along with the word "freedom" in Catalan and English. Only the chime of a clock on top of an imposing 19th century tower in the centre of the square broke the silence. Nine of the leaders have been charged with rebellion, with some also accused of misuse of public funds. They have all been in pre-trial detention for months, some of them for more than a year. - Unifying cause - "This is a reaction against the brutality of this trial, which is not against a few people but is instead against Catalan political feeling," said award-winning Catalan writer Ramon Solsona, who read some poems at the vigil. Similar events have been held across the northeastern region, where the leaders have obtained near-martyr status among many separatists who see them as "political prisoners". The 12 defendants face prison sentences of between seven and 25 years if convicted, with former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras at risk of the longest sentence. Catalonia's president at the time of the secession bid, Carles Puigdemont, is not among those on trial since he fled to Belgium where he regularly receives visits from top Catalan separatists. With Catalan separatist parties divided over strategy -- some calling for more civil disobedience while others favour dialogue with Spain's central government -- the cause of the jailed Catalan leaders helps keep them united. - 'Judging all of us' - Polls show the region remains split over the issue of independence, and separatist protests -- which in the past drew over a million people -- appear to have lost strength. Pro-independence groups have responded by holding smaller events to show support for the detained separatist leaders. The defendants were moved from prisons in Madrid to jails in Catalonia shortly after Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez came to power in June in what was seen as a goodwill gesture. Since then separatists have gathered regularly outside of the Catalan jails where they were being held, holding concerts, camping outside overnight and forming human pyramids, called "castells", a Catalan tradition. Separatist parties and associations have vowed to stage a wave of protests during the trial, starting with demonstrations on February 12 and 16 in Barcelona, followed by a general strike across Catalonia on February 21. A major protest is scheduled in Madrid on March 16. Protests are also planned outside of Spain, in Berlin, Paris, Brussels and London. "In the end, they are judging all of us. They are judging an entire people and its right to self-determination," Catalan president Quim Torra said last month at an event with relatives of the jailed leaders.
Notable new paper on "Race and Prosecution" | Main | Highlighting, though Ohio's remarkable recent experience, a possible tipping point on midazolam as a lethal injection drug
February 9, 2019
Michigan Attorney General files amicus briefs in state Supreme Court supporting challenges to state's sex offender registry
As reported in this press release, "Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed amicus briefs in the Michigan Supreme Court [Friday, Feb 8] in Michigan v Snyder (Case number 153696) and People v Betts (Case number 148981), arguing that Michigans sex offender registration and notification requirements are punishment because they are so burdensome and fail to distinguish between dangerous offenders and those who are not a threat to the community." Here is more from the release:
When originally put into place, Michigans Sex Offender Registration Act was narrow in scope and specifically designed to be an important law enforcement tool to protect the public from dangerous offenders, said Nessel. But since its enactment, the Act has swelled without any focus on individualized assessment of risk to the community, which makes it increasingly difficult for law enforcement officers to know which offenders to focus on. It also makes it difficult for offenders to rehabilitate and reintegrate into the community because they are limited in where they can live, work or even attend their childrens school functions. Nessel also pointed out that public accessibility of the registry has led to shaming, ostracizing, and even bullying of registrants and their families. Because the registry now allows the public to submit tips on the registry website, the public is essentially encouraged to act as vigilantes, opening the possibility for classmates, work colleagues and community members to be vindictive and retaliatory. There are certainly dangerous sexual predators and the public needs to be protected from them, said Nessel, but the current requirements are not the way to achieve that goal. Amendments to the Act in 2006 and 2011 especially geographic exclusionary zones and in-person reporting requirements are onerous restrictions that are not supported by evolving research and best practices related to recidivism, rehabilitation, and community safety. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently agreed, holding that Michigans SORA is punishment and cannot be applied retroactively. A number of state supreme courts have struck down their state registry laws on similar grounds. Simply put, said Nessel, the state Sex Offender Registration Act has gone far beyond its purpose and now imposes burdens that are so punitive in their effect that they negate the States public safety justification.
The filed amicus briefs are linked here for Michigan v Snyder and here for People v Betts. The full introductions in both briefs are the same, and that intro seems worth reprinting in full here:
The tide is changing. For years, federal and state courts consistently held that sex offender registration and notification requirements were not punishments and therefore did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. Their conclusions relied heavily on the U.S. Supreme Courts analysis in Smith v Doe, 538 US 84 (2003), and its conclusion that Alaskas Sex Offender Registration Act was nonpunitive. But more recently, both state and federal courts have been rethinking the issue in light of the significant additional burdens that have been added to these statutes since Smith upheld a first generation registration statute. State Supreme Courts in Alaska, California, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania have concluded that their registries constitute punishment and their retroactive application an ex post facto violation either by distinguishing Smith or by relying on their state Ex Post Facto Clause. In 2015 the Sixth Circuit reviewed Michigans Sex Offender Registry Act (SORA), determining that SORA was something altogether different from and more troubling than Alaskas first-generation registry law and holding that its 2006 and 2011 amendments were punishment and that their retroactive application violated the federal Ex Post Facto Clause. Does #15 v Snyder, 834 F3d 696, 703, 705 (CA 6, 2016), reh den (September 15, 2016), cert den Snyder v John Does #15, 138 S Ct 55 (2017). The Sixth Circuit cautioned that Smith was not a blank check to states to do whatever they please in this arena. Id. at 705. Smiths rationale, which was premised on the limited nature of Alaskas registration scheme, seems outdated with respect to modern registration schemes. It surely is with respect to Michigans sex offender registry, which has changed greatly since its initial character as a tool to help law enforcement keep Michigan citizens safe from dangerous sexual predators and far exceeds the baseline federal requirements for such registries. It has become a bloated statute whose recent amendments are out of touch with the practical ramifications of its geographic restrictions and in-person reporting requirements, with societys evolving relationship with the Internet, with the needs of law enforcement, and with a more balanced and researched understanding of recidivism. There are dangerous sexual predators, to be sure, and the public needs to be protected from them. But the current SORA it is not the way to achieve that goal because it places people on the registry without an individualized assessment of their risk to public safety and with little differentiation between a violent rapist or reoffender and an individual who has committed a single, nonaggravated offense. The 2006 and 2011 amendments are punishment, and their retroactive application violates both federal and state Ex Post Facto Clauses.
UPDATE : Over at Simple Justice, Guy Hamilton-Smith has this potent guest post spotlighting some highlights from these briefs and why they their filing is so important. I recommend the post in full, and here is an excerpt:
Reading the briefs, it is impossible not to be struck by their tone. When the government is forced to concede a point in a filing, it is usually done in the smarmiest, most back-handed way possible. There is no trace of that here. There is, instead, a forceful eloquence and a vision of what effective public safety could look like when it comes to sexual harms. Instead of signing off on the idea of registries being a fundamentally good policy, weaved throughout these briefs is a strain of skepticism as to their utility at all. To state it differently, these are some of the strongest briefs written assailing public registration as public safety. That they came out of an AGs office is astonishing. It is much too early to tell what the extended impact of this will be. Now that an Attorney General, as opposed to a civil rights litigator (or even a judge) has called a spade a spade, one hopes that others will be willing to follow suit in the quest to earnestly, effectively, and humanely address the spectre of sexual harms in our society. Or, more dimly, perhaps we will be unable to kick our registry habit, and simply endorse more restrictions, though on fewer people those whom we are certain are dangerous and therefore deserve whatever ingenuous cruelties we can dream up.
February 9, 2019 at 10:48 AM | Permalink
Comments
Well, well. Signs and wonders.
Posted by: Fat Bastard | Feb 9, 2019 8:38:29 PM
This amicus brief is filed at the same time frame as the documentary by David Feige called "Untouchable", comes out in video on Amazon or Google Play. It's an outstanding film about a powerful Florida lobbyist who uses his political power to pass the toughest sex offender laws in the nation.
As the Michigan Attorney General says "The tide is changing"...indeed, and rightfully so!
Too many laws have been passed and the legislators ignored the fact that they were unconstitutional in the first place.
Posted by: Book38 | Feb 9, 2019 11:38:02 PM
The Sex Offender Registry Act (SORA) is misused for profit & benefits in the judicial system. Who in their right mind would put an elementary child on the Sex Offender Registry? This registry is for life time.
There are dangerous sexual predators, to be sure, and the public needs to be protected from them. But the current SORA it is not the way to achieve that goal because it places people on the registry without an individualized assessment of their risk to public safety and with little differentiation between a violent rapist or reoffender and an individual who has committed a single, nonaggravated offense. The 2006 and 2011 amendments are punishment, and their retroactive application violates both federal and state Ex Post Facto Clauses.
Posted by: LC in Texas | Feb 10, 2019 11:56:57 AM
"Or, more dimly, perhaps we will be unable to kick our registry habit, and simply endorse more restrictions, though on fewer people those whom we are certain are dangerous and therefore deserve whatever ingenuous cruelties we can dream up."
I don't think there is anything "dim" about this course, it is exactly where we are going. It is certainly the direction my state has gone.
Let's not kid ourselves, the human desire to shame, humiliate, and punish hasn't gone away. So it either spreads wide and not deep or it spreads deep and not wide. All we as a society is doing is moving from one model to another.
Posted by: Daniel | Feb 10, 2019 2:03:45 PM
retroactivity is a huge huge problem
Posted by: federalist | Feb 13, 2019 8:30:54 AM
Federalist: Do you have any evidentiary support for your claim, or is this merely perception?
Posted by: Tom Root | Feb 17, 2019 12:26:33 PM
Federalist: I need better glasses. I read "recidivism" instead of "retroactivity." You are quite right. It is a huge problem. Sorry.
Posted by: Tom Root | Feb 17, 2019 12:27:37 PM
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"The Vanishing Criminal Jury Trial: From Trial Judges to Sentencing Judges" | Main | "Why Cant We Redeem the Sex Offender?"
July 18, 2018
Ohio completes its first execution since botched execution of another inmate late last year
As reported in this local article, Ohio managed to get its machinery of death functioning again this morning. Here are the details and context:
Robert Van Hook horrifically murdered a Cincinnati man, but he seemed remorseful as he died by lethal injection on Wednesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. Van Hook, 58, was strapped to the gurney in Ohios death house and the lines carrying the deadly drugs had been inserted in his arms when he turned his head to three witnesses from the family of his victim, David Self.... Van Hook served a violence-plagued 32 years in prison after a death-penalty conviction for what now could be considered a hate crime of the utmost violence. On Feb. 18, 1985, Van Hook met Self in a gay bar in downtown Cincinnati and went home with him. Van Hooks clemency report says he lured Self into a vulnerable position and strangled him into unconsciousness. He then took a paring knife from the kitchen and stabbed the victim behind the right ear, aiming the thrust upward toward the brain, accompanied by a blade-twisting movement, the report said.... During his incarceration Van Hook amassed a disciplinary record of more than two dozen incidents, including stabbing another inmate in the face and chest, threatening to kill corrections officers and damaging property. Joe DAmbrosio served 22 years on death row with Van Hook until DAmbrosio was exonerated and released in 2010. He had mental problems, I dont care what anyone says, said DAmbrosio who was at the prison Wednesday to protest Van Hooks execution. He would go for long periods of time and then he would explode. In their unsuccessful bid for clemency, Van Hooks attorneys cited his difficult childhood. His mother, who had a history of mental illness, abused alcohol and drugs and became enmeshed in repeated, mutually abusive relationships. His father also drank heavily, beat Van Hook and was a virulent homophobe, the lawyers wrote. Van Hooks father, a musician, introduced his son to alcohol and drugs when Van hook was 11 or 12, his lawyers said. At 14, Van Hook moved with his father to Florida and eventually ran away. He lived on the streets, sometimes supporting himself by having sex for money with men.... DAmbrosio said there was no point in killing Van Hook. It was unneeded, unnecessary, cruel, unusual, he said. Its barbaric. But three members of Selfs family, who sat quietly holding hands through the execution, wanted Van Hook to die. They declined comment on Wednesday. But Selfs sister, Janet Self, told the parole board that her brothers murder reduced him in the public mind to nothing more than a gay man in a bar, when in reality he was an intelligent, witty person. She also noted that Self was abused by his own father and had to face prejudice because he was gay. Van Hooks execution was the first in Ohio in 2018. The last attempted execution of Alva Campbell in November was called off when corrections workers could not find a suitable vein for intravenous drugs. He died earlier this year of natural causes. Gary Otte and Ronald Phillips were executed last year. They were the first to be killed in Ohios death chamber after a three-year moratorium following the 2014 execution of Dennis McGuire, 53, who gasped, choked, clenched his fists and appeared to struggle against his restraints for about 10 minutes before being pronounced dead. Van Hook was the 56th man to be executed in Ohio since 1999. Two more executions are scheduled for later this year. A total of 137 people remain under death sentences in Ohio.
July 18, 2018 at 06:08 PM | Permalink
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You lawyers kept this person alive after age 14. You are 100% responsible for every single one of his thousands of violent crimes after that time. The families of his victims would be fully justified in getting accountability from the lawyers in the legislature and on the bench that protected, privileged, and empowered this super-predator. Call him evil if you wish. That he gave notice of his character, likely after age 3, makes the lawyers 1000 times more culpable. His crimes had the foreseeability of planetary orbits.
Posted by: David Behar | Jul 18, 2018 10:22:01 PM
As written I would have to say this sounds like it was a rather tame murder. It would seem he actually did what he could to make it quick.
Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jul 19, 2018 3:15:47 AM
Fascinating about his old cellie. I admire all of the exonorees who have continued their fight for justice after they obtained it in their own cases.
Posted by: John | Jul 19, 2018 4:07:33 AM
Soronel Haetir makes a good point. Death supposed to be for "the worst of the worst." This was bad (as is every murder), but hardly the worst of the worst.
Posted by: Dave from Texas | Jul 19, 2018 1:08:09 PM
The victim is totally sympathetic in this case. But one should pay very close attention to the facts. Mr.Self was already dead when Van Hook abused his corpse by cutting him open etc. Abuse of a corpse doesnt make the cause of death more henious because it occurs post mortum
Posted by: ? | Jul 19, 2018 10:19:28 PM
Good riddance. Should have happened years ago. And what's with the "homosexual panic" defense? Guy goes to gay bar and picks someone up--then claims panic---judge never should have allowed the defense in the first place.
Posted by: federalist | Jul 22, 2018 7:48:14 AM
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"Justice for Veterans: Does Theory Matter?" | Main | Notable advocacy for Georgia as "national model" for sentencing reform
November 18, 2017
Reviewing Ohio's unique execution difficulties ... which perhaps explains seemingly ho-hum reaction to latest botched Ohio execution
As detailed in this DPIC listing, this past week, there were scheduled executions in Nevada, Ohio and Texas, but two of these planned lethal injections were stayed. And in Ohio, as first reported here, Ohio tried but failed to complete the lethal injection of a double murderers. Only thrice in recent US history has the execution process been started and then halted with the condemned inmate living on, and two of those cases have taken place in the last decade in Ohio. Moreover, as reviewed in this recent ACLU posting, Ohio has an extraordinary recent history with troubled executions (links from the original):
Ohios lethal injection team spent more than 30 minutes poking Alva Campbells decrepit body in search of any decent vein into which they could inject their lethal cocktail to no avail. They finally relented but only temporarily. Hours later, Gov. John Kasich announced not a commutation or a plan to investigate what went wrong but that Campbells execution would be rescheduled for 2019.... It was predictable and avoidable not only because of information furnished to the state by the defense, but because Ohio had already committed a similar bungle in 2009 when it failed to find a suitable vein to execute Rommell Broom after sticking him with needles for over two hours. The ability to find a suitable vein is basic to lethal injection. When it cannot be done because of lack of training and qualifications of the lethal-injection team or the health of the prisoner the process becomes impossible and the risk of a failure or botch undeniable. Ohio has earned its execution infamy over time. The states lethal-injection teams inability to find a suitable vein led to the botched execution of Joseph Clark in 2006, who raised his head from the gurney during the execution to say, It dont work. It dont work. Ohio persisted, working for another 30 minutes to find another vein before resuming the execution. Media witnesses heard moaning, crying, and guttural noises before the deed was finally done 90 minutes after it had begun. The botched two-hour execution of Christopher Newton in 2007 also stemmed from the execution teams inability to access a suitable vein. The states botched execution of Dennis McGuire in 2014 has been attributed to the use of midazolam great if you need a sedative for a medical procedure but unsuitable for executions. The takeaway should be clear. Ohio cannot be trusted to use the death penalty, as time and time again the state fails and causes needless pain and unconstitutional torture. But Ohio is forging ahead. The states schedule of more than two dozen lethal-injections through 2022 gives Ohio the dubious distinction of maintaining the longest list of upcoming executions in the nation. A second attempt to take Campbells life is now set for 2019, while Rommell Brooms new date is in 2020. Last year, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Ohio could attempt to execute Broom, yet again....
Because I know and have respect for lots of folks involved in Ohio's criminal justice system, I am somewhat amazed and greatly troubled that Ohio has a uniquely disconcerting recent record in the carrying out of executions. At the same time, I have this week also been somewhat intrigued that Ohio's latest botched execution has not received all that much attention in Ohio or nationwide.
As highlighted via this post and this one, when Oklahoma had an ugly execution in 2014, it engendered lots of national attention and commentary and calls for a national moratorium on executions. Of course, that ugly execution was arguably more grotesque that what happened this past week in Ohio, and surely death penalty abolitionists figured in 2014 they had more national leaders who were sympathetic to their capital punishment criticisms. Still, I think it is notable and telling that the reaction to Ohio's latest execution difficulties is relatively "ho-hum."
Recent prior related posts:
November 18, 2017 at 03:46 PM | Permalink
Comments
The remedies are self evident, except to the lawyer. The lawyer belongs to the stupidest group of people in our nation.
1) EMS training and experience for executioners.
2) Switch to carfentanyl. Buy it on the internet for a few dollars.
3) Or, for once, get smart, lawyer moron. End the death penalty. Adopt the Italian Death Penalty, where the evil murderer gets stabbed with shanks made of sharpened tooth brushes, multiple times, dies slowly and painfully. Reward the executioners with a carton of cigarettes.
Posted by: David Behar | Nov 18, 2017 5:43:24 PM
The other person dying might have mattered a tad.
Posted by: Joe | Nov 18, 2017 6:13:20 PM
"As detailed in this DPIC listing, this past week, there were scheduled executions in Nevada, Ohio and Texas, but two of these planned lethal injections were stayed."
14 NV Scott Raymond Dozier STAYED
15 OH Robert Van Hook RESCHEDULED
15 OH Alva Campbell, Jr. ADMINISTRATIVE REPRIEVE
16 TX Larry Swearingen STAYED
Posted by: Joe | Nov 18, 2017 6:16:58 PM
The Van Hook date was rescheduled long ago, Joe, and I am not sure why DPIC has it and other Ohio dates long ago reset on its serious execution list still.
Posted by: Doug B | Nov 18, 2017 9:38:39 PM
David Behar is an idiot.
Posted by: Claudio Giusti | Nov 19, 2017 4:53:44 PM
Claudio Giusti. What does your last name mean? Are you Hebraic? There is a Talmudic flavor to your commentary.
I find you brilliant. You have solved the dilemma of the American Death Penalty. I predict that in 10 years, the dimwit US lawyer profession will finally realize that.
Posted by: David Behar | Nov 19, 2017 10:55:35 PM
"ho-hum" - You still don't get it Doug. Those of us who have seen so many botched executions like this over so many years now are sick, physically sick sometimes, to know of the torture inflicted on other human beings in the name of "justice". It is an act of deep cowardice and inhumanity. Why don't more people voice similar feelings afresh? Because the act is so shameful they want to block it out. They do not want to taint themselves in that shame by association with even the discussion - and therefore look the other way which is so much more comfortable for them. It is always someone else's problem. Only when those directly in a position to end or influence the end of this nightmare chose to stand up and be counted can abolition finally be achieved in a State or across America. It can happen, as we have thankfully seen over the past decade. It is time it happened in Ohio and like it or not, you have a significant responsibility to humanity and the people of Ohio to play your part. Being a detached commentator is I know so very much more comfortable. But not very honorable.
Posted by: peter | Nov 20, 2017 4:58:22 AM
Peter. Calm down. There is no torture. There are no botched executions. There is no pain. The people are unconscious the entire time. The IV has infiltrated into the tissue surrounding the vein. The entire dose is still being delivered, just more slowly.
I have proposed that all executioners get EMS training and experience. They may do so on prison pay, at no expense to the health care system. They will learn to find venous access in the very worst of conditions, in people in shock (low blood pressure), hanging upside down from their cars, very ill and dehydrated from cancer and diabetes, after seizures. They may also learn to start central venous lines. This is a line going into the big vein returning to the heart, the vena cava, found below the left shoulder. If you object to their finding it by anatomical landmarks, they may use ultrasound.
The identity as executioners should remain secret, even from their EMS supervisors. That way, low life, ultra-violent, left wing, pro-criminal scum will not harass and retaliate against them. Health licensing boards filled with those low life, left wing, pro-criminal scum should not be able to sanction their licenses, by a statute. If they do, the police should sanction them every time they exceed the speed limit by 1 mph. That policy should cover the low life, left wing pro-criminal judges, who are the very worst of all.
Posted by: David Behar | Nov 20, 2017 10:57:39 AM
Peter. I actually prefer the Italian Death Penalty. Privacy is arranged. The prisoner is stabbed multiple times with shanks made of sharpened toothbrushes, dies a slow, painful, lonely death, screaming for his life. Then the guards say, we cannot find the murderer. Except some guy now has a full carton of cigarettes out of nowhere, and is buying all kinds of favors from other prisoners with it.
Posted by: David Behar | Nov 20, 2017 11:01:28 AM
Mr. Behar, I think you mean to be edgy and bold. But your comments long ago became, well, "ho hum." They all simply repeat the same, old, uninteresting hysteria: "lawyers are stupid," "judges should be killed," "the Italian death penalty," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You're just boring.
Posted by: Publius | Nov 20, 2017 1:27:31 PM
DB is a nazist.
Posted by: Claudio Giusti | Nov 20, 2017 2:42:11 PM
Publius. They are repetitive because thy are replies to the false propaganda of this left wing pro-criminal lawyer profession. That is really tiresome.
Here is something that is really unbearably tiresome, the 30 million repetitive crimes you assholes allow a year. Over and over, and you assholes do nothing about it.
Posted by: David Behar | Nov 20, 2017 3:08:08 PM
Yet, having concluded that the writer and readers of this blog are "assholes" who plainly pay no serious attention to you, you nonetheless continue your repetitive ranting. Seems rather sad.
Posted by: Publius | Nov 20, 2017 3:24:19 PM
Publius. You are too stupid to know how stupid you are. I cannot control that.
You do not criticize the repetitive nature of the posts. Crime is low. Decarcerate. More mitigating factor are needed. Every fucking day, these lawyer lies.
That means your criticism is partisan, not really about repetitiveness.
Posted by: David Behar | Nov 20, 2017 4:27:53 PM
Actually, I know just how stupid I am, but that is beside the point. The issue is whether your comments add anything to the discussion or simply represent unhelpful hyperventilating to an audience that has made clear it has no interest in your thoughts. I may indeed be stupid, but at least I don't post comments day in and day out that readers find bitter, bizarre and uninteresting. Speaking of which, this dialogue has grown tiresome, so I'm off to do some stupid, asshole thing as is my wont.
Posted by: Publius | Nov 20, 2017 4:39:59 PM
Publius. Here is the problem. Your stupidity and the stupid shit you do hurts millions of violent crime victims. It kills $trillions in economic value a year. So your stupid profession must be controlled better.
Posted by: David Behar | Nov 20, 2017 4:48:30 PM
Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.
Posted by: G. B. Robinson | Nov 21, 2017 4:27:05 AM
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Around 100 people celebrated Friday at a preopening ribbon cutting and breakfast at Cracker Barrel, which will officially open Monday in the Enos Ranch development.
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About Me Scott Because prophetic scriptures are found throughout the bible, it is obvious that a comprehensive, systematic approach would be useful, if not necessary, for the understanding of prophecy. Past prophecies have been fulfilled in a literal manner, as confirmed by the dating of these writings and historical records of confirmation. These past prophecies also serve as a model of how to interpret future prophecies. A literal view of prophecy clearly indicates a certain sequence of events will occur within a single generation, concluding with the Tribulation and Second Advent and these events will be obvious. The prophetic signs appear to be present in this generation and we believe these signs are revealed in the news from around the world. View my complete profile
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| June 23rd | 2021 5:00 AM
You Quit Your Job Good for You! But How Does that Impact Your Investments?
As companies make plans to return employees back to the office, millions of workers have made a decision not to go back at all. In fact, the number of people who quit their jobs increased to four million in April and increased 2.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The largest increases in employees leaving their jobs occurred in retail trade and professional and business services.
This Dec. 12, 2018 file photo shows State Assemblyman Ron Kim, center, as he speaks at a rally opposing New York's deal with Amazon, on the steps of New York's City Hall. Gov. Andrew Cuomo warns that what he calls "political pandering" to critics of Amazon's proposed secondary headquarters could sink New York's biggest-ever economic development deal. But opponents say they'll keep fighting a project they see as corporate welfare. Friday's back-and-forth came after The Washington Post reported that Amazon is reconsidering its planned New York City headquarters because of opposition from local politicians. (AP Photo/Karen Matthews, File)
Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned Friday about what he called "political pandering" to critics of Amazon's proposed secondary headquarters amid a report that the company is reconsidering its planned New York City headquarters.
But opponents said they'd keep fighting a project they consider corporate welfare.
The back-and-forth came after The Washington Post reported that Amazon is having second thoughts because of some local politicians' opposition to the nearly $3 billion incentive package. The report cited two unnamed people familiar with the company's thinking.
In response, Amazon would say only that it's engaging with small business owners, community leaders and educators, pointing to its pledges to fund high school computer science classes and contribute to job training.
"We are working hard to demonstrate what kind of neighbor we will be," the Seattle-based company said in a statement.
Noting the Post's report, Cuomo accused the state Senatewhose leader recently tapped an Amazon critic for a board that might have sway over the project's subsidiesof "governmental malpractice" and siding with those who are "pandering to the local politics."
"And that's what could stop Amazon," he said at an unrelated event on Long Island. "I've never seen a more absurd situation where political pandering, and obvious pandering, so defeats a bona fide economic development project."
This Nov. 14, 2018 file photo shows New York State Sen. Michael Gianaris, center, as he calls on supporters to remove the Amazon app from their phones and boycott the company, as he address a coalition rally and press conference, in New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo warns that what he calls "political pandering" to critics of Amazon's proposed secondary headquarters could sink New York's biggest-ever economic development deal. But opponents say they'll keep fighting a project they see as corporate welfare. Friday's back-and-forth came after The Washington Post reported that Amazon is reconsidering its planned New York City headquarters because of opposition from local politicians.(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
"It is irresponsible to allow political opposition to overcome sound government policy," he said.
Cuomo and the Senate leadership are Democrats, as are many of the deal's critics.
Cuomo and Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio say Amazon will transform Queens' Long Island City area into a high-tech hub and spur economic growth that will pay for the $2.8 billion in state and city incentives many times over.
"The mayor fully expects Amazon to deliver on its promise to New Yorkers," spokesman Eric Phillips said in response to the Post's report.
Construction-industry groups urged the public and officials to get behind a plan projected to create at least 25,000 jobs in a decade: "It's time to stop the showboating," declared Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, a group of unions.
This Nov. 13, 2018 file photo shows a seagull flying while holding fish scraps near a former dock facility, with "Long Island" painted on old transfer bridges at Gantry State Park in the Long Island City section of the Queens Borough of New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo warns that what he calls "political pandering" to critics of Amazon's proposed secondary headquarters could sink New York's biggest-ever economic development deal. But opponents say they'll keep fighting a project they see as corporate welfare. Friday's back-and-forth came after The Washington Post reported that Amazon is reconsidering its planned New York City headquarters because of opposition from local politicians. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
Critics see the project as an extravagant giveaway to one of the world's biggest companies and argue it won't provide much direct benefit to most New Yorkers. Several welcomed the news that Amazon might be rethinking the plan.
"We rose up and held the line. ... It's not over, but I'm proud of the values we fought for," Democratic City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, who represents Long Island City, said in a statement.
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district includes some nearby neighborhoods, suggested on Twitter that the report showed people can "come together and effectively organize against creeping overreach of one of the world's biggest corporations."
The Post said no firm decision had been made about whether Amazon would pull out of the deal.
"I don't know if they're serious or not, and frankly, I don't care," said Sen. Michael Gianaris, a Democrat who represents Long Island City and calls the agreement bad policy. "If their view is 'we're going to extort New York or we're going to leave,' then they should leave."
In this Jan. 19, 2015 file photo, Sen. Deputy Majority Leader, Michael Gianaris, D-Astoria, speaks with reporters after listening to New York Gov. Gov. Andrew Cuomo warns that what he calls "political pandering" to critics of Amazon's proposed secondary headquarters could sink New York's biggest-ever economic development deal. But opponents say they'll keep fighting a project they see as corporate welfare. Friday's back-and-forth came after The Washington Post reported that Amazon is reconsidering its planned New York City headquarters because of opposition from local politicians. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)
State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins nominated Gianaris earlier this week to a little-known state panel that could ultimately be asked to approve the subsidies. Cuomo has the final say over appointments.
After Cuomo's remarks Friday, a spokesman for Stewart-Cousins said it was "unfortunate that the governor is trying to divide the Democratic Party at this crucial and historic time."
A Quinnipiac University poll released in December found New York City voters support having an Amazon headquarters, by 57-26 percent. But they were divided on the incentives: 46 percent in favor, 44 percent against.
The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
Explore further Amazon reconsidering move to New York: report
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New Horizons took this image of the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 (nicknamed Ultima Thule) on Jan. 1, 2019, when the NASA spacecraft was 5,494 miles (8,862 kilometers) beyond it. The image to the left is an "average" of ten images taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI); the crescent is blurred in the raw frames because a relatively long exposure time was used during this rapid scan to boost the cameras si'gnal level. Mission scientists have been able to process the image, removing the motion blur to produce a sharper, brighter view of Ultima Thule's thin crescent. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory
An evocative new image sequence from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft offers a departing view of the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) nicknamed Ultima Thulethe target of its New Year's 2019 flyby and the most distant world ever explored.
These aren't the last Ultima Thule images New Horizons will send back to Earthin fact, many more are to comebut they are the final views New Horizons captured of the KBO (officially named 2014 MU69) as it raced away at over 31,000 miles per hour (50,000 kilometers per hour) on Jan. 1. The images were taken nearly 10 minutes after New Horizons crossed its closest approach point.
"This really is an incredible image sequence, taken by a spacecraft exploring a small world four billion miles away from Earth," said mission principal investigator Alan Stern, of Southwest Research Institute. "Nothing quite like this has ever been captured in imagery."
The newly released images also contain important scientific information about the shape of Ultima Thule, which is turning out to be one of the major discoveries from the flyby.
The first close-up images of Ultima Thulewith its two distinct and, apparently, spherical segmentshad observers calling it a "snowman." However, more analysis of approach images and these new departure images have changed that view, in part by revealing an outline of the portion of the KBO that was not illuminated by the Sun, but could be "traced out" as it blocked the view to background stars.
Mission scientists created this "departure movie" from 14 different images taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) shortly after the spacecraft flew past the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule (officially named 2014 MU69) on Jan. 1, 2019. The central frame of this sequence was taken on Jan. 1 at 05:42:42 UT (12:42 a.m. EST), when New Horizons was 5,494 miles (8,862 kilometers) beyond Ultima Thule, some 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth. The object's illuminated crescent is blurred in the individual frames because a relatively long exposure time was used during this rapid scan to boost the camera's signal level but the science team combined and processed the images to remove the blurring and sharpen the thin crescent. This is the farthest movie of any object in our Solar System ever made by any spacecraft. The images reveal an outline of the "hidden" portion of the Ultima Thule that was not illuminated by the Sun as the spacecraft zipped by, but can be "traced out" because it blocked the view to background stars also in the image. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Stringing 14 of these images into a short departure movie, New Horizons scientists can confirm that the two sections (or "lobes") of Ultima Thule are not spherical. The larger lobe, nicknamed "Ultima," more closely resembles a giant pancake and the smaller lobe, nicknamed "Thule," is shaped like a dented walnut.
"We had an impression of Ultima Thule based on the limited number of images returned in the days around the flyby, but seeing more data has significantly changed our view," Stern said. "It would be closer to reality to say Ultima Thule's shape is flatter, like a pancake. But more importantly, the new images are creating scientific puzzles about how such an object could even be formed. We've never seen something like this orbiting the Sun."
Scientists' understanding of Ultima Thule has changed as they review additional data. The "old view" in this illustration is based on images taken within a day of New Horizons' closest approach to the Kuiper Belt object on Jan. 1, 2019, suggesting that both of "Ultima" (the larger section, or lobe) and "Thule" (the smaller) were nearly perfect spheres just barely touching each other. But as more data were analyzed, including several highly evocative crescent images taken nearly 10 minutes after closest approach, a "new view" of the object's shape emerged. Ultima more closely resembles a "pancake," and Thule a "dented walnut." The bottom view is the team's current best shape model for Ultima Thule, but still carries some uncertainty as an entire region was essentially hidden from view, and not illuminated by the Sun, during the New Horizons flyby. The dashed blue lines span the uncertainty in that hemisphere, which shows that Ultima Thule could be either flatter than, or not as flat as, depicted in this figure. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
The departure images were taken from a different angle than the approach photos and reveal complementary information on Ultima Thule's shape. The central frame of the sequence was taken on Jan. 1 at 05:42:42 UT (12:42 a.m. EST), when New Horizons was 5,494 miles (8,862 kilometers) beyond Ultima Thule, and 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth. The object's illuminated crescent is blurred in the individual frames because a relatively long exposure time was used during this rapid scan to boost the camera's signal levelbut the science team combined and processed the images to remove the blurring and sharpen the thin crescent.
This animation depicts a shape model of Ultima Thule created by the New Horizons science team based on its analysis of all the pre-flyby images sent to Earth so far. The first half of the movie mimics the view from the New Horizons spacecraft as it approached Ultima Thule and has the snowman shape that was so frequently mentioned in the days surrounding the New Years 2019 flyby. The movie then rotates to a side-view that illustrates what New Horizons might have seen had its cameras been pointing toward Ultima Thule only a few minutes after closest approach. While that wasnt the case, mission scientists have been able to piece together a model of this side-view, which has been at least partially confirmed by a set of crescent images of Ultima Thule (link). There is still considerable uncertainty in the sizes of Ultima (the larger section, or lobe) and Thule (the smaller) in the vertical dimension, but its now clear that Ultima looks more like a pancake than a sphere, and that Thule is also very non-spherical. The rotation in this animation is not the objects actual rotation, but is used purely to illustrate its shape. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
Many background stars are also seen in the individual images; watching which stars "blinked out" as the object passed in front them allowed scientists to outline the shape of both lobes, which could then be compared to a model assembled from analyzing pre-flyby images and ground-based telescope observations. "The shape model we have derived from all of the existing Ultima Thule imagery is remarkably consistent with what we have learned from the new crescent images," says Simon Porter, a New Horizons co-investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, who leads the shape-modeling effort.
"While the very nature of a fast flyby in some ways limits how well we can determine the true shape of Ultima Thule, the new results clearly show that Ultima and Thule are much flatter than originally believed, and much flatter than expected," added Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. "This will undoubtedly motivate new theories of planetesimal formation in the early solar system."
One of the US most senior military figures and an adviser to President Donald Trump has called for firmer rules governing naval encounters in disputed waters such as the South China Sea, where near misses between warships continue to test territorial claims and rights to free navigation.
Lets not be obstructing one another, driving our ships in front of one another, throwing obstacles in front of the ship, Admiral John Richardson, chief of US Naval Operations, said at a meeting of the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington on Wednesday. Lets just be biased towards making it easy.
Richardson said the US should explore new ways to enforce the rules designed to govern encounters between navies and extend them to coastguards and maritime militias, so-called second and third sea forces that Beijing has used to advance its sovereignty claims in the South and East China seas.
The China and US navies agreed to the 2014 Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, a non-legally binding accord that was designed to reduce the chances of clashes between naval vessels and military aircraft and prevent maritime tensions from escalating into full-blown conflicts. The navies of 21 nations abide by the code.
US admiral sets sail for four-day talks with Chinas top military brass
Claimants to South China Sea and East China Sea territories such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan have long complained that Beijing has used coastguard ships and militia vessels to maintain a presence, although Beijing said these ships and crews were not controlled by the Peoples Liberation Army Navy.
Richardson said that a consistent US naval presence in the region one that persisted with what it called freedom of navigation exercises into territory claimed by Beijing plus a rapidly expanding PLA Navy, demanded more ways to minimise the chance of miscalculations between heavily armed warships.
Rules based on a transponder-based automatic identification system could be used to share vital information among ships to avoid collisions, Richardson said.
Story continues
So, just putting in some of these enforcement mechanisms makes it harder to play fast and loose with the rules, the admiral said. But youve got to make a move to enforce those things. I think a lot of that structure exists, its just weve got to be a little more muscular in enforcing it.
Richardsons remarks on grey zone or short of conflict encounters comes as China and the US are engaged in competition on many fronts. While their rival economies are locked in what some have described as the largest trade war in economic history, there are fears of confrontation over the South China Sea and the status of Taiwan, two issues Beijing regards as its business.
The US is also concerned with flashpoint encounters involving the Russian Navy in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Richardson said that his January visit to Beijing, when he met with his counterpart, Vice-Admiral Shen Jinglong, and General Li Zuocheng, the PLAs chief of joint staff, was part of an effort to seek a deeper understanding and minimise the risk of conflict.
Our thinking is different [yet] we have common interests in many areas. I would say a denuclearised Korean peninsula is an area where we share common interests, Richardson said. We have differences some big differences in terms of how we consider the South China Sea.
In Beijing, Richardson said, he had emphasised the consistency of US policy concerning the South China Sea and Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing regards as a breakaway province to be reunited, by force if necessary.
The US had made it clear that militarisation of [South China Sea] islands was a destabilising factor for the world, not just for the region, he said.
Consistency was a theme in respect to Taiwan, Richardson said. Our approach to Taiwan has not changed. We are going to remain consistently focused on that and would not look favourably upon any kind of unilateral action on either side of the strait to disrupt that status quo.
This article South China Sea: Trump military adviser calls for firmer rules to stop near misses first appeared on South China Morning Post
For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2019.
He built one of the world's most valuable companies from scratch, becoming the richest person on the planet. Now Jeff Bezos is intent on showing he won't be bullied in a battle of wills with the politically connected owner of a supermarket tabloid. The 55-year-old Bezos founded Amazon in his garage in 1994 and went on to grow it into a colossus that dominates online retail, with operations in streaming music and television, groceries, cloud computing, robotics, artificial intelligence and more. His other businesses include The Washington Post newspaper and the private space firm Blue Origin. While Bezos has long been in the public eye because of Amazon's growth and his estimated $133 billion fortune, he was thrust into the spotlight with his announcement in January that he and his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie, were divorcing. When the National Enquirer, controlled by President Donald Trump's ally David Pecker, threatened to release lurid, intimate pictures of Bezos and his mistress, he fought back by releasing the details of his exchanges publicly. "If in my position I can't stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?" Bezos wrote on Medium. The bombshell from Bezos brought a tidal wave of reactions, many praising his decision to face down Pecker and the Enquirer. "Not everyone can stand up to bullies, thugs and extortionists, but if you can, you should," said rival tech entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay. Until recently, Bezos had been seen as a bookish but determined entrepreneur, running his businesses with ruthless determination but avoiding the limelight -- steering clear of confronting Trump after a series of attacks by the president. - Road to riches - Bezos's penchant for experimenting reportedly dates to a young age -- with one widely shared story recounting how he tried to dismantle his own crib as a toddler. His mother was a teenager when she gave birth to Bezos in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 12, 1964. "You shaped us, you protected us, you let us fall, you picked us up, and you loved us, always and unconditionally," Bezos said in a Twitter message thanking his mom "for everything" on Mother's Day in May. She remarried when her son was about four years old, and he was legally adopted by his Cuban immigrant stepfather who worked as an engineer at a major petrochemical company. "My dad came here from Cuba all by himself without speaking English when he was 16 years old, and has been kicking ass ever since," Bezos said in a Father's Day tweet in June. His mother's family were settlers in Texas, where Bezos spent many a summer working at a ranch owned by a grandfather retired from a job as a regional director at the US Atomic Energy Commission. Bezos was enchanted by computer science when the IT industry was in its infancy and he studied engineering at Princeton University. After graduating, he put his skills to work on Wall Street, where by 1990 he had risen to be a senior vice president at investment firm D.E. Shaw He surprised peers by leaving his high-paid position about four years later to open an online bookseller called Amazon.com, which according to legend was started in a garage in a Seattle suburb. Bezos was backed by money borrowed from his parents. Bezos went from being a boy with a love for how things work to being the man who built Amazon.com into an internet powerhouse. - 'Hunger Games' - Amazon lost money for many years as Bezos insisted on investing revenues for future growth, a plan which only recently has started to pay off. Last year, he announced Amazon would be seeking a second headquarters after outgrowing Seattle, launching a competition derided by some as a "Hunger Games" competition. The company eventually decided on two locations -- one in New York City and the other in the Virginia suburbs of the capital Washington. In releasing Amazon's latest results which showed a record $3 billion quarterly profit, Bezos put the emphasis on artificial intelligence and the Alexa digital assistant. Bezos declined to join other billionaires in pledging the bulk of his fortune to charity, but last year announced a philanthropic fund with a $2 billion initial commitment to help homeless families and launch preschools in low-income communities.
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LOS REVOLUCIONARIOS NO TOMAN CACA-COLA No se trata solamente de un capricho, sino de una sana actitud en todos los sentidos. Desde la solidaridad con el pueblo colombiano donde la empresa Caca-Cola ha cometido los mas grandes abusos contra sus trabajadores incluyendo el presunto secuestro y asesinato de los dirigentes del sindicato, hasta la proteccion de la salud de nuestros hijos, enviciados por ese jarabe de cola y azucar, que les produce obesidad prematura. Pensemos tambien los revolucionarios, que ese dinero que gastamos en los refrescos es utilizado por esas empresas para financiar el terrorismo en nuestro pais. Es cierto, no se trata solo de la Caca-Cola, sino tambien de la cerveza, de los cigarrillos y todos esos articulos innecesarios y mas que eso, daninos para nuestra salud. Podriamos incluso pensar en un dia de parada para cada uno de ellos. Es cuestion de irnos organizando. Pero para empezar, que tal si dejamos de comprar Caca-Cola y sus similares?
Cuando lo extraordinario se vuelve cotidiano...
Discurso del Acto de Grado en Barinas en 12 de Febrero del 2005 Queridos Graduandos:
Mas que un discurso, quiero dirigirles algunas palabras que escribi anoche, despues de visitar en las clinicas, a los estudiantes heridos, a consecuencia de los enfrentamientos con la policia de hace apenas dos dias.
Me ha tocado por razones del destino, ser la persona que les otorgue el titulo que bien merecieron con sus estudios. Y me siento sumamente orgulloso de serlo. Me consta que la Universidad de Los Llanos Occidentales Ezequiel Zamora, a pesar de lo dicho por los enemigos de esta universidad, es una universidad de primera.
No tendremos la mejor planta fisica, en los salones hace calor. En el comedor hace calor. Pero no es en lo material que las cosas deben valorarse. El mayor capital es el ser humano. Y en eso, nuestra UNELLEZ, lo digo con conocimiento de causa, esta sobrada. Los llaneros venezolanos son nobles, valientes, de coraje.
En la UNELLEZ hacen vida, en este momento, aproximadamente 67000 personas. El 97% de ellas son estudiantes. Jovenes que, como Ustedes hasta el dia de hoy, buscan ese titulo, que constata los anos de dedicacion y de estudio.
Los jovenes son el rio de la vida, ustedes graduados deben ser los capitanes de esos barcos que naveguen por el rio de la vida.
Nuestra Patria atraviesa momentos muy dificiles porque decidio dejar de ser esa matrona de edad vetusta y complaciente, para ser joven, rebelde y altanera. Nuestra imagen ya no es la de una acaudalada ricachona mayamera. En nuestro rostro brilla ahora la sonrisa del Che Guevara, con su diente delantero torcido, su pelo largo y su boina con la estrella.
Entender esto, a mi me ha tomado practicamente toda la vida. Tengo 53 anos, y ya perdi mi oportunidad de derramar sangre joven a causa de un ideal.
Ustedes son jovenes, estan en la flor de la vida. No cometan por favor el error de renunciar a su instinto de rebelion. El Che Guevara fue Ministro de a Economia en Cuba. Los billetes y las monedas se adornaban con su rostro. Nada de eso le importo. Primero fue a Angola donde paso un penoso ano de combate. Despues se fue a Bolivia, donde encontro la muerte. El Che era el ultimo que comia, el que cargaba la mochila mas pesada. Siempre se sacrificaba por los demas en un estoicismo que mas parecia fervor religioso que ideologia marxista.
Si quieren un modelo de vida. Ahi lo tienen.
Dije hace unos momentos que el 97% de la poblacion de la UNELLEZ es estudiante. Se imaginan Ustedes la Universidad que podriamos tener si todos los estudiantes tuvieran la abnegacion, la combatividad del Che?
Los momentos que se avecinan van a requerir de una gran unidad del pueblo venezolano. La alternativa de continuar siendo libres o regresar a la pobreza se nos planteara en los proximos dias de forma enmascarada, o quizas peor, desenmascarada, vestida con uniforme de soldado del Imperio.
Por nuestra parte podemos esperar lo mejor. La macroeconomia no podria ir mejor, la justicia social ha mejorado notablemente. Las misiones ocupan un papel muy importante en el pago de dicha justicia social. Aqui en Barinas ya hemos cumplido con dos de las misiones, la mision Robinson y la mision Sucre. No hay analfabetismo y no hay exclusion en la educacion superior, en estas tierras de Zamora.
Pero ay malhaya! Son precisamente estos exitos los que nos hacen mas antipaticos al Imperio. Para ellos, somos inclusive un mal ejemplo que se esta contagiando al resto del continente y cuidado sino al resto del mundo.
Nunca venceremos al Imperio. Estara siempre ahi, acechando. Por lo menos hasta que el mismo no se autodestruya. Porque, sepanlo senores, el neoliberalismo es canibal. Cuando le ataque el hambre, se devorara a si mismo.
Ustedes, queridos graduandos, a partir de hoy pasan a conformar la elite profesional que debe sostener este pais en los proximos cuarenta o cincuenta anos. Anos decisivos para el logro de nuestra libertad y del rescate de nuestra Soberania.
No se dejen comprar. No se dejen corromper. No se dejen gritar. No se dejen pisar. Que nadie les diga que comer, o que vestirse, o que leer. Sean siempre autenticos, rebeldes, contestatarios. Pero eso si, profundamente patriotas, dignos de ser hijos de Bolivar.
Muchas gracias y que Dios los bendiga.
Alguna duda?
Medio siglo de Holocausto Palestino
Oscar Zanartu Nacio en Caracas en 1960. Ha realizado exposiciones individuales en las galerias Minotauro, Clave y San Francisco, y en salas de Coro, estado Falcon, y Puerto Ordaz, estado Bolivar. En Paris su obra ha sido exhibida en el Centro Cultural Tanagra, en la Exposicion Cite Internationale des Arts, en las galerias De Mars y Arver Space, al igual que en la Galeria Municipal Levallois, en Levallois Perret (Francia). En muestras colectivas, su obra se ha expuesto en Belgica, Francia, Estados Unidos y Venezuela; en Caracas intervino en la exposicion "Del genesis a la memoria", 1995, organizada por la Fundacion La Previsora. En 1982 obtuvo el Premio Nacional Critven y en 1990 la Mencion de Honor Jose Antonio Paez, en la Embajada de Venezuela en Paris. En 1991 se le concedio el primer premio de Pintura Itinerante, en Levallois Perret, Francia.
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Homenaje a Jason Galarraga
La Victoria de Samotracia
Odalisca
Mas fotos de la nevada del pasado agosto 2008
La Sierra Nevada de Merida
Nuestro precioso Churum Meru
Homenaje a Picasso
Autoretrato
Sabes lo que bebes en una Coca-Cola?
La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.
Mi profesion?
Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.
Sal en la Coca Cola?
A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.
De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:
Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gusto
Acido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)
azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)
Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantas
Mucha Cafeina
Conservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o Potasio
Dioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebe
Sal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracion
El uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.
Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.
Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.
En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).
Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.
La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.
Bebidas Light?
Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el
Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.
Publicado por loretahur
En realidad, la formula secreta de la Coca-Cola se puede detallar en 18 segundos en cualquier espectrometro optico, y basicamente la conocen hasta los perros. Lo que ocurre es que no se puede fabricar igual, a no ser que uno disponga de unos cuantos millones de dolares para ganarle la demanda que te metera la Coca-Cola ante la justicia (ellos no perderian).La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gustoAcido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantasMucha CafeinaConservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o PotasioDioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebeSal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracionEl uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el aspartamo , despues de tres semanas mojado, pasa a tener gusto de trapo viejo sucio.Para evitar eso, se agregan una infinidad de otros productos quimicos, uno para alargar la vida del aspartamo, otro para neutralizar el color, otro para mantener el tercer quimico en suspension porque sino el fondo de la gaseosa quedaria oscuro, otro para evitar la cristalizacion del aspartamo, otro para realzar el sabor, dar mas intensidad al acido citrico o fosforito que perderia su sabor por el efecto de los cuatro productos quimicos iniciales... y asi sucesivamente.Un consejo final !!Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.Publicado por loretahur
MARGARINA o MANTEQUILLA La margarina fue producida originalmente para engordar a los pavos; cuandolo que hizo en realidad fue matarlos.Las personas que habian puesto el dinero para la investigacion quisieronrecobrarlo asi que empezaron a pensar en una forma de hacerlo.Tenian una sustancia blanca, que no tenia ningun atractivo como comestible,asi que le anadieron el color amarillo, para venderselo a lagente en lugar de la mantequilla.Que tal esa?... Ahora han sacado algunos nuevos sabores para vender mas alos incautos como usted y yo.CONOCE USTED la diferencia entre la margarina y la mantequilla?Siga leyendo hasta el final... porque se pone bastante interesante!Comparacion entre mantequilla y margarina:
1.- Ambas tienen la misma cantidad de calorias.
2.- La mantequilla es ligeramente mas alta en grasas saturadas: 8 gramos,comparada con los 5 gramos que tiene la margarina.
3.- Comer margarina en vez de mantequilla puede aumentar en 53% el riesgo deenfermedades coronarias en las mujeres, de acuerdo con un estudiomedico reciente de la Universidad de Harvard.
4.- Comer mantequilla aumenta la absorcion de gran cantidad de nutrientesque se encuentran en otros alimentos.
5.- La mantequilla provee beneficios nutricionales propios mientras lamargarina tiene solo los que le hayan sido anadidos al fabricarla.
6.- La mantequilla sabe mucho mejor que la margarina y mejora el sabor deotros alimentos.7.- La mantequilla ha existido durante siglos mientras que la margarinatiene menos de 100 anos.
Ahora... sobre la margarina:
1.- Es muy alta en acidos grasos trans. (Si, esos que recien ahora loscientificos descubrieron que son malisimos y los gobiernoscomenzaron a prohibirlos) .
2.- Triple riesgo de enfermedades coronarias.
3.- Aumenta el colesterol total y el LDL (el colesterol malo) y disminuye elHDL (el colesterol bueno).
4.- Aumenta en cinco veces el riesgo de cancer.
5.- Disminuye la calidad de la leche materna.
6.- Disminuye la reaccion inmunologica del organismo.
7.- Disminuye la reaccion a la insulina.
Y he aqui el factor mas inquietante (AQUI ESTA LA PARTE MAS INTERESANTE! ):A la margarina le falta UNA MOLECULA para ser PLASTICO...!!Solo este hecho es suficiente para evitar el uso de la margarina de porvida, y de cualquier otra cosa que sea hidrogenada (esto significaque se le anade hidrogeno, lo cual cambia la estructura molecular de lassubstancias).Usted puede ensayar lo siguiente:Compre un poco de margarina y dejela en el garaje o en un sitio sombreado.Dentro de unos dias notara dos cosas:
* No habra moscas; ni siquiera esos molestos bichos se le acercaran (esto yale debe decir a usted algo).
* No se pudre ni huele mal o diferente porque no tiene valor nutritivo; nadacrece en ella. Ni siquiera los diminutos microorganismos puedencrecer en ella.Por que? Porque es casi plastico!!
No a la guerra, Si a la Paz
Misterios de la ciencia...
Los costos de la guerra
medicos y capitalismo...
medicos (2)
Quien educa a nuestros hijos?
Los Medios...
Sin Palabras...
Chistes feministas
- Cual es el problema, Eva?
- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz...
- Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.
- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...
- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.
- Que es un hombre?
- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.
- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.
- Cual es el truco?.
- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.
- Cual?
- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.
Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas? Porque todos son unos cerdos
Un dia, en el Paraiso, Eva llamo a Dios: Tengo un problema.- Cual es el problema, Eva?- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz... - Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.- Que es un hombre?- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.- Cual es el truco?.- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.- Cual?- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas? Porque todos son unos cerdos
Ellas (2)...
Tres venganzas femeninas VENGANZA NUMERO 1
Hoy mi hija cumple 21 anos y estoy muy contento porque es el ultimo pago de pension alimenticia que le doy, asi que llame a mi hijita para que viniera a mi casa y cuando llego le dije:
-Hijita, quiero que lleves este cheque a casa de tu mama y que le digas que: Este es el ultimo maldito cheque que va recibir de mi en todo lo que le queda de su puta vida!!! Quiero que me digas la expresion que pone en su rostro.
Asi que mi hija fue a entregar el cheque. Yo estaba ansioso por saber lo que la bruja tenia que decir y que cara pondria.
Cuando mi hijita entro, le pregunte inmediatamente: -Que fue lo que te dijo tu madre?
-Me dijo que justamente estaba esperando este dia para decirte que no eres mi papa!
VENGANZA NUMERO 2
Un hombre que siempre molestaba a su mujer, paso un dia por la casa de unos amigos para que lo acompanaran al aeropuerto a dejar a su esposa que viajaba a Paris.
A la salida de inmigracion, frente a todo el mundo, el le desea buen viaje y en tono burlon le grita:
- Amor, no te olvides de traerme una hermosa francesita Ja ja ja!!
Ella bajo la cabeza y se embarco muy molesta.
La mujer paso quince dias en Francia.
El marido otra vez pidio a sus amigos que lo acompanasen al aeropuerto a recibirla.
Al verla llegar, lo primero que le grita a toda voz es:
- Y amor me trajiste mi francesita??
- Hice todo lo posible, - contesta ella - ahora solo tenemos que rezar para que nazca nina.
VENGANZA NUMERO 3
El marido, en su lecho de muerte, llama a su mujer. Con voz ronca y ya debil, le dice: - Muy bien, llego mi hora, pero antes quiero hacerte una confesion.
- No, no, tranquilo, tu no debes hacer ningun esfuerzo.
- Pero, mujer, es preciso - insiste el marido - Es preciso morir en paz.
Te quiero confesar algo.
- Esta bien, esta bien. Habla!
- He tenido relaciones con tu hermana, tu mama y tu mejor amiga.
- Lo se, lo se Por eso te envenene, hijo de puta!!!
machismo y cibernetica
Chiste machista La NASA ha enviado al espacio una mision experimental tripulada por dos monos y una mujer.Apenas abandona la atmosfera, se establece comunicacion con Houston.
-Atencion, simio 1, verifique sistemas hidraulicos, controle adecuada presion de los propulsores de arranque. A 60.000 pies disminuya un 25% la velocidad.
El simio hace la sena de OK.
-Atencion, simio 2, nivele al cruzar la estratosfera y active sistemas anticongelantes. No olvide monitorear sistemas de comunicacion e indicadores de presion. Comprendido?.
El simio hace la sena de OK.
-Atencion, Houston llamando a mujer: no se olvide.
-Mujer: Si, si, ya se! -interrumpe enojada- que no me olvide darles de comer a estos monos de mierda y que no se me vaya a ocurrir tocar nada!.
.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti.
Un abogado mantiene un romance con su secretaria.Al poco tiempo, esta queda embarazada y el abogado, que no quiere que su esposa se entere, le da a la secretaria una buena suma de dinero y le pide que se vaya a parir a Italia.Esta pregunta: Y como voy a hacerte saber cuando nazca el bebe ? El abogado responde: Para que mi mujer no se entere, tan solo enviame una postal y escribe por detras: Spaghetti. Y no te preocupes mas, que yo me encargare de todos los gastos.
Pasan los meses y una manana la esposa del abogado lo llama al bufete, algo exaltada: Querido, acabo de recibir el correo y hay una postal muy extrana viene desde Italia. La verdad, no entiendo que significa.El abogado, tratando de ocultar sus nervios, contesta:Espera a que llegue a casa, a ver si yo entiendoCuando el hombre llega a casa y lee la postal, cae al suelo fulminado por un infarto.Llega una ambulancia y se lo lleva. Ya en el hospital, el jefe de cardiologia se queda consolando a la esposa y le pregunta cual ha sido el evento que precipito tan masivo ataque cardiaco.
Entonces la esposa saca la postal y se la muestra diciendole: No me explico, doctor; el solamente leyo esta postal. Vea usted mismo lo que trae escrito.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti."Tres con salchicha y albondigas y dos con almejas
Gol !!!!
Chistes de Borrachos Entra un borracho a su casa todo manchado con lapiz labial por todos lados hecho un desastre, y la mujer le pregunta:-Hombre que te paso?Y el borracho le responde:-No me vas a creer, me pelee con un payaso!
Este es un borracho que entra en un bar y le dice al camarero:-Me da cinco copas de whisky?Al rato:-Me da cuatro?Al rato:-Me da tres copas?Despues:-Me da dos copas?Luego le dice:-Me da una copa?Y le dice al camarero:-Ves? Cuanto menos bebo, mas borracho estoy!
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A very large partially loaded oil tanker from Saudi Arabia is heading to Venezuela in an extremely rare shipment between the two oil producers and OPEC members, S&P Global Platts trade flow data showed on Friday.
The very large crude carrier (VLCC)one capable of carrying up to 2 million barrels of crude oil, refined oil products, or condensateis owned by Saudi tanker company Bahri. The super tanker, Abqaiq, left the Yanbu port on the Red Sea on January 20 and is scheduled to arrive at Venezuelas main crude oil terminal of Jose on February 11, according to Platts tanker flow data.
This is a very unusual voyage for a Saudi oil tanker as no tanker owned by Saudi Arabia has been spotted to have made the trip to Venezuela in at least the past two years, Platts data show. Other Bahri-owned tankers currently in the Atlantic Ocean have their final destinations set for the U.S. Gulf Coast, which is the conventional destination of Saudi tankers sailing in the Atlantic.
Shipping sources tell Platts that the tankers owned by Bahri are being exclusively used by Saudi state oil giant Saudi Aramco to ship crude oil or refined oil products.
The ship is partly loaded, so there could be two possible explanations, according to Plattsone is that the tanker is shipping Saudi light oil or condensate to Venezuela, the other is that it could load Venezuelan crude oil to later ship it to another region.
The light oil/condensate delivery scenario could be a plausible one, because with the new U.S. sanctions on Venezuelas oil industry and its state oil firm PDVSA, Venezuela cant import naphtha from the U.S. to use it as a diluent to blend with its extra heavy crude oil to make it flow for exports.
Yet another possible explanation for the very rare trip could be that the tanker crew may have incorrectly entered the destination, according to Platts.
By Tsevtana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Amid growing uncertainties on the global oil market, Japan is looking to boost its energy cooperation with Russia, and international sanctions on Moscow dont prohibit cooperation, Japans Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko said in a written interview with S&P Global Platts published on Friday.
Japan, which relies almost exclusively on imports of crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) to meet its demand for those products, sees the benefit of shorter travel times and safer routes for deliveries from Russias Far East, amid increased uncertainties in the global oil market with the U.S. sanctions on Iran, according to Seko.
Imports of Russian crude oil and LNG do not go through any chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz. Therefore they are important for the diversification of Japan's energy import sources, and I hope that Russia will play an even larger role. I would like to continue working to expand our cooperation, Seko told Platts.
Currently, Japan relies heavily on imports from the Middle East, with cargoes having to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to block numerous times over the past few years.
Japanese companies are also interested in taking part in planned LNG projects in Russia, including Arctic LNG 2, Baltic LNG, and the third train at Sakhalin, the Japanese minister said, noting that if Japanese firms secure participation, Japan could boost its LNG imports from Russia in the future.
Sanctions on Russia are not a concern for Japan, because Tokyo complies with them, yet sanctions do not comprehensively prohibit Japans energy cooperation with Russia, Seko told Platts.
Japanese and Russian firms have recently entered into an early agreement for possible future cooperation in LNG.
As Russias LNG producer Novatek is looking to boost LNG supply to the growing Asian market, the Russian firm has recently signed a preliminary agreement with Japans Saibu Gas, under which the companies will consider potential cooperation in entering the end-consumer LNG market in Asia. Novatek will optimize its LNG supplies to the Asia-Pacific region by using Saibu Gass Hibiki LNG terminal in Japan, the Russian firm said in December.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Natural gas flows into the three liquefaction and export plants on the U.S. Gulf Coast have begun to increase once again after a brief interruption prompted by adverse weather in the Gulf.
Reuters data shows that after falling to a years low earlier this week, at 1.5 billion cu ft daily, flows are back to rising at the Sabine Pass LNG plant operated by Cheniere Energy and Cove Point, property of Dominion Energy. The only exception was Chenieres Corpus Christi facility, where, according to data provider Genscape, gas volumes dropped to virtually zero this month. The reason is yet unclear but it is not atypical for new LNG plants to suspend operations temporarily soon after launching.
Natural gas flows into the countrys three operating liquefaction and export plants hit a record 5.5 billion cu ft a day in January, so the drop was indeed quite substantial. The implications are that weather conditionswhich in the last few weeks on the Gulf coast included Heavy fog, high winds and rough seas, according to an IHS Markit analystare having the same effect on the LNG industry as they are having on the oil industry in the Gulf, and future interruptions are always a possibility.
There is, however, no way around this. LNG plants cannot be built inlandat least not profitablyso a risk of disruptions will just need to be factored in by the operators, whose number just increased by two: Exxon and Qatar petroleum decided to go ahead with a planned US$10-billion expansion of their joint Golden Pass LNG import plant. The expansion will add a liquefaction and export terminal to the facility, raising the number of operating LNG export terminals in the United States to four.
As demand for liquefied natural gas continues to rise globally, more capacity will be coming on stream in the worlds largest natural gas producer. In a December 2018 report the Energy Information Administration said it expected the countrys LNG export capacity to double by the end of this year to 8.9 billion cu ft daily. This will make the U.S. the third-largest exporter of LNG in terms of capacity after Qatar and Australia. Related: Russia Begins To Fear Maduro May Lose
Of these, two are planned to start operating before long: Sempra Energys Cameron LNG in Louisiana, and Freeport LNG, with a capacity of 13.9 million tons per year, in Texas. Sempra is currently starting up the 12-million-ton-per-year facility after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave it the go-ahead, and hopes the plant will begin operation by the end of the year. Freeport LNG, as per a Reuters report from 2018, should launch by September this year, although delays are always a possibility with LNG projects.
Then theres one more project that could begin operation by the end of 2019, and this is the Elba Island LNG plant in Georgia. The Houston Chronicle earlier this week reported that operator Kinder Morgan had begun the startup process, like Sempra, after getting the green light from FERC. Elba Island is different from regular LNG plants in that it consists of 10 modular liquefaction facilities, with a total capacity of 2.5 million tons per year.
U.S. LNG exports are expected to increase from about 3 billion cu ft daily to about 17 billion cu ft by 2030.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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I hope people raise hell about this.
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I knew where that purple link next to John Landis name would lead, and I still clicked it.
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Yep, me too.
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He frequents a bar in my city and they proudly display his autograph. MESS
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is this in la?
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Vancouver.
This city's so throaty, it's embarrassing
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Sometimes men who commit sexual assault are talented screenwriters and their work comes with baggage.
other times, theyre Max Landis. Buffering the Vampire Slayer (@UnburntWitch) December 23, 2017
eta: this is one of the 2017 threads referenced above. lots of stories about him. disgusting, as per, so be advised.
Edited at 2019-02-09 05:05 am (UTC) eta: this is one of the 2017 threads referenced above. lots of stories about him. disgusting, as per, so be advised.
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OT, but Zoe Quinns perseverance despite gamergate amazes me. Shes a woman who was unjustly put through years of harassement which was downplayed by the internet but shes still out here making cool shit.
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Is it feminist if hes the writer? Like if you want feminist movies, hire more women behind the scene instead of giving basic, mediocre nepotism white men the job
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You know who gets told not to write feminist action flicks? Female action writers. Constantly. https://t.co/wzPK6yJz6q Jessica Ellis (@baddestmamajama) February 8, 2019
bloop
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Holy shit, that thread makes me so angry
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this is some "Hitler befriends that one Jewish girl" shit
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Apparently feminism is white men exploiting feminist tropes in fiction to make money and repair their reputation
Edited at 2019-02-09 08:03 am (UTC)
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honestly, judging from "a leery, all-male crew" it likely won't be a feminist screenplay. I bet it wouldn't even pass the Bechdel test - just one exceptional woman in a world populated by dudes. Yawn.
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In this case, feminist means nothing. And judging from that blurb, that isn't feminist.
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exactly. one woman in a cast of men? a "leery all male crew"? fuck that shit.
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Have the crew be all women and then we'll talk but not really because fuck him I bet then the movie would be a crew of women talking only about men.
And I just pictured sucker punch in my head for some reason.
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fuck max landis. what a scumbag piece of shit. he is incapable of producing feminist work. period.
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You're still not good. Sorry.
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I hate that every creep just ducks out on a vacation & then acts like "Oh heyyy, I was just away writing and doing self care. But I'm baaackk & ready to roll!" Matt Lauer keeps poking his head out to test the air, Carter Oosterhouse strutted back with his "chilling with the fam not stars" act, etc
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they all keep doing it and it's so fucking predictable and infuriating, especially how it seems to always WORK
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Aziz Ansari and Louis CK have been embraced at comedy clubs with open arms yet they keep telling us that allegations supposedly ruin men's lives which they'll never be able to recover from
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Wait, I meant to say:
FUCK OFF.
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Mute this fucker.
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You can ruin a female filmmakers career in Hollywood by simply telling people shes difficult ... meantime, dudes with dozens of sexual assault accusations against them are courted to make feminist movies and Red Sonja etc. Its really something. Lexi Alexander (@Lexialex) February 9, 2019
mary lambert and martha coolidge both retweeted this and it makes me so angry for them. god, i hate this trash industry so fucking much mary lambert and martha coolidge both retweeted this and it makes me so angry for them. god, i hate this trash industry so fucking much
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I really hate men
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He's such a complete fucking piece of shit.
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Casey Affleck says film set in a "society without women" has nothing to do with the sexual harassment allegations made against him https://t.co/gzc8JxfK3s pic.twitter.com/6dZUIf7R5W Jezebel (@Jezebel) February 8, 2019
late to this news, i'm sure, but i just found this in one of the many landis threads. these shitheads will never face any repercussions lord im going to fucking s c r e a m lmfao
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So basically it ripped off the plot of a YA book also coming out as a movie this year ok fucker go away.
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so much ew
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This is... redundant. We already know what a society dominated by men looks like.
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electric chair
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No, no. Do you really want these people to die? I don't think death is the answer. I think..one of those programs where they can't ask for help from anyone, and aren't treated in humanely, but learn how 'the other side lives' -- that sounds like 're-education' which i don;t like...but how to help these people?
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......oh you weren't being sarcastic.
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Lusaka (AFP) - Zambia's opposition on Saturday accused police of opening fire during a rally, causing the party's leader to fear for his safety as political tensions rattle the country.
Police denied using live ammunition to disperse the crowd at the event on Friday in Sesheke, a small town on the border with Namibia, approximately 500 kilometres (300 miles) west of the capital Lusaka.
United Party for National Development leader Hakainde Hichilema, who was detained in 2017 on treason charges that critics said were politically motivated, was addressing his supporters ahead of a parliamentary by-election in the area slated for next week.
"Our lives are in danger as police are discharging live ammunition at us and our people," Hichilema said on Twitter late Friday, urging people to "remain calm".
The party said no one was injured.
"We are temporarily safe and the president is in hiding but we don't know what will happen to us," Brian Mwiinga, the deputy press secretary told AFP.
Later, Mwiinga said in a Facebook post that the party's convoy had been threatened by "heavily armed" police as it passed back through Sesheke on Saturday.
Inspector general of police Kakoma Kanganja denied real bullets were used at Friday's rally.
"The Zambia police wishes to state that no live ammunition was fired by our officers that were dispersing the unruly crowd in Sesheke yesterday. We also wish to further clarify that no life was lost yesterday as a result of the fracas," Kanganja said in a statement.
Zambian President Edgar Lungu has been accused of cracking down on dissent since winning a disputed election in 2016.
Hichilema has repeatedly challenged the result of the 2016 election and accused the government of intimidating critics.
He was detained in April 2017 over an incident in which he allegedly failed to give way to Lungu's motorcade. He was released in August that year.
New Yorks Milk Gallery is showcasing a clothing line with a unique message for the citys annual Fashion Week: Do something to stop climate change, or youre going to need to wear these clothes.
The conceptional line, called Unfortunately, Ready to Wear, presents items built to handle heat waves, infectious disease, extreme storms, air pollution, and the transient lives of environmental refugees. According to Milk Gallery, its an unfortunate vision for the future.
Unfortunately, Ready to Wear is the result of a collaboration between Milk, designer Luka Sabbat, and environmental non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). It will be exhibited from Feb. 10 to Feb. 14.
The line showcases solar-powered headphones to give storm warnings, a bandana with interchangeable filters to fight air pollution, and a fireproof, water resistant jacket with a hood including a mosquito-net face mask. Theres also a backpack with a water filter that can be re-purposed as a sleeping bag.
Were going at this from a different angle than I think most environmental organizations have ever done, Rhea Suh, president of NRDC, told Fast Company. Honestly, I think we need to be a lot more creative about how we reach out to new audiences.
Climate change is being addressed more frequently as new reports warn against human inaction. Just last month, the journal Science published a study stating the Earths oceans are warming 40% faster than previously thought. On Wednesday, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said 2018 was the hottest year in almost 140 years.
These are not things that youre going to need in the futurethese are things you need now, Mazdack Rassi, co-founder of Milk Studios, told Fast Company about the clothing line.
Give your joint a twist think Goan-style pork or Peruvian chicken with help from the countrys most inventive chefs - Andrew Crowley
Sunday lunch at Kricket in White City, London, is, in many ways, a classic roast. The key elements are there: juicy roast pork belly with crispy skin, golden roasties, sprouts and gravy. And yet as I bite into the potatoes, subtly spiced with cumin and curry leaf, dip a pumpkin half-moon into the masala gravy, and scoop up a forkful of mustard-spiced greens and shredded Brussels (all pictured above), its clear that were in new territory.
Krickets Sunday lunch is one of a growing band of new roasts. Restaurants such as Ceviche, Native and Brigadiers, all in London, are also offering exciting twists on Sunday lunch, which helps to lure diners through the doors during one of the weeks most competitive sittings: when restaurants are up against pubs as well as each other.
Peruvian restaurant Ceviche in Shoreditch now serves pollo a la brasa rotisserie-style chicken every day of the week. It is a very common dish for Peruvian families to have on a Sunday, says Daniel Ribeiro, Ceviches executive chef. Ceviches chefs marinade the birds with amarillo chilli and spices, and serve them with roast sweet potato wedges or chips (find the recipe, tweaked for home cooks, below).
Native, a London restaurant that specialises in foraged foods and game, has launched a monthly wild roast. Seasonal meat such as venison is served as a communal feast, while trimmings can include roast potatoes with mugwort or heritage carrots with a seaweed salsa verde. Even in midwinter, there are plenty of foraged foods to add interest to a roast, say Ivan Tisdall-Downes and Imogen Davis, Natives founders. We use juniper berries, crab apple and rowan berries, and make pine-needle salt for a dry rub on lamb.
Restaurants are after the vegan (and vegetarian) pound, too. Greens in Manchester does a vegan roast with a pecan and hazelnut or red lentil loaf and all the trimmings including Yorkshire puds. Kricket offers a weekly meat-free roast, such as roasted broccoli, kori-spiced mushrooms or delica pumpkin.
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Chef Matt Davies at Greens in Didsbury, with his vegan roast dinner Credit: PAUL COOPER
Roasts are more flexible than you might think. Just ask The Telegraphs cookery writer, Diana Henry, whose book A Bird in the Hand contains enough twists for a month of Sundays (lemon grass and turmeric roast chicken, Indonesian roast spiced chicken, caraway roast potatoes).
Roast meats work well with Indian spices, says Krickets Will Bowlby. White meats like chicken work particularly well with lighter spices like fenugreek and turmeric. Red meats take on spices even better and, at this time of year, we like to pair spices like peppercorns, cloves, star anise, Kashmiri chilli and saffron with game.
Is tinkering with the classics a risky move, or does novelty give pubs and restaurants a competitive edge? The Lygon Arms in Worcestershire certainly thinks its the latter. The Cotswolds inn has introduced Wellington Sundays, with a trolley of venison, salmon and vegetarian Wellingtons wheeled around the dining room. We wanted to offer something a little different, says Ed Fitzpatrick, its deputy general manager.
The new roasts might not win a purists approval. But for curious diners, theres never been a better time to tuck into Sunday lunch whether youre eating out, or cooking at home, thanks to the simple, inventive recipes below supplied by the chefs from Kricket, Greens and Ceviche.
Five ways to jazz up your roast
Give a lamb or beef joint an Indian spice rub or marinade. Start a couple days in advance to allow the marinade to penetrate the meat as best it can, says Will Bowlby. Make Yorkshire pudding more nutritious by switching half your white flour for quinoa flour, as pioneered at Ceviche. The restaurant also sprinkles cooked black quinoa on top for texture and crunch. Make a delicious foraged jelly to complement your meat, suggest Ivan Tisdall-Downes and Imogen Davis. You can easily find crab apples early in the year, along with rowan berries and hawthorn berries. These are high in pectin, so you only need a little sugar. A few easy tweaks can make most of your roast suitable for vegans. Switch from animal fat to vegetable oil for just-as-golden roasties. You can even make Yorkshire pudding without eggs, as they do at Greens, where they use soya milk. Adding a little warm water to the batter helps them rise (see the recipe in the box below, and other recipes online). Feeling adventurous? Gather acorns* or chestnuts to make stuffing, suggests the Native team. Or grind up clean pine needles in a pestle and mortar, then add a little salt. Use in moderation for a dry-rub on lamb. Theyre fragrant like rosemary, with a hint of citrus.
*Acorns should only be eaten when brown, not green, and need to be treated before eating. The Woodland Trust has a useful guide on how to do this (woodlandtrust.org.uk).
LAWRENCE, Mass. (AP) Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren made her bid for the presidency official on Saturday in this working-class city, grounding her 2020 campaign in a populist call to fight economic inequality and build "an America that works for everyone."
Warren delivered a sharp call for change at her presidential kickoff, decrying a "middle-class squeeze" that has left Americans crunched with "too little accountability for the rich, too little opportunity for everyone else." She and her backers hope that message can distinguish her in a crowded Democratic field and help her move past the controversy surrounding her past claims to Native American heritage.
Weaving specific policy prescriptions into her remarks, from Medicare for All to the elimination of Washington "lobbying as we know it," Warren avoided taking direct jabs at President Donald Trump. She aimed for a broader institutional shift instead, urging supporters to choose "a government that makes different choices, choices that reflect our values."
Trump "is not the cause of what's broken," Warren told an elated crowd without using the president's name. "He's just the latest - and most extreme - symptom of what's gone wrong in America."
In a tweet, Trump referenced the controversy over her Native American identity, once again using the insulting nickname he's given her.
"Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President," Trump tweeted. "Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!"
Asked to explain the tweet's reference to "the campaign TRAIL," the White House didn't respond.
Warren announced her campaign in her home state of Massachusetts at a mill site where factory workers went on strike in the early 20th century, a fitting forum for the longtime consumer advocate to advance her platform.
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Supporters turned out in below-freezing temperatures, many hoisting signs "Win With Warren," one read. A Massachusetts bakery created "Persist" cookies for the event to honor the candidate's slogan, "Nevertheless, She Persisted," words first spoken in the Senate to rebuke her.
Warren's rollout rally was a potent motivator for longtime supporters such as Mo Malekafzaly and Carlos Garcia, two longtime backers who attended her rally from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
The choice of Lawrence to start her campaign "shows who she's fighting for," Garcia said. Asked if fellow New Englander Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, could pose a serious threat to Warren in New Hampshire's critical primary should he get into the race, Garcia said Warren is "such an effective communicator that I think that people will respond to that very well."
Warren went straight from her kickoff to New Hampshire, home to the nation's first primary, where her campaign projected that 350 people turned out for an event in the city of Dover. She plans to spend Sunday in Iowa, where the leadoff caucuses will be the first test of candidates' viability.
Warren was the first high-profile Democrat to signal interest in running for the White House, forming an exploratory committee on New Year's Eve.
She was endorsed and introduced Saturday by Massachusetts Democrats Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Joe Kennedy III. Kennedy's backing could prove valuable for Warren, given his status as a rising young Democratic star and his friendship with one of her potential 2020 rivals, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas.
Warren enters the race as one of the party's most recognizable figures. She has spent the past decade in the national spotlight, first emerging as a consumer activist during the financial crisis. She later led the congressional panel that oversaw the 2008 financial industry bailout. After Republicans blocked her from running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she helped create, she ran for the Senate in 2012 and unseated a GOP incumbent.
She has $11 million left over from her commanding 2018 Senate re-election victory that can be used on her presidential run.
Still, Warren must compete against other popular Democrats who will be able to raise substantial money. A recent CNN poll found that fewer Democrats said they'd be very likely to support Warren if she runs than said the same of former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Sanders. Still, about as many Democrats said they'd be at least somewhat likely to support Warren as said the same of Harris or Sanders.
That challenge is on display this weekend as Democratic presidential contenders or those considering a run fan out across the crucial early-voting states. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is in Iowa, while New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is visiting South Carolina. Another possible presidential rival, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, planned to be in New Hampshire on Saturday, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar is announcing her bid Sunday in her home state of Minnesota.
And Warren's launch comes at a challenging moment for the 69-year-old senator. She's apologized twice over the past two weeks for claiming Native American identity on multiple occasions early in her career. That claim has created fodder for Republicans and could overshadow her campaign.
On Saturday, Trump's re-election campaign manager was quick to respond to her candidacy and called her "a fraud."
Warren got notable backup from Gillibrand, however, who called her Senate colleague "an extraordinary public servant." Speaking to reporters in South Carolina, Gillibrand said Trump's treatment of women, particularly women of color, was "outrageous."
The campaign launch will test whether the controversy is simply a Washington obsession or a substantive threat to her candidacy. Doug Rubin, a Boston-based strategist who advised Warren during her first Senate run in 2012, said in an interview that most voters will respond to "the powerful message she's been talking about," in terms of battling social and economic injustices, rather than the back-and-forth over her personal identity.
Another threat could come from a fellow senator who has yet to announce his own plans for 2020: Sanders. They're both leaders of the Democrats' liberal vanguard, but some Sanders supporters are still upset Warren didn't support him during his 2016 primary run against Hillary Clinton. And as a senator from Vermont who won the New Hampshire primary, he would likely go into the Granite State as an early favorite if he decided to run again.
Sheri Clark Nadell, a Maine resident who traveled to Warren's New Hampshire event, said that while she likes Sanders and voted for him in his previous campaign, she is less inclined to do so now.
"I'm not sure, at this point, that he could win," Nadell said. "And I feel sad saying that. But we need to win."
Despite their similarities, Warren and Sanders have taken somewhat divergent paths in recent months as they prepare for the primary. After proposing an "ultra-millionaire tax" that would hit the wealthiest 75,000 households in America, Warren told Bloomberg News last week that she continues to "believe in capitalism" but wants to see stricter rules to prevent gaming the system a marked contrast with the self-described democratic socialism of Sanders.
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Associated Press writers Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, and Jonathan Lemire in Washington contributed to this report.
Washington (AFP) - A second woman has accused Virginia's lieutenant governor of sexual misconduct, US media reported Friday, further adding to the political turmoil in the eastern US state.
Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is next in line for the governorship if Governor Ralph Northam -- who faces intense pressure to resign over a racist yearbook photo -- decides to step down.
The Washington Post reported that a Maryland woman accused Fairfax of a "premeditated and aggressive" attack when the two were undergraduate students at Duke University in 2000, while CNN said the woman had accused Fairfax of rape.
The allegation comes after another woman accused Fairfax of misconduct over a sexual encounter they had in a hotel room 15 years ago, one that he insists was "100 percent consensual".
Fairfax, a 39-year-old Democrat, won election in November alongside Northam, who has been fighting for his political survival since a 1984 yearbook surfaced that features a racist photo on a page dedicated to him.
After initially saying he was in the photo -- which pictures one man in blackface next to another wearing a Klu Klux Klan robe and hood -- Northam now denies appearing in the image, and has so far declined calls to step down.
Critical support for embattled Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax collapsed Saturday when the Democratic Party of Virginia called on him to resign following a second allegation of sexual assault.
The Democratic Party of Virginia said in a statement that Fairfax "no longer has our confidence or support. He must resign."
The statement, issued by party chair Susan Swecker, said that in light of the "credible nature" of the latest claims against Fairfax, "it has become clear that he can no longer fulfill the duties and responsibilities of his post."
The possibly lethal blow from the state party came only hours after the Virginia Legislative Caucus and Democrats in both houses of the legislature reversed course and called for the Fairfax to resign.
One state legislator, Patrick Hope, a Democrat, has vowed to begin impeachment proceedings on Monday if Fairfax does not step down immediately.
The about-face by party leaders and legislators came only hours after Meredith Watson said in a statement through her lawyers that Fairfax raped her while they were students at Duke University in 2000.
Fairfax, one of three top Virginia Democrats embroiled in political scandal, said Friday he would not step down and demanded an investigation into the claims.
"I will clear my good name and I have nothing to hide. I have passed two full field background checks by the FBI and run for office in two highly contested elections with nothing like this being raised before," Fairfax said in a statement. "It is obvious that a vicious and coordinated smear campaign is being orchestrated against me."
The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, which stood by the 39-year-old African American following the first accusation, said in a statement late Friday that "it is best for Lt. Governor Fairfax to step down from his position."
While the group said it believes in due process,"we can't see it in the best interest of the Commonwealth of Virginia for (Fairfax) to remain in his role."
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In addition, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, called for the lieutenant governor's resignation, as have six of the state's seven Democratic U.S. House members.
The firestorm around Fairfax follows a tumultuous week in Virginia politics, with Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, first acknowledging then denying that he appeared in a photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook that showed a man in blackface standing by a man dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. He did acknowledge using blackface in impersonating Michael Jackson in a dance contest that same year.
Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax presides over the Senate at the Virginia State Capitol, February 7, 2019 in Richmond, Virginia. Virginia state politics are in a state of upheaval.
He has refused widespread calls for his resignation.
In his first interview since the scandal erupted, Northam told The Washington Post Saturday that he had "overreacted"by putting out a statement taking blame for the picture. He said that an independent investigation being conducted by Virginia Medical School is aimed at establishing the facts in the case.
He said he wants to focus the rest of his term on racial equity.
'Horrific week in Virginia': Gov. Ralph Northam takes on blackface scandal in first interview
"This has been a real, I think, an awakening for Virginia," he told the Post. "It has really raised the level of awareness for racial issues in Virginia. And so were ready to learn from our mistakes.
Shortly after the first accusation surfaced against Fairfax, Attorney General Mark Herring, a 57-year-old Democrat, volunteered that he had appeared in blackface at a party at the University of Virginia in the 1980s.
The last accusation against the lieutenant governor follows a previous claim by a one-time colleague, Vanessa Tyson, who accused Fairfax of forcing her to perform oral sex in a hotel room during the 2004 Democratic national convention in Boston. Fairfax denied the charge of sexual assault, calling his sexual encounter with Tyson consensual.
In a statement Friday, Watson's lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said Fairfax and her client were friends in college but didn't date. Watson told her friends at the time that Fairfax raped her and has provided her lawyers with emails and Facebook messages detailing her account of the rape, Smith said.
After Fairfax's strong denial of the charges as part of a smear campaign, Watson's attorney issued a second statement pushing back on Fairfax's denial.
In college, Watson went to Fairfax after she had been previously raped by someone else, Smith said. Later, after Fairfax allegedly raped Watson, they had an interaction outside a campus party, Smith said.
"She turned and asked: 'Why did you do it?' Mr. Fairfax answered: 'I knew that because of what happened to you last year, youd be too afraid to say anything.' Mr. Fairfax actually used the prior rape of his 'friend' against her when he chose to rape her in a premeditated way," Smith said in the second statement.
Duke campus police have no criminal reports naming Fairfax, university spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said. Durham police spokesman Will Glenn also said he couldn't find a report in the department's system on the 2000 allegation.
Kaneedreck Adams, 40, told The Washington Post that Watson told her at Duke in spring 2000 that Fairfax raped her at a fraternity house.
"She said she couldnt speak, but she was trying to get up and he kept pushing her down," Adams, who reportedly lived across from Watson, told the newspaper. "She said he knew that she didnt like what was happening, but he kept pushing her down."
Adams described Fairfax, who was a year ahead of them in school, as a "nice sweet charming guy."
"We all knew he wanted to be in politics," she told the Post. "He had a reputation for being very friendly. Some of my friends, we called him sunshine."
The Post also reported that Watson emailed Milagros Joye Brown, a college friend, in 2016 as Brown invited former classmates to a fundraiser for Fairfax's lieutenant governor bid.
"Molly, Justin raped me in college and I dont want to hear anything about him. Please, please, please remove me form any future emails about him please," Watson reportedly wrote in the Oct. 26, 2016 email.
Contributing: A.J. Perez, Ryan W. Miller and Christal Hayes
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Democratic Party of Virginia wants Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax out amid sexual assault claims
Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has expressed gratitude to President Rodrigo Duterte for respecting the independence of the House of Representatives, especially during the proposed 2019 budget process. In her Adjournment Speech Friday, Arroyo said the proposed 2019 budget is probably the most dissected budget in the past few decades and yet the President respected the constitutional mandate of the House and the Senate to ensure transparency and accountability in the budget process. We also appreciate President Duterte for respecting the constitutional mandate of the House and the Senate in the budget process. His cognizance of the need for transparency and accountability during his watch served as a beacon of guidance and inspiration for us all. As a former Chief Executive myself, I am well aware of how much can be achieved by a close, constructive partnership between an elected President and the elected representatives of the people, Arroyo said. Congressmen are also confident the allocations in the newly ratified 2019 national budget worth P3.757 trillion will pass legal scrutiny, in the event the money measure is challenged at the Supreme Court. At a press conference Friday night, Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr., chairman of the House committee on appropriations, allayed concerns that appropriations for each congressmen run contrary to the Supreme Court order prohibiting lump sum funds. What the Supreme Court said is there should be no post-enactment involvement ng Congress. Everything that you want to have in the budget, where it should go, how much, should be indicated in the budget, Andaya said. He also clarified that a baseline figure for appropriations of each House member was established, but it was adjusted according to the needs of the district. Meanwhile, Deputy Speaker and Surigao del Sur Rep. Prospero Pichay on Saturday said the amounts given as entitlements to each congressman are based on the needs of their districts and not on hating-kapatid (sibling division) sharing. Pichay said the pork barrel funds, which Senator Panfilo Lacson has always branded as bad, are the projects they as congressmen put in the budget to help their constituents improve their living conditions. There is nothing wrong with providing services to the people, to our constituents, Pichay said in a statement. If we do not put any project in our districts, we dont deserve to be the representatives of our district. We do not deserve to stay a day longer in office. Pichay said Lacson does not put projects in his home province of Cavite to serve his people. We respect that. But he should not fault us for wanting to give better services for our people, he added. Congress is on a two-month break for the election period. Session resumes on May 20, or a week after the polls. Arroyo also congratulated the Senate for passing the budget as she called it a joint achievement of both houses of Congress. Both the House and the Senate should be congratulated for passing the budget in a process characterized by hard work and collective wisdom. The two bodies worked independently, but in harmony, in scrutinizing the budget, so in the end, it is a joint achievement, she said. The Speaker also thanked her colleagues for their tireless effort to pass meaningful legislations during her speakership especially the priority bills of President Duterte. I hope that our beloved Juan and Juana de la Cruz will be gratified to hear that since last December, every one of the Presidents priority bills as enunciated in his 2018 State of the Nation Address have been duly acted upon by this body, she said.Let the critics carp, but I am hopeful that our people shall know that this 17th Congress has been hard at work for the people who dutifully and thoughtfully marked ballots in May 2016 to mandate our presence here, Arroyo stated. These bills include the Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region; the Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Act; Rice in the Agricultural Tariffication Act; Enhanced Universal Healthcare Act; Amnesty ProgramGeneral Tax and Estate Tax Amnesty; Revision of the Constitution; National Land Use Act; Creation of the Department of Disaster Resilience; End of Endo/Contractualization Act; TRAIN 2Trabaho Bill; the Mining Law; an Increase on the Excise Tax on Tobacco Products, Real Property Valuation and Assessment; Traffic and Congestion Crisis Act; Reform in Capital Income and Financial Taxes; and Increasing and Restructuring the Excise Tax Rates on Alcohol. During the recess, Arroyo said she will continue with the House Oversight hearings to make sure the laws made by Congress are properly implemented. Our oversight committee hearings shall continue during the three-month campaign recess chaired by the several congressmen who are either not running for any post in May or are running unopposed. When we return from the campaign recess, we will go back to legislation, she said. We expect several of the bills we have passed on third reading to be acted on by the Senate in the last month of the 17th congress. In that case there will be bicameral conferences and reports to be ratified, the Speaker said. Leyte Rep. Vicente Veloso, chairman of the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments Chairman, echoed Andayas view, adding that the Constitution provides that no money shall be spent out of the Treasury unless budgeted by the Congress. We lawmakers ay mandated by the Constitution to pass laws, including appropriation bills. All bills and appropriation shall originate from the House of Representatives, Veloso said. He said House members submit the planned expenditures of their respective districts to the Department of Budget and Management, which in turn consolidates the submissions into a proposal. Under Section 25 (of Article 6), we cannot increase, we can only decrease the proposed expenditure. We can realign in the process We only pass the budget. If there are irregularities in the money we allocate, that is beyond Congress, said Veloso. Veloso also appealed not to call congressmen as members of the House of Representa-thieves. Andaya, meanwhile, said that the Arroyo-led House see to it that congressional entitlements are distributed equitably. The general rule is equity, not equal... equitable depending on the need of the place, he said. I dont think there is a district which is not in need of any government service. I cannot think of a district that does not need any assistance from the national government. Andaya also stressed that politicking was not given room as all districts received their fair share of the budget. No district should be left behind. No zero congressional entitlements, he added. The House leadership will always assert its power to pass a transparent money measure, Andaya said.
The United States is racing to develop hypersonic missiles that can travel at five times the speed of sound, officials have confirmed.
Heather Wilson, secretary of the US Air Force, said the effort was being made to keep pace with other nations like Russia and China while speaking on Friday at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
The US Air Force currently operates 80 satellites in space, the secretary added. Her comments followed reports suggesting Russia was also developing new missile systems after Washington announced plans to exit from a landmark nuclear arms control pact.
Vladimir Putin said over the weekend that Russia has suspended the Cold War-era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) which banned both countries from stationing short and intermediate-range land-based missiles in Europe.
Meanwhile, Moscow and Washington have accused each other of violating the treaty and Mr Putin said Russia had acted after the United States announced it was withdrawing from the pact.
Washington had made clear it planned to start research, development and design work on new missile systems and Moscow would do the same, Mr Putin said.
He added the Russian military should start work on creating land-based launch systems for an existing ship-launched cruise missile, the Kalibr, and for longer-range hypersonic missiles.
Russian officials have said the work should be completed by the end of next year so the new systems were ready by 2021.
Still, US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood told a UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Tuesday that the country would reconsider its withdrawal from the INF treaty should Russia return to full and verifiable compliance.
This is Russias final opportunity to return to compliance, Mr Wood said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United States has presented a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council calling for international aid deliveries and a presidential vote in Venezuela, triggering a Russian counter-proposal.
While no date has yet been set for a vote on the American draft, and negotiations are ongoing, Russia is likely to use its veto power to block it as part of its support of Nicolas Maduro's regime, diplomats said.
The text, a copy of which was obtained by AFP on Saturday, expresses "full support for the National Assembly as the only democratically elected institution in Venezuela."
The legislative body's chairman, Juan Guaido, has declared himself interim president of Venezuela, challenging Maduro's rule.
The draft resolution stresses "deep concern with the violence and excessive use of force by Venezuelan security forces against unarmed, peaceful protesters."
It also "calls for the immediate start of a political process leading to free, fair and credible presidential elections, with international electoral observation, in line with Venezuela's constitution."
The text also requests that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres "utilize his good offices" to obtain such elections.
It also "stresses the need to prevent further deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Venezuela and to facilitate access and delivery of assistance to all in need in the entirety of the territory of Venezuela."
On Friday, Moscow proposed an alternative resolution to the American one, diplomats said.
It expresses "concern over the threats to use force against the territorial integrity and political independence of... Venezuela," according to a draft seen by AFP.
The draft also criticizes "attempts to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of... Venezuela."
Calling for a "peaceful" resolution of the stalemate in Venezuela, it "supports all initiatives aimed at reaching a political solution amongst Venezuelans to the current situation... through a genuine and inclusive process of national dialogue."
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However, a diplomat told AFP that if put to a vote, the Russian text would fail to obtain the minimum of nine votes to pass without another veto-wielding country blocking it.
Humanitarian aid sent by the United States recently arrived in the Colombian city of Cucuta at the border with Venezuela, but Maduro has refused to let in the shipments.
Guaido said Friday he was ready to take any necessary measures, including authorizing a US military intervention, to force Maduro from power and alleviate the humanitarian crisis.
Seoul (AFP) - There was still some hard work to be done ahead of the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a Washington envoy said Saturday after three days of talks in Pyongyang.
Stephen Biegun, the US Special Representative for North Korea, said preparatory talks had been productive, but more dialogue was needed ahead of the summit scheduled for Vietnam from February 27-28.
Biegun on Saturday briefed South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on his Pyongyang visit, shortly after Trump revealed the summit would take place in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
"We have some hard work to do with the DPRK between now and then," Biegun told Kang, adding: "I'm confident that if both sides stay committed we can make real progress here.
Trump announced Hanoi as the location on Twitter, hailing as "very productive" the preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said.
The State Department said talks during Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula".
It also confirmed Biegun had agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the summit.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with the top brass of the Korean People's Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernize the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
- Ending the Korean War? -
Attention will now focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward denuclearization.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war."
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The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South.
Experts say the most likely scenario in Vietnam is that the concerned parties -- North and South Korea, the US, and China -- to declare a formal end to the war as a political statement.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula".
But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV."
On Friday Trump tweeted that North Korea will become a "great Economic Powerhouse" under Kim.
"He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is," said Trump.
But Park Won-gon, a professor at South Korea's Handong University, said Trump's remarks may not align with Pyongyang's current agenda.
"What Pyongyang wants now, more than anything, is the lifting of the existing sanctions," Park told AFP.
"The idea of being an economic powerhouse may sound too vague and even unrealistic for them at this moment."
North Korea, which holds most of the peninsula's mineral resources, was once wealthier than the South, but decades of mismanagement and the demise of its former paymaster the Soviet Union have left it deeply impoverished.
In 2017 the UN Security Council banned the North's main exports -- coal and other mineral resources, fisheries and textile products -- to cut off its access to hard currency in response to Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
burs-oh/ska/wd/fox
The markets remarkable New Year momentum cooled this week, but major indexes managed to notch a rally into the green on Friday afternoon, easing some concerns about fresh trade uncertainties ahead of the weekend.
Wall Street is also over the hump of Q4 earnings season, as more than half of the S&P 500s member companies have now filed their latest results. Returns have been impressive during earnings season despite mixed numbers and shaky guidance in certain industries, but there certainly feels like enough marquee reports yet to come that could paint a clearer picture of this seasons overarching theme.
With that said, investors should remember to use the Zacks Earnings Calendar to plan out their schedules for earnings, dividend announcements, and other important financial releases. This handy tool is your perfect one-stop-shop to properly prepare for the market events that will have an impact on your own portfolio.
Today, were going to take a look at a few of the upcoming weeks most important reports. This is an incomplete list, no doubt. The companies below, in our view, simply carry the heaviest narratives into their reports, and they should serve as great indicators for their broader industries.
Check out our top earnings reports to watch for the week of February 11:
1. Activision Blizzard, Inc. (ATVI)
Activision Blizzard was battered this week amid weak results from industry rivals EA EA and Take-Two TTWO, which both cited continued pressure from free-to-play games such as Fortnite as headwinds for their businesses. Moreover, ATVI has lost about half its value in the past four months as investors have grown more skeptical about traditional video game publishers.
The maker of Call of Duty will try to revert that trend with a better report of its own next week. Analysts are expecting adjusted earnings of $1.29 per share, according to our latest Zacks Consensus Estimate. This consensus, which represents year-over-year growth of 37%, has moved a penny lower in the past 60 days as some downward estimate revisions have been published. Revenue is expected to be $3.1 billion, up nearly 16% from the year-ago quarter.
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2. Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO)
Cisco shares have rallied more than 15% from their Christmas Eve lows and are heading into the report date with impressive momentum. The IT giant will publish its report after the market closes on Wednesday. It has met or surpassed earnings estimates in every quarter we have on record, dating back to late 2015.
Cisco will look to continue that streak by outperforming a consensus estimate of $0.72 in earnings per share. This consensus has moved a penny higher over the past quarter and would mark growth of 14% from the prior-year period. Revenue estimates are calling for net sales of $12.4 billion, up about 4% year over year.
3. The Coca-Cola Company (KO)
Coca-Cola is scheduled to report its latest results before the opening bell on February 14. KO shares are up about 5% in the past month but are just about flat in the past 12 weeks. The soft beverage icons annual dividend is yielding 3.2% right now. The company has a multi-year history of raising its payout and could be set to do so again.
Based on our latest Zacks Consensus Estimates, it looks like analysts are expecting earnings of $0.43 per share and revenue of $7.1 billion. These results would represent year-over-year growth rates of 10% and -6%. The earnings consensus has moved a penny higher in the past 60 days.
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The journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was killed in 2018 - AFP
A United Nations-led inquiry into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi said on Thursday that evidence pointed to a brutal crime "planned and perpetrated" by Saudi officials.
Khashoggi's killing by a team of Saudi operatives on Oct. 2 provoked widespread revulsion and tarnished the image of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, previously admired in the West for pushing deep changes including tax reform, infrastructure projects and allowing women to drive.
US intelligence agencies believe Crown Prince Mohammed ordered an operation to kill Khashoggi, a critic and Washington Post columnist, and say his body was dismembered and removed to a location still publicly unknown. Riyadh denies the prince had any involvement in the murder.
"Evidence collected during my mission to Turkey shows prime facie case that Mr Khashoggi was the victim of a brutal and premeditated killing, planned and perpetrated by officials of the State of Saudi Arabia," Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions, said in statement issued in Geneva.
She said her Jan 28-Feb 3 mission to Turkey with a team of three experts "could not firmly establish whether the original intention was to abduct Mr Khashoggi, with his murder planned only in the eventuality of this abduction failing."
Saudi officials had "seriously undermined" and delayed Turkey's efforts to investigate the crime scene at its Istanbul consulate, where Khashoggi had gone to get papers needed for his wedding, she said.
Neither the Saudi government communications office nor Turkey's foreign ministry gave immediate responses to requests for comment on the report.
Delayed access to the consulate and residence and "clean up of the crimes scenes", had severely limited the potential for the Turkish criminal forensic investigation to "produce telling evidence", Ms Callamard added.
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After Khashoggi's first visit to the consulate on Sept 28, Saudi planning included "the travel of the three teams that carried out the operation; the presence of a lookalike of Mr Khashoggi who was seen leaving the consulate; the presence of a forensic doctor; the escape of the teams' members and, of course, the disposal of Mr Khashoggi's body."
It was "unconscionable" that Saudi authorities continued to fail to disclose the whereabouts of Khashoggi's remains, "after having admitted that he met his death within their custody in their consular premises," she added.
Ms Callamard said her team had access to part of "chilling and gruesome audio material" of Khashoggi's death obtained by the Turkish intelligence agency. She had also been promised access to forensic and police reports critical to her inquiry.
A Saudi public prosecutors spokesman said late last year that 11 Saudis had been indicted and referred for trial over the case, with authorities seeking the death penalty for five.
Saudi Arabia has denied Turkey's request for extradition of the 11 suspects, amid conflicting claims for jurisdiction, Ms Callamard said.
She had "major concerns" about the fairness of the trial proceedings and had sought an official visit to the kingdom.
(Reuters) - New laws on foreign investment in the UK will block Chinese firm Huawei from sensitive UK tech projects, The Sun newspaper reported on Friday.
Many are concerned that allowing Huawei an inside track on the rollout of the 5G mobile network in the UK would let China spy on private lives and hack UK companies, The Sun said.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson are among those concerned about the Chinese firm's reach, the report said.
(Reporting by Gaurika Juneja in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler)
(Reuters) - A U.S. federal court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit against BlackRock Inc that had accused the world's largest fund manager of charging too much in investment advisory fees, according to a preliminary order.
Investors in the BlackRock Global Allocation Fund and the BlackRock Equity Dividend Fund had filed suit in 2014 alleging the fund manager charged fees substantially in excess of those charged by other similar funds.
Judge Freda Wolfson of U.S. District Court in Trenton, New Jersey, ordered that the full ruling be sealed for 30 days until the parties could make a submission to redact portions of the order. In the preliminary ruling the judge "ordered that Plaintiffs claims are dismissed in their entirety."
BlackRock declined to comment.
(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Packaging Institute of the Philippines outgoing president Joseph Ross Jocson
State-of-the-art and digital technologies have penetrated the Philippines packaging space with the recent staging of ProPak, the leading processing and packaging trade event in Asia. The event, attended by more than 4,000 participants in January 2019, offered sustainable and affordable packaging solutions for the countrys micro, small and medium enterprises. Organized by UBM Philippines and powered by ProPak Asia, ProPak Philippines 2019 is the first-of-its-kind food, drink and pharmaceutical focused international trade show in the country. It exhibited world-class packaging and processing machines to boost the capability of local packaging service providers and MSMEs.UBM said food manufacturing remains the Philippines strongest manufacturing sector, representing 65 percent of the industry, which is in need of upgraded technology and a higher level of automation. The Packaging Institute of the Philippines expressed optimism that the sector will replicate the countrys economic growth which is expected to be within the vicinity of 6 percent in 2019. PIP is also looking at a stable growth for the industry based on the strong showing of the manufacturing sector, said outgoing president Joseph Ross Jocson. Growth is a given for the packaging industry. It is always growing since it correlates food and to the rise in population. A growing population means more food and more food means an increase in packaging needs, Jocson said. While the biggest portion of packaging dedicated to food, almost everything that is manufactured needs to be packaged such as garments, consumer goods, electronics, appliances, among others. Packaging comprises at least 20 percent of the total cost of a product, especially for manufactured food. For some products, there are times that packaging is even more costly than the product itself. Globally, it is estimated to be a $1-trillion industry.Compared to its Asean neighbors, the Philippines is said to be one of the laggards in terms of packaging technology. Thats precisely the reason why we brought in ProPak to give manufacturers options when it comes to their packaging requirements. For 20 years now, Propak has always been in Bangkok, China and Vietnam. Our MSMEs have no means to go these countries to look for the latest trend in packaging, Jocson said. In MSME development, the key is to make entrepreneurs smarter by exposing them to all new developments via networks like ProPak to solve the problem of minimum order quantity that has been hampering MSMEs, said Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez. The three-day event held on Jan. 24 to 26, brought together 292 leading companies from 29 countries with nine international pavilions from China, Denmark, Italy, Germany, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the UK. The Philippine government also saw the importance of good packaging in enhancing the marketability and competitiveness of Philippine MSMEs. Packaging in the words of Secretary Ramon Lopez, is your form of advertisement, said Trade Undersecretary Zenaida Maglaya. ProPak is envisioned to be an annual venue for Filipino producers to explore more options for packaging.
DUBLIN (Reuters) - An influential U.S. Congressman warned Britain on Thursday that the prospects for any bilateral trade deal could be influenced by what agreement is reached over the Irish border in a Brexit accord.
Richard Neal, chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, was speaking after meeting Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who was in Washington to ask members of Capitol Hill's Irish-American caucus to use their influence to ensure nothing is done to undermine peace in Northern Ireland.
London, Dublin and Brussels want to avoid physical checks on the border between the British province and EU-member Ireland, which was marked by military checkpoints before a 1998 peace agreement ended three decades of violence.
However, with 50 days to go until Britain is scheduled to leave the bloc, they disagree on the "backstop" Brexit negotiators say must be put in place to exclude such checks.
"It's going to weigh on my mind. I've already expressed my concerns to the United States Trade Represetative," Democratic Congressman Neal, whose committee oversees trade, told Irish national broadcaster RTE.
"We want a bilateral trade agreement with the United Kingdom, but at the same time I think that I would raise the same concerns that are being raised now and that would be obviously no return to a hard border."
Fellow Democratic committee member Brendan Boyle last week introduced a resolution to Congress outlining opposition to the reintroduction of a hard border in Northern Ireland.
Boyle said he and colleagues had been meeting with officials from Dublin, London and Brussels for over two years on the issue.
Coveney, whose visit to Washington was a long-standing commitment and not a response to British lawmakers vote last week to seek changes to the backstop, said he was not lobbying against the United Kingdom or asking members of Congress to take sides.
"What we are asking people to do though is to inform themselves and to ensure that the influence that they have and the contacts that they have are used to ensure that nothing is done to undermine a peace process," he said.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
By Rodi Said
QAMISHLI, Syria (Reuters) - The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) began an assault against the final Islamic State enclave in eastern Syria on Saturday, aiming to wipe out the last vestige of the jihadist group's "caliphate" in the SDF's area of operations.
President Donald Trump, who is planning to pull U.S. forces out of Syria, said on Wednesday he expected an announcement as early as next week that the U.S.-led coalition operating in support of the SDF had reclaimed all the territory previously held by the jihadist group.
The enclave, close to the Iraqi border, comprises two villages. Islamic State also still has territory in the part of Syria that is mostly under the control of the Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government.
Mustafa Bali, the head of the SDF media office, told Reuters the aim of the assault was to "eliminate the last remnants of the terrorist organisation" and called it the "last battle". He later wrote on Twitter that the battle had started.
Bali told Reuters in the last 10 days SDF fighters had handled the battle "patiently" as more than 20,000 civilians were evacuated from the besieged enclave.
The SDF, spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, has driven Islamic State out of a swathe of territory in northern and eastern Syria over the last four years.
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the group's "caliphate" in 2014 in territory stretching across Iraq and Syria. But the group lost its two main prizes - the Syrian city of Raqqa and Iraq's Mosul - in 2017.
After capturing Raqqa, the SDF advanced southwards into Deir al-Zor province, attacking the jihadists in territory on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.
The remaining Islamic State territory in Syria is west of the Euphrates.
Trump announced in December he was pulling all 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, saying the battle against Islamic State there was almost won.
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But a top U.S. general said on Tuesday the group would pose an enduring threat following the U.S. withdrawal, as it retained leaders, fighters, facilitators and resources that would fuel a menacing insurgency.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the U.S. military was preparing to withdraw from Syria by the end of April.
A U.S. official confirmed that target date to Reuters, saying the withdrawal included a pull-out from the U.S. military base at Tanf, near the Syrian border with Iraq and Jordan.
GRAPHIC: https://graphics.reuters.com/MIDEAST-CRISIS-SYRIA/010081ST38B/MIDEAST-CRISIS-SYRIA.jpg
(Reporting by Rodi Said in Syria; Writing by Tom Perry in Beirut; Editing by Alexander Smith and John Stonestreet)
In this Wednesday, March 27, 2013 file photo, Melati a female Sumatran Tiger walks past her frozen pool at London Zoo.
Two rare tigers at the London Zoo were paired to mate in efforts to protect their species, until their first interaction turned deadly.
Sumatran tigers Asim, a male, and Melati, a female, were being introduced Friday for the first time in the same space when Asim soon became aggressive and killed Melati, the zoo said in a statement Friday.
"Everyone at ZSL London Zoo is devastated by the loss of Melati, and we are heartbroken by this turn of events," the zoo said.
Asim arrived from Denmark 10 days prior as part of a European-wide conservation breeding program.
"Asim is a handsome, confident cat who is known for being very affectionate with the ladies in his life we're hoping he'll be the perfect mate for our beautiful Melati," head tiger keeper Kathryn Sanders said in a statement in January.
The two tigers were held in adjoining enclosures before being in the same space so that they could "see, smell and react to each other."
"As with all big cats, introductions, however carefully planned, are always considered to be high risk," the zoo said.
London Zoo was hopeful though that their interaction would be positive and said they saw good initial signs of the match.
"There has been lots of 'chuffing' which is a happy sound they make to let each other know they have good intentions. Its fantastic to see that theyre interested in each other already," Sanders said in January.
More: 4 meerkats, aardvark die in London Zoo fire
Asim, 7, approached Melati, 10, when the adjoining door was opened, but both tigers were cautious to begin.
"Their introduction began as predicted, but quickly escalated into a more aggressive interaction," according to the zoo.
Staff tried using flares, alarms and other loud noises to distract them, but Asim had already pounced.
Asim was coaxed into a separate enclosure, and veterinarians confirmed Melati had died, the zoo said.
The tiger exhibit was closed for the rest of the day and the zoo said staff was caring for Asim.
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An endangered species, Sumatran tigers are the smallest surviving tiger subspecies, and only 400 remain, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Deforestation and poaching has devastated the species, but organizations have increased conservation efforts.
The European Endangered Species Programme, which matched Asim with Melati, tries to prevent extinction by promoting genetic diversity within the tiger population, according to the London Zoo.
Follow USA TODAY's Ryan Miller on Twitter @RyanW_Miller
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Two endangered tigers were supposed to mate. But it turned deadly instead, zoo says
Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump's choice to lead the World Bank is a firebrand critic of the world's largest anti-poverty lender -- an institution he has called wasteful, corrupt and overly generous to China.
Those complaints are similar to those voiced by others in the development community. But that does not mean they have found a new ally in David Malpass, the senior US Treasury official who has pledged to reform the bank.
Nancy Pelosi, the newly reinstalled Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives, says Trump's choice threatens to "undermine the institution's mission."
And Liberia's former minister of public works W. Gyude Moore tweeted that "an incorrigible arsonist will now be our fire chief."
Malpass' many criticisms of the Washington-based lender certainly echo familiar refrains.
Many activists have long called for reforms at the World Bank, citing a litany of alleged human rights failures and scandals, and saying projects all too often left the world's poorest even worse off, harmed the environment or entrenched the power of oligarchies and despots.
Those critics might well have nodded their heads in accord in 2017 when Malpass said international financial institutions such as the World Bank "spend a lot of money" but are "not very efficient."
"They are often corrupt in their lending practices and they don't get the benefit to the actual people in the countries," he said in congressional testimony.
When pressed for examples, he cited situations in Venezuela and South Africa, countries that do not have programs with the World Bank.
Internal audits and outside reports have, however, tied World Bank funds to forced labor in Uzbekistan, death squads in Honduras and a Chadian oil pipeline that enriched the undemocratic local government all while child mortality rose, to name just a few examples.
So is Malpass a kindred spirit?
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Analysts and activists say probably not.
- 'Fundamentally opposed'? -
David Pred, head of Inclusive Development International, which has accused the World Bank of back-door financing for coal-fired energy in Asia that is likely to spur global warming, strongly questioned Trump's choice.
"While some of Malpass' past critiques of the World Bank may be valid, the former chief economist of a financial institution whose recklessness helped blow up the global economy in 2008 is one of the last people we can count on to make the bank more accountable," he told AFP.
Malpass served as chief economist at the former investment bank Bear Stearns, whose collapse marked the start of the global financial crisis.
To be sure, Malpass' nomination has delighted some observers, including the World Bank's conservative critics.
A Wall Street Journal editorial called Malpass, himself a long-time contributor, "the best man to run" an institution whose operations he well understands.
With a long career in development economics, Malpass has worked to "wean" the increasingly wealthy and ambitious China off World Bank financing as it pursued its ambitious "Belt and Road" infrastructure initiative across multiple continents, the newspaper said.
The Economist likewise said US allies could be "relieved" that Trump had chosen one of his administration's "few remaining grown-ups" to be its next president, calling his reform efforts "mostly unobjectionable and reassuringly unoriginal."
But elsewhere Malpass is not viewed simply as a critic.
Moore, the former Liberian minister, told AFP that Malpass' opposition to lending to China could be incompatible with the bank's very business model.
Returns from those loans provide helps to fund for assistance to low-income countries, many of which are now concentrated in Africa, he said.
"He's never put forth an alternative about how the bank is going to grow its reserves," Moore said.
"To have a person who is fundamentally opposed to the way the bank does business raises questions for me and is alarming."
- 'Drop in the bucket' -
The bank did not respond to Malpass' criticism in 2017, but it touts the precipitous drop in extreme global poverty -- which it says fell to 10 percent from 36 percent between 1990 and 2015 -- as evidence of its success.
The global lender also routinely blacklists corrupt companies and says it scrutinizes projects for corruption risk.
Malpass told reporters last week that the bank had changed since his 2017 testimony.
"There were criticisms that I had that were addressed in the reform package" of 2018, he said, adding that he wanted to focus on the bank's "core mission" of poverty eradication.
Yet Elana Berger, executive director of the Bank Information Center, which scrutinizes World Bank lending and shares some of Malpass' concerns, remains dubious.
"I agree that the World Bank frequently falls short of achieving its mission because its projects are very often not well targeted" towards the goal of poverty reduction, she told AFP.
But she said it was unclear whether Malpass shares the bank's goals.
For instance, in accepting Trump's nomination last week, Malpass hailed the bank's new Saudi-supported Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, spearheaded by the president's daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump.
Berger said that $1 billion fund represented "a drop in the bucket" compared to the billions the bank spends in a given year.
The bank's board will accept nominations through mid-March, but under an unwritten rule Washington has anointed the World Bank's president since its creation following World War II -- a custom that faces mounting opposition.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this month will be held in Hanoi. "My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump said on Twitter. "I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said. (Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by David Alexander)
By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration signaled on Friday it was unlikely to meet a deadline to report to Congress on whether it intends to impose sanctions on those responsible for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, prompting an angry backlash on Capitol Hill. Republican and Democratic lawmakers triggered a provision of the Global Magnitsky human rights act in October, giving the administration 120 days until Feb. 8 to report on who was responsible for the death of Khashoggi and whether the United States would impose sanctions on that person or persons. Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who wrote for The Washington Post, was killed at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in early October, sparking global outrage. In Saudi Arabia, 11 suspects have been indicted in the murder, and officials have rejected accusations that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing. Congressional aides said they had not received a report from the White House by early evening on Friday. Some said they still hoped to receive it by early next week, but the administration said President Donald Trump did not feel the need to send one. "The President maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate," a senior administration official said in an emailed statement. "The U.S. Government will continue to consult with Congress and work to hold accountable those responsible for Jamal Khashoggi's killing." Some lawmakers responded angrily and said they intended to punish whoever was responsible. "The administration's refusal to deal with this issue and keep Congress informed underscores the need to get to the bottom of what is motivating the Trump foreign policy," Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. The New York Times reported on Thursday that the Saudi crown prince had said a year before Khashoggi's death that he would use "a bullet" on Khashoggi if he did not return home and end his criticism of the government. Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir told reporters on Friday the prince did not order Khashoggi's killing but declined comment on the Times story. Al-Jubeir said he wanted Congress to let the Saudi legal process conclude before taking action on sanctions. "We are doing what we need to do in terms of acknowledging the mistake, investigating, charging and holding people accountable," he said. Al-Jubeir said he believed some congressional criticism was "driven by politics." 'THE LAW IS CLEAR' Juan Pachon, a spokesman for Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Trump was breaking the law by failing to send the report. "The law is clear," Pachon said. "It requires a determination and report in response to the letter we sent with (former Foreign Relations Chairman Bob) Corker. The president has no discretion here. He's either complying with the law or breaking it." Members of Congress, including many of Trump's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, have clamored for a strong response to Khashoggi's murder as well as the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Ahead of the deadline, a group of Republican and Democratic senators on Thursday renewed their push to penalize Saudi Arabia, unveiling legislation to bar some arms sales and impose sanctions on those responsible for Khashoggi's death. Trump has resisted such legislative efforts, viewing weapons sales as an important source of U.S. jobs and standing by the Saudi crown prince. He is also reluctant to disturb the strategic relationship with the kingdom, seen as an important regional counterbalance to Iran. Senator Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he expected more legislation would be introduced. Risch also said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote to him on Friday, describing the Trump administration's past sanctions and adding that he expected "a more detailed briefing" later. The United States imposed economic sanctions on 17 Saudi officials - not including the crown prince - in November for their role in Khashoggi's killing. A State Department spokesperson confirmed that Pompeo had provided an update to members of Congress on Friday, but did not give details on what he said. After receiving Pompeo's letter, Senator Menendez said: "I am very disappointed that the response from Secretary Pompeo doesn't come close to fulfilling the statutory mandate and demonstrates what the administration has wanted all along - the Khashoggi murder to be forgotten." (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; additional reporting by Jonathan Landay, Arshad Mohammed and Lesley Wroughton; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Sonya Hepinstall)
Donald Trumps administration is holding direct talks with members of the Venezuelan military and urging them to abandon president Nicolas Maduro, according to a new report.
Two weeks after opposition politician Juan Guaido declared himself Venezuelas president and a succession of countries, including the US, recognised him as its legitimate leader, a White House official said it was speaking with members of the armed forces and hoping for more defections. The official also said Mr Trump was preparing new sanctions against Mr Maduros government.
We believe these to be those first couple pebbles before we start really seeing bigger rocks rolling down the hill, the unidentified official told Reuters.
The official added: Were still having conversations with members of the former Maduro regime, with military members, although those conversations are very, very limited.
In the two weeks since Mr Guaido, a leader of the defunct national assembly and a protege of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, declared himself president, he has been recognised by a number of major nations, including Canada, the UK and many European countries.
China, Russia, and Mexico still regonise Mr Maduro, who were sworn in for a second term six-year term in January, following an election last year that was criticised by many members of the international community as flawed. It was boycotted by the opposition.
Mr Maduro has denounced the efforts of Mr Guaido and those nations who support him and engaging in nothing less that a coup.
In recent days, the US has been delivering humanitarian supplies to locations outside of Venezuela, which has been more than three million people flee economic hardship, hunger and political violence.
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Theres an attempt to violate our national sovereignty with this show of a humanitarian operation by the government of Donald Trump, Mr Maduro said, according to the Associated Press.
Most observers believe the fate of Mr Maduro depends on what the countrys military does. For now, there have been few defections, with analysts pointing out that large number of senior officers have been part of a corrupt system benefitting from the presidents rule. They are unlikely to enjoy such lives under a new government.
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The most senior defector has been Venezuelan air force Gen Francisco Yanez, who earlier this month posted a video saying he was throwing his support behind the 35-year-old Mr Guaido.
Most top military have declared their support for Mr Maduro. In the days after Mr Guaidos action, defence minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said Mr Maduro was the countrys legitimate president and that the opposition was seeking to carry out a coup.
I warn the people that there is a coup under way against our democracy and our president Nicolas Maduro, Mr Padrino said.
Those of us who lived through the coup of 2002 have it etched into our minds, we never thought wed see that again, but we saw it yesterday.
The US has a long history of interfering in the domestic politics of nations in Latin America, even supporting and organising coups. While Mr Maduro has faced widespread criticism for his increasingly authatorian rule and his his mismanagement of what was once a wealthy nation, the actions of the Trump administration have also been condemned by those who feel the US should keep its nose out.
Congresswomen Tulsi Gabbard, who is seeing to become the Democratic Partys candidate for the 2020 presidential race, said two weeks ago: The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We dont want other countries to choose our leaders so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.
Photo credit: RossHelen - Getty Images
From Men's Health
Throughout history, the battlefield has been key to civilian medical advancement- think vaccines, antibiotics, and the ambulance service, to name a few. In recent years, trauma care has dramatically improved through a few simple changes that, unfortunately, are now relevant in the civilian world. In 2018 alone, there were 323 mass shootings-defined as four or more people shot in the same location at roughly the same time-in the U.S. Last year also marked more school shootings than ever before, and for the first time in American history, the public school system is on record to do more lock down drills than fire drills.
Photo credit: .
I'm writing about combat and civilian casualties because of my background. I was part of the Army 75th Ranger Regiment for five years. It's a light infantry special operations unit regarded as the Armys premier direct action raid force. Personally, Im partial to what our Afghan interpreter informed me the locals called us: "The men with the green eyes who come in the night," referencing the glow of our night vision goggles. Of my five years on active duty, two were spent full-throttle serving as a Battalion Surgeon in the 75th Ranger Regiment.
Photo credit: Courtesy
What drew me to pursue serving as a surgeon with the Rangers? The unrelenting standards. Elsewhere in the special operations, the soldiers are split between operators, the bad asses coming out of the water in recruiting commercials, and "support" for which there are different training requirements. Not in the Rangers. Every soldier must uphold the minimum physical, marksmanship, and airborne standards regardless of rank and function. Prior to my arrival, my unit went for 18 months without a doctor because physicians go through the same selection process as other Ranger leaders and kept failing.
These standards are the reason Rangers are so good at saving lives on the battlefield. I'm now an emergency room physician and gave a lecture to the emergency physicians at a respected major trauma center and shared an unwelcome truth: If I got shot outside the hospital I would rather have a team of non-medical, high-school educated Rangers take care of me than any group of ER doctors. The reason? Rangers are drilled to be fast and efficient. I have clear memories of repeat training iterations well past midnight involving assessing, treating, and evacuating casualties using night vision in the midst of flash bang grenades, live machine gun fire, and rotor wash from nearby helicopters.
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Photo credit: Courtesy
Between October 2001 and March 2010, the 75th Ranger Regiment sustained 419 battlefield casualties during over 8,000 combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In spite of overall greater injury severity, the Rangers had significantly better outcomes than the rest of the Department of Defense. Additionally, of the 32 combat deaths, none were considered preventable after action review, meaning that the Rangers life could not have been saved by any change in pre hospital medical care. These statistics were so impressive that they shifted the entire paradigm of American military trauma care.
Tactical Combat Casualty Care, or TCCC is the basis of this shift. Time counts in trauma and the focus of TCCC is on broadening out the responsibility of initial care beyond the few medical personnel out to everyone, and a huge number of lives have been saved because of it. Full training involves a multi-day intensive course, but simple scene safety and the three points below are absolutely enough to save a fellow human should you be unfortunate enough to have the option to act.
1) Stay Safe Yourself
This is by far and away the most important principle. I want to reemphasize this: Do not add to the problem. Until the threat is neutralized, you need to maintain cover and do all you can to prevent being shot yourself. This is not just for yourself-if you become a casualty while attempting to do a great thing, you are further stressing the available medical resources and are decreasing the chance of others being treated in time.
2) Stop the Bleeding
Extremity wounds are the number one cause of preventable combat death. Extremity bleeding is stopped by use of a tourniquet rapidly applied painfully tight and as high up on the extremity as possible way above the actual wound. Bullets can track weird courses; think J.F.K.. The initial tourniquet should be put on rapidly, over the clothes and as near the torso as possible to keep the blood near vital organs. There are numerous effective products, but the CAT tourniquet is the best known and costs around $20 on Amazon. I keep a few in my vehicle. A belt or whatever else you can tie around is secondary option, but has to be tight, like really tight. Do not worry about killing the limb with a tourniquet; hours can safely pass before any real damage occurs.
Photo credit: Courtesy
Treat shots in junctional areas-places you cant get a tourniquet on, but it's possible to compress, like the groin, armpit, and near the neck-with pressure. Focused pressure is the most effective, a finger tip where the bleeding is coming from is far better than a huge gob of bandages that slowly soak with large quantities of blood. I have gone un-sterile into the operating room with my hand inside my patients neck to prevent further blood loss from a slit throat.
Shots in the box (torso and abdomen) need a surgeon. Period. Your best care is to get them to a hospital ASAP. If there are a lot of people injured the ambulance service can be overwhelmed and going by private vehicle is totally appropriate and often life saving. In penetrating trauma, gunshots and stabs, you do not need to worry about preventing spinal injury, just get them to a vehicle and go.
Photo credit: simonkr - Getty Images
2) Treat a Sucking Chest Wound.
A penetrating injury to the chest or upper abdomen needs a simple plastic covering to prevent a rapidly fatal complication called a tension pneumothorax. This is where with each breath air gets sucked in through the wound and gets trapped in the chest cavity progressively raising the intrathoracic pressure and collapsing the lung and large veins returning to the heart. The dressing can be simple, a candy bar wrapper, zip lock bag, etc. held or duck taped over the wound.
3) Provide Warmth
Keep the casualty warm with a blanket, ideally, but coats, the shirt off your back, or whatever else you have around will work. Blood loss and injury causes decreased body temperature even in really warm environments. This causes what textbook's describe as the coagulopathy of trauma. Basically, your bodys natural process to stop bleeding is dependent on enzymatic reactions that are slowed or stopped by cold. So you can drastically reduce the overall blood loss by keeping the casualty warm and allowing their body to do its part.
The simple steps in this article are absolutely enough to save a life without further medical training. If you want to take it a step further, Citizen Aid has slimmed down the militarys casualty care training system for civilians. They focus on the initial life saving minutes before professional help arrives and offer a free what to do in a shooting phone app, trauma supply kits, and a one-hour $14 online training with a 1:1 matching incentive which trains a teacher.
Action is the first step to being a hero. Not long ago, in a state-of-the-art, fully resourced emergency room trauma bay, I was unable to bring back a healthy male in his early 20s with a simple gunshot to the leg. He bled to death in the middle of the day on a busy street full of good people. Literally just one person going up and taking action, either by putting a tourniquet on his thigh or even just jamming a shirt hard into the injury with a thumb, would have saved his life. Take action, my friends.
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Seoul (AFP) - Some 2,500 South Koreans marched through Seoul Saturday to honour a worker who was crushed to death at a coal plant fuelling an outcry which led to a landmark amendment of the nation's industrial safety laws.
Kim Yong-kyun, 24, died last month after being sucked into a coal conveyor belt. He was working as a contractor at a power plant 110 kilometres (70 miles) south of Seoul.
His death triggered uproar in South Korea where critics say work safety is compromised for temporary or contract workers -- despite being a wealthy, developed economy which is the fourth biggest in Asia.
Labour activists say if Kim had not been working unaccompanied, another person could have saved Kim's life by turning off the conveyor belt. Kim was the ninth subcontracted worker to have died from work-related injuries at the Chungnam plant in Taean since 2010.
Kim's mother, Kim Mi-sook, refused to hold a funeral until the government introduced protective measures for temporary workers, 60 percent of whom are deprived of employment benefits including health insurance.
The funeral ceremony finally took place on Saturday after the government offered to turn 2,200 temporary workers into full-time employees.
Street protests following Kim's death led to the amendment of the Industrial Safety Act, which bans companies from subcontracting high-risk tasks such as those requiring the use of mercury.
Young temporary workers attended the funeral wearing headbands that read "I am Kim Yong-Kyun". Kim's father, Kim Hae-gi, sobbed as he hugged the coffin.
"I hope you get to be born again," said Park Seok-woon, the chair Korea Alliance for Progressive Movement, a local NGO, at the ceremony.
"I hope you get to live in a world where life is valued more than anything else".
South Korea has one of the highest workplace fatality rates among developed countries.
According to labour ministry data, 1,957 South Koreans died of work-related injuries or diseases in 2017.
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Of 20 employees who died after being injured while working for the nation's five major power plants from 2014 to last year, all were subcontracted workers, according to a report by lawmaker Lim Lee-ja's office.
In 2016, an unaccompanied, subcontracted worker was killed by a train while repairing platform screen doors at Seoul's Guui subway station, aged 19.
Kim, a college graduate, spent more than six months trying to find a full-time position before taking the temporary position at the power plant.
As of 2017, 51 percent of all Koreans aged 15-24 were working in part-time or contract positions, according to a study by Korea Labor Institute.
Kim's mother sobbed as she read out a letter to her son at the ceremony.
"I don't know how to live now that you are gone," she said. "I will always love you."
Arlene is an oil painter and she has an autistic son, Zac, who is now 11 years old. She says that if she wins the P25-million grand prize in Smart Amazing 25, she will use the money to construct a building that will house an art museum and a school for children with autism and Down syndrome. Proceeds from the operations will support institutions that care for persons with special needs. The building will employ persons with disabilities. The complex will be called Manger, inspired by the Baby Jesus in the Manger. The vision Arlene has in mind is a building that serves as a home to a community that society in the olden days see as misfits. The people in her establishment do not have the refinements of persons that readers see in glossy magazines. Instead, the building will be home to persons who exude genuine compassion, understanding and humility. The place will be filled with activities that promote learning while discovering simple joys, laughter and music. It will be spacious. Walls will be high. Spaces will be airy. The environment will be colorful yet soothing, with lots of flowers and instrumental music. The sound, however, will always conform to the level that is comfortable for autistic persons with sensory overload. The building will promote absolute respect for all differently-abled persons. The quality of art the community will produce will be the talk of the town. Patrons of the arts will come over, not for charity, but because they hear about the explosion of creative talents in the complex. Clients will want to bring home paintings and works of art that radiate comfort and joy. Learners will see a completely different perspective on the big issue called life. Arlene has seen a facility similar to this in San Francisco as she watched YouTube. The place became a sort of a blessing to the busy urban population. People who want to relieve themselves of stress, anxiety and depression habitually visit the place. In the building, one does not have to be conscious of who she or he is. Through the creations of people in Arlenes place, visitors enter a beautiful world serene and pure...so long as guests are bent on seeing and giving joy to people who do not conform to current conventions, so long as they believe that life is fleeting. And that service to others and unconditional love are words to live by and not just cliches. They will be welcomed with an embrace by Arlene and Zac inside the building that was constructed using the P25 million cash prize from Smart Amazing 25 grand raffle.Smarts biggest raffle promo, Smart Amazing 25, is the companys way of showing thanks for the loyalty and support of subscribers nationwide for the past 25 years. The raffle promo gives one lucky subscriber a chance to win P25 million cash grand prize to be drawn next month. Smart is also giving away smartphones, MVP Rewards points and data in separate monthly draws. The promo is open to all active Smart, Sun and TNT subscribers until Feb. 25, 2019. To join, subscribers need to register once. Simply dial *121#; choose AMAZING 25 on the menu, and followethe steps to confirm the sign up. Right after the registration, subscribers start earning and accumulating raffle entries. Prepaid subscribers earn raffle entries each time they avail of the promotions through retailers or text registration. More entries await those who use *121# to register to select prepaid promos. For Smart, these particular promos are Giga Surf, Giga Surf Plus, All Out Surf and Game Time. For TNT, the promos include Surf Saya, Gaan Surf, Panalo Combo, Panalo Data, Giga Surf and All Out Surf. For Sun, the promos to get are Sulit Surf Plus, Big Time Data, Non-Stop Surf, Giga Surf and All Out Surf. Meanwhile, postpaid subscribers who pay their bills in full and on time can join the raffle. Every P1,000 worth of payment is equivalent to 100 entries. Smart postpaid subscribers can get more raffle entries by buying add-ons such as the Giga Surf offers. Sun subscribers can earn more entries by availing of add-ons like the Social Bundle 199, Chat Bundle 249 and Non-Stop 450. The raffle entries earned by subscribers in January are reset at the end of the month. However, all entries accumulated by subscribers within the promo period are qualified for the grand raffle cash prize of P25 million. As Smarts 25th anniversary approaches, it is giving away monthly instant bonuses through texts, calls or data for prepaid subscribers. They can enjoy these perks until the end of February. Subscribers just have to dial *121# to redeem the bonuses, choose Celebrate Smart Amazing 25, and select Get My Bonus Now to receive a notification about the bonus. Smart has come up with the P25-million cash raffle prize as a salute to its subscribers who have been supporting the company in the last 25 years.
Riga (AFP) - Several thousand people rallied in front of Riga City Hall on Saturday in support of Nils Usakovs, the city's mayor and leader of the popular pro-Kremlin Harmony party, who is under investigation for corruption.
Usakovs faces a confidence vote at city hall next Tuesday after a probe into kickbacks on bus and tram contracts for Riga public transport turned up evidence of graft.
The mostly elderly Russian speaking protesters touted placards saying "Hands off our Mayor Usakovs", "We're here for Nils!", "Don't touch the Riga City Council".
Usakovs, speaking in Latvian and his native Russian, denied any wrongdoing.
At the national level, his popular Harmony party is backed mainly by ethnic Russians who make up about a quarter of Latvia's population of 1.9 million.
It topped October's general election, but was unable to find a coalition partner among mainly ethnic Latvian parties and has been relegated to the opposition.
Usakovs was briefly detained and searched in January in an ongoing corruption probe into bus and tram purchase contracts for city-owned public transportation company Rigas Satiksme.
In December six high-profile suspects, including Rigas Satiksme CEO Leons Bemhens and Maris Martinsons, one of the richest businesspeople in Latvia, were arrested in the probe.
They remain in pre-trial custody as anti-corruption investigators probe kickback schemes involving tram and bus deliveries from Poland and the Czech Republic to Rigas Satiksme.
According to the Polish Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA), the kickback amount was at least 800,000 euros ($905,000), while TV3 Latvija later reported that bribes accounted for five to seven percent of the deal's value.
Protesters rallying for Usakovs on Saturday appeared to be oblivious to the allegations of graft that have engulfed city hall.
"I support Usakovs just because he is Russian, and Vladimir Putin is also Russian," one elderly protester who asked not be identified told AFP.
The gathering was supported by the Latvian Union of Russians, a local Putinist party, but was notably not supported by Honour to Serve Riga, a regional party which forms a majority with Harmony in the 60-seat Riga City Council.
Thai Princess Ubolratana's unprecedented attempt to become the country's next prime minister was abruptly nixed Saturday after her party agreed to comply with a command from the king opposing the plan.
The party's announcement effectively blocking Ubolratana's candidacy came after an extraordinary rebuke by her brother King Maha Vajiralongkorn, and removes a hurdle for the ruling junta to hold onto power after the March 24 vote -- the first since a 2014 coup.
The Thai Raksa Chart party, affiliated with the powerful Shinawatra political clan, had announced the princess as their candidate Friday morning.
The move rattled the status quo and threatened the ambitions of the generals who have controlled Thailand since they toppled the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra almost five years ago. Her brother Thaksin was ousted as premier in a 2006 coup.
But the Thai king torpedoed his sister's bid in a sharply worded statement the same day that said bringing senior royal family members into politics was against tradition and "highly inappropriate".
Thai Raksa Chart responded swiftly, cancelling a campaign event Saturday and issuing a statement saying it "complies with the royal command".
"Chin up and keep moving forward! We learn from past experiences but live for today and the future," Thaksin Shinawatra wrote on Twitter late Saturday.
Thailand has some of the most severe lese majeste laws in the world and the king's word is seldom challenged.
Royalist Thais and celebrities praised the intervention on social media after the order, writing "long live the king".
Others expressed unhappiness with Thai Raksa Chart.
An activist who called himself Champ 1984 said he was "disappointed" with the idea of a pro-democracy party enlisting a royal family member and would now vote for a different party.
- 'Very firm' -
Analysts say the events of the past day will help the military to consolidate power and tilt the odds in favour of junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha.
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Prayut is standing as premier for the Phalang Pracharat party, a group aligned with the regime.
The military has "gained the upper hand", said professor Anusorn Unno from Thammasat University, adding that it is poised to perform well in the vote.
Even before Thai Raksa Chart's reversal, many warned the palace statement had ended the princess' chances.
"The palace disapproval invalidates her candidacy," said Puangthong Pawakapan, professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University.
An Election Commission official said it is reviewing all candidate applications and will finish the process this week, though few expect it to divert from the royal order.
Historian Chris Baker said that while he could not predict what would happen next, the language in the palace statement was strong and "very firm".
Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has not had a royal run for frontline office since 1932.
The 67-year-old princess has yet to address the rebuke head on.
She thanked supporters Saturday on her widely followed Instagram account, saying vaguely that she wanted Thailand to "move forward".
The king did not criticise the princess directly and seemed to focus blame on the politicians who brought her on board.
Both Yingluck and Thaksin live in self-exile to avoid charges which they say are politically motivated.
Observers had said Thaksin and the party would not have teamed up with the princess without royal approval.
But the bold play appears to have backfired dramatically on Thaksin.
"After last night the king's intervention had an effect of discrediting Thaksin," Anusorn said.
Ubolratana is the first-born of former king Bhumibol Adulyadej.
She gave up her royal titles when she married an American in 1972, but they divorced and she moved back to Thailand.
Ubolratana is an unusually public figure for a royal, having starred in movies and maintaining an active social media footprint.
While she said she was exercising her rights as a commoner to stand for prime minister, the statement from the palace said she is she is "still a member of the House of Chakri", referring to the name of the dynasty.
While politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez start pushing for a Green New Deal in Washington, teens stateside are taking cues from Europe, where a huge climate change movement led almost entirely by young women and teen girls is sweeping several countries.
Tens of thousands of students have flooded the streets in the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Belgium to demand we fight climate change, now. Not only is their movement gaining attention in the media, but the young women and girls at the center of the movement are inspiring other women to fight back.
The movement can be traced to September 2018, when Swedish teen Greta Thunberg went on school strike to protest alone outside of Swedens Parliament and demand climate action from her countrys government. Thunberg sought to dispel notions that the Nordic nation is a model of climate responsibility. Sweden is not a green paradise, it has one of the biggest carbon footprints, she told The Guardian in September.
In January, 16-year-old Thunberg traveled to Davos, Switzerland, during the annual World Economic Forum. There, she joined Swiss schoolchildren whod been inspired by her original action to make a statement to world leaders about the looming threat of climate change. While she was in Davos, nearly 30,000 students participated in similar walk-out protests in Belgium and, since late January, even more walk-outs have been happening across Europe.
Some of the most dramatic strikes have been happening in Belgium, with Thursday marking the fourth in a series of weekly walkouts led by a 17-year-old named Anuna De Wever. We deserve a green planet, a secure future and politicians who take responsibility for taking measures that prevent global warming and will continue to fight for it as a single generation, De Wever told the crowds during the mass protest.
We are not here to miss one day of school, but because of the political games that have an influence on our future, added De Wevers friend, Kyra Gantois, another teen credited with helping rapidly grow the Belgian movement. De Wever and Gantois credit Thunberg with giving them the idea to start protesting in early January, growing the European movement and seeing a greater push globally.
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Jamie Margolin, the 17-year-old founder and executive director of Zero Hour a youth-led climate action organization told BuzzFeed News that shes been working on a mass protest set to take place March 15, 2019, across the US. Margolin also said that climate activism is giving women a new voice.
There arent very many spaces that I can be in charge of, and what Im going to say is going to be heard, Margolin said. If youre a victim of a system of oppression, youre more affected by the climate crisis that goes for women. Nobody is going to hand us this. We have to step up and raise our voices.
(Photo by Omer Messinger/Getty Images)
A divided US Supreme Court stopped Louisiana from enforcing new regulations on abortion clinics in a test of the conservative courts views on abortion rights.
The justices said by a 5-4 vote late Thursday that they will not allow the state to put into effect a law that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the courts four liberals in putting a hold on the law, pending a full review of the case.
Donald Trumps two Supreme Court appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, were among the four conservative members of the court who would have allowed the law to take effect.
Justice Kavanaugh wrote a dissenting opinion in which he said the courts action was premature because the state had made clear it would allow abortion providers an additional 45 days to obtain admitting privileges before it started enforcing the law.
If the doctors succeed, they can continue performing abortions, he said. If they fail, they could return to court, Brett Kavanaugh said.
The law is very similar to a Texas measure the justices struck down three years ago. John Roberts dissented in that case.
But the composition of the court has changed since then, with Kavanaugh replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted to strike down the Texas law. Mr Trump had pledged during the campaign to appoint pro-life justices, and abortion opponents are hoping the more conservative bench will be more open to upholding abortion restrictions.
Louisiana abortion providers and a district judge who initially heard the case said one or maybe two of the states three abortion clinics would have to close under the new law. There would be at most two doctors who could meet its requirements, they said.
But the federal appeals court in New Orleans rejected those claims, doubting that any clinics would have to close and saying the doctors had not tried hard enough to establish relationships with local hospitals.
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In January, the full appeals court voted 9-6 not to get involved in the case, setting up the Supreme Court appeal.
The law had been scheduled to take effect Monday, but Justice Samuel Alito delayed the effective date at least through Thursday to give the justices more time. He and Justice Clarence Thomas were the other dissenters Thursday.
The justices could decide this spring whether to add the case to their calendar for the term that begins in October.
Associated Press
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers heard pleas from state and local officials on Thursday to take urgent action to rebuild the nation's infrastructure and address an estimated $2 trillion in needs over the next decade. The hearing by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee was held two days after President Donald Trump reiterated an infrastructure call in his State of the Union speech but stopped short of offering specifics. "Do something. Come up with a plan," said Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who noted the nation's governors have made investing in infrastructure a top priority this year. He called on the federal government to give states "maximum flexibility." Democrat Walz campaigned on hiking state gasoline taxes to fix roads. He said Minnesota will need to spend about $20 billion over the next 20 years on state highways that are in "rough shape." U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio, who chairs the Transportation Committee, said Congress had to act. "Let me be clear that the question is not whether we will need to invest but when we will invest," DeFazio said. "Congress must act to provide significant federal dollars to invest in U.S. infrastructure." Trump vowed as a presidential candidate to win $1 trillion in infrastructure improvements over a decade but did not propose a plan until 13 months in to his term. That plan, which called for using $200 billion in federal funds to try to win $1.5 trillion in improvements largely funded by states, cities and the private sector, was roundly dismissed. The top Republican on the panel, Representative Sam Graves, said it was encouraging Trump identified infrastructure as a priority. Republicans and Democrats "want to get something done," he said. "We can't waste this opportunity." Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told lawmakers Congress should allow airports to collect additional passenger taxes to pay for improvements, expand direct federal funding and facilitate "the arrival of scooters, boring tunnels, and bringing electric and autonomous vehicles to our streets." Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood testified the private sector wants to take part. "There is a lot of money waiting to be invested. What the investors want is a signal from Congress that you're serious about infrastructure, that you're going to put your share in," LaHood said. Some lawmakers like Graves favor a tax on vehicle miles that would raise new revenue by ensuring that electric vehicles also pay for highway repairs, since they do not pay gasoline taxes. (Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
The short answer is as soon as possible, but theres a lot more to the story.
A child holding books and an apple in front of a chalk board that says Back To School.
Image source: Getty Images.
If youre a parent, or are going to be a parent soon, theres a good chance youve thought about the high cost of college. After all, the average cost of in-state tuition and fees is currently about $10,000 per year, and thats in addition to room, board, books, and other expenses. So you can only imagine how expensive it will be when your kids reach college age. With that in mind, heres a rundown of when you can start a college fund for your child, the best ways to start saving, and why its important to get started early.
When can you start a college fund?
You can start saving for college expenses at any time, but in order to do it in a 529 plan or Coverdell ESA (more on those in a bit), there are a couple of things to know.
First, these accounts need to have a beneficiary for whom the account will be used. In order for your child to be named as the accounts beneficiary, youll need their Social Security number. Based on personal experience -- Ive been through the college account set-up process twice for my own children -- you can expect to have it about two weeks after your child is born. Once you have it, you are able to set up a college savings account in your childs name.
Having said that, theres a way to get started even sooner -- before your child is born. With 529 plans and Coverdell ESAs, you can change the beneficiary quite easily. So its possible to set up an account with yourself listed as the beneficiary, and then change it after your child is born.
I dont see any reason to do it that early, but its possible. I started 529 plans for both of my children when they were just a few months old. And if you receive cash as a baby gift from anyone, it can make an excellent opening deposit.
The different ways you can save for college
There are several different ways you can save for college. For example, many parents simply choose to set aside money in a regular bank savings account, or even a checking account. Others use their own brokerage account to invest for college, and plan to sell investments and withdraw funds when the time comes.
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Having said that, there are some advantages to using college-specific and other tax-advantaged savings vehicles. Heres a quick rundown of the three main options in this category:
529 savings plans are administered by state by state and are structured similar to 401(k) accounts in terms of investment selection. Generally speaking, youll have one or two dozen investment funds to choose, and there are also age-based portfolio options that you can often choose. Tax-wise, contributions to a 529 savings plan arent deductible on your federal tax return, although they may be deductible on your state taxes. However, all qualified withdrawals for educational expenses are 100% tax-free, no matter how well your investments have done.
Coverdell Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, are brokerage accounts that allow the investor to invest their college savings in virtually any stocks, bonds, or funds they want. And they have a similar tax structure to a 529 savings plan, where qualified withdrawals are tax-free. The potential downside to using a Coverdell ESA is that you can only contribute $2,000 per year per beneficiary. On the other hand, 529 savings plans are only limited by a maximum account balance restriction, which is often in the $400,000 ballpark.
Finally, Roth IRAs are also quite popular for college savings. Roth IRAs have the same basic tax structure as both 529 savings plans and Coverdell ESAs, plus college expenses are an allowed exemption to the IRSs early withdrawal penalty. However, Roth IRAs dont have to be used for college expenses. If you end up not needing all of the funds for your kids college education, you can simply save it towards your own retirement.
When should you get started?
The short answer is that you should get started as soon as possible. Im not saying that you need to start a 529 plan for your yet-to-be-born children, but the longer you allow for your money to compound (and to ride out the markets ups and downs), the better.
As a final thought, consider this simplified example. Lets say that you want to have $25,000 available to help put your child through college once they turn 18, and that you can expect an average annualized return of 7% on your investments.
If you wait until your child is 10 years old to start saving, youll need to set aside about $2,100 per year, or about $175 per month in order to meet your goal. If you start saving when your child is five years old, the annual funding requirement drops to just $1,109, or about $92 per month. And finally, if you start when your child is born, youll only need to set aside $669 each year, or $56 per month in order to meet your $25,000 goal.
The bottom line is that the sooner you start saving for college, the easier it will be to reach your goal. So, if youre able to start saving now, it may be a smart idea to not put it off any longer.
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In this episode of "Skullduggery TV," co-hosts Michael Isikoff and Dan Klaidman welcome Harold Koh, former legal adviser to the State Department, to discuss his recently published Readers Guide" to the 25th Amendment and its possible application to the current president. Then Roger McNamee, early investor in Facebook and managing director of Elevation Partners, joins the show to discuss the fallout from the social media giant, which he details in great depth throughout the course of his new book, "Zucked."
Reuters
Lyle J. Goldstein
Security, Americas
A Russian defense analyst conjures a U.S. military intervention scenario in Venezuela. It is not a pretty picture.
The Second Caribbean Crisis?
Russians refer to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, often considered the closest the planet has come to nuclear apocalypse, as the Caribbean Crisis [ ]. Is the table now set for a second Caribbean Crisis? President Donald Trump has said that all options are on the table in the current Venezuela situation and National Security Advisor John Bolton triggered rumors of an imminent U.S. ground force deployment to Colombia. Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin has sought to reassure Venezuelas embattled leader Nicolas Maduro, and reports suggest that Russian contract soldiers are already on the ground.
To be sure, this iteration seems to be much less dangerous. While Russian strategic bombers paid a visit to Venezuela only a couple of months ago, signs do not appear to point to the outbreak of a massive U.S.-Russia clash of arms over Venezuela. Still, it is worth noting that Russias strategic forces were quite paltry back in 1962, compared to Moscows contemporary nuclear firepower. It will, indeed, be important to track Russian perceptions of the evolving crisis, which were summarized by Alexander Yermakov in the Russian newspaper Izvestiya. His work appeared under the headline: We are going to Maracaibo: will the US begin a military campaign against Venezuela [ : ] in early February 2019.
Yermakov charges that: the American side makes a fog, on the one hand, avoiding direct answers to questions about planning a military scenario, and on the other, threatening Nicholas Maduro with serious consequences for attempting to forcefully resolve the issue of divided power. From the Russian perspective, Boltons briefing was pouring fuel on the fire [ ] and the Russians hardly missed the writing on the National Security Advisors notepad that said quite conspicuously, 5 thousand soldiers to Colombia [5 . ]. Not surprisingly, the article also reviews decades of regime change policies (e.g. Chile 1973) in Latin America by the North American elder brother.
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That unhappy history hardly constitutes a novel point, but Yermakovs military analysis is interestingperhaps in part because U.S. analysts have refrained from speculating in that regard, by and large. He explains initially that U.S. military operations are generally associated with air and naval power. He assesses: The position of Venezuela on the coast of the Caribbean Sea is quite convenient[The U.S.] can fully use the capabilities of the fleet and there is no need to use the airspace of third countries. [ ].
On the issue of airpower, the analysis notes that skirting Cuba [ ] sorties from U.S. air bases in Florida would make for a 2,500-kilometer triplong for both machines and pilots. But Yermakov notes that the U.S. Air Force has also been flying long sorties to strike Syria and, after all, that Washington possesses a huge fleet of tankers (three quarters of the world total) [ ( )]. The piece, moreover, speaks with some substantial admiration for Americas strategic aviation. U.S. Air Force heavy bombers B-1B or B-52H are not called bombers in Russian military lingo, but rather are referred to as rocket carriers []. These bombers are estimated to be quite sufficient to the task.
As to the fleet, Yermakov claims that the USS Abraham Lincoln battle group is not far from Americas Atlantic shore and at short notice, can be dispatched into the Caribbean. The Russian author also concludes that if the carrier battle group suddenly breaks off its exercise routine and returns to port that this might be one of the clearest signs of preparation for military aggression [ ]. Concerning the role of U.S. nuclear attack submarines, Yermakov says that a grouping may already be concentrated in the region, but that for obvious reasons this information is not available in open sources [ ]. The expectation is that these submarines would be firing cruise missiles or serving as bases for the activities of fleet special forces [ ].
This Russian analysis projects that the employment of U.S. special operations command is most likely in such circumstances, especially if a hypothetical U.S. military intervention is limited to support of local forces. For that, Yermakov suggests that the U.S. Army Green Beret [ ] of the 7th or 20th operational groups will be most appropriate as they specialize in Latin America. The Green Berets will be employed to support allies in place, while naval special forces are assessed to be used for intelligence and also for direct sabotage missions [ ].
As to the possible sending of major ground force units, such as Boltons five thousand [ ], Yermakov suggests that option should be viewed critically. After all, if there is light resistance, they might form an unpleasant picture of foreign occupiers. But if there is heavy resistance, on the other hand, that could result in significant casualties, which could also be extremely unpleasant for the U.S. Thus, the Russian analysis yields the logical conclusion that any U.S. military intervention would likely be spearheaded by naval forces, along with strategic aviation.
The analysis concludes by stating that Venezuela is far from being either Grenada or Panama [ ]. Not much is said with respect to Russian weaponry. A couple of dozen Su-30s are mentioned, but the imported air defense systems (Pechora/Buk/Antey) are said to be most formidable and quite sufficient to cause American losses. Yermakov admits that a strong blow from the air against loyalist targets could turn the psychological momentum toward the opposition. But he also concludes that, if the Venezuelan military demonstrates strong allegiance to Maduro, then Washington will most likely prefer to stick with economic pressure.
Americans may examine this rather candid Russian appraisal and could be relieved to some extent. There is no mention of actual Russian expeditionary forces arriving to stem the tide, so we will evidently be spared the drama of a second Caribbean Crisis with nuclear overtones. Nor does Yermakov reveal any particularly surprising weapons systems that could really stymie U.S. forces. Yet, for those Americans concerned with a pattern of failed U.S. interventions, this sketch of a hypothetical American use of force against Venezuela is thoroughly vexing. Putting aside the military risks and greater damage to Americas already sullied reputation, street revolutions have still gone badly awry in recent years in settings as diverse as Syria, Ukraine, Congo and Myanmar. These precedents should make us extremely leery about promoting the overthrow of foreign regimes, even if those regimes are themselves odious. U.S. domestic political imperatives (e.g. gaining favor in the critical electoral state of Florida) should not obscure the obvious national foreign policy interest in regional stability, moderation, and restraint.
Lyle J. Goldstein is Research Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI. In addition to Chinese, he also speaks Russian and he is also an affiliate of the new Russia Maritime Studies Institute (RMSI) at Naval War College. You can reach him at goldstel@usnwc.edu. The opinions in his columns are entirely his own and do not reflect the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. government.
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WASHINGTON (AP) House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has hired former National Security Council staffers to work for him as he launches a sweeping new investigation into President Donald Trump's finances and foreign connections a move that appears to have drawn particular ire from the president.
Trump tweeted Thursday that Schiff and Democrats were going "nuts" with investigations and wrote, without elaborating, that they were "even stealing people from the White House!"
It's unclear exactly who Trump was talking about, but the tweet comes as Schiff appears to have hired at least one staff member who served on the National Security Council under Trump. The staff member, Abigail Grace, is listed in a House directory as working for Schiff on the intelligence panel. A person familiar with the committee's staff confirms that she is working for the panel and used to work for the NSC.
The person declined to be identified because Schiff has not publicly announced his new hires.
Grace worked for a bipartisan think tank, Center for a New American Security, after working for both former President Barack Obama and Trump on the National Security Council from 2016 to 2018. She focused on Asia-Pacific security issues, according to a spokesman for the group.
Schiff wouldn't confirm the hires in an interview Thursday, but hinted at them while snapping back at Trump.
"We have a long tradition of hiring out of the intelligence community, out of the National Security Council, and if the president is worried about our hiring any former administration people maybe he should work on being a better employer," Schiff said.
A committee aide said that none of Schiff's staff have come directly from the White House, but said the panel has hired people with prior experience on the National Security Council staff.
"We do not discriminate against potential hires on the basis of their prior work experience, including the administration," the aide said. The person also declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publically about confidential committee business.
By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A cardinal who was sacked from a senior Vatican post by Pope Francis has written his own "Manifesto of Faith," in the latest attack on the pontiff's authority by a leading member of the Church's conservative wing. Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, 71, a German who was the Vatican's doctrinal chief until 2017, issued the four-page manifesto on Friday via conservative Catholic media outlets. He said "many bishops, priests, religious and lay people" had requested it. He did not say how many and why he was issuing it now. However, conservatives balked this week when Francis made the first trip by a pope to the Arabian peninsula and signed a "Document on Human Fraternity" with a Muslim faith leader. Ultra-conservative Catholics are opposed to dialogue with Islam, with some saying its ultimate goal is to destroy the West. The manifesto was dated Feb. 10, the sixth anniversary of the eve of former Pope Benedict's announcement of his resignation. Benedict, 91, remains an icon for conservative Catholics. Mueller said he wrote it "in the face of growing confusion about the doctrine of the faith". He said some Church leaders "have abandoned the people entrusted to them, unsettling them and severely damaging their faith". He warned against "the fraud of (the) anti-Christ". Mueller, who did not mention the pope, is one of a handful of conservative cardinals who have open accused Francis of sowing confusion. They say he is weakening Catholic rules on moral issues such as homosexuality and divorce while focusing excessively on social problems such as climate change and economic inequality. Their leader is Raymond Leo Burke, 70, an American who was demoted from a senior Vatican position in 2014. Mueller has ramped up his criticism of the pope since Francis removed him as head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2017. Most of the manifesto was a re-stating of the Church's teachings, including several that Francis himself has strongly upheld, such as celibacy for priests and the ban on women's ordination. One section, however, was a clear jab at Francis' reaching out to Catholics who have divorced and remarried outside the Church. Francis believes some should be allowed to receive communion on a case by case basis, something that is anathema to conservatives. The Vatican has not commented on the document. (Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Ros Russell)
Moscow (AFP) - A Russian Arctic archipelago on Saturday declared an emergency situation over an "invasion" of dozens of aggressive polar bears that have entered homes and public buildings.
Russia's northeastern Novaya Zemlya archipelago, which has a population of around 3,000 people, has appealed for help to tackle "a mass invasion of polar bears into inhabited areas," regional authorities said in a statement.
Russian authorities have so far refused permission to shoot the bears but are sending a commission to investigate the situation and have not ruled out a cull.
Polar bears are affected by global warming with melting Arctic ice forcing them to spend more time on land where they compete for food.
They are recognised as an endangered species in Russia and hunting them is banned.
Russia has air force and air defence troops based on Novaya Zemlya.
Since December, 52 polar bears have regularly visited the archipelago's main settlement, Belushya Guba, with some displaying "aggressive behaviour," local official Alexander Minayev said in a report to regional authorities.
This included "attacks on people and entering residential homes and public buildings," said Minayev, the deputy chief of the local administration.
"There are constantly 6 to 10 bears inside the settlement," he said.
"People are scared, they are afraid to leave their homes... parents are frightened to let their children go to schools and kindergartens."
The head of the local administration Zhigansha Musin said that the numbers of polar bears were unprecedented.
"I've been on Novaya Zemlya since 1983 and there's never been such a mass invasion of polar bears," he told regional officials.
Bears are constantly inside a military garrison and "literally chase people" he said as well as going into the entrances of blocks of flats.
Local officials complained that measures to scare off polar bears such as vehicle and dog patrols have not been effective as polar bears feel secure and no longer react.
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The federal environmental resources agency has refused to issue licences to shoot the most aggressive bears.
A working group of regional and federal officials is set to visit the archipelago to assess the situation and the measures taken so far.
The Arkhangelsk regional authorities, which oversee Novaya Zemlya, said that if all else failed "shooting the animals could be the only possible forced measure."
In January, a defence ministry official said that hundreds of disused military buildings had been demolished on Novaya Zemlya because polar bears were settling inside them.
Washington (AFP) - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is hoping to stall inroads of Russian and Chinese influence as he visits two of the European Union's most quarrelsome members, Hungary and Poland.
The top US diplomat arrives Monday in Hungary and will also visit Slovakia and Poland, in each NATO ally highlighting Washington's role in the fall of communism 30 years ago.
Poland, eager for a strong US relationship amid a resurgent Russia, is teaming up with Pompeo to hold a two-day conference on the Middle East, which has drawn limited interest as Europeans balk at President Donald Trump's hawkish line on Iran.
Hungary has drawn especially deep concerns among Western powers as Prime Minister Viktor Orban shows growing authoritarianism, buddies up with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite Western worries over Ukraine and willfully exercises Hungary's veto within the 28-member EU.
A US official said Pompeo will raise concerns about Orban's support for the Russian-backed TurkStream gas pipeline, Moscow's financing of the Paks nuclear plant in Hungary -- and especially the country's agreement to let Huawei develop its 5G mobile networks, as Washington accuses the Chinese telecom giant of undermining global security.
- Populist praise for Trump -
The right-wing leaders of Poland and Hungary have been among the few Europeans to praise Trump, sharing his hard line against refugees, his extolling of Christian values and his antipathy toward the power of multilateral bodies such as the EU.
The Trump administration initially welcomed engagement with Orban, who received the cold shoulder from former US president Barack Obama, but concerns have mounted in Washington that Hungary has moved no closer into the US orbit.
Last year, Hungary disappointed the United States by sending two suspected Russian arms dealers wanted by Washington back home.
And despite the US ambassador's intervention, Budapest's renowned Central European University last year said it was moving key programs to Vienna due to tough requirements imposed by Orban on institutions it considers foreign.
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The university was founded by US-Hungarian billionaire philanthropist George Soros, an outspoken proponent of liberal values, who is vilified by the far-right in both countries with imagery that is at times anti-Semitic.
The State Department said that Pompeo would not shy away from raising concerns with Orban and would meet in Hungary with civil society groups.
Orban's chief of staff Gergely Gulyas scoffed at Pompeo's meeting with non-governmental groups, telling reporters: "If a US foreign minister meets organizations receiving support from America, then no one should be surprised about that."
- 'Show up or lose' -
The US official adamantly defended engagement with Hungary, saying the Obama administration paid too little attention to Central Europe while Putin visited Budapest twice last year alone.
"We have to show up or expect to lose," the official said.
"Those vacuums that were created by the US not being more strongly present in these places, they do get filled and they have gotten filled," he said.
But Joerg Forbrig, an expert on Central Europe at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said that Orban is a wily politician who knows that Washington has even less leverage over him than the EU, which he has defied for years despite the bloc's power of the purse over Hungary.
"This small country called Hungary, whether it's on Western values or traditional partnerships or existing integration schemes like NATO and the EU, they are completely spitting at this, and very consciously," Forbrig said.
He doubted that the United States and European Union could coordinate much on Hungary in light of Trump's poor relationships with major European allies such as Germany and France.
"I'm not sure Orban will be quite laughing Pompeo out the door, but I'm not sure he's taking his trip very seriously," Forbrig said.
DOVER, Del. (AP) A police chief in Delaware has admitted to ordering the deletion of security video that showed him crashing into another vehicle in the department's parking lot.
The News Journal in Delaware reported that Newport police Chief Michael Capriglione admitted in court on Friday to two misdemeanor charges. They are careless driving and official misconduct. Prosecutors dropped other counts that included a felony charge of tampering with physical evidence.
Capriglione faces up to a year in prison. A tentative sentencing date is scheduled for June.
Capriglione was suspended days after the May 19 incident. Newport officials did not immediately respond to the newspaper's message seeking comment about how Capriglione's job status could be affected.
Capriglione's attorney, James E. Liguori, told the newspaper that they would comment after the sentencing.
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Information from: The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., http://www.delawareonline.com
TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese subsidiary of Pfizer Inc is recalling a drug for high blood pressure which was found to contain a carcinogenic substance in its active ingredient valsartan, the drugmaker said on Friday. More than 763,000 tablets of the drug Amvalo, manufactured from April to July in Mylan Laboratories Limited in India, are the subject of recall, Pfizer Japan Inc said in a statement, adding there were no reports of any damage to health. "We will fully pay careful attention to our manufacturing and quality control to prevent a recurrence," Pfizer Japan President Akihisa Harada said. Mylan NV said in November it would recall certain batches of blood pressure medicine valsartan in the United States after they were found to contain a probable cancer-causing impurity. Chinese pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturer Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals also said in July it would recall valsartan from consumers in the United States after finding traces of a probable carcinogen. Last year, the Japanese Health Ministry asked pharmaceutical firms to check whether any of their drugs using valsartan contained any carcinogenic impurities. (Reporting by Takashi Umekawa; Editing by Alexander Smith)
Jerusalem (AFP) - A Palestinian suspected of killing a young Israeli woman has been arrested in a raid in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli security officials said on Saturday.
The body of Ori Ansbaher, 19, was found on Thursday evening in the south of Jerusalem, and she was buried on Friday in the Israeli settlement of Tekoa.
Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service named the suspect as 29-year-old Arafat Irfaiya from the flashpoint city of Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank.
"The interrogation of the suspect is ongoing and is focused in particular on the motives for the murder," it said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the security services for the speed with which they arrested "the abhorrent murderer".
"The long arm of Israel will reach whoever hurts us and we will settle accounts with them," the premier said in a statement.
The Jewish state's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, earlier accused the UN Security Council of staying silent in the face of what he charged was the complicity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) of president Mahmud Abbas in such attacks.
"The PA maintains its policy of paying salaries for terrorists and educating its youth with incitement, and a 19-year-old girl was brutally murdered in Israel," he said.
"The Security Council has the responsibility and moral duty to make a clear condemnation of this barbaric murder and to act firmly against the culture of terror in the Palestinian Authority."
The West Bank was hit by a bout of unrest in December as tensions eased in the Gaza Strip after months of violent protests.
The future of the West Bank is set to be one of the main issues in the Israeli election campaign ahead of a nationwide vote on April 9.
Netanyahu's main challenger Benny Gantz, a former army chief running on a centre-right ticket, has hinted that he may be ready to pull back from the territory as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.
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Netanyahu's far-right coalition partners are campaigning for the unilateral annexation of large swathes of the Palestinian territory.
Some 650,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem.
The settlements are seen as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to peace, as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.
Abuja (AFP) - Nigeria's main political opposition on Saturday said it had been forced to cancel a key presidential campaign rally in the capital Abuja, and blamed President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling party.
Atiku Abubakar and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had been due to hold the event in the Garki area of the city, with just a week to go until polling day.
But the PDP said it had been denied access to the Old Parade Ground venue, despite making payments and having obtained official approval.
"The PDP invites Nigerians to document this provocative action against our party and our presidential campaign by the Buhari Presidency and the APC (All Progressives Congress)," it said in a statement.
Nigerians go to the polls next Saturday, with Buhari, 76, seeking a second, four-year term. Abubakar, a 72-year-old former vice-president is his leading challenger.
Abubakar and the PDP have accused Buhari and the APC of trying to scupper their campaign because they fear the race will be close.
Buhari was on Saturday scheduled to hold a similar rally in the commercial hub, Lagos. Abubakar is pencilled in to visit next week.
"We hope they will allow the Lagos rally to hold on Tuesday," the party said.
APC spokesman Lanre Isa-Onilu said the party did not own the Abuja venue, "so there is no way we could have denied them access to a place we don't own and we don't have control over".
"If there is any truth to what the PDP has said, it is not APC and it is not our policy," he told AFP.
There was no immediate comment from the authorities at the APC-run Federal Capital Territory administration.
By Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Efforts in the U.S. Congress to resolve an impasse over border security funding intensified on Friday and were expected to continue over the weekend, as a special negotiating panel aimed to come to a deal by Monday, lawmakers and aides said. Despite optimism among Senate and House of Representatives negotiators, contingency plans also were being made in case the talks falter. Rather than push the Department of Homeland Security and several other federal agencies into a second partial shutdown when their funding expires on Feb. 15, the group of 17 lawmakers were preparing a stop-gap appropriations bill to keep them operating beyond that date. That would allow more time if necessary to haggle over President Donald Trump's demand for $5.7 billion this year to help construct a U.S.-Mexico border wall. Democratic Representative Nita Lowey, a lead negotiator, told Reuters in a brief hallway interview that the bipartisan panel was "working together. I'm always optimistic." But she added, "It will probably take a little longer" than this weekend to reach agreement. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, complained that while Democrats "talk about more money for a barrier," they also were trying to place restrictions on how that money would be used. Trump says a border wall is needed to block the entry of illegal drugs and undocumented immigrants. Democrats counter that at an overall wall cost of $25 billion or more, high-tech tools, such as drones, scanners and sensors would be more cost-effective and could be deployed immediately. Republicans and Democrats in the past 24 hours swapped a series of proposals, lawmakers said. The main sticking points still had not been resolved. "Theres multiple offers back and forth ... Democrats submitted a counter-offer last night," said Democratic Representative Pete Aguilar, another negotiator. The two parties continued to argue over how much money should be appropriated for the rest of this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, for barriers such as steel-slatted fencing. A Republican negotiator, Representative Chuck Fleischmann, told reporters a deal could contain more than the $1.6 billion that the Senate had approved in December but substantially less than Trump's $5.7 billion demand. Asked about the $1.6 billion figure, Fleischmann said, "I hope it's north of that. I wouldn't necessarily say far north." Another contentious issue, lawmakers said, was Democrats' demands for funding fewer immigrant detention beds than the Trump administration seeks. Republicans want to increase the number as part of their drive to speed immigrant deportations. Meanwhile, according to one official familiar with the talks, Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar pushed for prohibiting border-barrier construction around some environmentally fragile areas, national parks and a SpaceX launch facility in his home state of Texas. Even if a border security deal is reached, sparing the country another shutdown that left 800,000 federal workers without paychecks for more than a month, the border wall battle between Trump and Democrats will resume. In coming weeks, Congress will begin writing fiscal 2020 appropriations bills. Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, has invited a few of the negotiators from both parties, as well as a handful of other House members, this weekend to discuss bipartisanship now that Democrats have wrested control of that chamber from Republicans. They are scheduled to gather at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, Friday night and Saturday morning. (Reporting by Richard Cowan, David Morgan and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Tom Brown)
Maputo (AFP) - Several non-governmental organisations in Mozambique on Saturday called on Credit Suisse to write off debt their government contracted with the Swiss bank as part of a massive "hidden debt" scandal.
In a letter addressed to Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam seen by AFP, 21 civil society groups said the scandal over allegedly illegal loans totalling $2 billion was "a direct result of fraudulent illegal collusion between Credit Suisse, contractors and Mozambican government officials".
The letter was co-signed by Graca Machel, a humanitarian activist and widow of Nelson Mandela.
"Having considered all available information in our possession, we demand that Credit Suisse publicly declares that the Mozambican people should not pay a single cent of these debts, and that recovery of any money should come from the companies and individuals who, instead, have benefited from this chaos," the letter said.
The call came only days after Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi sacked deputy finance minister Isaltina Lucas who has been implicated in the widening scandal.
AS national treasury director she signed guarantees in 2013 and 2014 for the loans to three state-owned security companies.
An independent audit has found that $500 million of the loans, which were deliberately hidden from the country's parliament as well as international donors, was diverted and remains unaccounted for.
When the hidden debt was revealed, Mozambique -- which relies on donor aid and is one of the world's poorest countries -- was plunged into the worst financial crisis in its history.
The US alleges that at least $200 million was spent on bribes and kickbacks, including $12 million for former finance minister Manuel Chang, who also signed off on the debt guarantees.
Chang was arrested in South Africa in December on a US extradition request for his alleged involvement in the loans.
The US has alleged that Chang received the $12 million to agree to sign loan deals for supposed financing for a tuna-fishing fleet and a maritime surveillance project.
Chang is facing extradition requests from both US and Mozambican authorities on suspicion of financial misconduct. Court hearings are to resume in South Africa on February 26.
Seven suspects including Mozambicans and ex-Credit Suisse bankers are accused by the US of fraud, conspiracy to financial security fraud, conspiracy to launder money.
NEW YORK (AP) The longtime boss of a union for New York City corrections officers was sentenced to nearly five years in prison Friday for corruption convictions, a steep fall for a man credited with winning guards pay and benefits parity with police and firefighters before squandering $19 million in union funds.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein announced the sentence for Norman Seabrook after hearing the former head of the New York City Correction Officers' Benevolent Association defiantly defend his two decades of work leading the union.
The judge told a courtroom packed with Seabrook supporters, including former New York Knicks star Charles Oakley, that all the good Seabrook did after rising from a childhood of poverty left him wondering anew: "Why do good people do bad things?"
"Mr. Seabrook, I believe, was blinded by his own sense of importance and a desire to benefit himself after having benefited others for so long," Hellerstein said.
As he left the courthouse, Seabrook bristled at a reporter who asked him why he expressed no remorse.
"How can you be remorseful for something you didn't do?" he asked.
Seabrook, 58, was convicted last August at a Manhattan trial after prosecutors said he accepted $60,000 in cash bribes in 2014 to funnel $20 million in union funds to a risky hedge fund. All but $1 million was lost.
A trial witness, Jona Rechnitz, told jurors he talked Seabrook into the investment on a free trip to the Dominican Republic, then later handed off $60,000 in a designer bag.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Bell told Hellerstein during sentencing arguments that Seabrook kept the bag he received cash in hanging on a doorknob at his home when it should have been a source of shame.
Seabrook, though, told Hellerstein the bag was filled with cigars.
He said there was no evidence he ever intended to "lose a dime" of union members' money.
Seabrook pledged to emerge from the case "stronger and better."
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"My life's journey may have been interrupted but it's not over until God says it's over," he said.
Outside the courthouse, he said he would appeal and would win.
His lawyer, Paul Shechtman, appeared to nearly convince the judge that his client should remain free pending an appeal.
Shechtman said the question of whether Hellerstein should have allowed the jury to hear about the $19 million that was lost was a big enough point of contention that Seabrook should get to remain free until the appeals court rules.
Hellerstein said he'll let prosecutors submit written arguments opposing the request in the next week.
Before the sentence was announced, two men and a woman who worked in the jails system spoke as victims of Seabrook's crimes, saying Seabrook was a bully who once had so much power that he could retaliate against anyone who spoke against him.
Tripoli (AFP) - A force led by Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar said Saturday it had carried out a "warning" air strike near an oil field in the country's south.
Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army targeted the Al-Fil oil field 750 kilometres (465 miles) southwest of Tripoli, where a civilian plane was preparing to take off for the capital.
Pro-LNA media quoted military officials saying it was a "warning strike" which had not caused any damage.
But the country's UN-backed unity government said the plane was carrying wounded people and called the strike a "terrorist act" and a "crime against humanity".
It did not give further details on the identity of those on board.
The Tripoli-based administration said it would inform the UN Security Council of the "grave violation" of international law.
Haftar, whose force already controls much of eastern Libya, backs a rival administration.
His force in mid-January announced the start of an offensive intended to "purge the south of terrorists and criminal groups", including rebels from Chad.
It warned earlier this week that "any landing or take-off from airports in the south is prohibited" without its authorisation.
The LNA said Wednesday it had seized one of the country's biggest oil fields, around 900 kilometres south of Tripoli, without a fight.
The Al-Sharara field had been shut down for nearly two months by armed groups, which complain of marginalisation by Libya's Tripoli-based unity government.
The LNA's offensive has stirred political and ethnic tensions in the marginalised region, marked by bloody struggles since the fall and killing of Moamer Kadhafi in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising.
WASHINGTON (AP) The Latest on congressional negotiations for a potential bipartisan agreement on border security. (all times local):
3:05 p.m.
President Donald Trump is taking a wait-and-see approach to a potential bipartisan agreement on border security.
Asked about the congressional negotiations, Trump told reporters on Thursday: "I hear they're working on something, we'll see what happens." But he added: "We need border security. We have to have it, it's not an option. Let's see what happens."
It was a more measured tone from Trump, who had previously been dismissive of the congressional negotiations and has threated to declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and fund his long-promised border wall.
But Trump met earlier Thursday with Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. Shelby said Trump was "very reasonable."
Both Democratic and GOP negotiators said a deal could come as early as this weekend to make a Feb. 15 government shutdown deadline.
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2 p.m.
Negotiators are striking a distinctly optimistic tone after a meeting with President Donald Trump on the broad parameters of a potential bipartisan agreement on border security.
Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama said Thursday's session in the Oval Office was "the most positive meeting I've had in a long time" and that the president was "very reasonable."
Trump had previously said he doesn't expect the talks to produce much and he's threatened to declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and build a U.S.-Mexico border wall. But Shelby said Trump during their meeting "urged me to get to yes" on an agreement.
Both Democratic and GOP negotiators said a deal could come as early as this weekend to make a Feb. 15 government shutdown deadline.
PARIS (AP) The Latest on the French yellow vest protests in Paris (all times local):
6 p.m.
French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner has gone on Twitter to express his "disgust" as French yellow vest protesters set alight an anti-terror military car at a protest in Paris.
Such vehicles have been a common sight in Paris since the deadly attacks by extremists in 2015.
Paris demonstrators, who ended the 13th consecutive weekend of protest at the Eiffel Tower, set the vehicle ablaze in front of the famed monument.
Castaner said: "Every day the military ... protects our compatriots from the risk of terrorism. These attacks are intolerable."
Police said 31 demonstrators had been arrested Saturday as scuffles broke out between protesters and police. But the Interior Ministry said the protests are much smaller than last week's.
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4:55 p.m.
French police say 21 demonstrators had been arrested as scuffles broke out between yellow vest protesters and police near the Champs-Elysees Avenue and the National Assembly.
A car, motorbikes and multiple trash bins were set ablaze as the protest moved toward the city's Invalides monument but France's Interior Ministry said this week's protest was significantly smaller than last week's.
Earlier in the day, a protester's hand was ripped apart during violent clashes in Paris as demonstrators tried to storm the French National Assembly in a 13th consecutive week of unrest.
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4:20 p.m.
A French yellow vest protester's hand has been ripped apart during violent clashes in Paris as demonstrators tried to storm the French National Assembly in a 13th consecutive week of unrest.
Police said the injured protester lost four fingers as police swooped in to stop protesters from breaching the parliament's exterior. Police could not confirm French media reports that the demonstrator's hand was blown up by a grenade used to disperse unruly crowds.
As scuffles broke out in front of the National Assembly and French police responded with tear gas, paramedics huddled around the injured protester.
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Police said 17 demonstrators had been arrested in the clashes.
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3:40 p.m.
A French yellow vest protester has sustained a serious hand injury during violent clashes with police on the streets of Paris in a 13th consecutive week of demonstrations.
Paramedics huddled around the injured protester near the gates of the National Assembly as they provided emergency treatment. The man was then taken to the hospital for treatment.
Police said about 10 demonstrators have been arrested so far as scuffles broke out between protesters and police near the Champs-Elysees avenue and the National Assembly.
Police used batons and fired tear gas in Paris to disperse demonstrators, some of whom threw debris at riot police in front of the National Assembly.
The French yellow vest protests began in November to protest what they see as economic injustice.
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2:45 p.m.
French police say a yellow vest protester has sustained a hand injury in Paris as the 13th consecutive weekend of demonstrations grew tense.
Police say the demonstrator, whose condition isn't currently known, is being treated Saturday by emergency workers.
Police said that about 10 demonstrators have been arrested so far as scuffles broke out between protesters and police near the Champs-Elysees avenue and the National Assembly.
Police fired tear gas in Paris to disperse demonstrators, some of whom threw debris at riot police hunkered down in front of the National Assembly.
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1:15 p.m.
Scuffles have broken out between French yellow vest protesters and police in a 13th consecutive weekend of demonstrations.
Police fired tear gas in Paris to disperse demonstrators near the Champs-Elysees avenue on Saturday afternoon as scuffles broke out.
The protest in the French capital has passed the National Assembly and will end up near the Eiffel Tower.
The yellow vest activists, who have brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets over the past three months, are now trying to achieve electoral success but the movement is politically divided and has no appointed leader.
President Emmanuel Macron the target of many demonstrators' anger seems to be clawing back support as he tries to quell the movement with a national political debate. Recent polls show Macron's approval ratings rising.
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Weve lost count of how many times insiders have accumulated shares in a company that goes on to improve markedly. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of examples of share prices declining precipitously after insiders have sold shares. So well take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in Centrica plc (LON:CNA).
Do Insider Transactions Matter?
It is perfectly legal for company insiders, including board members, to buy and sell stock in a company. However, rules govern insider transactions, and certain disclosures are required.
We dont think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions. But logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares. For example, a Harvard University study found that insider purchases earn abnormal returns of more than 6% per year.
Check out our latest analysis for Centrica
Centrica Insider Transactions Over The Last Year
Group CEO & Executive Director Iain Conn made the biggest insider sale in the last 12 months. That single transaction was for UK203k worth of shares at a price of UK1.54 each. So we know that an insider sold shares at around the present share price of UK1.36. They could have a variety of motivations for selling, but its still not particularly encouraging to see. Arguably, insider selling at around current prices should give us reason to reflect on whether the stock is fully valued at the moment. Notably Iain Conn was also the biggest buyer, having purchased UK229k worth of shares.
Over the last year, we can see that insiders have bought 160.19k shares worth UK229k. But insiders sold 310.99k shares worth UK478k. All up, insiders sold more shares in Centrica than they bought, over the last year. They sold for an average price of about UK1.54. Its not ideal to see that insiders have sold at around the current price. But we dont put too much weight on the insider selling, since sellers could have personal reasons. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by individuals) over the last 12 months, below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction!
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LSE:CNA Insider Trading February 9th 19
Centrica is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.
Have Centrica Insiders Traded Recently?
Non-Executive Director Margherita Della Valle bought just UK2.0k worth of shares in that time. Thats not much at all. Looking at the net result, we dont think these recent trades shed much light on how insiders, as a group, are feeling about the companys prospects.
Insider Ownership
I like to look at how many shares insiders own in a company, to help inform my view of how aligned they are with insiders. I reckon its a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Centrica insiders own about UK9.3m worth of shares. That equates to 0.1% of the company. Weve certainly seen higher levels of insider ownership elsewhere, but these holdings are enough to suggest alignment between insiders and the other shareholders.
So What Does This Data Suggest About Centrica Insiders?
Our data shows a little more insider buying than selling in the last three months. But the difference isnt much. The insider transactions at Centrica are not inspiring us to buy. And were not picking up on high enough insider ownership to give us any comfort. If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its future.
If you would prefer to check out another company one with potentially superior financials then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
By Conor Humphries and Amanda Ferguson DUBLIN/BELFAST (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Friday said he believed "a deal can be done" to avoid a disorderly British exit from the EU, after a meeting with a key ally of British Prime Minister Theresa May that he said went very well. Varadkar later hosted May for a formal dinner in Dublin that an Irish official described as "very warm" - in contrast to a relatively chilly reception given to May in Brussels earlier this week. Varadkar said talks with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party in Belfast in the afternoon showed there was "more that unites us than divides us when it comes to Brexit," unusually conciliatory language in what has often been an acrimonious relationship. The DUP, which props up May's government, has been one of the fiercest critics of Britain's exit deal with the European Union, which parliament in London has rejected and more particularly the contentious "backstop" championed by Varadkar. The provision is an insurance policy meant to keep the border between Ireland, a euro zone member, and the British-run province of Northern Ireland open under any and all circumstances. The DUP says its terms are unacceptable as they would undermine trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The EU has said it will not remove the provision or re-open the legally binding Brexit deal agreed with Britain over two years, but has said it is ready to rework the political declaration that accompanies it. After the meeting, DUP leader Arlene Foster said she had a "good engagement" with Varadkar and that the DUP wanted "to be as helpful as we can to try and get a deal that works for the United Kingdom and also works for the European Union." She declined to comment on the detail of the talks, saying both sides needed space to complete discussions. The support of the DUP's 10 members of parliament is seen as key to May's winning over skeptical members of her Conservative party and securing parliamentary approval for the withdrawal agreement. Asked by Irish state broadcaster RTE how he envisaged a deal could be done between Britain and the EU after weeks of stalemate, Varadkar cited the common ground between the Irish government and the DUP. Both sides, he said, wanted to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland, ensure Britain left with a deal and enabled frictionless trade. "Often when you share all the major objectives, it is possible to come to a solution," Varadkar said. "I think that on balance we will secure a deal - whether it will be by the end of March or after an extension I can't say," he added. Speaking ahead of his dinner with May, which included cured salmon, beef fillet and a selection of Irish cheeses, Varadkar said the meeting was aimed at seeing "confidence and trust restored." An Irish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the meeting would not involve any formal negotiations, which are being led by Brussels. (Editing by Peter Graff and John Stonestreet)
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It is not uncommon to see companies perform well in the years after insiders buy shares. The flip side of that is that there are more than a few examples of insiders dumping stock prior to a period of weak performance. So before you buy or sell Barclays PLC (LON:BARC), you may well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling.
Do Insider Transactions Matter?
Its quite normal to see company insiders, such as board members, trading in company stock, from time to time. However, rules govern insider transactions, and certain disclosures are required.
We dont think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions. But logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares. As Peter Lynch said, insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.
Check out our latest analysis for Barclays
The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At Barclays
Ashok Vaswani made the biggest insider sale in the last 12 months. That single transaction was for UK732k worth of shares at a price of UK2.06 each. Although we dont gain confidence from insider selling, we note that this large sale was at well above current price of UK1.56. So it is hard to draw any strong conclusion from it.
In the last twelve months insiders purchased 1.42m shares for UK2.7m. But they sold 385.39k for UK797k. Overall, Barclays insiders were net buyers last year. They paid about UK1.89 on average. These transactions suggest that insiders have considered the current price of UK1.56 attractive. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!
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LSE:BARC Insider Trading February 9th 19
Barclays is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.
Insiders at Barclays Have Bought Stock Recently
Over the last quarter, Barclays insiders have spent a meaningful amount on shares. Non-Executive Director Michael Ashley spent UK50k on stock, and there wasnt any selling. This makes one think the business has some good points.
Insider Ownership of Barclays
Looking at the total insider shareholdings in a company can help to inform your view of whether they are well aligned with common shareholders. I reckon its a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Insiders own 0.07% of Barclays shares, worth about UK19m. This level of insider ownership is good but just short of being particularly stand-out. It certainly does suggest a reasonable degree of alignment.
What Might The Insider Transactions At Barclays Tell Us?
Its certainly positive to see the recent insider purchase. And an analysis of the transactions over the last year also gives us confidence. Given that insiders also own a fair bit of Barclays we think they are probably pretty confident of a bright future. Therefore, you should should definitely take a look at this FREE report showing analyst forecasts for Barclays.
Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
For the second time in two years, Robert Whittaker has had to pull out of an event in his home country of Australia.
For the second time in two years, Robert Whittaker has had to pull out of an event in his home country of Australia. (AP Photo/John Locher)
In a massive blow to the UFC 234 card, middleweight champion Robert Whittaker will have to bow out of the main event due to a severe abdominal injury requiring emergency surgery suffered the night before his fight against Kelvin Gastelum, the UFC announced Saturday.
With Whittaker out, Anderson Silvas long-awaited return to the Octagon against rising star Israel Adesanya has been elevated to the UFC 234 main event.
The news, in which Whittaker reportedly suffered a hernia, initially came via ESPNs Brett Okamoto.
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Per Okamoto, the hernia was not related to Whittakers weight cut. Whittaker reportedly complained of pain in his abdomen around midnight of the previous night and was soon taken to the hospital.
ESPNs Ariel Helwani does not paint a pretty picture of what occurred that night.
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Robert Whittaker will miss Australia fight again
The loss of Whittaker, who is on a nine-fight win streak, will certainly be a massive disappointment for many fans with UFC 234 tickets. The event was scheduled to take place in Melbourne, Australia, due to the 28-year-olds status as the first Australian to hold a UFC belt.
Making the development even more bitter is that nearly this same thing happened a year ago with the same fighter, the same country and the same belt on the line.
Whittaker, fresh off winning the middleweight belt, had been scheduled to mount his first title defense in February 2018 against Luke Rockhold at UFC 221 in Perth, Australia. About a month before the event, Whittaker had to pull out with a staph infection in his stomach. Now, a year later, history has repeated itself with even worse timing for Dana White.
Because his next fight against Yoel Romero was a non-title bout after Romero missed weight, Whittaker still has yet to officially defend his belt a year into his status as middleweight champ.
Whittakers team: Fighting could have been fatal
Whittakers camp released a statement later Saturday announcing that the fighter underwent surgery for both an intestinal hernia and a twisted and collapsed bowel. Whittaker reportedly still wanted to fight up to his surgery, until he was told a blow to his stomach could have been fatal
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Of course, none of that stopped Gastelum from declaring himself the true middleweight champion by virtue of flying all the way to Australia and making weight. Well see if White pays that any heed.
Anderson Silvas return becomes new UFC 234 main event
With next to no time to find a replacement for Whittaker all the way out in Australia, UFC 234 turned to its old superstar in Silva to headline the event. Lando Vannata and Marcos Marianos lightweight matchup will also be elevated to co-main status.
Silva, who is officially 1-4-1 in his last six fights, is returning from a two-year hiatus from fighting due to failed drug tests. The Brazilian will take on a fighter 14 years his junior in Adesanya, who is sixth in the UFC middleweight rankings and 15-0 in his MMA career.
Adesanya, a New Zealander who UFC called its breakout star of 2018 in its release, made his UFC debut only a year ago in the preliminary card of UFC 221, the same event that Whittaker had to pull out of. Now, Adesanya gets the biggest fight of his career thanks to a UFC card being suddenly Whittaker-less again.
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A groom was escorted out of his own wedding reception in handcuffs after allegedly sexually assaulting a teenage waitress and fighting police.
During the reception, which was held at the Northampton Valley Country Club on Nov. 24, 2018, Matthew Aimers, 31, allegedly asked the waitress if they could go outside and makeout, according to an affidavit obtained by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
He told the young girl, whose name or age has not been revealed, they could do whatever she wanted, the affidavit states.
When the waitress turned down his advances, Aimers, who is originally from New Jersey, allegedly followed her into the womens bathroom and forced her into an empty stall, the affidavit says, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The waitress told police he started kissing her against her will before trying to unbutton her pants and then exposed himself, the criminal complaint alleges, reports KYW News Radio 1060.
When the girl tried to break free, Aimers allegedly offered her $100, the documents allege.
Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
The police were later called to the scene, where they found Aimers pushing and punching people, according to the affidavit.
He allegedly got physical after being told to stop bringing alcohol outside of the country club.
Aimers then tried to board a nearby shuttle bus, despite the officers commands to surrender. The police allege they boarded the bus and demanded Aimers get off.
Aimers allegedly continued to resist the cops and began insulting them with harsh words, according to the affidavit.
Authorities were later able to get control of Aimers and he was taken into police custody after a brief scuffle.
RELATED: 8-Year-Olds Big Brother Details the Horrific Abuse He Suffered from Moms Boyfriend Before His Death
Aimers was released on Wednesday, Feb. 6 after posting 10 percent of his $350,000 bail, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
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He has been charged with indecent assault, indecent exposure, imprisonment of a minor and harassment, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
He has also been charged with simple assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, the newspaper reported.
RELATED: Til Death Do Them Part: A Husband Pushed Off a Cliff, a Wife Drowns and Other Newlywed Homicides
At this time, Aimers is denying the charges. He maintains his innocence and he looks forward to clearing his name when this is all concluded, Aimers attorney Louis Busico told KYW News Radio 1060.
Aimers lawyer did not immediately respond to PEOPLEs request for comment.
Aimers preliminary hearing for the sexual assault is scheduled for Feb. 21.
DETROIT General Motors on Wednesday outlined an incentive plan for the head of its self-driving car unit that points the way toward a possible initial public offering for the business.
The No. 1 U.S. automaker disclosed a long-term compensation plan that incentivizes Dan Ammann, chief executive of the Cruise unit, to develop the technology and commercial plans that could lead to the stock offering within 10 years, according GM's annual 10K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Ammann, who stepped down as GM's president and assumed the Cruise position at the start of the year, was awarded 16,914 restricted stock units for common shares of Cruise and stock options for 101,485 common shares of Cruise by the unit's board on Monday.
The incentives are based on meeting certain targets, including "a change of control or initial public offering" that occurs prior to the 10-year anniversary of the stock grant, according to the SEC filing.
Ammann stands to make at least about $25 million based on the stock units, which have a value of $1,515 a share, according to the filing. However, his compensation could be much more lucrative if an eventual IPO drives the value of the stock options far above their strike price of $1,515 a share.
"Mr. Ammann's compensation plan is consistent with CEO benchmarks from tech companies with similar market cap to Cruise and is heavily weighted toward the attainment of specific technology and commercial targets," GM spokesman Tom Henderson said in a telephone interview.
Analysts have speculated that GM eventually will sell shares in Cruise or spin it off. Cruise, with more than 1,100 employees, is aiming to launch a robo-taxi service by the end of 2019. Automotive News reports that other future or current Cruise employees are also being compensated with equity.
GM Chief Executive Mary Barra told analysts on a conference call on Wednesday after the company reported stronger-than-expected earnings that the Detroit automaker was making "rapid progress" with the technology, and the company's self-driving vehicle plans were "not squishy at all."
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"I think it's in a strong position from funding," she said. "I think it's in a strong position as we continue to do the development."
Cruise has a value of about $14.6 billion despite no significant revenue and a product not ready for commercial launch. Japanese technology investment fund SoftBank Group Corp and Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co invested a total of $5 billion for separate minority stakes in Cruise.
GM spent $700 million on Cruise last year and expects to spend another $1 billion on the unit this year, GM Chief Financial Officer Dhivya Suryadevara said on the earnings call.
Ammann joined GM in 2010 from Morgan Stanley, where he was an adviser to GM's government-led bankruptcy restructuring in 2009. He became GM's president in 2014.
Reporting by Ben Klayman
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By Ginger Gibson HAMPTON, N.H. (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown sought advice earlier this year from former President Barack Obama about running a 2020 presidential bid, the Democrat told voters on Friday at an event in New Hampshire. "I called the president about a month ago and just talked to him about his thoughts of candidacy," Brown, 66, said. Brown, who is weighing whether to mount a campaign for his party's nomination to challenge President Donald Trump, said he did not ask the former president whether he should launch a campaign. But Obama spoke about what it was like to be a candidate. "I think he encourages anyone who talks to him - so in no way am I implying pushing me, pulling me, stopping me or encouraging me," Brown told Reuters after the Hampton, New Hampshire event. "It was a good talk; he was generous with his time." The field of Democratic hopefuls is rapidly expanding. As many as two dozen Democrats could ultimately launch campaigns, a race that is expected to pit the liberal wing of the party against moderates. Brown is spending the weekend in New Hampshire, a state that holds the second presidential primary contest in 2020 and plays an outsized role in picking the nominee. While he has not launched a presidential campaign, Brown has branded his visit to key political states the "Dignity of Work" tour. He is focusing on issues like wages, union organization and paid family leave. As a senator from the key political state of Ohio, Brown is seen as a potentially formidable opponent to Trump. Brown was reelected in 2018 with a larger percentage than Trump received there in 2016, thanks to his ability to connect with middle-class voters. Brown said he thinks he can be both progressive and willing to connect with working voters. "You either choose to talk to the progressive base or you talk to working families and listen to issues that matter to them, but I dont think its a choice. I think you can do both," he said. (Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
WASHINGTON Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' accusation that the tabloid National Enquirer tried to blackmail him with intimate photos could spell new trouble for the company already at the center of multiple scandals, including a hush-money deal involving President Donald Trump.
Prosecutors with the Southern District of New York are investigating the claims and reexamining a non-prosecutorial agreement that has protected the Enquirer's parent company, American Media, Inc. (AMI) from criminal charges, a person familiar with the matter told USA TODAY.
Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and is a frequent target of the president's criticism, said in a blog post on Thursday that AMI threatened to publish multiple nude photos him, which he characterized as blackmail and extortion. The company is known for its controversial business practices and the close relationship between its CEO David Pecker and President Donald Trump.
Bezos backed up his claims with copies of emails that showed AMI's attorney, Jon Fine, laying out terms that included the media company would not publish photos if Bezos put out a statement declaring that AMI's coverage of him was not "politically motivated or influenced by political forces."
More: Jeff Bezos is taking on the National Enquirer. Here's a look at the key players
Federal prosecutors last year secured AMI's cooperation in an investigation into payments to two women in the final months of the 2016 presidential campaign to prevent them from going public with accusations of extramarital affairs with the president. In return, prosecutors agreed not to bring criminal charges against the company for its role in the scheme.
The agreement required that AMI "commit no crimes whatsoever."
Whether the allegations Bezos outlined amount to a criminal offense is up for debate and has the legal community torn. AMI has denied wrongdoing and said it will review the negotiations with Bezos.
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Making matters more complicated is that federal extortion laws aren't commonly used against media companies. The Justice Department has long struggled with how to apply criminal laws to news organizations for fear of running afoul of the First Amendment.
"I don't think there's any doubt that the Southern District will investigate these claims," said Harry Sandick, an attorney who formerly served as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.
He said while the company is likely to argue its First Amendment privileges, the emails that Bezos published look to be more of an attempt to blackmail rather than negotiate.
"There's a line between legal and illegal even when you're a reporter or a media company," Sandick said. "People are allowed NDAs and other forms of settlements but you aren't allowed to threaten to harm someone or their reputation in exchange for something."
Sandick added the revelations will put pressure on prosecutors over the agreement and the decision to shield the company from legal scrutiny.
"I think most prosecutors get angry when they give an entity a break just to see them go out and commit the same type of behavior," Sandick said. "It makes them [prosecutors] look foolish."
The allegations against the company seem to be neverending.
Over the last 18 months, AMI has been accused of protecting Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein by using its reporters to discredit women that accused him of sexual assault, and of helping to elect Trump to the White House.
More than a year before the election, Pecker met with Trumps former lawyer Michael Cohen and an unnamed member of his campaign to discuss ways the company could help bottle up damaging stories about Trump.
Just five months ago, AMI admitted to paying a $150,000 settlement to former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal who claimed to have had an affair with the president.
AMI entered into an agreement in September with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York that shielded it from potential criminal charges in exchange for its cooperation with their investigation, one of two ongoing criminal probes now encircling the president.
Then on Thursday, Bezos detailed his talks with the company and the allegations of blackmail and extortion.
Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, said while lawyers could argue both sides of whether AMI's conduct might be criminal, prosecutors do not have to prove a crime in court to void the agreement they have with the company.
He said if prosecutors allege criminal conduct, it could lead to the end of the agreement and open the door to potential charges against the company and its executives, primarily David Pecker.
While Mariotti said he did not believe prosecutors would take this course, he added AMI's involvement in this issue with Bezos was not smart.
"The lawyers for AMI knew about this agreement and should have known that due to it, they were under this form of supervision of sorts by the U.S. Attorney's office," he said. "When you're dealing with an entity as powerful as the U.S. Attorney's office, it's not smart to test them. This is a time where the company should have been extra careful."
He added even the "slight risk" that the Southern District could nullify the cooperation agreement "is not worth it."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Feds investigating Jeff Bezos' claims, examining agreement that shielded AMI from criminal charges
As the Food and Drug Administration prepares to meet in March to discuss the safety of breast implants, the FDA is warning there may be an association between implants and a rare type of cancer.
Of 457 confirmed cases of the condition caused by implants called Breast Implant Associated-Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma or BIA-ALCL nine patients have died. Based on existing research, the FDA says the frequency of the disease ranges anywhere from 1 in 3,000 women with implants to 1 in 30,000. Some 1.5 million women get breast implants every year.
A letter addressed to health care providers on Wednesday states: The FDA received reports indicating that patients with breast implants have an increased risk of developing this disease within the scar capsule adjacent to the implant.
The FDA goes on to explain that BIA-ALCL is not a cancer of the breast tissue and to ask doctors to be more cautious with patients experiencing new swelling, lumps, or pain around breast implants.
RELATED: Former Playboy Models Get Their Breast Implants Removed Believing They Caused Illness
Implants can come with smooth or textured exteriors and saline or silicone gel interiors, and the letter also explains that most cases of the disease have occurred in patients with textured implants. But its been found with smooth implants as well. Most of the women diagnosed with BIA-ALCL visited their doctors because of pain, lumps, swelling, or asymmetry that developed after they were fully healed.
Europe has already taken steps to ban textured implants because of their association with BIA-ALCL, says Dr. Marguerite Barnett, one of the nations top surgeons for removing implants or explanting.
Initially, [BIA-ALCL] was said to be very rare, but as time goes by, theyre finding more and more cases, Barnett explains to PEOPLE. Its a serious tumor capable of killing people.
While Barnett hasnt personally dealt with any cases of BIA-ALCL in her patients, a more frequent issue shes seen is whats referred to as Breast Implant Illness or BII. Theres no official diagnosis, though, because, Barnett says, 95 percent of plastic surgeons dont think it exists.
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It takes a while for symptoms to emerge, so most doctors dont put two and two together, she says. Ive been a little bit upset because some of my colleagues are saying its not a real thing.
The condition, in Barnetts experience, looks like chronic fatigue, aches and trouble breathing, and theres very little research into what about the implants may cause it.
She says patients will come to her with such symptoms, often having read about BII on social media, and 60 percent of patients with saline and two thirds of patients with gel will feel better after getting them removed.
While some of her colleagues, she says, have challenged her findings with accusations that its a placebo effect which she concedes is real she doesnt believe its the case for her patients.
Usually about one-third of people feel better with placebos and it happens right away, but the effects fade over time, she explains. With my patients, its the opposite. About two-thirds feel better after at least a year, and they improve as time passes.
RELATED: Crystal Hefner Removes Her Breast Implants Because They Slowly Poisoned Me
In Wednesdays letter, the FDA also urged surgeons who provide breast implants to provide their patients with the manufacturers labeling and educational material and to have a discussion about the benefits and risks of implants.
Its exactly what Sia Cooper who runs the popular blog Diary of a Fit Mommy and who openly suffered from what she believes is Breast Implant Illness has been advocating for. She got her implants smooth with gel in 2011 and out in early December, Cooper tells PEOPLE.
When she chose to have the surgery, she says her doctor told her nothing about the risks of implants beyond capsular contracture which refers to the forming and tightening of scar tissue around the implants that happens to most women and infection with surgery.
After about a year, she started to feel differently My hair was falling out, and my weight was slowly climbing, she recalls to PEOPLE. I was inflamed. I felt like my body was attacking itself.
RELATED VIDEO: Chelsea Handler Slams Breast Implant Rumors
Adding that there were days she couldnt get out of bed, Cooper continues: The illness hit me like a ton of bricks [last] year. I look back, and it was silently creeping up on me I thought it was part of motherhood and getting older, but Im like, Im 29. I shouldnt be feeling like this.
Some two months after her surgery, Cooper is feeling better.
Its unclear exactly what percentage of women with implants develop symptoms of BII, in part because theres no registry for those who have them, Barnett says. She adds that this dearth in information is shocking because a registry is standard procedure for many devices implanted in the body, such as pacemakers.
But, Barnett emphasizes that shouldnt diminish the importance of tracking BII.
I believe these women, she asserts. It makes sense that if you put some foreign body in it that youre going to have a reaction.
Washington (AFP) - Elizabeth Warren officially joined Sunday a crowded field of Democrats vying to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020 -- already shaping up to be one of the largest and most diverse ever.
Warren joins a group of White House hopefuls that includes other high-flying female US senators, charismatic military veterans and a young gay mayor.
And it is likely to grow before the US primary season gets underway a year from now.
Here are the first entrants in the presidential race, 21 months before the election.
- Elizabeth Warren -
At 69, the US Senate's consumer protection champion from Massachusetts became the first high-profile Democrat to enter the race when she announced a presidential exploratory committee on December 31. She officially kicked off her White House run on Saturday. Warren is on the party's left flank, and built her reputation by holding Wall Street accountable for its missteps. She is considered to have one of the best campaign organizations of any Democrat.
Trump has already taken aim at Warren, mocking her proclamation of Native American heritage.
- Cory Booker -
The 49-year-old US senator from New Jersey announced his candidacy February 1, evoking the civil rights movement as he promised to work to bring together a divided America. Often compared to former president Barack Obama, Booker began his career as a community activist and rose to prominence as mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He was elected to the US Senate in 2013, the first African-American senator ever from that state.
A talented orator with a flair for the dramatic, he drew attention for his performance during confirmation hearings of Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
- Kirsten Gillibrand -
This New York senator made a name fighting the battle to end sexual assault, especially in the military, before the #MeToo movement gained national prominence.
The 52-year-old, a fierce Trump critic, is making gender and women's issues a hallmark of her campaign.
Story continues
- Kamala Harris -
The barrier-breaking senator from California who aspires to be the nation's first black female president announced her candidacy on a day honoring slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr.
The daughter of an Indian immigrant medical researcher mother and a Jamaican economist father, Harris, 54, began her career as a district attorney in San Francisco before serving as California's attorney general.
- Julian Castro -
A cabinet member in the Obama era and grandson of a Mexican immigrant, Castro announced his candidacy in English and Spanish on January 12 in the heat of the debate on immigration and border security.
At 44, the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas hopes to become the nation's first Hispanic president.
- Tulsi Gabbard -
At just 37, this congresswoman from Hawaii would be the first Hindu president if elected.
A supporter of liberal Bernie Sanders in the 2016 race, military veteran Gabbard was criticized for meeting with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad during that country's civil war, and for anti-gay positions that she has since retracted and apologized for.
- Pete Buttigieg -
Nine months younger than Gabbard is the South Bend, Indiana, mayor who joined the race unveiling a resolutely future-looking and optimistic message to counter Trump's darker vision.
A US Navy veteran who put his mayoral duties on hold to serve in Afghanistan, Buttigieg would become the first openly gay nominee of any major party.
- Andrew Yang -
The 44-year-old tech entrepreneur launched his campaign with little fanfare in late 2017, warning against the dangers that automation presents to US workers.
He has advocated for a form of universal basic income as a way to reduce inequality.
- John Delaney -
An affluent Maryland businessman who served three terms in Congress, Delaney was the earliest Democrat to officially launch a bid, back in July 2017. He has crisscrossed the early-voting state of Iowa seeking to boost his name recognition.
- Waiting in the wings -
Several big Democratic guns have yet to commit, including former vice president Joe Biden and senators Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown. Senator Amy Klobuchar is expected to announce on February 10.
Former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke is considering a run, as are billionaire New York ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Current and former governors are in the mix, too: Washington's Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Steve Bullock of Montana and Virginia's Terry McAuliffe.
burs-oh/bbk
LAWRENCE, Mass. (AP) When U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren officially jumps into the race for president, it won't be from her Cambridge hometown where Harvard and MIT reside, or nearby Boston, where presidential hopefuls have launched campaigns over the generations.
Instead, the 69-year-old Democrat is widely expected to kick off her campaign Saturday some 30 miles (50 kilometers) north in Lawrence, a faded mill city that's one of New England's poorest and most heavily Latino.
The struggling city, once a center of the American textile industry and where one of the nation's most significant labor strikes occurred, provides a fitting backdrop for Warren's economic message of fighting for workers in the face of powerful corporate interests and a growing wealth divide.
With a long tradition of welcoming immigrants, the nearly 80 percent Latino city is also a place where the fight over immigration deeply resonates.
"Lawrence is a microcosm of the story Democrats want to tell about where America has been and where it wants to be," said John Cluverius, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts in nearby Lowell. "It's an industrial city where American workers fought for fair wages and labor conditions. It's also an immigrant city that's grown from many of the policies that President Trump and Republicans now oppose, like family or chain migration."
But what makes the city, where more than 80 percent of voters picked Hillary Clinton in 2016, ideal for Democrats also makes it an easy foil for Republicans.
President Donald Trump and governors in neighboring Maine and New Hampshire have called out Lawrence for being a hub for the lethal heroin and fentanyl trade. They've taken aim at the city for its sanctuary city policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agencies.
"Ending sanctuary cities is crucial to stopping the drug addiction crisis," Trump argued last March, citing a Dartmouth College study that found Lawrence was one of the primary sources of fentanyl in six New Hampshire counties.
Story continues
Democratic Mayor Dan Rivera acknowledged his city's reputation for crime and corruption has been difficult to shake, but he pointed to signs of progress.
Trendy cafes and restaurants are starting to take their place among the vacant storefronts, barber shops, convenience stores and other modest businesses downtown.
A smattering of biotech and other firms have moved in among revitalized mill buildings, and sneaker company New Balance's towering factory along the Merrimack River is among the most visible links to the city's manufacturing past.
"There was a time when politicians wouldn't want to be seen in Lawrence," Rivera said. "But Lawrence isn't just the bad things in the past. There's so much going here."
In downtown Lawrence this week, news of Warren's visit was greeted with surprise and curiosity.
Many welcomed the positive attention as the city recovers from a series of natural gas explosions and fires. The September disaster killed one resident, injured dozens more, damaged scores of homes and businesses, and left thousands without gas service for heating and cooking for weeks as winter set in.
Susan Sirois, who heads Bread and Roses, a soup kitchen named after the city's famous 1912 strike, is among many hoping that Warren offers tangible solutions to the challenges facing Lawrence and many other old cities in her speech Saturday.
"She has to if she's coming here. She has to," Sirois said. "We might be the poorest city in Massachusetts, but this is not an aberration. This is the United States. This is the way it is."
A resident of nearby Salem, New Hampshire, Sirois is a registered Democrat who voted for Clinton in 2016 but hasn't decided whom she'll back in 2020.
Across the street from the Everett Mills, where Warren is set to speak Saturday, Carmen Reyes was excited at the prospect of hearing from the senator she's back in both her senate campaigns. The 60-year-old registered Democrat, who voted for Clinton in 2016, said Warren would be her pick if the presidential election was today.
"I really want a woman president," Reyes said. "She can probably do a lot better than what the current one is doing."
But a few blocks over, at El Taller cafe, David Cabrera was less willing to commit to a candidate this early.
The 47-year-old telecommunications salesman, who is unaffiliated, said he's intrigued by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, and former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, of Texas neither of whom has confirmed a presidential candidacy but would vote for Warren if she was the Democratic Party's nominee.
"I find her to be a little more to the left than I would prefer," he said. "Free college tuition, for example, sounds wonderful, but what are our taxes going to look like after that happens? How is it going to affect what I take home?"
___
Follow Philip Marcelo at https://twitter.com/philmarcelo .
Rosina Bosco and her then-husband were like many couples she saw on Facebook.
They regularly posted photos on vacations, at concerts and of the activities they did together.
Her social media feeds were always bombarded with images of friends getting together and having families. "All you see on social media is weddings and babies," she said.
So when it came to updating her profiles after her divorce, it was "incredibly painful."
"All of a sudden I have to basically shed half of my world," Bosco, 34, said. "Five years of our relationship was up on Facebook. Like, what are you supposed to do?"
A friend came over one day to go through it. "She would say a name, and I would say, 'yes,' and she would de-friend them," Bosco said. For photos, the task became too challenging, so she created a new profile.
Today, Bosco is in increasingly rare company divorced and millennial. In September, millennials made headlines for "killing" divorce when research found that the U.S. divorce rate dropped from 2008 to 2017 and that younger couples were driving the trend.
More: Add divorce to the list of things millennials are 'killing'
Even so, some millennials, like Bosco, have bucked the trend, still getting divorced. In doing so, they face an array of changes decoupling on social media, swiping through dating apps and utilizing online legal services that comes with splitting in the digital era.
Divorced millennials face an array of changes decoupling on social media, swiping through dating apps and utilizing online legal services that comes with splitting in the digital era.
Social splits
"Social media can be this knife that stabs into your wound and makes it worse," Bosco said.
Dealing with her social media presence was one of the hardest parts of moving on. She said she wished there was a "101"-guide on being a divorcee online.
New York divorce attorney Bryan M. Goldstein, a millennial himself, said he's seen first-hand how social media impacts his clients.
Whether it's deleting accounts or seeing posts from an ex, using the platforms can be challenging right after a split, Goldstein, 35, said.
Story continues
Dating apps also present new hurdles.
Tinder survey: Are millennials 'killing' relationships, too? Young people are embracing single life
Swiping on the apps after a long-term relationship felt foreign, Bosco noted. "I had to pretend I wasn't recently divorced," she said.
However, apps can make it easier to "get back out there" once a person is ready, Goldstein said.
New lawyer's office
New digital tools can help with navigating the tricky and sometimes archaic process of legally splitting.
Storey Jones, 55, founded dtour.life as a platform to better facilitate divorces in the digital age. One goal: Remove some of the financial stress associated with divorce.
"There's so much chaos and lack of clarity about what (divorce) is, it becomes a black vortex of fear," Jones said.
Dtour.life users can create a dashboard to navigate documents and financial records. They enter bank account information, log assets and debt, track expenses and manage other aspects of their divorce digitally.
While Jones knows technology alone won't make divorce easier on couples emotionally, she hopes the product can make the process more straight-forward.
Survey: 32% of millennials would break up with their significant other for a $37,000 raise
"So much of the 'hating' and animosity honestly comes from a fear of not knowing how they're going to be at the end of the day," Jones said.
Processing a split in a digital way is essential for millennials, Jones and divorce attorneys say. For one, legal bills shrink because attorneys spend less time sifting through paperwork, and clients can have a "smarter hour" with lawyers, Jones said.
"It certainly makes my job easier," Goldstein said. Because millennial clients are digitally organized, using an online tool is natural.
"Rather than making a phone call, a digital platform allows them to communicate when they want to, on their time frame," said Dallas-based divorce attorney Elizabeth Hunter. "And it allows the lawyer the same thing."
On the flip side, millennials are also looking online to prepare for marriage. For example, writing up a prenuptial agreement.
"I don't have to got to an office and sit in a big leather chair and wait in the lobby.
I can sit and talk with my (soon-to-be) spouse, pop open the app and say, 'Let's do this together,'" said Dave Coffey of LegalShield.
LegalShield connects clients with attorneys for a variety of legal services, and users can fill out questionnaires to start up prenuptial agreements and divorce proceedings.
Did 'millennials' really 'kill' divorce?
The millennial generation takes a lot of heat. They're accused of "killing" bras, top sheets and chain restaurants. They love eating avocado toast and taking selfies.
Last year, divorce was added to the graveyard after University of Maryland sociology professor Philip Cohen found that since the 1990s, the prevalence of divorce for people under age 45 has leveled off, whereas it continues to rise for people over 45.
According to Pew Research, millenials are those born between 1981 and 1996.
Are you a Xennial?: How to tell if you're the microgeneration between Gen X and millennial
But Cohen, who doesn't like the term millennial, said many generalizations for that wide-ranging age group can be too broad. "The category of millennials really doesn't make much sense."
For example, the Great Recession in the late 2000s divides millennials depending upon whether they had graduated college, Cohen noted. And the demographic makeup of the generation is much more diverse than past ones.
As a result, seemingly arbitrary characterizations of who a millennial is arise.
"If you draw those lines by the categories, you can make a story thats not a real story and you end up giving a character that is not justified," Cohen said.
Divorced but equals
For young people who do marry, they often wait until they're further along in their careers and more highly educated.
LegalShield has seen a seven-time increase in users' prenuptial agreements within the app in the past year, with millennials contributing to 40 percent of that growth, Coffey said.
Goldstein has also seen more prenups in recent years as millennials enter marriage with more wealth. Why? Younger clients view their spouses as equals more so than past generations. That's tamed some of the stigma around them.
"They don't look at their spouses the way our grandparents did," Goldstein said.
Study: Millennials strive for perfectionism more than past generations
As for divorce, even though it's rarer for millennials, it's also less wrought with stigma.
In one case, Hunter's client posted a photo on social media with their ex, smiling as they held finalized divorce papers.
"(Millennials) want to be different and better," Hunter said. "If they end up going through a divorce, they don't approach each other the same way as prior generations."
Follow USA TODAY's Ryan Miller Twitter @RyanW_Miller
Dear fellow millennials: Why marrying at 22 is the best decision I ever made
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Facebook status: Divorced. Why millennials 'killed' how you decouple in the digital age
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Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people. jctony
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User ID: 488370
02-09-2019 04:32 PM
Posts: 41
Post: #1 Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people.
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Amakudari ("descent from heaven") is the institutionalized practice where Japanese senior bureaucrats retire to high-profile positions in the private and public sectors. The practice was increasingly viewed as corrupt and a drag on unfastening the ties between private sector and state which prevent economic and political reforms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_...ics)#Japan
However in Japan, the situation is extremely unique.
In Japan the revolving door is particular the origin of corruption.
I live in Kagoshima, which is located in the Japan proper.
Ainu people (indigenous people of Japan) is said to have lived in Hokkaido.
But I believe that Japanese indigenous people were cornered to the north and the south.
In the south, a lot of indigenous people used to live in Okinawa and Kagoshima.
However the Imperial clan's ethnic cleansing was so intense that nowadays few indigenous people live there.
We have strong dialects, but those words almost disappeared.
In my neighborhood, a variety of people moved in to the region.
And, social leaders are almost newcomers and they usually bully the local people.
For many years, I was wondering why this unusual and strange things occurred.
But now I understand the whole situation.
Japan has a strict family registration system.
Probably the system started in ancient times.
Nowadays the Japanese government has the detailed but extremely big data about people's blood origin.
In other words, the government knows who is connected to the emperor and who is not.
The word "amakudari" literally means "descent from heaven".
"Descent from heaven" is the diffusion of the Imperial clan, in other words.
In one or two generations, nuisance people are soon eliminated through the revolving door, job transfer, discrimination, marriage, social bullying and so on.
It is shown by the image something like this.
It is ethnic cleansing, something more powerful than violence or war.
Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people.Amakudari ("descent from heaven") is the institutionalized practice where Japanese senior bureaucrats retire to high-profile positions in the private and public sectors. The practice was increasingly viewed as corrupt and a drag on unfastening the ties between private sector and state which prevent economic and political reforms.However in Japan, the situation is extremely unique.In Japan the revolving door is particular the origin of corruption.I live in Kagoshima, which is located in the Japan proper.Ainu people (indigenous people of Japan) is said to have lived in Hokkaido.But I believe that Japanese indigenous people were cornered to the north and the south.In the south, a lot of indigenous people used to live in Okinawa and Kagoshima.However the Imperial clan's ethnic cleansing was so intense that nowadays few indigenous people live there.We have strong dialects, but those words almost disappeared.In my neighborhood, a variety of people moved in to the region.And, social leaders are almost newcomers and they usually bully the local people.For many years, I was wondering why this unusual and strange things occurred.But now I understand the whole situation.Japan has a strict family registration system.Probably the system started in ancient times.Nowadays the Japanese government has the detailed but extremely big data about people's blood origin.In other words, the government knows who is connected to the emperor and who is not.The word "amakudari" literally means "descent from heaven"."Descent from heaven" is the diffusion of the Imperial clan, in other words.In one or two generations, nuisance people are soon eliminated through the revolving door, job transfer, discrimination, marriage, social bullying and so on.It is shown by the image something like this.It is ethnic cleansing, something more powerful than violence or war. LoP Guest
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02-09-2019 04:42 PM
Post: #2 RE: Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people.
Ooh, pink nipple...from Heaven Lakeofmarch
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User ID: 487777
02-09-2019 05:33 PM
Posts: 16,660
Post: #3 RE: Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people.
Agree, that's the smell of feudalism in the morning. I wonder how much longer Japan will last with that trail of oppression they like so much.
https://terebess.hu/english/tao/wu.html
https://het-report.nl/
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Axte Incal, Axtuce Mun
-NO8DO-
The Great Tao is universal like a flood. How can it be turned to the right or to the left?NS "Snow Crash", CC "Eagle's Gift"Son Calenda/Fudo MyooAxte Incal, Axtuce Mun-NO8DO- (This post was last modified: 02-09-2019 05:34 PM by Lakeofmarch .) Uppity Me
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02-09-2019 05:42 PM
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Post: #4 RE: Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people.
the problem is that you are infiltrated by North Korean spies, maybe even a few Chinese spies, but most definitely NK spies - beware Quote: Les pauvres n'ont-ils des Euros ?
Alors laissez les pauvres 'sh*t' dans les rues Uppity Me
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User ID: 488374
02-09-2019 06:33 PM
Posts: 33,799
Post: #5 RE: Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people.
You're right, slow genocide of ethnic peoples is a silent and serious problem and more deadly than any war because in war you see your enemy clearly Quote: Les pauvres n'ont-ils des Euros ?
Alors laissez les pauvres 'sh*t' dans les rues Natura Naturans
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User ID: 480998
02-09-2019 07:00 PM
Posts: 13,156
Post: #6 RE: Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people.
My business partner of 25 years is Japanese in Hawaii 3rd generation. He has family in Japan who have traced their lineage back over three hundred years. But so much of your status depends on your lineage that as the OP says, it is often crucial in getting good jobs, getting elected in government positions etc. Japanese society is a mix of feudalism and modernism. Few outside Japan know how difficult it is for Japanese who spend too much time outside of Japan. Even full blooded Japanese who grew up in brazil may not get Japanese citizenship and are consider "gaijin" or foreigner. Some Korean familys living in Japan for centuries are not allowed to become citizens. Of course Japanese law prevents any immigration. So I sympathize with the OP. The status of the Ainu is still very bad even though there was considerable intermarriage centuries ago. Anyone who has too much body hair is immediately suspect of having "Ainu blood". The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. --Baruch Spinoza LoP Guest
lop guest
User ID: 464826
02-09-2019 07:03 PM
Post: #7 RE: Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people.
Natura Naturans Wrote: (02-09-2019 07:00 PM) My business partner of 25 years is Japanese in Hawaii 3rd generation. He has family in Japan who have traced their lineage back over three hundred years. But so much of your status depends on your lineage that as the OP says, it is often crucial in getting good jobs, getting elected in government positions etc. Japanese society is a mix of feudalism and modernism. Few outside Japan know how difficult it is for Japanese who spend too much time outside of Japan. Even full blooded Japanese who grew up in brazil may not get Japanese citizenship and are consider "gaijin" or foreigner. Some Korean familys living in Japan for centuries are not allowed to become citizens. Of course Japanese law prevents any immigration. So I sympathize with the OP. The status of the Ainu is still very bad even though there was considerable intermarriage centuries ago. Anyone who has too much body hair is immediately suspect of having "Ainu blood".
They also have a caste system depending on the tone of your skin. They also have a caste system depending on the tone of your skin. Mr ifnoc nli
lop guest
User ID: 524471
01-22-2020 01:00 AM
Post: #8 RE: Revolving door is actually the softly killing of local people.
The revolving door, is what makes the world as we know it, go round. This revolving door, doesn't represent the global population, nature, nor is it ever fair if you stumble.
Antarctica is the last continent to be conquered, but how could Ant'arc'ticas lack of none aquatic predators, be a conclusive conquest?
Unless Antartica makes for a fantastic secret held from the world. Nothing will change.
Same bus. Same wheels.We don't get to drive. Those that have the wheel, don't hold on to the wheel at all. Who now, supposedly has control of the wheel?
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren officially jumped into the 2020 presidential race Saturday, joining a crowded field of Democratic challengers as she faces fresh criticism over her claims of Native American heritage.
"This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone," Warren said. "And that is why I stand here today: to declare that I am a candidate for President of the United States of America."
During her rally in Lawrence, Massachusetts, she also received some high-profile endorsements from several lawmakers, including Rep. Joe Kennedy III and Sen. Ed Markey, both key Democrats from Massachusetts.
"No one knows how to fight for what is right better than Elizabeth Warren," Markey said. "No one knows how to get under Donald Trump's skin better than Elizabeth Warren."
She touted her support for progressive politics, including increasing the minimum wage and Medicare for All. She propped up embracing diversity and the immigrants who helped build the nation, all with a backdrop of Everett Mills, the site of a workers strike 100 years ago led by women and immigrants that boosted workers rights.
She told the story of the strikes, using it as an example that even those without power can work together to shape policy and change America.
Warren already faces a sea of high-profile Democratic opponents contending for their party's nomination. Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker announced their bids in recent weeks.
The Massachusetts Democrat announced her exploratory committee for her campaign on New Year's Eve but hadn't officially thrown her hat in the ring.
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Warren, 69, has faced recent controversy over her past claims that she was of Native American descent.
She apologized Wednesday for "not having been more sensitive about tribal citizenship" after The Washington Post published a 1986 Texas bar registration card where she listed her race as "American Indian."
Story continues
"I'm not a tribal citizen," Warren told reporters. "My apology is an apology for not having been more sensitive about tribal citizenship and tribal sovereignty. I really want to underline the point, tribes and only tribes determine tribal citizenship."
Warren has apologized multiple times in the past month. In response to the Post's story, Warren said she "cant go back," in terms of claiming the heritage and that she was sorry for "furthering confusion on tribal sovereignty" and the harm she caused.
In a private conversation, Warren told Cherokee Nation leadership that she was sorry about her DNA test that aimed to prove Native American ancestry, according to media reports.
The Massachusetts Democrat shared in October the analysis of her genetic background which found "strong evidence" of Native American ancestry going back six to 10 generations. That decision faced backlash.
President Donald Trump, who could face Warren in the general election, has long derided her heritage claims and often refers to her as "Pocahontas."
After Saturday's announcement, Warren plans to head to New Hampshire, where the first primary will take place, and then Iowa on Sunday, home to key causes, the AP reported.
Contributing: William Cummings
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'This is the fight of our lives': Elizabeth Warren officially announces 2020 bid
President Donald Trump clearly wanted to send a warning sign to House Democrats poised to investigate him and his Administration. If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigations, he said in Tuesdays State of the Union.
But Democrats are moving right ahead. This week, investigations from the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives started to pick up in earnest, and at the top of the list is the Presidents finances.
On Thursday, the Ways and Means committee will hold its first hearing on the subject of Trumps tax returns and the disclosure policies for Presidents, Vice Presidents and candidates for those offices. The hearing is largely expected to center on the provision in Democrats ethics reform bill, officially known as the For the People Act, which stipulates that all Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates must submit their tax returns from the past decade to the Federal Election Commission to publicize.
Its no coincidence that Democrats wrote this provision into the bill. Trump was the first candidate in decades to refuse to release his tax returns both business and personal claiming he couldnt do it because he was under audit. Now that Democrats control the House of Representatives, however, they have a path to obtaining them.
Under an obscure provision in the internal revenue code, the Ways and Means Committee (along with the Senate Finance Committee and Joint Committee on Taxation) has legal authority to request the Presidents tax returns from Secretary Treasury Steven Mnuchin. The written request would have to come from Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Richard Neal, which he has not yet done. Although he is working on building a case for requesting the returns, according to a committee aide, he has come under fire from progressive groups, who have been arguing he is dragging his feet on this issue by not submitting the request.
While Thursdays hearing is broadly focused on the Democrats bill, it is expected dance around the issue of Trumps tax returns, according to one Democratic aide an effort to show that they are not, in fact, wavering but are trying to be judicious.
Story continues
Overwhelmingly, the public wants to the Presidents tax returns, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday. She acknowledged, however, the need to be careful and meticulous in the process.
This bill is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate. But for the progressives who have been pushing Neal, this hearing is a victory, even if it is only the start of a long waiting game.
It will shed light on the fact that obtaining a tax returns is really an oversight issue, said Maura Quint, the Executive Director of Tax March, which held rallies across the country in 2017 calling on Trump to release his tax returns, and was among the progressive groups who sent a letter to Neal last month urging him to start the process. Just bringing that to light would be a useful takeaway.
More broadly speaking, Thursdays hearing is just one piece of the way House Democrats are probing the Presidents finances an area where he has explicitly drawn a red line. On Wednesday, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff released a list of his committees priorities. Second on the list was probing Trumps business deals; more precisely, investigating the extent of any links and/or coordination between the Russian government, or related foreign actors, and individuals associated with Donald Trumps campaign, transition, administration, or business interests, in furtherance of the Russian governments interests.
Schiff had long indicated Trumps financial interests have been an area he wanted to probe. The President has tried to draw a red line around his finances and his business and we see the peril of that already, he told TIME last December. The public as well as policy makers need to know if the Presidents financial interests or threat of exposure is motivating this Russian policy.
Trump, who recently preached unity at his State of the Union, was quick to disregard that rhetoric when it came to Schiff. Hes just a political hack whos trying to build a name for himself, he said Wednesday. Its called presidential harassment.
Those sentiments were on display in Thursdays morning tweets. The Dems and their committees are going nuts, he wrote.
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Lawrence (United States) (AFP) - Democrat Elizabeth Warren officially kicked off her 2020 White House run Saturday with a full-throated pledge to defend working Americans, unbowed by a row over her Native American ancestry that has threatened to nip her campaign in the bud.
"This is the fight of our lives," she told cheering supporters in gritty Lawrence, Massachusetts, against "a rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else."
"Millions of families can barely breathe," Warren said, in a feisty speech that struck aggressively populist and unapologetically left-leaning notes. "It is not right."
The Massachusetts senator -- who had announced her intention to run on New Year's Eve -- is among the highest-profile of the growing pool of Democrats hoping to unseat President Donald Trump in 2020.
The Democratic field is already the party's most diverse ever -- in gender, age and ethnic background -- and one of its more progressive. It includes several well-known women lawmakers, with Senator Amy Klobuchar expected to join their numbers on Sunday.
Warren's past battles with Wall Street have brought her a large following, and her campaign team has drawn the grudging respect of its rivals. Hoping to ride the momentum of her Lawrence speech, she heads next to early-voting Iowa and New Hampshire, followed by five other states.
But for now it is unclear how badly damaged Warren is by the stubborn controversy over her claim to Native American roots -- a claim Trump has seized upon to belittle her, mocking her as "Pocahontas."
Hoping to put the controversy to rest, Warren released DNA tests in October -- but this backfired when they showed her to have only negligible amounts of Native blood, dating back generations. Warren ultimately apologized to the Cherokee Nation.
The matter reared its head again this week when The Washington Post published what it said was an official 1980s document in which Warren listed her race as "American Indian."
Story continues
- 'Exposed as a fraud' -
Trump's re-election campaign issued a dismissive statement ahead of Warren's announcement, saying she had "been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career." It said her "socialist ideas" would hurt workers.
"This is a story that she did not want in this launch," said John Cluverius, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
But he also cautioned that "it's still very, very early" to speculate on "how it harms her, or doesn't harm her."
Lawrence, the scene of Warren's announcement, is a former mill town where a group of women workers, including many immigrants, launched a strike in 1912 that spread across the region and came to be seen as a historic victory for women and for labor, with improved wages and working conditions.
The 69-year-old senator has made the protection of middle-class rights the central pillar of her political message.
Lawrence, once part of a bustling US textile industry, has for years fallen on hard times, with the loss of thousands of factory jobs.
But Warren showed nothing but pride in Lawrence's pro-worker history. "I will never give up on you," she said. "I am in this fight all the way."
- Humble origins -
She called for "big, structural change" in America that would reach beyond new US leadership -- though she called the Trump administration "the most corrupt in living memory."
Warren said she would press for steeper taxes on the rich, strong anti-corruption legislation, curbs on lobbyists and a defense of the climate. She also supports universal health care.
She pointed to her own rise from humble origins -- the daughter of a janitor, she started her schooling in a $50-a-semester community college and ended up teaching law at Harvard -- arguing that she can help bring a revival of the American Dream.
Warren tried in her speech to appeal to a broad ethnic coalition, saying, "We must not allow those with power to weaponize hatred and bigotry to divide us."
Cluverius says Warren will need strong Hispanic support since two popular African Americans -- Democratic senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker -- are also in the crowded field.
She will also need to win over female voters, which might explain the highly unusual -- and somewhat risky -- decision to include a story about potty-training her baby daughter.
Warren recounted her decision to go to law school when Amelia was not quite two years old, but said the only day care she could find -- with five days before classes were to start -- would take the child only if potty-trained.
A determined Warren accomplished the task, she told a laughing crowd, "courtesy of three bags of M&Ms."
"Since that day, I've never let anyone tell me that anything is 'too hard,'" she quipped.
FREEHOLD, N.J. Thomas Fallon had been in the United States barely two years when he signed up to join the Union's 37th New York Infantry in 1861.
The Irishman fought in more than 20 major Civil War battles, waded through the Savannah canal and once captured 29 Confederates, eventually becoming Freehold Borough's only Medal of Honor recipient.
Yet somehow his medal spent the last six decades at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, under another war veteran's name.
"I know that since 1957 that medal has not honored the man that it's due to honor," said Muriel Smith, a local historian. "So it's about time 100 years later that he be honored for what he did during the Civil War."
More: Medal of Honor: Heroic combat medic to receive nation's highest military honor
Muriel Smith, left, and Glenn Cashion visit Thomas T. Fallon's grave site at St. Rose of Lima Cemetery. The stone mentions Fallon's Medal of Honor.
Smith spent three years calling on the college and then on the U.S. Army to return Fallon's medal. She and Middletown resident Glenn Cashion, a descendant of Fallon, even enlisted the help of U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. On Monday night, they finally held the commendation in their hands.
"Thank God for men like Private Thomas Fallon, and thank God the medal is back home," Cashion, 78, told a packed room in Freehold Borough Hall.
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Fallon arrived in New York City in 1859 and settled in Freehold, Cashion said. Barely two years later, he signed up to join Company K of the 37th New York Infantry, also known as the "Irish Rifles." He fought in Virginia in the First and Second Battles of Bull Run and the Battle of Fredericksburg, among others.
At the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862, he was sent to the skirmish line with nine other soldiers. Only four made it back. He was put on a "sick list," but he insisted on fighting and participated in the Battle of Fair Oaks.
Fallon was discharged after two years of service but re-enlisted four months later as a sergeant in the 35th New Jersey Infantry. At the Battle of Big Shanty in Georgia, he knocked down a Confederate officer with his musket, capturing him and 28 soldiers.
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He received the Medal of Honor in 1891 for his feats in Williamsburg and Big Shanty, according to the Medal of Honor website. He was one of more than 1,500 Civil War veterans and one of 146 Irishmen who received the medal.
"Yes, the Irish immediately fell in love with our country. They were willing to participate in battle and fought gallantly," Cashion said Monday night. "My great-uncle epitomized the inner strength of each and every Medal of Honor recipient."
Tracing the history
For most of his life, Cashion had no idea he was related to this war hero.
Cashion, who retired from the telecommunications industry in 2001, took an interest in researching his lineage. That research led him down a list of names in Freehold's St. Rose of Lima Church records, where he came across Fallon years later.
"I looked up every baptism, death and marriage record, going back to the beginning," he told the Asbury Park Press. "My family was back there in the beginning."
Cashion's ancestors fled Ireland during the potato famine in the mid-19th century. They found work in Monmouth County, which was known for potato farming. Among them was his great-grandmother Ann Garrity and her sister, Catherine Garrity.
Pvt. Thomas Fallon's grave site in Freehold Borough
Cashion eventually learned that Catherine Garrity married Fallon in between his enlistments, and they had a daughter.
Meanwhile, Muriel Smith was researching Medal of Honor recipients with local ties and came across Fallon's credentials. She learned that he had received the Medal of Honor, but that in 1957 the Army handed it over to Dickinson College's Archives & Special Collections department for an exhibit honoring Gen. Horatio Collins King, an alumnus of the school who had also received a Medal of Honor in the Civil War.
"It's sinful, it's wrong," Muriel Smith said on Monday.
When asked about the mix-up, college spokeswoman Christine Baksi said the college's library director wrote to the Army and requested a replica of a Medal of Honor for King's exhibit.
"The army sent an actual Medal of Honor to us, which we now know belonged to Fallon," Baksi said.
She started calling officials at Dickinson College in 2016 asking to have the Medal of Honor returned to Cashion's family and Freehold Borough. Eventually, they stopped responding.
Muriel Smith didn't take no for an answer. She got the borough's blessing to continue contacting the college, and by the end of 2017, she learned that Cashion was related to Fallon.
"Things don't happen by accident," Muriel Smith said Monday night.
Pvt. Thomas Fallon's grave site in Freehold Borough
Cashion dug up family records to prove the connection. Muriel Smith drove to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a three-hour drive from the borough, and demanded a meeting with the school president.
The meeting never happened, but she did track down the medal. When she turned it over, she found the name "Fallon" inscribed.
Baksi, the spokeswoman, said Dickinson got in touch with the Army and started working with the agency directly instead of with Muriel Smith.
"We didn't feel it was within our right to return this medal to Mrs. Smith with a simple request," Baksi said. "During the process, we were working with the Army going through the correct channels."
The college sent the medal to Fort Knox in June 2018, Muriel Smith said. She called the Army. No luck.
Muriel Smith and Cashion asked Congressman Smith for help getting a response. Smith's office sent a letter in October, noting that Cashion is "the last living descendant of Private Fallon." The Army denied the request a week later.
His office sent another letter in November. That one was denied on the grounds that Cashion wasn't direct next of kin.
The third and final letter went out shortly after. In a reply dated Dec. 20, Brig. Gen. Robert W. Bennett Jr. said his staff would deliver the medal, though the original ribbon was lost and could not be remade.
"I've listened to many Medal of Honor recipients over the years," said Cashion, a Marine Corps reservist during the Vietnam era and a Freehold Marine Corps League member. "They are the most humble creatures in the world, and they've fought the most heroic battles in the world."
"To get it back," he added, "I was dumbstruck when it happened."
Smith's office also offered to look into the mix-up at Dickinson College. His office confirmed that the Army sent Fallon's medal to the college in 1957 in response to a letter.
The tiny, brass-colored medal returned to Freehold Borough on Monday night in a soft case. Cashion said he's discussing with local officials and historians where to display the commendation.
"Outside of Ireland, this is the only place anybody in the world knows where he lived. He raised his family here. He belonged to St. Rose Church. He was a tailor here," Muriel Smith said. "I can't think of any other place that it should be."
Follow Steph Solis on Twitter: @stephmsolis
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: For decades, this Civil War Medal of Honor memorialized the wrong man
ISTANBUL (AP) Turkish officials blamed illegal construction practices for the collapse of an apartment building in Istanbul as they joined hundreds of mourners Saturday at a funeral for nine members of one family killed in the disaster.
As the overall death toll rose to 18, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said there were "many lessons to learn" from the tragedy. He said the government would take "determined" steps after investigators complete their work and called for speedy urban renewal.
The eight-story residential building collapsed in the city's Kartal district Wednesday. By Saturday, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu increased the death toll to 18. He said rescuers had reached another person under the rubble, who was thought to be dead.
Murat Kurum, Turkey's minister for environment and urban planning, said the collapsed building had permits for only six floors. He said someone had illegally built its top two floors with low quality concrete and sea sand instead of construction-grade concrete and stronger steel.
"In this area, we have faced a very serious problem with illegal businesses like this done to make more money," Erdogan told reporters on his first visit to the site.
Experts say a majority of buildings in Istanbul lack proper licenses and are built illegally or without engineering services. They have criticized a government decision to grant amnesty for illegal construction last year ahead of the country's general election.
Turkish cities have grown massively under Erdogan's 15 years in power. Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city of more than 15 million people, is also located on a seismic belt.
Earlier Saturday, Erdogan and other officials joined mourners at the funeral for nine members of the Alemdar family who lived in the collapsed building. Five other relatives, including two children, are among the 13 people hospitalized in the collapse. Seven of the injured were still in serious condition on Saturday.
Friends and relatives have been waiting near the apartment building for news of their missing loved ones as emergency teams, aided by sniffer dogs, worked around the clock. Fourteen people have been pulled alive from the rubble, including a 16-year-old boy on Friday.
Officials haven't disclosed how many people are still unaccounted for. The collapsed building had 14 apartments, 43 registered residents and three businesses.
Washington (AFP) - The northeastern US state of New Hampshire's Supreme Court on Friday upheld the conviction of three women who went naked on a beach -- violating a local ordinance.
In May 2016, "Free the Nipple" activist Ginger Pierro decided to do some topless yoga on a beach in the city of Locania.
But that broke a local law against nudity in public places -- which specifically bans "the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple."
Police, alerted by onlookers, arrested her.
Then, three days later, activists Kia Sinclair and Heidi Lilley decided to sunbathe topless on another beach in the town to protest Pierro's arrest.
The three women were found guilty and slapped with a $100 suspended fine.
They then appealed to have their conviction thrown out, arguing they were victims of gender discrimination.
But the Supreme Court did not agree. For the majority of the judges, the law "merely reflects the fact that men and women are not fungible with respect to the traditional understanding of what constitutes nudity."
The women's lawyer, Dan Hynes, said he was "disappointed" with the ruling -- and argued the court had "effectively condoned making it a crime to be female."
His clients now have their sights set on the US Supreme Court. Should the high court take the case, it could clarify a point of some confusion in the US.
Only some states formally forbid women from showing their breasts -- with others imposing restrictions, particularly on breastfeeding.
Cucuta (Colombia) (AFP) - The soldiers blocking humanitarian aid from entering Venezuela look unlikely to give any ground, but Maria Acevedo thinks she knows how to make them let the shipments through.
Acevedo, 26, wants to join together with fellow Venezuelan women and escort the food and medicine across the border from Colombia.
Her bet is that a group of hungry and suffering mothers, sisters and daughters can convince the soldiers to break with President Nicolas Maduro and let the US aid shipments pass.
Maduro, who is locked in a power struggle with opposition leader and self-declared interim president Juan Guaido, refuses to let the aid through. He calls it a "show" and says Venezuela's humanitarian crisis has been manufactured by Washington to justify a "coup."
What happens to the sea of shiny white plastic bags filled with vital supplies -- and to Venezuela itself -- now hinges on the military, which has so far stood by Maduro.
But Acevedo, who has three children, thinks she and her fellow Venezuelan women can change that.
She should know -- she comes from a family of soldiers.
"I come from a military family, too. And my family is against this, against the army blocking humanitarian aid.
"But my family can't do anything. Only the top brass," Acevedo told AFP in Cucuta, on the Colombian side of the border.
She regularly travels there to buy the food she can no longer find in Venezuela, a once booming oil giant that has skidded into a devastating economic crisis under Maduro.
"We women are the ones who have to help get this humanitarian aid through. Not the men," she added.
"They may be strong, but they can't do much because the authorities would immediately attack them."
- 'We're counting on you' -
There is history behind Acevedo's hope.
In 2016, Maduro also closed the border at Cucuta, accusing Colombia of plotting to destabilize his socialist government.
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In July that year, hundreds of women dressed in white broke through the military cordon and crossed to Colombia, the only place they could buy enough food for their families.
Women protesting in white, a tradition dating to at least the suffrage movement in the United States a century ago, has reemerged as a trend.
It was seen most recently on Tuesday at President Donald Trump's State of the Union address, where several dozen opposition Democrats used their wardrobes to make a visually striking statement against Trump.
Guaido, who is recognized by around 40 countries, may try the same strategy used in Cucuta in 2016. The team he has appointed to distribute the aid says it is not ruling it out.
"The Venezuelan people are going to unite in a humanitarian corridor, civilians hand in hand with soldiers," said Lester Toledo, the head of that team.
A small group of Venezuelan protesters on the Colombian side of the border bridge -- expatriates who are among the 2.3 million people to leave the country since 2015 -- is sending the same message.
"Soldier, friend, we're counting on you," said a sign one of them was brandishing.
"We didn't want to leave our country, which we love, but the situation forced us to. Our children are hungry, we have no money," said demonstrator Eduard Guzman, clutching a sign asking soldiers to let the aid through "now, now, now."
He walked across the border and was on his way to the Colombian capital, Bogota, when he saw the protest and decided to join it.
"We need it, we are suffering," said Guzman.
"We can't go on like this."
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Coty, Inc. (NYSE: COTY)
Q2 2019 Earnings Conference Call
Feb. 8, 2019, 8:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
Prepared Remarks
Questions and Answers
Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the operator. Today's conference is scheduled to begin momentarily. Until that time, your lines will again be placed on music hold. Thank you for your patience.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Maria, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Coty's Fiscal Second Quarter 2019 Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session.
As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, February 8th, 2019. On today's call are Pierre Laubies, Chief Executive Officer; Pierre-Andre Terisse Chief Financial Officer, and Ayesha Zafar, Group Controller.
I would like to remind you that many of the comments today may contain forward-looking statements. Please refer to Coty's earnings release and the reports filed with the SEC, where the company lists factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements.
All commentary on organic net revenue reflect a comparison of the business at constant currency, in the current and prior year period, excluding the impact of acquisitions and divestitures. In addition, except where noted, the discussion of our financial results and our expectations reflect certain adjustments, as specified in the non-GAAP financial measures section of our earnings release. You can find the bridge from GAAP to non-GAAP results in the reconciliation tables in the earnings release.
I will now turn the call over to Mr. Laubies.
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Maria, and welcome everybody to Coty's Fiscal 2019, second quarter conference call. I'm very happy to be participating in my first earnings call since joining Coty. Actually, it's my first ever earnings call, since I've been working private businesses all my life. I'm also very pleased to have Pierre-Andre Terisse here, with us, as our newly appointed Chief Financial Officer. Pierre-Andre and I will walk you through the second quarter financials, and together we'll take questions. We also have with us on the call, Ayesha Zafar, who has served as our Interim Chief Financial Officer, over the past five months.
Story continues
Before diving into the details of our business, let me just acknowledge that I've been with Coty for fewer than three months, and Pierre-Andre has been with us for one week. So, therefore, we are very much still in the learning phase of our business. We will do our best to answer all of your questions on the call today, and would expect to do so on the future ones. Today, is clearly a bit of an unusual situation, and there may be questions that would need the investor relations team to get back to you on, as appropriate.
More From The Motley Fool
Since I joined the company, I've been discovering each part of our business, aiming to assess what is and what is not working, and where the opportunities lie. As a result, I have not yet had a chance to speak to many of you directly, but I look forward to doing so, as we conclude our assessment, and finalize our strategic plan. Before we get into the substance of our last quarter, I thought that it would be appropriate for me to share a bit of my background, as well as some introductory remarks and initial observations about Coty.
As you may know, I spent most of my career at Mars, where I started in finance, and later, became general manager, regional president, and then, divisional president. I acquired extensive experience across the world, as I operated in France, Russia, Latin-America, most of Europe, and eventually, globally, as I became Global Pet Care President of Mars. I left Mars to become CEO Douwe Egberts, which became later, JDE, after a merger with the Mondelez Coffee Business, and which also required a substantial strategic reconfiguration.
My first experience of business transformation, occurred in Russia, 23 years ago, and it feels like I have been doing little else since then; since that time. I derive from these experiences, few core beliefs. I believe that there is no shortcut to greatness, but persistence and consistency are key, elements of any successful turnaround plan. I believe that my job, together, with my leadership team is to lead our organization to mastery, therefore, offering space for creativity and innovation, so that we can generate lasting growth. If you examine my tactics elsewhere, while exact financial figures are private, you will find that with the teams I had the privilege to lead, we systematically created value, by deploying the same business philosophy that we intend to be applying at Coty. I'm also particularly proud to say that each time I moved on to a new challenge, I left a very skilled and highly engaged team, and the business continued to grow and perform for the years that followed.
Our approach to Coty will be no different. To turn around our business, means rapidly focusing Coty on the fundamentals. My observation is that we can unlock significant value at Coty, by running our company better. This will give us the headroom that we need to address the most strategic issues that we face, and capture the opportunity that we see. I must stress to you, that while we are confident we can return Coty to a path of growth, we are also realistic that it will take some time. Our luxury and professional beauty businesses are growing reasonably well, but it cannot compensate completely for the difficult trajectory of our consumer beauty division. In consumer beauty, we need to earn our right to grow, again.
In that respect, my personal experience has led me to conclude, that the path to building a bigger business is always to build a better one. That means, producing better products, better advertising, better in-store execution, better pricing, less complexity, lower costs, more engaged people, simple organizational design, flatter structures, and so on. So, we will just do that, we will focus on doing quality business, and will not be obsessed by market shares at any costs.
We will refocus our portfolio, and make sure that we advertise our power-brands at scale. We will strive the right balance between advertising and promotion, we will ensure that our media choices deliver the right amount of reach and frequency We will create advertising, which cuts through, and consistently build our brand assets. We will make sure that our product trends provide the velocity that our retail partners expect from us. And we will right-size our innovation pipeline to deliver fewer, yet, bigger projects. We already execute on these fundamentals well, in our luxury and our professional beauty division, but we need to do that in all our categories, all our markets, all of the time.
From a financial standpoint, we will be gross margin-obsessed. We clearly understand that gross margin is the lifeblood of the business, and that we have a gap here, versus our beauty field, that we must close over time. That means, managing revenue and cost, improving product mix and range, simplifying our portfolio and formulation, and systematically deploying lean-inspired methodologies, in our manufacturing and logistics operation.
We will depart from having an experimental culture to one that embraces a disciplined approach, grounded in logic, playbook, standardization, and prioritization. I have observed over time, that while there are many ways to kill one, there is truly one way to build a great one. In marketing and selling, like in all other functions, our objective will be to lead our organization to mastery, where we become experts at what we do, and we'll aim to make sure that all our people clearly know what is expected of them, and that they have the tools, and methodologies to excel in their job.
I want to stress, that I do not see any contradiction between discipline and innovation. On the contrary, I'm quite convinced that discipline enables innovation, and maximizes its chance of success. This is very purposely an ambitious agenda. We will deploy these principles whenever possible, during the remainder of Fiscal 2019. Although, our main objective is to finalize a strategic plan, which will define our agenda for the medium term. I have a great deal of confidence that the management team that we have now put in place is a right one to develop this plan. We will leverage the power of all and the capabilities of each. We will make sure that we have true alignment within our leadership team, and of course, the organization, on our roadmap, and our way of doing things.
I am personally very confident that we can do this. Yet, I am also conscious that we need to earn back the trust of our investors. To achieve this, we will need to build a believable plan, which will be shared with you over the next few months. And to build also, a tactical of delivery in the quarters to come. In the meantime, we intend to carry on, and deliver profit time recovery in the second half.
Now, let me turn things over to Pierre Andre, who brings a deep tactical, he comes to us with nearly 30 years of public company finance experience, including nearly 7 years as the CFO of Danone. We are delighted to have him join Coty at this important, yet exciting junction for our company.
Pierre-Andre Terisse -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Pierre, and good morning everyone. I'm excited, too, to join the company, where the potential for value creation is so meaningful, combining challenges, strong brands, and teams, and opportunities for improvement. And this will obviously be a long journey. But ever day, since I joined, is concerning this impression, and I look forward, very much, to contributing to the new management team, and building together in the coming months, strong plans, and execution.
So, on to our second quarter results. In general, I think it's important to say that the quarter results show continued difficulties, first. But at the same time, they also show some progress in strengthening our control over the business. We have a number of positive developments in the quarter, including improved visibility, and progress from supply chain issues, strong luxury results, and improved dynamics in professional beauty. On the like-for-like basis, second quarter revenue increased by 0.7%, and these strong sequential improvements, in the like-for-like performance were connected to several temporary factors: the addition of Burberry, the positive impact from the monetary change in the revenue recognition policy, the shift of some luxury shipments from the first quarter into the second quarter, as a result of U.S., Hurricane Florence, and last, supply chain-related headwinds.
We estimate these factors cumulatively benefited our like-for-like revenue growth rate by approximately 2%. Which, imply a modest underlying second quarter like-for-like decline, of minus-1.1% for the total company. As was seen, for all factors we experienced in the quarter. Year-to-date, like-for-like revenues were down 3.2%. But again, on an underlying basis, we estimate that the like-for-like revenue has declined approximately 2% in the first half.
Let me get now, into a bit more detail, on the highlights of the quarter. I'll start with the supply chain disruption, which in November -- which, we reported in November, with four major issues, we drove the business disruption across the three divisions. We now have significantly more visibility around these issues, and we can confirm that the nearly $150 million of net revenues in the first half of full year 19, represent the majority of impact we expect for the year. We've made significant progress in resolving the issues in our luxury warehouse in Germany. Such, that shipment backlogs have been cleared, and capacity constraints are effectively resolved. We do not anticipate any further impact connected to this warehouse during second half of Fiscal 2019.
The disruption that we experienced during the ramp-up of the consumer beauty planning hub and manufacturing plant in the U.K. has also been steadily improving, and service levels for the current cosmetic portfolio are nearing normalized levels. We expect only minor residual impact from third quarter results, as this consumer beauty supply chain disruption is getting fully resolved. However, we still have progress to make on the consolidation of the professional beauty distribution center in the U.S., which continues to negatively impact customer service, particularly, for the OPI nail brands. We expect to stabilize OPI service levels during the second half. And the teams are working very hard on this as we speak, with good progress.
You may also recall that, there were two external factors last quarter that mainly affected the luxury division, as a result of shortages from component stock suppliers, we continue to experience a deficit of pumps and certain glass bottles, and expect this to be an ongoing issue during the second half. We've been assured, though, by our suppliers, that Coty's order are being prioritized, at very strong capacity, in their own plants, and we expect to see here, again, progress. We firmly believe altogether that we have resolved the most critical supply chain integration issues, and we are confident that the disruption, which will be solved by year-end, with a less, moderate impact expected in the second half. That's for supply chain.
I'll now move to luxury, with the division, which returned to strong, 10.8%, like-for-like net revenue growth, in the second quarter. The supply chain issues, of course, continued to be a sizable headwind, but this was more then offset by strong growth in the Burberry, in light of very depressed prior-year comps, as well as the U.S. hurricane-related impact previously mentioned. On an underlying basis, luxury was still strong, growing approximately 5% in both the quarter and the first half. Which, is consistent with historical trends. We continue to see strong growth across many of our core brands including, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, and Chloe, supported by robust innovation and exhibition.
Looking at the details for some of them, in Gucci, we have continued to expand, the Bloom. And as we enter the second half, key launches include the Ultra-Premium, and Calvin Klein collection, Gucci Guilty Revolution, and a select relaunch of items in the Gucci color cosmetic line. In Burberry, the launch of Her, is off to a strong start, driving improved sale trends, particularly in the U.S., U.K., and Germany. Daisy Love, continues to expand the Marc Jacobs' franchise. NYU, has also been impacted by the supply chain disruptions. The brand remains a core focus. We have a key launch slated for second half.
We continue to see strong e-commerce momentum in the division, with online growth way ahead of overall division growth, fueled by both traditional retailers, and e-commerce-pure players. And from the stability standpoint, luxury continues to drive exceptional financial performance, with 41% adjusted operating income growth, in the second quarter, and 29% in the first half, contributing to a 15.4% adjusted operating margin in the first half. These continue, therefore, to be a very strong business for us.
Professional beauty, next. Second quarter, like-for-like trends improves sequentially, to a decline of 0.8% including the negative effects of supply chain disruption. These disruptions are impacting our hair color business, including, Wella, but has disproportionately impacted our OPI brands, as already mentioned, disrupting sequence of the brands both, in North America and internationally. Adjusting from the supply chain disruptions, and the line, professional beauty, like-for-like revenues remain consistent at plus-1.5%.
On the profit side, strong improvement in the divisional growth margin, supported by product mix and accretive innovation together, with fixed cost control, drove a 1% increase in the second quarter, adjusted operating income, resulting in a 17.3 adjusted margin for the quarter, and 12.3 adjusted margin for the first half.
From the brand perspective, Wella continues to benefit from a steady increase, when converting, set on those to the Wella current effect, with ME Plus line. We continue to see growth, strong momentum in GHD, across nearly all countries, due by a combination of our Platinum Plus Styler launch, a new brand campaign, and growing distribution.
Before we move ahead, with consumer, I would like to outline here that, together luxury and professional beauty represent 60% of the portfolio, and that the 60% of the portfolio are showing solid-to-strong performance. Let me now focus on the 40% of the business, which is still facing difficulties. Consumer beauty, second quarter, like-for-like results as -7.3%, improved meaningfully from the 14% decline in first quarter. It was nonetheless the weak results indicating that we still have much work to do to achieve -- the division.
On an underlying basis, second quarter like-for-like was a negative-7.8%, with Younique, contributing to the decline. During the second quarter, the performance was broadly in line with set-out trends, as our brands were pressured by continued weakness in the last beauty category, particularly in the U.S. and Europe. Set-out trends have shown a moderation in the pace of all share losses.
Product category and brand perspective, so color cosmetic declined, mid-single digits, with Cover Girl and Sally Hansen benefiting from easy comps in the prior year, ahead of their brand relaunches, while Rimmel, and Max Factor were weighed down by the supply chain disruptions. In retail hair, Wella, set-out trends remain positive, with Wella, steadily gaining share of over the last year, helped by innovation. Set-out trends at Clairol remain pressured, while net revenue benefited from low comps ahead of less share -- and media relaunch. In body care, our Brazilian local brands continued their momentum, with strong revenue growth, and share gain. Ecommerce, was a bright spot in consumer beauty, with strong growth in the quarter, and year-to-date, and share gains from them, as well, across a number of categories, and in our core consumer beauty categories.
During the second quarter in 19, Younique revenues and profits remain pressured due to a decline in product sales, and presence of sponsorship. We continue to refrain of product offering and compensation plan structures to drive improvements in present sales activity, recruitment, and retention. And from the product standpoint, consumer beauty, second quarter, adjusted operating margin, a total of 5.6%. As supply pressure, and the loss profit contribution from the divested brand, more than offsets fixed cost reduction.
Our expectation in second half for Fiscal 2019, is for both, a moderation in supply chain disruptions, as already said, and a more disciplined strategic approach to our investment. Both and below net revenues, which should translate into an improved profit picture in the second half. Connected to the continued pressure we are seeing at the consumer beauty division, let me briefly touch on the $965 million that are non-cash impairment charge that we are taking this quarter. Primarily connected with the consumer beauty division, and selective brands trademarks. The consumer beauty division has experienced increased competitive in market pressure for the first half of Fiscal 19, which has resulted in weaker than expected revenues and earnings.
Additionally, the discount rate associated with the division has also increased in the quarter. Based on these two adverse factors, management determined that there were indications that the goodwill of the division, as well as certain trademarks, intangible assets, may be impaired and accordingly, an interim goodwill impairment test was performed as of December 31st, 2018. The charge announced today, reflect non-cash impairment charge with $832 million for the consumer beauty goodwill, and $97.8 million to the trademarks of Covergirl, Clairol, and two small regional brands. While this charge clearly had a material effect on reported operating profit, or adjusted operating income, excludes this charge, of course.
Second quarter adjusted operating income of $322.3 million, declined by 7% from the prior year, with a margin of 12.8 %, bringing first half adjusted operating income to $463 million, and an adjusted margin of 10.2%. In the first half, the adjusted operating income was adversely impacted by temporary factors of approximately $48 million, including over $19 million from the supply chain disruption. Excluding these temporary effects, the first half underlying adjusted operating income, does decline about 6% year-over-year, with an operating margin of approximately 11%.
We anticipate a profit trend recovery in the second half compared with the first half. Our second quarter adjusted net income, $181.9 million, declined 23% from the prior year, primarily due to a $41.8 million, positive foreign tax settlement in the prior year, which, we'll not do this year, of course. Interest expense was relatively higher than last year, as a result of a higher debt balance, while net income attributable to minority interest was declining due to the decrease in Younique profitability. As a result of all this, adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.24 per share.
I'll now comment on the improvement in our net debt during the quarter. Debt decreased in the second quarter, due to approximately $320 million of operating cash flow, and $195 million of free cash flow generated during the quarter. As we drove strong conversion of operating income into operating cash flow, supported by working capital improvements. Our team remains focused on free cash flow, as deleveraging is a strong priority for Coty, and the most important lever for value creation for both equity and debt orders in the short-term.
Like Pierre, I believe that the more disciplined and systematic focus on cash, will meaningfully enhance our cash flow in the medium-term. This, in turn, will free-up resources to both invest behind our brands, and to expand our profits.
Net debt was $7,489 million, on December 31st, 2018, decreased $173 million from the balance of $7,662 million on September 31st, 2018, resulting in the last 12 months net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 5.85. The reduction in net debt reflects positive free cash flow, the payment of $94 million dividend, and a positive foreign exchange impact relating to the part of our net debt, which is in euro. Our covenant adjusted net leverage ratio remains, as a result of all this, below our threshold, and we have ample liquidity available, as a revolver, with no significant debt maturities until 2023.
Let me, to finish, offer some final color on the Fiscal 2019 outlook. As we focus on building a healthier business model, we anticipate a profit trend recover in the second half of Full year 2019. We expect that Full year 2019 constant currency adjusted operating income will be moderately below last year adjusted operating income of $1 billion. And we continue to expect positive free cash flow for Full year 2019, and for the rest of the year.
Before wrapping up, let me quickly review our key priorities for the remainder of the year. The first, of course, is to fully resolve the supply chain issues, and on each front, we are making very good progress, which we'll need to be careful in the third quarter. Collectively, as a team, we will work to delivering the profit target I just mentioned. My own growth focus, as a CFO, will be on improving free cash flow generation, as part of a commitment to deleveraging. And finally, as mentioned several times by Pierre with the new -- and under his leadership, we will spend the next few months, as a team, assessing the risk and opportunities of the business, and building medium-term plans with a focus on gross margin, addressing operating income, and free cash flow. That's what I wanted to tell you, as a comment for the second quarter.
...
With that, let's move to Q&A. Thank you.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you wish to ask a question at this time, please press the * key, followed by the number, 1. If at any point, your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue, by pressing the # key. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question, and one follow-up.
Our first question, comes from the line of Nick Modi, of RBC Capital Markets.
Nick Modi -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst
Thank you, good morning everyone. Pierre, maybe you can just -- I know it's still early, but as you've come in and looked at the businesses, I just wanted to get your assessment on the consumer insights capabilities at Coty, today, and maybe on a scale of 1 to 10, where would you rank it? Obviously, 10, being the best. And just, from the Covergirl perspective, obviously, it was relaunched, it looked like it had some early success, just wanted to get the State of the Union on how that relaunch is progressing.
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
Nick, thank you very much for this question. So, when it comes to consumer insight capabilities, I think that we have -- based on my superficial assessment, and I'd be very cautious about what I say, I think our assessment of where the market is going, what are the constant trends, and what is it that we need to do is probably reasonably good, so I'd give it 6 or 7, I mean, if I wanted to rank it. I do happen to believe that where our opportunities lie is how to transform these insights into a consistent locked in strategy of discipline opposed to brand-building, of discipline opposed to popular management, and I would say, and the discipline media approach, overall. So, that's kind of what I think. I think the opportunity, not less in discovering the insight, but how we transform them into complete action.
When it comes to Covergirl, I have to say, I think this is an amazing one. This is one a lot of -- a lot of scale, a lot of opportunities, not in the U.S. market, but I'm talking from intuition here. And so, I accept that this is sort of answer -- answer. I think that brand, has really, a lot of potential, it is very distinctive, it has really strong international expansion capabilities. So, I think that we have a very strong asset here. When it comes to the relaunch, I think the -- I would say that the assessment is a bit less clear, at this stage. We are not happy with the development of the brand. I know distribution plays into that, but I think that there are also some issues in the way we market that brand from a structural standpoint. Again, we come back to the same conversation we had, we've got choices, building or not on the distinctiveness of the brand. And velocity of our sales and complexity of our brands.
So, we are taking stock of that, but again, I think the team is quite conscious of some of the trajectory that we have with that brand, we really believe it deserves better, and we will work strongly to turn it on.
Nick Modi -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst
Great. Thank you, so much. I'll pass it on.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shannon Coyne, of BMO Capital Market.
Shannon Coyne -- BMO Capital Market-Analyst
Hi, thank you. Pierre, you talked about introducing playbooks in a more standardized, disciplined approach to the business. Can you give more details on what that means, and maybe talk about how that marries up with being in beauty, which is often a changing in a dynamic industry?
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
Actually, thank you, Shannon, for this very good question. Playbooks talks of the way we -- on how we do business, nothing else. Beauty is a tricky world, and so is music. Right? And nobody can play to a philharmonic orchestra without mastering music, right, or the field of music, and learning music. It's a bit the same analogy. What we need to do is to have strong, standard ways of doing things, organization -- which matters, the why, the how, and the what. The why, is very clear, why we are in the business, why does the company exist. And you know, it's relatively easy to answer these questions.
The what, is what makes the difference. If I want to sell more Covergirl, I need to do something with the range, we need to do something with the price, we need to do something with the distribution, we need to do something with the recipes. That's the what. And that's where we spend most of our -- we spend most of our time. Large organizations face complexity, complexity is the ransom of success, and with complexity comes complexity of businesses, complexity of processes, and complexities of organization. And that's where the how operates.
What we don't want is to have people who disclose on how they have to perform their job. We want them to really master that, by giving them the marketing philosophy, a selling philosophy, a manufacturing philosophy, or a finance philosophy, for whatever it counts. So, that's what we are going to do in this company. We need to invest a bit at the initial phase, but if we free up a lot of time and a lot of energy, so we can focus on selling more beauty.
Shannon Coyne -- BMO Capital-Analyst
Thanks, that's helpful. And just, real quick, can you give us some sense as how based on the guidance you gave today, how Q3 and Q4 plays out? Thanks.
Pierre-Andre Terisse -- Chief Financial Officer
I'll take that. It's going to be skewed toward Q4, clearly, there are different reasons for that. One of them, being the supply chain, resolution, which is obviously going to improve. There will be some impact as well as revenue, recognition, due to the change of norm, it's going to have different impacts throughout the quarters, as we are normalizing it. And some cost-saving, as well. That's it.
Shannon Coyne -- BMO Capital-Analyst
Thanks.
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
You're welcome.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Lauren Lieberman, of Barclays.
Lauren Lieberman -- Barclays -- Analyst
Great. Thanks. Good morning. Pierre-Andre, I know you've been there only a week, as you pointed out, but a couple of questions for you. First, just thought on capital allocations, sort of, where does the dividend sit in on your priority list? Also, I noticed n the release, the net debt, the EBITDA target that's been there in the past was not mentioned. So, is there any change to that? And then, also, just that you were willing to step up and kind of -- you know, you adjusted the full year guidance a little bit lower, but like you said, there's this implied significant acceleration. So, why do that at this point? You're very new; you didn't have to. Maybe just offer your level of conviction, the drivers that really kind of get you to be comfortable giving an outlook at this point in time. Thanks.
Pierre-Andre Terisse -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Lauren. So, it's a competent question, actually. I'll start with the last one, it's true, I've been here for a week, but the company has not started working for a week only. And Pierre, by the way, joined three months ago. And for those three months, there's been a lot of things happening, in particular, in reassessing the short-term performances of the business, getting a more realistic view of what we are delivering, and putting in place plans to support the profitability, and the profit delivery, and to support as well the delivery of cash flow for the one week. And I must say, a bit more than one week, to be frank. I've been wrapping up on that work, meeting many people, and getting to the conclusion that there are very solid plans.
And this is the reason why we feel comfortable in saying what we've been saying about a lot of the profit delivery. Which means, $950 to 1 billion operating income target for the year. And indeed, an improvement in the second half. But it's pretty logical and very easy. You see that consumer beauty Q2 is already improving, this is Q1. You see that, as we move forward, we are getting less impact from the supply chain issues, and as a result of that, you can see what the trend is going to be in the second half. So, this is why we are comfortable reassuring the market on that. And somehow, confirming the resilience of the business, which we have seen in the second quarter.
On your other question, which are a bit more long-term, on capital allocation and dividends, very simply, no intention to touch the dividends. My -- sorry -- in the financial dividend and capital allocation, the return to shareholders is a very important matter, and we take it very seriously, as we take very seriously deleveraging. Today, I have no reason to question what's in place, we are focusing on free cash flow generation to match these two objectives of the financial policy.
On the net debt target change, I believe you're talking of the medium-term guidance. As mentioned here, we are going to make a strategic assessment of the company, in the coming month, and obviously, this will result in conclusion in the cash flow generation and what we want to do with it, and therefore, I don't want to confirm before we have made these plans. Whatever target medium-term will be. I simply want to note that we have a set of targets from a covenant perspective, which anyway, leads us to a net debt EBITDA ratio, which are gradually going down, as we move in time. So, that remains in place of course. I hope I have covered your question, with my answer.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Wendy Nicholson, of Citi.
Wendy C. Nicholson -- Citi -- Analyst
Hi. Good morning. Can you talk about your initial sense for the portfolio of brands? Do you have a feel for whether you just have too many brands to manage, too many different lines of business? And I'm particularly curious if you have an initial take on the hair-coloring business because, that seems to be particularly challenged, and maybe particularly a competitive category, where it might be difficult to regain some momentum. Thank you.
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Wendy, for this question. I think it is. Indeed, as you have said, we don't suffer from a lack of brands at Coty, but probably, we do suffer from a lack of portfolio share. So, I think this is what we are going to assess during the strategic plan. I believe that if you want to manage, or to achieve a solid market share, at any given market, you do need to have brands, but you do need to have a well-structured portfolio brand aligning with the price tiering of the marketplaces. And unfortunately, I think that over the years, this has not been the strategy that Coty has followed.
Some competitors have inevitably followed this strategy because, it is a good one. I think this is something that we need to work on. We will definitely come back to you when we evaluate our strategy, and share our strategy with that way of looking at the market. And I do happen to believe that in that case, Coty is very well placed. We have a few hidden gems into the organization, or into the business that we can capitalize on, and to build, I would call it, a structured group portfolio, which has the capability to become global, providing we give the focus that it deserves. That is my answer, first, to your question.
I understand that they are second brands that we have, which are probably non-strategic. In this type of situation, I think you have to be pragmatic. You can't -- this brand generates cash flows, or where we need that cash flow, so we will continue to manage them. Some of these brands are also going to be off tone, but our local; I don't mind that at all. I think you can have also, a set of local brands providing they are well managed, and you manage them not as global brand, but you manage them as you would manage a global brand at the local level. And again, this is what a value of a playbook gives, which gives people the methodologies, and a way of doing things, which are actually whatever you applied on the Covergirl brand, on the Max Factor brand, you could apply it on the Bruno Banani, in Germany. So, that's my approach to this sort of problem. I think that was your question.
On hair-coloring, we had great idea in the U.S. market, specifically with the Clairol move, where particularly, our exhibition has been a bit challenging, as we have unfortunately, we have -- in the case of Clairol, particularly, in the U.S. market, we have gained penetration, we have deliverance of Clairol, but we have upset some traditional users of the main partition of the market, as I call it, and we have lost business. It is a great example of why your playbook matters, and then, you avoid this type of problem. I think it is a category where we have a right to win, we have capabilities, we have competencies, and we have potentially -- we have some, I would call it, local brands, Clairol in the U.K., and in the U.S. I don't see any reason why we can't build a global portfolio on this category, taking into consideration our success in professional hair color, I'm absolutely convinced that we can take this to the mass market. And again, it would be, clearly, part of our strategy. I would again see that as a great opportunity.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of William Roeder, of Bank of America.
William Roeder -- Bank of America
Good morning. Earlier, you chose not to talk about a medium-term leverage target. Maybe you could talk even longer-term than that. Philosophically, where do you believe this company should be levered? And then, I guess, if I could just get an update on the P&G integration, we were expecting $225 million of savings in 19. Do you know what was achieved during the first half, and therefore, what we might expect to see on the second half? That's all. Thank you.
Pierre-Andre Terisse -- Chief Financial Officer
Just, on the first part of your question, and I will let Ayesha answer the second part about P&G. I have no philosophy. It basically depends on the business, and the delivered cash flow. So, entering the problem -- the question with -- spirit of conviction, to me, doesn't make sense. I want, first, to go through what is the ability of this business to deliver free cash flow --. What is the ability to deliver sustainable earnings and growth, and then, depending on the outcome, we need to define what is the right level of leverage we want to put in place, and what is one we can put in place from a realistic standpoint? So, that's why I'm not willing to go much further than that, and we'll discuss that once we have numbers.
Ayesha, do you want to answer on the --?
Ayesha Zafar -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
Yes. So, just the answer on synergies, we were expecting about 225 for the year, and we are on track. So, I would say, roughly half, but that's just to give you a sense. That's how we were expecting it to work out.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Mark Astrachan, of Stifel.
Mark Astrachan -- Stifel Nicolaus -- Analyst
Thanks, and good morning, or afternoon. I wanted to ask about the gross margin focus. So, that suggests perhaps freeing some funds up for flexibility in the business, including reinvestment, whether it's incremental or just a continuation. I guess, I'm curious, if that's reasonable, if that's kind of how you view the business, and if so, or even if not, how do you think about the EBITDA margin longer term? As I think, your predecessors seem to have what I think in the industry was viewed as a bit of unrealistic expectations about high single-digit EBITDA margins. Do you think that that is still the right number? Sort of directional, not looking for specifics, but what is the right level of margin for the business? What's the right level of reinvestment for the business? That'd be helpful, thank you.
Pierre-Andre Terisse -- Chief Financial Officer
Yes, I will take the first part of the question, and then, I will let Pierre elaborate on gross margin, and the engine. But again, I don't want to make the answer before we have entered the -- exact size. But what we are all clear about is that we think there is room for meaningful improvement of the operating margin, and this, as a whole, actually. We want to take this company at the level of EBITDA margin, which is going to be meaningfully higher than the one we have today. A substantial part of that is going to come from gross margin. Another part of that is going to come from the simplification of the costs, basically, and from fixed costs, and from fixed costs leverage, by the way, as well.
For gross margin, my only comment -- and Pierre, will elaborate more -- is that, if we want to rebuild the business of quality, we need to have the ability to invest behind this, and if we want to have the ability to invest behind this, we want to have available gross margin, which is higher, and that's as simple as that. So, the question is already answered -- choose a second.
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
Exactly, Pierre-Andre. And Mark, thanks for the question. It's almost a point, a strong point of view that I've developed over the years, is that -- and reinforcing to this category, looking at this category in detail, beauty is an expensive business, from an NCP standpoint. You need to be able to compete in this area, it doesn't mean that you need to waste, and we don't need to, we don't intend to. But clearly, we need to strengthen our ability to talk to our consumers, or to build our brand with our consumers. In that respect, delivering, sustain gross margin, and ever-improving gross margin.
I mean, we need to make a step up -- and after that, go to the strategy of continuous improvement, through many levers: being, strategic quality management, costing, simplification of our recipes, simplification of formulation, prediction of our costs. I mean, we have to -- in a strategy like that, you don't leave any stone unturned. And we will just do that. But clearly, we are in the business of brand-building, and as Pierre-Andre said, that takes money, and at the same time, we also want to deleverage our company, pay dividends, and improve our profitability. So, again, I see that as the place to go to, and we will do that in the not-too-distant future.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Robert Ottenstein, of Evercore.
Robert Ottenstein -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Great. Thank you very much. And you kind of touched on my question just now, but maybe let me try to ask it again, and knowing it's early days. Again, philosophically speaking, you made a couple of key big-picture comments before the Q&A section. 1) You want to earn the right to grow in consumer business. 2) You're not obsessed with market share. 3) You are obsessed with gross margin. And I guess, what I'm struggling with a little bit, and again, you touched on it here, is what do you mean in terms of right to grow in consumer business? Does it mean that you have the brand that the consumers want, or does it mean that you have the profitability, first? It's kind of an egg and chicken situation there. If you stand up and look at some of those comments, you're not obsessed with market share, but you are obsessed with gross margin. Does that mean that you want to be more aggressive, perhaps in terms of pricing? So, again, I know you touched on it a little bit before, but if you could help us think through those various objectives, particularly in the short-term. I understand, long-term, you want to drive the gross margin long-term, but over the next 12 months, how are those different priorities fitting together? Please.
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, very much, Robert, for this question. When I say I'm not obsessed with market share, I mean by that, that I'm obsessed with quality business. All right? And they are good business. We all know that there are good business, and very bad business. What we all need to do, we need to focus on building good business, and we are going to forfeit very, very bad business, and we are going to limit bad business. So, I think we need to be pragmatic on this dimension, but it's really philosophically the guidance that we give to all people. I actually don't see any compatibility between doing that, and having gross margin. Actually, I think it is the lifeblood of gross margin, too. And gross margin is, in turn, the lifeblood of building plans, or building portfolios. So, I see that philosophically, it is, sort of 2 times, right, if I may say so, or a 3-time strategy.
Clearly, spend the next six months assessing our point of departure, market by market, assessing our portfolio, market by market, where is the space to go, where are the opportunities. Immediately, at the same time, but that would take another couple of years, I would say, focus on the quality of the business, with the portfolio that we have today, and optimizing its performance in terms of quality market shares, and not only in terms of total market shares. I mean, mostly, in that case, I mean, the market share of the base business, and versus, the incremental one. And at the same time, once we have done all -- really build an innovation program, or a transformation program for a portfolios standpoint that we will be able to deploy in a period of time, starting from, I would say, 18 months to the rest of our life. Or 18 months to 2 years -- to the rest of our life.
Because, again, you need to exercise consistency over that. We have too many markets where we only have one brand. And we can't fight competitors. We have two or three brands with only one brand. That's not going to work. So, we need to give those a position in the marketplace. And again, you don't move Covergirl, as a brand, which has 17% penetration in the U.S. market. It was launched 78 years ago, if I do remember well. All right? So, I think that takes time, and of course, I do not intend to wait that long to see success. But clearly, I do see that series of events, and we all work concomitantly with different parts of the organization working on each specific agenda item.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Faiza Alwy, of Deutsche Bank.
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
And that will be the last question, by the way.
Faiza Alwy -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for that. So, Pierre, we seem to be hearing two things. So, on the one hand, it seems that you want to invest to help build a better company. Some of that can likely be sourced by lean initiatives. But given where you stand now, versus competition, especially in consumer beauty, it also seems that that would require a good deal of upfront investment. And I think that's implied by the lower operating profit outlook today. So, I guess the first question is do you agree with that assessment? And the second question is, how do you balance that desire to improve, and the potential need to invest against your deleveraging priorities? And to what extent is elevated that sort of constraining of what you would otherwise like to do? And how do you sort of break through those constraints?
Pierre-Andre Terisse -- Chief Financial Officer
Maybe Pierre-Andre will take --. I will take the question first. I don't think the investment has anything to do with the profitability, as you mentioned. The profitability incorporates a very important factor, which is the supply chain issue. So, I think that's the main reason for the profitability of this year being better than the profitability of last year.
On the constraints, well, that's basically what we have on the agenda now. We have a strong commitment on the deleveraging standpoint. We have ambition from the profitability of this company. And we know that we need to find a way to at the same time invest and deliver, and do it in a balanced manner. This is very much what we are going to try and work in the coming weeks and months, and we are going to try and incorporate in the strategic review, sorry, we are doing, that's usual constraints for a business. You cannot invest everything upfront because, that would be taking too much risk. You need to do it in gradual manner, and have delivery coming at the same time. So, maybe, Pierre, you want to complement on that.
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
Faiza, very good question. I think that I allude to what I said earlier in my initial statement. We have space to improve the performance of our business by working differently. Right? In our ANCP budget, yes, we are not short of ANCP, yes, we could have more. I mean, that's not the problem. I mean, who does not want more ANCP? But our balance between working media, and non-working media has to be improved. Our balance between reach and frequency has to be improved. Our balance between the different types of media can be improved. So, we have space in our P&L. And we have space in our execution. We received that space, those spaces, and I think it will free-up not only cash, to be honest with you, or money to be spent, but also, it will save us from a lot of waste. And I think with waste comes fatigue, and with fatigue comes lower performance, and our objective is actually to fundamentally eliminate waste and hence, refocusing our organization and our people to what really makes a difference.
Faiza Alwy -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Thank you.
Pierre-Andre Terisse -- Chief Financial Officer
With that, we thank you. And we'll see you on the road. Thank you, bye-bye.
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
Thank you so much, all, for your time.
...
Operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.
Duration: 59 minutes
Call participants:
Pierre Laubies -- Chief Executive Officer
Pierre-Andre Terisse -- Chief Financial Officer
Ayesha Zafar -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
Nick Modi -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst
Shannon Coyne -- BMO Capital Market-Analyst
Lauren Lieberman -- Barclays -- Analyst
Wendy C. Nicholson -- Citi Investment Research -- Analyst
William Roeder -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Mark Astrachan -- Stifel Nicolaus -- Analyst
Robert Ottenstein -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Faiza Alwy -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
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Ankara (AFP) - Turkey on Saturday condemned China's treatment of its Muslim ethnic Uighur people as "a great embarrassment for humanity," adding to rights groups' recent criticism over mass detentions of the Turkic-speaking minority.
"The systematic assimilation policy of Chinese authorities towards Uighur Turks is a great embarrassment for humanity," Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said in a statement.
The northwest Xinjiang region of China, where most Uighurs live, has been under heavy police surveillance in recent years, after violent inter-ethnic tensions.
Nearly one million Uighurs and other Turkic language-speaking minorities in China have reportedly been held in re-education camps, according to a UN panel of experts.
Beijing says the "vocational education centres" help people steer clear of terrorism and allow them to be reintegrated into society.
But critics say China is seeking to assimilate Xinjiang's minority population and suppress religious and cultural practices that conflict with Communist ideology and the dominant Han culture.
"It is no longer a secret that more than one million Uighur Turks, -- who are exposed to arbitrary arrests -- are subjected to torture and political brainwashing in concentration centres and prisons," Aksoy said in the Turkish foreign ministry statement.
"Uighurs who are not detained in the camps are also under great pressure," he added.
Turkey called on the international community and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres "to take effective steps to end the human tragedy in Xinjiang region."
Most mainly Muslim countries have not been vocal on the issue, not criticising the government in China which is an important trading partner.
Aksoy also said Turkey had learned of the "tragic" death in custody Saturday of Uighur poet and musician Abdurehim Heyit.
"We've learned with great sorrow that dignified poet Abdurehim Heyit, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for his compositions, died in the second year of his imprisonment," he said.
"This tragic incident has further strengthened the Turkish public's reaction to the serious human rights violations in Xinjiang Region."
N'Djamena (AFP) - The Chadian military on Saturday said it had captured more than 250 rebels, including some top leaders, after an operation against a convoy of militants trying to cross into the country from Libya in late January that also involved French airstrikes.
In a statement issued by army staff the Chadian military said the sweep would continue in the region of Ennedi, in the northwest border with Libya and Sudan, near where the armed column of rebel vehicles was brought to a halt in early February.
The statement said some 250 "terrorists, including four main leaders" were detained, while more than 40 vehicles were destroyed and hundreds of weapons were seized.
"Several compromising documents" were also seized," the statement added without giving further details.
However, a spokesman for the Union of Resistance Forces (UFR) rebel group, dismissed the figure given for those arrested as "imaginary".
Youssouf Hamid said only about 30 fighters had been held.
President Idriss Deby on Thursday said the column of rebels had been "destroyed" in a series of strikes carried out by French warplanes.
Acting in conjunction with Chad's government, French Mirage 2000 jets targeted the convoy on Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday, destroying about 20 of roughly 50 pickup trucks the rebels started out with, the French armed forces said in a statement.
Chadian forces had already tried to stop the column with airstrikes at the beginning of February, before asking France for warning passes and then strikes.
An armed forces spokesman said the convoy had crossed 400 kilometres (250 miles) of Chadian territory before being halted between Tibesti and Ennedi in the northwest.
The anti-Deby UFR had claimed to have crossed into northern Chad with "three columns" of vehicles.
On Friday, the group said it had suffered "damage" after the French strikes, according to one of its members Mahamat Doki Warou.
Story continues
Another source from the group told AFP that ten fighters had been killed, adding: "We are in the mountains of Hadjer Marfain."
The UFR was created in January 2009 from an alliance of eight rebel groups.
In February 2008, a tripartite insurgent group, moving in from the east, reached the gates of the presidential palace in N'Djamena before being repulsed by Deby's forces.
Chad, a vast and mostly desert country with more than 200 ethnic groups, has suffered repeated coups and crises since it gained independence from France in 1960.
Under Deby, a former head of the armed forces, the country has taken a leading role in the fight against jihadism in the Sahel region.
It is part of a West African coalition fighting the Boko Haram insurgency, and a member of the French-backed G5 Sahel anti-terror alliance, which also includes Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.
By David Schwartz
PHOENIX (Reuters) - An Arizona long-term healthcare facility where a severely disabled woman was raped will remain open after its owners agreed to allow the state to oversee operations, a spokesman for the governor said on Friday.
Hacienda HealthCare had said on Thursday that it was no longer "sustainable" to operate its skilled nursing facility in Phoenix, where an unidentified patient in her 20s was raped, a crime that only came to light after she gave birth in December.
"(The agreement) means Hacienda patients and families would be allowed to stay in the home they've known for years while ensuring new and enhanced protections and oversight are put in place," said Patrick Ptak, a spokesman for Arizona Governor Doug Ducey.
Ducey and state regulators had sharply criticized Hacienda's decision to close the facility.
Hacienda said the company had already taken steps to ensure the safety and welfare of the roughly three dozen patients at the facility by adding surveillance equipment, increasing security and improving training.
"Our patients, their families, our team members and the community deserve nothing less than this commitment from us," the company said in a statement on Friday.
Ducey has urged the state attorney general to open an investigation and to seek civil penalties against Hacienda and a company reorganization.
A nurse at the facility, Nathan Sutherland, 36, was arrested in January after investigators said they had linked him to the case through DNA evidence. He has pleaded not guilty and remains in jail.
The woman ultimately gave birth to a baby boy, who police say is doing well and is being cared for by her family members.
Caretakers at Hacienda said they had no idea that the woman, who was disabled by seizures during her early childhood, was pregnant.
(Reporting by David Schwartz; Edited by Dan Whitcomb and Rosalba O'Brien)
It's a strange little world.
At 4 billion miles from Earth, MU69 (also nicknamed Ultima Thule) is the farthest-away object a human spacecraft has ever visited. For the past few years, scientists have labeled MU69 as an unknown, mysterious "puzzle." After the 13-year-old New Horizons spacecraft eventually swooped by the frozen rock on New Years Day 2019, the object graduated to a snowman-shaped frozen rock.
Now, after receiving new images of MU69, planetary scientists suspect that both of its "lobes" are flattish, too.
"The larger lobe, nicknamed 'Ultima,' more closely resembles a giant pancake, and the smaller lobe, nicknamed 'Thule,' is shaped like a dented walnut," the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (where the mission is headquartered) detailed online.
Cms%252f2019%252f2%252f90bf2895 8d76 95f6%252fthumb%252f00001.jpg%252foriginal.jpg?signature=s2m0onzri4n6f8yr5kflp5p502c=&source=https%3a%2f%2fvdist.aws.mashable
These latest observations, which revealed the object in a new light, create more puzzles. Other solar system objects similar to MU69 like comets, for instance have rounder, though still imperfect, forms.
"It would be closer to reality to say Ultima Thule's shape is flatter, like a pancake," Alan Stern, who heads the New Horizons mission, said in a statement. "But more importantly, the new images are creating scientific puzzles about how such an object could even be formed. We've never seen something like this orbiting the Sun."
New Horizons the legendary spacecraft that captured these images of MU69 shot the latest sequence of pictures on Jan. 1, 2019, as the spacecraft departed MU69 at 31,000 mph and hurtled deeper into the black abyss of space, toward still-unknown destinations.
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These certainly aren't the last images we'll see of MU69, nor are they the closest. But they are the final views New Horizons captured of this far-off, icy world.
MU69 is a place of major scientific intrigue. It's preserved in a ring of ancient frozen objects, called the Kuiper Belt, that form a ring around the solar system. Out here, temperatures drop to nearly absolute zero, or negative 460 degrees Fahrenheit, which is as cold as it can get naturally.
Story continues
The latest conceptions of the shape of MU69
Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
Scientists believe that out here in this remote frigid realm, objects like MU69 have been frozen in pristine condition since the onset of the solar system some 4 billion years ago.
It's an artifact of our ancient cosmic past.
As New Horizons beams more images through the solar system, we'll almost certainly continue seeing weird, unprecedented stuff.
Business Insider
Russia and China have drawn closer to each other due to a shared desire for "what they call a new type of great-power relations," one expert said.
VISALIA, Calif. More than 120 visitors and staff at a resort in the Sequoia National Forest were freed after being trapped for days by heavy snowfall, authorities said Friday.
Between 4-8 feet of snow fell at Montecito Lake Resort this week. The Sierra Nevada resort is above 7,000 feet.
It's unknown when authorities were contacted by resort staff. The Associated Press reported that the guests had been snowbound for five days.
On Wednesday, Sequoia National Forest and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks rangers used heavy equipment to clear an 8-mile stretch of snow and more than 20 downed trees that were blocking access to the resort, rangers said.
All resort guests were safe and accounted for, officials said. Supplies requested by the guests were delivered Thursday morning to "ease their extended stay," rangers said.
Forest and park service crews cleared the final path to the lodge by 6 p.m. (Thursday) and park service personnel began escorting the stranded visitors down the mountain at approximately 6:30 p.m.," said Joe Gonzales, forest service incident commander. "The first convoy included 25 vehicles and 92 guests.
More snow is expected this weekend and could add to dangerous driving conditions.
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Tulare County Sheriffs Office recommends that visitors stay out of the area until it is cleared and safe for people to return.
We appreciate TCSOs valuable recommendations, the offers of snow removal equipment and assistance responding to family members calls of concern, Gonzales said.
The upcoming storm is expected to create hazardous conditions with falling trees and branches, power outages, and slick roads, rangers said.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks aren't the only areas facing weather woes.
Earlier this week, roads to Yosemite National Park were closed due to snow and fallen trees. Some roads have since opened, but more snow is expected.
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This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: 120 snowbound visitors at California mountain resort freed by rangers
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US President Donald Trump refused to meet a legal mandate Friday to tell Congress whether the White House thinks Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is personally responsible for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, CNN reported.
The President maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate, a senior administration official told CNN.
A National Security Council source insisted that the administration is under no legal obligation to respond, but added that the State Department would send a letter to Congress. The source, however, did not disclose the contents of that letter.
The immediate reaction from Congress was unequivocal.
The law is clear, said Juan Pachon, spokesman for the Democratic side of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The President has no discretion here. Hes either complying with the law or breaking it.
On October 2, 2018 The Washington Post contributor, Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi had entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to validate documents, but had gone missing. It was argued that he was killed there for writing articles that criticize Riyadh. Saudi Arabia, however, had denied these accusations claiming that the journalist had disappeared after leaving the consulate. But subsequently, Riyadh confirmed that Khashoggi was killed at the consulate.
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YEREVAN. Unlike the first instance court, the course of the Criminal Court of Appeal trial into the case of Armenias second President Robert Kocharyan was lawful.
Hayk Alumyan, one of Kocharyans attorneys, stated about he above-said at a press conference on Saturday.
Unfortunately, the [presiding Criminal] Court of Appeal judge allowed himself to grossly violate the law in his final decision and continued to keep Mr. Kocharyan in custody, disregarding several very gross violations, Alumyan added. In 2008, a charge of breaching the [countrys] constitutional order was brought against seven peopleto the most active participants. Then in 2009, the relevant article of the constitution was changed (). As a result of that change, the criminal proceedings regarding those seven people were ceased, with that part (). [As a result,] our respected [incumbent PM] Nikol Pashinyan also evaded criminal proceedings.
One of our [Kocharyans legal defense] arguments was that the same standard should be applied to Mr. Kocharyan, too.
As reported earlier, the Criminal Court of Appeal on Thursday denied the motion by Robert Kocharyans attorneys and upheld the first-instance court decision on extending the term of his custody.
On January 18, the capital city Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction granted the petition by the Special Investigation Service, and with a request to extend Kocharyans confinement for another two months, but denied the motion by the legal defense team of Kocharyan, and to the effect that their client be released from custody on bail. The defense, however, appealed this ruling to the Criminal Court of Appeal.
Robert Kocharyan was first remanded in custody on July 27, 2018 by a decision of the Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction. But on August 13, the Court of Appeal granted Robert Kocharyans legal defenders appeal to commute the first-instance courts decision on remanding their client in custody, and Kocharyan was released from courtroom on the grounds that he had presidential immunity.
But on November 15, the Court of Cassation overturned the Criminal Court of Appeal decision on remandingand on the grounds of presidential immunityRobert Kocharyan in custody, and the case was sent to the same court for a retrial.
And with its ruling on December 7, 2018 the Criminal Court of Appeal upheld the first instance courts July 27 decision on remanding Robert Kocharyan in custody. On the same dayDecember 7, Kocharyan was remanded in custody a second time.
Armenias second President Robert Kocharyanalong with several other former officialshas been charged within the framework of the criminal case into the tragic events that transpired in Yerevan on March 1 and 2, 2008and under Article 300.1 Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code; that is, breaching Armenias constitutional order, in conspiracy with others.
On March 1 and 2, 2008 the then authorities of Armenia used force against the opposition members who were rallying in downtown Yerevan, and against the results of the presidential election on February 19, 2008. Eight demonstrators as well as two servicemen of the internal troops were killed in the clashes. But no one had been brought to account for these deaths, to this day.
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro said on Friday he doesnt think it necessary to hold presidential elections in the country right now, TASS reported.
"What does the people of Venezuela need today? Elections? I dont think so," he told journalists.
"The people of Venezuela needs economic revival, peace and constitutional stability. And it is necessary to reelect the National Assembly for that," he said.
"The opposition wants no elections," he said. "If we say elections will be held in 30 days, they will begin inventing reasons to dodge them."
On January 23, the leader of Venezuelas opposition Juan Guaido, whose appointment as parliamentary speaker had been annulled by the Supreme Court two days before that, declared himself as acting president. On the same day, the United States recognized him as acting head of state. So did the Lima Group countries except for Mexico, the Organization of American States, and a number of other countries. On January 28, Washington imposed sanctions on Venezuelas oil company PDVSA and put some of Venezuelas assets in US banks under Guaidos control.
Some European countries recognized Guaido as interim president after Maduro had refused to call an early election within eight days. Russia, Belarus, Bolivia, Iran, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Syria and Turkey came out in Maduros support. The UN secretary-general urged a dialogue for resolving the crisis.
Karabakh President convenes session of Board of Trustees of Shushi University of Technology
France, Germany propose EU summit with Russia's Putin
Armenia acting MOD meets with acting high-tech industry minister
Rescuers remove body of man from gorge located near St. Sargis Church in Yerevan with great difficulty
Armenia President: Constitution needs to be amended, our country understands presidential governance better
EU intends to pay Turkey EUR 3.5 billion for refugees
Putin, Aliyev discuss factors for implementation of Russia-Armenia-Azerbaijan agreements on Nagorno-Karabakh
Russia FM to discuss Karabakh situation with UN High Commissioner for Refugees
PACE affirms Azerbaijan's refusal to resolve problem of political prisoners
Votes are being recounted in Armenia, Baku is ready to 'work with Yerevan on a big peace agreement, Jun. 23 digest
Armenia acting Deputy PM on his political career in the future
Armenia President: A nation with a history of genocide with Turkey needs to be very careful and have a friend
Armenian NGO president: Elections in Armenia only satisfied Baku and Ankara
Ambassador: UAE will carry out charity program for women in Armenia's Shirak Province
Armenias Sarkissian to pay state visit to Italy
Tokayev to Sarkissian: Continuing our constructive dialogue will contribute to expansion of Armenian-Kazakh cooperation
Aliyev: Armenia refuses to give us maps of minefields
One dollar falls below AMD 513 in Armenia
Armenia acting Deputy PM on dismissals of officials due to their political views
Armenian peacekeeping brigade takes part in military exercise at US military base in Germany
Azerbaijan Deputy PM: Trilateral group will continue its work after Armenia's new Cabinet is formed
Acting deputy PM on Armenian captives return: We have opportunity to reach mutual agreements
'Armenia' bloc member: We garnered 258 votes at polling station in Kapan, but there were no entries
Bayramov: Azerbaijan is ready to work with Armenia on a big peace agreement
Person suspected of firing gunshot at car of Armenian politician detained
Two boys suffer electric shock in Yerevan, one dies in hospital
Head of Armenia's Odzun village: I was beaten by ten people, including the governor of Lori Province
ost of sea freight hits record price due to China
Patriarch of All Russia to Armenia President: You conscientiously fulfill duties entrusted to you
Armenia I Have Honor bloc candidate for PM says their attitude towards acting PM Pashinyan will be "mirror"
Lavrov, Bayramov discuss implementation of agreements reached between Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan
Armenia I Have Honor bloc candidate for PM on Artsakh issue: Right of peoples to self-determination is inalienable
Artsakh government to provide one-time monetary assistance to war wounded, outpatients
Armenia state-funded Public Television makes around $829,000 purchase from one person
I Have Honor bloc candidate for PM: We can return Armenian captives in Azerbaijan in 2-3 days if we have power
China says world chaos caused by one power
Armenia I Have Honor bloc candidate for PM: I will go to parliament if decision is made that the bloc goes
Judicial farce against Armenian captives continues in Azerbaijan
Armenia acting premier appoints 2 new deputy governors to Ararat Province
Xi Jinping attaches great importance to development of China-Armenia relations
Armenia delegation member to PACE: Azerbaijan media are at forefront of spreading hatred, enmity towards Armenians
100 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia
Putin calls Russia contribution "decisive" in Karabakh conflict settlement process
Head of Ukraine parliament friendship group with Armenia congratulates Pashinyan
Armenias Pashinyan congratulates Luxembourg PM on national holiday
US authorities to allocate $ 8 billion to restore airports operation after pandemic
Artsakh State Minister clarifies what happened during Stepanakert rally
World oil prices going up
Biden administration revives plans to build new space station
Newspaper: Armenia troops to be taken out from front line
Newspaper: Pashinyan is PM of actually just 26.49% of Armenia voters
Tarasov: Azerbaijan, Turkey cant resolve matter of road via Armenia without Armenians participation
Lawyer: Armenia court on Wednesday will announce decision on motion to arrest physician
Armenia Security Council Secretary: Authorities will be guided by 'remedial secession' principle to solve Karabakh issue
Armenia 2nd President: Government views Hayastan All-Armenian Fund as additional source of funding
Karabakh President: My visit to Armenia's Civil Contract Party office on day of elections was misinterpreted
Number of 'Armenia' bloc's votes grows by 10 times after recount in Vanadzor
Rally participant: Karabakh President leading confidential negotiations with head of Azerbaijan state security service
Head of Armenia's Odzun village submits report to police, case to be forwarded to Special Investigation Service
Gagik Tsarukyan: Prosperous Armenia Party won't be in parliament, but will still be involved in politics
Belarus President congratulates Armenia's Pashinyan
Opposition National-Democratic Axis Party declines offer to meet with Armenia acting PM
Armenia Administrative Court renders decision on ex-deputy chief of army's General Staff
French MFA: France hopes elections will provide Armenia with opportunity to solve several issues
Leader of 5165 Movement Party rejects offer to meet with Armenia acting PM
Armenia acting high-tech industry minister introduces Industrial City Plan to US Ambassador
Armenia Central Electoral Commission: There will be vote recounting at more than 70 polling stations
Armenia ex-FM on Security Council Secretary's statement on torpedoing issue of POWs' return
Armenia Security Council Secretary: Exchange of mine maps and POWs may be ongoing
Armenia Security Council Secretary blames ex-FM for 'torpedoing' issue of return of POWs
Armenia Security Council Secretary: Negotiations over deployment of Russian border guards in Gegharkunik underway
Head of Armenia's Odzun village beaten in building of regional governor's office
Armenia Security Council Secretary reminds Levon Ter-Petrosyan about 1996 presidential elections
More Russian peacekeepers to be deployed in Armenia, Aliyev speaks on Shushi, Jun 22 digest
Armenia Security Council Secretary says former authorities are the capitulators
Armen Sarkissian holds phone talks with 'Armenia' bloc's leader Robert Kocharyan
Christian-Democratic Party leader to Armenia acting PM: We will support the government
2 Stepanakert residents declare hunger strike at main square of Artsakh capital
Citizen's Decision Party leader to Armenia acting PM: Results of elections show that political field is not competitive
Principal of school in Armenia's Metsamor and her husband are charged
Robert Kocharyan: 'Armenia' bloc is the one calling the shots
Holy Etchmiadzin: Acting PMs proposal for dialogue to spiritual leaders is welcome
Citizen's Decision Party: No agreement reached with Armenia acting PM
Iran MFA congratulates successful holding of snap parliamentary elections in Armenia
Armenia President holds phone talk with leader of 'I Have Honor' bloc Artur Vanetsyan
Armenia acting PM to political party leader: I thought you would cross electoral threshold and enter parliament
Dollar descent continues in Armenia
Another body retrieved during search operations in Karabakhs occupied lands
Karabakh President intends to hold referendum of confidence
Aliyev declares Artsakhs occupied Shushi as cultural capital of Azerbaijan
Armenia Ambassador presents credentials to Lithuania President
Armenia independent MP to grant letter of recommendation for release of Armen Charchyan from custody
Russia envoy: Armenian peoples contribution is invaluable in Great Patriotic War victory
Lithuania President: Nikol Pashinyan has been given mandate of Armenian people
Armenia President congratulates Nikol Pashinyan on his political party's victory in the elections
Leader of Armenian extra-parliamentary force meets with Nikol Pashinyan
'Armenia' bloc member: Authorities will establish dictatorship of Nikol Pashinyan, not of law
European Parliament delegation on Armenia elections: We call on all political forces to acknowledge election results
Armenia acting MOD pays tribute to fighters who fell in the Great Patriotic War
Armenia former President Kocharyan on Erdogan's platform of 6": Hard to talk about what does not exist
California's most effective instrument of resistance, however, may be its reputation and character, its strength as a role model. It's the un-Trump nation, an exemplary rebuke to presidential bluster and policies.
California has many problems -- a severe housing shortage, a volatile tax structure too dependent on the wealthy and capital gains, unfunded pension liabilities, and growing gaps between the haves and have-nots. Nonetheless, it boasts the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world, and it has achieved its ongoing economic success despite three tax increases, and dire warnings that those increases and California's stringent regulatory environment would drive business from the state.
The state has also thrived even as its population has grown ethnically more diverse. In 1994, with the passage of Proposition 187 -- which denied all public services, including schooling, to immigrants in the country illegally -- California looked a lot like the place Trump now wants America to be. But in the 25 years since, California repudiated the 1994 proposition. A federal judge overturned most of Proposition 187's provisions, and ultimately, the state's voters, and especially its Latino voters, were appalled by its naked nativism.
Sometimes local trial courts have a difficult time finding interpreters for their full range of language needs, or resources for signs and forms in languages their court users can understand. But weve made headway by building on ideas from our trial courts, creating coalitions, gathering better data, and channeling Californias culture of innovation.
Since 2015, weve expanded interpreter services to nearly all civil proceedingscritical cases including many domestic violence disputes, as well as cases involving child custody, elder abuse, and evictions.
In 2015, only nine out of our 58 trial courts provided interpreters in these critical cases; today 51 of our trial courts provide these services. Having a qualified interpreter means we can avoid the heartbreaking scenario of a child translating for her or his parents in family court, or a tenant relying on his landlord to explain what a judge is saying in an eviction proceeding.
In Sacramento, Merced, and Ventura counties, we launched a pilot project to see if using remote video could help broaden access to interpreters in the future. When used appropriately, this technology has the potential to increase access to qualified interpreters, meet the need for languages spoken less widely, and reach residents in the most remote parts of the state.
Jim Dunlop, founder of Dunlop Manufacturing and enormously influential innovator of picks, capos, and other guitar accessories, has passed away. He was 82 years old. Born in Scotland in 1936, Jim traveled to Canada as a young man looking for new opportunities. There he met his bride and mother of his children, Bernice, and the two of them headed to California for warmer weather. By the 1960s, he had started a family and was working as a machinist and then mechanical engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Off-hours, he turned his lifelong interest in music to creating accessories for guitar players.
Jims fearless, innovative spirit led him to turn his hobby into a livelihood, and in 1965, he founded Dunlop Manufacturing, Inc. Finding local success with handmade capos, he made the life-changing decision to become a maker of guitar picks when his obsession for precision drove him to design guitar picks gauged by their true thickness. Jim made a personal commitment to expanding the options available to guitar players of the time, introducing strict quality control and a wider variety of gauges than had ever been available before. He blended the advice of musicians with his precise engineering intuition as he experimented with numerous shapes and materials so that players could find the right pick and get the most out of it. One of the greatest triumphs to come from that experimentation was Tortex Picks, which is the #1 pick in the world today. In the 1980s, Jim boldly entered the effects market, assembling a crack team of engineers and securing top-quality parts. He acquired beloved brands such as Cry Baby and MXR and expanded their offerings while remaining true to their legacies and introducing a level of quality and consistency where it had never existed before. Taking on electronics blew the door wide open for Jims company, leading to collaborations with the family of Jimi Hendrix and numerous artists such as Eddie Van Halen, Dimebag Darrell, and Slash to make the sounds of the worlds top players available to everyone around the world. Today, Dunlop Manufacturing is one of the worlds largest pedal companies. It would be difficult to find a guitar player who hasnt been affected by Jims thoughtful innovations. Ever attentive to their needs, Jim will live on in the many products that he created to provide people with a better playing experience.
We can compete with the west ...
Top-end smartphones continue to offer fantastic new features to customers. The latest innovation that has got smartphone fans excited is foldable displays.
Samsung, Apple, and Huawei are all in the process of developing foldable smartphones, and the new technology is expected to be released in 2019.
Beyond features like foldable displays, top-end smartphones offer first-class performance thanks to their powerful hardware.
However, as smartphones continue to improve, their price tags keep going up.
The iPhone Xs Max costs R31,999 in South Africa, while Samsungs upcoming S10 range is expected cost even more than this.
Consumers are not happy with these high prices, and Apples iPhone Xs and Xr have suffered from poor sales a decrease of 15% compared to previous results.
Many consumers are choosing to buy cheaper smartphones instead, which offer better value for money.
To find out what the situation is in South Africa, MyBroadband spoke to smartphone experts about what consumers are, and should, be buying.
Mid-tier smartphone popularity
AppleDoctor MD Sean Joffe told MyBroadband that mid-tier smartphones have massively outsold flagship devices.
Consumers are no longer willing to just splash out to acquire the latest and greatest, as the cost benefit simply no longer make sense, said Joffe.
He added that buying a top-end iPhone is still a relatively smart decision, however, because they are made of premium materials, offer better security, and are more likely to hold their resale value.
Megan Quy, marketing manager at WeFix, said they have also seen an increase in customers interested in mid-range smartphones.
There is a new market emerging as more and more people become employed and want an efficient smartphone with good specs, but dont wish to spend their salary on it, said Quy.
The value of a big brand
According to Quy, however, it is important to choose a respectable smartphone brand even if youre not buying a top-end device.
We must all remember that some channels of society feel safe when they are within an ecosystem that is familiar, said Quy.
So owning a good brand still holds some merit, even if its not the top brand.
She added that different customers seek different things from their smartphone, and this will inform whether they choose a big brand as well as what level of device they will use.
For some, they want a luxury smartphone because they can afford one, because it fashionable, or because they see an alignment of values with the manufacturer, said Quy.
Old technology is good enough for many
Joffe said that the majority of their dealings are with older iPhones, due to the soundness of their construction.
The tendency is to shop down and seek more value, said Joffe.
Our top-selling iPhones remained the iPhone 6 and iPhone 8 in January, followed by iPhone Xr the best-selling in the new range.
Joffe added that the bulk of AppleDoctors repairs were on older models because they still have enormous longevity.
Quy said the phone WeFix repairs the most is the iPhone 6, while the iPhone 5s is also a popular repair option.
There has been an increase in iPhone 7 repairs which will see an upward trajectory as the iPhone 5 starts to decline, Quy added.
This shows that there is still a strong trend to repair versus replace and that giving the customer the right to repair holds much value.
Important stuff you won't get from the liberal media! We do the surfing so you can be informed AND have a life!
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo looks on as US President Donald J. Trump (R) launches the White House Global Women Initiative by signing a national security memorandum in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, Feb. 7. EPA-Yonhap
Two U.S. lawmakers have urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to seek a longer-term cost-sharing agreement for the stationing of American troops in South Korea.
In a letter dated Wednesday, Reps. Grace Meng (D-NY) and Norma Torres (D-CA) said a one-year deal did not sufficiently reflect the importance of the U.S. alliance with South Korea.
This comes as the two countries are finalizing a new deal on sharing the costs of stationing 28,500 American troops in the South.
The new agreement reportedly calls for increasing South Korea's contribution to just over 1 trillion won (US$890 million) and shortening its term from five years to one.
@doug_hanks
The election is still more than a year away, but the novelty of a crush of open seats on the Miami-Dade County Commission has created such demand that two candidates bumped into each other at the Elections Department Friday while filing their candidacy papers.
Raquel Regalado, a former elected school board member who lost the 2016 mayoral race to incumbent Carlos Gimenez, filed her papers to seek the District 7 commission seat Gimenez once held and that's now occupied by Xavier Suarez. (Really quick: Suarez used to be the mayor of Miami, and so did Regalado's dad, Tomas. Suarez's son, Francis, is the mayor now.)
"I'm filing to get going," said Regalado after submitting her candidacy papers for the Miami-area seat to the Elections Department in Doral. "It's on."
One seat away was Marlon Hill, a corporate lawyer who also made his commission candidacy official Friday by submitting filing papers. He's running for the District 9 seat occupied by Dennis Moss, one of the two longest-serving members on the 13-seat board. Hill praised Moss, saying "this election is all about building on the work he has done."
In this Feb. 3, 2019, file photo, U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun is questioned by reporters upon his arrival at Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea. South Korean media on Friday, Feb. 8, 2019, say Biegun has returned to South Korea after a three-day visit to Pyongyang. AP-Yonhap
U.S. and North Korean negotiators concluded their talks in Pyongyang, agreeing to meet again before their leaders' second summit slated for later this month, the State Department said Friday.
Washington's Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun visited the North Korean capital from Wednesday to Friday for pre-summit talks with his counterpart, Kim Hyok-chol.
President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are scheduled to meet in Vietnam on Feb. 27 and 28.
The two envoys "discussed advancing President Trump and Chairman Kim's Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming U.S.-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula," the department said in a statement, referring to pledges made at their first summit in June.
Stanley Ho has been reportedly admitted to the emergency room in the Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital at 9:00 p.m. yesterday (Friday) after his health condition deteriorated, Apple Daily said.
Due to his fragile health condition Ho, 97, has been hospitalized with the report indicating that his health got worse at around 6:00 p.m. Friday. Despite initial treatment, some organ failure episode occurred and he was assisted in the emergency room.
According to Apple Daily, several members of the gaming tycoons daughters were seen arriving at the hospital, including Daisy Ho, Laurinda Ho and one of his granddaughters Faye Ho.
Hos fourth wife, local legislator and gaming businesswoman Angela Leong, was also spotted at the HK hospital, Macau Business reported today (Saturday). But when asked by reporters about Hos health condition, she denied to be there to visit him and said that she had only gone to the hospital to handout lai sis.
Other Chinese media quoted other family members saying that the patriarch was okay. Some denied even he was assisted in the emergency room.
TVBS website today (Saturday) reported that a battalion of Hong Kong media is waiting outside the hospital. They photographed Hos wife and children in various areas of the hospital.
The health of the founder of gaming group Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau (STDM) has become increasingly fragile in recent years, prompting disputes between his heirs for control of his many assets.
In 2009 Ho fell in his apartment at Repulse Bay in Hong Kong, injuring his head and having to undergo brain surgery. He was discharged from the hospital half a year later, but having to return to hospital care in 2014.
In April last year, Stanley Ho became the latest Hong Kong billionaire after Li Ka-shing to step away from the empire he built, passing along the top roles at casino operator SJM Holdings Ltd. to his heirs, revealed a filing to HK stock exchange.
The casino tycoon retired as chairman and executive director of SJM in June 12. He became chairman emeritus. Daisy Ho, his 53-year-old daughter, took on his roles. Angela Leong, 57, Hos wife and SJMs second-largest shareholder, acts as co-chair with another executive director.
While Ho hasnt been involved in the operations for many years, we cant help but think that the proposed board structure is a bit messy, said JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst DS Kim in a note. This complicated structure, in our view, leaves room for a potential power tussle within the board, given the lack of clear control, he told Bloomberg.
Kim is looking for a clearer plan, such as a single chairperson, to fine-tune SJMs corporate structure before the opening of the operators first property in Macaus key Cotai district this year.
More recently, a new alliance emerged among some of Stanley Hos 17 children in the decade-long family battle for his Macau casino empire, and eldest daughter Pansy looks the likely victor.
As the Times reported in January, Ho announced that she had joined up with some siblings and the Henry Fok Foundation and would hold a combined 53 percent in STDM, which controls casino operator SJM Holdings Ltd. The alliance gives her the upper hand over Angela Leong, the fourth wife Stanley Ho, and her main rival in the battle for control of Macaus original gaming company.
MDT/Agencies
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This pamphlet was a little confusing to me--at first I thought it would fit into a category of Outsider creations, a small collection of pamphlets filled with some towering and submerged ideas on curing the Depression, keeping the U.S. out of war, flagpole painting, zipper repair, exrta-Earths populating the (regular) Earth, eyestalk plant people of Mars, flooding the Sahara, damming the Hudson River, nuclear powered _____, mega weapons, mega planes, hair massage for higher IQ, and so on. The design of the pamphlet certainly had the feel and look of a great attempt at conveying some secret truth, it turns out that it is pretty straightforward, an 1890's/1900's appeal to folk on acting courteously and amicably towards others to achieve a one-government-something.
The message was very simple: do good, be kind, help people, live your religion. It was the work of a very successful bookseller and publisher in Melbourne, Edward William Cole1. He sounds like he was an interesting guy, autodidact and entrepreneurial, born in the U.K. and migrating to Cape Colony and on to Australia, spending time in the gold diggings, exploring the Murray, and settling into Melbourne where he opened up a bookshop in 1864 which morphed into a large arcade with many rented kiosks.
Cole wrote a number of short pamphlets, published them, and either sold or gave them away--the pamphlet presented here was probably a gift to his customers. It published eight essays of 660 collected for the prize of publication, extolling brotherhood and the commonality of the human condition, appealing for kindness and the common good, and reading above nearly all else.
The imagery on the rear cover is striking, most of the artwork being the fronts and backs of medals/medallions that Cole had made. The image in the middle of it all is, well, very surprising, and potentially disturbing, though it seems unconnected to any of the essays or sentiments of the pamphlet, and seems largely to be a non sequitur. In any event there seems to be no connective text, nothing on race dominance or eugenicism, the only thing that comes close to that is a repeated belief that English should be the dominant world language for its "perfection". As dire as it seems the map seems to be open to speculation, though on the face of it doesn't look like much good could come . Is it something as nasty as showing what the map maker thinks are the natural divisions of the world according to race, or could it possibly be suggesting that skin color is based on location on the globe and has nothing to do with any sponsorship of superiority or inferiority based on color? Given the rest of what seems to be in this pamphlet, it seems likely that the later is the case. The guy would've been better served if he left the map out.
I'm reproducing the artwork here because there seems to be little mention2 of this work outside of stiff and undated bibliographies of books-received.
Notes:
1. Cole's entry in the Dictionary of Australian Biography: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cole-edward-william-3243
2. According to WorldCat there's another version of this work, fleshed out to 207pp,, printed around the same time (the librarian guesses '189_') and located in just one library (Victoria). There's only one copy located of the copy mentioned here, located at the Murdoch library, 11,564 miles from where I sit in western North Carolina.
1. Yes. Its important for students to stay focused throughout the year. Its a plus.
2. Yes. It would fill the learning gaps caused by COVID and would help cut youth crime.
3. No. Students and teachers deserve a summer break. Year-round school wont work.
4. No. It wouldnt work with the militarys summer PCS schedule. Its a bad idea.
5. Unsure. Its hard to say without knowing how the school calendar would work.
Vote
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LINGUIST List 30.652
Fri Feb 08 2019
Confs: General Linguistics/Romania
Editor for this issue: Everett Green
06-Feb-2019Olga Spevak 53rd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea53rd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica EuropaeaShort Title: SLE 2020Date: 26-Aug-2020 - 29-Aug-2020Location: Bucharest, RomaniaContact: Alexandru NicolaeContact Email: < click here to access email > Meeting URL: http://sle2020.eu/ Linguistic Field(s): General LinguisticsMeeting Description:The Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) and University of Bucharest are pleased to announce the ''53rd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2020)'', to be held in Bucharest (Romania), 26-29 August 2020.SLE meetings provide a forum for high-quality linguistic research from all (sub)domains of linguistics and seeks to attract the submission of workshop proposals on specialized linguistic areas.The Website mentioned above will be available in June 2019.
disclaimer
I have received the books on this blog for review from the publisher or author or I have bought them. I have no financial interest in any book featured on this blog.
More than 100 years ago, the American government took control of the Hawaiian islands and took away Native Hawaiians land rights.
Now, officials at the United States Civil Rights Commission are urging lawmakers to permit Native Hawaiians to establish their own independent government.
But many Native Hawaiians reject the idea. They say they will not accept anything less than Hawaiis complete independence. And, they say, they want control of more than 400,000 hectares of the islands land.
How did we get here?
Sailors from Polynesia first settled the Hawaiian Islands around the year 400. For more than 1,000 years, the Native Hawaiians lived together in small groups, farmed and fished for their needs, and governed themselves. In the late 1700s, one native leader overpowered the others and united the islands into a single kingdom.
But in the early 1800s, the area changed sharply. Other groups came. Many Native Hawaiians died from the new diseases that came with the foreigners. Others were forced from their lands to permit the newcomers to create large sugar cane farms. American planters soon dominated the islands economy.
In time, the planters, United States government officials and Marines ousted from power Hawaiis last ruler, Queen Liliuokalani. In 1898 the U.S. government officially annexed Hawaii, and in 1959 named it the countrys 50th state.
Today Native Hawaiians are only about 20 percent of the states population.
Calls for sovereignty
Noelani Goodyear-Kaopua is an expert on Native Hawaiian social movements. She is also Native Hawaiian, or Kanaka Maoli.
Kaopua says Native Hawaiians have been protesting the loss of their rights and calling for sovereignty since the 1800s. But they do not always agree on what they are asking for. Some want to form a government and operate as a kind of nation-within-a-nation, like Native American tribes on the U.S. mainland. Others want to be a country independent from the United States.
In 2014, U.S. government officials held a number of hearings across Hawaii to learn what Native Hawaiians thought about forming their own government. A large majority of people who spoke in the hearings said they did not want it. Instead, they argued the U.S. violated international law when it removed the queen as ruler. The kingdom, they say, continues to exist.
Yet in 2016, the U.S. government released a final rule to permit Native Hawaiians to form a government in other words, the nation-within-a-nation solution.
Noelani Goodyear-Kaopua points out that the rule does not permit Native Hawaiians control of any land currently controlled by the U.S. government.
How is this in any way to our benefit? she asks. We wouldnt even be getting the crappy deal that Native American nations have. And once you accept a lesser deal, a better deal is impossible.
Another Hawaiian historian does not reject the U.S. governments offer completely. Bavianna McGregor is a founding member of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. She says the U.S. officially recognizing that Native Hawaiians have the right to govern themselves is an important step toward full independence.
She says she hopes to see an independent Native Hawaiian government within an independent Hawaii. But, she says, she does not think she it will happen in her lifetime.
Im Caty Weaver.
Cecily Hilleary wrote this story for VOANews.com. Kelly Jean Kelly adapted her report for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.
We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.
______________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
dominate v. to overpower and take control
annex v. to seize
benefit n. something that leads to good results
crappy adj. of poor quality
Warren Ragudo died after two Taser shocks by California police seeking to end a family argument.
Ramzi Saad died after a Taser shock by police during a dispute between Saad and his mother.
Chinedu Okobi died after police used a Taser to stop him from walking across a busy street.
Each person killed was unarmed. All three had histories of mental health problems. And they all died last year in the northern California county of San Mateo.
They were among at least 49 people who died in 2018 after being shocked by police with a Taser. That number is similar to the number of Taser deaths nationwide in each of the past two years, the Reuters news agency reports. The news agency says its findings are based on an examination of police records, news reports and court documents.
Taser deaths normally receive little, if any, public attention in the United States. No U.S. government agency follows such deaths, and medical examiners use different rules to decide if a Taser shock caused a death.
Some communities now are considering stronger rules for using Tasers. Some say such weapons are used too often. Others say they are too often deployed against people with physical problems or mental conditions.
Reuters talked to 14 police departments, county governments and cities that saw a Taser death or a serious Taser-related incident in 2018.
Of those, five are examining their Taser policies; three had looked into the issue and decided not to make changes; and five did not comment because investigations into Taser use were still active.
Reuters has documented a total of at least 1,081 deaths following use of Tasers, almost since they began coming into widespread use in the early 2000s. In many of those cases, the Taser was used with other force, such as hitting or restraining the person.
The weapon gives a small electric shock to its target, making the person unable to move for a short time.
When Tasers were new, police believed they were a perfect non-deadly weapon. Now they are rethinking that decision.
I personally think it would be appropriate to have a moratorium on their use, said Dave Pine, a San Mateo government official.
Most independent researchers who have studied Tasers say deaths are unusual if the Taser is used correctly. But in 2017, Reuters found that many police officers do not know how to use the Taser correctly.
The news agency was able to get information for 779 of the 1,081 deaths it has documented. The Taser was listed as a cause or part of the cause of death in 21 percent of the cases.
Axon Enterprise, Inc., an Arizona-based company, manufactures the Taser. Axon says most deaths involving the weapon are a result of drug use, or underlying physical conditions, such as heart problems. Another reason is using the Taser with other police force.
Axon said in an email that Tasers are not risk free, but are the most safe and effectivetool available to law enforcement.
Recognizing the Risks
The Reuters investigation found that many cases involved high-risk subjects, such as people affected by drug use or those with a mental condition. The other cases involved people with heart problems, those who are very young, very old or very weak.
At least half those who died after Taser shocks last year belonged to one of those groups. Also, 90 percent were unarmed and nearly 25 percent had mental issues.
As police officials have grown to understand the risk of Taser deaths, some have put new rules in place for using them, says Chuck Wexler. He is the head of the Police Executive Research Forum research group.
One of the countrys largest police departments, the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, put new rules in place, said one official. It is waiting for approval from the citys newly elected government.
In San Francisco, city government officials stopped the police departments plan to buy Tasers.
Axon said it offers police departments training for Taser use. That includes special training for dealing with people who suffer from mental illness. The company also offers training to help police stop conflicts without using the Taser.
Worries in San Mateo
In San Mateo, the medical examiners office ruled the death of Ramzi Saad as a homicide. The office said Saads heart stopped after being restrained by police, who then used the Taser.
Police officers went to the home where Saad lived on August 13 after a neighbor saw him push his mother and called the police.
Saad had high blood pressure and other medical problems, as well as mental illness. Police used the Taser at least two times after Saad threatened an officer. He died at the hospital.
Saads Taser death was followed by two others.
Stephen Wagstaffe, the top lawyer for the county government, became worried, he told Reuters.
Wagstaffe said he asked his office to come up with as much information as possible on Taser-related deaths. The information will go to all of San Mateo Countys police departments to help them in their judgment on the future use of Tasers, he said.
Im Dorothy Gundy. And I'm Susan Shand.
The Reuters news agency reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.
Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.
______________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
Taser n. a gun that produces a small electric charge and makes the target unable to move for a short period
department n. a division or office of a large organization, such as a government or business
restrain v. to hold a persons body so they cannot move
moratorium n. a period of time to think before coming to a decision
homicide n. the legal term for one person killing another
The older sister of Thailands king says she will run for prime minister in elections to be held next month.
The move by Princess Ubolratana Mahidol breaks a long-held Thai tradition of keeping the royal family independent from politics. She is the sister of Thailands current King Maha Vajiralongkorn, and the oldest daughter of former King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
On Friday, King Maha criticized his sisters action. He said it conflicts with the countrys traditions, customs and culture.
The 67-year-old princess was nominated Friday by the opposition Thai Raksa Chart Party. The party is linked to former Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. Each had served as Thailands prime minister until they were ousted.
The Thai Raksa Chart Party was launched in November by relatives and supporters of the Shinawatras. Parties linked to the Shinawatras have won every Thai election in recent years.
The family still remains popular in many areas, especially in the rural northeastern provinces.
Princess Ubolratana currently does not have the same official standing in Thailand as other members of the royal family. She had to give up her highest royal titles more than 40 years ago when she married an American man and moved to the United States. However, she is still very popular in Thailand and is commonly called and treated as a princess.
Because Thailand is a constitutional monarchy, the king and other royal family members are not supposed to get directly involved in politics. Traditionally, Thailands royal family has had close ties to the military.
Princess Ubolratana confirmed her decision to run in a message on Instagram, saying she desires to lead the country to prosperity.
Thailands current prime minister is Prayuth Chan-o-cha. He is a former army chief who led the 2014 military coup that ousted the countrys last elected government, led by Yingluck Shinawatra.
Prayuth also accepted on Friday the nomination as a candidate for prime minister from his military-backed party. He has been considered the front-runner for the March 24 elections. Observers say this is because his government has made changes to the constitution and election rules that make it difficult for political parties without military backing to win.
Some political experts say Ubolratanas entry could greatly change the campaign because she is a different kind of candidate. The Thai royal family enjoys a very high level of popularity and respect among the public. Thailand also enforces strict laws banning criticism of the king or other royal family members.
Allen Hicken is a political scientist at the University of Michigan who specializes in Southeast Asian studies. He called the decision a game changer for the race. In the event Thaksin-aligned parties win the election, it makes it very difficult for the military and royalists to contest, protest, or seek to overturn the result, Hicken said.
Im Bryan Lynn.
The Associated Press reported on this story. Bryan Lynn adapted the report for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.
We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.
_____________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
royal adj. of or relating to a king or queen
title n. name that describes someones position or job
constitutional monarchy n. system of government in which a country is ruled by a king and queen whose power is limited by a constitution
prosperity n. the state of being successful usually by making a lot of money
contest v. to say formally something is wrong or unfair and should be changed
Legos continue to be one of the most popular toys for children around the world.
Many fun and interesting things can be created with these plastic, colored building blocks.
Sometimes, Legos can even build some very useful things. One such example was created by a Spanish man, whose love for Legos began as a young child.
David Aguilar, now 19, has spent many years playing and building things with Legos.
Aguilar was born without a right forearm because of a genetic condition. As a child I was very nervous to be in front of other guys because I was different, Aguilar told the Reuters news agency. But that didnt stop me from believing in my dreams.
One dream he had was to build his own prosthetic arm out of Legos.
Aguilar is currently a university student in bioengineering at UIC Barcelona in Spain. He is now using his fourth model of the Lego creation. He says his next dream is to design low-cost robotic arms and legs for people in need.
Aguilars first attempt at creating a prosthetic arm came when he was nine years old. He says this first version was a simple design with very limited abilities. He built his first fully operational robotic arm at age 18. It had a movable elbow joint and tool for picking things up powered by an electric motor.
Each new version has added improved possibilities for arm movements. His newest Lego inventions also permit him to pick up and carry heavier objects.
Aguilar told Reuters it is nice to be able to wear the prosthetic arm because he likes the feel of having two hands. But he said he does not use the arm all the time because he has learned to do many of his daily activities without it.
All the prosthetic arm versions are kept inside his room at school. The latest models are marked MK, followed by a series number. The name is meant to honor one of Aguilars favorite superheroes, Iron Man.
Aguilar shows off some of his Lego creations on his own YouTube channel, named Hand Solo. In one of his videos, he demonstrates the MK-III. He calls it the best one yet.
In some of his videos, Aguilar aims to show people with disabilities that nothing is impossible. He wants them to know that they, too, can reach their goals and dreams. He would even like to help provide needed equipment for some of them.
I would try to give them a prosthetic, even if its for free, to make them feel like a normal person, because what is normal, right?
Im Bryan Lynn.
Reuters reported on this story. Bryan Lynn adapted the report for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.
We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.
_____________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
toy n. object for children to play with
forearm n. the lower part of the arm between the wrist and the elbow
prosthetic adj. an artificial body part, such as an arm or leg
disability n. a physical or mental condition that makes someone unable to act in a way considered usual for most people
Saturday, February 9, 2019
As we previously had reported, the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands is concerned about unauthorized practice by attorneys not admitted in the jurisdiction
This matter comes before this Court pursuant to the response of Karin A. Bentz, Esq. and Applicant Anne Elder Kershaw to this Courts January 18, 2019 order, which required them to show cause, in writing, as to whether pro hac vice admission should be denied in light of an allegation that Kershaw has engaged in the unauthorized practice of law in the Virgin Islands. For the reasons that follow, we deny pro hac vice admission, and refer this matter to the appropriate authorities.
The story
Bentz moved for the pro hac vice admission of Kershawa New York attorneyin early 2018 to represent the defendants in De Leon v. Bentz, Super. Ct. Civ. No. 182/2015 (STX). Although this Court granted the motion in a January 14, 2019 order, it stated that Kershaws pro hac vice admission would only take into effect upon execution of the Oath with the Clerk of the Court. On January 15, 2019, a representative from Bentzs law office arranged for the Clerk to administer the pro hac vice oath of office on January 25, 2019.
On January 17, 2019, Lee J. Rohn, Esq., counsel for the plaintiff in the De Leon matter, filed an emergency motion for this Court to reconsider Kershaws pro hac vice admission because Kershaw had purportedly engaged in the unauthorized practice of law. The motion was accompanied by an affidavit in which Rohn swore, under penalty of perjury, that Kershaw had appeared as counsel for the defendants at a mediation that occurred on January 17, 2019, even though she had not taken the pro hac vice oath of office.
The court entered a show cause order
Bentz and Kershaw filed a joint response with this Court on January 23, 2019. In that response, they concede that Kershaw appeared as counsel for the defendants at the January 17, 2019 mediation, despite not having been administered the pro hac vice oath. However, they maintain that Kershaw was authorized to do so pursuant to American Bar Association Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.5(c).
The court rejected reliance on the ABA Rule
Bentz and Kershaws reliance on the ABA Model Rules is misplaced. Although former Supreme Court Rule 203 did at one point provide that the ABA Model Rules governed the conduct of Virgin Islands attorneys, this provision was repealed effective February 1, 2014, and replaced with the Virgin Islands Rules of Professional Conduct. In re Adoption of the Virgin Islands Rules of Professional Conduct, S. Ct. Prom. No. 2013-001, slip op. at 1 (V.I. Dec. 23, 2013). Significantly, this Court expressly declined to adopt ABA Model Rule 5.5(c) when it enacted the Virgin Islands Rules of Professional Conduct...
Moreover, ABA Model Rule 5.5(c) was never applicable to the Virgin Islands in the first place. In its first unauthorized practice of law decision involving a bar applicant, this Court held that the statutory definition of the unauthorized practice of law codified in section 443 governed to the exclusion of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. In re Campbell, 59 V.I. 701, 711 (V.I. 2013) (By its own terms, [former] Rule 203 establishes that the Model Rules govern the conduct of individuals who have actually been admitted to the Virgin Islands Bar, and makes no reference to extending the Model Rules to govern the conduct of nonmembers . . . . More importantly, Rule 203 expressly states that the Model Rules only supersede previously promulgated court rules pertaining to disciplinary enforcement, and does not purport to modify the statutory definition of unauthorized practice of law found in section 443.) (emphases in original). Since then, this Court has repeatedly held that incorrect reliance on ABA Model Rule 5.5 is not a defense to the unauthorized practice of law in the Virgin Islands.
The mediation appearance was unauthorized practice
Accordingly, we deny the petition to admit Kershaw pro hac vice. Since the underlying conduct may potentially warrant action beyond the denial of pro hac vice admission, we also refer this matter to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the Board on Professional Responsibility, the Board on Unauthorized Practice of Law, and the Virgin Islands Attorney General, for the purpose of taking any additional action which they may find appropriate with respect to Bentz and Kershaws conduct in this matter.
As admission had been granted and awaited only administration of an oath, I find this response disproportionate to the conduct. (Mike Frisch)
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2019/02/as-we-previously-had-reported-the-supreme-court-of-the-virgin-islands-is-concerned-about-allegations-of-unauthorized-practic.html
Friday, February 8, 2019
There are substantial disputes as to what sorts of behavior constitute coercion and thereby undermine consent. This disagreement was on full display during the public fray over Aziz Ansaris behavior on a date. Whereas some commentators condemned Ansaris behavior as nothing short of sexual assault, others believed his behavior did not rise to the level of undermining consent.
This Article claims that the way forward is to see that there are two normative functions for coercion, and each is at play with respect to consent. Sometimes coercion is about the blameworthiness of the coercer, and sometimes coercion is about the involuntariness of the consenters choice. To deny the latter is not to deny the former. Because these are two disparate functions, much of the debate about Ansari may be commentators talking past each other.
After explaining this miscommunication, this Article broadens our understanding of how the blameworthiness of the coercer can bear on the permissibility of his actions. Just as no man may profit from his own wrong, coercers may not avail themselves of consent, even if it is sufficiently freely given such that the consenter is not acting involuntarily. This Article claims that the wrongful coercion normatively impairs the coercer, and that this normative impairment is at play in other legal doctrines.With the normative grounding in place, this Article considers how and if these amendments to our view of coercion should be taken into account in the law, with a specific focus on sexual offenses. It offers a draft statute for discussion purposes, considers charges of paternalism in both the public and private sphere, and points to other reasons to be cautious about criminalization. Finally, this Article defends this view as a more perspicuous account of the normative landscape than other coercion theories.Ultimately, the goal of this Article is to define new conceptual territory for normative debate. Progress cannot be made until we ask the right questions and answer the same ones. This Article aims to provide the framework within which more nuanced discussions can be had.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2019/02/ferzan-on-consent-and-coercion.html
Abrams Blasts Trump, McConnell for Power Grab After State of the Union Address
Stacey Abrams may not be the governor of Georgia, but she did make history on Tuesday, Feb. 5.
After patiently waiting in the wings as President Donald Trump used 90 minutes to deliver what was supposed to be a 45-minute State of the Union Address, Abrams provided a scathing Democratic rebuttal to the presidents highly-scripted speech to Congress on Tuesday, Feb. 5.
In doing so, Abrams became the first Black woman for either party to deliver a formal response to the State of the Union.
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Speaking firmly and with a fervor that has earned her the national stage, the former Georgia Gubernatorial candidate said the hopes of American families are being crushed by Republican political leadership.
In Georgia and around the country, people are striving for a middle class where a salary truly equals economic security, Abrams said.
But instead, families hopes are being crushed by Republican leadership that ignores real life or just doesnt understand it.
The response is a tradition undertaken by a representative of the presidents opposing party, who gives a speech immediately after the State of the Union to rebut claims made in his address.
According to CBS News, the first rebuttal was delivered by Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen and Rep. Gerald Ford in response to President Lyndon B. Johnsons 1966 State of the Union. Since 2011, there have been responses in English and one in Spanish given by a separate speaker.
The address has usually been given by a member of Congress or a sitting governor, making Abrams an intriguing choice given she doesnt currently hold a political office.
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Only one other time has an elected official not holding statewide or federal office given their partys response: Elizabeth Guzman, a Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates, delivered the Spanish-language response for Democrats in 2018, CBS reported.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra gave the Spanish address this year.
However, since losing her gubernatorial bid, Abrams has said she is open to running for political office again.
Abrams talked about family values taught by her parents.
In one instance on a cold winter night, her family went looking for her father and when they found him walking along a road, he was shivering and without a coat.
He had given his coat to a homeless man, Abrams said. I knew he would still be alone when I left him, but I knew you were coming for me, she said, relating her fathers words.
I hold fast to my fathers credo, we are coming for a better America, Abrams said.
Abrams railed against Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the government shutdown.
Abrams noted McConnells recent verbal assaults on a House Democratic voting rights and an election bill that he has labeled a Democratic power grab.
Voter suppression is real we can no longer ignore these threats to Democracy. We cannot accept efforts to undermine our right to vote, Abrams said.
This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country, she said.
We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counter is a power grab.
She blasted Trump and McConnell noting the missed paydays and the struggles of more than 800,000 federal workers who could still face another shutdown in just a couple of weeks because Trump wants to build a $5 billion wall on the southern border.
Just a few weeks ago, I joined volunteers to distribute meals to furloughed federal workers. They waited in line for a box of food and a sliver of hope since they hadnt received a paycheck in weeks, Abrams said.
Making their livelihoods a pawn for political games is a disgrace, she said.
Further driving home her point, Abrams continued:
The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the president of the United States, one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people, but our values.
Trump, who continues to garner headlines over a myriad of alleged misdeeds, misstatements, and the division thats enveloped the country since he took office, called for bipartisanship in his address.
He claimed outstanding records on jobs and the economy and Americas global standing. He also again took credit for low African American and Latino unemployment, saying more people 157 million are working now than anytime in the past in America.
The president also talked about the 300 or so judicial nominees that are in the Senate, ignoring that President Barack Obamas high court choices were blatantly disregarded by the Republican-controlled Senate.
Abrams, who was once the Democratic Leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, dismissed those claims.
Abrams also firmly rebutted the notion that the Trump administration has the best ideals for the country going forward.
We may come from different sides of the political aisle, but our joint commitment to the ideals of this nation cannot be negotiable, she said.
The Republican tax bill rigged the system against people. Wages struggle to keep pace with the cost of living. We owe more to the folks who keep our country moving.
We know bipartisanship can craft a 21stcentury immigration plan, but this administration chooses to cage people. Democrats stand ready to secure our borders, but we must understand America is made stronger by immigrants, not walls.
To see Abrams entire rebuttal speech, click here.
Hudson Music: Lance's "Bebop Spoken Here" is one of the heaviest and most influential jazz blogs in the UK.
Rupert Burley (Dynamic Agency): "BSH just goes from strength to strength".
'606' Club: "A toast to Lance Liddle of the terrific jazz blog 'Bebop Spoken Here'"
The forgotten aviator
That was my first encounter with Captain Hardy Furer. He served Nepali air transport for many years during a time when aviation infrastructure was at its initial phase. He loved Nepal very much.
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On Friday, the Los Angeles City Council approved a resolution formally declaring L.A. "a City of Sanctuary, protecting the human rights of all our residents."
The vote before the full council came more than two years after the resolution was first introduced by councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Herb Wesson.
This declaration is not legally binding, meaning it does not create or amend any existing city laws or policies concerning immigration. So, it's essentially a symbolic welcome sign, though it could "open the door for additional immigrant friendly policies," according to Fredy Ceja, a spokesman from Cedillo's office.
The District 1 councilman added that while it serves only as a symbol, the sanctuary city label "does set the tone for the way we want our residents to be treated, with dignity and respect regardless of their immigration status."
"The resolution is extremely significant at a time when ICE has raided our communities and instilled fear in the lives of our residents," Cedillo said in a statement to LAist. "Not only are we saying Los Angeles is a city that welcomes all who wish to come here in search of a better life, we are also making a political statement about the types of laws and protections we will support so that all Angelenos can fully realize their potential."
The approved resolution now awaits a signature from Mayor Eric Garcetti, who in the past has been unclear about his stance on L.A. as a sanctuary city, at one point telling NPR he was "not sure what one is."
L.A.'s existing policies aimed at detangling from federal immigration action include:
Special Order 40, an LAPD directive that prohibits police officers from questioning or arrested people based on their immigration status
Mayor's Executive Directive 20, which provides all Angelenos equal access to city services and protects personal data from federal immigration officials, among other things
Policies barring city police from partnering with ICE to conduct immigration enforcement or holding individuals in jail past their eligible release date at the request of ICE agents
By slapping on that "sanctuary city" name tag, L.A. could find itself wrapped in the legal war raging between cities and President Donald Trump's administration.
Last January, the president issued an executive order to withhold federal funding from cities that don't cooperate with his ramped up immigration enforcement efforts. Parts of the order were later struck down as unconstitutional in federal court.
"The Trump Administration has empowered (L.A.) to double down on its efforts to protect all Angelenos, regardless of immigration status," Ceja said in a press release Thursday.
Revenue collection at Birgunj Customs hit due to protests
Revenue collection at Birgunj Customs dropped to almost half of the targeted amount with the disruption in cargo movement following protests by customs agents last week.
Mainstreaming homosexuality
For as long as films have been made, one basic narrative form, also known as the Classical Hollywood Narrative, has been the normtheres a hero, who is male, and he falls in love with a heroine, who is female.
The January launched failed to place a satellite into orbit as planned, although it reportedly surprised international observers with successful firings of the first two-stages in a three stage rocket. Although the third stage then misfired, its very existence was previously unknown to persons outside the Islamic Republic.
In this sense, the effort simultaneously showcased the persistent shortcomings and the potential advancements of the Iranian missile program.
Although neither the January launch nor the one that took place this week were explicitly military in nature, the rocket technology involved in prospective satellite launches is very similar to that which is used in ballistic missiles.
These weapons, which could be used in the delivery of a nuclear warhead, have been a serious point of contention between Iran and Western nations, especially in the wake of the 2015 agreement over the Iranian nuclear program. Although that deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, does not address Irans missile capabilities, the accompanying United Nations Security Council resolution calls upon the Islamic Republic to avoid all work on ballistic missiles that are designed to be capable of carrying a nuclear payload.
The vague language of this provision has given the Iranian regime an opportunity to ignore it, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has accordingly carried out more than a dozen relevant test-launches since 2016. US President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA last May, citing Irans ongoing ballistic missile development as a major reason why. This rationale has been reiterated many times, including in the White Houses response to Irans announced plans to launch communication satellites.
But as the AP report emphasized, the latest launch was conducted in open defiance of American warnings and the critical response to last months attempt. It was not immediately clear whether the second attempt was more successful than the first, which apparently involved a different type of rocket.
Iranian authorities made no public comment to corroborate the satellite images, although these showed propaganda messages written on the launch pad to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the supposed advancements in domestic production of high-tech goods, including military equipment.
Far from shrinking away from its boasting of these advancements in the wake of the latest American criticisms, the IRGC immediately followed up on the satellite launches with an even more provocative gesture, unveiling yet another ballistic missile.
The Dezful surface-to-surface missile reportedly has a range of 1,000 kilometers, or about 620 miles. According to Al Jazeera, this places Israel and various US military bases within range of the new weapon, although that range is still comparatively modest.
The Islamic Republic has voluntarily adopted a limit of 2,000 kilometers on the range of its weapons, but this limit is arguably rendered meaningless by various statements from the IRGC and other Iranian officials proclaiming that the limit could be quickly and easily exceeded if the regime decided to expand its reach.
A variety of recent statements from such officials have given the clear impression that this is precisely what the regime intends to achieve, both with its missile technology and via a broader military buildup. The commander of Iranian naval forces, for instance, recently declared that the nation stands ready to dispatch a flotilla to the Atlantic Ocean, ostensibly in an effort to compensate somewhat for the presence of Western naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.
On Friday, Business Insider reported that Iranian state media had expanded upon this propaganda by releasing a quirky animated video that shows an American aircraft carrier and several destroyers being sunk by an Iranian submarine.
The video concludes with another reference to the 40-year anniversary of the Revolution, after declaring that the Islamic Republic has achieved domestic mastery of very advanced military subs. Business Insider underscores the inherent exaggeration in this claim and notes that Irans military technology is overwhelmingly archaic. However, the report also acknowledges that Iranian torpedoes could do damage to US Navy vessels, provided that the noisy submarines were able to get close enough.
This is in keeping with other expert assessments that have been published in recent months about Irans military capabilities, in comparison with those of the US. It is expected that in the event of war or an Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the IRGC and the Iranian military would be capable of inflicting some damage through the use of asymmetrical tactics such as the use of sea mines. But this does not alter the fact that the Iranian military is in no way equipped to stand up to a global superpowers and would almost certainly not risk such an adventure.
Still, this has not stopped Tehran from boasting of its military readiness, or even from declaring that it would be victorious in a battle against the US. Much of this propaganda is tied to the countrys missile development, as evidenced by comments made on Thursday by Brigadier General Abbas Sadehi, the head of public relations for the Iranian armed forces. Sadehi insisted that with 40 different types of missiles, including intermediate range ballistic missiles and recently unveiled surface-to-surface cruise missiles, the Islamic Republic has become the first missile power in the region.
According to the state-run Iran Project, Sadehi went on to say that Iran is capable of manufacturing submarines, destroyers, advanced fighters such as Kosar, UAVs, etc. under the auspices of the Islamic Revolution. He attributed this supposed upsurge in military capabilities to the effects fo the Shiite theocracy over the past 40 years, declaring that the Revolution revived religion and demonstrated to the world that religion creates motivation toward prosperity.
Other officials have tied the regimes identity to the notion of regional unity under the banner of the Islamic Republic and the axis of resistance against Western influence. This element of Iranian propaganda was evident on Thursday in remarks delivered by Major General Mohammad Baqeri, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, at a military exhibition attended by foreign ambassadors.
Baqeri repeated the regimes longstanding rejection of any and all negotiations over the countrys ballistic missile program, and then vaguely condemned the different plots of arrogant powers. As well as declaring that the nation will not be intimidated into bargaining, Baqeri promised that Iran would continue to take on larger roles in the surrounding region, and would thereby help other adversaries of the US to bolster their mechanisms for opposition to Western interests. Toward this end, Press TV reported, Thursdays event signaled Tehrans readiness to share military technology and know-how with neighboring countries.
Such declarations are sure to be met with fresh ire from the US, and perhaps also from Europe, which has spoken out against Iranian ballistic missile tests despite also striving to preserve the nuclear agreement and provide Iran with economic assistance.
The United States will continue to be relentless in building support around the world to confront the Iranian regimes reckless ballistic missile activity, and we will continue to impose sufficient pressure on the regime so that it changes its malign behavior including by fully implementing all of our sanctions, said US State Department deputy spokesperson Robert Palladino in a statement on Thursday.
As Fox News pointed out, the head of the Iranian judiciary made reference to the prospective releases in a speech on Monday, wherein he also denied that the Islamic Republic is currently holding anyone in jail based on political activism or dissent against the regime. Such denials are commonplace among Iranian officials, even though the plight of political detainees is well-reported in the global press, often on the basis of leaked information from persons inside Iranian prisons. In 2015, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was widely condemned and ridiculed after declaring in an interview with American television, We do not jail people for their opinions.
Western media has been following the cases of roughly a dozen dual nationals who are currently serving sentences or awaiting trial in Iran on the basis of recognizably unsubstantiated charges. But these represent only a fraction of the larger population of political prisoners, which has swelled over the past year in the midst of a crackdown on persons alleged to have participated in or supported anti-government protests that swept the entire country at the beginning of 2018.
Philip Luther, the research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa division of Amnesty International, was recently quoted as saying the regimes brutal response to this unrest constituted a year of shame. And on Wednesday, the Christian Science Monitor published a report detailing the close connections between Tehrans crackdown on the purely domestic population and its attacks on foreign and dual nationals who have been baselessly accused of membership in an infiltration network tasked with the overthrow the Iranian regime.
The article points to the elaborate conspiracy theories that have grown up among members of ruling elite, especially members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, in the wake of Supreme Leader Ali Khameneis decision to adopt the language of infiltration in place of the previous, less specific charge of cultural invasion. Whereas the earlier language prompted officials and supporters of the regime to be on guard against subtle trends of Western influence, the recent warnings of infiltration suggested something more deliberate and targeted, and thus it set the stage for mass arrests.
But regardless of the specific language, the regime has long considered foreign criticisms or domestic criticisms that might somehow be linked to foreign actors to be national security threats. This is evidenced, for instance, by the fact that the regime maintains its own human rights monitor, whose only apparent role is to dispute accounts of Iranian human rights abuses and to portray foreign criticism as being driven by cultural imperialism and disregard for Islamic law.
The ongoing crackdown on dissent has noticeably overlapped with efforts by some regime authorities to reassert their commitment to the fundamentalist Islamic principles on which the government was founded. Toward that end, the nations prosecutor-general expressed regret last month that the judiciary does not utilize ancient forms of corporal punishment more often. Based on Quran, God, the passionate and merciful, has categorically ruled that the hands of a man or a woman if proved guilty of theft, should be amputated, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said in comments carried by Fars News Agency. Unfortunately, so as not be condemned on human rights issues in the United Nations, we have abandoned some of the divine laws.
Montazeris statement points to two contrary trends in Irans politics and dealings with the international community. In the first place, the regime strives to deflect foreign criticisms of its human rights record, and in the second place, it strives to defy those criticisms and demonstrate its unwillingness to compromise with its professed enemies.
This can be seen, for instance, in the judiciarys treatment of the issue of capital punishment for juvenile offenders. Such sentences are banned by two international conventions that Iran has signed, and yet the practice continues with several juvenile executions being carried out each year. Nevertheless, when a sentence of this kind is brought to the attention of international human rights advocates, it often results in the execution being delayed and the case reviewed, even though the judiciary almost invariably upholds the sentence and carries it out at a later date.
The prospective release of thousands of as yet unspecified Iranian prisoners may be indicative of a similar phenomenon, with the regime attempting to improve its international image in the wake of a year of shame and in the midst of crackdowns that are, by all accounts, still ongoing. Furthermore, the sentence commutations, if they actually take place, may turn out to include non-violent drug offenses that were already due for review following a change in minimum sentencing laws.
The Islamic Republic consistently maintains the worlds highest rate of executions per capita, but this rate has declined over roughly the past two years as a result of activist pressure regarding drug laws. Even so, various reports during that period indicated that the judiciary was moving slowly to review cases that were affected retroactively by legislation that clerical authorities had begrudgingly allowed to pass into law. The judiciarys supposed display of clemency on the occasion of the regimes 40th anniversary may be an opportunity to given the impression of a sudden, humanitarian turn that had actually been delayed over the long term.
Even if that is the case, it is not clear that it will spoil the regimes bid to secure a better global image of its criminal justice system. On the other hand, the announcement of prisoner releases was closely followed by new revelations regarding the regimes past record of political arrests and prisoner abuse.
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that the media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) had come into possession of leaked documents detailing all of the judicial proceedings in the area of Tehran over a 30 year period. After months of cross-referencing the file with data gathered by their own researchers and by other activist groups, RSF determined that between the regimes founding in 1979 and the suppression of Green Movement protests in 2009, approximately 1.7 million people were detained in the notorious Evin Prison. Of these, nearly 62,000 are known to have been political prisoners, with 520 of those being aged 18 or under.
In keeping with the organizations emphasis on press freedom, RSF noted that at least 860 of the detainees in Tehran and the surrounding area were jailed on the basis of their work as reporters. The actual figures for journalists and other prisoners of conscience may be even higher, because the judiciarys documents do not list detainees professional status. The AP suggests that this has allowed authorities to maintain a veil of plausible deniability regarding the true reasons for the arrests.
Secrecy continues to surround various arrests and trials in the Islamic Republic, including those of dual nationals. But information from the global press and Irans domestic activist community often injects these cases with credible suspicions regarding the regimes behavior. The new RSF report underscores the fact that these suspicions are sometimes confirmed as new information trickles through Tehrans tight network of censorship.
Whether or not the international body pursues the case, the global publicity for these new findings can be expected to make the Islamic Republic subject to renewed scrutiny of its human rights record, and perhaps also of the current conditions of its criminal justice system. This may prove uniquely inconvenient as the regime works to somewhat rehabilitate its image.
Government to tighten gold trade
As the government prepares to enforce anti-money laundering provision on bullion trade, gold traders will soon have to ask their customers to fill up a form or submit a photocopy of their identity card for transaction of gold and other precious metals.
Remarks: This came out in 1994, going gold in the US, UK and New Zealand. It is made from her mothers sayings. Desree is a one-hit wonder in the US, but ...
2 days ago
Envoy Acharya: EPG report a big feat
Nepali Ambassador to India Nilambar Acharya has said that the report being prepared by the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on Nepal-India relations is a huge achievement for bilateral relations betwee.n Nepal and India
This San Francisco purveyor of graffiti has it right.When times are bleak -- when country and planet sink under the barely restrained sway of greed, raw power, and fear -- it's time to restate what matters. I write here to preserve and kindle hope for a national and global turn toward multi-racial, economically egalitarian, gender non-constricting, woman affirming, and peace choosing democracy that preserves the habitability of earth for all. There's a big order -- but what else is there to do but struggle for this? Not much.Topics range from the minuscule to the transcendent to the global, from dire to delightful. I am not an optimist, but I refuse to allow myself to wallow within the easy bias that everything is going to always be awful. Good also happens; love lives too.I've been yammering here about activism, politics, history, racism and other occasional horrors and pleasures since 2005.I intend to continue as long as the opportunity exists. In this time, that means activism and chronicling resistance. Perhaps it always has, one way and another.My other internet project: 596 Precincts-Walking San Francisco
Grand Old Partisan salutes Henry Worthington, born in Maryland this day of 1828. He relocated to California after studying law. Early during the Civil War, this patriotic Republican served a state house term, voicing support for African-American rights, and was a colonel in the state militia.
In 1863, Worthington relocated again, to Nevada. Admitted to the Union a year later, the state elected him its U.S. Representative for the last four months of the 38th Congress. His vote proved crucial in ratification of the GOP's 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. He witnessed the murder of Abraham Lincoln and served as one of his pallbearers.
Worthington was ambassador to Argentina and to Uruguay. President Ulysses Grant named him Collector at the Port of Charleston. In 1909, he died from a stroke suffered while visiting the U.S. Capitol.
Here is a Video Version of this article on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DZfiz28jnwY
Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.
Each day, his grandoldpartisan YouTube channel and Grand Old Partisan blog celebrate more than sixteen decades of Republican heritage. And, see Speech Raves for audience feedback from his presentations in thirty-one states so far.
He also wrote the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar.
Clarence Thomas cited Back to Basics for the Republican Party in a Supreme Court decision.
Buy the book at Amazon
See www.youtube.com/q?v=IzxKCiXc5Qc for a brief video of a Texas Republican praising Back to Basics for the Republican Party.
"This is the most amazing book about politics that I have ever read. The Overview should be required reading for anyone with even a minor interest in government. The remainder is an enthralling history lesson that I will never forget. For years, we have all been misled about the true nature of the GOP. This is the real deal! Read it and be proud!"
"Michael Zak wrote the definitive history of the GOP."
"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is the most significant contribution to the Republican Party in the last twenty years apart from Ronald Reagan."
"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is more important to our party now than ever before."
and
"one of the best books I ever read"
Estimados amigos,
Les doy cordialmente la bienvenida a este Blog informativo con articulos, analisis y comentarios de publicaciones especializadas y especialmente seleccionadas, principalmente sobre temas economicos, financieros y politicos de actualidad, que esperamos y deseamos, sean de su maximo interes, utilidad y conveniencia.
Pensamos que solo comprendiendo cabalmente el presente, es que podemos proyectarnos acertadamente hacia el futuro.
Gonzalo Raffo de Lavalle
Las convicciones son mas peligrosos enemigos de la verdad que las mentiras.
Quien no lo ha dado todo no ha dado nada.
Helenio Herrera
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx
If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Sun Tzu
We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
Paulo Coelho
DON KIRBY FRIDAY RESULTS (PDF) | HUSKY CLASSIC RESULTS (PDF) | PHOTO GALLERY
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Seven Lobos finished in the top 10 in their respective events on the first night of competition at the Don Kirby Collegiate Elite Invitational held at the Albuquerque Convention Center.
Of those seven, three finished in the top five, with the highest finisher being Adaora Chigbo in the high jump. Her clearance of 5-9.25 (1.76m), which she made on the second attempt at that height, helped her finish runner-up in the 14-person event. The sophomore easily cleared the first two bars on the day before recording her first miss at 1.76m.
On the track, senior Jared Garcia ran 8:28.16 (8:15.65 converted) in the 3000-meter run to place third. The success on the track continued for the Lobos later on as Jay Griffin IV produced another fast time in the 200-meter dash, running 21.12 (21.19 converted) to win his heat, finishing fourth overall but third among collegiate runners. It is the third race this season that Griffin has run in the 21.10-21.20 range and has finished among the top of the finishers.
In the mens high jump, Brent Dionisio tied his season-best height with 6-9.50 (2.07m) to finish eighth. The senior cleared his first two bars on the second attempts at each height before clearing 2.07m on the first attempt. It would be the final bar he would clear in the competition.
Also finishing eighth and tying his season best was Tanner Battikha in the long jump. His mark of 24-1.00 (7.34m) on his fourth attempt matched the result he produced last weekend at the New Mexico Classic, which also set a personal best for the junior.
Running 10:18.90 (10:03.66 converted) in the 3000-meter run, sophomore Sophie Eckel finished ninth in the event.
Joining Chigbo in the high jump top 10 was Shannon Fritz, who cleared a height of 5-5.75 (1.67m) finish tied for 10th. Her height however did mark a season best for the junior by 2.50.
While UNM had several top results, two Lobos had season bests of their own that although didnt result in top finishes, showed progress.
Akeisha Ayanniyi jumped a season-best 16-7.75 (5.07m) on her first jump in the long jump to improve of her seasons top mark by 4.75.
Elsewhere, Sarah Smyth ran 25.88 (25.95 converted) in the 200-meter to record a season best for the freshman.
The Don Kirby resumes tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. MT with the womens shot put. The track events begin shortly after at 10 a.m. with the qualifying round of the 60-meter hurdles.
Due to inclement weather in the area, the Husky Classic held at the University of Washington, was consolidated into one day.
The change in plans didnt hinder the Lobos as the women produced three of the top times in school history in the 3000-meters. Ednah Kurgat was the top finisher for UNM, running 8:59.78 for a sixth-place finish. Finishing behind Kurgat in the section was Hannah Nuttall, who raced a time of 9:07.64 and finished ninth. Crossing the line at the Dempsey Indoor track was Adva Cohen at 9:08.40 to finish 11th in the event. Kurgats result placed her 0.01 behind second-best all-time , which belongs to current Lobo runner Weini Kelati. Nuttalls time places her ninth all-time in program history and Cohens finish would place her 10th.
Kurgats time is also the sixth-fastest time run in the NCAA this season, with Nuttall and Cohen running the 14th and 16th best time this season, respectively. Furthermore, in the Mountain West, Kurgat, Nuttall and Cohen ranks second, third and fourth, respectively.
Oregons Jessica Hull currently holds the top spot in the event with an 8:53.91 that she ran on Saturday at the Husky Classic. The top six times in the country were ran at the Husky Classic on Saturday.
Emily Martin ran the 5,000-meter run in 16:25.41 while Kieran Casey completed the mile in 4:41.25.
While the Lobos may be finished at the Husky Classic, UNM still has one runner to watch for on Saturday in Kelati. Kelati is set to run the 3,000-meter at the Millrose Games in New York, with a scheduled start time of 2:30 p.m. MT. The event will be broadcast live on NBC.
Dahal warns of crisis if peace process and constitution are ignored
Nepal Communist Party Co-chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has said that the country will face a crisis if the peace process and constitution are not implemented.
TORONTO, Feb. 08, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fura Gems Inc. (Fura or the Company) (TSXV: FURA, OTC: FUGMF and FRA: BJ43) announces that the agreement between Regius Resources Group Ltd. (Regius) and Fura to acquire the ruby licences/concessions held by Regius has been terminated.
Fura continues to advance towards closing its proposed acquisition from New Energy Minerals Ltd. (formerly Mustang Resources Limited) of (i) 75% of the issued shares of Montepuez Minerals Pty Ltd., which owns a 70% interest in mining licence 5030L and an 80% interest in mining concession 8921C; and (ii) a right to earn a 65% interest in mining concession 8955C under a joint venture agreement (collectively, the New Energy Assets). Please see the Companys press release dated November 29, 2018 for further details regarding the terms of this proposed acquisition.
For more information about Fura Gems Inc., please contact:
Fura Gems Inc. Dev Shetty - President & Chief Executive Officer
Tel: +971 (0) 4 240 8760
dev.shetty@furagems.com Brad Scharfe Director Investor Relations Tel: +1+(778)386-1313
brad.scharfe@furagems.com Public Relations
Tavistock (UK)
Jos Simson / Barney Hayward Tel: +44-207-920-3150
fura@tavistock.co.uk
About Fura Gems Inc.
Fura Gems Inc. is a gemstone mining and marketing company which is engaged in the mining, exploration and acquisition of gemstone licences. Furas headquarters are located in Toronto, Canada and its administrative headquarters are located in the Almas Tower, Dubai. Fura is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker symbol FURA.
Fura is engaged in the exploration of resource properties in Colombia and owns a 76% interest in the Coscuez Emerald Mine in Boyaca, Colombia. Fura is also involved in the exploration and mining of rubies in Mozambique through its 80% effective interest in four ruby licences (4392, 3868, 3869 and 6811).
Regulatory Statements
This press release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the Companys ability to complete the acquisition of the New Energy Assets, the termination of the proposed acquisition of licences/concessions owned by Regius, the mineralization and prospectivity of the New Energy Assets, the Companys exploration activities and mining activities and the Companys performance. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects or does not expect, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates or does not anticipate, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; the actual results of exploration activities; regulatory risks; risks inherent in foreign operations, legacy environmental risks, title risks and other risks of the mining industry. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.
Two major Colorado Springs hospital expansion projects will open this month, but the local health care building binge is far from over.
St. Francis Medical Centers expanded emergency department opens Wednesday, the last major part of a $102 million, 168,000-square-foot addition that was started in May 2017. UCHealth Memorial Hospital Norths $129 million, 130,000-square-foot addition will open Feb. 25, with space for expanded services for women, cancer patients and emergency medicine.
More construction will follow, starting with this springs opening of Childrens Hospital Colorados $165 million, 294,000-square-foot facility on the Memorial North campus. Penrose-St. Francis Health Services plans to build out shell space for six more operating rooms and add two floors to the St. Francis addition for inpatient beds, building a third campus along Interstate 25 in northern Colorado Springs and renovating its Penrose Hospital campus on North Nevada Avenue.
The expansions have state officials concerned about an arms race with hospitals building redundant facilities to compete, rather than compliment each other, but Colorado Springs hospital officials say they are just trying to keep up with the areas growing population and demand for health services.
We built the emergency room (at St. Francis) for 2,800 to 3,000 patients a month, and we have significantly exceeded that. We are now over 4,000 (patients a month) all the time, said Calvin Eisenach, the hospitals vice president of operations, during a tour last week. We are bursting at the seams. There have been long waits for emergency room patients.
Memorial North and St. Francis report fast-growing patient counts, triggered by explosive population and housing growth to the north and east in the Colorado Springs area, especially as more Denver-area workers look for less-expensive housing in northern El Paso County. Memorial North opened in 2007 and St. Francis two years later.
This expansion will serve the community well, but we have to keep expanding to serve the community coming in, Eisenach said. We built bigger than we needed (now). But the community is growing and needs these (expanded) services. Besides the bigger emergency department, the addition includes a neonatal intensive care unit that opened in August and four more operating rooms that opened in October.
Few new employees have been hired to work specifically in the additions; both hospitals have added workers as needed to accommodate their growing patient volumes.
The expanded St. Francis emergency department will be nearly twice the size of the emergency department at Penrose Hospital. St. Francis emergency department often handles more patients, while Penrose is equipped and staffed to handle more severe cases. The St. Francis department will have beds for 48 patients, not counting four beds to evaluate arriving patients, and special units for children and behavioral health.
The new emergency department was designed by the medical staff that will use it, creating the most efficient patient flow, said Michele Hobbs, the hospitals emergency services director. That includes having satellite radiology and laboratory operations there so patients dont have to be taken elsewhere in the hospital and a larger ambulance parking area with a lounge for crews, she said.
The current St. Francis emergency department, which will close as its replacement opens, will be remodeled during the next month or so for vascular care, infusion and radiology, Eisenach said. The four new operating rooms are at capacity, though demand for those services tends to be higher in winter, and medical-surgical inpatient beds and the neo-natal intensive care unit also are full, he said.
The hospitals parent company acquired adjacent land in 2016 for expansion that could accommodate medical offices, parking or other needs, Eisenach said.
Penrose-St. Francis is acquiring a site for its third campus to follow housing being developed on the citys northern edge. The hospital sold a site in northwest Colorado Springs that was to have been used to replace Penrose Hospital. That plan was dropped, and Penrose instead will be renovated over seven to 10 years. The new campus will begin as a specialty hospital, perhaps focusing on high-end orthopedic and spine care. It likely will start with only a couple of floors and 24 beds, but will grow to rival St. Francis in size.
About half of Memorials addition is dedicated to womens services, with areas for soon-to-deliver mothers, labor and delivery as well as care of mothers and newborns. The new space doubles the capacity of womens services and, when more unfinished space is completed, will be larger than the space now dedicated to those services at the Memorial Hospital Central campus east of downtown.
Memorial North handles about three-fourths of the volume of Memorial Central, but the number of annual births at the North campus grew by 21 percent between 2013 and 2018, hospital data show. Womens services now occupies about a third of Memorial Norths building; that space will be used to expand inpatient beds for medical and surgical patients.
Our growth in birth numbers year over year is reflective of the population growth in the region, and we are excited here at UCHealth to be growing in size and innovation to make sure the best services are available to our patients, said Amber Rossman, interim clinical director of Memorials Maternal Child Division.
The hospital is running training exercises in the addition this month to help staff become familiar with where supplies and equipment are stored and how on-call staff can quickly find their way to the right rooms when paged. In one scenario, nurses walked through an uneventful birth while in a second scenario, a mother undergoing a C-section begins hemorrhaging, and teams from the emergency and intensive care units are summoned.
In October, Memorial North opened the first-phase expansion a nine-room addition to its emergency department that will increase capacity by 50 percent.
That expansion wont be the last for Memorial North. The master plan for the 128-acre campus, which also houses Colorado Springs Orthopaedic Group, calls for another hospital tower, a second medical office building and a parking garage. UCHealth Memorial also operates Grandview Hospital on North Nevada Avenue and Pikes Peak Regional Hospital in Woodland Park.
Child marriage still in practice in the Chepang community
Thirteen-year-old Sunita Chepang, a sixth-grade student of Suryodaya Secondary School in Sarikhet Palase of Raksirang Rural Municipality in Makwanpur district, quit school after she got married to Madan Chepang, a local Chepang man.
Candace Owens, 29, has not had an easy life. As a Stamford, Conn., high school senior in 2007, she received threatening racist phone calls traced to a car in which the white Democratic mayors son was riding. Racism led her family to successfully sue the Stamford Board of Education in federal court for failing to protect her civil rights.
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Colorado is on track to join 11 other states and the District of Columbia in attempting to decree that the winner of the popular vote nationally not the candidate who captures the Electoral College will be the victor in future presidential races.
Senate Bill 42, proposed by Sen. Mike Foote, D-Lafayette, would change how Colorados electors, the people who choose our presidents, cast their votes every four years.
While Republican lawmakers might oppose the change, they are in the minority in the state House and Senate. And, with a Democratic governor, passage seems assured.
Colorados electors now cast their votes for the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in the state. Under SB 42, the states electoral votes would be cast for whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote, regardless of who wins Colorados popular vote.
In 1996, for example, Colorado electors voted for Republican Bob Dole because he won the states popular vote over Democrat Bill Clinton. But Clinton won the national, as well as the Electoral College, vote that year. Under SB 42, Colorado electoral voters would have gone to Clinton.
The move to change how the nation elects presidents comes in the wake of the 2016 election, in which Democrat Hillary Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes nationwide than Republican Donald Trump. But the Electoral College the traditional name for the electors of all states made Trump president because he won more state electoral votes.
While Hillary Clinton won large popular-vote majorities in big states such as California, New York and Illinois, Trump won majorities in more states, giving him 306 electoral votes to Clintons 232.
If you change the system to a national popular vote election, candidates will campaign nationwide and not just focus on a few slivers of a few states, Foote said. Each voter will be recognized as important and it will lead to the winner actually governing with the entire country in mind.
The Senate in late January approved Footes bill, voting along party lines, sending the measure to the House, where it is sponsored by Reps. Jeni Arndt, D-Fort Collins, and Emily Sirota, D-Denver.
Gov. Jared Polis supports the bill, a spokeswoman said.
An identical bill failed in a Republican-controlled Senate committee two years ago. A similar attempt fell flat about a decade ago.
Now that Democrats hold the majority in the statehouse and the governorship, they plan to use it, Arndt said.
The Democrats are in charge because there was an election. We didnt trick anybody, Arndt said. Thats not sneaky. Thats not underhanded. Thats responding to what the voters said.
Revenge, or close to it
There have been five presidents elected despite losing the popular vote , but many see the growing national movement as a reaction to Trumps 2016 election. Republican George W. Bush also won in 2000 despite Democrat Al Gores narrow national popular vote victory.
If the bill isnt revenge, its not far off, said Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, who voted against the measure in committee and again on the Senate floor, strongly denouncing it both times.
It looks like there are ill feelings on the presidential election a couple years ago and a few years previous to that, Sonnenberg said. And this is the way for some folks to think they can rectify it.
Sonnenberg and Sen. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, who also opposed the bill, said Colorado would be ceding its voice in presidential elections to liberal urban centers such as New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Foote said the idea arose in the 1960s, preceding Trumps and Bushs victories. In the past, he said, it had support from Republicans.
The fact that Trump was elected the way that he was in 2016 has turned it into more of a partisan issue than it was before, he said.
Sirota said the measure will likely be heard by a House committee in February. In the meantime, Democrats will try to drum up support from across the aisle, she said.
At least three electors
The system of electors was established in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1789, and revised by the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804. (See the accompanying box.)
The system was tied to the debate over how states should be represented in Congress.
The small states said they would not join the union unless they had equal representation in Congress, said Robert Hardaway, a law professor at the University of Denver, who has written several books on the topic.
The big states thought it should be based on population alone. The compromise between those two factions, known as The Grand Compromise, was to do both. Have a Senate and a House.
The Electoral College, in turn, is based on the numbers of representatives in the House and the number of senators (states) have, he said.
Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia employ a winner-take-all system for presidential elections. This means whichever candidate wins the popular vote within the state wins all of that states electoral votes.
Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes by whichever candidate wins each respective district within the state. The Constitution leaves that choice up to the states.
In all, the Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A presidential candidate must win a majority of 270 votes to win the presidency.
California boasts the most electoral votes in the country at 55. North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Vermont, Delaware and Alaska have the least with three electoral votes each.
Some claim the Electoral College was created to maintain the rights of slave owners, Hardaway said. But he dismissed that as urban legend.
The Electoral College systems net effect is to give smaller states more of a say in who becomes president than would be the case otherwise. Each state has at least three electors no matter how small it is.
For example, California has 68.5 times more residents than Wyoming. But in the Electoral College, California has only 18.3 times more electors than Wyoming.
For all its faults, the Electoral College facilitates a two-party system in the countrys elections, Hardaway said. It brings stability to presidential elections that have become the envy of the world, he said.
On average, about once a century a presidential candidate wins the Electoral College without also winning the national popular vote. But, even so, he said, the margins usually are relatively close and the winning candidate still has the support of a large percentage of the country.
Colorado Democratic lawmakers, on the other hand, say each vote should count equally and the majority should win.
In SB 42, theyre proposing to use the national popular vote by combining the electoral votes of all states that join the pact and commit them to the candidate that earns the most votes nationally.
One person, one vote, Foote said. Lets elect our president together.
It couldnt get any worse
The pact would only take effect if enough states join to add up to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
Each of the states in the pact among them New York, California, Maryland, Vermont and Washington voted for Democratic candidates in the last five presidential elections.
Even so, Foote said about a third of the lawmakers who supported the change in those states were Republicans.
The measure preserves the Electoral College, which would take a constitutional amendment to abolish. It just changes the way the votes are allocated, proponents have said.
And each state can still back out of the pact if its legislature wishes to do so, though there are restrictions on how close to an election that would be allowed.
Under the current system, presidential candidates typically only visit and focus their efforts on battleground states, Foote said. States that typically vote either red or blue fall by the wayside.
If votes are combined on the national scale, candidates will have a greater incentive to travel across the country, appealing to more voters and better understanding their concerns, Foote said.
But Republicans such as Sonnenberg fear that with the change rural areas will be further ignored and candidates will gravitate toward major urban population centers.
Hardaway agreed.
Candidates would go where the votes are, he said. The votes are in the big cities.
Potential for a challenge
The measure would also boost voter participation, Arndt said. Republicans in blue states like California and Democrats in red states like Texas would be more likely to cast their ballot if they knew they could influence the outcome nationally.
Governors, senators and representatives are elected by popular vote, Foote noted. I dont see why that would be such a foreign idea (with presidential elections).
Arndt mused that there would be an outcry if presidents were elected by the national popular vote, and politicians tried to impose an Electoral College.
But Hardaway said the countries that use the national popular vote, which he calls the Russian-style direct election, sometimes face problems.
France has that system, Hardaway said, and in the countrys April 2017 election, there were so many candidates that the candidate with the most votes got about 24 percent.
Ultimately the election went to a runoff between Emmanuel Macron, who ran as the candidate of a newly formed party, and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
They got two people that, in the country, 65 percent of the people didnt want either, Hardaway said.
Ultimately, Macron won the election, but voters were so dismayed at their choices that a record number about 600,000 people cast blank ballots in protest, Hardaway said.
The pact to have electors follow the national popular vote is, on its face, unconstitutional, Sonnenberg says.
After doing a little more research and reading, it appears that states cannot make compacts among each other, he said. So there indeed is potential for a constitutional challenge.
Foote disagreed, saying the Constitution allows each state to allocate electoral votes however the legislature chooses.
But the measure is also likely to be challenged in court nationally because if just enough states join to amount to 270 electoral votes, the other states would be disenfranchised, Hardaway said.
Arndt sees the issue differently.
Its not that those other states would be disenfranchised, its that the majority would have spoken, she said.
Its just beating them, she said. (A losing vote isnt) squelched. Its heard. It just didnt prevail.
Then theres the matter of finding universal agreement on the national popular vote, Hardaway said. There is no unified system the states each count their votes and the popular vote is calculated not by the federal government, but by national news agencies like the New York Times, Fox News and MSNBC.
Thats not a huge hurdle, Arndt said.
How hard is it? she said. Each state has their election returns and theyre all certified by the secretary of state (of each state). If the New York Times can add it up, couldnt the federal government?
Perhaps the biggest sticking point, according to Gardner and Sonnenberg, is that its possible for the majority of Coloradans to vote for one candidate, but the states electoral votes to go to the other.
Were essentially erasing state boundaries in a way, Gardner said. Making it less important to be a state.
Just the latest scheme
The proposal is so riddled with flaws and holes that Hardaway said it cant be a genuine effort. Instead, its likely meant to cause enough of a stir to shift the national conversation toward amending the U.S. Constitution, he said.
This is just the latest scheme. And there have been all kinds of schemes, but none have been worth anything, and this is the worst of them all, he said. Every time somebody does this, all they want to do is change the Constitution so they can make sure their guy wins next time.
But Foote said that sounds more like a conspiracy than reality.
If thats the master plan, then Im certainly not aware of it, he said.
Sonnenberg and Gardner acknowledge that the bill is more than likely to be signed into law, given that Polis has signaled his support.
Sirota and Arndt expressed confidence in Democratic support within the House. House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, R-Castle Rock, did not return a message seeking comment.
Even if the bill is signed into law, the pact doesnt become effective until enough states join and thats unlikely to happen this year, Foote said. Its unlikely the measure would affect the 2020 presidential election.
If it does pass, Democrats will continue to press their agenda nationwide and support other states that might enter the pact. Foote noted that Republican legislatures will eventually have to pass the measure as well for it to go into effect.
Gardner said opponents can try and dissuade additional states from joining or eventually file a lawsuit, which would likely make its way quickly to the Supreme Court.
Two Colorado Springs firefighters sent to the hospital recently for suspected carbon monoxide poisoning are proof the department needs to update its aging fleet, the local firefighters union says.
Three times in a two-week span starting in December, firefighters working on Engine 6 reported feeling sick after suspected exposure to carbon monoxide within the cab of the truck, the Colorado Springs Professional Firefighters IAFF Local 5 President Dave Noblitt said.
The Fire Department confirmed the incidents.
Your family deserves better, an IAFF Facebook post about the exposure said. Until our public safety needs are met, you can count on your Colorado Springs Firefighters to continue to sound the alarm to ensure a #SaferSprings for your family and ours.
The first incident was reported on Dec. 20 as the crew was returning to its station off of North Union Boulevard. One firefighter complained of a headache while his supervisor had trouble punching information into his computer, Deputy Fire Chief Steven Dubay said.
The firefighters were sent to the hospital where one showed elevated levels of carbon monoxide in his blood, Dubay said. Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas that can be toxic to humans in high doses, causing symptoms such as a headache, dizziness, nausea, confusion and blurred vision.
During an inspection, mechanics repaired two areas on the 1996 truck where exhaust was leaking into the cab, a work order showed, and the truck was returned to duty.
Two weeks later, one of the firefighters again reported feeling sick on runs, though Dubay said another round of tests did not show elevated concentrations of carbon monoxide in his blood.
That time, mechanics found nothing to indicate there was a problem with the truck, Dubay said. Still, they sent it to MHC Kenworths repair shop for a second opinion. Kenworth also found no exhaust issues, but it did make $950 in repairs for an oil leak, an issue that work orders show had been reported to department mechanics six times over the last year.
The engine has since been retired to the reserve fleet and replaced by a 2018 engine as part of what Dubay said was a scheduled upgrade the department recommends replacing major apparatus after 17 years.
But the firefighters union argued in a Facebook post that the out of date and unsafe fire engine from 1996 put crews at risk. IAFF also worried about future problems with the six other apparatus in the aging fleet of 22 that also date back to the 90s or early 2000s.
Some trucks are so old that when there are mechanical issues the manufacturer has to go back and do a custom build because they no longer make those parts, Noblitt said.
The department wants to replace aging apparatus but doesnt always have the funding to do so, Noblitt said. Fire engines which pump water cost about $500,000. Firetrucks, with ladders attached, cost about $1 million, records show.
The city, in recent years, has committed to helping the department update the fleet, but in stages and as the strained budget affords additional funds also have been allocated to hire more police and firefighters and boost salaries.
Last year, the department purchased three new engines, and this year its getting four, though two are being paid for by the Cimmaron Hills Fire Department and the Colorado Centre Metropolitan District as a part of mutual response agreements.
Each upgrade helps, Noblitt said, but in some cases it feels too little too late.
We should have started this four years ago so that we wouldnt have gotten ourselves into a situation where our apparatus is 20-21 years old, Noblitt said.
Dubay disagreed with Noblitts conclusion that the age of the fleet poses a safety risk to employees. He called the carbon monoxide exposure a fluke that had nothing to do with the engines age.
If it works and its functional, is it outdated? Dubay said. Do you replace your washer and dryer just because it has reached a certain age? Just using the date of the manufacturer is not a good indicator (for replacement).
Regardless, the Fire Department is committed to assessing vehicles and replacing them as the budget allows, Dubay said.
Is the fleet aging? Yes. Does it function just fine? Yes. Do we have a plan for replacement? Yes, he said.
Contact the writer at 719-636-0362 or find her on Twitter: @njKaitlinDurbin.
People who are active in their religious congregations tend to be happier, a new Pew survey finds. But that advantage doesnt extend to their waistlines.
In a meta-analysis of 35 countries, Pew researchers found that religiously active people around the world report a range of desirable health and social outcomes. They vote and volunteer more, and they smoke and drink less than the nonreligious or those who rarely attend.
The study, Religions Relationship to Happiness, Civic Engagement and Health, builds on a growing mountain of literature linking religion and health. That literature mostly has found that religions seem to contribute to overall health, though there are obvious exceptions.
Perhaps most notably, religious participation does not appear to encourage weight loss or regular exercise.
In 19 of the 35 countries, actively religious people are as likely as any other to be fat. They are also less likely to exercise.
The correlation is particularly true in the U.S. among African-Americans and ethnic groups, said Harold Koenig, one of the foremost experts on religion and health, and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University.
Religious people, he said, are encouraged to eat. And the kinds of meals people eat in church fellowship groups are high-calorie ribs and fried chicken.
In most countries, highly religious people are not more likely to rate themselves as being in very good overall health. The U.S. is among the exceptions. Thirty-two percent of Americans who are active in their congregations say they are in very good health, compared with 27 percent of their religiously inactive counterparts and 25 percent of nonreligious people.
The association between religion and happiness, however, is clear-cut. In every country studied, people who are active in religious congregations tend to be happier than those who attend infrequently or not at all.
Thirty-six percent of actively religious U.S. adults describe themselves as very happy, compared with only a quarter of other Americans. In Australia, 45 percent of actively religious adults say they are very happy, compared with 32 percent people who attend infrequently and 33 percent of people who never attend. In some countries, the differences werent that statistically significant.
Pew researchers believe it is not the religious affiliation that makes people happier, but the social connections that come with regular participation. They arrived at that conclusion since they found no meaningful differences in happiness between those who attend infrequently but presumably still prize their religious affiliation and those who never do.
That suggests its really active participation in the social life of the religious community that drives these well-being gaps, not just identifying with a religion, said Joey Marshall, a research associate at Pew.
The religiously active tend to also be civically engaged. In the U.S., 69 percent of the actively religious say they always vote in national elections, compared with 59 percent of those who are not as active and 48 percent of those who are nonreligious.
The analysis relied on crunching numbers from existing cross-national surveys conducted between 2010 and 2014 by the Pew Research Center and the World Values Survey Association and the International Social Survey Programme.
Analysts divided respondents into three groups: those who were active in religious congregations, those who were inactive but still claimed a religious identity and those who do not identify with any organized religion (sometimes called the nones).
Pew analysts took pains to point out that the numbers do not prove that going to religious services improves peoples lives. It could be that civic engagement drives people to be active in religious communities, or that those activists are happier to begin with, rather than becoming happier because of their faith commitments.
KATHMANDU,
The Cabinet on Thursday approved a draft regulation created to establish and operate a hedge fund intended to reduce investment risk The planned hedge fund will address the foreign exchange risk that comes with foreign direct investment in public infrastructure projects
Colorado Springs, CO (80903)
Today
A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 92F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph..
Tonight
Cloudy skies. Low 67F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Jim Flynn is with the Colorado Springs firm of Flynn & Wright LLC. Contact him at moneylaw@jtflynn.com. "Best of Jim Flynn's Money & the Law" is now available at amazon.com paperback or e-book.
U.S. peace envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad says that although talks with the Taliban have produced the framework for a peace deal there is still a "long way to go" before a final agreement.
Speaking at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington on February 8, Khalilzad said he was "hopeful" a peace deal could be finalized before Afghanistans presidential elections in July, but warned that there remained "a lot of work" to do.
"We are at the early stages of a protracted process," said Khalilzad, who has met with Taliban negotiators for a series of talks in the Middle East in recent months.
Khalilzad held six days of talks with Taliban negotiators in the Qatari capital, Doha, last month, culminating in the basic framework of a possible peace agreement.
The agreement calls for the Taliban to prevent international terrorist groups from basing themselves in Afghanistan and for the United States to withdraw its forces from the country.
The Taliban has yet to make concessions on two key U.S. demands -- implementing a cease-fire and agreeing to negotiate directly with Afghan government representatives as part of an Afghan-led, intra-Afghan peace process.
The Afghan government has been absent from the U.S., Taliban talks, prompting anger and frustration in Kabul.
The Taliban considers the Kabul government a Western puppet and has so far refused to directly negotiate with it.
But Khalilzad said the next phase of the peace process will have to be Afghan-led, saying Washington roles will "decrease" as Afghans from the warring sides hammer out a possible deal through an "inter-Afghan dialogue."
Khalilzad said there were indications that the Taliban could sit down with government representatives in a "multiparty format."
The former U.S. ambassador said there was "positive change" in Pakistan, which Washington and Kabul have long accused of sheltering the Taliban.
Khalilzad said Islamabad had helped facilitate recent talks between the militants and the United States, although he said Pakistan should "do more."
Russia hosted a second peace conference in Moscow from February 5-6, attracting representatives of neighboring countries, powerful Afghan power brokers, and Taliban officials.
U.S. officials have accused Russia of attempting to muddle the U.S.-backed peace process.
Khalilzad said the Russia-backed talks were "positive" as long as they helped facilitate intra-Afghan talks, not if they "polarize Afghans further."
"I'm not seeking to monopolize" the Afghan peace process, Khalilzad said, adding that regional countries should play a role i
BATKEN, Kyrgyzstan -- A court in Kyrgyzstan's southern region of Batken has sentenced a local man to four years in prison after convicting him of inciting ethnic hatred with posts on the WhatsApp messaging application.
The regional court's spokesman, Askarbek Baimuratov, announced on February 7 that a 30-year-old resident of the Leilek district received the sentence on January 30.
According to Baimuratov, the man from the town of Isfana, whose identity was not disclosed, was arrested in October.
He was charged with posting a video on WhatsApp that showed a brawl between people from "two different ethnic groups" along with a comment calling for the "elimination of an ethnic minority" in the region.
The convicted man's lawyer, Akylbek Osorov, told RFE/RL that his client's sentence was too harsh and would be appealed at a higher court.
According to Osorov, his client did not post the video in question but admitted that he made the comment and had shared it using WhatsApp.
He said a warning from law enforcement would be enough to stop his client from reposting such videos and making such comments in future.
The issue of interethnic relations in Kyrgyzstan's south, where most of the country's ethnic Uzbek minority resides, has been a sensitive matter for decades.
About 450 people, mainly ethnic Uzbeks, were killed In June 2010 -- and thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed -- in violent clashes between Kyrgyz and local Uzbeks in the southern regions of Osh and Jalal-Abad.
These villagers dont know any other home than Nepal. But theyre still stateless.
In the village of Neemkhotiya, which is about five kilometres from the nearest town of Gulariya, there are about 75 households consisting mostly of Madhesi Dalits, where dozens of residents remain without citizenship.
Candace Owens is the Director of Turning Point USA, a conservative non-profit that has been criticized over its "Professor Watchlist" that identifies college professors who it accuses of discriminating against conservative students. It also stands accused of attempting to secretly influence student government elections as part of its agenda to "combat liberalism" on college campuses.
article that broke this story. This the portion of the article that contains all of her comments: She was in London last December when she made some comments about Adolf Hitler in response to a question. Responses to those who criticized her comments claim they were taken out of context. Here is the Buzzfeedthat broke this story. This the portion of the article that contains all of her comments:
Asked by a member of the audience about nationalism in Western politics, Owens brought up Adolf Hitler. I actually dont have any problems at all with the word nationalism, Owens said. I think that the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism. Globalism is what I dont want. Whenever we say nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler."
He was a national socialist, she continued. But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody to look a different way. To me, thats not nationalism. In thinking about how we could go bad down the line, I dont really have an issue with nationalism. I really dont."
Ms Owens tweeted the following regarding her comments being taken out of context just after I began this blog:
This is what responsible journalism looks like. https://t.co/GPA58FdTjh Congratulations to Business Insider for being the first publication to publish the ENTIRETY of my comments, not taken out of context.This is what responsible journalism looks like. @businessinsider February 9, 2019
* * *
If I am interpreting the comments of Ms Owens in their entirety correctly, her problem with what Hitler did begins when he began his attempt at conquering the world, which was his definition of her term "globalism."
Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans living outside of the nation's borders), expansion into and domination of western Europe and In February of 1933, Hitler promulgated his foreign policy of incorporating(ethnic Germans living outside of the nation's borders), expansion into and domination of western Europe and Lebensraum (living space, which was to be acquired in eastern Europe). But it wasn't until March of 1938 when Germany annexed Austria that Hitler took action outside of his nation; where Ms Owens lauds his nationalism. Let's look at some of the things that Hitler did between those two events:
Later in Feb 1933 - the Communist Party was banned following the Reichstag fire. This gave the Nazis complete control of the government.
March 1933 - The Enabling Act is passed, giving Hitler authority to make laws without consulting the Reichstag for the next four years.
April 1933 - The German secret police, the Gestapo is formed.
April 1933 - The Nazis seized control of local governments.
May 1933 - Trade unions were banned.
May 1933 - Over 25,000 "un-German" books were burned at the urging of Joseph Goebbels
July 1933 - All political parties other than the Nazi Party are banned.
All that in less than six months.
Sturmabteilung SA, the paramilitary unit of the Nazi Party were assassinated in what is now known as The Night of the Long Knives. June 1934 - 150 leaders of thethe paramilitary unit of the Nazi Party were assassinated in what is now known as
September 1935 - Nuremberg laws redefine German citizenship. Relationships between Jews and Aryans are banned.
December 1936 - Membership in the Hitler Youth organization was made mandatory for all boys.
One other item occurred after Hitler's annexation of Austria and seizure of Czechoslovakia, merely two months later.
November 1938 - Kristallnacht. Night of the Broken Glass. Named for the shards of broken glass from two nights of violence against the homes, businesses and synagogues of German Jews. Hundreds dead. 30,000 Jewish men arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps.
If it was the intention of Ms Owens to dismiss these things as not being part of the problem because Hitler had formulated a foreign policy, but not yet undertaken any real expansion efforts outside of Germany's borders, that doesn't fly.
Yale Law School.
Students at Yale Law School recently celebrated the addition of two new bathrooms to the law campus, but its not shiny faucets or sparking tile that had them excited.
Theyre the schools first multi-stall, gender neutral bathrooms and the fruits of years of advocacy by student groups and legal action challenging Connecticuts building codes.
The schools OutLawsand organization that supports lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer members of the law school communityled the charge for more gender neutral bathrooms, with the support of the law school administration. The law campus now has 20 gender neutral stalls, counting the latest additions. Previously, only single stall bathrooms were designated as gender neutral.
I think its a really positive step, OutLaws co-president and second-year law students Hannah Hussey told the Yale Daily News. Obviously gender equity is multifaceted, and this is one piece among many, but I think it sends a really strong message that Yale Law School recognizes that gender is not always a binary.
Students began their campaign for gender-neutral restrooms in 2016, arguing that transgender students and other non-binary students sometime feel uncomfortable using bathrooms designated for either men or women, and that the existing gender-neutral bathrooms were in inconvenient locations.
But their efforts ran up against Connecticuts building codes, which require a certain number restrooms for men and women in every building. Gender-neutral bathrooms dont count towards those totals, and building additional bathrooms into the law schools historic 1920s Sterling Law Building would be difficult.
The law school was denied an exemption from the code in 2017, and sued in June asking the court overrule the decision from the states Codes and Standards Committee. Former Governor Dannel Malloy then intervened to grant the schools request.
This effort involved community discussions, taking into consideration the concerns raised about religious and cultural differences, said Ellen Cosgrove, the law schools dean for student affairs. Next, our students led a protracted litigation effort, advocating for changes to Connecticut law. We were fortunate that our former dean and current dean supported the student effort and were grateful to the Universitys Office of the General Counsel for their work on this initiative.
German payments firm Wirecard said it was taking legal action against the Financial Times for "unethical reporting."
Singapore police raided Wirecard's office in the city state on Friday, according to Reuters.
Wirecard shares plunged 10 percent following the news.
Wirecard WDI-DE shares tumbled 10 percent Friday after Singapore police reportedly raided the firm's offices.
Shares of the German payments firm had traded higher earlier in the day after it announced it was taking legal action against the Financial Times for "unethical reporting" into its accounting practices.
The FT has published three articles alleging fraud and misconduct in Wirecard's accounting practices. In a statement released Friday , Wirecard said it was taking legal actions against the news publication for its "unethical reporting."
"In the article published yesterday (Thursday), Wirecard employees are slanderously prejudged with unproven and false allegations. We will use all available legal means to protect the company and in particular our employees and their personal rights," the statement said.
The Financial Times was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
One of the reports on Thursday described a pattern of "book-padding" at the firm's Singapore office with reports on Friday morning saying that its offices in the island city-state had been raided by the authorities. Meanwhile, a prosecutor in Munich launched a probe on potential market manipulation into Wirecard, Reuters also reported on Friday.
The FT's first investigation, published on January 30 , said a senior Wirecard executive used forged and backdated contracts, possibly to inflate revenue. The report sent Wirecard shares tumbling nearly 20 percent in one day.
Wirecard called the original report "false, inaccurate, misleading and defamatory."
The German firm has been praised as a European fintech success whose valuation at one point surpassed Deutsche Bank DBK-DE 's. As of Friday, Wirecard's market cap was roughly $14 billion.
Story continues
Reuters contributed to this report
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President Donald Trump has until the end of Friday to determine whether new sanctions should be imposed on Saudi Arabia due to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but he may opt to ignore the matter altogether, Bloomberg reports.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a letter to the White House in October to demand Khashoggis death be investigated and determine whether these new sanctions would be necessary. Trump has not yet responded to the request, andaccording to an official who spoke to Bloomberghe doesnt have to.
While the deadline for a response is Friday, the White House has the power to ignore congressional committee requests when the president deems it appropriate.
Saudi Arabias minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, told Bloomberg he is not aware of any U.S. investigation into the Khashoggi murder.
We have said that we will investigate and we have. We have said that those responsible will be held accountable, al-Jubeir reportedly said, noting that the Saudi government has already charged 11 people in connection to the murder. Were saying let the legal process play out and then judge us when it is complete. But dont judge us before this is complete.
Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and prominent critic of Saudi Arabian leadership, was killed within the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October. The U.S. Senate issued a resolution condemning Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for Khashoggis murder in December, following a CIA report concluding his responsibility.
Trump, however, has been reluctant to speak ill of the crown prince, repeatedly citing a $110 billion arms deal as the reason for maintaining positive relations with Saudi Arabia.
It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event maybe he did and maybe he didnt! Trump wrote in a November statement. That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Nepali official issued a directive on mandatory labour permits for Indians, causing diplomatic friction
A directive issued by the Department of Labour and Occupational Safety last month has caused a diplomatic stir between Kathmandu and New Delhi, leading the Indian ambassador to meet with Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Labour Minister Gokarna Bista.
The deal gives OakNorth an eye-watering $2.8 billion post-money valuation.
OakNorth says the fresh capital will be used to drive an expansion into the U.S.
CEO Rishi Khosla says an IPO doesn't make sense for the firm yet.
British digital bank OakNorth said Friday it secured $440 million in an investment round led by Japan's SoftBank.
The firm, which lends to small-to-medium enterprises through its digital platform, said it had raised $390 million from SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund, with the remaining capital coming from Clermont.
The deal gives the three-year-old firm an eye-watering $2.8 billion post-money valuation, making it Europe's most valuable private fintech group.
OakNorth's announcements confirmed reports overnight that said the company had received a new cash injection from the Japanese tech giant.
Speculation over the funding began late last year after a Times of London report said that SoftBank was in talks with OakNorth and fellow British fintech firm Revolut about investing in both businesses via its technology investment fund.
"We decided that, with (SoftBank's) capital, and with their network, that we would be able to significantly expand to growth plans we have for the business," Rishi Khosla, co-founder and chief executive of OakNorth, told CNBC over the phone.
"Aligned with our mission to support the financing needs of growth SMEs across the globe, we thought SoftBank... would be a really good investor to have alongside our existing strong investors."
OakNorth said the fresh capital would be used to drive an expansion into the U.S. The firm has so far been mostly focused on the U.K. market, but is expanding abroad by licensing its technology platform to banks in other countries.
The firm touts its artificial intelligence-powered lending platform as a way to optimize credit for customers while cutting many of the costs traditionally involved in the process.
It said the addition of SoftBank as an investor would help open the door for its technology to be deployed in more banks and lenders internationally. The tech is currently being used by the Netherlands' NIBC Bank.
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While questions around whether the bank will consider an initial public offering are likely to increase, Khosla put any speculation over a flotation in the near-term to rest.
"The whole question is, 'Why go public?' Is it to raise capital, is to raise profile, is it to give existing shareholders liquidity?" he said.
"At the moment, we don't feel like we have any of those drivers knocking on our door."
SoftBank's Vision Fund has been a major investment player in the tech sector, pumping money into the likes of ride-hailing giant Uber, co-working start-up WeWork and workplace messaging app Slack.
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Emerging markets equities and the corresponding exchange traded funds are rebounding, but as has been seen in previous eras of emerging markets bullishness, this asset class is not always known for smooth sailing.
The MSCI Emerging Markets Index has a three-year standard deviation of 14.8 percent, well above the comparable metric on the S&P 500 and the MSCI EAFE Index.
What Happened
For investors looking to nibble at emerging markets stocks with lower volatility, the iShares Edge MSCI Min Vol Emerging Markets ETF (CBOE: EEMV) is a sensible option. EEMV is up almost 6 percent year-to-date compared to a gain of about 9 percent for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.
For those who are skittish about the volatility of EM equities, minimum volatility investments might be a more palatable exposure to the asset class, said BlackRock in a note published Tuesday. Funds such as the iShares Edge MSCI Min Vol Emerging Markets ETF (EEMV), seek to track indices that aim to provide broad exposure to an asset class but in a manner designed to reduce risk.
Why It's Important
EEMV's three-year standard deviation of just over 11 percent is inline with those of some major developed market indexes, indicating the fund is doing its job a volatility-reducing play on developing economies.
Amid last year's emerging markets swoon, EEMV did its jobs. The low volatility fund was 680 basis points less volatile than the MSCI Emerging Markets Index while declining just 5.8 percent compared to 15.3 percent for the MSCI index.
True to its design, EEMV has historically provided investors with downside risk mitigation, according to BlackRock. In 2018, EEMV declined 58% less than that of broad EM as measured by the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. If we extend the analysis to a longer period of time, similar performance behaviors hold. Since its first full month of live performance in November of 2011, EEMV has exhibited a downside capture of only 78%, reduced volatility by over 23%, and dampened the maximum drawdown by 22%.
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What's Next
China, Taiwan and South Korea, which are usually among the least volatile emerging markets, combine for nearly half of EEMV's geographic exposure. Evaporating trade war fears could bolster the case for emerging markets stocks this year, potentially providing some upside for EEMV along the way.
Recently, we have seen trade wars disrupt and pressure EM; however, we believe that much of the potential impact of these trade wars has already been priced in, said BlackRock. That said, volatility may escalate or subside from here.
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(Corrects to 2,940 U.S. cities from 385 in para 2 after the company clarified)
Feb 7 (Reuters) - Grocery and food delivery platform Postmates Inc said on Thursday it had confidentially filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Postmates, which has tied up with companies such as Walmart Inc, Starbucks Corp and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc for delivery services, operates in 2,940 U.S. cities, as well as in Mexico.
The San Francisco, California-based company was valued at $1.85 billion in its latest funding round, Recode said in January.
Postmates has raised over $675 million in funding over 11 rounds. Its latest funding round was in January, where it raised $100 mln from investors including asset manager BlackRock Inc and investment firm and hedge fund Tiger Global, according to data provider Crunchbase.
The initial public offering is expected to start after the completion of the SEC review process, subject to market and other conditions, the company said in a statement https://reut.rs/2GdONtb.
Postmates did not specify the number of shares it was selling or the price range of the offering.
Ride hailing service providers Uber and Lyft, as well as business messaging platform Slack have all confidentially filed for their IPOs in recent weeks. (Reporting by Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru)
Investing.com - After a brief respite from a smaller-than-expected build in U.S. crude inventories, oil prices returned to the downward path on Thursday as Russia shrugged off any urgency to formalize additional cooperation with OPEC on reducing the global supply through production cuts.
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell 81 cents, or 1.50%, at $54.21 a barrel by 10:15 AM ET (15:15 GMT).
Meanwhile, Brent crude futures, the benchmark for oil prices outside the U.S., traded down 50 cents, or 0.80%, to $62.19.
Crude has been under pressure this week amid signs that global economic weakness would reduce demand, even as data from the Energy Information Administration showed that the U.S. continues to produce oil at record levels, outstripping traditional sources such as Saudi Arabia or Russia.
Dashing hopes that an agreement between OPEC and allies led by Russia would be sufficient to put the brakes on the global supply, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Moscow was taking its time in complying with the exports cuts, giving itself until May instead of the original March deadline to honor the reductions.
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal had reported that Saudi-led OPEC was trying to lure Russia into a formal tie-up with the cartel to better ensure the countrys compliance to rebalancing the market.
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak poured cold water over hopes of a rapid agreement on Thursday as he commented that the alliance could discuss a charter outlining open-ended cooperation in April, according to TASS news agency.
John Kilduff, founding partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital, likened the idea of tying Russia down to OPEC rules as leading a horse to water, but not being able to make it drink.
The Russians know that when they are forced to proactively keep their supplies tight at all times to support prices, they are only going to foster more barrels from other competitors who arent playing by such rules," Kilduff said.
Story continues
In other energy trading, gasoline futures fell 1.30% to $1.4402 a gallon by 10:17 AM ET (15:17 GMT), while heating oil lost 0.40% to $1.9045 a gallon.
Lastly, natural gas futures traded down 1.62% to $2.619 per million British thermal units.
-- Reuters contributed to this report.
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Rudy Giuliani speaks at the Iran Freedom Convention for Human Rights and democracy in Washington in May. Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP
As counsel to President Donald Trump, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has made statements, ostensibly in his clients defense, that have left some in the legal realm scratching their heads.
One critic, a retired federal appellate judge, even asked in a letter to the editor of the New York Law Journal why the former mayor and Manhattan U.S. attorney hasnt been brought up on disciplinary charges.
As for New York attorneys who have worked closely with Giuliani and the offices he has led in the past, some recall his days as the hard-charging U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York or the two-term mayor who took credit for making New York City safe and leading the city in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and wonder whats become of him.
Others, however, say that, despite Giulianis marquee accomplishments, he might not have much to boast about in terms of his legal acumen.
Martin & Obermaier name attorney John Martin, who served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York immediately before Giuliani became the head of the office in 1983, and later served as a district judge in the Southern District for 13 years, spoke of a dissonance between the Giuliani hed known and the one he sees working for Trump today.
Back in the day he and I had differences on some things but I always thought of him as a good lawyer, Martin said of Giuliani. Im not so sure I think the same thing about him today.
Giuliani himself did not respond to direct requests for comment. A number of past and recent allies of his likewise did not comment, either by not responding to requests sent by the New York Law Journal, or explicitly declining those requests.
Giulianis reputation for pugnacity extends back to his time as U.S. attorney, according to prosecutors who served in the office at the same time. According to one person, the trait cut both ways.
The attorney, who is now a partner at a top law firm and was granted anonymity to be able to speak freely about his time working under the future mayor, said in some ways Giulianis approach as U.S. attorney was a good thing. He was extremely aggressive, the litigator said, and gave line assistants a lot of leeway, while pushing them hard on their cases.
These same tactics earned Giuliani and the office criticism from judges and the public for at times stepping out of line, such as the use of public "perp walks," which predictably garnered media coverage for the SDNY and placed the accused in a harshly negative light, and accusations of leaks to the media.
He was criticized and praised for just thatbeing very aggressive, not being shy about going after anybody, the attorney said.
Now, the attorney joins Martin and others, some of whom declined to go on the record, in echoing various levels of bewilderment, frustration, and concern about the turn they've seen their old boss and colleague take in representing Trump. In some instances, the bond was even closer; the attorney said that Giuliani joined in some family functions.
The new Rudy we dont understand, he said.
The attorney said two specific issues stood out for him and others hed been in discussions with. First, there was disappointment at what the lawyer described as Giuliani turning a blind eye to what he believed were evident issues with Trumps actions and behaviors. Similarly, former prosecutors were frustrated at Giulianis new-found concerns over law enforcement and prosecution tactics by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III and other federal prosecutors that are, by the attorneys account, tame compared to some of the shit Giuliani used to do.
This is like routine prosecution. Theres been no overreaching that any of us have seen in any of those offices, the attorney said. Mueller doesn't hold press conferences. Rudy would hold press conferences every week, beating his own drum and carrying on.
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From Trump Critic to Legal Bullhorn
In 2015, before he became Trumps legal bullhorn, Giuliani criticized the then-candidates proposal to ban Muslim immigration as a violation of the First Amendment, an area of law that presented a persistent challenge for Giuliani during his mayoral tenure, from 1994 through 2001.
The New York Civil Liberties Union reported in 1999 that it squared off in court with the Giuliani administration in 21 different First Amendment cases, of which 15 the organization provided direct representation and served as an amicus party in the remaining six. At that point, the NYCLU had been on the winning side in 18 of those cases.
Prominent civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who served as executive director of the NYCLU from 1985 to 2000, said the group fought a disproportionately high number of First Amendment cases with the Giuliani administration compared with the administrations of Giulianis two predecessors, Edward Koch and David Dinkins.
Notable free-speech clashes in New York City during the Giuliani years that ended in defeat for his Law Department include a case regarding Giulianis move to pull city funding for the Brooklyn Museum and evict is from its quarters for displaying an oil painting of the Virgin Mary that was flecked with elephant dung and embedded with pornographic images.
In another case that ended in defeat for the administration, Giuliani proposed a ban on protests and news conferences on the steps of City Hall as part of a broader effort to step up anti-terrorism measures in Lower Manhattan.
In my opinion he did not understand what the First Amendment provided, Siegel said of Giuliani. I was, back then, not impressed with his legal skills.
As it so happens, Siegel and Giuliani were classmates in the 1960s at New York University School of Law, though Siegel said that the two were not friends. He said that, with respect to Giulianis current role as Trump's counsel, it seems to fit with Giulianis apparent desire to be in the middle of the mix of things.
Another attorney who clashed with Giuliani during his mayoral tenure was Peter Vallone Sr., a Democratic member of the City Council who served as council speaker in the Giuliani years.
Vallone, who represented Astoria, Queens, said that while he and Giuliani often butted heads over the councils role in the budgeting process and its status as a co-equal branch of government, he was able to cooperate with Giuliani on a number of issues and that the two remain friends today.
As for what he thinks about Giulianis current service to Trump, Vallone still sees Giuliani as the man who served as mayor of New York City at a time when crime rates dropped precipitously, and who risked life and limb to be at Ground Zero in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
I have a great respect for what he did as mayor, Vallone said. What hes done thereafter is a different story.
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Moving back to Nepal is a hard choice, and a very personal one
So, gathering up all these clues, I have decided to move back to my own country where I belong and where (I hope I will) find my true calling.
BB&Ts deal with SunTrust Banks is the biggest bank acquisition since the financial crisis in 2008, and the lenders executives have taken care to position the combination as a merger of equals. In practice, such deals are very seldom truly equal, but the companies plan to create the sixth-largest US bank comes pretty close.
Executives often try to convince shareholders, politicians, and employees that deals are equal, even when one party is clearly dominant. Stakeholders may try to scuttle a transaction out of concern that the dominant firm will impose painful layoffs for the target company, and investors want to make sure theyre getting compensated fairly.
On several important scores, this combination comes close to a merger of equals, according to Scott Moeller, a finance professor at Cass Business School in London. The post-combination stock ownership is reasonably close to balanced (the companies are proposing that BB&T shareholders will get 57% of the company, compared with 43% for SunTrust). Both banks will get an equal number of the merged banks board seats, and the CEO spot will first be occupied by BB&Ts chief executive before rotating to SunTrusts boss in 2021.
This ticks a lot of the boxes for a merger of equals, said Moeller, a former Deutsche Bank deal maker. Its pretty close to what they say on the tin.
For stock investors, the $28.2 billion deal is structured more like a merger than an acquisition. SunTrust shareholders will get 1.295 BB&T shares for each SunTrust share owned, marking a 7% premium from Wednesdays closing price. Acquisitions typically involve a premium of around 30%, Moeller said.
Culture, a factor thats hard to capture on paper with numbers, also comes into a play. The strength of management personalities (ie. their egos), and the performance of the previously separate companies after the deal closes, also affect the complexion of the new entity. This factor can also evolve over time, as executives triangulate for power.
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Convincing the parties involved that a deal is a merger rather than an outright acquisition is also important for the message it sends to employees, who may understandably panic when they get the memo, and start sending out resumes. When management is more balanced between the two firms, it signals layoffs might be more evenly distributed, rather than only coming from the buyout target. BB&T and SunTrust have told investors that the combination will result in $1.6 billion in savings, net of investments, which signals sizable job cuts down the road.
The combined companys name is also important in Moellers analysis in whether something qualifies as a merger or a takeover. For BB&T and SunTrust, this remains to be seen, as the companies say they will decide on a new name before the deal closes, which is expected to happen toward the end of the year. Post tie-up, the headquarters will be in Charlotte, North Carolina, closer to BB&Ts Winston-Salem base in the same state than to SunTrusts head office in Atlanta.
Of course, the deal isnt perfectly equalthe terms of the agreement make clear that SunTrust is to merge into BB&T. The companies executives say a bigger bank will help them keep up with advancing technology, according to the Wall Street Journal (paywall), as bank branches close and consumers rely on smartphones for more services. It could also help them keep up with larger rivals when it comes to deposits, which are an important source of funding.
Another question is whether more such banking tie-ups will soon be in the making. Crisis-inspired regulations made deals like the all-stock combination between BB&T and SunTrust far more difficult, but the Trump administration has loosened such restrictions. If theres a revival in financial sector deal making, just take note of the small print when it comes to mergers of equals.
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Clay A. Cosse , Jeffrey J. Cox, Deron L. Wade, and Prescott W. Smith of Dykema Gossett.
Dykema Gossett has hired a four-lawyer group of products liability defense attorneys in Dallas, who came from Hartline Dacus Barger Dreyer in a client-driven move.
Jeffrey Cox and Deron Wade joined Dykema as partners in the firm's products, class actions and professional liability practice group Feb. 1, and Prescott Smith and Clay Cosse came on board as senior counsel.
Wade said the move was prompted by a client's decision to place some work at Dykema.
"It was a situation where a client made decisions on their outside counsel and an opportunity arose for us to continue to do work with that client. That was part of that aspect of it," he said, adding that he and the group have a "long-held regard for Dykema and its attorneys."
Wade declined to identify the client, but said, "We needed to move to Dykema."
In an email, Larry Grayson, the Dallas-based managing partner of Hartline Dacus, did not respond to a question about the client matter. However, he wrote that the firm wishes former partners Cox and Wade much success as they continue their practice at Dykema.
"Their departure was an amicable one and we will miss them. At the same time, we are preparing to celebrate our 25th anniversary, with 75 lawyers (20 partners) and offices in Dallas, Houston, Corpus Christi and Waco," Grayson wrote.
Chris Kratovil, managing partner of Dykema's Dallas office, said the firm has a national products liability and tort defense practice, but the new team brings that service offering to the Dallas office, which as grown to 46 lawyers.
"These guys are absolutely world-class trial lawyers who focus on products liability and high-exposure tort matters, which not coincidentally are historical areas of strength at Dykema," Kratovil said.
Cox said the transition has been seamless because his group knows the firm well. He said he previously worked with lawyers in at least four of Dykema's offices.
Over the last two decades, Cox has served as regional counsel for several large automakers. He said his clients include GM, Nissan and Huawei Technologies.
Wade serves as lead trial counsel in complex product liability, commercial, and automotive and energy industry litigation. He said his clients include GM, Oncor Electric Delivery and Enlink Midstream.
Wade said Dykema's larger network of officesit has 13 including three in Texasand broad range of practices will help him serve his clients.
Dykema opened an office in Dallas in 2007 and another in Austin in 2013, but the firm expanded its Texas presence in a big way in 2015 when it merged with San Antonio-based Cox Smith Matthews.
Story continues
Further Reading:
Cox Smith Merging With Dykema
Darrell Jordan Helps Establish New Dallas Digs for Dykema
Lindsay B. Haber, partner with Kluger, Kaplan, Silverman, Katzen & Levine in Miami.
The world is a buzz over news that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos may have had an extramarital affair and that he and his wife are divorcing. And as it happens in all divorces, the parties assets and liabilities must now be split, including Bezos $135 billion net worth as stated by Forbes in January.
So, what if Jeff Bezos was filing for divorce in Florida? Would adultery be grounds for divorce and would his wife, Mackenzie Tuttle, be entitled to any additional claims for his adultery?
What may seem shocking to somethe answer to both questions is NOT EXACTLY.
Now, let me explain.
Of course, adultery is a reason any spouse may use to seek a divorce. But, statutorily, it is not the grounds needed nor the basis for a Florida court to grant your divorce. Florida is a no-fault divorce state that statutorily requires a spouse to only allege one of two grounds for a divorce to be granted: either that the marriage is irretrievably broken or that there is mental incapacity of one of the parties. Any other allegations as to why it's broken arent even needed.
Moreover, Florida family courts, for the most part, are not interested in the facts or allegations surrounding a spouses adultery unless that spouse spent money on an extramarital affair. This could include buying jewelry and paying for hotel rooms and vacations with a paramour to name a few.
So, about Bezos alleged extramarital affair. What could Mackenzie Tuttle ask a Florida court for when it comes to money spent on a paramour? It is called an unequal equitable distribution. This provides a means to award Tuttle one-half (or her equal share) of any money she could prove Bezos spent on his paramour. And once proven, the court would award Tuttle her rightful share from Bezos equitable distribution. Which means that the Florida court first equitably distributes parties marital assets and liabilities and then determines the unequal equitable distribution entitled to someone like Tuttle.
Which leads to the next question. How would a Florida court equitably distribute Jeff Bezos accumulated wealth? First, the Florida court would start by splitting Bezos $135 billion net worth equally with each party receiving $67.5 billion dollars. It would also splitor divvy outthe property. For example, awarding each party equal real propertyi.e., Bezos could keep the 29,000-square-foot home in Medina, Washington, and Tuttle could keep the Spanish-style mansion in Los Angeles worth $24.5 million.
Now, the average family law divorce does not have such substantial assets like Bezos has accumulated over the years. In the average divorce, the Florida family court would look to equally divide marital assets and liabilities, such as a marital residence, cars, bank accounts, brokerage/retirement accounts as well as credit card debt and loans. And just as important as what items they would need to divide would be the date the court takes into consideration in valuating marital assets and liabilities.
Unless the parties settle their divorce out of court (like Bezos most likely will), the Florida court will decide the valuation date for each asset and liability. Generally, the court will pick between three potential dates: the date of filing the petition for divorce; the trial date; or a separation date if agreed to by the parties. And the court may even select different dates for different assets/liabilities. This is because there may be a significant increase or decrease in a marital asset or liability due to one partys action after the date of filing or separation. Or the opposite, where there is a long period of time between filing for divorce and going to trial, the change in value of assets may needed to be accounted for. Take for example the stock marketparties who filed for divorce in January 2018 and have yet to go to trial have seen a significant drop in the market, which may require a court to use the trial date for stocks as opposed to the date of filing for a credit card debt.
The court also will determine the nonmarital assets and liabilities, which include gifts from third parties and assets acquired prior to the date of marriage. There are several ways, however (and that is a big however) where a nonmarital asset can become a marital asset. For example, if Bezos owned a house prior to his marriage, sold it, and used the funds to purchase a new home titled in he and Tuttles name, Bezos would have lost its nonmarital status and created a new marital asset. Or, as another example, if Bezos had received proceeds from the ale of an inherited real property and put the proceeds into a joint bank account, he would have commingled the inheritance potentially turning the proceeds into a marital asset.
Last, it is only after all the assets and liabilities are equitably distributed and any unequal equitable distribution awarded that the court would consider whether either party is an alimony candidate in this long-term marriage. While Florida courts are still able to award permanent alimony to a spouse from a long-term marriage (i.e., over 17 years), the court takes into consideration one partys needs and the other partys ability to pay before making such an award. And in Bezos case, spoiler alert: Neither party would be an alimony candidate with no less than $67.5 billion dollars to their name!
Lindsay B. Haberis a partner in the family law division of Kluger, Kaplan, Silverman, Katzen & Levine in Miami. She has experience in high-profile, high-conflict family law matters, such as complex and high-value property, business and financial distributions as well as acrimonious child-related matters including international kidnapping and parenting conflicts.
QUEBEC Alexandre Bissonnette was driven by racism and hatred when he stormed into a Quebec City mosque and gunned down six worshippers in 2017, a judge said as he sentenced him to 40 years in prison without possibility of parole
A terrorist who opened fire in Quebec City mosque has been sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for 40 years.
Far right extremist Alexandre Bissonnette shot dead six men when he stormed the mosque in Canada.
He pleaded guilty last March to six charges of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder.
More than 50 people were at the Islamic Cultural Centre in January 2017 when he began shooting during evening prayers.
Innocent victims Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42; Abdelkrim Hassane, 41; Khaled Belkacemi, 60; Aboubaker Thabti, 44; Azzeddine Soufiane, 57; and Ibrahima Barry, 39, were all shot in the place of worship.
Authorities who monitor extremist groups in Quebec described the 29-year-old French-Canadian university student as someone who took extreme nationalist positions at Laval University and on social media.
Bissonnette was a known supporter of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and US President Donald Trump.
Quebecs premier previously acknowledged the province has its demons in terms of attitudes toward Muslims.
People place messages and flowers near a mosque that was the location of a shooting spree in Quebec City (Photo credit should read ALICE CHICHE/AFP/Getty Images)
The judge began his ruling by saying the day of the murders will forever be written in blood in the history of this city, this province, this country.
The prosecution had recommended that his six life sentences be served consecutively, which would have meant 150 years before being eligible for parole.
His lawyer had argued the sentences should be served concurrently, making him eligible for parole after 25 years.
Six men, aged between 39 and 60, were killed when Bissonnette stormed the mosque and opened fire on January 29 2017.
Witnesses described a scene of chaos as worshippers scrambled to find friends and loved ones.
Bissonnette was arrested that night in his car on a bridge nearby, after he called 911 to say he wanted to co-operate with police.
FILE PHOTO: A European Union flag flutters outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels FILE PHOTO: A European Union flags flutters outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 20, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's effort to rewrite two-decade old copyright rules to take into account online platforms such as Alphabet Inc's Google moved a step forward on Friday when a majority of member countries agreed on a common position for talks with lawmakers next week.
Negotiations stalled last month after EU countries failed to bridge their differences, among them whether small companies should be subjected to the rules, which critics blamed on lobbying by Google and others.
Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovakia did not agree to the draft, however.
The EU now has to reconcile its stance with that of the European Commission and the European Parliament.
The Commission, which opened debate on the issue two years ago, has said the revamp will protect Europe's cultural heritage and level the playing field between big online companies and publishers, broadcasters and artists.
EU digital chief Andrus Ansip said he hoped they could reach a deal at talks next Tuesday and Wednesday.
"Glad to see EU countries once again finding a common voice on copyright reform ... I hope for a final agreement next week. Europeans deserve copyright rules fit for digital age: it is good for creators, platforms and for regular internet users," Ansip said on Twitter.
Lobbying groups the European Magazine Media Association, the European Newspaper Publishers' Association, the European Publishers Council and News Media Europe welcomed the agreement but said more should be done to protect their rights.
"It would still lead to substantial legal uncertainty for press publishers as it does not protect with sufficient clarity the use of press content by news aggregators and search engines, which is the whole purpose of a right," they said in a joint statement.
Article 11 of the proposal, which would force companies like Google and Microsoft Corp to pay publishers for displaying news snippets, and Article 13, which requires online platforms such as YouTube and Instagram to install filters to prevent users from uploading copyrighted materials, have been the most controversial.
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EU lawmaker Julia Reda from the Pirate Party criticised a compromise reached by France and Germany on small companies and called on Europeans to pressure lawmakers to reject the deal.
"That French-German deal is actually more extreme than previous versions, requiring all platforms older than three years to automatically censor all their users uploads, and putting unreasonable burdens even on the newest companies," she said.
EU countries also reached a joint position for next week's negotiations with EU lawmakers and the Commission on rules known as the platform-to-business (P2B) law aimed at curbing the powers of companies such as Google and Apple Inc.
Unveiled by the Commission in April last year, the proposed legislation seeks to prevent unfair business practices by app stores, search engines, e-commerce sites and hotel booking websites in a bid to ensure a level playing field between the tech companies and traditional businesses.
Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Apple App Store, Google Play, Facebook Marketplace, Booking.com and Leboncoin.fr are among the companies that would be affected by the proposal.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Grant McCool and Rosalba O'Brien)
Homecoming, for some, is an utterly unspectacular process
For many people, coming home is not a financial, political or social option. And for others, especially those with financial security, it is fundamentally of choicewhich makes it utterly unspectacular.
The picture emerging from the Q4 earnings season is not great, but it is not as bad either as many in the market had feared ahead of the start of this earnings season.
We knew that the period of very strong growth was now behind us. But the steady negative revisions to earnings estimates for the current and coming quarters have left growth expectations for the first half of 2019 barely in positive territory. This negative revisions trend is a function of uncertainty about global economic growth, with a host of leading companies in different industries citing weakness in China, Europe and elsewhere as the driver of weak guidance.
We will share the current scorecard and whats on deck this week a little later, but lets first point out the key trends that we have seen from the Q4 results through Friday, February 8th.
First , growth is decelerating. This isnt a surprise, as we knew already that Q4 growth would be materially below the pace set in the first three quarters of the year.
Total earnings for the 332 companies that have reported are up +13.4% from the same period last year on +7.2% higher revenues. Earnings and revenue growth for the same cohort of companies had been +24.3% and +9.7% in the preceding earnings season, respectively. The comparison chart below puts this growth deceleration in a historical context for these index members.
The growth pace is on track to decelerate even further in the current and coming quarters, as we will show a little later.
Second , companies appear to be struggling to beat consensus EPS estimates.
For the 332 index members that have reported results already, 67.2% are beating EPS estimates and only 62% are beating revenue estimates. For the same cohort of companies, the proportion of positive EPS and revenue surprises was 78.6% and 60.8% in the Q3 earnings season, respectively.
The proportion of these 332 index members beating both EPS and revenue estimates is 46.7%, which compares to 50.9% for the same group of companies in the preceding reporting cycle and 12-quarter average of 53.9%.
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The revenue beats percentage is on the weak side relative to historical periods, but the lag on the EPS beats percentage side is particularly noteworthy. The fact is that the Q4 EPS beats percentage is the lowest in more than 3 years.
The comparison chart below puts the Q4 blended beats percentage in a historical context for these 235 companies.
With Q4 positive surprises this hard to come by, one would reasonably assume that perhaps estimates had been too high. We know that wasnt the case as estimates for the quarter had fallen the most of any other recent periods.
Third , estimates for 2019 Q1 and full-year 2019 are coming down in a major way, with the Q1 growth rate now in negative territory.
The chart below shows how estimates for 2019 Q1 have evolved since late-November 2018.
Negative revisions to 2019 Q1 estimates are along the same lines that we saw ahead of the start of the Q4 earnings season as well. Estimates for full-year 2019 have been coming down as well, as the chart below shows.
This chart is tracking consensus earnings growth expectations since the second half of 2018 got underway. As you can see, estimates were effectively unchanged during the September quarter, but they have been on a consistent downtrend since early October. Many in the market suspect that estimates have further to drop before stabilizing.
Key Earnings Reports This Week
We have more than 400 companies coming out with quarterly reports this week, including 63 S&P 500 members.
Tuesday, February 12th: We have 15 index members reporting results on Tuesday, of which 9 will come out before the markets open and the rest after the markets close. There is no shortage of big-name reporters today, but Under Armour (UAA) will be the notable report in the morning session and Activision Blizzard (ATVI) after the markets close. Under Armour shares jumped following the Q3 earnings release on October 30th and even though the stock has since lost ground, it is still up big over the past year, up +57.3% vs. +31.3% gain for Nike (NKE) and +5.1% gain for the S&P 500 index.
Activision Blizzard and other game publishers have been struggling lately, with Epic Games Fortnight stealing their thunder. While estimates for the December quarter have been stable, the same for full-year have been steadily coming down. The stock is down -34% over the past year, lagging its industrys -25.3% decline over the same time period.
Groupon (GRPN) is another notable company reporting after the close on Tuesday.
Wednesday, February 6th: We have 21 S&P 500 members reporting results on Wednesday, with Cisco (CSCO) as the more prominent company reporting after the markets close. Cisco shares have outperformed the Tech sector as well as the broader market in the last 12 months, with the networking giant up +21.3% vs. +4% gain for the Zacks Tech sector. The stock typically responds in a major way to quarterly releases; it was up following the last two quarterly reports.
Thursday, February 14th: Coca-Cola (KO) in the morning and Nvidia (NVDA) after the markets close are the more notable of the 18 index members reporting results on Thursday.
Nvidia shares have struggled lately, particularly since October 1st, though the stock has fallen after each of the last two releases. The stock is down -32% over the last 12 months, underperforming the Zacks Semiconductor industrys -2.5% decline. Estimates have been steadily coming down, with the current 75 cents per share estimate for the quarter down from $1.99 per share estimate three months back. Estimates for full-year 2019 have come down more than -40% over the last three months, highlighting the tough supply-demand dynamics in the space.
Friday, February 15th: Deere & Co. (DE) and Pepsi (PEP) will be the notable for the 4 index members on deck to report Q4 results on Friday.
Q4 Earnings Season Scorecard (as of Feb 8th, 2019)
We now have Q4 results from 332 S&P 500 members that combined account for 78% of the indexs total market capitalization. Total earnings for these 332 index members are up +13.4% from the same period last year on +7.2% higher revenues, with 67.2% beating EPS estimates and 62% beating revenue estimates.
The table below shows the current scorecard.
We mentioned earlier how companies are struggling to beat consensus estimates. The Chart below compares the 2018 Q4 EPS beats percentage with other recent periods for the same cohort of companies that have reported already.
For Q4 as a whole, combining the actual results from the 332 index members that have reported with estimates for the still-to-come 168 companies, total earnings for the S&P 500 index are expected to be up +13.7% from the same period last year on +6.2% higher revenues, which would follow the +25.7% earnings growth on +8.5% higher revenues in 2018 Q3.
Earnings growth is expected to be in double digits for 8 of the 16 Zacks sectors, with Energy (+100.3% growth), Finance (+16.1%), Construction (+21.8%) and Transportation (+29.3%) as the strongest growth. Tech sector earnings are track to decelerate meaningfully in Q4, up +7.7%, after back-to-back quarters of very strong growth.
Four sectors are expected to have lower earnings in Q4 relative to the year-earlier period, namely Conglomerates (-7.4% decline), Autos (-9.8%), Utilities (-7.8%) and Basic Materials (-0.7%)
The table below shows the summary picture for Q4, contrasted with what was actually achieved in the preceding earnings season.
The chart below shows Q4 earnings and revenue growth expectations contrasted with what is expected in the following three quarters and actual results in the preceding 4 quarters.
As you can see in the chart below, the growth pace is expected to decelerate materially from what we saw in the first three quarters of the year.
The chart below shows the same data on a rolling 4-quarter basis.
Whether we look at the growth picture on a quarterly basis or on a rolling quarter basis, there is no doubt that growth peak is now behind us. The question now is how much estimates for the coming quarters have still to come down. And the answer to that question will depend on the evolving economic backdrop that we discussed at the start.
For more details about the overall earnings picture, the Q4 earnings season and expectations for the coming periods, please check our weekly Earnings Trends report.
Note: Sheraz Mian manages the Zacks equity research department. He is an acknowledged earnings expert whose commentaries and analyses appear on Zacks.com and in the print and electronic media. His weekly earnings related articles include Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview.
Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019
In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year?
Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.
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Chances of Another Government Shutdown Are 'Next to Nil,' Says GOP Negotiator
The possibility of another government shutdown is next to nil according to Tennessee Rep. Chuck Fleischmann.
The Republican Congressman was asked Friday about the shutdown during an interview on Fox & Friends. Fleischmann said that the chance of another shutdown is nil, or next to nil.
He went to on to say In this situation, there is no appetite on either side of the aisle and I think in either chamber for another partial government shutdown, Politico reports.
Fleischmann is a member of the bipartisan conference committee that is tasked with reaching a deal on border security. His comments come two weeks after President Donald Trump announced that his administration and Congress reached a deal to temporarily reopen the government after 35 days, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
However, a stopgap spending bill runs out next Friday. If a compromise is not made, then the country would face another shutdown.
The main point of the contention is still centered on Trumps border wall. The president wants $5.7 billion allocated to build a wall on the U.S. Mexico border. His opposition has said that walls are ineffective against immigration issues and that the way would be a waste of government money.
Trump has threatened to issue a national emergency in order to get the wall built, should the money not be allocated for its construction.
On Friday, Fleischmann suggested that there would likely be some money allocated toward border protection, but did not specify whether that protection would be a fence, wall, or another type of barrier.
The market expects Canada Goose (GOOS) to deliver a year-over-year increase in earnings on higher revenues when it reports results for the quarter ended December 2018. This widely-known consensus outlook is important in assessing the company's earnings picture, but a powerful factor that might influence its near-term stock price is how the actual results compare to these estimates.
The stock might move higher if these key numbers top expectations in the upcoming earnings report. On the other hand, if they miss, the stock may move lower.
While management's discussion of business conditions on the earnings call will mostly determine the sustainability of the immediate price change and future earnings expectations, it's worth having a handicapping insight into the odds of a positive EPS surprise.
Zacks Consensus Estimate
This high-end coat maker is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.57 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +23.9%.
Revenues are expected to be $259.98 million, up 24.2% from the year-ago quarter.
Estimate Revisions Trend
The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. This is essentially a reflection of how the covering analysts have collectively reassessed their initial estimates over this period.
Investors should keep in mind that an aggregate change may not always reflect the direction of estimate revisions by each of the covering analysts.
Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise
Earnings Whisper
Estimate revisions ahead of a company's earnings release offer clues to the business conditions for the period whose results are coming out. Our proprietary surprise prediction model -- the Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction) -- has this insight at its core.
The Zacks Earnings ESP compares the Most Accurate Estimate to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter; the Most Accurate Estimate is a more recent version of the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. The idea here is that analysts revising their estimates right before an earnings release have the latest information, which could potentially be more accurate than what they and others contributing to the consensus had predicted earlier.
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Thus, a positive or negative Earnings ESP reading theoretically indicates the likely deviation of the actual earnings from the consensus estimate. However, the model's predictive power is significant for positive ESP readings only.
A positive Earnings ESP is a strong predictor of an earnings beat, particularly when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold). Our research shows that stocks with this combination produce a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time, and a solid Zacks Rank actually increases the predictive power of Earnings ESP.
Please note that a negative Earnings ESP reading is not indicative of an earnings miss. Our research shows that it is difficult to predict an earnings beat with any degree of confidence for stocks with negative Earnings ESP readings and/or Zacks Rank of 4 (Sell) or 5 (Strong Sell).
How Have the Numbers Shaped Up for Canada Goose?
For Canada Goose, the Most Accurate Estimate is the same as the Zacks Consensus Estimate, suggesting that there are no recent analyst views which differ from what have been considered to derive the consensus estimate. This has resulted in an Earnings ESP of 0%.
On the other hand, the stock currently carries a Zacks Rank of #3.
So, this combination makes it difficult to conclusively predict that Canada Goose will beat the consensus EPS estimate.
Does Earnings Surprise History Hold Any Clue?
Analysts often consider to what extent a company has been able to match consensus estimates in the past while calculating their estimates for its future earnings. So, it's worth taking a look at the surprise history for gauging its influence on the upcoming number.
For the last reported quarter, it was expected that Canada Goose would post earnings of $0.19 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.35, delivering a surprise of +84.21%.
Over the last four quarters, the company has beaten consensus EPS estimates four times.
Bottom Line
An earnings beat or miss may not be the sole basis for a stock moving higher or lower. Many stocks end up losing ground despite an earnings beat due to other factors that disappoint investors. Similarly, unforeseen catalysts help a number of stocks gain despite an earnings miss.
That said, betting on stocks that are expected to beat earnings expectations does increase the odds of success. This is why it's worth checking a company's Earnings ESP and Zacks Rank ahead of its quarterly release. Make sure to utilize our Earnings ESP Filter to uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they've reported.
Canada Goose doesn't appear a compelling earnings-beat candidate. However, investors should pay attention to other factors too for betting on this stock or staying away from it ahead of its earnings release.
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(Bloomberg) -- If Amazon.com Inc. boss Jeff Bezos really wants his companys movie production division to create a blockbuster hit, he might want to let them focus on his own life.
In the past two days alone, the biography of the worlds richest man has taken more plot twists than a M. Night Shyamalan flick and includes a superstar cast complete with President Donald Trump and a cameo by political sensation Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Threats by a tabloid to publish graphic images sent to a new flame. A private investigator hired to unearth leaks. Conspiracy theories of a connection to the killing of a Saudi dissident journalist. Plea deals with federal prosecutors under pressure. Political intrigue swirling around a proposed $2.5 billion investment on a New York City waterfront. Martin Scorsese is salivating.
The saga began last month when the e-commerce pioneer used Twitter to announce he and Mackenzie, his wife of 25 years, planned to divorce. Within hours, the National Enquirer exposed Bezoss relationship with former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez. That sounds pretty pedestrian now.
The story took on hard-to-believe Hollywood proportions on Thursday. In a lengthy blog post, Bezos accused the National Enquirer and its publisher, Trump-ally David Pecker, of blackmail and extortion, publishing email exchanges to back it up. The Enquirer threatened to publish graphic selfies of a scantily clad and sometimes exposed Bezos, saying the images are newsworthy because they reveal poor judgment by the leader of the worlds biggest online retailer.
Bezos representatives argued publication of his private images would violate copyright laws. The Enquirer said it would not publish the photos if Bezos agreed to issue a statement saying the magazines reporting isnt politically motivated. The tabloid also wants to stop Bezos investigating how the photos leaked. The billionaire has hired Gavin de Becker, a private investigator to the stars, to find out what happened.
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The blog laid bare the tactics of a tabloid that years ago ended John Edwardss presidential run by exposing an extramarital affair, and more recently protected then-candidate Trump by buying the stories of women who allegedly were sexually involved with him and then never publishing a word.
The post also highlighted the shrewd public-relations tactics of a billionaire who refuses to be cornered. Forget the portrait painted by the Enquirer of a moneyed philanderer in a mid-life crisis. Bezos cast himself as a hero, protecting the First Amendment at his own risk. His ownership of The Washington Post, which has published stories critical of Trump as well as investigations into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, is a complexifier in his situation, he said. Bezos decided to expose the correspondence with the Enquirer, and risk photos of himself being shared with the world, to stand up against blackmail and extortion and ensure the integrity of the Washington Post, he said.
Its unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy, Bezos wrote. President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Posts essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.
The feud between Trump and Bezos is well known, but the suggestion of a potential connection between the Enquirers expose and the assassination of Khashoggi was a bizarre twist. Khashoggi was a leading critic of Saudi Arabias de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom Trump regards as an important ally. A Saudi Arabian envoy said the kingdom wasnt involved in the fight between Bezos and the National Enquirer, calling it a "soap opera."
Bezoss accusations quickly took on far-reaching ramifications. Federal prosecutors are reportedly reviewing the National Enquirers dealings with Bezos given the companys earlier cooperation deal with prosecutors. American Media Inc., owner of the National Enquirer, agreed not to commit crimes to avoid prosecution over hush-money payments to women who claimed relationships with Trump. AMI said it acted lawfully in reporting Bezoss affair, but will investigate claims by the CEO that it was politically motivated.
Bezoss bombshell allegations were followed Friday by a new revelation. The Washington Post said Amazon was considering withdrawing plans to expand in the Long Island City neighborhood of New York City due to an unrelenting political backlash.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and city mayor Bill de Blasio both celebrated Amazons decision to invest $2.5 billion in the city and hire 25,000 people over the next two decades. But several local politicians who were shut out of the negotiations have criticized tax breaks offered to Amazon, questioning the companys anti-union stance and worrying about low- and middle-income residents getting squeezed out by rent hikes as highly paid tech workers move in.
The news, later confirmed by Bloomberg, shows how Bezos has become a prime target of populist politicians highlighting growing wealth disparity. The idea of tax breaks benefiting the worlds wealthiest man have taken on a life of their own. And the suggestion that Amazons response to public scrutiny is to threaten to move its project elsewhere isnt sitting well.
U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an outspoken critic of the deal, took to Twitter to celebrate the possibility that Amazon would pack it in, saying it proved people could come together and effectively organize against creeping overreach of one of the worlds biggest corporations.
To contact the reporter on this story: Spencer Soper in Seattle at ssoper@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
2019 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- It took Amazon.com Inc.s announced New York expansion to make buddies out of Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The states two most powerful politicians have fought for six years over everything from mass transit to how to combat the Ebola virus. Now theyve got each others back like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, rhetorical guns ablaze against an array of fellow Democrats who want to kill the deal the pair has worked for months to consummate.
A report Friday that the company may be reconsidering its plans has emboldened opponents in the state Senate and the City Council. The news came days after Senate leaders named Michael Gianaris, one of the deals fiercest critics, to a board that would give him power to veto it. The governor could reject Gianariss appointment, but he hasnt said what hell do.
Powerful Democrats in Albany and New York City object to $3 billion in tax breaks and grants going to a company valued at close to $1 trillion with an owner, Jeff Bezos, whos the worlds richest man. If the deal dies, Cuomo said, so will the political careers of those opposing it.
Stopping Amazon?
The problem is the state Senate has adopted that position and thats what could stop Amazon, Cuomo told a gathering of business executives Friday who asked him about the intra-party fight. And if they do, I would not want to be a Democratic senator coming back to my district.
The unlikely Cuomo-de Blasio alliance will now have to fight on another front that raises the stakes in the already pitched battle. Both men spoke out Friday about what they see as the benefits to New York, while others questioned whether Amazon actually intends to withdraw and how much more political capital may be necessary to save the deal.
The governor and mayor are in no position to offer the company more, and their best hope is to rally public support with the help of construction and building services unions that have been assured jobs from the project.
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This is the type of extortion by Amazon thats got us into this mess in the first place, Gianaris said Friday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. They are sitting there, dictating to governments of this country how much money they want, making them compete with each other, forcing them to sign secrecy agreements, and then threatening to leave if they dont get their way.
Public Backlash
Amazon expected it would face the biggest public backlash to a new headquarters in New York City, Bloomberg has reported. The company chose the location anyway, wanting the benefits of the citys large skilled-labor pool and opportunities for spouses and partners of recruited hires to find employment in their own careers, officials have said.
For Cuomo and de Blasio, its a no-brainer: those tax breaks and grants in return for as much as $27.5 billion in tax revenue by 2045 and 25,000 to 40,000 jobs paying an average $150,000 a year. It holds the promise of making the city a tech-industry leader rivaling Silicon Valley and Bostons Route 128 corridor.
Yet the political stakes in this fight may be greater than the economic benefits. Opponents say Amazons arrival would have much less of an impact than Cuomo and de Blasio would have the public believe. The citys economy already employs 4.6 million people, and it produced 71,000 new jobs in 2018.
The influx of new employees would average 1,600 a year -- a much more muted impact in a city of 8.6 million than in northern Virginia, where Amazon plans to build an equivalent campus. The financial incentives sound less impressive in a state and city that have proposed combined budgets totaling more than $267 billion next year.
At the same time, the mayors alignment with Cuomo and Amazon carries considerable political risk. Hes been traveling the U.S. trying to establish himself as a national spokesman for progressive Democrats who are decrying the countrys income inequality.
Now he finds himself defending a company with a reputation for union-busting and accused of causing an affordable housing crisis in its hometown of Seattle. And hes now paired with Cuomo firing rhetorical shots at Gianaris, who has been one of the mayors few staunch backers in the state Senate.
Theres a lot of people who like to go to rallies, theres a lot of people who like to offer critiques, de Blasio said, aiming his attack at Gianaris and others who would jeopardize the deal. But I dont think theres a lot of people whod want to lose 25,000 to 40,000 jobs and then have to answer to their constituents.
Yes, They Can
The mayor also has found himself on the other side of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the self-described Democratic-Socialist representative from the Bronx and Queens who has been one of the most vocal critics of Amazon. She saw the news of a potential withdrawal as a victory.
Can everyday people come together and effectively organize against creeping overreach of one of the worlds biggest corporations? Yes, they can, she said on Twitter.
The mayors warning hasnt daunted City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, a candidate for mayor in 2021 who doesnt see a political downside in taking on Amazon. Johnson reacted to Fridays reports by saying it shows that the City Council he leads has been doing a good job. No company is entitled to public land and subsidies without tough public scrutiny, he said.
Johnson has the support of almost all the 48 Democrats on the 51-member City Council, including Jimmy Van Bramer, who represents the Long Island City, Queens neighborhood across the East River from Manhattan where Amazon wants to set up its 4 million-square-foot campus.
Shame on you, shame on your corporation for coming to New York City is how Van Bramer began his questioning of Brian Huseman, Amazons vice president for public policy, during a Jan. 30 council hearing.
Johnson told Huseman: We have 63,000 people sleeping in a homeless shelter tonight. We have subways falling apart. We have schools that arent getting money they deserve. We have public housing that is crumbling around us not far from where Amazon wants to locate. Dont you think theres a better way for us to spend three billion dollars?
--With assistance from Spencer Soper and Emily Chang.
To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flynn McRoberts at fmcroberts1@bloomberg.net, ;Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net, Ian Fisher
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2019 Bloomberg L.P.
(Corrects Feb. 7 article to show, in fourth paragraph, that a temperature rise of 2C is equivalent to 3.6F, not 35.6F)
* Norway fund to ask companies for emissions, risk scenarios
* Says some progress made, but companies must do better
* Power producers could disclose more
* Developing in-house tool to measure climate change risk
* Largest SWFs: http://tmsnrt.rs/2tskfub
By Gwladys Fouche
OSLO, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Norway's $1 trillion wealth fund will push the 9,000 firms it invests in to disclose more data on greenhouse gases they emit and how they adapt to climate change during the coming annual general meeting season, a top fund official said.
The world's largest sovereign wealth fund invests the revenues of Norway's oil and gas production and has stakes in some 9,000 companies across 72 countries.
It was an early mover among international investors in trying to assess climate change risk, wanting to avoid investments in one sector negatively impacting another - so-called "externalities" - and hurting its overall portfolio.
This year, it will make a fresh push on firms to explain how their business will be affected, and how they are adapting, to a world where temperatures may rise by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F).
"What we would like to see more of is scenarios, including a two-degree scenario, and we want better disclosure of the assumptions for these scenarios," Carine Smith Ihenacho, the fund's chief corporate governance officer, told Reuters.
"We want clear targets for CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases, including methane. And we want to see reporting of progress against the targets," she added.
"We would like to see it more disaggregated, meaning not for the whole company, but more broken down, for instance regional or even on an asset level."
DIVESTMENTS
As part of its green push, the fund has been developing an in-house software, called Angle, that can take non-financial data, such as CO2 emissions, combine it with trading data and earnings data, and see how it will affect a company years ahead.
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That tool has informed divestments in some 30 companies in 2018, fund CEO Yngve Slyngstad told Reuters, helping show that these companies did not have a sustainable business model over the long-term. He did not name them.
Presentation material showed two of the 30 divested companies were involved in palm oil; one in rubber; ten in coal-based power; and one in "CO2 intensity".
The next step in the software's development, first disclosed by Reuters in October, is to develop the platform to see how much of the carbon cost can be passed on to customers and how much companies must pay themselves.
"It is still in the works," Slyngstad said.
Smith Ihenacho said companies were generally better at reporting climate-related data, citing for instance banks and oil and gas companies as "quite good" examples.
But others, like power producers, were lagging.
"There is still far to go for many companies to report at the level we would like to see," she said.
The fund itself "emitted" 107 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2018 via its ownership stakes -- roughly twice the amount emitted by Norway in 2017 -- according to its annual responsible investment report released on Thursday.
In 2018, the fund voted against one or more resolutions put forward at 27.5 percent of AGMs it attended last year, roughly the same level as in 2017.
The fund said it voted against the CEO also holding the position of board chairman at Amazon, Johnson & Johnson , Total, Procter & Gamble and Pfizer , among others.
It also voted against executive pay proposals at JP Morgan Chase, Verizon, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, among others. (Reporting by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Terje Solsvik and Andrew Cawthorne)
The Vilcek Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 Vilcek Foundation Prizes for Biomedical Science, awarded to immigrants who have made significant contributions to the field. Dr. Angelika Amon will receive the $100,000 Vilcek Prize, while Drs. Amit Choudhary, Jeanne T. Paz, and Mikhail G. Shapiro will each receive the $50,000 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise.
"Immigrant scientists are behind some of the most transformative discoveries made on American soil, as epitomized by the winners of the Vilcek Foundation Prizes," says Jan Vilcek, Chairman and CEO of the Vilcek Foundation. "Their work has extraordinary implications for our understanding of human biology and our prospects for treating human disease."
The Vilcek Prize, awarded to individuals with records of significant accomplishment, is bestowed to Austrian-born molecular and cell biologist Angelika Amon, the Kathleen and Curtis Marble professor of cancer research and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Amon studies cell growth and division, and how errors in these processes contribute to birth defects and cancer. Her research has identified molecular, protein, and spatial signals crucial to triggering progression in cell division, as well as how certain errors in cell division, a state called aneuploidy, lead to disorders like Down syndrome. Amon has also illuminated the interplay between aneuploidy and cancer cells, increasing the potential for new treatments capable of selectively targeting cancer cells. Among other honors, Amon has been elected into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the European Molecular Biology Organization, and received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine.
The Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise are awarded to emerging biomedical scientists who have shown exceptional promise early in their careers. The recipients are the following:
Amit Choudhary's research lies at the intersection of physics, biology, and chemistry. He identified a fundamental force integral to the structures of biomolecules like proteins and nucleic acids, opening up avenues for new modes of drug design and delivery, as well as insight into molecules tied to the origin of life. He refined controls for the genome-editing enzyme CRISPR-Cas9 to minimize unintended effects, increasing its potential for treating genetic disorders and curbing vector-borne diseases. His research on binge-eating snakes led to insights on insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells, suggesting possible therapeutic approaches for human diabetes. Choudhary, born in India, is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a member of the Renal Division faculty at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and an associate member of Broad Institute.
Jeanne T. Paz uses optogenetics, a technique in which light is used to control genetically modified brain cells in living animals, to understand the brain mechanisms underlying epileptic seizures in rodent models. Her work revealed the role of the basal ganglia and thalamus in mediating seizures with a genetic underpinning, as well as those following stroke-induced brain damage. Her research forms the potential basis for predicting and arresting seizures, even in cases of intractable epilepsy, with implications for treating brain disorders such as dementia as well. Paz, born in Georgia (then part of the Soviet Union), is an assistant investigator at the Gladstone Institutes and assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
Mikhail G. Shapiro developed a new class of noninvasive imaging tools to visualize molecules and structures in living organisms at high resolution. Shapiro fashioned sensors allowing magnetic resonance imaging to visualize clinically relevant molecules, like dopamine, which play a role in various brain disorders. Then, he coopted structures known as gas vesicles, a biological feature in certain bacteria, to serve as ultrasound sensors; Shapiro also demonstrated that these and other biomolecules could be used to monitor and manipulate genetically engineered microbes, allowing for their greater potential as therapeutic drugs. Shapiro was born in Russia (then part of the Soviet Union), and is a professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology.
The prizewinners were selected by independent panels of biomedical experts. In addition to biomedical science, the 2019 Vilcek Foundation Prizes also recognize immigrant contributions in culinary arts and art history. The prizewinners will be honored at a gala at the Mandarin Oriental in New York in spring 2019.
The Vilcek Foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the foundation, to honor the contributions of immigrants to the United States and to foster appreciation of the arts and sciences, was inspired by the couple's careers in biomedical science and art history, as well as their appreciation for the opportunities they received as newcomers to this country. The foundation awards annual prizes to immigrant biomedical scientists and artists, sponsors cultural programs, and manages the Vilcek Foundation Art Collections. To learn more about the Vilcek Foundation, please visit vilcek.org.
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A University of Oklahoma researcher, Si Wu, and collaborators from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and Indiana University, are developing new strategies leading to diagnosis and early intervention of Lupus, an autoimmune disease that may affect up to 1.5 million Americans. The National Institutes of Health is funding the OU research with a $2 million grant over a five-year period.
"We are providing the first snapshot of autoantibody development in Lupus patients by developing a novel detection method using a top-down mass spectrometry approach for identifying disease-specific autoantibodies quickly," said Wu, assistant professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, OU College of Arts and Sciences. "This may lead to novel biomarkers and a foundation for new strategies for the early detection of Lupus. To our knowledge, we are the first to apply this approach in understanding how autoantibodies become pathogenic."
Ken Smith, OMRF investigator, is purifying antibodies from samples of over 50 patients from Oklahoma and surrounding states for this research. In collaboration with rheumatologists Judith James and Eliza Chakravarty, these longitudinal samples will come from well-characterized Lupus patients collected over several decades allowing for evaluation of the disease over time. Xiaowen Liu, associate professor in the School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, will work with Wu on the development of the needed software tools.
Wu's research team has complementary expertise on top-down mass spectrometry, antibody immunity and bioinformatics. The team will look at antibodies of specific antoantigens to determine how the properties of the antibodies in individual patients over time and across patients are related. The researchers will link antibody clones with disease activity to determine how they change with the disease progression and various medications.
The research team is providing the first quantitative top-down platform for characterizing these autoantibodies. After development, the top-down autoantibody characterization platform can be easily adapted to other autoimmune diseases, such as Sjogren's Syndrome. For more information about this NIH-funded research, "Quantitative Analysis of Serum Autoantibody Repertories in Systematic Lupus Erythematosus," contact Professor Wu at si.wu@ou.edu.
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BEIJING: the Chinese foreign ministry informed Venezuela should resolve its own matters itself via peaceful talks and China supports the international community`s efforts in this regard. Here about 20 European Union nations including Britain, Germany, France and Spain have aligned with the United States in recognising Juan Guaido as Venezuela`s interim president and pressuring socialist President Nicolas Maduro to call a new election.
However, offering a counter-point to Washington`s hard-line stance, the EU and a group of Latin American governments that has kept a moderate line on Venezuela called for dialogue and fresh elections. The EU-backed International Contact Group on Venezuela in its inaugural meeting in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo this week said overly forceful intervention could aggravate the crisis.
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While talking about meeting, China`s foreign ministry said in a statement late on Friday that China supported the efforts of the international community on the peaceful settlement of the Venezuela issue and hoped all parties would continue to play a constructive role.
The ministry said "Venezuela`s affairs should be resolved by its people within the framework of the constitution and the law through peaceful dialogue and political channels,". Further added that "Only this way can Venezuela realising lasting stability." China has lent more than $50 billion to Venezuela through oil-for-loan agreements over the past decade, securing energy supplies for its fast-growing economy. But the financing dried up as the South American country`s economy began spiralling downward in 2015, pressured by plummeting oil prices.
Guaido has said a change in government in Venezuela would favour its two main foreign creditors Russia and China, and that he has sent communications to both countries, which have close relations with Maduro`s government.
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DUBLIN: On Friday, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he believed "a deal can be done" to avoid a disorderly British exit from the EU, after a meeting with a key ally of British Prime Minister Theresa May that he said went very well. Varadkar later hosted May for a formal dinner in Dublin that an Irish official described as "very warm" - in contrast to a relatively chilly reception given to May in Brussels earlier this week. Varadkar said talks with Northern Ireland`s Democratic Unionist Party in Belfast in the afternoon showed there was "more that unites us than divides us when it comes to Brexit," unusually conciliatory language in what has often been an acrimonious relationship.
However, the DUP, which props up May`s government, has been one of the fiercest critics of Britain`s exit deal with the European Union, which parliament in London has rejected and more particularly the contentious "backstop" championed by Varadkar. The provision is an insurance policy meant to keep the border between Ireland, a euro zone member, and the British-run province of Northern Ireland open under any and all circumstances. The DUP says its terms are unacceptable as they would undermine trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
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While the EU has said it will not remove the provision or re-open the legally binding Brexit deal agreed with Britain over two years, but has said it is ready to rework the political declaration that accompanies it. After the meeting, DUP leader Arlene Foster said she had a "good engagement" with Varadkar and that the DUP wanted "to be as helpful as we can to try and get a deal that works for the United Kingdom and also works for the European Union."
However she declined to comment on the detail of the talks, saying both sides needed space to complete discussions. The support of the DUP`s 10 members of parliament is seen as key to May`s winning over sceptical members of her Conservative party and securing parliamentary approval for the withdrawal agreement.
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New Delhi: In Lahore,India has raised a strong protest over the 26/11 Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed's recent `Kashmir Solidarity Day` rally. While on Wednesday, Ministry of External Affairs sent a note verbale to Pakistan High Commission India, February 6, registering its "strong protest at the continued use of Pakistan controlled territory by extremist and terrorist elements" to "freely propagate and promote violence and terror against India."
However, India also called upon the "government of Pakistan to fulfill its international obligations" and "abide by its bilateral commitment to not allow any territory under its control to be used for terrorism against India in any manner. JuD is a UN-designated terrorist organisation and Saeed has a bounty of $10 million on his head. Saeed also launched his own political outfit Milli Muslim League (MML) last year. JuD has also opened centres in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir in collaboration with a prominent leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party in power in Pakistan.
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Here it is to be noted that, Saeed, the chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) and co-founder of banned militant outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba, took part in the `Kashmir Solidarity Day` rally on February 5. He was even showered with rose petals during the rally proceeding. India has been vocal about the issue of Hafiz Saeed roaming freely in Pakistan several times. Last year at the United Nation, New Delhi slammed the neighbour nation for supporting terror and asked how is that a "UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed enjoys a free run inside Pakistan and spews venom and sets up candidates for electoral office?"
Despite Islamabad maintaining it wants peace with India, Pakistani ministers have often been filmed sharing the dais with Hafiz Saeed and making anti-India statements. In January, India sent a number of Note Verbales to Pakistan on the issue of Indian Diplomats harassment, killing of Indian fisherman and stopping of Indian cargo flights to Afghanistan.
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Washington: The Trump administration has announced that it will launch two projects in India in partnership with the private sector as part of its historic initiative to empower 50 million women globally to tap their economic potential.
The initiative will be led by Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter and senior advisor of President Donald Trump.
US President Donald Trump signed a memorandum to launch the Women's Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative a first-of-its-kind, whole-of-government approach to women's economic empowerment
One of the programmes will be launched in West Bengal.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in partnership with PepsiCo in West Bengal will scale women's economic empowerment throughout PepsiCo's agriculture supply chains, the White House said.
"The OPIC (The Overseas Private Investment Corporation) $100 million loan will expand IndusInd's microfinance lending to women in India," it added.
Further the USAID-UPS Memorandum of Understanding is aimed at improving the ability of women entrepreneurs to export their goods to markets, with an initial focus in Africa, Asia, and Central America.
The Department of State's Office of Global Women's Issues will launch 'WE RISE' to work with microfinance civil society organizations to reduce barriers faced by women entrepreneurs.
It also announced creation of a W-GDP Fund which with an initial $ 50 million fund at USAID will support innovative and effective programs that advance women's economic empowerment.
"Our goal is to reach 50 million women and maybe more, and it looks like it is probably going to be substantially more than that, substantially more than 50 million women, in the developing world, and that will be done, Ivanka, by 2025, has said," Trump told reporters at the White House as he signed the memorandum in this regard.
"Our goal is to empower women to help their home countries become self-reliant and to allow a lot of families, millions of families throughout the world to become self-reliant. And also in the United States, very importantly," he said.
"As my national security strategy says, investing in women helps achieve greater peace and prosperity between nations, not only our nation, this is all nations, all over the world, we're getting together, we've developed a lot of really tremendous relationships because of what we're doing right here, Trump said.
Earlier in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Ivanka said this new initiative will for the first time coordinate America's commitment to one of the most undervalued resources in the developing worldthe talent, ambition and genius of women. This initiative aims to help 50 million women in developing countries realize their economic potential by 2025.
Observing that expanding women's economic participation has the potential to boost global economic output by an additional $12 trillion by 2025, Ivanka said this number represents far more than an economic boom it represents millions of lives full of promise: mothers who could provide for their children, daughters who could be the first to graduate from high school, and young women who could start businesses and create jobs.
The Kuniyur hamlet in Tirunelveli district is just like any other typical village in Tamil Nadu. The village has dusty pathways, and people live in packed small huts. Though majority of the villagers, for them even Chennai is a city of dreams, have not seen the outside world, Kuniyurs fame has crossed the seven seas and reached the shores of the US.
The Kuniyur village is popular among the Americans for its mastery over pottery. The pots and other related products made by the traditional pottery workers of this small hamlet are being exported to foreign countries, including the US. And the pillar behind this initiative is 52-year-old Shanthi and the voluntary organization who gave a lending hand to the pottery industry of the village.
The ancestors of Shanthi were involved in pottery business, and she too is making pots and other earthenware to make ends meet. But changing times threw up many challenges for her. Shanthis income dipped due to natural calamities and lack of proper soil to make clay, and she found it extremely difficult to continue with the vocation. Shanthi and her husband could earn only a paltry Rs 50,000 per year and life became hard for this couple, who has two kids, as demand for pottery went southwards.
Two years ago, Shanthi approached Srinivasan Services Trust, which had been established by industrialist T V Sundaram Iyengar to protect traditional industries and help workers in the rural areas, to bail her out.
Eventually, the trust took steps to form a cluster group - Narmada - under the leadership of Shanthi to protect the pottery industry of Kuniyur village.
The group had the responsibility to make the workers aware about the government benefits that were due to them. Narmada started to gain popularity within a span of two years and its products started to reach the Chennai markets, and also made a mark in the US. Twenty workers are working under Shanthi and each family is netting a revenue of Rs 2.5 lakh per year.
Shanthi and her friends are firmly sticking to the traditional values while taking the pottery industry to new heights. Quality soil found in the village is used to make pots and other products. All markets, including foreign, are impressed by the uniqueness of the earthenware churned out from the Kuniyur village.
The ultimate goal of Narmada is to follow the culture and traditions in pottery and not to compete with multi-national companies, and that paid dividends.
When the industry gained momentum, the state government started to source soil from neighbouring places and consigned the raw materials to the village free of cost. Besides Tamil Nadu, the products of Narmada are sold in Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
The new workers are given a two-day training. The pots and other articles, which are manufactured at a cost of Rs 30 to Rs 40, are fetching close to Rs 500 in the market. Each woman in the group has an income of Rs 15,000 per month, which is credited to their respective bank accounts. The women have also learned to withdraw money through ATM kiosks.
Muthukumar, Shanthis nephew and an employee of a hotel in the US, had sent videos of the pottery-making process to his American friends during a visit to his home village. And that was the start of a steady flow of orders from the US, and Muthukumar became an agent there. The business started to grow steadily though the only marketing tool was word-of-mouth publicity. The relatives of Muthukumar in Thoothukudi had put in place a business model as the number of orders kept increasing.
Now, Muthukumar is Narmadas marketing head in the US, and around 15,000 pots have hit the US markets to date. Shanthis aim is to make available Kuniyur pots and other related products across the nation, and in other countries too, besides providing a steady income to rural women.
Washington: US President Donald Trump said on Friday that diplomats had a "very productive meeting" with North Korean officials, and he announced his summit later this month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be held in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump said on Twitter.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said.
Earlier this week, Trump announced the dates for the second summit with Kim and said it would be held in Vietnam, but the city had not been disclosed.
Stephen Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, held three days of talks in Pyongyang to prepare for the summit, the State Department said on Friday.
It said Biegun had agreed with his counterpart Kim Hyok Chol to meet again ahead of the summit.
In their talks in Pyongyang, from Wednesday to Friday, Biegun and Kim Hyok Chol "discussed advancing President Trump and Chairman Kim's Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearisation, transforming US-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula," the State Department said.
Its statement, which referred to North Korea by the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, gave no indication of any progress in the talks.
Just weeks ahead of the planned summit to follow on from an unprecedented first meeting between the leaders in Singapore last June, the two sides have appeared far from narrowing differences over US demands for North Korea to give up a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States.
Biegun said last week his Pyongyang talks would be aimed at seeking progress on commitments made in Singapore and mapping out "a set of concrete deliverables" for the second summit.
He said Washington was willing to discuss "many actions" to improve ties and entice Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and that Trump was ready to end the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
'Economic powerhouse'
Biegun said Kim Jong Un committed during an October visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the dismantling and destruction of plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities and that "corresponding measures" demanded by North Korea would be the subject of his talks.
At the same time, he set out an extensive list of demands that North Korea would have to meet eventually, including full disclosure of its nuclear and missile programs, something Pyongyang has rejected for decades.
On Saturday, Biegun said his talks in North Korea had been productive and Trump looked forward very much to his meeting with Kim in Hanoi.
"We have some hard work to do with the DPRK between now and then," Biegun said in South Korea before a meeting with its foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha.
"I am confident that if both sides stay committed, we can make real progress."
Trump, eager for a foreign policy win to distract from domestic troubles, has been keen for a second summit despite a lack of significant moves by North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. He and Biegun have stressed the economic benefits to North Korea if it does so.
"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," Trump said on Twitter.
"He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is," Trump said.
Trump announced the plan for his second meeting with Kim in his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Trump said much work remained to be done in the push for peace with North Korea, but cited the halt in its nuclear testing and no new missile launches in 15 months as proof of progress.
The Singapore summit yielded a vague commitment by Kim to work toward the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, where US troops have been stationed since the Korean War.
While in the US view North Korea has yet to take concrete steps to give up its nuclear weapons, it complains that Washington has done little to reciprocate for its freezing of nuclear and missile testing and dismantling of some facilities.
North Korea has repeatedly urged a lifting of punishing US-led sanctions, a formal end to the war, and security guarantees.
Kolkata: Trinamool Congress legislator Satyajit Biwsas was shot dead by unidentified assailants at a Saraswati Puja programme in West Bengal's Nadia district on Saturday evening, police said.
The Trinamool accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of being involved in the murder, but it denied the charge and called for a Central Bureau of Investigation enquiry, if needed.
Biswas, 37, the lawmaker from Krishnaganj (SC), was fatally shot while attending the puja inauguration programme in Phulbari along with state minister Ratna Ghosh and Trinamool district president Gourishankar Dutta.
The newly-married legislator was fired upon multiple times from close range when he was coming down the stage after the programme.
Biswas, a popular scheduled caste leader, was rushed to a local hospital where he was declared dead.
The Trinamool alleged a BJP hand behind the crime.
"BJP and (its leader) Mukul Roy harboured a deep grudge against him as Biswas became an MLA at a time when Roy had betrayed us. The killing is the result of that conspiracy. We will see its end. There will be an inquiry by the police.
"But whoever has murdered, has done it with the blessings of Mukul Roy. This aspect cannot be glossed over," Dutta alleged.
BJP state president Dilip Ghosh called the murder "unfortunate", and said it was Trinamool's habit to link his party to every such killing of its leaders.
"This is a very unfortunate incident. Last month, the MLA of Joynagar had a close brush with death. Now the BJP is being made the sacrificial lamb.
"Earlier, lot of murders had taken place in Birbhum district, their workers were also killed . They tried to implicate us in all these killings also. But the victims' families pointed fingers at the factional feuds within the Trinamool.
"We want the truth to come out. Whoever is guilty, should be punished. This politics of murder should stop in West Bengal," said Ghosh.
He said murderers and anti-social elements have now taken up the Trinamool flag. "These people are committing such murders," he said.
New Delhi: Robert Vadra, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law, on Saturday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for the third time in connection with a probe into allegations of money laundering in purchase of assets abroad.
Vadra arrived at the central probe agency's office at Jamnagar House in central Delhi at about 10.45 am in his private vehicle.
Officials said the investigating officer (IO) of the case required Vadra to answer more questions in connection with the case and hence was asked to depose on Saturday, after his two sessions of questioning on February 6 and 7.
While Vadra was grilled for the first time for about five-and-a-half hours, he was questioned the second time for about 9 hours.
It is understood that the last time Vadra was "confronted with" documents that the agency had obtained or seized as part of its probe in the case, including those linked to absconding defence dealer Sanjay Bhandari.
Vadra has also shared documents with the investigating officer of the case and has assured some more will be provided as and when he gets them, official sources had said.
The ED case against Vadra relates to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property located at 12, Bryanston Square worth 1.9 million GBP (British pounds), which is allegedly owned by him.
The agency has told a Delhi court that it has received information about various new properties in London which belong to Vadra. These include two houses, one worth 5 million GBP and the other valued at 4 million GBP, six other flats and more properties.
Vadra has denied the allegations of possessing illegal foreign assets and termed them a political witch hunt against him. He said he was being "hounded and harassed" to subserve political ends.
Sources said Vadra's statement is being recorded under Section 50 (powers of authorities regarding summons, production of documents and to give evidence) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, as was done the last two times.
His appearance before the ED acquired political overtones after his wife Priyanka Gandhi, recently appointed Congress general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, accompanied him to the investigating agency's office on Wednesday while she picked him up after questioning on Thursday.
Vadra is also expected to depose before the ED on February 12 in Jaipur in an another money-laundering case related to a land scam in Bikaner. The Rajasthan High Court has directed him to cooperate with the agency in the case.
Shillong: The CBI will continue the questioning of Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar for the second day on Sunday and former TMC MP Kunal Ghosh will appear in person at the investigating agency's office here for interrogation in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam, officials said Saturday.
Three senior CBI officers questioned Kumar for nearly nine hours on Saturday about his alleged role in the tampering of crucial evidence in the scam, the officials said.
There was no briefing by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the questioning which began at around 11 am at its highly secured office at Oakland here as per the directions of the Supreme Court.
Kumar's counsel Biswajit Deb, who is also the TMC coordinator for Meghalaya, said Kumar is "cooperating and complying" with the CBI.
"He (Kumar) has come here on the orders of the Supreme Court. He has complied earlier and he is complying now as per the orders," he told reporters outside the CBI office.
Kumar led the special investigation team (SIT) formed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to investigation the chit fund scam before the probe was handed over to the CBI by the apex court.
He will be present at the CBI office for the second day tomorrow, said Deb, who met Kumar along with two senior IPS officers from West Bengal -- Javed Shamim and Murlidhar Sharma -- thrice during the day for brief periods.
Ghosh had implicated BJP leader Mukul Roy, who was once the right-hand man of Banerjee and 12 others in the Saradha scam.
The Supreme Court had directed Kumar on Tuesday to appear before the CBI and "faithfully" cooperate in the investigation of cases arising out of the Saradha chit fund scam.
The apex court had also directed Kumar to appear before the investigating agency at a neutral place in Shillong "to avoid all unnecessary controversy" and made clear that he would not be arrested.
The CBI had moved the Supreme Court after its officials were thwarted by Kolkata Police when they had gone to Kumar's official residence in Kolkata to question him on February 3.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had rushed to the spot and had staged a three-day 'Save the Constitution' dharna against the CBI move and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah of plotting a 'coup'.
The central investigating agency had said that its officials had wanted to question Kumar to plug the holes in the Saradha investigation case as he was supposed to be in possession of certain key documents as a member of the special investigation team.
Beijing: China on Saturday "firmly opposed" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, asserting that it has never recognised the sensitive border state and the Indian leadership should refrain from any action that may "complicate the boundary question".
Prime Minister Modi Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation stone of projects in Arunachal Pradesh worth over Rs 4,000 crore and said his government was giving a lot of importance to improve connectivity in the border state.
Modi said his government was giving importance to improve the highway, railway, airway and power situation in Arunachal Pradesh, which was neglected by the previous governments.
In New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs reacted sharply to China's remarks, saying the state of Arunachal Pradesh is an "integral and inalienable part" of India.
"Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions," the MEA spokesperson said in a statement.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in response to a question on Modi's visit said, "China's position on the China-India boundary question is consistent and clear-cut. The Chinese government has never recognised the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh' and is firmly opposed to the Indian leader's visit to the East Section of the China-India boundary."
"China urges the Indian side to bear in mind the common interests of the two countries, respect the interests and concerns of the Chinese side, cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral relations, and refrain from any action that may lead to the escalation of disputes or complicate the boundary question," she said in her reaction posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website.
Kochi: Authorities of the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) Thursday granted permission to a section of students in its Alappuzha campus to conduct 'pooja' for Goddess Saraswati, in a peaceful manner following a protest by them.
The permission was granted after north Indian students studying in the Cochin University College of Engineering Kuttanad (CUCEK) protested the CUSAT authorities' decision not to grant permission to organise the religious function in the institution, college authorities said.
Students from North India had sought permission from the college authorities to conduct 'Saraswati Pooja' in the campus on February 9,10 and 11, following which the request was forwarded to the CUSAT authorities. However, the request was declined by the CUSAT authorities, sayingit "cannot permit religious function/activities of any religion inside campus" "since it was a secular campus.
The North Indian students staged a protest against the decision, claiming that such a pooja was performed in the campus last year with the permission of the college authorities.
Considering the protest of the students, a high-power committee of the CUSAT comprising Vice Chancellor and registrar met and decided to grant permission to the students to organise the Saraswati pooja on February 10 "in a peaceful" manner in the college campus, sources said.
CUCEK Principal N Sunilkumar said the university authorities have orally communicated to him about the decision granting permission to conduct the pooja in the campus.
The North Indian students have also been informed about the decision taken by the University authorities, he said.
Thiruvananthapuram: V M Sudheeran, a veteran Congress leader and former party president in Kerala, said on Saturday that he will not be contesting in the coming Lok Sabha polls.
Speaking to IANS, Sudheeran said that even when the party high command in 2009 asked him to contest, he did not.
"I feel it's high time that new faces, especially the youth, are given more importance. I have had a very long innings in public life and have contested several elections," he said.
Sudheeran, 70, entered politics through KSU, the Congress-backed students unit, and over the years he was a four-term Lok Sabha member and also a legislator an equal number of times.
Dismissing media reports that he was asked to meet Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Sunday, the veteran leader said: "I am going to Delhi, but not tomorrow (Sunday). It's pretty cold there now."
In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, Sudheeran lost to Dr K S Manoj, a political novice fielded by the CPI(M), by 1,009 votes.
In 2014, he was named the new Congress state president. But he resigned in 2017.
The BJP central leadership wants Thushar Vellappally to contest in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. The party plans to stop Vellappally Nadesan's anti-BJP comments through this move. The state leadership has told the centre it is ready to give up any seat except Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur and Pathanamthitta.
The central leadership wants Thushar on the NDAs candidate list in state. The BDJS has been conveyed this idea. BJP National President Amit Shah is expected to make the offer directly to Thushar when he visits Kerala this month or early March.
The state leadership has told the centre it will be best to contest Thushar from Attingal, Kollam or Alappuzha. Natesans comments during Chengannur by-election and Sabarimala issue have troubled the BJP. They fear the same during the Lok Sabha election. Once Thushar is a candidate, both Natesan and the SNDP will stand with the party, the BJP believes. Natesan seems to have argued against Thushars candidacy the other day realising this strategy.
Kozhikode: Continuing his allegations on a secret pact between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPM and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president Mullappally Ramachandran on Saturday alleged that the left party's continued silence in the controversial Rafale deal was due to fear over the SNC-Lavalin case.
"The CPM failed to even comment on one of the biggest corruption that the country faced. Their parliamentarians as well as Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his party here are silent on the issue. Pinarayi fears that any negative comments on the Rafale deal would turn against him, when the SNC-Lavalin files are already with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). If the CBI properly investigates the Lavalin case, the chief minister would be behind the bars. Recently, we heard Pinarayi saying that even if the Congress wins some seats, Rahul Gandhi will not be able to form a government in the Centre. This is equivalent to inviting Narendra Modi (as prime minister) again," Mullappally said during his Janamahayathra.
The SNC-Lavalin hydroelectric scandal has always a hot topic of discussion, targetting Pinarayi. The infrastructure contract with the Canadian company SNC-Lavalin when Pinarayi was the power minister in 1995 allegedly resulted in loss of more than Rs 374.5 crore to the exchequer according to the CAG. However, Pinarayi was acquitted by a CBI special court in 2013. Though the CBI appealed in the Kerala High Court in August 2017, Pinarayi, as well as two others were removed from the list of accused.
'Soft stance against Modi'
The KPCC chief also alleged that the CPM never took any strong stand against Modi in Parliament.
He also cited the instance of lone BJP legislator in Kerala Assembly O Rajagopal voting for CPM's P Sreeramakrishnan for the Speaker's post as a clear indication of the tie-up between the two parties.
Mullappally said that though the BJP had an option to adopt an equi-distant approach, Rajagopal chose to back the CPM candidate for the Speaker's post.
Union Minister Alphons Kannanthanam's visit to the CPM office soon after he took charge was also cited by Mullappally as a proof of the close link between the two parties.
"It was RSS/Jana Sangham that helped Pinarayi when he contested from Kuthuparamba in 1970. They even led his campaigns then. In return, the CPM supported Jana Sangh leader K G Marar at Uduma. The links between late CPM leaders E M S Namboodirippad and Harkishan Singh Surjeet with former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is already known to the public. Recently RSS leader from Kannur, Valasan Thillankery revealed that he was a 'bridge between the RSS and the CPM'. We will disclose more evidence of the unholy alliance between the two parties when the time demands," he said.
However, Mullappally, reserved any criticism on Nair Service Society (NSS) and stressed that it has a great legacy in the reformation of the Kerala society.
He also criticised CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan for his derogatory comments against the NSS.
New Delhi: The Congress will not be fielding sitting MLAs and Rajya Sabha MPs as candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The crucial decision, which brings an end to speculations over the candidature of many, including former Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, was taken at a meeting of Congress state chiefs and parliamentary party leaders chaired by party president Rahul Gandhi here on Saturday.
There were reports that Chandy, the MLA represting Puthuppally assembly constituency, may be fielded probably in Idukki seat.
It was also decided not to field party leaders who lost more than two polls earlier, sources said.
Sitting MPs with winning chances will be allowed to contest this time too. The party also decided not to grant seat to more than one person from a family. State election committees have been asked to submit the list of candidates before February 25. The candidates will be finalised in the first week of March. Rahul asked the party leaders to hold discussions with allies in state units over seat allocation.
From Kerala, leader of opposition Ramesh Chennithala and KPCC working president Kodikunnil Suresh attended the meet.
Malayali movie lovers wont easily forget the production house Shirdisayi Creations, which gave Malayalam cinema some of its evergreen super hits. PKR Pillai, a noted entrepreneur had bankrolled blockbusters like Chithram, Vandanam, Kizhakkunarum Pakshi and Amrutham Gamaya, under the banner of Shirdisayi Creations. However, in an unfortunate twist of fate, the producer of the movies which catapulted many actors including Mammootty and Mohanlal to superstardom has plunged into abject poverty. It was producer Saji Nanthiyattu who let the world know about PKR Pillais plight, and it has already created ripples in the cinema fraternity.
The producer, who funded around 22 movies, is spending his life, in poverty and distress, at his home in Peechi, Thrissur. PKR Pillai once owned business ventures at almost all the big cities in India. His wife Rama says that the family fell into poverty when the businesses were taken over by those who were close to Pillai, through trickery and deceit.
Though the movies produced by him are still aired on the TV channels frequently, the 85 year old Pillai cant seem to remember who owns the copyrights to those films. His wife and children sought the aid of the producers association when the family faced dire financial constraints to conduct the wedding of the producers youngest daughter.
Pillai, who lost his memories, is still waiting for his son, who died three years ago, to come home. Rama says that he had even tried, many times, to make a comeback into the movies. A native of Koothattukulam, Ernakulam, PKR Pillai had spent most his life in Bombay owing to his business. He had even contested in the Mumbai municipality polls as a Congress candidate. Besides, Pillai had shared close friendship with former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He produced 22 movies within a span of 20 years. They family came down from Mumbai to settle at Thrissur, 10 years ago, when the business had crashed.
They sold their luxury house, which was worth more than Rs 6 crore, for a mere Rs 70 lakhs to buy the plot and house in which they are currently residing. Rama says that his friends from the cinema industry disappeared when he lost everything. The family hopes that the documents regarding the movies that he produced would be returned to them with the help of the producers association and his old colleagues.
Vepralam, made in 1984, was PKR Pillais first movie as a producer. Later he went on to bankroll movies like Onathumbikkoroonjal, Puli Varunne Puli and Oomapenninu Uriyada Payyan which are still loved by the audiences.
PKR's son Sidhu had acted in Dulquer Salmaan's movie 'Second Show'
Sidhu R Pillai, one of Pillais four children, died in mysterious circumstances at Goa. He had acted in Dulquer Salmaans debut movie Second Show. Pillais another child is abroad, while the family is seeking alliances for his daughter.
Many associations have offered to help PKR Pillai after the story of his misfortune appeared in the media.
Thiruvananthapuram: An alert traffic policeman nabbed a serial chain-snatcher in the city. Poojappura resident Sajeev (38), an accused in many such cases, was caught because of cop Biju Kumars timely intervention.
A bike-borne assailant had snatched an elderly womans three-sovereign chain in the guise of asking for directions. This was caught on a CCTV camera nearby. The description of the bike and criminal was then passed over the wireless phones from the police control room.
Biju, who was on duty in front of the Museum Station, received the message and swung into action. A bike with the registration number conveyed by the control room was spotted parked near Kanakakkunnu. Biju observed the vehicle for a while and stopped the rider once he approached it. The Museum Police soon arrested him.
Sajeevs features matched the chain-snatcher's images from the CCTV. The shadow police confirmed it was indeed him, an accused in many other chain-snatching cases.
Biju Kumar was congratulated by the City Police Commissioner for his swift action. The civil police officer on traffic duty hails from Vandithadam, Thiruvalla.
Kannur: Young Niya will soon hear her father and mother's voice again. The state government has promised to get her a new hearing aid after the one she used to wear was stolen.
Niya is at her mothers place, running a temperature after all the crying from losing the gadget received after much effort. Health Minister KK Shailaja personally delivered the news to family by handing over a temporary speech processor. Shailaja said a new processor would be given in two weeks.
Niyasrees speech processor was stolen last week. After the news was published in Manorama on February 5, Social Security Missions Executive Director Dr Muhammed Asheel was analysing the scope of providing her a new one. But he had to wait for a couple days since the money could be used for another child in case someone returned the gadget. Many others too came forward with an offer to buy it for Niya. But when that did not look imminent, the government swiftly took a call.
Niyashree was born deaf at Chorakkalam, near Peralasseri, Kannur. She underwent a cochlear implant surgery at Calicut Medical College under the governments Sruthi Tharangam project and gained the sense of listening four months back. She had started learning the basic words when someone stole her hearing aid. Niya had started calling out to her parents after a few sessions of speech therapy at the medical college. She was travelling in the womens compartment of Egmore Express with mother after a therapy session when the gadget was lost. It was kept in her mothers bag in a box, which someone might have mistaken for a jewellery box, the parents believe.
Seattle: Boeing's 747 jumbo jet, an aircraft that democratized global air travel in the 1970s but fell behind modern twin-engine passenger jets, has bounced back from near death to mark its 50-year flying anniversary on Saturday, thanks to a cargo market boom fuelled by online shopping.
Boeing's "Queen of the Skies" is the world's most easily recognized jetliner with its humped fuselage and four engines. It is now enjoying a second, perhaps less glamorous life, as a cargo mule for companies like United Parcel Service Inc.
"It's an efficiency machine for us," said Jim Mayer, a spokesman for UPS, the world's largest package deliverer.
UPS ordered 14 more 747-8 freighters in 2018, a lifeline that helps ease doubts over the future of the jumbo, which looks set to outlive its European competitor, Airbus SE's A380.
Airbus is looking "extremely seriously" at closing its superjumbo A380 factories sooner than expected, Reuters reported in January, after Dubai's Emirates indicated it might switch its A380 orders to the smaller A350.
A 747 used by Air India. File photo
Unlike the 747, Europe's superjumbo does not have a freighter version to help absorb slack demand.
Boeing had said in 2016 it could end 747 production amid falling orders and pricing pressure. Major US carriers like United Continental Holdings Inc and Delta Air Lines Inc have already said goodbye to the 747.
By keeping the 747 alive, Boeing avoids charges and layoffs for halting production at the mammoth wide-body plant outside Seattle.
It also shields newer programs like the 787 Dreamliner and the latest model of 777, which would have to bear a larger share of the plant's huge overhead if the 747 line went dark.
Still, the 747's extended lifespan could be tempered by US-China trade tensions and concerns about a broader economic slowdown threatening freighter demand.
Workers load the Solar Impulse aircraft into a Cargolux Boeing 747. Reuters
Global air cargo rose 3.5 per cent in 2018 compared with 9.7 per cent in 2017, according to the latest data from the International Air Transport Association.
The 747, which had its maiden flight on February 9, 1969 and entered service on Pan American World Airways in January 1970, allowed for more affordable air travel due to its size and range.
It still flies passengers for Lufthansa, Korean Air and Air China, and does have one other role.
The US government asked Boeing in 2017 to repurpose two 747-8 jetliners for use as Air Force One by the US president. The two aircraft are due to be delivered by December 2024, painted red, white and blue.
A British Airways Boeing 747 passenger jet takes off. Reuters
The $3.9 billion contract followed President Donald Trump's objection to the $4 billion price tag of a previous Air Force One deal. He tweeted that "costs are out of control" and added "Cancel order!"
Jim Bridenstine, the space agencys administrator, said that NASA plans to return people to the Moon and have astronauts explore more of the surface for longer periods, Trend reported citing Sputnik.
The NASA administrator wrote a post detailing his agencys goals, which aside from sending people to the Moon as well as Mars one day, involves keeping them there longer.
As a lifelong NASA supporter, I am thrilled to be talking once again about landing humans on the moon. But to some, saying were returning to the moon implies well be doing the same as we did 50 years ago. I want to be clear that is not our vision. Bridenstine wrote in his blog post for Ozy news outlet.
Bridenstine had previously called for the best and brightest of American industry to help design and develop human lunar landers in response to what he says is a clear mandate from Donald Trump and Congress to once again get astronauts out of Earths orbit.
We are going to the moon with innovative new technologies and systems to explore more locations across the surface than we ever thought possible. This time, when we go to the moon, we will stay, he added.
Bridenstine said that NASA will begin to proceed with its plans next week, when partners from private industry and elsewhere will visit the space agencys headquarters to discuss lunar landers.
Ultimately, Bridenstine said, the goal is to get astronauts back on the Moon within the next decade.
Billions of people around the world will watch history being made as astronauts explore more of the surface for longer periods of time than ever before, and help us prepare for missions to Mars and other destinations, he said.
Switching to mutual payments in the national currencies is an important area of focus in relations between Russia and Thailand, Russian Ambassador to Thailand Yevgeny Tomikhin told Russian reporters in the run-up to Diplomats Day, Trend reports referring to TASS.
"Not only Russia, but many other countries are discussing that issue", the diplomat said. "We are conducting such negotiations with a number of countries, primarily with those with which we have a large trade turnover".
According to the ambassador, these schemes will be convenient for expanding business cooperation in the future. "This issue is on the agenda in our relations with Thailand," he stressed. "We have a working group tackling the issue of inter-bank cooperation. Its next meeting is expected to be held this year, and I believe that mutual settlements in the national currencies will be one of the focal points", he said.
Tomikhin noted that work was in progress to develop bilateral military-technical cooperation. "Thailand is one of our promising partners in terms of military-technical cooperation," he emphasized. "[We will] try to work with our Thai partners in terms of searching for opportunities to expand this cooperation".
The ambassador noted that Thailand was pursuing an active foreign policy, including with regard to Russia. "I believe that cooperation with our counterparts at Thailands Foreign Ministry is very effective. We have established good relationship and cooperation, but we will try to promote cooperation in all areas in the future", he said.
The trade turnover between Russia and Spain has dropped three-fold after the European Union imposed restrictive measures against Russia, Russian Ambassador to Spain Yuri Korchagin told reporters, Trend reports referring to TASS.
"Prior to 2014, our trade turnover reached 11 bln," the diplomat said. "According to the data provided by the Spanish customs service, it was approaching 15 bln. After the EU imposed its anti-Russian restrictions the trade turnover dropped nearly three-fold."
"Nevertheless, we have seen an increase in the trade turnover over the past two years," Korchagin went on to say. "In 2018, it grew 6% to reach 5.6 bln, but this is incomparable with the previous figures."
"Last year, the implementation of the major project to supply Russian LNG to Spain began," the diplomat stressed. "I believe this likewise contributes to the growth of the trade turnover to some extent."
According to the ambassador, relations between the two countries began 500 years ago. "The first full-fledged Russian embassy arrived in Spain 350 years ago. Throughout the centuries, our contacts and dialogue have been marked by intensity, mutual respect and interest in each other regardless of what government was in power in Spain," Korchagin stressed.
He added that the new government led by the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, which came to power last June, "immediately showed interest in maintaining and even intensifying bilateral relations." "A phone call initiated by Madrid between Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Russian President Vladimir Putin has been held," the ambassador said. "During the conversation, both parties reaffirmed their commitment to cultivating bilateral ties," he said.
"This year, some Spanish ministers received invitations to attend international forums scheduled to be held in Russia," the diplomat pointed out. "In addition to that, we are planning a series of consultations at the deputy foreign ministers level, which will be held in Moscow and Madrid alternately," Korchagin added.
At least one person died and 95 injured on Friday following the collision of two trains between Manresa and Sant Vincenc de Castellet in east Spain, the state-owned railway infrastructure manager ADIF said in an official statement, Trend reported citing Xinhua.
A passenger warned the emergency services at 18:20pm local time of a collision of two trains travelling the usual route R-4 in Rodalies, linking two cities in the main industrial belt of Barcelona.
It was a head-on collision of two trains, and a train driver was killed, according to state-owned railway operator Renfe Operadora.
A total of 95 people were injured during the wreck, three in serious condition, said local emergency services via their Twitter account.
Local councillor Damia Calvet told Ser radio Station that the accident was "due to a malfunctioning of the signalling mechanism that should have prevented a train from following the wrong direction", a possible "problem of manual systems".
An eye witness told local TV how she saw a train heading towards the other, with no sufficient time to stop. "Pieces of glass broke off and flew around," she described.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has sent his condolences to the victims and the family of the deceased.
"Keeping an eye on every piece of information that we can get from the emergency services regarding the frontal collision between two trains St Vicenc de Castellet and Manresa. My thoughts are with the deceased's family and those who were injured," Sanchez tweeted.
On Nov. 20, 2018, a train carrying 133 people on the same route had an accident due to a landslide following heavy rains in the region, leaving one dead and 50 injured.
If the United States decides to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, the Czech Republic will follow, Czech Defence Minister Lubomir Metnar said on Saturday, Trend reports citing Sputnik.
"If the current negotiations [on Afghan peace with the participation of the United States and the Taliban movement] are successfully completed and this leads to internal political stability in this country, then security should improve. If it comes to reducing the number or complete withdrawal of US troops, we will respond to it adequately. Meaning that if the United States leaves Afghanistan, we will also pull out", Metnar told the Pravo newspaper.
Some 340 Czech soldiers are based in Afghanistan within the framework of the NATO Resolute Support mission. The mission provides training and assistance to the Afghan security forces. A total of 16,000 soldiers from 39 NATO countries are currently serving in Afghanistan as part of the Resolute Support.
In Late January, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani vowed to try to remove all foreign troops from the country. In addition, an agreement on the possible withdrawal of the US forces from Afghanistan was reportedly reached during recent talks between the United States and Taliban in Qatar. The radical movement, for its part, pledged to prevent terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base to carry out operations in other countries under the future deal.
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Rome to protest the course of Italy's populist government, Trend reports with reference to The Associated Press.
Several unions called for the protest on Saturday in order to draw attention to inequality, unemployment and racism under the government, which came to power last year.
"The government has to come out of its virtual reality and enter the real world," said Annamaria Furlan, the head of the Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions Cisl.
"The country must be united, not divided," said Maurizio Landini of the Italian General Confederation of Labour Cgil.
There were no official attendance figures, but local media reported turnout as high as 200,000 people.
Rome's populist government - made up of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League - has alienated many Italians with its anti-immigration stance and other controversial policies.
The Greek Parliament ratified by a narrow margin on Friday the protocol on Northern Macedonia's accession to NATO, according to the results of the vote, Trend reported citing Sputnik.
The protocol was backed by 153 lawmakers in the 300-seat legislative body, with 140 lawmakers voting against it and one lawmaker abstaining from the vote.
With the completion of the ratification process of the NATO accession protocol by all 29 NATO member states, the Republic of Macedonia, which has been recently renamed to the Republic of Northern Macedonia, will become a fully-fledged member of NATO with the right to vote on all decisions of the Alliance.
Until June 2018, the name dispute had prevented Macedonia from pursuing membership in NATO and the European Union. Skopje and Athens agreed on a new name, the Republic of North Macedonia. The deal, however, resulted in mass rallies in both countries, with at least 60,000 Macedonians protesting the name change in January.
Iranian parliament speaker is scheduled to travel to Japan for an official visit to the Asian country on Monday, Trend reports citing IRNA.
Heading a high-ranking parliamentary delegation, Ali Larijani will depart Tehran for Tokyo on Monday for an official two-day visit to the country.
Larijani will visit Japan upon an official invitation of his Japanese counterpart Tadamori Oshima.
The Iranian parliament speaker is expected to discuss issues of mutual interest with his Japanese counterpart and other officials of the Asian country.
Tehran and Tokyo have good diplomatic relations for about a century and Japan is one of Iran's oil importers.
Baku, Azerbaijan, February 9
Trend:
Uzbekistan has asked Georgia to provide its airlines with the "Fifth freedom of air", Trend reports citing the press service of Uzbek Foreign Ministry.
The fifth freedom allows an airline to carry revenue traffic between foreign countries as a part of services connecting the airline's own country. It is the right to carry passengers from one's own country to a second country and from that country to a third country (and so on).
This proposal was announced during the 11-th round of political consultations in Tashkent between the foreign ministries of the two countries.
"Uzbekistan Airways plans to open a flight on the route Tashkent-Tbilisi-Tashkent this year. In this connection, the Uzbek side raised with the Georgian delegation the question of the possible provision of Uzbek Airways with the "Fifth freedom of air", the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
For instance, Uzbekistan Airways, with hypothetical flights on the route Tashkent-Tbilisi-Baku, will be able to disembark passengers in Tbilisi, as well as take passengers on board to Baku.
For passengers, the presence of this agreement with the airline is beneficial due to cheap air tickets, in this case from Tbilisi to Baku and back. Due to the fact that some of the passengers fly only to Tbilisi, the airline always has empty seats on the route from Tbilisi to Baku, which it tries to load as much as possible, using reduced prices.
Tehran, Iran, Feb. 9
Trend:
An Iranian lawmaker believes the establishment of the European financial channel for Iran's transactions is a good approach that might even bring the US to negotiations table.
"The EU mechanism is a good start but it is not enough. It was a hard decision that was made by the Europeans against the US," said Chairman of the Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, Trend reports citing ILNA.
"The important issue is that the US intelligence services stated that Trump had made a mistake by leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and I believe that by reforming domestic management, preventing corruption and establishing constructive relations with the world we can gradually provide a situation that the Americans move towards the negotiations with Iran," he added.
The lawmaker noted: "Some of the European countries and even China and Russia are moving towards this approach."
On Feb. 1, three European countries France, Germany and the UK (shortened as E3) officially announced the creation of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), a special purpose vehicle, to allow them bypass US sanctions on trade with Iran.
INSTEX facilitates non-dollar trade with Iran, allowing European companies to trade with the Islamic Republic without being hit by the sanctions.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
By Elnur Baghishov Trend:
According to the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of Iran, both government departments and non-state companies in the country should provide 20 percent of the electricity consumed via alternative energy sources, Majid Sabouri, Executive Director of Irans North Khorasan Electricity Distribution Company, told IRNA.
According to Sabouri, if the departments will not use electricity generated from alternative renewable energy sources by the end of the current year (started March 21, 2018), 20 percent of the cost of the electricity used by them will be calculated with the cost of electricity generated by alternative renewable energy sources.
Sabouri noted that some departments have already taken steps in this direction, with the rest still having done nothing about it.
"Electricity production skyrockets during the summer. In summer, electricity consumption in Iran reaches 60,000 megawatts, although the same figure stands at about 30,000 megawatts during wintertime," he said, adding that some 25,000 megawatts are consumed by electric heaters, according to statistics.
"A $30 billion investment is needed for providing 30,000 [megawatts of] electricity," he said.
According to the company official, the peak use of electricity in neighboring countries in Pakistan, for example is 25,000 megawatts.
Sabouri said the government pays a substantial amount of subsidies on energy. If the electricity generating cost per 1 kilowatt hour (kWh) is 1200 rials (about $0.02), its sale is 600 rials (about $0.01).
Iran's North Khorasan Electricity Distribution Company has over 350,000 users.
Tehran, Iran, Feb.9
Trend:
Iranian Minister of Energy Reza Ardakanian and Iraqi minister of electricity Louay Al Khateeb signed a memorandum of understanding on the expansion of cooperation between the two countries in the field of production, export and transfer of technology for the electricity industry.
Also, at the meeting, Iran's Tavanir Company signed a contract with Iraqi company on export of electricity to Iraq, Trend reports citing IRNA.
An official contract for the export of electricity between Iran and Iraq was signed in 2005 with a capacity of 150 megawatts, which was renewed each year.
According to the latest agreement between the two sides, Iran exports 1,200 megawatts of electricity annually to Iraq through three transit routes in Basra, Diyala and Amara.
In order to receive electricity export money, the governor of the central bank of Iran, Abdul Nasser Hemmati, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iraqi finance minister, according to which the new payment mechanism between the two countries was set to accelerate the debt payments.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Feb. 9
By Huseyn Hasanov Trend:
The work is underway to implement a project for the supply of Turkmen electricity along the Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TUTAP) route, Trend reports with reference to the Turkmenistan State News Agency.
In January, the State Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs of Turkmenistan signed an agreement with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for a sum of $500 million for financing the project of modernization of the energy network of Turkmenistan.
Actively connecting Turkmenistan to a single Central Asian energy system plays an important role in opening up additional possibilities for the increase of the scope of supply of Turkmen electricity within the framework of the international "Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Tajikistan Afghanistan Pakistan" (TUTAP) project.
Earlier, Turkmenistan's Minister of Energy Charymyrat Purchekov presented the report on the implementation of the project for the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan power transmission line to Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.
In his report Purchekov said that the construction is being carried out according to the plan.
Besides, a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the implementation of this project was signed with Turkish Calik Holding A.S. to develop a legal basis for regional partnership for the construction of a 500-kilovolt transmission line along the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline.
At the same time, an agreement on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan power transmission line was signed between the governments of the countries participating in the project.
It was also reported that the total volume of electricity generated in Turkmenistan by 2024 is planned to increase up to 33 billion kilowatt-hours, which is 27.2 percent more compared to the plans for 2018. Turkmenistan sells electricity to Afghanistan and Iran.
Hajigabul, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
By Jeyhun Alakbarov - Trend:
Khazar cars produced in Azerbaijan will be exported to Ukraine, Chairman of the Board of AzerMash Emin Akhundov said at the groundbreaking ceremony of assembly plant for GAZ cars in Azerbaijan's Hajigabul industrial area, Trend reports Feb. 9.
Akhundov said that the first batch of cars will be exported in mid-2019.
"To begin with, it is planned to export 300 cars," he said. "Forty percent of the Khazar cars produced in 2018 were bought by government agencies, ant the rest 60 percent - by the country's population."
The groundbreaking ceremony of assembly plant for GAZ cars was held in Azerbaijan's Hajigabul industrial area on Feb. 9.
The volume of investments in the enterprise will be 14 million manats. At the initial stage, 100 people will be employed at the plant.
The enterprise will assemble GAZel NEXT and GAZel BUSINESS light commercial vehicles, as well as GAZon NEXT medium trucks.
AzEurocar, a AzerMash subsidiary, will deal with the distribution and maintenance of GAZ vehicles in Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, February 9
Trend:
The volume of cheese supplies from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan increased by more than 90 times in 2018, Trend reports with reference to Kyrgyz Ministry of Economy.
The Ministry states that the trade turnover of Kyrgyzstan with Uzbekistan increased by 1.4 times from 2014 to 2017.
Moreover, the import of Kyrgyz products from a neighboring country increased by 25.4 percent, exports to Kyrgyzstan - 1.6 times.
At the end of last year, the trade turnover of the two countries grew by 10 percent ($309.4 million), compared with 2017.
Uzbekistan imports coal and petroleum products, cement, glass and glassware, stone and cement products from Kyrgyzstan, and mainly exports vegetables, fruits, knitted fabrics, plastic, aluminum and copper products to the neighboring country.
Hajigabul, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
By Jeyhun Alakbarov - Trend:
GAZ cars that will be assembled in Azerbaijan's Hajigabul industrial quarter are planned to be exported to Iran, Georgia and Turkey, Trend reports Feb. 9.
The Minister of Economic Development of Russia, Maxim Oreshkin, told reporters that the establishment of the GAZ plant in Hajigabul, like other joint projects of Azerbaijan and Russia, benefits both countries.
The minister noted that the plant will provide about 1,000 people with jobs. At the same time, given the fact that a part of the components will be produced in the Russian Federation, this will provide additional growth for the Russian economy.
Oreshkin stressed that this is one of the many joint projects implemented by the two countries: "Cooperation is very active. There are practical results. We hope that the equipment that will be produced here will improve the quality of life of people throughout the country."
The groundbreaking ceremony of assembly plant for GAZ cars was held in Azerbaijan's Hajigabul industrial area on Feb. 9.
The volume of investments in the enterprise will be 14 million manats. At the initial stage, 100 people will be employed at the plant.
The enterprise will assemble GAZel NEXT and GAZel BUSINESS light commercial vehicles, as well as GAZon NEXT medium trucks.
AzEurocar, a AzerMash subsidiary, will deal with the distribution and maintenance of GAZ vehicles in Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
By Elnur Baghishov Trend:
In 2018, Iran moved ahead of Turkey in exports to Iraq, Hamid Hosseini, the secretary-general of the Iran-Iraq Joint Chamber of Commerce, told the Fars News Agency, Trend reports.
Iranian exports to Iraq in 2018 amounted to $8.75 billion.
Hosseini added that Iranian exports to Iraq failed to reach a satisfactory level during the 10th month of the Iranian calendar (started 21 March 2018).
"There were two reasons for this. The first one was the holidays during the month of January, and the second was the return of foreign currency acquired through exports," he said, adding that the exports declined by $510 million in the 10th month.
"However, during some months of the current year (started March 21, 2018), Iran's exports to Iraq had also reached $900 million," he said.
Hosseini said that Iran has exported about $750 million worth of goods to Iraq on average per month, and remarked that Turkish exports stood at $8.3 billion in 2017 and $7.35 billion in 2018.
Tehran,Iran, 9 Feb.
Trend:
Iran's Custom Administration is to lift the ban on 1,300 items that the country used to import through its land borders, Trend reports via ILNA.
The government of Iran has approved the new list of imported goods that are allowed to enter the country, partially due to the situation with population living near the borders.
The ban on 1,300 imports goods was first implemented in 2016. Iran was forced to apply strict rules on imports and exports, due to economic pressures of the US sanctions and to prevent smuggling.
Director General of Ilam Customs Administration Ruhollah Gholami has recently announced that smuggling of goods via the Ilam customs border in the current Iranian year (started on March 21,2018) has increased by 1,100 percent, compared to last year (March 21, 2017).
"During past ten months of the current year, there were 46 smuggling cases, with estimated worth of the smuggled items being some $117 million. The items were considered as exporting goods," he said.
He said the items included steel products, rare medicine, metabolic milk, paper, jewelry, various spare parts and saffron.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
By Jeyhun Alakbarov -Trend:
The groundbreaking ceremony of assembly plant for GAZ cars was held in Azerbaijan's Hajigabul industrial area, Trend reports.
The event was attended by Minister of Economy of Azerbaijan Shahin Mustafayev, Minister of Economic Development of Russia Maxim Oreshkin, who is on a visit to Azerbaijan, Chairman of the Board of AzerMash Emin Akhundov.
The ministers and guests got acquainted with the car models that will be manufactured at the plant and the conditions created for entrepreneurs in the Hajigabul industrial quarter.
The volume of investments in the enterprise will be 14 million manats. At the initial stage, 100 people will be employed at the plant.
The enterprise will assemble GAZel NEXT and GAZel BUSINESS light commercial vehicles, as well as GAZon NEXT medium trucks.
As reported earlier, it is planned to organize the production of various types of special equipment on the basis of the basic models of GAZ cars in the future, including vehicles for municipal services, ambulances and school minibuses. The company will manufacture up to 1,000 commercial vehicles annually.
A memorandum on the creation of an assembly production of GAZ vehicles in Azerbaijan was signed by Russias Gorky Automobile Plant and Azermash in April 2018 in Baku.
According to the agreement, GAZ will organize the delivery of vehicle sets for assembly production, training and certification of AzerMash specialists, as well as provide the necessary documentation and licensing.
It is also planned as part of the agreement to conduct joint work on the use of a number of Azerbaijani-made components in local assembly machines. AzEurocar, a AzerMash subsidiary, will deal with the distribution and maintenance of GAZ vehicles in Azerbaijan.
(1 USD = 1.7 AZN on Feb. 9)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
Trend:
A meeting of the Russian and Azerbaijani delegations took place on Friday, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijan's Ministry of Economy.
The Azerbaijani delegation was represented by senior officials of the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, the State Road Agency of Azerbaijan, the State Customs Committee, the State Border Service and the executive authorities of Khachmaz and Gusar districts, along with the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu.
The Russian side was represented by a delegation including representatives of related structures, headed by the Minister of Economic Development of Russia Maxim Oreshkin, Russian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mikhail Bocharnikov, and Head of the Republic of Dagestan of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vasilyev.
The Azerbaijani Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev noted that the presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia attach great importance to the development of relations between the two countries, and the mutual meetings of the heads of state, official delegations and businessmen are perfect examples thereof.
Mustafayev noted that Russia is the main trading partner of Azerbaijan and ranks first in the import of non-oil products of Azerbaijan. He said the trade between the two countries grew by 20 percent during the last year alone.
The minister spoke about the projects being implemented between Azerbaijan and Russia in transport and transit, and stressed that the construction of a road bridge over the Samur River is of great importance in the development of trade and economic ties, in the development of the North-South International Transport Corridor.
Maxim Oreshkin noted that cooperation between the two countries, based on the political will of the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan, keeps developing. The minister noted the importance of the automobile bridge across the Samur River in terms of an even greater expansion of developing trade relations between the two countries and added that this would contribute to the development of the North-South International Transport Corridor.
The expansion of trade and economic relations between Azerbaijan and Russia, cooperation in transport and transit, and the development of the North-South International Transport Corridor were topics of discussion during the meeting.
The Azerbaijani and Russian delegations examined the Yarag-Kazmalyar and Samur checkpoints at the Azerbaijan-Russia state border and got acquainted with the construction of the road over the Samur River.
In accordance with the agreement signed between the governments of Azerbaijan and Russia, the construction of an automobile bridge over the Samur River at the Azerbaijan-Russia state border is ongoing. The bridge is scheduled to be commissioned in 2019.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
By Rashid Shirinov Trend:
The Hungarian government has allocated about 450 million euros for the development of business projects in Kazakhstan and Hungary, Trend reports via Kazakh media.
"These funds are intended for Hungarian businessmen in Kazakhstan and for Kazakh businessmen in Hungary. This is a huge amount that should be used to bring our businesses closer and create interesting joint projects," Kazakh Ambassador to Hungary Nurbakh Rustemov said.
It should be noted that the Hungarian oil and gas company MOL invested more than $200 million in the mining sector of Kazakhstan. The company has been present in the Kazakh market for more than 10 years.
The main interest of MOL is the Fedorovsky block, which has promising reserves and potential for further exploration. The company is preparing for further exploratory drilling in the block.
Another important area of cooperation between the two countries is agriculture. Established In 2015, the Kazakh-Hungarian Investment Fund with the authorized capital of $40 million, continues to work successfully.
In 2018, the Fund financed two projects: a greenhouse complex in the Aktobe region with a design capacity of 1,500 tons of vegetables per year, and the creation of new apple orchards on an area of 300 hectares.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @ShirinovRashid
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
By Huseyn Veliyev Trend:
A groundbreaking ceremony will be held for the assembly of GAZ vehicles in Azerbaijans Hajigabul Industrial Park on Saturday, Trend reports.
The enterprise will assemble GAZel NEXT and GAZel BUSINESS light commercial vehicles, as well as GAZon NEXT medium trucks.
As reported earlier, it is planned to organize the production of various types of special equipment on the basis of the basic models of GAZ cars in the future, including vehicles for municipal services, ambulances and school minibuses. The company will manufacture up to 1,000 commercial vehicles annually.
The estimated volume of investments in the company will make up 14 million manats.
A memorandum on the creation of an assembly production of GAZ vehicles in Azerbaijan was signed by Russias Gorky Automobile Plant and Azermash in April 2018 in Baku.
According to the agreement, GAZ will organize the delivery of vehicle sets for assembly production, training and certification of AzerMash specialists, as well as provide the necessary documentation and licensing.
It is also planned as part of the agreement to conduct joint work on the use of a number of Azerbaijani-made components in local assembly machines. AzEurocar, a AzerMash subsidiary, will deal with the distribution and maintenance of GAZ vehicles in Azerbaijan.
($1=1.7 AZN on February 9)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
By Sara Israfilbayova - Trend:
State Agency on Management of Agricultural Projects and Credits under the Ministry of Agriculture of Azerbaijan plans to implement a joint project with the EU to issue subsidies, head of the agency Mirza Aliyev told Trend.
He noted that this project is planned to be launched from April 15.
Aliyev said that there are a lot of plans and projects, noting such as the project to increase agriculture employment (AMAL), a joint project with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in organizing information and consulting services and others.
He further noted that this year the agency will issue loans worth 10 million manats.
Aliyev said that the same amount of funds was allocated last year. He added that the active portfolio of the agency is 95 million manats.
At the same time, he expressed hope that about 50-60 million manats will be allocated additionally for the purchase of agricultural machinery and equipment.
(1.7 manats = 1 USD on Feb. 9)
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Follow the author on Twitter: @IsrafilbekovaS
Baku, Azerbaijan, February 9
Trend:
Uzbek Ministry of Finance held a meeting with representatives of the Asian Development Bank, headed by Werner Liepach, Director General for Central and West Asia, Trend reports via Uzbek media.
The meeting was devoted to further strengthening technical cooperation in such areas as public-private partnership (PPP), energy, transport, agriculture and improving the public procurement system. Deputy Prime Minister Uzbek Minister of Finance Jamshid Kuchkarov and senior officials discussed the priorities and partnership strategy for 2019-2023.
Liepach noted the importance of developing PPPs and welcomed the introduction of additional measures that would be useful to support investment projects, as well as the development of the newly created PPP Development Agency under the Ministry of Finance.
Recently, the ADB has increased its loan funds allocated to Uzbekistan, providing new loan commitments to the business plan of operations in the country (BIP) for 2018-2020. BIP fully supports the national development strategy of the country and reflects the updated development priorities of Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan is the country with the largest loan from ADB in the region in 2018 with a project portfolio of $2.9 billion.
Liepach also expressed interest in improving irrigation water supply. In his turn, Uzbek Ministry of Finance, noted the importance of introducing drip irrigation for the development of this sphere.
During the negotiations, it was noted that in the near future, the bank will provide international experts for provision of advisory support to the Ministry in the development of PPP and public procurement systems.
In conclusion, the parties also discussed other promising projects and how ADB technical assistance can be used to support reforms in the country.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
Trend:
An official meeting under the leadership of Azerbaijani Minister of Defense Colonel General Zakir Hasanov was held at the Central Command Post on Feb. 9, Trend reports referring to the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan.
The meeting held with the participation of the deputies of the defense minister, commanders of the branches of troops, chiefs of the main departments, departments and services of the ministry, as well as commanders of the Army Corps also involved the commanders of formations and other responsible officers via video conference.
Hasanov shared his visions of a more effective and high-quality organization of combat training classes in the branches of troops, Army Corps, formations and military units in accordance with the relevant directives and instructions, studying guidance documents, as well as other activities aimed at improving professionalism in the new training period.
The minister of defense demanded to focus on the tasks assigned to the Azerbaijani Army by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Ilham Aliyev, with regards to army building, including his recommendations and demands in connection with the liberation of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.
Colonel-General Zakir Hasanov, noting that the work carried out under the instructions of Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces regarding raising the level of combat readiness of military personnel and improving the social conditions of the servicemen of the Azerbaijan Army, in particular in military units stationed in the frontline zone, gave relevant instructions to the responsible officials regarding the implementation of these works in accordance with modern requirements.
Hasanov assigned tasks to better organize combat training, raise the level of military professionalism, continue reforms, strengthen ideological work and moral and psychological support, as well as solve other official issues.
At the end of the meeting, the minister of defense ordered and demanded that commanders and chiefs of all levels must be ready for giving an adequate response to any provocation of the enemy and strongly suppress enemys provocative activities.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend:
The President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan affirmed the protocol between the Turkish and Azerbaijani governments on the exchange of military personnel, Trend reports.
The document is aimed at developing the military and educational activities and cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries.
The protocol determines the personnel of the Turkish and Azerbaijani armed forces, which are to be involved in joint activities of the parties, and the military units, organizations and institutions in which they will take place.
The other goal of the protocol is to establish the basis for the exchange of personnel between the Turkish General Staff and the Ministry of Defense and the State Border Service of Azerbaijan, as well as to determine the positions, powers and responsibilities during the exchange period.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
Trend:
Another group of new army recruits took the oath of allegiance to the motherland in the N military unit of the State Security Service of Azerbaijan, Trend reports referring to the State Security Service.
Chairman of the State Security Service, National Hero of Azerbaijan, Colonel-General Madat Guliyev and the participants of the event first honored the National Leader Heydar Aliyevs memory and laid a wreath at the monument to the great leader.
Afterwards, the combat flag was brought to the square. The unforgettable memory of the heroic sons of Azerbaijan, who gave their lives for the independence and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, was honored with a minute of silence. The young soldiers then solemnly took the oath.
Colonel-General Madat Guliyev congratulated the personnel of the military unit and their parents on the occasion of the oath on behalf of the Supreme Commander, wished success to the officers and soldiers in their honorable and responsible service.
Then the servicemen and the new recruits marched past the tribune, accompanied by the military march. Photos were taken in front of the monument to the national leader.
Later, the Chairman of the State Security Service, Colonel-General Madat Guliyev met with the parents of the soldiers, once again congratulated them on this significant day.
The parents expressed gratitude to the country's leadership for the conditions created for military service.
Colonel-General Madat Guliyev familiarized himself with the work on the exemplary and effective organization of the service in the military unit, including mastering the results of modern achievements in the military-technical and combat fields, further increasing the knowledge and skills of the soldiers, the physical training of the soldiers, and giving appropriate recommendations and orders.
The measures taken under the leadership of the Supreme Commander Ilham Aliyev constantly strengthen the defenses of the country and the military-technical potential of the Armed Forces.
It is no coincidence that the Azerbaijani army is among the 50 most powerful armies in the world today, thanks to a deliberate policy pursued at the state level in the field of army building.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9
Trend:
Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have 20 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said Feb. 9, Trend reports.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
A year after the mysterious death of a prominent Iranian-Canadian environmentalist at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, his wife is still barred from leaving the country to join her family in Vancouver.
The 64-year old Iranian-Canadian sociology professor, Kavous Seyyed-Emami, died in prison on February 8, 2018, two weeks after his arrest.
Authorities claimed he committed suicide, but many in Iran, including his relatives, and human rights defenders abroad challenged that claim. No independent investigation was allowed.
Meanwhile, several other environmentalists were also detained during the early months of 2018 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) most-feared Intelligence Agency.
Eight environmentalists are still at Evin, at least four of them charged with espionage against Iran, which is punishable by death. After a year in temporary detention, the first session of their court hearing was held on January 30 behind closed doors.
Niloufar Bayani, Taher Ghadirian, Houman Jokar, Sepideh Kashani, Amirhossein Khaleghi, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh, Sam Rajabi, and Iranian-American Morad Tahbaz, members of local environmental group the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation appeared in court for the opening of the trial on accusations of spying.
Branch 15 of Tehrans Revolutionary Court, which is overseeing the trial, did not allow the defendants lawyers to review the indictment prior to the session.
Notorious hard-line Judge Abdolghassem Salavati of Branch 15 also restricted the defendants choices for lawyers to a list approved by the head of the judiciary. During the trial, one of the detainees interrupted the session, claiming they had been tortured and coerced into making a false confession, a source confirmed to Human Rights Watch.
While the judiciary and IRGC insist that the legal case against the detainees is related to security and intelligence affairs, President Hassan Rouhani's deputy and the head of the Department of Environment (DoE), Isa Kalantari, as well as the Intelligence Ministry have repeatedly said there is no evidence pointing to the involvement of the detainees to espionage.
In response, Tehran Prosecutor-General Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi explicitly cautioned them to stay away from judicial affairs and stop commenting on "non-executive" matters.
Seyyed-Emami's son, Ramin, has reiterated that whoever detained his father was responsible for his death and should be held accountable.
Ramin Seyyed-Emami also called on the judiciary to release his mother, who remains barred from leaving Iran despite the expiration of the travel ban that was imposed on her in December 2018.
We only want to exercise our constitutional right to defend ourselves against the accusations made regarding our father, Ramin said in a phone interview with the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) on February 7.
Seyyed-Emami's wife, Maryam Mombeini, has been barred from leaving the country despite the "undisputed fact" that she had never been involved in her late husband's professional activities.
A few weeks after Seyyed-Emamis death, Ramin Seyyed-Emami disclosed that his mother had been detained and interrogated for three hours before being released.
"My mother was threatened and warned against speaking to the media about her husband's death," Ramin Seyyed-Emami said. "They told her, Talk to the media, and we will arrest you, as well."
Furthermore, Mombeinis legal counsel, Abouzar Nasrollahi, asserts that depriving her client of leaving Iran is blatantly against Iranian laws and regulations.
The authorities have said that the [travel] ban on Ms. Mombeini expired on December 22, 2018, but she is still not allowed to leave the country until the ban is rescinded by the judiciarys security office because they are the ones who issued it, Nasrollahi told the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency on February 6.
In the meantime, Iranian judicial officials have not publicly explained why they barred Seyed-Emamis widow from leaving the country or why the ban remains in place despite having officially expired. Family members of detainees held under politically motivated charges in Iran are routinely threatened and pressured by state agencies not to speak publicly about the cases.
According to the New York-based CHRI, one of the Tehran-based lawyers representing the family has revealed that no final autopsy has been made public but a preliminary state medical examiners report "showed evidence of an injection on his skin" as well as bruises on different parts of the body.
Irans State Prisons Organization and the judiciary, as well as prison officials, are responsible for the health and wellbeing of detainees, CHRI reiterates, adding that one year after Seyed-Emamis death, no one has been charged, prosecuted, or held accountable for it.
Iran has also ignored international calls for an independent and impartial investigation into Seyyed-Emamis death, for his wife to be allowed to leave Iran, and for his colleagues to be given a fair trial.
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has warned companies not to use the trade mechanism Europe has set up to facilitate limited trade with Iran, according to Bloomberg.
Anyone actually using it to trade on anything other than humanitarian activity is going to be sanctioned by the United States, Sondland said in a Feb. 7 interview. Well find them and sanction them and they wont be doing any business with the United States.
When the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal last May, Europe disagreed with the decision and pledged to do its best to entice Iran economically to stay in the agreement. After months of delays finally France, Germany and United Kingdom announced the trade mechanism called INSTEX - Instrument In Support Of Trade Exchanges on January 31.
Iran has cautiously welcomed the move but has reminded Europe that this is good only as a first step, as trade will be limited. However, it is mainly up to companies to decide if they want to do business with Iran and larger corporation will be reluctant if they have business interests in the U.S.
U.S. sanctions only allow humanitarian trade with Iran, such as selling the country food and medicines.
Sondland dismissed INSTEX saying, it will sit there and will be little used, adding that its a fig leaf the European Union offered to the Islamic Republic.
The United States says it is in "full compliance" with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the landmark Cold War-era nuclear accord.
The statement from the U.S. mission to NATO on February 8 came a day after Russia demanded the United States destroy a missile-defense launch system deployed in NATO member Romania in order to return to compliance with the INF.
The United States announced on February 2 that it would withdraw in six months from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty unless Moscow ended what it says were violations of the pact. Moscow, which denies violating the treaty, followed suit a day later.
"The United States has repeatedly engaged Russian officials in multiple venues including the Treatys Special Verification Commission, or SVC, to explain why U.S. actions in these areas are in compliance," said the statement from the U.S. mission to NATO.
The Mark 41 Vertical Launching System (Mk 41 VLS) is part of the missile-defense system located in Deveselu, in southern Romania, known as Aegis Ashore.
Aegis Ashore was inaugurated in May 2016 and is tasked with shooting down rockets as part of a larger defense shield against potential threats from rogue states such as Iran.
Russians have long claimed that the Mk 41 VLS system allows Aegis Ashore to also launch ground-based cruise missiles.
The accusation has been categorically rejected by Washington and NATO, which say the system does not have the software or the hardware needed for that, and its role is only to intercept missiles.
Russia's demand about the Mk41 appears to come as a countermeasure to Washington's accusation, first leveled in 2014, that Moscow is in violation of the INF because of its developing of a cruise missile known as 9M729, or SSC-8.
Romanian Defense Minister Teodor Melescanu on February 7 also reiterated that Aegis Ashore was a strictly defensive system.
Russia's demand "is purely an excuse for its own military programs that directly violate the INF Treaty," Melescanu said, adding that Romania will hold consultations with its allies and will come up with a common position on the issue.
Valery Kuzmin, Russia's envoy to Romania, told a news conference in Bucharest on February 7 that Moscow was not planning any "hostile or unfriendly actions" toward Romania.
However, since Romania hosts the U.S. missile-defense system on its territory, "it cannot be overlooked by the Russian defense planning," Kuzmin said in response to an RFE/RL reporter's question.
With reporting by RFE/RL's Romanian Service, G4media.ro, and Reuters
Security forces have reportedly attacked prisoners at the Qarchak (Gharchak) detention center in southern Tehran to stop female inmates protesting conditions at the prison.
Tear gas canisters were fired into the closed space of the prison on February 7. The attack was resumed on February 8, during which prisoners were beaten by guards, a website and Telegram channel run by Sufi dervishes of the Gonabadi denomination, reported, adding that several severely injured inmates were taken to hospitals.
There are many women from the Dervish community detained at the prison for participating in protests last year, but it is not clear what percentage of the prison population they constitute.
Tehran's outspoken representative to the Iranian Parliament, Mahmoud Sadeqi (Sadeghi), tweeted on February 8, "I contacted a well-informed person and I was told that female inmates incarcerated for narcotics-related charges in Qarchak, who thought that their names were not on the list of prisoners to be pardoned, held a protest rally but later calmed down after being promised that their names were also on the list."
This tweet shows a view of the prison on February 8, with smoke still rising from the complex.
According to the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC), prison officials had recently promised the 1,000 female inmates at Qarchak that Iran's supreme leader would pardon most of them, except those convicted of murder, as part of an amnesty plan. But ABC maintained that prison officials released a shorter list of women to be pardoned on February 7, prompting angered inmates to pound on their doors and walls.
Iran pardons thousands of non-political prisoners each year to celebrate the victory anniversary of the Irans 1979 revolution, on February 11, 1979.
Fifty thousand prisoners are scheduled to be pardoned by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's chief-justice Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani recently declared.
Nevertheless, sources close to the female dervishes behind bars at Qarchak report that the real reason behind the protest was the unbearable conditions at the prison, where thousands of women incarcerated for various crimes are held together.
The relatives of numerous prisoners have expressed concern over the fate of their imprisoned loved ones and the "extraordinary situation" of Qarchak Prison after the clashes.
The Dervishes also reported, "To neutralize the harmful effects of the pepper spray and gas canisters fired into the prison, the inmates were forced to burn their beds and blankets. Prison guards rushed in and put out the fire, using fire engines."
Furthermore, according to the same report, "The prison authorities cut off water and electricity of the blocks to prevent the spread of the blaze, but ignored the prisoners who were stranded in the cold weather after breathing pepper and tear gases."
A relative of the prisoners told the dervishes' site that some of the prisoners were severely beaten by guards and they were transferred to the medical ward.
Responding to reports that Iranian prison guards in riot gear beat prisoners and used tear gas, firearms and pepper spray during raids inside the women-only Qarchak Prison in Varamin outside Tehran, Amnesty International (AI) Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Philip Luther said, The reports of the Iranian prison guards reckless and heavy-handed response to protests at Shahr-e-Rey [eds: official name of Qarchak] prison are deeply alarming. Many prisoners were reported to have received hospital treatment for the effects of tear gas.
"Prison authorities must refrain from using unnecessary and excessive force against prisoners. Instead of carrying out violent raids against prisoners, they should be working to address the inhumane and squalid conditions at Shahr-e Rey prison.
AI also said it has previously documented cases of "appalling ill treatment" of prisoners at Qarchak. "Inmates at the site, which used to be a chicken farm, are held in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, without access to safe drinkable water, decent food, medicine, and fresh air," AI noted.
Parubiy signs law banning Russians from being elections observers in Ukraine, sends it to president for signing
A law banning Russian nationals and persons suggested by the Russian side to serve as official observers at the presidential, parliamentary and local elections in Ukraine has been signed by Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy and then sent for signature to the President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine.
As earlier reported, on February 4, bill No. 9524 "On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine Concerning the Observation of the Electoral Process in Ukraine" was registered in the Ukrainian parliament. According to the text of the bill, a citizen (subject) of a state that is recognized by the Verkhovna Rada an aggressor state or an occupier state cannot serve as an official observer from foreign states, international organizations during the presidential elections, parliamentary or local elections in Ukraine.
The explanatory note says that the bill was developed "in order to minimize the risks and threats of interference of the Russian Federation in the conduct of elections in Ukraine."
Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Andriy Parubiy, First Deputy Speaker of the Parliament Iryna Gerashchenko, the president's representative in the Parliament Iryna Lutsenko, leader of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction Artur Herasymov, and First Deputy Chairman of the People's Front faction Andriy Teteruk are among those who authored the document.
Earlier, the OSCE/ODIHR sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine an electronic list of long-term observers for the March 31 presidential elections, which included two candidates from Russiawomen born in 1990 and 1985.
On February 7, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker said he is not against Russian observers being allowed to monitor Ukrainian elections.
"Ukraine needs ODIHR monitors to prove it adheres to democratic standards. Otherwise allows people to question election," Volker said in a tweet on Twitter on Thursday.
"OK if Russian monitors are part, but under ODIHR authority. No games," he said.
The U.S. special representative for Ukraine said Ukraine "needs to have confidence in its own democratic institutions."
In the past day, the Russian-led militants mounted nine attacks on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, killing one serviceman and wounding two others, the press service of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) headquarters has said.
"On February 8, the Russian occupation forces violated the ceasefire nine times, including two attacks that involved the use of weapons forbidden by the Minsk agreements. As a result of the insidious attacks of the Russian occupation troops, one serviceman of the United Forces Operation was killed and two more were wounded," the JFO HQ said in an update published on its Facebook page on Saturday morning.
The report said in the action area of the operational-tactical group Skhid (East), the militants mounted two attacks using automatic grenade launchers and small arms at positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Avdiyivka. In the same area, the work of an enemy sniper was recorded. In addition, the militants mounted attacks at the Ukrainian positions near the village of Vodiane, using automatic grenade launchers, large-caliber machine guns, and small arms and there was another attack, which involved the use of grenade launchers and large-caliber machine guns near the populated locality of Pavlopil.
In the action lane of the operational-tactical grouping Pivnich (North), the militants mounted two attacks at the positions of the Ukrainian military using heavy machine-guns and small arms near the populated locality of Krymske and an attack, which involved the use of grenade launchers near the village of Zaytseve.
"The units of our defenders suppressed the enemy fire by using their organic weapons," the headquarters said.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, on February 8, six militants were killed and seven more were injured.
"Since the start of the day the enemy has not opened fire," the JFO HQ said.
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OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of Slovakia Miroslav Lajcak has suggested that the Ukrainian party reconsider its decision that the presidential elections in Ukraine will be closed for Russian observers.
Speaking on the phone to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, he "expressed regret" that the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada on February 7 passed a law that bans accreditation of Russian nationals as observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
Lajcak called on the leaders of Ukraine "to seek all possible ways" to ensure accreditation of all the observers coming from the ODIHR.
A statement on the conversation between Lajcak and Klimkin was published by the press service of the Slovak Foreign Ministry.
The Ukrainian delegation to PACE met with Belgian Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders to discuss the ongoing aggressive policy of the Russian Federation toward Ukraine and in the world, Verkhovna Rada First Deputy Chairperson Iryna Gerashchenko has said.
"The inadequacy of the Russian Federation is also destroying the CoE institute. [The parties] exchanged views on the security and humanitarian situation in Donbas and Crimea and issues involving release of hostages. Special attention was paid to the open aggression of the Russian Federation in the Kerch Strait area. We expect our partners to introduce the Azov package of sanctions against the Russian Federation. Political risks of Nord Stream II were discussed, too," Gerashchenko wrote on her Facebook page in the early hours of Saturday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said Ukraine is ready to receive any number of international observers from any country but Russia and suggested that "the lid be put on the matter in all the discussions."
"I herewith suggest that everyone finally calms down when it comes to official Russian observers for the presidential elections in Ukraine. In early January, I, as it should be, sent a letter to OSCE/ODIHR Director Ms. [Ingibjorg Solrun] Gisladottir with an invitation to deploy an [election] observation mission. Inviting observers [to monitor] the presidential elections in Ukraine, I mentioned that the Foreign Ministry would not accept applications from official Russian observers. It would not just be politically wrong but it would contradict ethical principles and the law," Klimkin wrote on his Facebook page on Friday night.
He recalled that one day before, on Thursday, February 7, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed a bill that introduces a ban on the involvement of Russian observers to monitor elections in Ukraine. And prior to that, there were already norms enacted in Ukraine that defined Russia as an aggressor country.
"Therefore, I suggest we stop taking into account what they are talking about this in Moscow. After all, this will have no effect, except for air shaking," the minister said.
Klimkin said Ukraine is ready to accept any number of international observers, from any country but Russia because it has been carrying out military aggression against Ukraine.
"We are ready to provide international observers with all the necessities... In the Ukrainian elections there will be a maximum number of international observers, and there will not be a single observer from the aggressor and occupier country," the Ukrainian foreign minister said.
He said a situation in which the aggressor state requires others to comply with the principles of the OSCE is absurd.
"I'd like to tell everyone that this is absurd when the aggressor country that has violated all the possible international norms and principles, tell us how and who shall comply with the principles of the OSCE, the organization that it has purposefully been destroying," Klimkin said.
"So, I suggest we put an end to all the discussions about a sovereign decision of a sovereign state and move on," he said.
An updated agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of Georgia on the mutual abolition of visa requirements will enter into force on March 1, the press service of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said.
"On March 1, 2019, an updated agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of Georgia on the mutual abolition of visa requirements comes into effectin addition to the existing visa-free mutual travel by citizens of Ukraine and Georgia on the basis of domestic passports, Ukrainian nationals will be allowed to travel to Georgia using ID cards with an electronic chip," the ministry said in a statement.
UAH 1,500 in government payoffs on average to be paid to households as part of monetization of subsidies Poroshenko
UAH 1,500 in government payoffs on average to be paid to households as part of monetization of subsidies Poroshenko
KYIV. Feb 9 (Interfax-Ukraine) Incumbent President and presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko has said that as part of the monetization of subsidies for utilities, every household in need in Ukraine will be paid UAH 1,500 in cash on average.
"About 4 million households will finally be able to receive cash in March for the month of February. These payments will amount to an average of UAH 1,500 per household," Poroshenko said at the Open Dialogue public forum in Kyiv on Saturday.
The president said the monetization of subsidies will be implemented in March.
He also said that Ukraine should discontinue purchasing natural gas from abroad and should increase its own production instead.
"We should not buy gas from Russia. We should not buy imported gas at allthere should be enough Ukrainian gas. I am proud that during my presidency in the last five years Ukraine finally jumped off the Kremlin's gas needle," Poroshenko said.
He also called on those in attendance not to trust some presidential candidates who promise to make gas "twice cheaper, four times cheaper, six times cheaper, or even free" because it is all "just fables."
Trump says his meeting with North Korea's Kim will be held in Hanoi
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un react at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore June 12, 2018. Photo by Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump said on Twitter.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said.
Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said late last month that Vietnam was confident of its readiness to host the second Kim-Trump meeting.
"We believe in our ability to organize such kinds of events after our success in hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 2017."
The nation was willing to actively contribute to building peace and stability in the Korean peninsula, she added.
Trump has sought to convince Kim that giving up his nuclear weapons would enable him to transform his impoverished land into a thriving country, according to The New York Times.
"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," Trump tweeted on Friday. "He may surprise some but he wont surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!"
Kim Jong-un and Trump first met last June in Singapore, where they signed a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work toward the "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."
Reuters
A Vietnamese student is set to go on trial in Germany on February 26 for murdering his Chinese classmate with hammer in August last year. Photo by Shutterstocks/khoaminh
A Vietnamese student who murdered and dismembered his Chinese classmate will be tried in Germany starting February 26.
The 23-year-old Vietnamese man, whose name has not been revealed, was charged with murder after he admitted to investigators that he had killed 26-year-old Liu Mou, a Chinese student, with a hammer.
The Daily Mail reported Tuesday that the Vietnamese suspect had surrendered at a local police station in August last year. Based on his testimony, police forces conducted a two-hour search for the body of the victim.
The body parts of Liu, an exchange student at the University of Friedrich Schiller in Jena City, eastern Germany, had been found chopped into pieces, placed in bags and discarded in the Saale River on August 28.
His head was found under a bridge and his liver was missing from his body, and an autopsy showed signs of the organ being removed by a sharp instrument like a knife.
During the investigation, police found that the Vietnamese suspect was a huge fan of cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, the main character in the horror detective series written by Thomas Harris, adapted in the 1991 movie, "The Silence of the Lambs," and its 2001 sequel "Hannibal".
Investigators also confirmed the suspect had several times watched the movies prior to the murder and mentioned the likelihood of his having eaten the victim`s liver as happens in the movie. However, whether or not the suspect has confessed to doing it is unknown.
Investigators have said that the accused had a quarrel with the Chinese student, who lived in a neighboring apartment, shortly before the murder took place. It has been said that the suspect stole the victims computer and mobile phone, and used Lius money to buy expensive goods on the internet.
The little-known pangolin is the world's most trafficked and poached mammal because of the demand for its meat and scales. Photos by AFP/Roslan Rahman
Uganda is looking for 18 Vietnamese men involved in smuggled ivory pieces and pangolin scales worth $8 million.
The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) Friday published photographs of the 18 suspects, saying that the wanted Vietnamese traffickers are on the run in connection with an ongoing case of ivory and pangolin scales smuggling worth up to $8 million, the Daily Mirror reported.
The smuggled goods were concealed in timber logs and could have originated from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo and passed through South Sudan before entering Uganda, the URA said.
Uganda police discovered the illegal cargo and seized them last week.
The incident comes just days after two Vietnamese men were arrested after URA officials seized the largest ever shipment of ivory and pangolin scales.
Global trade in elephant ivory, with rare exceptions, has been outlawed since 1989 after populations of the African pachyderms dropped from millions in the mid-20th century to around 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.
Vietnam also outlawed the ivory trade in 1992, but the country remains a top market for ivory products which are prized locally for decorative purposes and for traditional medicine, despite there being no proof of its medicinal qualities.
Of the 10 countries and territories with the largest number of pangolin trafficking incidents, seven were in Asia -- China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Laos, and Indonesia according to a 2017 study by wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic and Australias University of Adelaide.
Tet fights, firecracker and other accidents left dozens dead as thousands were rushed to hospitals during the holiday.
A Health Ministry report on casualties over five days of Vietnams Lunar New Year holiday, which began on February 2, said 11 people died in violent incidents and at least 3400 were rushed to emergency wards of hospitals across the nation.
The report also noted that the number of people hospitalised this year due to fights and traffic accidents did not increase over the same period last year, but that of firecracker injuries did.
The day with the highest number of casualties was Wednesday, the second day of Tet, when 734 individuals were admitted to emergency wards after brawls-related injuries. Of these, 435 people had to be admitted as inpatients for further treatment, down 21 percent over the same day last year.
On Friday afternoon, after nine ninth grade students in the central province of Quang Nam went swimming in a local beach, five drowned and one is still missing.
Casualties from work or other causes such as food and alcohol poisoning came up to 13,955, of which 16 people died.
The Vietnamese Lunar New Year holiday typically involves a lot of traveling, drinking and partying as the nation celebrates its most important and biggest holiday.
Police work with a man (C) whose restaurant in Nha Trang has been accused of overcharging customers. Photo by VnExpress/Xuan Ngoc
Some Malaysian customers were billed over VND9 million ($387.76) for a meal at a Nha Trang seafood restaurant.
A group of Malaysians visiting the famous beach town of Nha Trang in central coastal province of Khanh Hoa during Lunar New Year holiday decided to have a meal at seafood restaurant near the beach Thursday.
After finishing their meal of about 10 dishes, they were shocked with a bill of over VND9 million ($387.76). They were charged VND500,000 ($21.54) per plate for fried eggs with tomato, VND200,000 ($8.62) for a portion of white rice, and VND300,000 ($12.93) for a portion of boiled okra.
Usually, the three dishes in total would cost some VND100,000 ($4.31).
When the travel company responsible for the group of tourists failed to get a satisfactory explanation from the restaurant, they contacted local tourism authorities.
When contacted, Nguyen Van Phung, the restaurant owner said that he and some other investors had already transferred ownership to another through an intermediary on February 2. As a result, he was no longer aware of the restaurants activities.
Nguyen Thi Le Thanh, deputy director of Khanh Hoa Department of Tourism, said that she had received the information for this case and working to clarify the matter.
Such scams are not uncommon in Vietnam despite occasional crackdowns by local authorities.
Fining people who harass and cheat foreigners does not seem to be an effective deterrent, many people on social media have commented, blaming weak law enforcement for the continued fraud on visitors, tarnishing the countrys image and discouraging tourists from returning.
Vietnam welcomed an estimated 1.5 million international visitors in January 2019, a rise of 5 percent compared to the same period last year, according to the General Statistics Office.
The human resources demand for real estate and construction sector is expected to rise by 8 percent. Photo by VnExpress
Real estate, retail and information technology are among key sectors struggling to attract talent despite offering attractive salaries.
Construction and real estate
Recent statistics from global staffing giant ManpowerGroup show that the human resources demand for this sector is expected to rise by 8 percent over last year. Construction personnel will be required at all levels. In particular, companies are finding it difficult to attract senior personnel despite offering thousand-dollar salaries.
Lan, HR director of a real estate company in central Vietnam, said her company began recruiting business development managers early January 2019, but has not found anyone suitable despite offering a monthly salary of $2,000 as well as extensive benefits and commissions.
Real estate firms are also starved of department heads and deputy managers. Many businesses have reported looking in vain for months to fill these positions.
Retail
The retail sector, meanwhile, is having difficulty attracting personnel for both senior and entry positions. Salaries in this sector have increased significantly over the years.
For instance, the salaries for sales or purchase directors in Vietnam, where GDP per capita in 2017 is $2,343, range from VND50-100 million ($2,154-4,308).
According to ManpowerGroup, recruitment demand of the retail industry will increase by 10 percent in 2019. This is one of the industries with the highest growth rates, but also high rates of staff turnover due to job-related pressures.
Huong, HR director of a Thai retail group, said sales directors are always given high performance targets so there is much pressure. As a result, many candidates are forced to leave the positions after a trial period, unable to withstand the pressure of such.
Her company, for instance, hired two sales directors this year but was not able to retain either.
Information technology
Personnel demand for this sector is expected to rise by 14 percent over 2018, the biggest increase in the research group. Many businesses are finding it difficult to find people to direct their technology departments.
The HR director of a finance firm said that last year the company was looking for a Vietnamese chief technology officer (CTO) with a monthly salary of $10,000. However, it did not receive any applicants for three months, prompting it to try headhunting agencies.
"I hired a recruitment firm to find candidates, but they requested that the salary be raised to around $15,000-17,000. They finally found a foreign CTO for us."
According to Nguyen Thu Trang, ManpowerGroup Vietnam's director of recruitment and HR consulting services, it is very difficult to find candidates who can fill CTO positions. High-quality workers in this area are so scarce that many startups in areas like e-commerce do not have them.
Education
The average salary in this sector is not high, but currently an education project director can earn $1,000 a month. In particular, in schools with private investment capital, this position can pay up to over $2,000.
According to the HCM City Human Resources Forecast and Labour Market Information Centre, many high-salary positions are now unmanned in this sector because of stringent requirements.
With personnel demand for the sector set to rise by over 10 percent compared to 2018, the situation of senior positions remaining vacant for long periods is set to continue.
One company in Hanoi said it has not been able to hire a director of education despite offering salaries of up to $2,500 per month.
Manufacturing
Salaries for employees in this sector fluctuate between VND7-10 million ($301-430) per month. However a product development head is difficult to find, even with salaries in the $2,000-5,000 range.
Hoang, general director of a company in Ho Chi Minh City, said his company has been looking for a product manager for more than three months, offering a monthly salary of more than $2,000.
The position requires that the candidate has experience in strategic and business planning for new products, as well control of product management and product life cycle. They must also be able to evaluate and assess the position of products in relation to markets and customers, and compare and evaluate these with those that are offered by competitors.
Candidates must be able to coordinate with the central management to develop policies for the company's products and customers, and participate in product development, research and improvements.
"I interviewed hundreds of candidates for this position but have not found anybody suitable. If we hire a foreign director, it will be hard for the company to meet the salary she/he will demand."
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Hi, I am a retired newspaperman. I wrote 3 books on Trump and the media . I live in Poca, WV, with my wife of 43 years, Lou Ann. I grew up in Cleveland. Three kids. Grandfather.
At the coroners office in Dayton, Ohio, Dr. Mark Edgar stood over the body of Robert Van Hook. The deceased 58-year-old weighed 228 pounds; he wore blue pants, a white shirt, and identification tags around his ankles. Edgar, a professor of pathology at Emory University School of Medicine, had done countless autopsies over the years. But this would be the 1st time he examined the body of someone executed by the state.
Van Hook had died one day earlier, on July 18, 2018, inside the death chamber at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. After a tearful apology to his victims family, he was injected with 500 milligrams of midazolam the first of a three-drug formula adopted in 2017. Media witnesses described labored breathing from Van Hook shortly afterward, including gasping and wheezing loud enough to be heard from the witness room. Nevertheless, compared to recent executions in Ohio, things seemed to go smoothly.
Still, Edgar had cause for concern. For the past few years he had been examining the autopsy reports of men executed using midazolam across the country. He found a disturbing pattern. A majority showed signs of pulmonary edema, an accumulation of fluid in the lungs. Several showed bloody froth that oozed from the lungs during the autopsy evidence that the buildup had been sudden, severe, and harrowing. In a medical context, where a life is to be saved, pulmonary edema is considered an emergency it feels like drowning. Even if someone is to be deliberately killed by the state, the Constitution is supposed to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment. To Edgar, the autopsies showed the executed men felt the panic and terror of asphyxiation before they died.
Edgars findings compounded a more familiar problem with midazolam. Unlike the drugs used to provide anesthesia in previous execution protocols, it was a sedative, not a barbiturate. Anesthesiologists had warned for years that even at extremely high doses, midazolam did not have the properties to render a person insensate immune to pain for the purpose of lethal injection. The second and third drugs in Ohios protocol a paralytic that stops respiration and potassium chloride to stop the heart were known be excruciating if injected without a proper anesthetic. Experts likened the effect to being buried alive while feeling fire in ones veins.
Glossip v. Gross, waving forth a slew of executions using midazolam. But Edgars findings were new. Days before arriving in Ohio to do the autopsy on Van Hook, he had presented them publicly for the first time at a trial in Nashville, Tennessee, where lawyers were challenging plans to kill a man named Billy Ray Irick. Among the witnesses who corroborated Edgars conclusions was a leading pharmacologist, Dr. David Greenblatt, who did some of the earliest clinical trials of midazolam. He explained how a massive dose of the acidic drug would almost immediately begin to destroy pulmonary capillaries and lung tissues upon injection, leading to pulmonary edema. Other witnesses gave firsthand accounts of executions in which the condemned had struggled to breathe. This was compelling if not quite exhaustive evidence. The ideal situation would be for me to do these autopsies myself and see exactly what I was interested in, Edgar said on the stand in Nashville. The next day, Ohio executed Van Hook. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed this evidence in the 2015 ruling, waving forth a slew of executions using midazolam. But Edgars findings were new. Days before arriving in Ohio to do the autopsy on Van Hook, he had presented them publicly for the first time at a trial in Nashville, Tennessee, where lawyers were challenging plans to kill a man named Billy Ray Irick. Among the witnesses who corroborated Edgars conclusions was a leading pharmacologist, Dr. David Greenblatt, who did some of the earliest clinical trials of midazolam. He explained how a massive dose of the acidic drug would almost immediately begin to destroy pulmonary capillaries and lung tissues upon injection, leading to pulmonary edema. Other witnesses gave firsthand accounts of executions in which the condemned had struggled to breathe. This was compelling if not quite exhaustive evidence. The ideal situation would be for me to do these autopsies myself and see exactly what I was interested in, Edgar said on the stand in Nashville. The next day, Ohio executed Van Hook.
Ohio does not conduct autopsies following executions. But Ohio Federal Public Defender Allen Bohnert secured permission on Edgars behalf. The autopsy was conducted in the usual manner, Edgar wrote in a subsequent report. He made a Y-shaped incision into the chest and abdomen. A technician removed and weighed Van Hooks organs and Edgar examined them, looking for anything unusual. When he got to the lungs, he found significant abnormalities. They were unusually heavy one telltale sign of congestion. When he cut into them, he found a mix of blood and frothy fluid.
Of the 27 previously available autopsy reports for people executed using midazolam, Edgar had found evidence of pulmonary edema in 23. Van Hook was the 24th. A few weeks later, Tennessee used midazolam to execute Irick, who moved and made choking sounds another grim sign. In a motion seeking a stay of execution and preliminary injunction for Warren Keith Henness, who was scheduled to die in Ohio in February 2019, Bohnert urged a federal magistrate judge to consider these recent developments. At some point the courts cannot explain away the ever-growing mountain of evidence against midazolam, he wrote.
Glossip, people challenging lethal injection protocols had to prove that there was an alternative method readily available for the state to use to kill them. Henness had not met this burden. Magistrate Judge Michael Merz granted an evidentiary hearing. After four days of testimony, he issued a damning 148-page order on January 14. The evidence surrounding midazolam had become far more persuasive since Merz last presided over such a proceeding. Not only was he now convinced that midazolam had no analgesic properties, but the drug was sure or very likely to cause pulmonary edema, which was akin to waterboarding. Yet Merz said he could not stop Hennesss execution. Under, people challenging lethal injection protocols had to prove that there was an alternative method readily available for the state to use to kill them. Henness had not met this burden.
This is not a result with which the court is comfortable, Merz wrote. If Ohio executes Warren Henness under its present protocol, it will almost certainly subject him to severe pain and needless suffering. Reading the plain language of the Eighth Amendment, that should be enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Ohio seemed poised to carry out Hennesss execution. But then, on January 22, the governors office issued an order of its own. Newly inaugurated Gov. Mike DeWine granted a warrant of reprieve, delaying Hennesss execution until September. In the meantime, he ordered a review of the states options and an examination of possible alternative drugs.
Agony and Horror
Among those who have fought the legal battles over lethal injection, the events in Ohio were a big deal. Courts across the country have repeatedly upheld the use of midazolam despite mounting evidence of its dangers. Just last week, a federal judge in Alabama denied a request by Domineque Ray to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia instead of the states midazolam-based protocol. (That execution, scheduled for tonight, is currently on hold for unrelated reasons.) Although Merzs order did not stop Hennesss execution, his findings were blunt and unequivocal in a way that other judges have not been which could influence future litigation.
The reprieve for Henness was also particularly notable coming from DeWine. As Ohios attorney general from 2011 through 2018, he spent much of the past decade fighting to push through executions, even as Ohio adopted new and untested protocols. Ever since U.S. executions first became derailed by a shortage of sodium thiopental the fast-acting barbiturate long used for lethal injection states across the country had been engaged in a macabre human experiment. Ohio was particularly eager to tinker with its formulas, adopting 1-drug, 2-drug, and 3-drug protocols over time. After the state 1st used midazolam in the notoriously ugly 2014 execution of Dennis McGuire, DeWine was instrumental to passing legislation to conceal the identity of pharmaceutical companies that sold the state drugs for executions. But the risk of another botched execution appears to be of more concern now that DeWine is governor. When Hennesss attorney sent him a reprieve request highlighting Merzs ruling, he acted within 24 hours.
Like other states that have used midazolam for executions, Ohio had been cautioned before killing McGuire one anesthesiologist warned that it could cause agony and horror. The execution was a ghastly ordeal. Witnesses said he grunted and fought for air, snorting, gurgling and arching his back, as described in a lawsuit brought by McGuires family. According to the suit, one prison official mouthed Im sorry to his relatives in the execution chamber.
For the next 3 1/2 years, Ohio did not carry out a single execution. But other states continued to use midazolam. Although protocols varied from state to state, each relied on quantities of the drug that were well above the average therapeutic dose. Witness accounts were consistent, often describing labored breathing from the condemned.
If the individual was in any way aware of what was happening to them it would be unbearable.
In 2017, Edgar reviewed the autopsy report of 39-year-old Ricky Gray, executed in Virginia that January. News reports had described unusual movements after the midazolam was administered. He looked around, moved his toes and legs, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported . He appeared to take a number of deep breaths and he appeared to make snoring or groaning sounds. Grays family requested his autopsy report, which was obtained by The Guardian. It notes that blood-tinged fluid is present from the mouth and that the upper airways contains foamy liquid, reporter Ed Pilkington wrote. It also finds that the bodys lungs were severely congested and that there were red cells present in the airways. Edgar told Pilkington it was evidence of acute pulmonary edema. When it is this severe you can experience panic and terror, he said. If the individual was in any way aware of what was happening to them it would be unbearable.
But the executions continued apace. Shortly after that revelation, Virginia used the same protocol to kill 35-year-old William Morva. Witnesses said he, too, appeared to move and gasp for air. In the fall of 2017, Ohio ended its de facto moratorium with a revamped midazolam protocol, killing Ronald Phillips and then Gary Otte, both of whom seemed to struggle, according to witnesses. A third execution, that of 69-year-old Alva Campbell, was aborted after the execution team failed to find a viable vein. (He died 3 months later.)
A Tipping Point
On the occasions when botched executions have made national news, prison officials have often been the ones in the spotlight. Governors and attorneys general have also attracted a share of the blame. News reports have repeatedly exposed cavalier (and sometimes illegal) attempts to find drugs for executions from sketchy sources. Yet outside legal circles, there has been comparatively little critique of the courts that have enabled such executions to go forward. In his motion before Merz, Bohnert framed the issue in terms of a deeply entrenched problem that goes beyond lethal injection: junk science and the courts stubborn refusal to allow new evidence to change existing law.
This court, and others, have misapplied the science involved in lethal injection challenges involving midazolam, leading to conclusions that are inaccurate or simply not true from a scientific perspective, Bohnert wrote. Litigants untrained in medicine have muddied the factual picture, he wrote, while judges, typically facing the urgent press of an impending execution, have often further distorted the issue in their rulings. Because courts base their decisions on legal precedent, Bohnert wrote, each subsequent judicial decision has calcified those flaws, further insulating them from the rigorous re-evaluation that is necessary in the wake of executions that demonstrate a consistent pattern of troubling inmate reactions.
To Edgar, this made Merzs ruling a pleasant surprise. He independently took a look at this information anew and came to his own conclusion, he said. Like Bohnert, Edgar invoked examples of faulty forensics that have been exposed over the years and the duty to correct these problems in the courts. There are so many examples of junk science, he said. If were not willing to accept and relearn [based on new findings], then were in serious trouble.
Glossip is a major part of the problem. Like other decisions that have enshrined junk science into law, the ruling gave legal legitimacy to the findings of a pharmacist who had been widely When it comes to the case law on lethal injection,is a major part of the problem. Like other decisions that have enshrined junk science into law, the ruling gave legal legitimacy to the findings of a pharmacist who had been widely discredited even before Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments. Critically, Bohnert points out, the ruling conflated insensateness and unconsciousness, two concepts whose distinctions are hugely consequential. This error has been replicated by the lower courts, while execution after execution has shown that unconsciousness cannot protect people from the tortuous effects of lethal injection.
Bohnert points to an irony about Glossip and its legacy. The fact that the states have been allowed to continue to execute using midazolam is in large part what allowed the evidence to accumulate, he says. Although it is not clear what will happen next in Ohio, I think we had a tipping point here.
Elsewhere, midazolam is on its way out. Florida and Arizona have discarded the drug, while Tennessee has not used it since the Irick execution, turning instead to the electric chair at the request of the condemned. If Alabama uses midazolam to kill Domineque Ray tonight [ Domineque Gray was executed by lethal injection on Feb. 8, 2019 -- DPN], his execution stands to be another data point, in Merzs words, more evidence that states may or may not be torturing people to death while the courts continue to look away.
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Washington, D.C., February 9, 2019The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Pakistani authorities to immediately release and drop all legal proceedings against Rizwan-ur-Rehman Razi, a TV host for Din News, a privately-owned Urdu-language news station. Razi was arrested and taken into custody this morning in Lahore, according to news reports and CPJ reporting.
Expressing opinions, even critical opinions, should not be a crime, in Pakistan or anywhere, said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler. Justiceand Pakistans constitutional guarantee of freedom of the presscan only be served by Rizwan Razis immediate release.
Razi, also known as Razi Dada, was taken from his home at 10:30 a.m. today, according to his son, Osama Razi, who told CPJ his father was beaten and bundled into a black car, which he then chased after as it sped away from the house in Lahore. In an interview with CPJ, Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry confirmed that Razi had been arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency for social media postings that allegedly violated Pakistans Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act. A photograph was later circulated showing Razi in handcuffs.
A First Information Report released by the FIA Cyber Crime Wing, which CPJ has seen, said that Razi had put up defamatory and obnoxious posts on his Twitter account against the judiciary, government institutions and intelligence agencies of Pakistan. The FIR further stated that Razi had confessed to uploading the posts, apologized and promised to refrain from posting similar material in the future. The agency also said it had seized and searched Razis mobile phone.
Although it was unclear what specifically led to the arrest, earlier this month, Razi had criticized extrajudicial killings in Punjab at the hands of security forces and pointed fingers at the Army, according to screenshots of Twitter postings provided to CPJ. Razis Twitter account, @RaziDada, appeared to have been disabled on Saturday.
Osama Razi said that he expected his father to be released after he goes before a judge for formal charging, although this was not guaranteed.
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Following in the footsteps of Adina Pintilies controversial Golden Bear winner Touch Me Not, Marius Olteanus Monsters is a tragic saga that explores the social taboos surrounding sexual identity and female emancipation in modern-day Romania.
Its been over a decade since Tudor Giurgiu released the lesbian romance Love Sick. Since then, Romanian directors have tended to avoid LGBTQ+ topics. Its not surprising. Last year, the criticism surrounding Pintilies unconventional exploration of intimacy fuelled corners of the right-wing to widely reproduced comments from the press to justify their rejection of a film they believed threatened their core values. Later in the same year, there was a referendum to establish a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. It failed, but only because a fifth of voters bothered to turn out.
Instead of hiding in the shadows, Monsters continues where Pintilie left off, albeit in a slightly more conventional fashion. A relationship drama told across three chapters, the film explores the relationship between modernising cultures and sexual identity, but pushes the envelope further by examining the psychological impact of living in a society where women are still primarily regarded as mothers and wives. Focusing on the lives of a husband and wife struggling to self-actualise, the films construction is precisely managed, with the first two chapters unfurling across the same night. The first opens on Dana (Judith State) as she washes away her tears in a train station bathroom before jumping into a cab and spending the night travelling around Bucharest. The second follows Arthur (Cristian Popa) who, after an intense gym sessions, visits the apartment of a man he met on Grindr to have awkward, casual sex.
Olteanu isnt forthcoming with information about the couples past, instead forcing the audience to explore their body language and carefully calibrated confessions to understand the conflict that burns within them. These two nocturnal chapters are both shot in 1:1 ratio, with this prismatic composition perfectly suited to their respective nights of introspection. But it also alludes to the violence and pain often required to achieve any semblance of fulfilment something echoed by cinematographer, Luchian Ciobanus camera work, which constantly obscures them in the glare of windshields and windows.
In the films final chapter, the pair wake up next to each other in their marital bed. The ratio expands to 16:9, but the emotional fireworks they risk setting off never ignite. Instead they depart the house together to attend a friends daughters baptism, before having dinner with Arthurs conservative grandmother who lambastes Dana for failing to give Arthur a child. Do the Monsters of the films title relate to the pairs inner demons, or how women like this will view them if they choose to be true to themselves?
Unlike a conventional romance where love blossoms, here we observe two people attempt to dismantle their supportive relationship in order to achieve some semblance of contentment. But perhaps its not a simple as it sounds. Towards the end of the film Arthur asks Dana Why did you stay with me?. Its a question she can only answer by asking him the same thing back, with the silence that follows suggesting that perhaps a loving relationship isnt always the most nurturing space for an honest and liberating exploration of identity.
The Berlin Film Festival runs from 7-17 February. Follow our coverage here.
Patrick Gamble | @PatrickJGamble
Former bandmates of Oliver Mtukudzi will pay tribute to the late Zimbabwean musical icon with a performance this weekend in Edmonton.
Mtukudzi known by his fans as Tuku died last month at age 66.
With his distinctive husky voice, Tuku was considered the most recognized voice to emerge from Zimbabwe onto the international stage, and his rollicking, captivating performances won him devoted fans worldwide.
His music, a mix of Zimbabwean and South African rhythms, became known worldwide as Tuku Music.
It was like a national anthem to us. Everyone was singing his songs. - Enock Piroro
"Tuku Music was one those unique brands which I can say impacted many people, many people's lives," said Enock Piroro, who will perform in the special tribute concert on Saturday.
"I remember growing up, we would listen to that on the radio. It was like a national anthem to us. Everyone was singing his songs."
Piroro, Alice Muringayi Utah, Munya Mataruse and Tatenda Viya all performed, toured with or were mentored by Tuku.
As members of his band the Black Spirits, the men also played on some of Tuku's 67 albums before settling in Edmonton to pursue their own musical ambitions.
On Saturday evening at the CKUA Radio Network building, they will be joined on stage by former bandmate and guitarist Zivanai Masango, who has flown in from the U.S. for the performance.
Playing together is the perfect way to pay tribute to their mentor, a generous performer with a deep passion for music, said Piroro.
"He would come down to your level," Piroro said in an interview Friday with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM.
"He was very approachable. You could laugh, you could make jokes with him when you were on stage, you could enjoy everything with him."
Piroro said he hopes fans at Saturday's show feel like Tuku is there, performing on stage.
"There will be fireworks," he said. "People should come with their dancing shoes."
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Tuku made several successful international tours, and performed in neighbouring South Africa late last year.
He was known for mentoring young Zimbabwean musicians.
'He taught me to be humble'
Munya Vialy, a keyboardist with the Black Spirits, said as a boy Tuku inspired him to pursue music, and became like a father to him.
In 2007, Vialy started playing with Oliver's son, Sam Mtukudzi, who was a successful musician in his own right.
"I was one of the guys who was doing the song list for the band when we would go out for shows, and I used to put down more of Oliver's songs than Sam's. So, Sam used to go to his dad, 'Munya always plays your music more than mine, he's your number one fan.' "
When Sam died in a car accident in March 2010, Vialy was asked to join Tuku's band.
He's thankful for the time they shared.
Tuku always remained gracious and willing to nurture young talent, Vialy said.
"He taught me to be humble. Even though he died, I feel his musical legacy can't die. We have to continue with it and pass it on."
With files from the Canadian Press
Despite ongoing concerns over radon exposure and impacts on children, only a fraction of Calgary schools have been tested for the cancer-causing, radioactive, colourless, odourless and tasteless gas.
Radon can enter a building through the soil, foundation, windows, pipes or plumbing.
And while the Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) says they plan to test all their schools and will have 50 per cent of that testing done by the end of March the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) has only tested 10 schools and say they have no plans to do more.
'Representative sample' of CBE schools tested
According to the CBE, between 2014 and 2015 they tested the 10 schools as a "representative sample" of their schools, based on age, type of build and location, and found radon levels to be at acceptable levels below 200 becquerels per cubic meter in all 10 locations, and did not require any remediation.
"We really don't see a need for any additional testing to occur," said Dany Breton, superintendent of facilities and environmental services for the CBE.
Joanna French, communications specialist with CCSD said after testing 40 per cent of their 115 schools, they found "low risk concentrations of radon in three locations, which they are working to remediate.
"Much of the remediation is as simple as increasing ventilation, which can include running the school's HVAC system longer, or making small adjustments to the HVAC systems," she said.
Children extremely 'radiation sensitive'
Aaron Goodarzi, Canada research chair for radiation exposure disease, and assistant professor at the Arnie Charbonneau Cancer Institute at the University of Calgary, says radon exposure can cause cancer and is the number one cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.
Goodarzi advocates that all schools and childcare facilities to undergo testing, and remediation when necessary. He says radon is most dangerous for children because their bodies are still growing.
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"They're constantly growing tissue and growing body parts, that are much more radiation sensitive than a mature adult," he said.
"The younger you are, the more vulnerable. You might imagine a fetus or a toddler is much more rapidly growing and much more vulnerable to radiation compared to say, an 18 year old."
Goodarzi says research has found high concentrations of radon in soil and homes across the province, and schools are likely no different.
"Any buildings sitting on the ground potentially can have a radon problem here in Alberta," he said.
Radon testing in schools across Canada
According to CAREX Canada a national surveillance project that estimates the number of Canadians exposed to substances associated with cancer in workplace and community environments only three per cent of Alberta schools had been tested for radon as of 2017.
The same CAREX report found that 100 per cent of schools in the Yukon, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had been tested for radon, while eight per cent of schools in BC and Manitoba, two per cent of schools in the Northwest Territories, 18 per cent of schools in Quebec, 57 per cent of schools in Quebec and no schools in Newfoundland had been tested.
In a November 2018 update to the study, 106 additional schools have tested for radon in B.C., in Manitoba 10 additional schools had been tested, and in Alberta an additional 50 schools were to be tested in fall 2018 and winter 2019.
CBC
CBE test results
Breton said the CBE tested 10 of their 225 schools or roughly four per cent between 2014 and 2015 in partnership with Alberta Health Services after the Health Canada guidelines for acceptable radon levels in a building were adjusted from 800 Bq/m to 200 Bq/m.
Today there are 245 CBE schools.
"We thought it would be important to get up to our schools and see whether that was a concern within our schools," he said.
Breton said they did an initial test in the 10 buildings and then a follow-up test with a continuous digital monitor and they were happy that none of their schools required remediation.
"We were able to conclude is that with the movement of students through the school, coupled with the ventilation systems that we have that essentially pressurized the building we were able to get rid of any radon gases that might seep into the buildings just through the amount of air movement," he said.
As for schools built since 2014, they do not need to be tested, as building codes changed before then and require radon mitigation be built in.
What Breton found interesting when using the continuous digital monitors is that they could see very small increases in radon levels during the evening when doors were closed, but the levels were still "well below" 200 Bq/m3.
Colleen Underwood/CBC
End to CBE radon testing 'problematic'
And Goodarzi said that's sometimes all it will take to bring radon levels in check in large buildings like schools, but he thinks it's important that no school is left out.
He says from looking at test results from Alberta homes, they found one-in-six homes to have unacceptable levels of radon, which is why he says it's impossible to make a blanket conclusions about radon levels in all school buildings after only testing a few of them.
"It is problematic from the perspective that it creates a very unequal level of safety for the children in those schools compared to say their equivalent in the Catholic school board," said Goodarzi.
But, he acknowledges that conducting radon testing in schools would be an expensive affair.
"To my knowledge the main hold up here is not the lack of a will to do it, but rather the lack of the resources to do it," he said.
"Testing large buildings like your typical school requires a radon test to be placed in every single room where there's either a student or a staff member that can become quite costly."
A typical home-radon testing kit is between $40 and $60.
The CBE said it's something they paid for out of pocket, as there is no specific fund from the provincial government to conduct radon testing.
In an emailed statement, Alberta Education officials said there is no additional funding being considered for radon testing in schools.
"School jurisdictions would use the existing funding they are provided to carry out any testing they feel is needed," it read.
"Alberta Education provides funding to school authorities, and each individual school authority decides how that funding is best spent. Owners of buildings such as school boards, Alberta Health Services, municipalities, and other public-sector organizations are responsible for carrying out their own radon testing for their buildings.
"We recommend checking directly with school authorities regarding their plans for radon testing."
Impacts of Bill 209
Goodarzi said he's waiting for Bill 209 to be proclaimed in the legislature as it will make it law that all childcare facilities but not schools undergo radon testing and remediation when necessary.
Breton says if Bill 209's legislation comes into effect, it would ensure that more CBE schools were tested, as many of them are home to daycares and before and after school care programs.
"We've got hundreds of schools with such programs in them," he said.
Breton said the CBE would then have those service providers test the area that they're occupying and ensure that they're informing the CBE of the results so that they can take any remediation actions that might be required.
"If it becomes mandated we will have to make room for it in our budget somehow when an most certainly I mean we always ensure that we're abiding by legislation," he said.
From Esquire
Late on Thursday night, when hardly anyone was watching, Justice Brett Kavanaugh decided to conduct a covert op on whatever is left of the political reputation of Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. You may recall that, when Kavanaugh's nomination was hanging fire, Collins did her Down East Hamlet act for a couple of days before announcing that she would vote for PJ's beer buddy. She explained her decision by saying that Kavanaugh had convinced her that he would respect precedent, including all those precedents that protected a woman's right to full reproductive health, including abortion.
On Thursday night, Kavanaugh proved that, at best, Susan Collins is the biggest all-day sucker in American politics today. From The New York Times:
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the courts four-member liberal wing to form a majority. That coalition underscored the pivotal position the chief justice has assumed after the departure last year of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who used to hold the crucial vote in many closely divided cases, including ones concerning abortion. The courts brief order gave no reasons, and its action - a temporary stay - did not end the case. The court is likely to hear a challenge to the law on the merits in its next term, which starts in October. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh said they would have denied the stay. Only Justice Kavanaugh published a dissent, taking a middle position that acknowledged the key precedent and said he would have preferred more information on the precise effect of the law.
This rather soft-pedals what Kavanaugh did. In his one-man opinion denying the stay, Kavanaugh essentially showed that he doesn't feel bound by precedent at all in this matter. After all, the Louisiana law is identical to a Texas law that the Court already overturned three years ago. Kavanaugh didn't need "more information" to know that.
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Instead, his dissent relies on, along other things, the transparently phony notion that Louisiana officials will be judicious in using the law they've already passed. He writes:
...the State's regulation provides that there will be a 45-day regulatory transition period before the new law is applied. The State represents, moreover, that Louisiana "will not move aggressively to enforce the challenged law" during the transition period.
You'd have to be as big a sap as Susan Collins is to believe that one. It's impossible that even Kavanaugh believes it. What the defenders of the right to choose feared-and of which they still remain wary-is that upholding the Louisiana law will send a clear message to state judges that the federal system will not defend its own rulings. Thus would Roe v. Wade essentially die from a thousand cuts. Or that the law itself eventually will come before the Court as it is now constituted, with Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch having replaced Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.
Photo credit: Getty Images
Much is being made of Chief Justice John Roberts's having joined the majority in the Louisiana case, thereby giving the temporary stay a 5-4 majority. It is clear from time to time that Roberts cares as much for the reputation of the Court-and, by extension, his own-as much as much as he cares about the political positions he's held his entire life. If Roe is to die, it's not unreasonable to assume that Roberts would prefer it did so without his fingerprints on the murder weapon. Citizens United, Shelby County, and the overturning of Roe may not be the legacy Roberts wants to leave behind. Hey, given what's going on with the federal courts, that may be as sturdy a lifeboat as can be found.
Not that Roberts has discovered his inner Brennan. In the Court's other major decision Thursday night, he joined the conservative majority in gratuitous cruelty. An inmate in Alabama named Domenique Ray, facing execution this week, found his date with death delayed because the state prison there refused to allow him the spiritual solace of an imam at the time of his execution. Roberts and the other four conservative justices lifted the stay. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a fierce dissent:
A Christian prisoner may have a minister of his own faith accompany him into the execution chamber to say his last rites.
The fig leaf that the majority used to hide its outright religious bigotry was that Ray waited too long to "seek relief." You'd have to be Susan Collins to believe that one.
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The announcement was short and sweet Friday morning.
Public Services and Procurement Minister Carla Qualtrough announced the federal government has awarded a $185-million shipbuilding design contract for the next 15 Canadian warships to Lockheed Martin Canada.
This design work is expected to take up to four years to complete. The ships are to be constructed at the Irving shipyard in Halifax, beginning in the early 2020s.
Jim Irving, co-CEO of JD Irving Ltd., said he told the minister in advance to keep the speeches short.
"It's almost 9 o'clock on Friday, and we haven't done a lick of work yet. I know what it costs per minute to pay for this place," he said.
CBC
"But you're worth it," he told workers who were gathered for the announcement. "This is much more than a job, it's a commitment."
The Friday morning announcement was a formalization of the long-awaited contract the kickoff to a $60-billion project to produce 15 warships to replace the navy's frontline frigates over the next decade and a half.
All of the paperwork for the design contract was signed in Ottawa on Thursday between the Liberal government, Lockheed Martin Canada, BAE Systems, Inc., and Irving Shipbuilding, the prime contractor.
CBC
The decision to award the contract to the Lockheed Martin-led team is not without controversy, however.
It is the subject of a legal challenge by one of the other companies in the competition Alion Science and Technology Corporation and subsidiary Alion Canada.
A third team, led by the Spanish company Navantia, also submitted a bid but has not challenged the decision.
The challenge will be heard in Federal Court and critics question how completely the bids were evaluated.
Neither losing bidder was told precisely what was wrong with their bids, but they can expect to be briefed now that the contract has been signed, say defence industry sources.
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The chief executive of Imperial Oil is surprised the Trump administration has yet to take aim at Alberta.
Beginning last month, the provincial government mandated oil companies cut production to boost prices in Western Canada.
Imperial Oil's Rich Kruger told journalists on Thursday evening he expected U.S. government officials to criticize the policy because of its impact on trade between the two countries.
"Frankly, I'm surprised that it is not a bigger topic," said Kruger "The North American energy market was designed and built to allow the free-flow of energy to the benefit of North American consumers and anytime you start to artificially manipulate or influence that, I would think it would draw attention on whatever side of the border is affected by it."
"I'm surprised there hasn't been more direct U.S. government commentary on it," he said.
Kyle Bakx/CBC
Imperial has criticized Alberta's policy since it was first announced, along with Suncor and Husky. Other companies such as Cenovus and Canadian Natural Resources had strongly urged the government to take such action because of heavily discounted prices in Western Canada last year.
In the fall, the U.S. Congress revived an old proposal to allow the United States to sue OPEC nations. The bill would allow OPEC producers to be sued for collusion.
The change would also make it illegal to curtail oil or gas production or set those prices.
"With what is done here [in Alberta], there are a lot of similarities," said Kruger.
In the past, U.S. courts have ruled that current laws include sovereign immunity.
When Alberta's policy was announced, some trade experts had warned U.S. President Donald Trump could slap the province with countermeasures, however so far that has not happened.
The majority of oil produced in Alberta is exported to the U.S. When Canadian oil sold well below benchmark prices in the U.S. last year, some American refineries enjoyed lucrative profits.
The provincial government announced the curtailment plan, in part, to reduce the backlog of oil in the province because of limited space on export pipelines.
Cooke Inc. continues expansion with purchase of seafood distributor
One of New Brunswick's biggest private employers has purchased a Central American shrimp-farming company.
Cooke Aquaculture wouldn't disclose the price paid for Seajoy Seafood Corp.
The company, previously owned by Peter Jacobson of Ecuador, operates on the Gulf of Fonseca, which borders Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Joel Richardson, vice-president of public relations for Cooke, said the purchase comes with a "significant land acquisition," which includes buildings, processing facilities, 100 long-haul transport trucks and a "very strong" shrimp-breeding program.
The purchase brings an additional 1,400 employees into the Cooke workforce.
Now the company has 9,000 employees in Canada, Europe, China and Central America, all managed from Black's Harbour and the corporate office in Saint John.
"The company still has tremendous growth opportunity as well and provides a lot of meaningful jobs to people living in Honduras and Nicaragua," Richardson told Information Morning Saint John.
Over its 30-year history, Cooke has acquired more than 100 companies.
"Every time it strengthens the jobs back here at home," Richardson said.
Social responsibility
Richardson said Seajoy has been socially responsible in terms of its operation and programs such as sea turtle recovery programs and mangrove reforestation.
"That was attractive to us as well, so we're looking forward to getting involved in those things," he said.
A Calgary shop owner is pleased federal officials are looking into concerns about fake olive oil.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is warning a bad olive harvest in Europe could trigger an increase in oil fraud here in Canada.
So it's launching a 12-month national investigation in April to crack down, which will see inspectors test olive oil available on store shelves across the country.
"We try to go to small grocery stores and big grocery stores, we're trying to be as representative as possible," said Aline Dimitri, the deputy chief food safety officer at the CFIA.
"What we're trying to make sure is that, if you're getting an olive oil because there's a health issue, or there's a preference, that you're not inadvertently getting something that may cause you an allergy."
Jennifer Lee/CBC
Calgary is one of the cities the CFIA plans to send its inspectors.
The big concern is that products labelled as extra virgin olive oil may not be entirely pure.
"And that becomes a huge concern when you're talking about potential allergy concerns for people if they're cutting in some nut oils or seed oils," said Bruce Gillis, owner of Blue Door Oil and Vinegar in Calgary.
"And then, just also from a quality standpoint, and a transparency standpoint, if an oil was cut with another oil it certainly wouldn't test as an extra virgin olive oil, it wouldn't taste like an extra virgin olive oil."
If Canadian inspectors find irregular products, Dimitri said they could ask that it simply be re-labelled, or go as far as having it recalled.
"We can actually go all the way to prosecution if need be," she said.
Gillis says he has all of his olive oils tested to make sure they are pure. And he buys from small producers so he can trace his products.
Dimitri said a similar testing program by the CFIA two years ago turned up no cases of olive oil fraud in Canada.
A weather system that could last through early next week is rolling towards Newfoundland and Labrador.
The southwest coast of Newfoundland should expect to see high winds beginning around noon Friday, gusting up to 100 km/h in the Wreckhouse area, and then up to 120 km/h by evening.
"It'll be a windy day and the windy, wintry conditions are expected to continue for the remainder of the weekend, as well," said Dale Foote, a meteorologist at the Gander Environment Canada office.
It'll probably be into late Monday or into Tuesday before things start to abate. - Dale Foote
A rainfall warning, with a mix of ice pellets and freezing rain, is also in effect for most of Newfoundland for the next couple of days.
It will start in the Port aux Basques area Friday afternoon and move across the island to the Avalon by the evening.
Adrian Wyld/CP
Total rainfall of around 30 millimetres can be expected, before turning to flurries overnight into Saturday.
"We've got a cold, more seasonable air mass moving back over the south coast and the Avalon with flurries for most areas, including some snow squalls we're expecting for the Burin and the southern Avalon," said Foote.
"We've got a snow squall watch out for the Burin Peninsula and the rest of the south coast towards Port aux Basques, and we're gonna expect this cold westerly wind to continue to Sunday and into Monday, as well," he said.
There's a low-pressure system sticking off the coast of Labrador causing the four-day weather system, Foote said, and there will be some fluctuating temperatures for the island.
Marine Atlantic says its sailings across the Cabot Strait may be impacted through to Monday.
"It'll probably be into late Monday or into Tuesday before things start to abate" in the Cabot Strait, Foote said.
And Foote said despite what some people might be hoping, winter is definitely not over.
"Once the main area of snow goes through Labrador today and tonight, Labrador can expect more snow to wrap around and continue though the next few days," he said.
Read more articles from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
Metro Vancouver has some of the highest childcare fees in Canada but those in the province pushing for affordable daycare are optimistic things are changing.
A new report released on Thursday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) found that Vancouver's childcare fees are up to eight times more expensive than in other parts of the country like Quebec City and only behind Toronto in terms of cost.
Iglika Ivanova, a senior economist and public interest researcher with the CCPA in B.C., said the results of the annual study are not surprising because childcare costs reflect provincial policies.
"We've found, over five years of running the surveys, that provinces where childcare is largely left to the market have very, very high fees for parents," Ivanova told Stephen Quinn, host of CBC's The Early Edition.
"Places where provinces invest public dollars in reducing fees and affordability for families see a very different story."
Katerina Georgieva/CBC
New programs to reduce fees
The B.C. government has recently started investing more money into childcare with three new fee-reduction programs.
A $10-a-day prototype program is currently underway at 53 sites across the province.
Last year, fees were reduced across the board at licensed childcare centres by up to $350 a month and an income-tested subsidy was introduced for families that earn less than $111,000 a year.
"This is the first time ever that the government is investing in lowering parents fees," said Katrina Chen, Minister of State for Child Care.
"It's already bringing affordable relief and lowering fees for tens of thousands of families."
Those initiatives are not reflected in the CCPA report because the study was conducted in May and August, before the programs were rolled out.
Chen said she's optimistic about the direction B.C. is heading.
"A lot of families are paying less than $200 a month now," Chen said.
"I'm actually very positive and I look forward to looking at [CCPA's] data and sharing our data with everybody to see how our programs are making a difference."
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Neil Joyes/CBC
'Not going to happen overnight'
Sharon Gregson, a spokesperson with Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C., is quick to praise the steps the province has taken toward improving affordability.
But, she says, a lot of work is still needed.
"This is Year 1 of a 10-year-plan," she said.
"It was a big shift to turn around the complete chaos and so it's certainly not going to happen overnight. But we're most definitely heading in the right direction."
Gregson said she hopes childcare will one day follow a similar plan as schooling in B.C.: free and universally available.
"For the cynics out there who think this is just too big a project: it's not," she said.
"It's underway and it's happening."
Two foreign satellite operators may soon receive an interim licence to operate the receivers they built in Inuvik almost three years ago, which would allow them to stop using a receiver station in Antarctica.
For more than two years, U.S. satellite company Planet Labs Inc. and Norway's Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) antennas at the Inuvik satellite receiver ground station have sat unused as the companies wait for federal licensing from the Canadian government.
But this week, significant progress was made.
It's kind of crazy but it's easier to get a ground station up and running in Antarctica than it is in Canada. - Mike Safyan, Planet Labs Inc.
"Planet and GAC [Global Affairs Canada] are discussing the details of a provisional licence for the Inuvik ground station as an interim solution, which would allow the antennas to begin operations much sooner than expected," said Mike Safyan, a vice president with the company, on Tuesday.
Mackenzie Scott/CBC
He said this will be a significant step in the right direction, although he noted it's been a frustrating experience so far to get federal licences for six satellite dishes.
Last February, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) the department responsible for authorizing radio licences needed to operate fixed Earth stations in Canada approved the companies' licence applications.
However, approval from Global Affairs Canada is also needed since the installations, part of what's called a remote sensing space system, will be operated by foreign companies. This, Safyan said, created unique circumstances in the licensing process.
He said Norway's Kongsberg Satellite Services owns the teleport and some of the ground station assets, and although Planet has a Canadian subsidiary, their antennas are on KSAT's facility and they are controlled from mission operations in the U.S.
"So that's presented some questions from [Global Affairs Canada] unfortunately we've been the guinea pig for them figuring out that process," Safyan said.
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While the companies have been waiting to use their antennas at the Inuvik ground station they've been using a ground station in Antarctica.
"It's kind of crazy but it's easier to get a ground station up and running in Antarctica than it is in Canada."
'Black spot on Inuvik'
New North Networks is the the manager of the Canadian Satellite Ground Station Inuvik (CSGSI) where the satellites are located.
Owner Tom Zubko said provisional licences for both companies would be a good step forward, but "we really need the process to get to the finish line where they have fully issued licences. This is the first significant step forward since the start of this process almost three years ago."
Without doubt Canada has the most obscure licensing process anywhere. - Tom Zubko, New North Networks
Zubko says Canada has a regulatory problem, and international satellite technology companies are looking elsewhere to invest because of it.
"Without doubt Canada has the most obscure licensing process anywhere," said Zubko.
Zubko estimates that were it not for licensing delays, Inuvik could possibly have doubled the number of satellite dishes it hosts.
"We've got a real big black spot on Inuvik right now from the point of view of going out and trying to get more people to come to Inuvik," Zubko said. "Inuvik has a huge potential in this business if we can get the licensing sorted out."
In response to a CBC request for comment on criticisms leveled against the regulatory process, Global Affairs Canada stated in an email that the vetting process takes time and includes a "national security check," but it expects to "finalize the licence applications shortly."
"We welcome and are working to support the development of the satellite industry in Inuvik which offers important opportunities for economic development for the town and for the Northwest Territories as a whole," the statement said.
Two Canadian women who had been living in ISIS-held territory with their children have surrendered to U.S.-backed forces in Syria, according to the head of a non-profit organization that urged them to turn themselves in.
Alexandra Bain, director of Families Against Violent Extremism (FAVE), told CBC News that one of the women, a mother with two children, contacted her over the weekend from the city of Baghuz as Syrian Democratic Forces approached the area.
Baghuz, in eastern Syria near the Iraq border, is one of the last remaining pieces of land under the grip of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Global Affairs Canada said in an email statement to CBC News that it is "aware of Canadian citizens being detained in Syria," but its ability to provide consular assistance is "extremely limited" given the security situation on the ground.
"Canadian diplomats have established a communication channel with local Kurdish authorities in order to verify the whereabouts and well-being of Canadian citizens," said government spokesperson Richard Walker.
Bain, speaking on the phone from Fredericton, said the woman who contacted her said she was with a second Canadian woman who also has two children.
CBC News has been unable to independently verify the identities of the two women and their children.
FAVE, which works with families whose members have been exposed to or joined violent extremist groups overseas, says there may be as many as 27 Canadians being held in Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria.
'Her final chance'
Bain said that over the course of her exchanges with the Canadian woman conducted with a messaging service over a spotty internet connection she learned the woman had virtually no idea about the dangerous political situation around her.
Bain described the woman as "uncertain" and "afraid."
Leaving them there only feeds the ISIS narrative that the West hates Muslims, that the West hates Islam. - Alexandra Bain, Families Against Violent Extremism
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Initially, the woman said she intended to walk to the nearest camp in Iraqi territory, said Bain, but she advised against it, saying many children had lost their lives on that cold walk and she would likely face punishment by death if apprehended by Iraqi forces.
Instead, Bain encouraged the woman to approach a Kurdish militia vehicle that would take her to Al Hol, a displacement camp in northeastern Syria advice the Canadian woman heeded.
Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images
"She said she had been trying for the past seven months to escape ISIS with her children ... I guess she saw it as her final chance," Bain told CBC News by phone.
The FAVE director described the woman as sounding like she had been "in a bubble" and, "She would have only been getting news from ISIS over the past several years."
The woman didn't disclose her reasons for travelling to Syria, Bain said.
"She just knew she wanted to get out."
Unknown where women travelled from
Bain declined to disclose where the women were from in Canada, saying their names and stories would likely come to light should they be criminally investigated. It's unclear why or how long the two women were living in Syria.
Leaving Canada to participate in a terror group is an offence under the Criminal Code subsection 83.18(1) punishable to a term of up to 10 years in prison.
The researcher said that of the Canadians in ISIS territory, the majority are children who had no choice in their parents' decision to go to Syria.
Amarnath Amarasingam, a Toronto-based senior research fellow with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told CBC News he knows of at least four men, five women and 11 Canadian children who are still in Kurdish custody in Syria.
In many cases, those Canadians have left family members behind. Bain said every family she's spoken with has found itself in that position and is "horrified."
"It's broken their hearts."
Canada won't immediately act to repatriate
News of the two Canadian women's surrender comes just days after the U.S. State Department issued a statement calling on its allies to repatriate its citizens detained in the conflict something Canada's Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told CBC News this week he would not risk Canadian lives to do.
CBC
Global Affairs Canada confirmed in a statement there is no agreement in place to repatriate the Canadians detained in Syria.
Responding to reporters' questions on Wednesday, Goodale said the government is "considering the best way forward to make sure that Canada and Canada's national security are properly protected. We've heard the request or the suggestion from the United States. But at this point, the fact of the matter remains that is a dangerous and dysfunctional part of the world, in which we have no diplomatic presence."
Bain argues Canada should act quickly, citing a UN special rapporteur who has said the Canadian government has a legal obligation to repatriate its citizens.
She said leaving the Canadians in Syria also raises another problem.
"Leaving them there only feeds the ISIS narrative that the West hates Muslims, that the West hates Islam," Bain said.
"Bringing these kids home, and healing them and allowing them to lead productive lives encourages them in the future to stand up against violent extremism to be a voice against joining things like ISIS, and that's really what we're hoping for."
office buildings
The past few years have seen hard times for the Canadian energy sector. After more than a decade of rising oil prices and seemingly endless economic progress in Alberta, the energy sector came crashing down in 2014, with a steep, abrupt fall in the price of oil. Oil prices have still not returned to their 2014 levels, and although theyve risen somewhat on average, the energy sector has been sluggish since then.
The year 2018 was a particularly weak year for energy stocks, with many posting losses or seeing earnings fall year over year. The question is, why? With BP having recently posted its best earnings in five years, we have proof that low oil prices neednt necessarily drive energy stocks down. But the Canadian energy sector remains weak. To understand why, we need to look all the price of oilnot in aggregate, but Canadian oil specifically.
Persistent weakness of oil
Its normal for people speak of the price of oil or per barrel cost of crude, but technically there is no one universal oil price: various types of oil from various places have various prices. For example, as of this writing, Brent Crude was $62 a barrel, while Western Canadian Select was just $43. Its the latter type of oil that Canadian energy companies sell, refine and process, so Canadian projects bring in less from a barrel of crude sold than a company like BP does.
Why is Canadian crude so much cheaper than Brent? It has to do with ease of processing. Canadian crude comes mostly from tar sands, resulting in heavy crude that requires extensive processing before it can become economically viable. All that processing costs time and money, so companies involved in processing Western Canadian Select incur great costs to process cheap oil. So although Western Canadian Select is cheap, its also low margin and generally less profitable to sell compared to, say, OPEC oil. The end result is that Canadian oil projects earn less than Saudi ones. This creates a spillover effect impacting the entire energy sector, even companies that are not directly selling or processing crude.
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Project delays
Another factor harming the Canadian energy sector right now is project delays. Many Canadian energy companies, like TC Energy (TSX:TRP) are involved in building pipelines to transport oil to the United States. These pipelines are lucrative when they get the go ahead. The problem is, they dont always get it: TCs Keystone XL has been blocked numerous times by officials in the States, most recently by a Montana judge who blocked a segment of the pipeline because it hadnt been vetted enough for environmental impact. The decision is being appealed, but a long delay is inevitable.
Not all energy stocks are created equal
Despite the overall doldrums in the energy sector, not all energy stocks are doing poorly. Utility companies, for instance, are generally doing quite well: Emera Inc grew earnings by 30% in its most recent quarter, and is up about 6% over the last 12 months. It makes sense that utilities would dominate the energy sector, as many of them rely on renewables like hydro, and arent as vulnerable to the price of oil. This makes them better buys in sluggish markets than conventional oil and gas stocks.
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Fool contributor Andrew Button has no position in any of the stocks mentioned.
The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2019
In mid-January, Motley Fool Canada asked its contributors to name one company that would be a top stock in 2019. Stocks that got the nod included Restaurant Brands International, Canada Goose, Alimentation Couche-Tard, and Shopify.
Those are all natural candidates with strong business models and growing revenues and earnings. Justifying their inclusion is easy.
But what about stocks that arent so easy to recommend? The ugly ducklings of the TSX, if you will. How does one justify their purchase? The answer is, with great care.
The trio of retail stocks Im recommending has an average total return of 1% year to date through February 6, more than 7% percentage points worse than the TSX. The year is barely five weeks in, and theyre already falling behind.
Not to worry. I have a reason why each of this trio of stocks, although unlikely choices, will make you money in 2019 and beyond.
Indigo Books & Music (TSX:IDG)
Fool contributor Ambrose OCallaghan noted February 5 that Indigos Relative Strength Index (RSI) before its Q3 2019 report was 43, barely above oversold status.
The company delivered poor results shortly after OCallaghans article was published, sending its stock even lower, although not nearly as much as one might expect from earnings that dropped by half in the quarter from $1.56 a share a year ago to $0.79. Analysts were expecting $1.33 a share.
As CEO Heather Reisman explained during its conference call, Indigo was hit with a triple whammy in the third quarter, its busiest of the year. Unfortunately, the postal strike that began on October 23 turned double-digit gains in October into double-digit declines in November and December.
Its going to take months for the company to get back to business as usual. That said, Reisman is happy with the results from its first U.S. store, giving shareholders something to look forward to as Indigo climbs out of the hole Canada Post put it in.
Indigos stock has lost 41% of its value over the past 52 weeks. Its unlikely that it will face a similar triple whammy in Q3 2020. As TSX stocks go, its a big value play.
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Metro (TSX:MRU)
Of this trio of stock recommendations, Metro is the second-best performer, up 2.9% year to date, including dividends, but well off the index. Fortunately, for shareholders, the grocery store chain delivered strong results in 2018. I can see it turning on the burners in the spring and summer as more people get out and about.
On January 29, the Quebec-based food retailer reported solid first-quarter results, despite the fact that higher wages, supplier costs, and an E.coli outbreak stemming from bad romaine lettuce put it under severe financial constraints.
Its same-store food sales increased 3.2% during the quarter, while pharmacy same-store sales increased 1.5%. Overall revenue during the quarter was $3.98 billion, 3.5% higher than a year earlier, excluding Jean Coutu. On the bottom line, its adjusted net earnings increased 35.9% in the first quarter to $172.2 million.
With the pharmacy chain as part of the company, Metro is a much stronger business.
Hudsons Bay (TSX:HBC)
Of all three stocks, the department store has performed the best in 2019, up 8.6%. Of course, when your stock loses 35% of its value in the 2018 calendar year, a reversion-to-the-mean bounceback isnt unusual.
Two things give me hope.
CEO Helena Foulkes continues to rework the entire organization to make it more agile and customer friendly. As a result, shes got analysts paying attention to the company, and thats half the battle.
They have a pulse now. You see significant movement and action on her part and that gives investors some confidence, said Bruce Winder, partner at Retail Advisors Network in December. Its going in the right direction, but boy, oh boy, is there still a lot of work to be done here. By no means are they out of the woods yet.
And heres the second thing that gives me hope.
Executive Chairman Richard Baker ,through a company he controls, acquired an additional 10% of HBCs stock in early January from the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board for $9.45 a share, 19% higher than where its currently trading.
Baker is not the Eddie Lampert of Canada. His doubling down says a lot about his confidence in Foulkes ability to get the job done. I couldnt agree more.
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Fool contributor Will Ashworth has no position in any stocks mentioned. Tom Gardner owns shares of Shopify. The Motley Fool owns shares of RESTAURANT BRANDS INTERNATIONAL INC, Shopify, and Shopify. Alimentation Couche-Tard and Shopify are recommendations of Stock Advisor Canada.
The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2019
News / National
by NewzWire.live
Britain will not support Zimbabwe's debt clearance plan over "sickening" human rights violations seen over the past weeks, the Minister for Africa Harriet Baldwin said Tuesday.Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube is desperate to clear $2 billion worth of arrears to lenders such as the African Development Bank and the World Bank, and appeared to have secured a breakthrough last October when he presented his economic plan to EU countries in Bali. He hoped to clear arrears this year, which would allow Zimbabwe to access the new credit it badly needs.But his road map appears to be heading for a dead end, after Baldwin told the International Development Committee, which monitors the UK's development programmes for the British parliament, that events of the past three weeks make it hard for the UK to support any such plan."There needs to be progress in terms of the arrears that Zimbabwe has to international finance institutions, and the recent violence from state actors makes it very difficult for me personally to try and argue that this is the time for the UK to be stepping up to the plate working with international partners to do this," Baldwin said."The idea that we would step up to the plate and say look guys, the government is doing this to its own citizens, shooting them with live ammunition, a range of other egregious violations, and you know what, the UK is really happy to argue that now is the time for them to be helped with their international arrears'; you may push back on this, but I find that a very difficult political case to make."Baldwin visited South Africa last week, and she said officials there are discussing a package to help Zimbabwe clear its arrears."We will listen to that plan, but as the UK government's Minister for Africa, I cannot say that now is the time for us to really be sticking our necks out politically on the back of the kind of behaviour that we've seen from the government of Zimbabwe," Baldwin declared.Asked whether the UK would continue engaging with Zimbabwe, Baldwin added: "It is right to engage in terms of the messaging, and to set out the kinds of reforms that would enable Western democracies and organisations to work more closely with tackling the government's outstanding international debts, but I think we are a long way from that, and we've gone further away from that as a result of the human rights violations by the security forces."Zimbabwe has cleared its arrears with the IMF, but the country still owes $687 million to the AfDB, $1.4 billion to the World Bank and $322 million to the European Investment Bank. In total, foreign debt stands at $7.6 billion with $1.3 billion in arrears.To qualify for new credit, Zimbabwe has to clear its arrears first. Under the pari pasu rule, the country must simultaneously pay off what it owes to the World Bank, AfDB and other priority lenders. Ncube had been holding meetings, including with the UK, to have this requirement waived.After meetings in Bali in October, Matthew Rycroft, the UK's Permanent Secretary to its development arm DFID, showed some cautious support for Ncube's plan, tweeting: "Long road ahead on political and economic reforms. The UK, and others, stand ready to support reform efforts."However, this progress, and President Emmerson Mnangagwa's year-long carefully crafted plan to end Zimbabwe's international isolation, appears to have been shattered by his security forces' use of deadly force to quell violent protests over a fuel price hike.
News / National
by Staff reporter
Women rights activists have petitioned government to compensate women who were allegedly raped during a brutal crackdown by the military to crush protests against fuel prices.Dozens of women may have been raped during the post-protest crackdown, according to rights groups which have collected evidence, and say that security forces used rape as a weapon to spread fear among its opponents.Human rights activists with the Women's Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence (WALPE), Female Prisoners Support Trust (FEMPRIST) and Justice For Women Zimbabwe (JWZ) pushed two constitutional commissions, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) and the Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC) to step up pressure on government for compensation, asking the State rights bodies to also receive testimonies from rape victims.Rape victims are often ostracised in the country where discussion of the crime remains taboo, so it is not clear how many victims would actually come forward. The petition was also submitted to government ministries, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, Home Affairs and the Defence ministry, and international organisations including UN Women, African Union Commission and Sadc Gender Commission.The rights groups said the army deployments "turned out to be a premeditated clampdown on residents of major cities and towns" where "dozens of women were raped and sexually assaulted by members of the army.""Hundreds of women were also arbitrarily arrested and arraigned in fast track trials that disregarded all their rights."The ZHRC and ZGC provide a safe and secure platform for women's organisations to submit evidence of the crimes committed by the security forcesand push for justice for the victims of the military crackdown including demanding the arrest of all perpetrators, provision of reparation and compensation by the government to families who lost their loved ones."All perpetrators should be held to account and barred from working in the security sector," the petition read.
News / National
by Staff reporter
The clampdown on the ring leaders of the national shutdown that left a trail of destruction and over 12 civilians dead at the hands of security forces across the country is a Zanu-PF ploy to target MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa's support base ahead of the party's national elective congress slated for October this year, the biggest opposition party has alleged.The MDC Alliance has more than once distanced itself from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union (ZCTU) organised national shutdown that rocked the major cities but many MDC Alliance leaders have been arrested charged with subversion while others have gone into hiding.MDC Alliance national chairperson and leader of the opposition in parliament, Thabitha Khumalo, told TellZim News that the current clampdown by Zanu-PF forces was aimed at shaking Chamisa's support base ahead of their congress."The big question you should ask them is why are they targeting all key members who are known to be loyal to president Chamisa? We did not organise the national shutdown but all our people are being victimised. I cannot tell you more because I am also in hiding but we will not be broken," said Khumalo.Khumalo wrote a letter to Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda on January 21, 2019 complaining the wanton arrests of opposition legislators on what she said were trumped up charges."Some MDC Alliance legislators have been arrested and persecuted for the stay away which, as common knowledge has it, was called for by the suffering Working Class of Zimbabwe. Their call for the action was motivated by the various socio-economic challenges that are bedeviling our nation. Obviously, the hiking of fuel price and its ripple effects to the general cost of living."Consequently, some of the MPs are being charged for alleged attempts to subvert the sitting Zanu-PF government. In this regard we strongly feel that these are trumped up frivolous charges meant to frustrate and prejudice their social standing and that of the MDC-Alliance."For Your record and urgent attention, the following legislators have been unfairly arrested Mbizo's Settlement Chikwinya, Redcliff's Lloyd Mukapiko, Mkoba's Amos Chibaya and Chiwundura's Levi Chiminya."A host of other MDC legislators are being threatened and haunted by the State Security Agencies. All is being done for no good reasons. It must be highlighted to you that Opposition MP's are also Citizens who deserve respect just like their Zanu-PF counterparts thus we call upon you to always ensure that this remains the case always," wrote Khumalo.Chamisa's foot soldier and national organiser Chibaya is still on the radar of law enforcement agents facing inciting violence and subversion charges. He was only given bail by the Masvingo High Court on February 06 after two weeks in remand prison on inciting public violence and subversion charges.MDC Alliance national youth league boss Happymore Chidziva said he was still being hunted by the police and has been under their watch."I am safe for now, they said they will call me if they have an issue. Our people need not to tire because we will triumph over evil and we will stand by our president Chamisa," said Chidziva.MDC Alliance Mashonaland Central provincial youth chairperson, Tonderai Samhu and four colleagues were on Monday given six-year jail terms each by Bindura magistrate Vongai Guwiro for taking part in the violence during the shutdown in Mvurwi.Zanu-PF national spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo could not be drawn into comment as he said he was getting into a meeting."I am getting into a meeting," said Moyo before hanging up.Zanu-PF is said to be working underground to fund MDC Alliance members chief among them vice president Elias Mudzuri to contest Chamisa for the presidency at congress.Attempts to block Chamisa have been futile after Zanu-PF mooted an idea of using their two thirds parliamentary majority to amend the constitution and raise the presidential age limit from 40 years to 52 years.
News / National
by Staff reporter
An impersonator of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) has been jailed for fraud after fleecing desperate job seekers of their money claiming that he can facilitate job opportunities within the police force, state security and the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA).Charged with fraud as defined in Section 136 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform Act) Chapter 9:23, David Dhlodhlo of Tsanzaguru appeared before Rusape magistrate Patience Madondo and was sentenced to 72 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to the charges.Dhlodhlo will effectively serve 36 months in prison after 12 months were set aside on the basis of good behaviour and the other 17 months were suspended on the basis that he returns the money to those he defrauded.State facts as presented by Gift Mutigwa are that on a period extending from September 2018, Dhlodhlo misrepresented himself as a member of the Central Intelligence Organisation and approached Rufaro Manyoni promising him that he had links to get him a job in the security forces.He defrauded Manyoni of a total $1 485 as facilitation money but nothing materialised.On another occasion, Dhlodhlo used the same modus operandi on Nation Gombedza and swindled him of $60.On December 21, 2018, Dhlodhlo duped Fidelis Pezo who later made a police report leading to Dhlodlo's arrest.
News / National
by Staff reporter
Zimbabwean soldiers will be banned from wearing their camouflage outside the barracks unless when on deployment, ZimLive can exclusively reveal.In an internal memo, obtained by this website, the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) commander Lieutenant General Edzai Chimonyo said the measure had been taken "to ensure impostors abusing the uniforms will be easily identified and also ensure safety of members outside cantonment areas."Soldiers must leave their uniforms in their barracks, and will not be allowed to wear them during their commute to and from work, or when travelling between towns.The directive follows a spate of crimes which human rights groups say have been committed by soldiers, including rape, murder, armed robberies, extortion and beatings following the deployment of troops in residential neighbourhoods in the wake of fuel protests on January 14.The army denies that its members are behind the crimes, claiming instead that the perpetrators of those crimes stole the uniforms. In his memo to military commanders, Chimonyo did not mention rape and murder."It has been noted with concern that ZNA uniform has been abused in offences being committed such as robbery, gold panning, fraud, theft and extortion among others. Some members have also been attacked by civilians whilst in uniforms," said Chimonyo in the memo dated February 6.He directed that "with immediate effect no military uniform will be worn outside cantonment areas.""This applies to members commuting to and from places of work, intra and inter-city commuting. Take note that after working hours members are to put on civilian clothes and leave their uniforms in cantonment areas," the memo adds.ZimLive has seen a cache of police documents showing people in military uniforms have committed a string of crimes, particularly in Harare where soldiers remain deployed.Just after midday on February 7, two men claiming to be police detectives walked into a hair saloon at Machipisa Shopping Centre and ordered 36-year-old Caroline Mutasa, of Glen Norah, to follow them to their vehicle, a black Toyota Wish.Police files say nine men were in the vehicle, two of them wearing army camouflage and armed with a rifle. They threatened to "deal with her" at the KG6 military barrack but instead drove to Harare Kopje where they robbed her of US$500, $80 bond notes and her ID card.On February 8, at around 9.30PM, six men wearing masks and all armed with AK47 rifles, stormed a shebeen in Mbare and ordered everyone to lie on the ground. After assaulting one of the patrons with a sjambok, and firing a shot into the ground, they robbed the owner of the shebeen of $2,800 and US$100.The men jumped into their vehicles, a white Nissan MP300 with registration number AEA 4471, a white Nissan MP300 without registration plates and a Datsun Go without registration plates.Police sources told ZimLive the two Nissan vehicles are owned by the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). A police officer based at Mbare has been arrested in connection with that robbery.President Emmerson Mnangagwa has faced growing demands to order soldiers back to the barracks, but the military says it is on the streets at the invitation of the police to maintain law and order following protests last month. Rights groups say 17 people have died in the military operations, and over 250 others injured.
News / National
by Mandla Ndlovu
Harare City Council has warned residents against fake land barons who are moving around selling undesignated pieces of land to unsuspecting residents.The culprits are reported to be selling the land strictly in United States Dollars which is contrary to the policy of the Council."Council is not selling housing land in Hatcliffe. All the adverts purporting that council has such a programme are false and a calculated way of fleecing money from residents. Council uses its waiting list allocation system to sell housing land. More so the said stands are being charged in US$. Council does not have such a policy." The Council said in a statement.Council further revealed that their office has been received numerous visits and phone calls from residents who have been duped of their hard earned cash."The city kindly asks you to take notices posted on this page seriously. Our offices are inundated with calls and visits by residents fleeced of their hard earned money by land barons. This week there are reports that some individuals have been parceling out land on Crowborough Farm. The farm is not a residential estate. It is used for wastewater treatment and cattle grazing."Furthermore the Council also warned residents from interacting with bogus agents who are moving around allocating trading spaces to traders. It urged traders to apply for trading spaces only through the formal district offices."Council is reliably informed that there are individuals moving around inviting members of the informal sector to register with them for allocation of trading spaces. We advise all members of the informal sector that registration and allocation of trading space is done at council district offices. Any such payments and promises by the individuals are tantamount to throwing money in a deep well. We advise all people interested in securing trading spaces to approach their district officers for assistance."
News / National
by Staff reporter
GOVERNMENT is set to complete the national land audit next month, an exercise expected to address the issue of multiple farm ownership and underutilised land.Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement Deputy Minister Douglas Karoro said Government was even considering repossessing land from beneficiaries of the land reform programme who deserted the properties.He revealed this during the National Assembly Question and Answer session on Wednesday."Government wants to see a situation whereby there is fairness in land ownership. I will give an example of what is currently obtaining in our Ministry. There is a land audit that is currently underway. We expect to finalise the exercise by the end of March," Karoro said.He said the Land Commission, which has been conducting hearings across the country, would be critical in deciding what to be done with unutilised land."Currently, we have people who own land but they are not fully utilising that land. We have people who have been offered land but they are absent from the country. Government may come up with two scenarios. The first scenario is that Government is going to keep that land as State land for future development programmes. The other option is that Government may decide to distribute this land to landless people," Karoro said.In case Government redistributes land, it will make sure that the exercise is done fairly without discrimination on creed, colour or gender."A farmer is going to be looked at as a farmer who has capacity and competence. The essence is that we want to produce enough food for everybody as a country and surplus for export. In short, Government is looking at ways that are non-discriminatory in terms of allocating land to those people who want land," Karoro said.
News / National
by Staff reporter
TWO elderly women from Dete in Hwange district have been each sentenced to 12 months in prison for blocking the Dete-Cross Dete road using stones and tree branches.Ruth Dube and Angeline Moyo both aged 55 also forced pupils to join them as they joined opposition instigated demonstrations on January 14.Dube and Moyo of Magoli and Dingane villages respectively pleaded not guilty to obstructing or endangering free movement of people and traffic when they appeared before Matabeleland North magistrate-in-charge, Mr Livard Philimon.They were convicted yesterday after full trial and sentenced to 12 months each in jail.However, the two women will not taste prison life after the magistrate conditionally suspended the sentence.Three months were suspended for five years on condition of good behaviour while the remaining nine months were suspended on condition they each complete 315 hours of community service at Dingane Primary School.Prosecuting, Mr Vumizulu Mangena said Dube and Moyo blocked the road on three different points in a stretch of five kilometres."On January 14 the accused put tree branches and stones along Dete-Cross Dete road. They also wanted school children to help them but some refused," said the prosecutor.A witness Ms Barbara Munkuli said Dube and Moyo, who were drunk when they committed the crime, complained that transport operators were overcharging travellers. Pirate operators charge $5 from Dete to Cross Dete which is 16km.Appearing before the same court was Freddy Muleya (29) of Chentali also in Dete who was charged with a similar offence. Muleya was accused of using logs, stones and tree branches to block the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls road at the 310km peg in the company of an accomplice on January 15.Muleya was, however, found not guilty of the offence and acquitted. The three were represented by Mr Thulani Nkala of Dube, Nkala and Company.Meanwhile, MDC Alliance Hwange Central Senator Rosemary Nyathi, who was arrested for allegedly inciting violence in Hwange during the demonstrations called by the opposition party and its allies, will know her fate on Thursday next week when court makes its judgment.Nyathi faces a charge of defeating or obstructing the course of justice.
News / National
by Staff reporter
Matabeleland provinces will get 25 percent of the $100m Econet Challenge Fund announced this week by the firm's founder and executive chairman Mr Strive Masiyiwa and his wife Tsitsi to support rural entrepreneurs.The fund is part of the couple's extensive philanthropic work in Zimbabwe and across Africa.Mr Masiyiwa said in a statement that women would get a minimum of 50 percent, while traditional businesses like stores and grinding mills would be excluded from benefiting from the fund. The fund is being financed from their personal resources and would be disbursed as loans through Steward Bank, a member of the Econet group."My wife and I have decided to set up a special fund of $100m over 5 years for ReImagine Rural in Zimbabwe. We have also challenged our friends in the philanthropy community to join us to expand it across Africa."The fund which is our own personal money will be disbursed as loans through Steward Bank (a member of the Econet group). The money will support projects from rural entrepreneurs or those entrepreneurs willing to focus on rural areas," he said.Conditions for the fund are that the minimum loan would be $1 000, while the maximum was $10 000. In addition, beneficiaries will not be asked for collateral while the maximum interest was 5 percent.Mr Masiyiwa said repayments would go into a revolving fund and all entrepreneurs must undergo training before accessing the loans."I want to use this initiative to challenge global donors to support mass entrepreneurship in Africa by putting my own money into what I believe. My wife is currently on a major drive to get this concept adopted by other philanthropists, so we can push into other African countries."This initiative does not reduce our commitment to other areas of our philanthropy efforts including education and the $60m sanitation and water initiative in Harare."
Liberal Politics from the Heart of Bluegrass Country
The Venezuelan bishop of Merida and current apostolic administrator of Caracas, Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo, stood tall and firm while rejecting the validity of President Nicolas Maduros recent appeal for Vatican diplomacy. Maduro had written to the pope this week seeking his help amid an escalating violent opposition to his socialist government which has all but destroyed the countrys economy and thrust millions of people into abject poverty.
Cardinal Porras publicly denounced Maduros letter to Pope Francis of which the Vaticans Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin confirmed receipt on Feb. 4.
Porras was quoted on Argentinas Radio Continental that such a request was basically immaterial like a blank sheet of paper.(with) nothing concrete to discuss una hoja en blanco para conversar, pero conversar de que [?].
Whats more, Cardinal Porras blasted Maduros letter as having only cosmetic value, that is to say, a desperate attempt to help make the dictator look good as more and more people and nations openly support Juan Guaido, who was recently declared interim-president by Venezuelas National Assembly. Maduro is trying to give the impression that he can count Pope Francis as among his friends. At present, Maduros allies are countries like Russia, Iran, Bolivia and China.
Nonetheless, Porras said the papal mediation request was above all invalid, because Maduro completely bypassed the Venezuelan bishops conferences protocol procedures for communicating directly with the Vatican, even if Pope Francis while visiting nearby Panama called for an urgent peaceful solution to the crisis and said on his return flight to Rome that he was frightened by imminent bloodshed that would be caused by civil war.
In an ACI Prensa article , translated from the original Spanish by CNA , Porras explained: We are the first ones who have to take responsibility. Weve told the government through the spokesman for the bishops conference that its fine that they want to address the Holy Father, but first they should go through us because there is total harmony (between us) and theres nothing theyre going to do there (with the Vatican) thats different.
Porrass courageous words were emboldened by those of the recently retired Cardinal Archbishop of Caracas, Jorge Urosa Savino, who stated categorically a few days ago that Maduro and his corrupt administration absolutely must step down ( deben abandonar el poder) in order to avoid further death, destruction, and the exodus of Venezuelans from their nation.
A Venezuelan priest in Rome, and current student scholarship recipient of the Acton Institute at the Pontifical Lateran University, agreed with both of the Venezuelan cardinals tough stances. Rev. Alberto Marquez, from the Archdiocese of Valencia, said that any mediation with Maduro and the Pope must occur through the Venezuelan bishops, because they actually have the best strategies and means to offer humanitarian assistance which is now being blocked at the Colombian border by tanker trucks and fences.
I lost my own uncle last week who failed to receive his ordinary pharmaceuticals, he said.
The Churchs aid is much better than what the State or any public system can offerand with immediate effect, Marquez said. It is really a question of proper application of the Churchs own teaching on subsidiarity whereby local crises must be addressed and are best remedied by those who are closest to the problems themselves.
Our bishops are nearer to the problems at hand and can, therefore, propose better solutions than distant authorities, he said.
Lastly, Marquez said that Cardinal Porras is surely concerned that the Venezuelan government is trying to buy time with yet another vain attempt to bring the Vatican or Pope into new negotiations which the Cardinal himself said merely amounted to mockery of the Catholic Church in the recent past.
For Porras, there is surely nothing left to negotiate right now. And just like his brother Cardinal Urosa, he believes that Maduro and his evil regime simply must leave before any concrete improvement can be made to our countrys tragic circumstances, he said.
A federal judge sentenced a former N.C. Board of Elections official to two months in federal prison followed by a year of supervised release for assisting a non-citizen to vote.U.S. Attorney Robert Higdon announced Friday Judge Louise Wood Flanagan also ordered Wake County resident Denslo Allen Paige, 66, to pay a $250 fine and $25 special assessment.The case is part of a larger action involving 19 foreign nationals indicted last by a grand jury in Wilmington.Higdon also is the U.S. attorney to whom the state elections board sent its report on absentee ballot irregularities in Pender County during the 2016 election cycle. He has not commented on the status of that investigation. It came to light as part of further absentee ballot mischief in the 2018 9th U.S. Congressional District race unofficially won by Republican Mark Harris. The election has not been certified, and will be the subject of an evidentiary hearing set for Feb. 18.Court records show Paige, who was a paid election worker, advised Guadalupe Espinosa-Pena, a Mexican citizen, to register and vote in the 2016 general election. She knew Espinosa-Pena, her boyfriend, was a legal permanent resident, but not a U.S. citizen, according to news reports at the time. Espinosa-Pena had been denied naturalization twice.Paige urged him to vote to make his voice heard, and she assisted him in completing his voter registration form. He then voted at a Wake County polling site. Falsely claiming U.S. citizenship to vote carries a maximum sentence of six years' imprisonment and a $350,000 fine.The voter registration form's first question asks, "Are you a citizen of the United States of America?" It instructs not to submit the form if the no box is checked.Paige said she intentionally left the citizenship question unanswered, and submitted the form to a Board of Elections official. Someone at the Board of Elections checked yes in the citizenship block.The investigation by several federal agencies continues.
President Trump is moving toward his 2024 candidacy as per all indications from his enlightening address to the NC GOP on June 5, 2021. Considering this political vector as a distinct possibility: What is your electoral pleasure as an integral cog in this Representative Republic?
No Vote: Mr. Trump will never be president again as we boldly march toward a Socialist society.
Yes Vote: Mr. Trump was the best president since Ronald Reagan, and we need a real leader, who is fully cognitive of that responsibility in these tumultuous times..
Whiskey on ice in a cut glass: Above. photo by Stan Deatherage Click image to expand.
North Carolina lawmakers still wringing their hands over reforming the state's archaic and draconian liquor-control system should look to Kentucky as an example of what a legislature can do to boost tourism, nurture entrepreneurship, and promote innovation.Ten years ago, the Kentucky Distillers Association says, leaders of that state's signature bourbon and distilled spirits industry poured whiskey on the Capitol steps to protest the latest tax hike on spirits.Today, a KDA news release says, they are pouring bourbon inside the Capitol to toast the industry's epic turnaround.the release says.The number of distilleries in Kentucky has more than tripled to 68 in that time; the number of counties with a distillery has quadrupled to 32; and there are now nearly two barrels of spirits for every person in the commonwealth - valued at $3 billion, three times more than 2009.In 2005, North Carolina had one distillery. Now it has almost 60. Although the state has tweaked the laws enforced by the N.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission - allowing distillers to sell five bottles per customer per year from their distilleries, for example - most of the restrictive Prohibition-era rules remain.Eric Gregory, KDA president, applauded Kentucky legislative leaders for their work to modernize archaic alcohol laws, reform outdated tourism restrictions, and tackle the discriminatory tax that only Kentucky levies on aging whiskey barrels.Gregory said in the release. "By working together to remove unnecessary and artificial barriers to business, we have transformed Kentucky bourbon from an industry once viewed as 'sin' to one that truly defines signature impact, expansion, and global image.Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said distilleries - from craft startups to multi-national players - create jobs and investment throughout the state. The industry also draws related businesses, such as cooperages, marketing, retailers, and restaurants while spurring tourism and economic vibrancy statewide.Kentucky House Speaker David Osborne and Rep. Chad McCoy, both Republicans, were instrumental in the past two major pieces of legislation to benefit bourbon tourism - House Bill 100, which authorized vintage spirits sales in 2017, and H.B. 400 in 2018 that gives visitors the ability to ship bottles home.Rick Robinson, chairman of the KDA's board and a vice president for Campari America, also highlighted Senate Bill 11 from 2016 and thanked its sponsor, Republican Sen. John Schickel.Robinson said.The biennial study was conducted by economists Paul Coomes and Barry Kornstein, formerly of the University of Louisville, in conjunction with the Kentucky Distillers' Association.In the study, Coomes noted their analysis is based on data collected before retaliatory tariffs on whiskey exports were imposed by the European Union, China, Canada, Mexico and Turkey. Therefore, the impact on Kentucky distilling is not yet detectable in this report.Kentucky Republican Rep. Matt Koch this week filed House Bill 200 that would allow distilleries to sell exclusive bottles at their gift shops, a privilege that wine and beer already enjoy, as well as distillers in most other states and around the world, the release says.Koch said the measure would increase visitors to the famous Kentucky Bourbon Trail tour and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour."Tourists want to buy something at our distilleries that they can't get anywhere else," Koch said. "This will increase attendance and pour more revenue into our local communities, especially with repeat visitors who will come year after year to get those rare offerings."Gregory said Bourbon tourists made a record 1.4 million distillery stops in 2018 - a 370 percent increase over the past 10 years. The Kentucky Bourbon Trail logged 1 million visits for the first time since its creation in 1999.The KBT Craft Tour tallied 340,000 distillery stops, the most since its founding in 2012.Kentucky House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins, a Democrat, helped incentivize the growth in the Kentucky Bourbon Trail by sponsoring the Tourism Development Act in 1996, which provided tax incentives for new tourism investments.Study highlights: Distilling contributes $8.6 billion to Kentucky's economy, a 60 percent increase since 2009. More than 20,120 people owe their paychecks to the spirits industry, a 104 percent increase in the past 10 years and 2,600 more since 2016. Distilleries are in the middle of a $2.3 billion building boom, nearly twice the projection from the previous study in 2017. Distilling has the second highest job multiplier in the state when it comes to total number of jobs and spin-off factor, behind only light truck and utility vehicle manufacturing. If the industry continues to grow at this rate, economic output will exceed $10 billion by 2020, with employment more than 24,000, with payroll over $1.2 billion. The number of distilleries has grown to 68, a 258 percent increase in the last 10 years. More than $235 million in tax revenue for local and state governments is generated by spirits production and consumption, an 88 percent increase since 2009. Kentucky exported more than $450 million in bourbon and other spirits in 2017; the export value has tripled in the past 20 years.
N. Oregon Coast's Tillamook County Abuzz with Events: Manzanita, Pacific City, Tillamook, Nehalem
Published 02/09/2019 at 4:23 AM PDT
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff
(Pacific City, Oregon) From Manzanita to Pacific City, the Tillamook Coast area of the north Oregon coast provides a bevy of fun and intriguing events throughout February and March. Its where the indoors events begin to morph into outdoor happenings, including a load of music, food, arts, and nature fun. A literary event here or there, a food feast, some music scattered about, and the rush of whale watching season and the SOLVE beach cleanup dot the seascape of this part of the Oregon coast.
Check out the preview of activities in the next two months.
Most Fridays. Garibaldi Jam. Mostly old-time favorites and Country-Western standards using their complete sound system, with the audience cutting a rug on the large dance floor while others sit and enjoy, toes a-tapping. No admission fee is charged, but donations are always welcome. 6 p.m. Garibaldi Community Hall, 6th St. and Acacia Ave. Garibaldi, Oregon. 503-801-0953.
February 15. Tony Smiley. Raw rhythms with live looping. From rock, hip hop, reggae, tribal fusion, 80s and everything in between, with a dash of Mongolian throat singing. 9 p.m. Cover. San Dune Pub, 127 Laneda Avenue. Manzanita, Oregon.
Through February 17. Beer for Breakfast. A group of middle-aged buddies reunite for a guys weekend in a snowed-in cabin to eat chili, drink beer, and relive the good old days. $15. 7 p.m. and 2 p.m. on matinee days. Tillamook, Oregon. https://app.arts-people.com/index.php?ticketing=tap02. 503-812-0275
February 22. Manzanita Film Series. Mostly documentaries from the Northwest Film School in Portland. 7:30 pm. $5 admission charge. Refreshments will be available for purchase. Hoffman Center for the Arts. 594 Laneda Ave. Manzanita, Oregon.
February 23. Celebrate the Bounty of the Bays with Tillamook Estuaries Partnership. TEP is celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Tillamook Bays designation as a Bay of National Significance.You are invited to show your love for the estuaries and watersheds of Tillamook County and join in on a scrumptious feast that highlights amazing locally-sourced cuisine. 4 p.m. 205 Main Ave. Tillamook, Oregon. 503-322-2222. www.tbnep.org.
February 23. Tillamook Downtown District Artwalk. Each month a variety of merchants will host local artists in a dynamic and evolving art show. 1 p.m. Tillamook, Oregon. www.artaccelerated.org.
February 23. Three Capes Relay. From Cape Meares to Cape Kiwanda, running solo or in teams of 2 or 5 through the beautiful Oregon coast scenery to end here in Pacific City, Oregon. This one day race helps to support the three legs of Ultimook non-profit organization; Tillamook Distance Project, Ultimook Running Camp, and Ultimook Track Club. Cape Meares, Oregon. Www.yourlittlebeachtown.com.
February 25. Derik Nelson & Family. Musical concert. 7 p.m. Don Whitney Auditorium. 2605 12th St, Tillamook, Oregon. https://deriknelson.com/home.
March 2. Correo Aereo Trio. Award-winning acoustic multi-instrumental and vocal Latin/World Music Trio. They perform traditional music of Latin America: especially of Venezuela, Argentina & Mexico. 7 p.m. $15. Hoffman Center For The Arts. 594 Laneda Avenue. Manzanita, Oregon. https://hoffmanarts.org
March 8 - 9. Tillamook County Fairgrounds Vintage Flea Market & Spring Bazaar. Many different vendors that will be selling a wide variety of items. Noon. Tillamook County Fairgrounds. Tillamook, Oregon. 503-842-2272. www.tillamookfair.com.
March 9. Literary Tea with Myrna Daly. Her book Night Falls in the Gorge is a Pacific Northwest mystery. 3:30 p.m. La Tea Da Tea Room, 904 Main Ave, Tillamook, Oregon. 503-842-5447.
March 9. Sedona Fire Band Songs and Meaning Show. This event will be a night of music, poetry and storytelling that will take you on a theatrical and musical journey. 7 p.m. $10 - $15. St. Catherines Episcopal Church, 36335 N Hwy 101, Nehalem, Oregon.
March 23. Tillamook Downtown District Artwalk. Each month a variety of merchants will host local artists in a dynamic and evolving art show. 1 p.m. Tillamook, Oregon. www.artaccelerated.org
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Chad said the event was an opportunity for people with special needs "to know how truly special they are" and to know that they are "loved by God." Chad said early in the night that he anticipated around 700 people at the event.
"Once you've done this, you can't not do it again," Chad said of the event.
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Guest Anthony Granato eyed the room fervently at one point for his girlfriend, Julianna Johnson. Anthony's mother, Kim Granato, said she was just there to see Anthony off and that it was important that her son be there independently with Julianna, Anthony's buddy Lucas Ferrin and other friends.
Lucas, who knew Anthony from his time as a special education aide at Auburn High School through Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES, said he was enjoying the event.
"They just go have fun, they don't care who's watching," Lucas said of the guests.
The sounds of everyone from ABBA to Lady Gaga to Elvis Presley could be heard, with people swarming the dance floor. Two of the several people cutting a rug were Michael Nidison and Kathryn Smithler. Michael, who shook hands with people throughout the night, said why he wanted to come to the event.
"To dance!" Michael said with a mile-wide grin while raising his hands to his chest.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said Lifes most urgent and persistent question is: What are you doing for others?
The City of Auburn RSVP program devoted two weeks during the month of January to doing for others in a special way. The area food pantries receive much support during the holidays and then January arrives. The holiday decorations are put away but people are still hungry and in need of assistance. RSVP wanted to help
RSVP sponsored their 10th Annual MLK Food Drive to help the 6 food pantries and soup kitchens of the Auburn area served by RSVP volunteers, replenish their shelves.
I am officially a Florida resident these days but I have spent many years in the Auburn area. Recently, due to double pneumonia, I spent 10 days in Auburn Community Hospital where I also happened to have been born many decades ago. I have heard many adverse comments over the years about our hometown hospital, but I am moved to comment that my care, on 2nd Memorial, was outstanding. My three doctors, Dr. Mikael, Dr. Kalatoudis and Dr. Zygmont, were extremely compassionate and provided the best care I could possibly have received. My many nurses, including Carmen, Chelsea, Diane, C. J., Michele, Cheryl, Karen, Denise, Kathy, Marissa, Sarah, Kaileigh, Maureen, Jacenta, Devin, Steve, Barbie, Marian, Dave, Casey and Adam, were friendly, encouraging, caring and, quite frankly, extraordinary, in providing for every aspect of my care and comfort. Everyone in Cayuga County should be happy and proud to have such an exceptional hospital in their community.
The US diplomat leading talks with the Taliban said Friday he hoped to see a peace deal in place before Afghanistan's July presidential elections, though he cautioned he did not trust America's long-time adversary. Zalmay Khalilzad, a former ambassador to Afghanistan who has spoken extensively with the Taliban in recent weeks, also stressed that any US troop withdrawal would be dependent on conditions on the ground, and not on any particular timetable. The talks come as President Donald Trump pushes to end the Afghanistan conflict, where about 14,000 US troops are still deployed and which has seen countless thousands of civilian and military deaths. "The timing of a peace settlement from our point of view is the sooner is better," Khalilzad told an audience at the US Institute of Peace in Washington. "There is an election, I know, that makes reaching a peace agreement particularly complicated. But it will be better for Afghanistan if we could get a peace agreement before the election." Elections in Afghanistan had originally been slated for April 20 but were postponed for three months as peace talks progressed. President Ashraf Ghani, who was elected in a fraud-tainted poll in 2014, is seeking a second term. - 'Red line' - Khalilzad last week announced a "draft framework" for a peace deal, though he warned that major hurdles remain. Critics are skeptical for a number of reasons, primarily because talks have not yet included the Afghan government, which the Taliban considers US-backed puppets. Intra-Afghan negotiations are a "key objective" for the US, Khalilzad said, noting the Taliban and the Afghan government "must sit across the table and come to an agreement." Additionally, the Taliban have promised not to shelter foreign extremists, but experts say they cannot be trusted and even now are helping to hide such militants. Khalilzad repeatedly stressed the US would not leave Afghanistan without enforcement mechanisms in place to ensure Afghanistan does not become a jihadist safe haven. "Our vision long term is for an Afghanistan that's entirely sovereign, independent. If they decide that they don't want to have foreign troops, we don't want to stay where we are not wanted -- provided that there is no threat to our national security from Afghanistan," Khalilzad said. "That is a red line, and I think that's a policy of the (US) president as well." Khalilzad has in recent months held multiple meetings with Taliban officials in Qatar, where the group's senior leaders have an office in the capital Doha. The Taliban told him they realize Afghanistan is different from when they were ousted in 2001 -- when the hardline Islamists subjugated women, barred girls from school and wiped out any number of freedoms. "They understand that they cannot go back" to how things were, the US negotiator said. "We do not trust the words of any of the protagonists," Khalilzad added, noting that US-backed values such as press freedom and women's rights "must be respected." "Nothing is agreed to until everything has been agreed to," he said. - Moscow talks - Taliban leaders this week spent two days in talks in Moscow for an extraordinary summit that saw Afghan political figures from outside the government meeting with former sworn enemies. All parties agreed to support the Doha peace talks with US negotiators that Trump on Tuesday described as "constructive." A statement issued on behalf of all parties also agreed on the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan. But such a move is up to the Americans. Khalilzad on Thursday took to Twitter to deny a Taliban claim that a withdrawal timetable was in place. While the US is not seeking permanent military bases in Afghanistan, "our presence is conditions-based, our withdrawal is conditions-based," he told the Washington audience, speaking with a scratchy voice after "42 hours of talking with the Taliban." He added that he welcomed Moscow's role in talks. "I am not seeking to monopolize the diplomacy of peace," he said, and also offered rare praise to Pakistan, which he credited for helping push the Taliban to the negotiating table. Afghanistan has suffered nearly constant conflict since the Soviet invasion of 1979, which was followed by civil war, the Taliban regime, and the US invasion in late 2001. Khalilzad was a major player in George W. Bush's administration when the United States first invaded Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks. US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington US Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad participates in a discussion on "The Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan" at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, DC, on February 8, 2019 US troops deployment and death toll in Afghanistan since 2001.
There was still some hard work to be done ahead of the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a Washington envoy said Saturday after three days of talks in Pyongyang. Stephen Biegun, the US Special Representative for North Korea, said preparatory talks had been productive, but more dialogue was needed ahead of the summit scheduled for Vietnam from February 27-28. Biegun on Saturday briefed South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on his Pyongyang visit, shortly after Trump revealed the summit would take place in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. "We have some hard work to do with the DPRK between now and then," Biegun told Kang, adding: "I'm confident that if both sides stay committed we can make real progress here. Trump announced Hanoi as the location on Twitter, hailing as "very productive" the preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries. "I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said. The State Department said talks during Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula". It also confirmed Biegun had agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the summit. North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with the top brass of the Korean People's Army. As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernize the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks. - Ending the Korean War? - Attention will now focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward denuclearization. Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war." The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South. Experts say the most likely scenario in Vietnam is that the concerned parties -- North and South Korea, the US, and China -- to declare a formal end to the war as a political statement. At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula". But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means. Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV." On Friday Trump tweeted that North Korea will become a "great Economic Powerhouse" under Kim. "He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is," said Trump. But Park Won-gon, a professor at South Korea's Handong University, said Trump's remarks may not align with Pyongyang's current agenda. "What Pyongyang wants now, more than anything, is the lifting of the existing sanctions," Park told AFP. "The idea of being an economic powerhouse may sound too vague and even unrealistic for them at this moment." North Korea, which holds most of the peninsula's mineral resources, was once wealthier than the South, but decades of mismanagement and the demise of its former paymaster the Soviet Union have left it deeply impoverished. In 2017 the UN Security Council banned the North's main exports -- coal and other mineral resources, fisheries and textile products -- to cut off its access to hard currency in response to Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. burs-oh/ska/wd/fox US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun said hard work remains to be done ahead of this month's summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un Last year's landmark summit in Singapore produced a vaguely-worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards 'the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula'
Weeks of public sniggering and indignation culminated Saturday when the British government cancelled a ferry contract it had awarded to a firm with no ships. The island nation's breakup with the European Union took an odd turn in December when it handed the unheralded Seaborne Freight company the 13.8-million ($17.9 million, 15.6-million-euro) deal. It was meant to make sure that cross-Channel trade with its closest trading partners did not grind to a halt if Britain ended up leaving on March 29 without new arrangements in place. Fears of the dreaded "no-deal Brexit" are rising as the clock nears the hour when the United Kingdom ends its 46 years involvement in the European project. The agreement London and Brussels sealed in December is currently stuck in the UK parliament. Many lawmakers oppose it and Prime Minister Theresa May's efforts to get sweeteners from the EU that could help push it over the line are being rebuffed. The Seaborne Freight contract was the smallest of three emergency ferry deals transport secretary Chris Grayling quietly approved over the Christmas break. But it quickly became the most famous -- or perhaps infamous -- when reporters discovered that Seaborne Freight was a startup that had never actually been involved in this line of work. It had no ships and planned to operate from a port not suited for the types of large vessels needed to move stacks of loaded containers across the sea. Grayling's ministry said Saturday that its decision to rip up the deal came after an Irish firm that emerged as a possible supplier of ships for Seaborne Freight changed its mind. "Following the decision of Seaborne Freight's backer, Arklow Shipping, to step back from the deal, it became clear Seaborne would not reach its contractual requirements with the government," the transport ministry said. "We have therefore decided to terminate our agreement." It also stressed that no taxpayer money had been spent. - 'He has to go' - Seaborne Freight has been a source of ridicule and amusement throughout the bleak British winter weeks. Social media comment erupted after someone noticed that parts of its "terms and conditions" appeared to have been copy-pasted from a food delivery store. Grayling's ministry explained that the section had been put there in error. It was soon removed -- but the damage had been done. "Seaborne Freight. No ships, no trading history and website T&Cs copied and pasted from a takeaway delivery site," opposition Labour party deputy leader Tom Watson tweeted at the time. Labour's political assault on Grayling continue on Saturday with calls for him to resign or be sacked. "Whilst Theresa May needs the few friends she has right now, we cannot have this incompetent transport secretary carry on heaping humiliation after humiliation on our country," Labour transport pointman Andy McDonald said. "He has to go." The Telegraph newspaper said the Irish shipping company stepped in two weeks ago but abruptly withdrew Friday. There has been no official explanation for its change of heart. But Brexit backing MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said gravely that "one has to hope the Irish government has not lent on or put any pressure on Arklow to persuade it to pull out". "That would be a very unfriendly act of a neighbour to obstruct no deal preparations," he said. The government, worried about cross-Channel freight after Brexit, signed up a ferry company which didn't actually own ships Chris Grayling is facing calls to step down but, on the upside, the ferry episode provided weeks of amusement as Britain prepares for Brexit
A Tunisian court has sentenced seven jihadists to life in prison over attacks at a museum and on a beach in 2015 that killed 60 people, many of them British tourists, prosecutors said on Saturday. Dozens of defendants faced two separate trials over the closely linked shootings, which occurred just months apart in Tunis and Sousse, but many were acquitted. Four were sentenced to life in prison for the shooting rampage at a Sousse tourist resort in June 2015, which killed 38 people, mostly British tourists. Five other defendants in the Sousse case were handed jail terms ranging from six months to six years, while 17 were acquitted, prosecution spokesman Sofiene Sliti said. Three were given life sentences for the earlier attack in March 2015 at the capital's Bardo National Museum, in which two gunmen killed 21 foreign tourists and a Tunisian security guard. Others found guilty of links to the Bardo attack were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to 16 years, and a dozen defendants were acquitted, Sliti said. The prosecution will appeal, he added. One of the lawyers for relatives of French victims in the Bardo attack, Gerard Chemla, expressed "enormous bitterness" that the families had not been given more input into the proceedings. He said a live feed of Friday's hearing had brought some degree of comfort but lamented that the relatives of those killed had not been compensated. Geraldine Berger-Stenger, another of the lawyers, said the hearings had not revealed the full truth of what took place. "A page has turned, but this isn't a trial that can satisfy the victims," she said. "There is a taste of unfinished business." Tunisia retains the death penalty for terrorism offences despite carrying out no executions since the 1990s. - 'Duty to IS' - The court heard that the two attacks, both claimed by the Islamic State group (IS), were closely linked. Several defendants pointed to the fugitive Chamseddine Sandi as mastermind of both. According to Tunisian media, Sandi was killed in a US air strike in neighbouring Libya in February 2016, although there has been no confirmation. Among those who were facing trial were six security personnel accused of failing to provide assistance to people in danger during the Sousse attack. That shooting was carried out by Seifeddine Rezgui, who opened fire on a beach before rampaging into a high-end hotel, where he continued to fire a kalashnikov and throw grenades until being shot dead by police. Four French nationals, four Italians, three Japanese and two Spaniards were among those killed in the Bardo attack, before the two gunmen, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, were themselves shot dead. Investigations showed one of the gunmen, Yassine Laabidi -- who was born in 1990 and was from a poor district near Tunis -- had amphetamines in his body. His fellow attacker Jaber Khachnaoui, born in 1994 and from Tunisia's deprived Kasserine region, had travelled to Syria in December 2014 via Libya. One suspect questioned in court, Tunis labourer Mahmoud Kechouri, said he had helped plan the Bardo attack, including preparing mobile phones for Sandi, a neighbour and longtime friend. Kechouri, 33, said he was driven by a "duty to participate in the emergence of the caliphate", that IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed in June 2014 across swathes of territory the jihadists controlled in Iraq and neighbouring Syria. Other defendants accused of helping prepare the attack said they had only discussed ideas with friends. Several alleged they were tortured in detention. - 'Helps turn the page' - Survivors and relatives in France and Belgium, who watched the live feed of Friday's hearing, said it had helped them to turn the page. "It was important for us to see, and especially to hear -- to try to understand the role" of each defendant, said one French survivor. "Arriving at the end of the process will help us to turn the page, even if we can never forget." The Sousse attack, which killed 30 Britons, is also the subject of proceedings in front of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, which is seeking to establish what happened. After holding inquests into the British deaths in January and February 2017, judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith concluded that the response of Tunisian police was "at best shambolic, at worst cowardly". There have been significant improvements in security at Tunisian tourist resorts since the massacre and, in July 2017, Britain lifted its warning against "all but essential travel" to the North African country. The attacks and resulting travel warnings dealt a devastating blow to Tunisia's vital tourism sector from which it has taken time to recover. Since a 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, jihadist attacks in Tunisia have killed dozens of members of the security forces. Thousands of Tunisians have also travelled abroad to join jihadist organisations, according to the United Nations. The court has heard that the two attacks, both claimed by the Islamic State group (IS), were closely linked The shooting rampage at a Sousse tourist resort in June 2015 killed 38 people, mostly British tourists The Sousse attack, which killed 30 Britons, is also the subject of proceedings in front of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, which is seeking to establish what happened As well as leaving many dead, the Bardo and Sousse attacks dealt a devastating blow to Tunisia's vital tourism sector -- although it has begun to recover
President Donald Trump's choice to lead the World Bank is a firebrand critic of the world's largest anti-poverty lender -- an institution he has called wasteful, corrupt and overly generous to China. Those complaints are similar to those voiced by others in the development community. But that does not mean they have found a new ally in David Malpass, the senior US Treasury official who has pledged to reform the bank. Nancy Pelosi, the newly reinstalled Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives, says Trump's choice threatens to "undermine the institution's mission." And Liberia's former minister of public works W. Gyude Moore tweeted that "an incorrigible arsonist will now be our fire chief." Malpass' many criticisms of the Washington-based lender certainly echo familiar refrains. Many activists have long called for reforms at the World Bank, citing a litany of alleged human rights failures and scandals, and saying projects all too often left the world's poorest even worse off, harmed the environment or entrenched the power of oligarchies and despots. Those critics might well have nodded their heads in accord in 2017 when Malpass said international financial institutions such as the World Bank "spend a lot of money" but are "not very efficient." "They are often corrupt in their lending practices and they don't get the benefit to the actual people in the countries," he said in congressional testimony. When pressed for examples, he cited situations in Venezuela and South Africa, countries that do not have programs with the World Bank. Internal audits and outside reports have, however, tied World Bank funds to forced labor in Uzbekistan, death squads in Honduras and a Chadian oil pipeline that enriched the undemocratic local government all while child mortality rose, to name just a few examples. So is Malpass a kindred spirit? Analysts and activists say probably not. - 'Fundamentally opposed'? - David Pred, head of Inclusive Development International, which has accused the World Bank of back-door financing for coal-fired energy in Asia that is likely to spur global warming, strongly questioned Trump's choice. "While some of Malpass' past critiques of the World Bank may be valid, the former chief economist of a financial institution whose recklessness helped blow up the global economy in 2008 is one of the last people we can count on to make the bank more accountable," he told AFP. Malpass served as chief economist at the former investment bank Bear Stearns, whose collapse marked the start of the global financial crisis. To be sure, Malpass' nomination has delighted some observers, including the World Bank's conservative critics. A Wall Street Journal editorial called Malpass, himself a long-time contributor, "the best man to run" an institution whose operations he well understands. With a long career in development economics, Malpass has worked to "wean" the increasingly wealthy and ambitious China off World Bank financing as it pursued its ambitious "Belt and Road" infrastructure initiative across multiple continents, the newspaper said. The Economist likewise said US allies could be "relieved" that Trump had chosen one of his administration's "few remaining grown-ups" to be its next president, calling his reform efforts "mostly unobjectionable and reassuringly unoriginal." But elsewhere Malpass is not viewed simply as a critic. Moore, the former Liberian minister, told AFP that Malpass' opposition to lending to China could be incompatible with the bank's very business model. Returns from those loans provide helps to fund for assistance to low-income countries, many of which are now concentrated in Africa, he said. "He's never put forth an alternative about how the bank is going to grow its reserves," Moore said. "To have a person who is fundamentally opposed to the way the bank does business raises questions for me and is alarming." - 'Drop in the bucket' - The bank did not respond to Malpass' criticism in 2017, but it touts the precipitous drop in extreme global poverty -- which it says fell to 10 percent from 36 percent between 1990 and 2015 -- as evidence of its success. The global lender also routinely blacklists corrupt companies and says it scrutinizes projects for corruption risk. Malpass told reporters last week that the bank had changed since his 2017 testimony. "There were criticisms that I had that were addressed in the reform package" of 2018, he said, adding that he wanted to focus on the bank's "core mission" of poverty eradication. Yet Elana Berger, executive director of the Bank Information Center, which scrutinizes World Bank lending and shares some of Malpass' concerns, remains dubious. "I agree that the World Bank frequently falls short of achieving its mission because its projects are very often not well targeted" towards the goal of poverty reduction, she told AFP. But she said it was unclear whether Malpass shares the bank's goals. For instance, in accepting Trump's nomination last week, Malpass hailed the bank's new Saudi-supported Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, spearheaded by the president's daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump. Berger said that $1 billion fund represented "a drop in the bucket" compared to the billions the bank spends in a given year. The bank's board will accept nominations through mid-March, but under an unwritten rule Washington has anointed the World Bank's president since its creation following World War II -- a custom that faces mounting opposition. With Donald Trump's choice of David Malpass to head the World Bank, another major institution will likely be led by one of its chief ideological oponents Environmentalists in the Philippines call on the World Bank in 2014 to stop funding power plants using dirty fuel The bank touts a global decline in poverty as evidence of its successes
Ireland's World Player of the Year Johnny Sexton went off injured midway through the first-half of their Six Nations clash with Scotland at Murrayfield. The 33-year-old fly-half's enforced substitution -- after taking several hefty tackles early on -- dealt a huge blow to the defending champions hopes of bouncing back following their 32-20 defeat by England last Saturday in Dublin. Sexton, who was replaced by Joey Carbery, had been pivotal in setting up Ireland's second try by Jacob Stockdale, but as an indication all was not well, Conor Murray took the conversion. Scotland also lost a key player with full-back Stuart Hogg going off with a shoulder injury. Unlike the Irish, the Scots opened their campaign with a victory, beating Italy at Murrayfield last weekend. One consolation for the teams is that Sexton and Hogg have two weeks to recover as the tournament takes a break next weekend. Ireland's World Player of the Year Johnny Sexton had to go off with an injury in the 24th minute of their Six Nations clash with Scotland
A Mexican radio journalist was shot dead Saturday in a restaurant in Tabasco state, east of the capital, the latest victim in what has become one of the world's deadliest countries for the press. Jesus Ramos Rodriguez was killed in the town of Emiliano Zapata, an official from the local prosecutor's office told AFP. According to local media, Ramos had hosted a news bulletin for the 99.9 FM radio station for more than two decades. The El Universal daily quoted witnesses as saying his assailant got out of a car and headed straight towards him, shooting him more than eight times at point blank range. Also weeks after a community radio station director was murdered in the northern state of Baja California Sur, in the first such case of 2019. Rafael Murua, who had received death threats for his work, was found dead in a ditch on January 20, after being reported missing. Murua, 34, had been under the Mexican government's protection program for journalists and rights activists. Racked by violent crime linked to the country's drug war and fueled by political corruption, Mexico has registered more than 100 journalist murders since 2000, with 10 killed last year alone. In December 2018, watchdog group Reporters Without Borders ranked Mexico the third-most-dangerous country for reporters after war-torn Afghanistan and Syria. The vast majority of cases have gone unpunished -- as do more than 90 percent of violent crimes in Mexico. Pictures of journalists murdered in Mexico are displayed during a May 2017 protest in Mexico City "140 Journalists Murdered in MX (Mexico)" reads the words painted on the Mexico-US border fence section in Tijuana, Mexico in May 2018 Mourners surround the casket of Mexican radio journalist Juan Carlos Huerta, shot dead in May 2018 in Tabasco state - the same state where radio journalist Jesus Ramos Rodriguez was killed in February 2019
There was still some hard work to be done ahead of the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a Washington envoy said on Saturday. Stephen Biegun, the US Special Representative for North Korea, said three days of preparatory talks in Pyongyang that ended Friday had been productive, but more dialogue was needed ahead of the summit scheduled for Vietnam from February 27-28. Biegun on Saturday briefed South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa on his Pyongyang visit, also confirming the summit would be held in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. "We have some hard work to do with the DPRK," Biegun told Kang, adding: "I'm confident that if both sides stay committed we can make real progress here. "We don't know where it's going to go, but we are in the midst of a conversation ... our discussions (with Pyongyang) were productive." Kang told Biegun that the US had South Korea's "full support" for the summit. The US State Department said Biegun will meet again with Pyongyang officials ahead of the Trump-Kim talks Trump earlier announced Hanoi as the venue in a tweet, saying: "I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace." At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula". But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means. Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV". On Friday Trump tweeted that North Korea will become a "great Economic Powerhouse" under Kim. "He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is," said Trump. US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun says he was confident progress was being made ahead of the summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un
Five paintings attributed to Adolf Hitler failed to find buyers at an auction Saturday held amid anger at the sale of Nazi memorabilia. High starting prices of between 19,000 and 45,000 euros ($21,000 and $50,000) and lingering suspicions about the authenticity of the artworks were thought to have scared off potential buyers. The Weidler auction house did not comment on the reasons for the failure but said the paintings could yet be sold at a later date. Nuremberg's mayor Ulrich Maly had earlier condemned the sale as being "in bad taste". Among the items that failed to sell were a mountain lake view and a painting of a wicker armchair with a swastika symbol presumed to have belonged to the late Nazi dictator. The Weidler auction house held the "special sale" in Nuremberg, the city in which Nazi war criminals were tried in 1945. Days before the sale a number of the artworks were withdrawn on suspicion they were fakes with prosecutors stepping in. Sales of alleged artworks by Hitler -- who for a time tried to make a living as an artist in his native Austria -- regularly spark outrage that collectors are willing to pay high prices for art linked to the country's Nazi past. "There's a long tradition of this trade in devotional objects linked to Nazism," Stephan Klingen of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich told AFP. "Every time there's a media buzz about it... and the prices they're bringing in have been rising constantly. Personally, that's something that quite annoys me." - 'Ambitious amateur' - In Germany, public displays of Nazi symbols are illegal but exceptions can be made, in educational or historic contexts for instance. To comply with the law, the auction house pixellated the swastikas on the wicker chair and a blue-and-white Meissen porcelain vase in catalogue photos, and covered them up on-site. But none of the paintings included any of the totalitarian party's insignias. According to Klingen, Hitler had the style of "a moderately ambitious amateur" but his creations did not stand out from "hundreds of thousands" of comparable works from the period -- making their authenticity especially hard to verify. The watercolours, drawings and paintings bearing "Hitler" signatures featured views of Vienna or Nuremberg, female nudes and still life works, the auction house said. They were offered by 23 different owners. Prosecutors on Wednesday collected 63 artworks from the Weidler premises bearing the signature "A.H." or "A. Hitler", including some not slated to go under the hammer. Nuremberg-Fuerth prosecutor's office said it had opened an investigation against persons unknown "on suspicion of falsifying documents and attempted fraud", chief prosecutor Antje Gabriels-Gorsolke told AFP. "If they turn out to be fakes, we will then try to determine who knew what in the chain of ownership," she said. Weidler said in a statement that the paintings' withdrawal from sale did "not automatically mean they are fakes". All but five of the paintings were withdrawn from the auction after doubts were raised about their authenticity Hitler's work had the style of a 'slightly ambitious amateur', says art expert Stephan Klingen of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich The paintings included landscapes featuring views of Vienna or Nuremberg
A Canadian landscaper was jailed for life Friday for the murder and sexual mutilation of eight men from Toronto's gay community whose bodies he dismembered and hid in planters. Bruce McArthur, who admitted to the killings last month, will be in his 90s before he is eligible for parole from eight concurrent 25-year sentences. Ontario Superior Court Justice John McMahon said he would likely never be released. The Toronto serial killings shocked Canada and its gay community, with mayor John Tory calling McArthur "a monster who preyed on the city." The 67-year-old killer sat quietly hunched over, hands folded in his lap, as a row of police detectives -- whose investigation unfolded over the course of last year to become Toronto's largest ever -- watched from a row of seats directly behind him. McArthur's victims were a former lover, two Afghan immigrants, two refugees from Sri Lanka and another from Iran, a Turkish national, and a homeless sex worker. All went missing between 2010 and 2017. The judge noted that McArthur had shown no remorse for having preyed on vulnerable men on the margins of society, some of whom were struggling with drug addictions and their hidden sexuality. "The ability to decapitate, dismember his victims and do it repeatedly, is pure evil," he said. When police raided the killer's apartment in January 2018, they found a young man bound to a bed but unharmed who may well have become the ninth victim, the judge added. The investigation would later take police to dozens of properties where McArthur worked, to be excavated in search of evidence. - 'Despair and fear' - Several members of the gay community told reporters outside the courthouse they were disappointed McArthur did not receive a harsher penalty, while others accepted that he would likely die behind bars. The prosecution had asked for a minimum 50-year prison term. This "horrific" case, one man said, has left the close-knit Toronto gay community gripped by "despair and fear." The court heard that McArthur strangled his victims, and that the murders were "sexual in nature." Body parts of seven victims were found hidden inside large planters that McArthur stored at a client's home in midtown Toronto. The remains of an eighth victim were later discovered in a ravine behind the property. Karen Fraser, the owner of the home, who had casually met two of the victims, has said she is "haunted" by the case. - Tracking a serial killer - McArthur first came under suspicion in September 2017 in connection with the disappearance of his lover Andrew Kinsman, but police at first rejected suggestions that a serial killer was prowling Toronto's Gay Village neighborhood. At a press conference, lead investigator Detective Hank Idsinga said the Kinsman murder hadn't fit the profile of McArthur's other victims, and this led to his capture. While investigating his disappearance, police obtained video surveillance footage of Kinsman getting into McArthur's van, where a murder weapon would be found. Authorities also located a calendar belonging to Kinsman which had the entry "Bruce" on the day in June 2017 that he went missing. This would become "a big piece of the evidence," Idsinga said. "In hindsight, (Kinsmen) left the name of his killer on his calendar." In January 2018, police moved to arrest McArthur after seeing a young man enter his home. On his computer they would uncover an empty digital folder with his first name -- "John" -- akin to others created for each of his victims to store images. Prosecutors said McArthur snapped photos of the men before and after killing them, staging their corpses in poses, for example, lying on a fur coat, with an unlit cigar in their mouth, and their eyes taped open. He also kept mementos such as jewelry and a notebook, according to an agreed statement of fact. The court document said police uncovered a duffle bag containing duct tape, a surgical glove, rope, zip ties, a bungee cord, and syringes -- evidence pointing to some of the victims being tied up, confined and sexually assaulted prior to their deaths. McArthur had not acknowledged his sexual orientation until he was in his 40s. He suddenly left his wife and two children and moved to Toronto in 1997, where he became well known within the gay community. A psychiatric assessment after his first run-in with the law in 2001 -- for beating a male prostitute with a metal pipe, for which he served no time in prison -- said he likely harbored "underlying resentments" but concluded that he was not dangerous. Shelly Kinsman (R) leaves the Toronto courthouse after Bruce McArthur was sentenced for killing her brother Andrew Kinsman and seven other men Crown attorneys (L-R) Gabriel Ho, Andrew Max, Craig Harper and Michael Cantlon leave the Toronto courthouse after the sentencing of serial killer Bruce McArthur
A 74-year-old Australian tourist had to be airlifted from a cruise liner in Argentina after falling seriously ill.
According to local media, the elderly man collapsed on board the Celebrity Eclipse Solstice-class cruise ship about 485 kilometres from the Port of Rawson in the southern Argentine province of Chubut.
The attending doctor on the cruise, with a reported 2800 passengers on board, said that the tourist had breathing difficulties and very low blood pressure.
The rescue helicopter landed on the bow of the cruise liner to attend to the patient. Source: CEN/Australscope
As the mans condition was worsening, the ships doctor decided that he needed hospital treatment and the Argentine Navy sent out a plane and a rescue chopper.
According to reports, the rescue chopper was transporting paramedics and military personnel while the aircraft was there to support the operation.
After arriving at the ships position, the chopper landed on the helipad on the vessels bow.
The man was then transported by helicopter to hospital. Source: CEN/Australscope
The man was then flown to hospital where staff are seen positioning a stretcher in front of the helicopter.
During the flight, on-board medics cared for the 74-year-old man until hospital staff wheeled him inside and took over.
There have been no further updates on this condition.
Australscope
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A "yellow vest" demonstrator lost his hand during clashes with police outside the main parliament building in Paris on Saturday, witnesses told AFP, during a 13th weekend of anti-government protests across France. Despite a drop in numbers from the massive turnouts of the first demonstrations in November, tens of thousands still turned out in cities across the country to protest against French President Emmanuel Macron's policies. Clashes broke out outside the National Assembly building in Paris after a march from the Champs-Elysees avenue arrived there. While many demonstrators marched peacefully, some masked activists tried to break down barriers outside the parliament while others urinated nearby. Masked men threw projectiles at police, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades. As the march continued, vandals burned rubbish bins as well as cars -- mainly luxury models -- vandalising bus shelters, cash machines and shop windows along the route. One of the torched cars belonged to Sentinelle, France's anti-terrorism unit. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner expressed his "indignation and disgust" in a tweet. A man was being held for questioning over the blaze, Paris prosecutors said. Volunteer medics at the National Assembly told AFP that a man had had his hand ripped off during the clashes between police and protesters. One witness who filmed the incident, 21-year-old Cyprien Royer, said the victim was a yellow jacket photographer taking pictures of people trying to break down the barriers protecting the entrance to the National Assembly. He said he was hit in the calf by a type of stun grenade as the cops attempted to disperse people. "He wanted to bat it away so it didn't explode by his leg -- and it went off when he touched it," he added. Paris police said the man had lost four fingers. Officers had arrested 39 people and 21 were being held in custody, they added on Saturday night. - Disputed turnout - "We mustn't give up," said pensioner Serge Mairesse, from Aubervilliers, just outside Paris. This was the 11th time he had marched with the movement, he told AFP. "We have to win to have more social and fiscal justice in this country," said Mairesse, who was carrying a placard calling for the reimposition of a wealth tax on high earners repealed by Macron. At the march in the southeast city of Lyon, Benard, a 56-year-old computer technician, expressed scepticism about Macron's "great debate" initiative designed to address people's grievances. "It's all very good, the great debate, but we want something concrete: fewer taxes, more purchasing power. We'll be here every Saturday of the year if we have to." Thousands of protesters turned out Saturday in the French Mediterranean ports of Marseille and Montpellier and also in Bordeaux and Toulouse in the southwest -- strongholds of the movements -- as well as several cities in the north and west of France. In the eastern city of Saint Etienne, eight police officers were slightly hurt during clashes with some protesters on the fringes of the march there, local police said. Interior ministry figures put the turnout across France at 51,400, of whom 4,000 marched in Paris, slightly down on the previous week's figures. But last week's official estimates were disputed both by march organisers and contradicted by an independent estimate carried out for news media, which gave a higher estimate. The first yellow vest day of protest in November brought 282,000 people out on to the streets across France, according to government figures. But a YouGov poll of 1,037 people issued on Thursday suggested that nearly two out of three people in France (64 percent) still support the movement. It was carried out on January 30 and 31. French prosecutors are meanwhile investigating a series of attacks on homes belonging to politicians in Macron's Republic on the Move party, ranging from vandalism to arson. No one has been hurt and no individual or group has so far been implicated in the incidents. Government and opposition politicians have condemned the attacks. rfo-kap-jmo-mig/ecl/kaf A car belonging to the French anti-terrorism unit Sentinelle was one several cars torched along the route of the 'yellow vests' march French police have used a range of crowd control weapons blamed by some rights activists for serious injuries to 'yellow vest' protesters 'Yellow vest' protesters turned out again in the French Mediterranean city of Marseille, joining thousands of others across the country
The northeastern US state of New Hampshire's Supreme Court on Friday upheld the conviction of three women who went naked on a beach -- violating a local ordinance. In May 2016, "Free the Nipple" activist Ginger Pierro decided to do some topless yoga on a beach in the city of Locania. But that broke a local law against nudity in public places -- which specifically bans "the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple." Police, alerted by onlookers, arrested her. Then, three days later, activists Kia Sinclair and Heidi Lilley decided to sunbathe topless on another beach in the town to protest Pierro's arrest. The three women were found guilty and slapped with a $100 suspended fine. They then appealed to have their conviction thrown out, arguing they were victims of gender discrimination. But the Supreme Court did not agree. For the majority of the judges, the law "merely reflects the fact that men and women are not fungible with respect to the traditional understanding of what constitutes nudity." The women's lawyer, Dan Hynes, said he was "disappointed" with the ruling -- and argued the court had "effectively condoned making it a crime to be female." His clients now have their sights set on the US Supreme Court. Should the high court take the case, it could clarify a point of some confusion in the US. Only some states formally forbid women from showing their breasts -- with others imposing restrictions, particularly on breastfeeding. Participants and onlookers gather for Go Topless Day, in Venice Beach, California -- the women convicted in New Hampshire are members of the "Free the Nipple" movement
The best site I know for information about Southern Rhone wines is run by a Danish man who loves Chateauneuf du Pape: http://www.chateauneuf.dk/ Chris Kissack, an English physician, has a good grasp of French wines, particuarly those from the Loire Valley and Bordeaux: http://www.thewinedoctor.com/ Jacqueline Friedrich's book on Wines and Foods of the Loire Valley is a favorite of mine. She also runs an interesting, albeit a bit unusual, wine site: http://www.jacquelinefriedrich.com/ Jason looks for best values, mostly at Trader Joe's: http://www.jasonswineblog.com/ Wine Review Online offers columns by several knowledgeable wine lovers: http://www.winereviewonline.com/ Alice Feiring, http://alicefeiring.com/ , has a unique approach to wine and life that I appreciate.Since the early 1980s, Village Corner in Ann Arbor has been my primary source of wine and wine information. The store was closed for awhile but has now re-opened in a new location on Plymouth Road: http://www.villagecorner.com/ And a few other sites give me an insight into what is happening in some of my favorite wine areas: http://vmv.eu/uk/presentation/introduction.php
Why I Blog
If you read this blog fairly regularly, you've probably figured out that it's mainly a diary of the wines I drink every night with dinner. You're invited to share them vicariously with me, if you wish. Artisan Wine on a Budget is admittedly an act of self indulgence. My wines and my views about those wines are ultimately not all that important to anyone but me. The act of writing helps me understand and appreciate the wines on a different level, and I enjoy that. I should make it clear that I am not ranking nor recommending these wines. They are not necessarily the best wines nor the best values. They are simply the wines I enjoy for the reasons that I state. Although I have been tasting and enjoying wines for about 30 years, that doesn't qualify me for any special expertise or critical judgment. In fact, it may have locked me into certain biases that you have probably already discovered. The product of my self indulgence, however, is an ever-growing collection of tasting notes, which I trust will be useful. As a wine lover, I spend a good part of my life searching for tasting notes on wines--those I haven't tasted and those I have. I want to compare notes with others who enjoy wine. When I agree with the taster, whoever it may be, I gloat; when I disagree, I move on to find someone who has tastes closer to my own.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. Foreign minister of Armenia Zohrab Mnatsakanyan on February 8 met with Estonias foreign minister Sven Mikser on the sidelines of his official visit in Tallinn, the Armenian MFA told Armenpress.
The two ministers exchanged views on the possibilities to expand and enrich the multisectoral partnership between the two countries and the agenda of the Armenian-Estonian relations. Both highlighted that the centuries-old friendship between the two peoples serves a firm base for taking practical steps aimed at completely utilizing the existing potential in the bilateral agenda.
Introducing his meetings held during the visit and their outcomes, the Armenian FM attached importance to the inclusion of the representatives of high technologies and e-governance in the delegation which enabled to hold practical discussions with the representatives of the leading Estonian companies of the field. The two FMs agreed that there is a great potential in the fields of high technologies, innovation and creative education, which will open new cooperation prospects by joint efforts.
Touching upon the Armenia-EU ties, FM Mnatsakanyan highlighted the importance of the Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) for the implementation process of ongoing reforms in Armenia and the promotion of the governments development agenda.
The officials also praised the cooperation of the two countries in the international structures.
The meeting also touched upon urgent regional and international issues.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan introduced the Estonian counterpart on Armenias position and approaches on the exclusively peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. He highlighted the importance of creating an atmosphere contributing to peace, emphasizing the necessity to refrain from steps that lead to escalation of the situation and aggressive rhetoric.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. The current uncertainty over the issue of the appointment of the CSTO Secretary General is painful for the organization, but it will not affect the CSTO effectiveness and efficiency, Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Pankin told RIA Novosti.
On November 2 Armenias Yuri Khachaturov was dismissed from the position of the CSTO Secretary General after Armenia applied to the CSTO member states to launch the process of recalling him as criminal case was filed against Khachaturov over the 2008 March 1 unrest in Yerevan. CSTO Deputy Secretary General Valery Semerikov temporarily assumed the duties of the CSTO Secretary General.
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko on December 21 signed a draft decision of the CSTO Collective Security Council on appointing Stanislav Zas, the State Secretary of Security Council of Belarus, as CSTO Secretary General following the working meeting with the latter. Earlier Zas visited Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Russia for the approval of his candidacy. Moreover, Armenia said visit of Stanislav Zas to Yerevan is not planned. Zas said that he is ready to visit Armenia at any time comfortable for the Armenian leadership. He expressed hope for reaching consensus on his appointment.
The fact that after Armenia recalled the CSTO chief we still do not manage to appoint a new Secretary General is painful for the organization, Pankin said, adding that the situation should be solved as soon as possible.
He ruled out the negative impact of the current situation on the CSTO efficiency. The Russian deputy FM said the CSTO is a key tool of maintaining regional peace and stability, therefore it must operate concretely.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. The traffic department of the Georgian ministry of infrastructures told Armenias ministry of transport, communication and information technologies that today, as of 15:00, the Stepantsminda-Lars highway is open for all types of vehicles, the ministry told Armenpress.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. The mission of a humanitarian group consisting of Armenian specialists in Syria has an exclusively important significance, Armen Petrosyan expert on Arabic studies, told a press conference in Armenpress.
He said it is necessary to highlight several key factors in order to understand the importance of this step.
First of all, it is necessary to consider Syria-Armenia or the historic friendly ties between the Armenian and Syrian peoples. The next key factor is the Armenia-Syrian-Armenian community link, and the third one is Armenias international reputation which is very important, the expert said.
He noted that this action continues Armenias quite balanced position on the Syrian conflict with a qualitatively new stage. Petrosyan reminded that back in 2011 when the conflict launched, the Armenian people drew attention on Syria because its a very important country for Armenia.
Syria is a key partner for us in the Arab world, this also must be considered from the perspective of the friendship between the Armenian and Syrian peoples. We should never forget the fact that the Syrian people also helped our people during the tragic events. For us the important is that large number of Armenian community has lived and will continue to live in Syria, he said.
Armenias position in 2011-2018 is the approach of positive neutrality, by mainly maintaining the contact with the Syrian government. This is quite an interesting reality in terms of the international image. According to the expert, the international community will definitely appreciate Armenias such step.
Nowadays the humanity faces quite serious humanitarian disasters, the countries lack resources. Armenia, being a country with relatively limited opportunities, is conducting such an important function. This is a very important factor. The presence of Armenian specialists especially in Aleppo, is a humanitarian step of comprehensive significance which will definitely have a positive impact, he said.
Talking about the possible problems, the expert on Arabic studies said the risky situation is linked with the groups security. There is still a terror threat, because the issue is not solved yet.
But I would like to state that this initiative was announced half a year ago. The fact that the process prolonged for half a year, I suppose, was conditioned by getting security guarantees by the Armenian side. The area where our specialists will carry out activities is greatly safe, he said.
A group consisting of humanitarian de-miners, doctors and Armenian specialists ensuring their safety, a total of 83 people, arrived in Syrias Aleppo on February 8 aimed at providing professional humanitarian support to the Syrian people, Artsrun Hovhannisyan Armenian defense ministry spokesperson, said. The Armenian specialists will carry out humanitarian demining, demining awareness of the population and medical services provision activities in the settlements of Aleppo that are free of military operations. The decision on providing professional humanitarian assistance by Armenia to the Syrian people has been made taking into account the current humanitarian crisis in Syria and especially in Aleppo caused by the military operations, the UN resolutions, the written requests of the Syrian side, as well as the presence of large Armenian community in Aleppo, the spokesperson said.
The deployment, status, functions and security issues of the Armenian specialists in Syria will be settled in accordance with the Armenian legislation. The transportation and provision issues of the Armenian specialists are being carried out by the assistance of the Russian side.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. Four Indian citizens, who have been stranded in Armenia after being defrauded by Indian travel agents, presented the details of the incident after returning back to India, DNA India reported.
The four of them were received by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) parliamentarian Bhagwant Mann at the Delhi airport. The Indian nationals have applied to Mann requesting to bring them back from Armenia.
They were allegedly defrauded by a travel agent and were sent to Armenia on tourist visa after promising work visa.
Earlier the Hindustan Times published an article titled Havent eaten in 5 days, stating that four young Indian nationals from Punjab appeared in difficult situation. A video was released where the Indian nationals say they have not had anything to eat for five days and their landlord demands to leave the house for not paying the rent.
External Affairs Minister of India Sushma Swaraj reacted to the case, stating that the Indian ambassador in Armenia had reached them and was providing all help and assistance.
One of the Indian nationals, Harman Jeet Singh, stated that they came to Armenia in December with a promise of work permit. Within four days we got to know that there is no work for us. We were told that if we get more people to go to Armenia, we will get Rs 50.000 [nearly 340.000 AMD] as a commission, he said, adding that a travel agent in Punjab had taken Rs 400.000 [nearly 2.7 million AMD] from each of them and promised jobs in Armenia.
Another victim Shamsher Singh stated: They lured us and promised jobs with a monthly salary of Rs 40.000 [nearly 275.000 AMD]. But once we came to Armenia, there was no work for us.
MP Bhagwant Mann said he raised the issue in the parliament several times. Sushma Swaraj has also asked the state government to frame laws for the travel agents. I am told that the same agent has sent 7 more people to Armenia on January 31.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had assured Swaraj that appropriate action would be taken against the 6 travel agents accused of sending them to Armenia fraudulently. 2 of the accused have been arrested by the Punjab police in Kapurthala. The remaining suspects have also been found.
Investigation continues.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. The ministry of emergency situations informs that on February 9, as of 10:00, some roads are closed and difficult to pass in Armenia.
The Vardenyas Pass is closed for trailer trucks and is difficult to pass for the remaining vehicles.
Sotk-Karvachar highway is difficult to pass and is covered with clear ice.
Fog is reported in Tavush and Syunik provinces.
Drivers are urged to use winter tires.
According to the information provided by the Georgian authorities, the Stepantsminda-Lars highway is open for all types of vehicles.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. According to the Davos World Economic Forum indicator characterizing the level of market centralization (monopolization), in 2018 Armenia has recorded a significant progress by 9 points and is ranked 19th, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Facebook, reports Armenpress.
This means that the international community acknowledges that we have reached major success in fight against monopolies in 2018. This figure is a key signal for potential investors who can see that Armenia is included in the top 20 countries of the world in terms of anti-monopoly fight, the PM said.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. The four Indian nationals who were stranded in Armenia after being defrauded by Indian travel agents have been sent back to India, according to the Embassy of India in Armenia.
Four Indian citizens from Punjab who were stranded in Armenia have been sent back to India today, the embassy tweeted Friday late afternoon.
In turn, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh had earlier said that he has ordered the Punjab Police Department to closely monitor the investigation.
2 of the 5 accused in the case have been arrested by Kapurthala police. The remaining too will be arrested soon. Punjab Police DGP is personally monitoring the case on my directions, the said on Twitter in response to Indian FM Sushma Swarajs statement that the Chief Minister has promised immediate action on apprehending the fraudulent travel agents in India.
Earlier the Hindustan Times reported that Kapurthala (Punjab) police had booked six people for fraudulently sending the four men to Armenia on tourist visa in December last year after promising work visa.
Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
"A soul collective is a team of beings that together have a specific mission. As part of their mission, they all have different skills and qualities that are needed at particular times. In this regard, they can consciously exchange. They use one human vehicle as a focal point within this reality, with the one being most suited to mission requirements at a particular time occupying the body." (Clive Shane Herrington in "Self-Healing Handbook: The Advanced Handbook of Soul Transformation")
We the Angel-Light Collective/Team have been serving though our person (legal name Angel-Light Love) since the mid-1980s and are based in Texas. We have facilitated the healing and wellbeing of people and animals and places around the world both locally and remotely. We currently serve on a part-time basis. Our multifaceted ministry, Healing Love Lighthouse, became official in 1990.
One of the most mysterious and beautiful things we can experience is Art. That said, the art in which I'm married to and completely obsessed with is Music. Matthew Stewart is an acclaimed performing, touring, writing and recording Artist based in San Francisco California. Having toured North America and Europe at a young age Matthew Stewart is a veteran performer. Matthew draws from many genres that include Folk, Alternative, Classical, Soul and Spanish music.
Blending these styles together so well is what gives Matthew Stewar his unique sound. Ben Howard, Hozier and James Bay are some of the Artists often associated with Matthew Stewart.
Matthew is currently working on an upcoming EP release that will be available summer of 2016. Recorded at the stunning new 25th Street Recording studio in Oakland California with highly acclaimed Producer/Mixer Joe Chiccarelli (Jack White, Beck, The Shins, U2, etc) , he puts it, This is my most accomplished work to date. I couldn't be happier with the sound we were able to produce. I was finally able to capture everything I heard.
Matthew performs regularly in San Francisco Bay Area's top venues, tours nationally and internationally and continues to develop a loyal local and international following. Matthew will continue to play select cities in support of his new release (Sex Was Gold) as well as a Scandinavian tour this fall.
PLEASE NOTE!
Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!
All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!
(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
Books to the Big Screen: Ministry of Fear
PLEASE NOTE!
Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!
All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!
(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
Palmarino Zoccatelli (left) Sputnik
The so-called representative office of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic was opened in Italian Verona. TASS news agency wrote that citing the head of the representative office Palmarino Zoccatelli.
Zoccatelli said that he personally repeatedly visited the conflict zone.
"Our task will be to disseminate truthful information about what is happening in Donbas, which is still ignored by the official media. Our goal is to draw public attention to the problem that remains unresolved. We regularly send our delegations there, including with the participation of the Italian politicians," he said.
As reported, the French court allowed the activities of the so-called "representative center" of the terrorist "Donetsk People's Republic".
Earlier Ukraine's State Security Service detained a man in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region; he appeared to be the informant working for the terrorist organization known as 'DNR' ('Donetsk People's Republic', - 112 International). The SBU press office posted this via Facebook.
The law enforcers found out that the local resident gathered the data on the movement of Ukrainian military vehicles in Kramatorsk. He passed the information to the members of illegal armed formations.
The perpetrator was detained and charged with the creation of a terrorist group.
The pre-trial investigation is underway.
Earlier, the so-called Internal Ministry of Donetsk Peoples Republic refused to issue citizenship to one of the founders of this terrorist group, Andrey Purgin, as Gazeta.ru reported. Andrey Purgin occupied the post of Chairman of Peoples Council of Republic in 2015 and stated that he got the refusal for the issuance of DPR passport. The refusal also concerned his wife; however, she still lives in the territory occupied by the militants and pays taxes.
The Chairman of the political council of Opposition Platform For Life was invited to "Maga" program to talk about problems in Ukraine
The Chairman of the political council of Opposition Platform For Life Viktor Medvedchuk 112.ua
The Chairman of the political council of Opposition Platform For Life Viktor Medvedchuk told how many times he had met with the Russian President Vladimir Putin over the past five years on air of Maga program.
Of course, I never counted, but I should say we have met many, a lot of times. You know, this is communication with such person, the leader of the state, a person known in the whole world There are nuances of awareness of what you say. I always said it, obviously, we do talk about Donbas situation all the time. About the release of people. Moreover, despite some personal relationships, I was trying, and I am trying and I will try to use my opportunities, our relationships and his attitude towards me in the interest of Ukraine. And I have proved that it worked. But not in such amounts, as you say: Well, Medvedchuk is communicating and he wont say anything..., he stated.
It should be noted that on January 29, during the assembly of Opposition Platform For Life Medvedchuk said that Donbas should enjoy the status of autonomy as part of Ukraine. According to him, this will help solve the conflict in the east.
Viktor Medvedchuk, considered a major figure in the political life of Ukraine is well known for his pro-Russian stance and close ties with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In 2018, he acted as the negotiator during the talks on the exchange of captives in Donbas.
Viktor Medvedchuk stated that the negotiations on the exchange in an all for all format are being conducted all the time. In December 2017, the largest exchange by 306 for 74 formula took place.
Thanks to the participation of Viktor Medvedchuk, more than 480 Ukrainian citizens were released.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko together with his counterparts from Lithuania and Poland will visit the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian brigade headquarters (LITPOLUKRBRIG), situated in Lublin, in February this year. The press service of the President of Ukraine reports this.
Such an agreement was arranged at the 26th meeting of the Advisory Committee of the Presidents of Ukraine and the Republic of Poland under the chairmanship of Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Kostiantyn Yelisieiev, and Secretary of State Chief of the Cabinet of the President of the Republic of Poland Krzysztof Szczerski.
An agreement was reached on the participation of President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in the joint visit together with the Presidents of the Republic of Poland and the Republic of Lithuania to the headquarters of the LITPOLUKRBRIG in Lublin, Poland, in February this year, - the report said.
It is emphasized that the parties outlined the importance of intensifying cross-border, economic and investment cooperation between Ukraine and Poland.
In the context of the non-permanent membership of Poland in the UN Security Council, further efforts were discussed to consolidate the international community to provide Ukraine with practical support in countering Russian aggression and the release of Ukrainian prisoners illegally kept by the Russian Federation, including military seamen captured near the Kerch Strait in November 2018, - the report said.
The parties also decided to intensify cooperation on security matters, including energy security, as well as counteraction to the Nord Stream 2 project.
As we reported earlier, the agreement on the creation of the brigade was signed in September 2014. The Ukrainian Parliament ratified the document in February 2015. The HQ was opened in Lublin in early 2016.
The Russian authorities are ready to negotiate with the Netherlands over the crash of the flight MH17 Malaysia Airlines over Donbas in July 2014. This was stated by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Alexander Grushko, reports Interfax news agency.
"Our dialogue has not been interrupted, including at the political level. We consider these issues, we are ready for a conversation, first of all, on the assumption that it will concern such issues as the failure of Ukraine to provide the primary data to the investigation team that conducts this deal in the Netherlands ", said Grushko.
At the same time, the Russian Foreign Ministry declares that Ukraine should be responsible for the fact that it did not close its sky.
We should also talk about the responsibility of Ukraine, which has not closed its space, and all other aspects related to the non-consideration by the Dutch side of the information that we provided them with in The Hague as part of legal cooperation, added Grushko.
By the way, the government of the Netherlands sees no reason for bringing Ukraine to justice for the crash of the MH17 plane in the skies over Donbas for not closing the airspace.
As a result of the clash with the far right attackers, three law enforcement officers injured
Law enforcement officers detained far right who stormed the police department in Kyiv and fought with the police. About this reports the press service of the Kyiv police on Facebook.
The law enforcement officers saw a group of people with covered faces and chevrons of far-right C14 organization, included in the American terrorist base, on Kontraktova Square, Kyiv downtown, where the meeting of president's candidate Yulia Tymoshenko was taking place. They brought rubber-bullet handguns, Teren 4 pepper spray (carrying of which requires special permission), and knives. The police detained them and took them to the police station.
Soon the detainees were released, but the other far-right (not only C14 members) came to storm the police station and fought with law enforcement officers.
As a result of the brawl, three police officers hospitalized with injuries.
C14, the Ukrainian far-right organization, is regularly involved in numerous attacks against civilians, students, journalists, lawyers, social activists, foreigners, minorities, LGBT activists, they often conduct hate crimes and often go unpunished. The organization's leader Yevhen Karas acknowledged the cooperation of Ukraine's Security Service.
C14, which has taken part over the spring in brutal anti-Roma raids with hammers, has recently been a recipient of Ministry of Youth and Sports grants totaling at least $14,000.
Founded in 2010, C14 is named after the 14-word slogan We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children of American Nazi David Lane.
President of Czech Republic Milos Zeman has reproached Czech Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek that he evaluated the issue of Banderites not critically enough during the visit to Ukraine as TV Barrandov reported.
I reproached him that he noted the Banderites issue not enough; I think that he underestimated this phenomenon, the Czech president stated.
Besides, Zeman said at the end of January during the meeting with the senior officials that the issue of glorification of the Banderites really concerns him. President of Czech Senate Jaroslav Kubera stated it.
The work of Petricek was also criticized by the representatives of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia. Head of the political force Vojtech Filip stated after the meeting with Zeman that Mr.President expressed the concern by work of Mr. Petricek and we agreed on it.
Particularly, the communists are not satisfied with not critically enough attitude of Petricek toward the Ukrainian law, which provides the combatant status to people, who participated in all forms of the armed fight for the independence of Ukraine in the 20th century.
Czech Foreign Ministry responded that each country should cope with the difficult pages of the history on its own.
It is not the issue of diplomacy to evaluate and research the history; it is issue of the historians, the ministry said.
In December, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed a law, which expands the list of participants in combat actions by the warriors of a number of forces, which fought for the independence of Ukraine in the 20th century, including the members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and armed units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
President of Czech Republic Milos Zeman had publicly called Prague to officially express the protest against glorification of war criminals by Ukraine.
112 Agency
Viktor Medvedchuk is a guest of the "Maga" program
Petro Maga: Everyone says that Medvedchuk is back in big-league politics.
Viktor Medvedchuk: I have entered politics in the mid-90s. I have gone into politics after being elected as Ukraines MP for the first time (Irshava constituency, Zakarpattia region). I was supported not just by the majority of citizens, but by 94.15%. By the way, no one has yet broken this record on this constituency. Then I was elected again by the system of simple plurality as a member of SDPU (o) (Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United); at the 1998 and 2002 parliamentary elections it won parliamentary seats, since then not, - ed.). I have been always inherent to a consistent position of a man with a certain set of views and worldview. These views today are depicted as part of different caricatures, as you say when people talk about Medvedchuk (people discuss many politicians, and I am not an exception) ... Apparently, hatred, outrage, and disagreement with my position are often expressed by those whose views I do not share and against whom I speak. Yes, I have always opposed radical nationalism, although I believe and I am sure that there is nothing wrong with nationalism. Any state, any nation has its right to an extreme, associated with nationalism. But radical nationalism with its forms of the recent years, beginning with 2013-2014, is something that goes beyond civilized and permissible framework.
By the way, what language did your family speak?
Our family spoke only Russian. Including my father. We used it in everyday life, you know that in Ukrainian families... My family was Ukrainian because we were just living there (Medvedchuk was born in Pochyot, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russian SFSR, Siberia, - ed.), because my father was sent there, and I was born there in 1954. And my father had served a sentence, and in 1952, he was sent to the Krasnoyarsk Krai... I was brought up as a Soviet citizen, a schoolboy, a Komsomol member, a progressive Komsomol member who defended the interests and understood what was happening. I never doubted the correctness of the Soviet government, because when everything was destroyed in 1991 and Ukraine became independent, I was already a professional lawyer who reached certain heights: in 1990, I was elected President of the Union of Lawyers of Ukraine.
You never speak Ukrainian.
(Speaks in Ukrainian) No. I use the Ukrainian language very often, I speak it. Today I am back in politics and as Opposition platform - For life chairman, and when I try to bring to the people my point of view or ideology of our party, I speak Russian. (Continues in Russian) Our political force Opposition Platform - For Life is aimed primarily at protecting the interests of the residents of Ukraines southeast, the Russian-speaking population, and all citizens of Ukraine, who do not put up with the reality, to which the so-called Euro-reformers have brought us during the last five years.
You are pretty sharp in your expressions.
This is a demonstration of integrity and firmness of my position and confidence in it.
What is your position? Call your five main points, please.
My views are principled and consistent in the part of Ukraines todays borders, this is a territory that was once artificially created. If we trace the history of the X-XI centuries, there were 7-8 different states on the territory of modern Ukraine from Kievan Rus, the Golden Horde, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian empire, and the Soviet Union. Other state principles have been inherent in this territory. Building of the state, the formation of society within the framework of this state have taken place under certain conditions, which cannot be reduced to a common denominator. But today we appreciate the fact that we have received such a territory as an independent sovereign state. We should not only be proud of this. We must take this into account. When speaking of all these principles today, the policy of the present-day government in the last five years is aimed at neutralizing some concepts, close for certain segments of the population. We are talking about a modern country in the center of Europe, multi-million country (several tens of millions, surely nobody knows, from 30 to 45), a country in which people go to different churches, speak different languages, a country that in different ways, I emphasize, honors its history someone honors the Great Patriotic War and Victory, someone calls it Second World War; people recognize different heroes...
For five years, you have been negotiating ineffectively on the prisoner exchange. Or at least we dont know about the results.
In fact, the negotiation process should take place outside the cells, apart from journalism, and only its results can be heard to the public.
How many people were released thanks to you?
485 people. Including three people who were released while serving a sentence in the Russian Federation. I mean Savchenko (Nadia Savchenko, Ukrainian MP, currently imprisoned by Ukrainian authorities,- ed.), Afanasyev (testified against Oleg Sentsov, but later refused from his testimony,- ed.), Soloshenko (Afanasyevs grandpa, - ed). 482 are those people who were brought to justice and kept in prisons of Donetsk and Luhansk.
How many people do you think are there?
Today, according to my data, there are (those identified) 55 people there.
You're no match for hype in this regard.
When I released people from Debaltseve in 2015... They have lined up a convoy. A lot of Russian journalists were there, but the Ukrainian ones did not come. And here is our column, a hundred people. I came closer and talked to the guys. I stood together with the representatives of Luhansk and two more people. We were waiting for the miners to arrive in order to check the road; mine clearance has not been conducted there. And we were waiting for a miners dog. A white tank arrived from the village. It drove onto the road, turned around drove away from us. The tank turret began to move in our direction. The head of the Afghan veterans detachment, Luhansk police chief were also there. And the police chief said: Do you know whether they have got their salaries paid? What a story, I said to me. Later, I told this story to some people, some of them laughed. Everything was possible. But despite all this, I believe that if I can, I must do it. And I cannot blame others for not doing this.
In May 2014, Mr. Turchynov sent a lot of MPs there (to Donbas, - 112.international). A lot of them were from there as it was Ukraine. And the task was to meet Gubarev (self-proclaimed People's Governor of "Donetsk People's Republic," -ed.) it was such people's governor. Bolotov (Russian militant leader, known for his involvement in the Donbas War, - ed.)was in Luhansk, he is the sergeant of the Soviet Armed Forces, Afghani veteran; besides, there was Borodai (so-called Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic,-ed.), the citizen of Russia. And they had never met any of them. And then Turchynov asked me. Together with Nestor Shufrych we went there. It happened in the middle of May, right after the referendum on independence. Then we flew to Donetsk and Luhansk from Kyiv by plane. I called that I wanted to meet them. They were messing up for two-three days, and then I called to Moscow, complained about the situation, and they commanded properly. I have arrived there, Borodai came. We were in one of the restaurants of one Donetsk businessman, who lives in Kyiv now. He took out the Makarov pistols. We watched it calmly. We did not feel danger. They said: we respect you. But we hate those, Kyiv authority, from whom you came. We will never return.
You deliberately go to some things that provoke negative information against you. Now you are back in politics. Why?
It would not be correct to say that I have not been in politics before. There was a "Ukrainian choice" public movement. The policy is power. I have not been in power since 2005. I have left on January 21, 2005, after Yushchenko was elected president. And, by the way, not really going [to be involved in politics] today. Speaking about the Opposition Platform - For Life and its participation in parliamentary elections, this question is open for me today. I am ready to do it, but I have not decided for myself to what extent I am ready to do it I understand that there are things that could be done only by me. Not because I am the smartest or the most prepared person here. This is because I have such opportunities. Let us take away the knowledge, intelligence, communication as a resource, as a filter of opportunities. I have been trying to achieve some kind of result since May 2014. I feel and I am sure that we can reach peace. We can negotiate on peace. And I understand everything: here are those barriers, related to me, and the actions of the authorities, consciously or unconsciously, interfere with this. But I still think that this must be completed. This must be accomplished due to only one goal: I live in this country, I am a very wealthy person, I could live in any other country. But I am not going to do this fundamentally. This is my country, my parents are buried here, my family lives here, we feel well here, and most importantly, I feel great here. I understand everything that can happen to me, I understand all the risks and dangers, but I will continue. Not for hype.
You are often accused of monopolizing the entire natural gas market.
Yes, I've read about that.
Do you find it interesting reading something about yourself?
They always say: Why do you read this? And I reply: In order to know. Probably, you want to know who your enemies are? I say: I am not sure that people who write this are my enemies. They are indeed my opponents. And they do envy. Why do I read? I have adapted to this dirt, to this negativity, as one should be strong for this. So that when you see that its a lie, and you understand that you are better than this. This is not true. My wife tells me: You should go to court.
Do you know how many trials I won? Around 30-40 over these years. Do you think its a pleasure for me? No. Dirt is everywhere, and you, as a media representative, you know that dirt spreads and it becomes relevant when it spreads... But I have the power to adapt to this dirt.
What does family mean for you?
This is the most important thing today, and this is what has been formed during the last 5-10 years. We, after all, remember the family in the last place. Work is first. What is the main thing for a man? Work, sports, friends, meetings. At some stage, you understand that power, politics, business are all coming and going. And the family is forever. Wife, children. You understand that everything might happen. Sometimes, unfortunately, friends betray you, although my friends have never betrayed me. And I'm proud of it. But there is still nothing closer than the wife and children.
Sushchenko, illegally held in Russia is called the symbol of the fight for many Ukrainians
Ukrainian political prisoner Roman Sushchenko Ukrinform
The Mission of Ukraine to the North Atlantic Organization supported Roman Sushchenko, the Ukrainian journalist illegally detained in Russia. The press service of the mission reports this on Facebook.
According to the report, the Mission of Ukraine to NATO decided to join the action in support of Sushchenko and to congratulate him on his 50th birthday. They call him the symbol of the fight for many Ukrainians.
We wish him to stay strong and to return home as soon as possible, we wish him to celebrate his next birthday at home with family at his side, - the report said.
As we reported earlier, Ukrinform's Paris-based correspondent Roman Sushchenko was illegally detained on September 30, 2016, in Moscow, where he arrived on a private trip. On October 7, 2016, he was charged with "espionage." Russia's FSB claimed that Sushchenko is a member of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. The Main Intelligence Directorate denied this allegation.
On June 4, 2018, the Moscow City Court sentenced Sushchenko to 12 years in a high-security penal colony. The Supreme Court of Russia upheld the verdict on September 12.
More than 250 times the consular officials visited Ukrainian political prisoners in the places for punishment
Open source
Ukraine has sent Russia hundreds of messages and 300 diplomatic notes demanding to release and to protect the rights and interests of citizens of Ukraine illegally kept in Russia. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine reports this, according to Radio Freedom.
Russia has received over hundreds of messages and 300 diplomatic notes from Ukraine with demands to release and to protect the rights and interests of citizens of Ukraine illegally kept in Russia. More than 250 times the consular officials visited our Ukrainian political prisoners in the places for punishment, the report said.
According to the report, the diplomats provided the political prisoners with the consular and legal consultations, brought them their letters and messages as well as food and the basic necessities.
As we reported earlier, Russia took more than 70 political prisoners of Ukraine, 24 of them were servicemen, who had been detained near Crimea by the Russian militants.
At least 30 persons are kept on the Russian territory and over 40 persons are kept on the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea.
At least 30 persons are kept on the Russian territories and over 40 persons are kept on the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea and Sevastopol
Open source
Russia took more than 70 political prisoners of Ukraine, 24 among them were servicemen, who had been detained near Crimea by the Russian militants. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine reports this, according to Radio Freedom.
Over 70 citizens of Ukraine had been detained by the Russian Federation Forces under falsified politically motivated accusations till February, 6. At least 30 persons are kept on the Russian territories (without taking into account those 24 servicemen of Ukrainian Naval Forces, detained near Kerch Strait) and over 40 persons are kept on the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea and Sevastopol, - the Ministry reported.
As we reported earlier, Ukraines representative to the subgroup on humanitarian issues of the Trilateral Contact Group on settlement of the situation in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukrainian Presidential Envoy for Donbas conflict settlement Iryna Gerashchenko stated Russias representatives to the group and subgroup on humanitarian issues refused from exchange of Russians convicted in Ukraine for Ukrainians illegally kept in Russia.
Russian representatives declined this offer stating that they were waiting for the change of power in Ukraine during the coming elections in 2019.
The lawyer Nikolai Polozov 112 Agency
Four Ukrainian sailors, detained near Kerch Strait, repeatedly claimed they were prisoners of war, as lawyer Mykola Polozov reported on Facebook.
The lawyer clarified that the investigation actions, where Roman Mokriak, Bohdan Nebylytsia, Volodymyr Lisovy, and Yuriy Budzylov participated took place on Friday, February 8.
All of them repeatedly claimed their status as prisoners of war. They refused to testify, although they gave all the information required by Article 17 of the Convention, - Polozov said. He also added that the copies of PACE resolutions had been requested as well during the investigation process.
As we reported earlier, on December 3, the Russian prosecutors officially accused Ukrainian sailors with the 'illegal crossing of the state border' during the attack in the Kerch Strait.
Facing an extension of the sentence term, Ukrainian POWs detained in the Kerch Strait refused to testify in Lefortovo court. Sailors were distributed into six groups, four people in each. On January 15, 2019, Moscow's Lefortovo district court decided to keep 20 Ukrainian sailors in remand until April 24. On January 16, the court extended the detention term for another 4 sailors.
On November 25, the coast guard ships of the Russian Navy attacked the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. Ukrainian ships were rejected passage via the Kerch Strait, Russian coast guards opened aimed fire on them.
All 24 sailors on board were captured and delivered to Moscow; 21 of them were delivered to Lefortovo remand center, and the rest were taken to the hospital of Matrosskaya Tishina prison.
Armed Forces of Ukraine killed six Russian militants and wounded another seven over the period
On Friday, February, 8, one Ukrainian serviceman died, two more were wounded in Donbas conflict zone. The Joint Forces Operation (JFO) HQ reported this on Facebook.
The Russian militants violated the ceasefire regime nine times; they also used Minsk-banned weaponry twice over 24 hours.
In the East group area, the enemy attacked our positions:
twice using the automatic grenade launchers and small arms near Avdiivka town; one sniper had been spotted as well;
using automatic grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms near Vodyane village;
using grenade launchers and heavy machine guns near Pavlopol village.
In the North group area, the enemy attacked our positions with:
heavy machine guns and small arms twice near Krymske village;
the automatic grenade launchers near Zaitseve settlement;
the 120 mm mortar and small arms near Khutir Vilny settlement.
The defensive subdivisions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine opened fire as well to suppress the enemy activity. According to surveillance, six Russian militants were killed and seven more were wounded on February, 8.
Since the midnight on February, 9, no attacks have been spotted.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-06 06:58:59|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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QUITO, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Ecuador has received its first fleet of Chinese-made electric buses designed to modernize urban public transit and improve sustainability in Guayaquil, the country's main port and second most populous city, with some 2 million residents.
The fleet of 20 BYD brand buses arrived in the Port of Manta, in western Manabi province, on Monday, where vice president Otto Sonnenholzner was on hand to receive the units, along with executives of privately-owned transport company Saucin, which purchased them.
The buses "represent more comfortable, higher quality mobility (that is) environmentally friendly (with) zero pollution," said Sonnenholzner.
The arrival of these buses makes Ecuador the second South American country, after Chile, to embrace electric public transit. Chile's capital Santiago has incorporated 100 units into the city's fleet.
The modern air-conditioned buses will serve 10,500 commuters a day in Guayaquil, offering a safer and more convenient ride aboard units equipped with surveillance cameras and wheelchair ramps.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-10 04:38:13|Editor: Chengcheng
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren Saturday officially announced that she is running for the president of the United States.
Warren made the announcement at an event in Lawrence in her home state of Massachusetts, where she took a shot at the current administration and the nation's politics.
"We need to take power in Washington away from the wealthy and well-connected and put it back in the hands of the people where it belongs," she said in her speech.
The campaign of Warren, who's on the Democratic Party's left flank, will focus on economic equality, government accountability and reining in big corporations.
She pledged on Saturday to "break up monopolies when they choke off competition" and "take on Wall Street banks so that the big banks can never again threaten the security of our economy."
Warren has faced questions about her past claims of Native American ancestry. Her decision last year to release the results of a DNA test intended to prove her claims drew criticism from Native American groups.
The senator apologized earlier this week for those claims, clarifying that she is not a member of any tribe.
Brad Parscale, campaign manager for President Donald Trump's 2020 reelection, accused Warren of being a "fraud."
"Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected," Parscale said in a statement on Saturday.
Trump has called Warren "Pocahontas" and claimed that she benefited in schools and work from minority status.
Warren, 69, has represented Massachusetts in the Senate since 2013. In November last year, she won reelection to the upper chamber for a second term.
She's now officially joining a crowded field of Democrats seeking the party's nomination to take on Trump next year.
Other prominent Democratic figures who have announced presidential bids include California Senator Kamala Harris, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 22:32:12|Editor: Chengcheng
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BERLIN, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she wanted to work very hard to preserve and develop multilateral structures at the Munich Security Conference next week.
In a podcast published on Saturday, Merkel said as multilateralism is now being debated, she wanted to use the Munich Security Conference to promote the idea.
"At the moment we have a whole lot of important topics. For me the foremost is the question: how do we work together? The multilateralism, that is the conviction that we win more together than if we work against each other is up for debate," said Merkel.
"And I am very committed to ensuring that the multilateral structures to be developed and preserved," she added.
As a key politics and security forum in the world, the Munich Security Conference is to convene from Feb. 15 to 17, with about 35 heads of state and government, as well as 80 ministerial-level officials to attend.
"The Munich Security Conference has a long tradition and is very well respected internationally," said Merkel, who will join the conference after missing it last year due to the lack of a government after the 2017 federal elections.
Merkel added that facing new conflicts and new challenges, such as terrorism, today's interaction is at least as important as it was during the Cold War.
In addition, the conference no longer deals only with the classic security issues, but also with the topic of climate change or economic development.
"Especially with regard to our neighboring continent, in Africa, this is of particular importance," said the chancellor.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-10 05:38:22|Editor: zh
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by Murad Abdo
ADEN, Yemen, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Representatives of the two Yemeni warring sides participated in talks sponsored by the UN in Jordan in an attempt to achieve progress toward implementing the prisoner exchange deal declared in Sweden.
However, the delegations of Yemen's internationally recognized government and the Houthi rebels concluded the two UN-sponsored rounds of talks without achieving constructive results, leaving thousands of detainees who are dreaming of reuniting with their families in continued pain.
The warring sides blamed each other for undermining the ongoing peace efforts and breaking down the negotiations in Jordan's capital Amman, with the presence of the UN special envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths.
Yemeni observers and political analysts said the negotiating teams treated each other with suspicion and lacked mutual trust, which was one of the main factors behind the failure of Jordan's talks.
"New obstacles came up and impeded implementing the prisoner swap deal because the two-warring sides are still accusing each other of lying and submitting fake lists of detainees," said Abdul-Raqeeb Hidyani, a political analyst.
"The government representatives see the Houthi representatives as liars and insist on releasing all the prisoners from Sanaa jails," he added.
Yahya Abu Hatim, a strategic military expert, blamed the Iranian-backed Houthis for having serious reservations on the prisoners' list provided by the government delegation.
"Houthis are not really willing to hand over prisoners with the government authorities because they came just to rule and are still kidnapping people from workplaces on a daily basis," Hatim said.
"The Houthi negotiators included fake names belonging to hundreds of their fighters who were killed during battles with the government forces," he added.
Ali Ban Hadi, an Aden-based military analyst, said exchanging prisoners and war detainees should take place until after the end of the conflict or under a political agreement.
"The armed confrontations are still taking place fiercely and each side will attempt to keep prisoners as long as possible because no peace atmosphere is available," Hadi said.
"It's not an easy task to achieve success in this issue because the situation is still very complicated militarily and the warring factions will attempt to keep prisoners as a value card," he explained.
On the government side, former Defense Minister Mahmoud Subaihi, who has been held by the Houthis since they overran Sanaa in late 2014, and President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's brother Nasser, a former senior intelligence official, were included in the exchange list.
Haitham Abu Vadi, an Aden-based journalist and writer, ruled out the idea that the Houthis will agree to release high-ranking military leaders including Subaihi.
"The government wants to conduct a comprehensive swap deal but the Houthis prefer to swap specific names of detainees with low value, excluding the senior officials," Haitham said.
Sources confirmed to Xinhua that the two-warring sides agreed to hold a third round of talks to resolve issues but did not specify when or where the talks could take place.
On Friday, the Yemeni government and the Houthis decided to continue their meetings related to the swap of prisoners and to provide more time for finalizing the lists of prisoners to be covered by the deal.
Following days of negotiation, the two-warring sides reached an agreement in Jordan's capital Amman to exchange 2,000 bodies, 1,000 for each side, in three phases.
According to Ahmad Abu Hamzeh, a member of the negotiating team of the Houthis, the first phase will start in three weeks and the two sides will start by exchanging bodies in the morgues.
The second phase will focus on the bodies in cemeteries far from the front lines, which will last two months, while the third includes the bodies left on the battleground and the frontlines, which will take a longer time until a cease-fire is reached.
Representatives of the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels started their second meeting in Amman on Tuesday to review the final list of prisoners to be exchanged under a prisoner swap agreement reached between the two sides.
In December 2018 and following consultations in Sweden, the two sides reached the agreement to swap about 15,000 prisoners.
The Sweden Agreement called for the urgent need to address the dire humanitarian situation and insecure conditions faced by the Yemeni people.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 23:57:32|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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PHNOM PENH, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- The number of domestic and foreign tourists traveling in Cambodia during the three-day Chinese Lunar New Year celebration increased 8.1 percent to over 930,000, Cambodia's Tourism Ministry said on Saturday.
According to its report released on Friday, 826,761 locals travelled within the country during the festival, up 11 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, international arrivals rose to 105,370, showing an increase of 2.5 percent.
The kingdom's popular tourist destinations are the famed Angkor Archeological Park in northwestern Siem Reap province, the 440-km coastline stretching over four southwestern provinces, and the eco-tourism sites in northeastern provinces.
Although it is not a public holiday in Cambodia, the Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, is broadly celebrated in the kingdom.
Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen said on Tuesday that a large number of public servants in the country and a majority of the people in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, celebrated the festival.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 23:42:30|Editor: zh
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CHANGCHUN, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Lu Caishu sold his 110 cows to support his small tourism business in Erhe, a village in northeastern China's Jilin Province, known for thick snow during the winter.
Lu's decision was considered risky two years ago, especially among villagers who mostly had a stable income from raising cattle, but Lu was convinced that the tourism industry would offer a more lucrative and sustainable way to make money.
In 2018, the money Lu invested in his business began to pay off. During the winter, his business received over 5,000 customers, bringing in nearly 300,000 yuan (about 44,500 U.S. dollars)
"It only takes me three to four months to take care of my business, but I had to work for a whole year when I used to make a living on raising cattle," Lu said.
Lu not only runs one of the most profitable guesthouses in the village but also set up a travel company to further enhance the reputation of the businesses, allowing household investors to receive dividends by the end of the year.
More ambitious villagers began to start their own guesthouses and cash in on booming tourism as profits have snowballed over the years. There are now 50 guesthouses and restaurants in the village owned by 126 households.
Erhe attracts more than 8,000 tourists on average each winter. The number is expected to reach 100,000 this year, according to the local tourism sector.
"I've always wanted to start my own business, and the winter tourism helps me realize the dream," said Sun Linlin, who invested over 2 million yuan in her guesthouse.
Sun's guesthouse, now the biggest in Erhe, receives nearly 400 customers each day during the peak season.
"There is huge potential in winter tourism as more townspeople seek the rural lifestyle to reduce the pressure they face in big cities," she said.
Erhe's total tourism revenue reached 10 million yuan last winter. More than 80 percent of the villagers now work in the industry, and over 60 percent run their own businesses. Restaurants, guesthouses, souvenir shops, theatres and snow museums have sprung up in the village.
The booming tourism also attracts more villagers who previously moved to bigger cities for better opportunities to come home and get a slice of the cake.
"I had never imagined snow would become Erhe's most valuable asset," said Liu Hongcai, owner of a brewery that sells grain alcohol to local restaurants and tourists.
"I have my own business and can stay with my family. It is the best time of my life," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 23:17:24|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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BEIJING, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Most major production goods monitored by the government posted lower prices in the last 10 days of January compared with the previous 10 days, official data showed.
Of the 50 goods monitored by the government, including seamless steel tubes, gasoline, coal, fertilizer and some chemicals, 27 goods saw their prices fall during the period, with 14 posting rising prices and nine seeing their prices unchanged, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Prices of chemicals such as styrene and polyester filament grew notably, while liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) led the declines, according to the NBS.
Prices of coal products, nonmetal building materials and agricultural products also dropped or remained flat.
The reading, released every 10 days, is based on a survey of nearly 1,700 wholesalers and distributors in 24 provinces and regions.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 23:12:22|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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TOKYO, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- A cold snap hit the Japanese capital of Tokyo and some neighboring areas on Saturday, resulting in cancellations of more than 100 flights to and from Tokyo.
At Haneda and Narita airports, Japan Airlines Co. and All Nippon Airways Co. canceled over 100 flights though snow was not as heavy as forecast.
According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the snow accumulation was lower than the expected 5-cm volume. As of noon, 1 cm of snow was recorded in downtown Tokyo.
However, the agency still warned about icy roads as it predicted low temperature would continue at least through Sunday morning.
One of the runways at Narita airport in Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo was closed repeatedly for snow clearing, as snowfall of up to 2 cm was observed in parts of Chiba.
According to the weather agency, cold snap continued to hit Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 23:07:20|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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DAR ES SALAAM, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa on Saturday warned those using a recent spate of killings of children to cause panic and uproar in the public.
"The government is condemning the killings of our children and equally warning those who are using the incidents to create unnecessary panic to the public," Majaliwa said when adjourning the 14th parliamentary session in the capital Dodoma.
He made the remarks after some lawmakers said there were people who were posting videos and pictures of murdered children and associating them with the Njombe attacks.
Majaliwa said the government shall not tolerate more killings orchestrated by criminal groups in the southern highlands region.
"The government has already directed security officials to seek, arrest, interrogate and prosecute all those who are found to have been involved in killing the innocent children in that region," he added.
Majaliwa said 29 people had been arrested in connection with the killings.
On Thursday, Home Affairs Minister Kangi Lugola told the National Assembly that the government had dispatched a team of experienced detectives to help security organs in Njombe region to beef up investigation that will lead to the arrest, interrogation and prosecution of perpetrators.
He said those who post outdated pictures of bodies of children and linking them with Njombe killings would be arrested and prosecuted under the country's Cyber Crime Act.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 22:57:19|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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DAR ES SALAAM, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said on Saturday that the country is on full alert against acts of terrorism.
Adjourning a two-week parliamentary session in the capital Dodoma, Majaliwa said security organs in the country are vigilant all the time to ensure that terrorism acts do not happen.
"All people entering the country are thoroughly scrutinized to make sure that they meet all the security standards," he told the House.
Majaliwa said Tanzania will continue to collaborate with all countries in the East African Community (EAC) and the international community in the war against terrorism.
On Feb. 2, Rwandan President Paul Kagame urged EAC partner states to join hands in fighting terrorism.
Kagame, who took over as the new chairman of the EAC, said terrorism is an emerging challenge in the region that must be tamed by all means.
"We have to work together to fight terrorism," he told the 20th summit of the regional body in Tanzania's northern city of Arusha.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 22:52:17|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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RIGA, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- A large crowd of people gathered in Riga Town Hall Square on Saturday to show their support for Riga Mayor Nils Usakovs whose home was recently searched as part of a probe into alleged corruption in a municipal company.
Many supporters of the mayor had arrived to the rally with posters expressing support for Usakovs and lambasting the Latvian government whose ministers have been calling for the mayor's resignation.
Some protesters were holding signs with demands for various social improvements like lowering the prices of medicines and preventing emigration.
According to information provided by the state police, the rally in the town square had gathered around 3,000 people, but the event passed off peacefully despite earlier warnings of possible provocations on the part of some radical activists.
Usakovs watched the rally standing on the stairs at the town hall's entrance. Addressing the crowd, the mayor said that for some residents of Riga he was the symbol of all the good work that has been done for the city, while for others he stood for everything that was bad, but that the truth was somewhere in between.
At around 2 p.m. the protesters dispersed and the rally, which took place under heavy police presence, was over.
Usakovs' left-wing Harmony party organized the rally in the town hall square after anti-graft operatives on Jan. 30 raided his office and home as part an ongoing criminal investigation into alleged large-scale corruption and money laundering in Rigas Satiksme municipal transport company.
Andris Ameriks resigned as Riga vice mayor after the corruption scandal in Rigas Satiksme broke out, and several officials, including Environmental Protection and Regional Development Minister Juris Puce, have also called for Usakovs' resignation.
The mayor has been consistently denying his involvement in any corruptive activities and said he would not step down.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 22:22:11|Editor: Xiaoxia
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PARIS, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Three people were injured in the fresh action of "yellow vest" anti-government movement here Saturday, French news channel BFMTV reported.
Scuffles had briefly broken out between police and protesters in the front of the National Assembly where lawmakers earlier this week approved an anti-riot bill that empowered police to handle violent marches and reinforce measures against troublemakers.
According to the report, protesters threw projectiles at police who responded with tear gas to push them back.
A man, in his thirties, not wearing the highly visible yellow vest that symbolizes the social unrest, would have lost a hand when a tear gas grenade denotated while he recovered it to throw it at officers, the 24-hour news television reported citing police source.
Two others were also wounded, including a policeman, it said, adding that 10 individuals were detained so far in the wake of the violence that had relatively overshadowed the capital's demonstration.
Saturday was the 13th weekend of action in a row by "yellow vest" movement against weak economic performance and stagnant income increase under President Emmanuel Macron.
It started as a campaign against surge in fuel prices in November 2018. Since then, thousands of people staged street protests that had been transformed into social rebellion demanding Macron to step down.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 22:03:40|Editor: Xiaoxia
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Firefighters try to put out a fire that broke out at a slum area in Quezon City, the Philippines, Feb. 9, 2019. More than 100 shanties were razed in the fire, leaving around 200 families homeless. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 21:27:02|Editor: mmm
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LONDON, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Through auctions and draws, the UK-China Charity Initiative, initiated by China Chamber of Commerce in the UK (CCCUK) and the City of London, raised funds to support a Chinese poverty alleviation project and charitable projects of the Lord Mayor's Appeal (LMA) of the City of London here Friday.
In an event to celebrate the Chinese lunar Year of the Pig, the UK-China Charity Initiative raised 37,200 pounds (about 48,144 U.S. dollars) through on-site auctions and draws.
Accordingly, half of the funds will be used to support construction of a multifunctional hall which will be used for group training, art performance and distance learning for a rural school in China's Shaanxi Province, and the rest will be used for British charitable projects including child mental health, youth poverty alleviation and suicide intervention.
The event attracted nearly 300 guests from the Chinese and British political and commercial circles to celebrate the Chinese New Year and build a bridge between China and Britain for charity cooperation.
"Charity work helps shorten the distance between two hearts by building a bridge of love. I sincerely hope that the China-UK Charity Initiative will sow the seeds of charity and encourage more people to join in. Through charity, we can spread love, promote cooperation, deepen friendship and build a better world together," said Liu Xiaoming, Chinese Ambassador to the UK, in his speech.
The UK-China Charity Initiative was initiated at the end of 2018 to create a platform for charity with the theme of "Building Harmony Together."
"The CCCUK will always hold social responsibility at the heart of its mission and continue to work with our members to contribute to more charitable projects in both the UK and China," said Fang Wenjian, Chairman of the CCCUK, adding that "by joining force with the LMA, we are committed to ensuring the success of the UK-China Charity Initiative for many years to come."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 21:17:00|Editor: mmm
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Photo taken on Feb. 8, 2019 shows an inland expedition team of China's 35th Antarctic expedition on its journey in Antarctica. A total of 37 members on China's 35th Antarctic research mission on Friday night arrived at the Zhongshan Station after a six-day 520-km journey amid storms. The members are scheduled to board on China's icebreaker Xuelong on Feb. 15, leaving Antarctica for home. They are expected to arrive in Shanghai on March 10. (Xinhua/Liu Shiping)
ANTARCTICA, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- A total of 37 members on China's 35th Antarctic research mission on Friday night arrived at the Zhongshan Station after a six-day 520-km journey amid storms.
They started off from the Taishan Station on Feb. 3, which, at an altitude of 2,621 meters, is located between the Zhongshan and the Kunlun Stations. The stations are the latest three out of the four scientific research bases on the Antarctic ice sheet built by China since 1964.
The Chinese researchers, 21 of them from the Taishan team and 16 from the Kunlun team, came to Zhongshan after successfully completing their tasks. The two teams together departed on Dec. 18 from near Zhongshan for their missions.
The Taishan team completed the construction project of the supporting facilities at Taishan in 38 days, a week ahead of schedule. Taishan was put into operation in February 2014 after its main building on the ground was completed.
The Kunlun team conducted research works on astronomy, ice berg and surveying and mapping, among other things. For instance, they on Feb. 7 set up a new automatic meteorological station, some 100 km away from Zhongshan. The team members arrived at Taishan on Jan. 31 to join the researchers there.
The members of the two teams are scheduled to board on China's icebreaker Xuelong on Feb. 15, leaving Antarctica for home. They are expected to arrive in Shanghai on March 10.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 21:17:00|Editor: mmm
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By Xinhua Writers Chu Yi and Zhao Peiran
KUNMING, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Li Zhengxiang had not bathed for more than 15 years before meeting social worker Li Liping.
The 72-year-old man has long been troubled by hemiplegia. With no wife or children, he lived with his mother in Zhazishu, a remote mountain village in Shidian county, southwest China's Yunnan Province. His mother and siblings passed away several years ago.
When Li Liping lifted the old man out of bed carefully and washed him in a plastic bathtub with nine other volunteers, Li Zhengxiang laughed like a child.
"If it were not for him, I may have never gotten up and would have spent the rest of my life in the dark," the old man said.
Li Zhengxiang gets a government subsidy of 740 yuan (110 U.S. dollars) a month, about the same amount as the county's rural disposable income, but his days come and go with a sad monotony.
He lives alone, lying in bed all day and relying on his nephew and neighbors for food and used a plastic basin beside his bed for excretion.
"My spending is limited. I'm poor in spirit rather than materially," he said.
Since 2017, the senior's life started to get better thanks to Li Liping, a selected volunteer by "caring rural left-behind elderly" program launched by the local government and a public welfare foundation Changjiang 265, which defines its mission as providing home-based services to help rural left-behind live happily in old age.
To celebrate the Spring Festival which fell on Tuesday this year, Li Liping sent seniors in the village couplets and gifts, cleaned their houses and cooked them meals.
"Most of them are not very talkative and sometimes can't even hear me, but a smile is always the best way to communicate," said the volunteer.
Each selected local volunteer is responsible for at least 30 households and must take three professional training courses before carrying out the work, according to Zhong Tiehua, manager of the program.
"During regular visits of about three times a month, the volunteers keep the elderly company by chatting with them, sharing the latest news, learning about and solving their problems, as well as doing some housework," Zhong said.
Shidian has more than 58,000 elderly over 60 years old, over 16.7 percent of its total population, among which at least 3,700 live alone or rarely see their families.
"With the young heading to cities for jobs and opportunities, living alone has become a common occurrence in rural China," said Duan Yuyuan, head of the county's civil affairs bureau.
"Living in remote mountains, some of them have lost the abilities to take care for themselves due to aging and illness, and some were not even discovered to have passed away until several days after death," he added.
To keep the old company, Shidian has set up elderly centers and nursing homes where people can meet and talk, but it's not very effective as many rural seniors are reluctant to leave their homes and activities are just a one-time thing without long-lasting effects.
"Home-based services, however, supplement our work as it can benefit more aged people and provide targeted and sustainable care," Duan said.
Since the program opened its doors in 2017, it has worked with local governments in provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Shaanxi, and selected 53 local volunteers who have provided services to 2,652 left-behind elderly in 19 towns.
"Selected social workers all grew up in villages they serve, enjoying a good reputation, which contributes to smooth communication between the two sides," Zhong said.
"To make the work sustainable, we pay volunteers a competitive salary after discussing it with local authorities," she added.
The program had raised more than 4.7 million yuan at the end of last year through online charity platform Tencent Charity, which is mainly used for the salaries of volunteers, gifts for the aged, and funds for holding activities.
China is home to about 240 million people aged 60 or above, and the proportion of rural left-behind elderly has been rising with younger family members working in cities.
The country issued a document last year to require better social care for left-behind elderly people in rural areas. China had more than 144,600 nursing institutions as of September 2017, three times that at the end of 2012, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
"Home-based elderly service is a multi-win measure which can supplement the government policy, help youth care the aged at home, provide job opportunities in the village and provide company for the lonely elderly to enrich their lives," Zhong Tiehua said.
Li Liping is proud of his work. "Most of the elderly left behind are lonely. I'm happy that we are making a difference," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 20:56:56|Editor: Xiaoxia
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KABUL, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Up to 40 people including nine security personnel have been killed in Afghanistan over the past two days as both government forces and the Taliban outfit have intensified operations against each other, officials said Saturday.
Fighting between government forces and the Taliban fighters in the northern Sari Pul province has left seven insurgents and three security personnel dead on Saturday, a spokesman for Afghan army in the northern region Mohammad Hanif Rezai said.
According to Rezai, a group of Taliban fighters attacked security checkpoints in Baghawi, a suburban area of Sari Pul city, on Saturday morning, triggering fierce fighting which resulted in the death of seven militants and three security personnel.
Nine more militants and four security personnel have been injured in the fighting, Rezai said, adding crackdown against militants has been continuing to clean up the restive area.
Similarly, fighting between government forces and the Taliban militants had left eight Taliban fighters and six security personnel dead in Khawja Ghar district of the northern Takhar province on Saturday, district governor Mohammad Omar has confirmed.
The government forces, however, have killed 16 Taliban fighters in Qarabagh and Muqar districts of the eastern Ghazni province since Friday, provincial government spokesman Aref Nuri said Saturday.
The government troops, according to security officials, would continue to keep pressure on the militants to reduce their ability and gain more ground in the chilly winter.
However, the Taliban commanders, according to media reports, have vowed to increase activities against government forces in the freezing winter to consolidate positions ahead of the spring offensives.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 20:56:56|Editor: Chengcheng
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DAMASCUS, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- A total of three civilians were killed Saturday by a U.S.-led airstrike on the Islamic State (IS)-held area in eastern Syria, state news agency SANA reported.
The airstrike targeted a desert area in the al-Tayaneh area in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour province, said the report.
The airstrike is the latest in a string bombings targeting the last IS redoubt in the eastern Euphrates River region.
Earlier in the day, a war monitor reported that negotiations are underway in eastern Syria between the U.S.-led forces and the IS group for the latter's withdrawal from its last redoubt.
Relative calm is prevailing eastern Syria as the negotiation for the withdrawal of the IS from the last four sq km it controls in the eastern Euphrates River is ongoing, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The UK-based watchdog group said the destination of the IS militants and their families is still unknown amid ongoing negotiations.
It said the U.S.-led coalition struck positions of the IS in the eastern Euphrates to practice more pressure on the group.
After losing the four sq km, the IS will still be in control of 4,000 sq km in the desert in eastern Syria.
The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been on a crushing offensive to root out the IS from the eastern Euphrates region since last September.
The SDF managed, with the help of the U.S., to defeat the IS in much of the areas it had controlled in the eastern Euphrates area.
The Observatory said over 37,000 civilians, including tens of IS militants, have fled the last IS-held pocket to areas controlled by the SDF in the eastern Euphrates area since last December.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 20:51:55|Editor: Xiaoxia
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DAMASCUS, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- A total of three civilians were killed Saturday by a U.S.-led airstrike on Islamic State (IS)-held area in eastern Syria, state news agency SANA reported.
The airstrike targeted a desert area in the al-Tayaneh area in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour province, said the report.
The airstrike is the latest in a string bombings targeting the last IS redoubt in the eastern Euphrates River region.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 20:46:53|Editor: Xiaoxia
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LUSAKA, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Zambia on Friday launched an initiative to improve food security aimed at reducing poverty for 3 million smallholder farmers.
The landmark initiative, called Strengthening Climate Resilience of Agricultural Livelihoods in Agro-Ecological Regions (SCRALA) will help small farmers cope with climate risks, make their farming more resilient as well as diversified and give them better access to markets.
The project will be financed by the Zambian government, which has provided 105 million U.S. dollars over the next seven years while a grant of 32 million dollars has been provided by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Green Climate Fund (GCF) and 1.4 million dollars by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Zambian Agriculture Minister Michael Katambo said during the launch that the project supports the government to take meaningful steps to enhance resilience of vulnerable populations in the targeted districts, many of whom are women and youth.
"These women and youth, who are reliant on agriculture-based livelihoods, will benefit from the project through scaled up use of tailor-made weather advisories to inform decision-making by the farming community," he said.
The Zambian minister added that the project will increase the resilience of smallholder farmers as climate change has become a serious challenge to sustainable development which also includes poverty reduction.
Jerry Velasquez, director of GCF's Mitigation and Adaptation Division, said that the increasing effects of climate change are particularly severe for countries like Zambia, where 70 percent of the country's workforce relies on rain-fed agriculture.
"GCF's financial support will help farmers better manage the impacts of climate change through improved climate information and early warning systems, enhance smallholder farmers' access to water for farming, and strengthen farmers' links to rural markets," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 20:26:50|Editor: Xiaoxia
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NEW DELHI, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from consumption of illicit liquor in two northern Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand has risen to 58, officials said on Saturday.
According to officials in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, 36 deaths have taken place owing to the consumption of spurious alcohol.
"As of now at the district hospital 46 post-mortems were carried out and out of them in 36 cases the deaths have taken place clearly due to consumption of alcohol. However, in the remaining cases unless the viscera report is not available, it is difficult for doctors to ascertain clearly that the deaths were caused due to alcohol," said A K Pandey, district magistrate in Saharanpur.
In another district of Uttar Pradesh's Kushinagar so far eight deaths have been reported because of the consumption of hooch.
According to health officials, nearly two dozen people were still undergoing treatment inside hospitals in these two districts and doctors feared the number of deaths could rise.
Likewise, in Rorkee of Haridwar district in Uttarakhand the bootleg liquor has claimed 14 lives and many others are hospitalized.
Officials said the liquor was obtained from a common source for the deaths in Saharanpur and Rorkee.
Authorities in both Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand have started a crackdown on illicit liquor manufacturing units and sales points. Officials said several people have been detained for questioning.
Several officials associated with excise and police departments have been suspended.
The police were conducting raids to tighten noose around illicit liquor vendors.
The local governments in both states have announced a compensation of 2,806 U.S. dollars (200,000 Indian rupees) to the next of kin of each of those who died in the tragedy and 700 U.S. dollars (50,000 Indian rupees) for those sickened due to consumption of hooch.
In December 2011, bootleg liquor tragedy killed 172 people in South 24-Parganas district of West Bengal.
Spurious alcohol deaths are often reported in India, where people often drink cheap country made bootleg liquor.
A first day cover with commemorative stamps to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Portugal and China is seen at a stamp issuance ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal, on Feb. 8, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Liyun)
LISBON, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Portuguese post office CTT on Friday issued a set of two commemorative stamps with the first day cover to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Portugal and China.
The stamps feature two tea utensil sets with traditional Chinese and Portuguese cultural elements, which typically reflect the profound traditional friendship and culture between the two countries.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the occasion, CTT CEO Francisco de Lacerda said the Portuguese and Chinese people have a long history of exchanges and profound friendship.
The mutual respect and friendship between the two countries in various fields have fully justified for Portugal and China to jointly issue the commemorative stamps to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, he added.
For his part, Chinese ambassador to Portugal Cai Run said that the issuance of the commemorative stamps will help build a bridge for the communication between the Chinese and Portuguese people, which will further promote the friendship between the two peoples.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 20:06:44|Editor: mmm
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by Julia Pierrepont III, Gao Shan
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- A dynamo of creativity and a young rising star in the world of classical music, Du Yun presented her latest composition Wednesday and Thursday evenings at the LA Philharmonic's Chinese New Year's celebration.
Her latest work, "Thirst," is the third piece in her "Future Tradition" initiative and was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, as part of its centennial celebration, to be the centerpiece of LA Phil's Chinese New Year concert.
"I want to showcase the diversity of Chinese culture to the world through music," Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and 2019 Grammy Awards nominee, Du Yun, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
Born in Shanghai, Du Yun has won some of the most prestigious music awards in the world, including the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Musical Composition and the 2018 Guggenheim Award. She is the first ever Asian female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize with her opera "Angel's Bone." She recently became the first female of color to be nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, with her piece "Air Glow."
The 61st Grammy Awards will be held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles Sunday night.
As a Chinese composer, Du Yun hopes to touch American audiences by combining what she feels is quintessentially Chinese traditional culture with a more contemporary compositional style.
As such, "Thirst" takes inspirations from Xinchang Diaoqiang Opera, part of China's National Intangible Cultural Heritage. Du Yun first visited Xinchang in southern Zhejiang Province in 2017. There she became intrigued by the unique style of Xinchang Diaoqiang and its differences from the more well known forms of Yue Opera.
"At the end of summer 2017, I brought a team of researchers, scholars and filmmakers with me to Xinchang," she said. "Xinchang Diaoqiang is one of the oldest styles and dates back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD)."
Since then, Du Yun and her team have been researching some of China's regional operatic forms she wants to help preserve and introduce to international audiences.
Du Yun told Xinhua, "Besides the more well known Beijing Opera and Kunqu Opera, there are over 300 regional opera styles in China, each with their local cultural characteristics."
Her LA Philharmonic world premiere marks the first time Xinchang Diaoqiang Opera is heard by an international audience.
"Chinese music may be fresh to audiences in the Western world, but this is not enough. It should be able to touch and inspire them," Du Yun noted.
Her new piece was rousing, intense, even discordant at times, as it's musical form echoed its own ambitious libretto: "all things about life and death ..."
"As a creator, I often wonder about our projected role in our society and furthermore, our gender roles presented in the literature and theatrical works. So I experimented with giving (the character) back her woman identity in the end," said Du Yun. "In today's world, our gender becomes more fluid and laden with complex layers."
Du Yun is interested in making new works that integrate traditional Chinese operatic forms into a new narrative framework that explores the concepts of identity and gender in diverse musical traditions.
"Based on the traditional text, I rewrote the lyrics to reflect my thoughts. The lyrics are about a sense of despair, and finding one's own identity," she added.
An alumna of Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Oberlin College and Harvard University, where she obtained her PhD, Du Yun is currently on the composition faculty at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She is also a distinguished visiting professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
Du Yun said earning a Grammy nomination has been a great honor.
"This is recognition of Chinese musicians by the U.S. music industry," she said. "Whether or not I win the award, it's already an achievement for me and Chinese musicians in the United States."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 18:56:34|Editor: mmm
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BEIJING, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Saturday expressed strong opposition to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to a region on the east section of the China-India border.
Spokeswoman Hua Chunying's remarks came in response to a query about news reports saying that Prime Minister Modi visited the so-called "Arunachal Pradesh" earlier in the day.
"China's position on the China-India border issue is consistent and clear-cut," said Hua, stressing that the Chinese government has never recognized the so-called "Arunachal Pradesh."
While urging the Indian side to bear in mind the common interests of the two countries, Hua called on the neighboring country to respect interests and concerns of the Chinese side, cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral ties and refrain from "any action that may lead to an escalation of disputes or complicate the border issue."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 17:36:23|Editor: Xiang Bo
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NEW YORK, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Four leading Hong Kong designers unveiled their latest collections at a group runway show on Friday during New York Fashion Week (NYFW).
Led by Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), three of Hong Kong-based fashion brands focusing on enriching women's fashion tastes and choices were featured at the show.
Designer Mountain Yam set up 112 mountianyam in 2015. He told Xinhua that he wanted to help urbanites with a hectic living tempo find an outlet for their mental stress through his new collection titled Hide & Seek.
"In human society, people tend to hide in their comfort zone when facing problems, and most of the people run away or find excuses," Yam said. "But they need to express their real thoughts and true self. Don't hide away."
Unlike the young designer, founder of brand ANVEGLOSA Annette Chan paid her respect to tradition through her latest collection themed Salute to Fashion, as inspired by the good old days of the industry.
The collection features a combination of lambskin leather, silk, fabrics and embroidery to highlight feminine silhouettes, a review of the fashion quintessence from the 1920s to the present day.
Completing the lineup of the show is the collection of "ELIZABETH, WATCH THE STARS" of brand HEAVEN PLEASE+, which is co-founded by Yi Chan and Lary Cheung.
The new collection demonstrates the two designers' strength of integrating their understanding of art, music and literature into fashion design.
NYFW is a semi-annual series of events. It is one of the major fashion weeks in the world, collectively known as the "Big Four," along with those in Paris, London and Milan.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 17:11:16|Editor: Xiang Bo
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GARISSA, Kenya, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- A Kenyan court on Friday released two foreigners who were arrested last month at the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya's Garissa County on suspicion of having links with the al-Shabab terror group.
Garissa Chief Magistrate Cosmas Maundu said the two -- Sulub Warfa from New Zealand but of Somali origin and Sakawedin Abdullahi from Ethiopia -- had no case to answer and therefore were released unconditionally.
According to the prosecution, the two men's passports are valid, and they entered the country legally.
The two foreigners had been held by the anti-terror police for 10 days before appearing in court on Friday. According to investigators, Warfa had changed his name from Ramadhan Yusuf to Sulub Warfa.
Addressing journalists outside the court, Warfa said that changing one's name in New Zealand is not a crime, adding that this was one of the things that landed him into problems with the Kenyan police.
"I traveled all the way from Nairobi to Garissa then to Dadajabula but on my way back I was stopped at a road block at Hagarbul where police officers demanded my driving license which I produced and then my passport which I also produced," he said.
"But all of a sudden they told me to pack my vehicle and get out of it as they drew their guns. This really shocked me. They searched my car and wanted to hear nothing from me, saying I was a terror suspect," Warfa told journalists.
He said that terming him a terror suspect without verifying his traveling documents came as a shock.
He demanded an apology from the police for linking him to terrorism which he said had not only shocked his family back home but had ruined his reputation.
The arrest of the two foreigners came amid enhanced security in the country after al-Shabab terrorists struck a hotel and business complex in Nairobi on Jan. 15, killing 21 people and injuring several others.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 17:06:15|Editor: Xiang Bo
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NEW DELHI, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- A doctor in an Indian government hospital has left a pair of artery forceps inside a woman patient's stomach while performing a hernia surgery on her earlier this week.
A second surgery was performed on her on Saturday and the artery forceps were successfully removed, according to official sources of the hospital in Hyderabad, capital city of India's southern state of Telangana.
After the first surgery, the woman was discharged from the Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) on Thursday, but was readmitted the same night after she complained of acute pain in her stomach.
On medical investigation it was found that the artery forceps were left inside her stomach.
Speaking to Xinhua over phone, NIMS Director Dr K. Manohar said a second surgery was performed on the patient on Saturday morning and the artery forceps were successfully removed from her stomach, and that she was fine now.
"I have appointed a panel of senior doctors at the hospital to investigate into the matter and submit a report at the earliest," said the director.
"The local police have taken the old case sheet into their custody. As soon we get the panel's report, we will fix responsibility on the doctor who performed the earlier surgery and did this act of negligence."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 16:56:14|Editor: Xiaoxia
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- The governor of the U.S. state of Virginia said Friday that he will not resign in the wake of a blackface scandal, according to several news outlets.
Governor Ralph Northam has been under fire since the surfacing last week of a photo on his medical school yearbook page featuring a person wearing blackface and a person wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit standing side by side.
The photo, dating back to 1984, sparked widespread outrage and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for the Democratic governor to step down.
Northam had apologized and admitted he was one of the two individuals pictured, though he didn't say which.
"I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now," Northam said in a statement last Friday.
But he later walked back his earlier admission, claiming he wasn't in the photo. He did, however, revealed that he had worn blackface in a separate incident as part of a Michael Jackson costume in the 1980s.
Northam has signaled that he has no plan to resign.
"I intend to continue doing the business of Virginia," he told a press conference last week, adding that resigning would be the easier way out.
"I could spare myself from the difficult path that lies ahead. I could avoid an honest conversation about harmful actions from my past," he said. "I cannot in good conscience choose the path that would be easier for me in an effort to duck my responsibility to reconcile."
Virginia has entered a political crisis as the controversy has also brought about revelations about two of Northam's potential successors.
Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who would replace Northam should the governor resign, has had multiple allegations of sexual assault made against him in recent days.
Meanwhile, state Attorney General Mark Herring, who would be the third in line for the governorship after Fairfax, admitted this week to wearing blackface at a party decades ago.
Northam, 59, won the governorship against Republican nominee Ed Gillespie in the 2017 election before serving as the state's lieutenant governor for several years.
A physician by occupation, he was an officer in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1984 to 1992.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 16:46:12|Editor: mmm
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Suzhou Symphony Orchestra performs during the Chinese Lunar New Year concert at the UN headquarters in New York, Feb. 8, 2019. A Chinese orchestra on Friday evening entertained diplomats and overseas Chinese at the UN General Assembly hall in celebration of the Lunar New Year. The performance by the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra marks the first time that the UN headquarters hosts a concert celebrating the most important holiday of the global Chinese community. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese orchestra on Friday evening entertained diplomats and overseas Chinese at the UN General Assembly hall in celebration of the Lunar New Year.
The performance by the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra marks the first time that the UN headquarters hosts a concert celebrating the most important holiday of the global Chinese community.
The orchestra, conducted by the renowned Chen Xieyang, played a medley of Chinese and Western music as well as a fusion of traditional and modern works, including well-known Chinese folk song Jasmine Flower and classics by J. Strauss, Jr. and Tchaikovsky.
Completing the repertoire, the musicians played three more pieces, Beijing Happiness, Beautiful Flower and Full Moon and Radetzky March, after the conductor had to return twice following an enduring applause by the audience.
Friday's music, mostly of upbeat tempo, sent festive vibes across the hall.
Elliot Downey, an associate director of admissions with Tianjin Juilliard School, said the highlight of the evening for him was the Erhu performance, which was his first time hearing the traditional Chinese instrument.
Greek deputy UN envoy Dionyssios Kalamvrezos was brought back to his "good old days" in China when he had worked in Beijing from 2011 to 2014. "The first part of the concert, mostly Chinese music, evoked my attachment to China. I love the Chinese language. I love the Chinese culture."
His teenage daughter Andromeda said in Chinese that she could feel the music was sending a message of a joyous Spring Festival.
Founded in late 2016, the young orchestra from China's eastern city of Suzhou has performed in multiple countries including France, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan, said its director Chen Guangxian.
He added the orchestra is very young and highly international, with its 70 members hailing from 20 countries and regions. The average age of the members is 30.
Besides the symphony, iSuzhou, a digital platform by the municipal government, has been holding an exhibition at the UN General Assembly lobby depicting the culture of Chinese Lunar New Year as well as a historical and modern Suzhou.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 16:41:12|Editor: mmm
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Qu Bo from Beijing and his 10-year-old son visited several museums in New York and Washington D.C. during their 10-day U.S. trip, and the National Air and Space Museum was his son's favorite.
"He is especially interested in this area. He saw a lot of airplane models, and even selected a book himself," Qu told Xinhua, showing a freshly bought English book titled "Space Exploration."
Also included in their trip were Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania. Qu said he wanted his son to walk around the campuses and "feel the atmosphere."
After spending the Chinese New Year's Eve at home, Chu Li and her teenage son departed from Shenzhen on Tuesday, as the Lunar New Year kicked off. Their two-week U.S. trip is also set to be packed with museums and universities.
Besides the more well-known National Museum of Natural History in the capital, they plan to visit museums dedicated to minorities in the country. "We've done some research in advance," Chu told Xinhua. "Just want to learn more about the cultures of the minorities."
They will also visit Boston later on, with a planned stop at Harvard University. "I want to take my son there, to broaden his horizon," Chu said. Since about three years ago, Chu has been taking his son to famous universities around the world, including Oxford University and Cambridge University in Britain.
Just like Qu and Chu, many more Chinese people are traveling with their children. Tourists born after the year 2000 account for 22 percent of those who travel during the Spring Festival, according to data released earlier this week by Ctrip, China's leading online travel agency.
In recent years, the number of Chinese tourists who visited the United States has been growing steadily. China is now the fifth largest visitor origin country, following Canada, Mexico, Britain and Japan, according to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office. Its latest forecast showed that the number of Chinese tourists will reach 3.237 million in 2018, and exceed 4 million in five years.
As numbers grow, new trends are taking shape. Instead of flocking to popular tourist attractions, Chinese tourists have been turning their eyes toward places that arouse their interests and suit their needs, with more focus on cultural and educational experiences.
Shao Rongjia from Shanghai and her cousin arrived here on Wednesday, and top on their list is the National Gallery of Art. "We are both from the design industry," Shao told Xinhua. "We want to see some masterpieces at the gallery. It fits well with our specialty."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 16:06:07|Editor: Xiaoxia
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that a second summit with top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Kim Jong Un is to be held on Feb. 27-28 in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump tweeted, referring to U.S. special envoy for DPRK-related issues Stephen Biegun's DPRK visit.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he added.
"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," he later tweeted in a separate post.
"He (Kim) may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket -- an Economic one!" Trump said.
Earlier in the day, the State Department said in a statement that during his stay in the DPRK, Biegun had "met with Special Representative for U.S. Affairs of the State Affairs Commission of the D.P.R.K. Kim Hyok Chol February 6-8, in Pyongyang."
In his second State of the Union address made on Tuesday, Trump said that he will meet with Kim Jong Un on Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam, but did not disclose the specific location.
Biegun traveled to Pyongyang later on Wednesday to prepare for the summit, and to "advance further progress on the commitments the President (Trump) and Chairman Kim made in Singapore: complete denuclearization, transforming U.S.-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula," the State Department said.
Trump met with Kim for the first time in Singapore on June 12, reaching several commitments, at least in principle, that have led to the improvement of the U.S.-DPRK relations. However, differences between the two sides on such key issues as the roadmap of denuclearization, U.S. sanction-lifting and whether to issue a war-ending declaration, still haunt the two sides and hinder negotiations.
On Jan. 30, Trump said that progress is "being made" in talks with Pyongyang and that he saw a "decent chance" of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.
On Jan. 31, Biegun said in a speech that the U.S. side expects to hold working-level negotiations with DPRK in advance of the summit, "with the intention of achieving a set of concrete deliverables ... a roadmap of negotiations and declarations going forward, and a shared understanding of the desired outcomes of our joint efforts," he said.
Trump also said on Tuesday that "as part of a bold new diplomacy, we continue our historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula."
"Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one," he added.
But so far, there has been no comment from the DPRK on the issue.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 16:01:06|Editor: Xiaoxia
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JAKARTA, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Hot lava and volcanic materials that spewed from Mount Karangetang volcano in Indonesia's North Sulawesi province cut roads and buried bridges, while bad weather hampered evacuation operations, officials said on Saturday.
Local authorities are trying to evacuate 508 villagers from the slope of the mountain, said Wensi Rumbayan, a senior member of the quick rescue team of the provincial disaster agency.
The sliding hot lava nearly reached a height of 300 meters in Batubulan village in Sitaro district, where the villagers could not leave the area via land transport, said Rumbayan.
"The hot lava and volcanic materials have slid down, burying roads. Bridges were also damaged and disappear from the surface because of the flows of the lava and materials," Rumbayan told Xinhua over phone.
The village is located about 2,000 meters from the mountain and villagers live alongside a river where the upstream is in the slope of the volcano, making the village vulnerable when a stronger eruption or lava floods occur, he said.
The authorities planned to evacuate the villagers through sea with a ship, although some of them are reluctant to leave their houses and their cattle, Rumbayan said.
But weather has been unfavorable in recent days, with big waves hampering the ship to move close to a seaport, he said, adding that "this also makes the distribution of aids difficult."
To handle the risks of the eruption, local authorities declared a seven-day emergency status since Feb. 6.
Over 130 people have been evacuated so far, particularly those living in and alongside the slope of the volcano, said Rumbayan.
On Dec. 21 last year, volcanologists raised the alert status of Mount Karangetang to the second highest after the volcano erupted.
Mount Karangetang with the height of 1,827 meters is among the 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia, a vast archipelagic nation home to over 17,500 islands.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 16:01:05|Editor: Xiaoxia
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GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Two vehicles allegedly carrying militants loyal to the Taliban group have been targeted by Afghan government troops, leaving 10 insurgents including a local commander dead in the southern Ghazni province, provincial police said in a statement Saturday.
The attacks were conducted at 5:40 p.m. local time on Friday in the restive Qarabagh and neighboring Muqar districts, killing 10 militants including a local Taliban commander Mawlavi Sahar, the statement said.
The Taliban outfit has yet to make comment.
Both the Taliban group and government forces have stepped up operations against each other in the conflict-riddled country.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 15:25:59|Editor: Yang Yi
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Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai speaks at a dialogue on the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the U.S. in Grand Rapids, the United States, on Feb. 8, 2019. It is destructive to hold "zero-sum game" mindset in China-U.S. ties and the two sides need to develop even stronger relationship in the future, said Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai here on Friday. (Xinhua/Wang Ping)
GRAND RAPIDS, United States, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- It is destructive to hold "zero-sum game" mindset in China-U.S. ties and the two sides need to develop even stronger relationship in the future, said Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai here on Friday.
COMPETITION OVEREMPHASIZED
On Friday, Cui addressed an audience of over 400 people at a public event held by a non-profit organization in the Midwestern state of Michigan, discussing current China-U.S. ties.
The Chinese ambassador noted that some people see competition between the two countries as a "zero-sum" and "winner-takes-all" game, which is "very negative, very destructive" to bilateral ties.
Pointing out that "competition" originally was a good word instead of a bad one in both Chinese and English languages, Cui said the problem today is that "too much emphasis" has been added to it.
We should have competition and at the same time cooperate with each other, the ambassador said. "We should have a win-win result."
Cui also noted that the Chinese and U.S. companies should compete as well as cooperate with each other. "The real story in business is not that black-and-white," he said.
STRONGER TIES NEEDED
Addressing the luncheon held by the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, Cui also noted that China and the United States need to develop even stronger ties on the basis of "coordination, cooperation and stability."
Noting that China and the United States are "two very different countries" in terms of history and culture among other areas, he said it is important for the two sides to "have much better mutual understanding" for each other's intention and policy and identify common ground to stabilize the relationship.
"We have so many global issues that we have to work together on," including climate change, terrorism, poverty, pandemics and natural disaster, the veteran diplomat noted.
"No country can handle it all by itself," he added.
EDUCATION, A MAIN PILLAR
Education is one of the main pillars in the China-U.S. ties and we should continue to encourage students to study in each other's country, Cui said.
It is encouraging to see that there is a growing number of Chinese and American students studying in each other's country, the ambassador said.
Hopefully things will continue to be like that, he said.
Cui's remarks were echoed by former U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, who was also present at the event.
"It's terribly important that we continue to have Chinese students," Burns said.
Burns rebuked certain "calls" in Washington to prevent Chinese students from studying some subjects for "national security" reason, calling that a "dangerous" move.
"We do live in a global society and we have to work together" to tackle our problems, Burns added.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the China-U.S. diplomatic relations.
Bilateral trade grew from less than 2.5 billion U.S. dollars from 40 years ago to over 580 billion dollars in 2017. Over the same period, the stock of two-way investment rose from practically nil to more than 230 billion dollars.
Statistics show that as many as 1 million international students came to the United States for study in 2017, and Chinese students accounted for roughly 30 percent.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 15:05:57|Editor: mmm
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BEIJING, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- A recent study shows that more than 30,000 cases of infectious diseases were imported to the Chinese mainland from 2005 to 2016, and the types of imported infectious diseases increased from two in 2005 to 11 in 2016.
The study, conducted by researchers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and other Chinese research institutions, collected and analyzed data related to imported infectious diseases from China's National Information Reporting System of Infectious Diseases.
A total of 31,470 cases of infectious diseases were imported to the Chinese mainland from 2005 to 2016, and the cases were imported mainly from Africa and Asia.
The study was published in the January issue of the U.S. journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
According to the China Statistical Yearbook, the number of inbound tourists from Africa grew from 238,000 in 2005 to 589,000 in 2016, and the number of inbound tourists from Asia grew from 12.5 million in 2005 to 18 million in 2016.
Some infectious diseases have been re-emerging, such as epidemic hemorrhagic fever and malaria, which previously had been under control, and wild poliovirus that had previously been eliminated in China in 2000.
In 2011, an outbreak of wild poliovirus infection was reported in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. A few emerging infectious diseases, such as the Middle East respiratory syndrome, yellow fever and the Zika virus, were also reported in China.
The study found a seasonal distribution of imported infectious diseases. Most yellow fever cases were imported in March. There is usually a higher incidence of imported malaria from April to August, reaching a peak in May and June.
All the Japanese encephalitis cases were imported from June to September, whereas the incidence of imported dengue fever usually peaks in October. The cases of Zika were imported mainly through international airports around major festival events, such as the Spring Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day.
Information about the imported infectious diseases is believed to be of value for helping with drafting policies for public health.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 14:55:56|Editor: mmm
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Musicians perform during a symphony concert for Chinese New Year at the Oculus of the World Trade Center in New York City, the United States, Feb. 8, 2019. The Oculus of the World Trade Center, a new landmark in New York City, presented a dynamic symphony concert on Friday night in its atrium to celebrate the Chinese New Year. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)
NEW YORK, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Oculus of the World Trade Center, a new landmark in New York City, presented a dynamic symphony concert on Friday night in its atrium to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
During the free one-hour concert, a number of famous Chinese music pieces such as "Jasmine Flower," "Ode to the Yangtze River," and popular western songs including Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," were performed by the Asian Cultural Symphony, a local ensemble of nearly 100 artists of various ethnic groups and backgrounds.
The orchestra, which sat in the middle of the Oculus, was repeatedly greeted with warm applause from hundreds of commuters, tourists and shoppers.
The event was organized by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Asian Cultural Center (U.S.A.), an organization which was established in New York City in 1998 and has branches in Boston, Chicago and Washington D.C.
A man who identified himself as Wang was traveling with his family from China said he was surprised to hear a few familiar melodies in the U.S. metropolis.
"I'm amazed that the Chinese New Year is also celebrated here in New York at such a famous venue. The festivity here feels almost like the same back in China," he said.
Completed in 2016 beside the 9/11 terrorist attacks memorial site, the "Oculus" functions as a train station, plaza and shopping mall at the current World Trade Center area and is famous for its unique architecture. It serves 250,000 daily commuters and receives millions of annual visitors from around the world, covering an area of some 74,322 square meters.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 14:40:54|Editor: Chengcheng
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday ordered flags at federal government buildings and military facilities to be flown at half-staff in honor of late former Congressman John Dingell.
In a proclamation, Trump said flags will be lowered until sunset on Saturday "as a mark of respect for the memory and long standing service" of Dingell, who was the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history.
The Michigan Democrat "died peacefully at his home in Dearborn" Thursday at the age of 92 after a long battle with cancer.
He was first elected to the House in a 1955 special election following the death of his father, John D. Dingell, Sr.
The younger Dingell, taking over his father's seat, served until his retirement in 2014 after nearly six decades in the House. He played an important role in passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010, popularly known as Obamacare.
His wife, Debbie Dingell, ran for his seat and is now serving her third term.
"Deepest sympathies to Congresswoman Debbie Dingell and the entire family of John Dingell," Trump tweeted Friday.
"Longest serving Congressman in Country's history which, if people understand politics, means he was very smart. A great reputation and highly respected man," the president said of Dingell.
Dingell's former colleagues paid tribute to him on the floor of the U.S. House on Friday morning.
Dingell had been a prolific tweeter and a vocal critic of Trump.
@ewarren/Twitter(LAWRENCE, Mass.) -- Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is off to the races, announcing on Saturday that she would be running for president in 2020.
The former Harvard law professor formally launched her presidential campaign in Lawrence, Massachusetts, before an animated crowd in frigid temperatures. She offered a clear message of persistence and cited a track record as a fighter beginning in her early years living in Oklahoma.
The senior senator also echoed a similar theme touted by the crop of Democratic contenders already in the race including her colleague California Sen. Kamala Harris to unite the country amid deeply divisive times.
"This is the fight of our lives," the senator said to the crowd packed in an outdoor quad at Everett Mills. "The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone. I am in that fight all the way."
Chants of enough is enough and its not fair frequently broke out throughout the rally.
Warren chose Lawrence as her launch site to share the history of the city, hearkening back to its early roots nearly a century ago as a haven for immigrants and reminding the audience that it was once a booming center for American industry and reform of labor rules the Bread and Roses strike catalyzed these changes, which included giving workers weekends.
The story of Lawrence is a story about how real change happens in America, Warren asserted. Its a story about power our power when we fight together.
Some of the biggest applause from the audience came as Warren delivered a forceful rebuke of the Trump administration for what she called terrible acts and the most corrupt.
The man in the White House is not the cause of whats broken, hes just the latest and most extreme symptom of whats gone wrong in America, she began. It wont be enough to just undo the terrible acts of this administration Our fight is for big, structural change.
We all know the Trump Administration is the most corrupt in living memory, she said. But even after Trump is gone, it wont be enough to do a better job of running a broken system.
In a tweet on Saturday afternoon, Trump said that he would see Warren on the campaign trail, and asked if she would be running as the first Native American presidential candidate.
Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2019
"Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected, the statement reads. The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and crush America's middle-class. Only under President Trump's leadership will America continue to grow safer, secure and more prosperous." Warrens announcement comes on the heels of a tumultuous week after new fallout over her claim of Native American ancestry a claim that, at times, has been a distraction in her political career and a potential impediment on her presidential ambitions. The issue this week arose from a Washington Post report that Warren had identified herself as "American Indian" on a 1986 registration card for the State Bar of Texas.
Several attendees, however, dismissed the criticisms against Warren for identifying herself on the registration card. One person called it a non-factor. Another said it was irrelevant.
Warren did not address the controversy in her speech, but a spokesperson had previously said the registration card was not an application to the bar and that it was only used for statistical purposes.
This most recent stumble in the saga over Warren's Native American heritage seemed to disrupt her momentum heading into Saturdays announcement and it also raised questions about the durability of her campaign as she continues to confront negative headlines.
After first being elected to the Senate in 2012, Warren rose to the highest echelons of the Democratic Party by taking on Wall Street, propping up the middle class and helping create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Barack Obama after the 2008 financial crisis.
Following Saturday's announcement, Warren heads to Dover, New Hampshire. As an early primary state and because of its proximity to Massachusetts and significance as a linchpin in presidential contests New Hampshire is expected to be key to Warren's campaign.
Copyright 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 14:25:52|Editor: mmm
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TAIPEI, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- The ratio of the working-age population to the entire population in Taiwan fell from 74.22 percent in 2012 to 72.62 percent at the end of 2018, indicating a growing burden on the island's workforce, according to its interior affairs authority.
Taiwan had a registered population of 23.59 million as of the end of 2018, and the working-age population are those aged between 15 and 64, the authority said in a statement.
Moreover, Taiwan's aging rate, or the ratio of people aged 65 and above, climbed from 10.43 percent in 2008 to 14.56 percent in 2018, it said. The elderly population reached 3.43 million at the end of 2018.
The labels of aging, aged and super-aged societies refer to those with an aging rate above 7 percent, 14 percent and 20 percent, respectively.
Taiwan reached the threshold of an "aged society" in March 2018 when the aging rate stood at 14.05 percent.
Another crucial barometer, the aging index, which is calculated as the number of people aged 65 or above for every 100 people under the age of 15, was 112.64 at the end of 2018, up 6.94 from the previous year, according to the statement.
An aging index over 100 means that there are more elderly people than young people. Taiwan's aging index exceeded 100 in 2017 for the first time.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 14:15:50|Editor: Chengcheng
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TALUQAN, Afghanistan, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Clashes have left 14 dead including six police in Khawja Ghar district of the northern Takhar province on Saturday, district governor Mohammad Omar said.
"A group of Taliban rebels attacked security checkpoints in Khawja Ghar district early this morning, triggering a gun battle which ended at around 7:00 a.m. (local time), during which eight rebels and six police had been killed," Omar told Xinhua.
Taliban militants who have intensified activities against government interests have yet to make comment on the report.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 13:55:44|Editor: Chengcheng
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RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Fourteen people died in a shooting in a Rio slum on Friday, local authorities said.
The shooting occurred in the Fallet-Fogueteiro slum, located in the Santa Teresa neighborhood, which is close to Rio's historical center and has some tourist spots, in Rio's downtown region.
According to the Rio police, drug dealers were in a confrontation with policemen from the Special Operations Command. The identities of the 14 dead were not disclosed. Although there has been no official confirmation, the dead are suspected to be all drug dealers from a local gang in the slum.
The police said they were carrying out an operation to fight drug trafficking in the area with the support of the riot control forces. Officers reportedly have received an anonymous tip about a group of drug dealers who gathered in a house.
The police seized some rifles and several handguns as well as grenades. Three drug dealers tried to escape in a school van but were arrested.
The Fallet-Fogueteiro slum has been the site of a gang war in recent months, as criminals from another gang have been trying to take over the slum and drug trafficking there.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 13:40:41|Editor: mmm
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BEIJING, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Members of the public are invited to fill in an employment questionnaire and assist the government departments with the efforts to provide good service to job seekers.
The survey, launched by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, is open to the public from Feb. 3 to 20. It is available at the news aggregating APP of the State Council, China's Cabinet, starting Friday.
Respondents can access the questionnaire by scanning a QR code on the screen of their cell phones or logging onto the website of the ministry.
The purpose of the 31-query survey, is to "gain a better understanding of the employment situations after the Spring Festival holiday," which will end on Feb. 10, and to "provide better services to job-seekers."
Last year, the ministry also launched a public survey on employers and job-seekers to find out employment needs after the Spring Festival.
As Chinese migrant workers tend to look for new job opportunities after celebrating the holiday with their families, the government, which has been adopting a job-first strategy in macroeconomic regulation, always takes efforts to boost employment during this season.
Last year in Shenzhen, for instance, more than 80 percent of local companies hired more new workers since the Spring Festival holiday than they did in 2017.
This year, the Chinese government has vowed to put stable employment in a more prominent position and continue to prioritize creating jobs and implementing a more proactive employment policy.
Companies without or with few layoffs can get a 50-percent refund of the unemployment insurance premiums they paid in the past year. More government-subsidized training will be conducted to equip the jobless with vocational skills, while employment services and support policies will be given to laid-off workers.
Before this year's Spring Festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year which fell on Feb. 5, the Ministry of Finance, State Taxation Administration and other governmental departments jointly decided to grant a three-year-long tax benefit to inspire self-employment and support small companies to hire more people in need.
Under the decision, people in need who start a business can have 12,000 yuan (about 1,790 U.S. dollars) deducted from their families' annual share of taxes over three years.
The preferential treatment will target those registered as needy and jobless for more than half a year, on subsistence allowances, recent graduates from higher educational institutions or the self-employed veterans.
Companies who have hired the needy and paid social insurances for them can also enjoy tax deductions to the tune of 6,000 yuan per person annually for three years.
Local governments at provincial levels can lift tax relief according to local conditions.
China's job market continued stable development in 2018 thanks to government efforts to stabilize employment and steady economic growth.
Some 13.61 million new jobs were created last year, up 100,000 from 2017. The registered unemployment rate, at 3.8 percent, fell to a low level in recent years, while the surveyed rate came in at 4.9 percent, down from 5 percent in 2017, statistics from the ministry showed.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 13:25:36|Editor: Chengcheng
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PYONGYANG, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- To celebrate the 71st founding anniversary of the Korean People's Army (KPA), Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), attended a performance given by the State Merited Chorus here Friday.
According to reports by DPRK's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Saturday, Kim and his wife Ri Sol Ju warmly congratulated all KPA service personnel who mark the Army Founding Day, which falls on Feb. 8.
Kim also attended a banquet arranged by the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea to celebrate the Army Founding Day, together with other senior officials and army generals, the report said.
Also on Friday, Kim visited the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces, and called on the People's Army to strengthen military techniques in keeping with the requirement of the times.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 13:15:33|Editor: Chengcheng
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CANBERRA, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has argued for maintaining the country's migration intake to safeguard the economy.
Frydenberg on Friday said immigration was vital for Australia's economic success, a significant turnaround from the government's previous position of promising to significantly reduce the nation's cap on migration.
"Our plan is to continue to grow the economy and to continue to have a very strong and robust and welcoming immigration system," he told reporters in Canberra on Friday evening.
Following a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting where state, territory and federal ministers agreed on measures to plan for population growth, Frydenberg said immigration "will continue to be strong here in Australia."
It comes only three months after Prime Minister (PM) Scott Morrison indicated the annual permanent migration cap would be cut from 190,000, saying the nation's major cities were "full."
"The roads are clogged, the buses and trains are full," he said in November.
Under the strategy agreed on Friday, a greater share of permanent migrants will be channelled towards smaller states and regional areas to boost population growth in those areas and ease Melbourne and Sydney's growing pains.
South Australia (SA) is one of the states pushing for more migrants, with Federal Immigration Minister David Coleman on Friday announcing the state would receive 19.5 million Australian dollars (13.8 million U.S. dollars) in funding to attract skilled migrants.
"We understand the concerns that Sydney and Melbourne ... have got about infrastructure," state Treasurer Rob Lucas said.
"But as the Premier has indicated, we are very, very supportive of a greater concentration of immigration focus into SA."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 13:10:33|Editor: Chengcheng
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ADDIS ABABA, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Vera Songwe, on Friday urged concerted efforts to help refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) across the Africa.
"If we are to put the numbers into perspective, 23 million refugees represent twice the population of Tunisia, it is close to the population of Ivory Coast," Songwe said, which lift a huge burden for Africa currently.
Songwe made the remarks during her speech at the 34th African Union (AU) Executive Council meeting, which is underway at the headquarters of the pan-African bloc under the theme of "Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons: Towards Durable Solutions to Forced Displacement in Africa."
Songwe in particular urged African leaders to collectively address issues affecting displaced youth on the continent.
"The moral question is, how do we as a Union create the Africa we want if without shame or humiliation we let our youth, our young women lament in camps," the UNECA chief asked African leaders.
"How do we as a Union raise our voices with indignation about the treatment of our youth as they flee the continent and are rejected on foreign shores if without conscience or creed we deprive them of peaceful residence in their own countries? The basic right of every citizen," she stressed.
During the two-day meeting, the executive council is expected to consider key recommendations on the condition of African refugees, returnees and IDPs, ahead of the session of the AU assembly of heads of state and government, as African leaders are set to gather at the AU headquarters on Feb. 10-11.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 12:55:31|Editor: mmm
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Chinese Tai Chi master Chen Zhenglei demonstrates Tai Chi in Fremont, California, the United States, Feb. 8, 2019. A team of Chinese Tai Chi masters Friday started their tour to the United States to promote Chinese Tai Chi culture to overseas Chinese and American Kung Fu fans. San Francisco is the first stop of the team's 12-day Tai Chi Culture World Tour. The trip will also take them to two other U.S. cities of Las Vegas and Los Angeles. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- A team of Chinese Tai Chi masters Friday started their tour to the United States to promote Chinese Tai Chi culture to overseas Chinese and American Kung Fu fans.
The delegation, led by Chen Zhenglei, noted Chinese Tai Chi masters and successors of the national intangible cultural heritage in China, consists of five masters representing Chen-style and Yang-style Tai Chi and former champions of Tai Chi competition both at home and abroad.
"Tai Chi is a national treasure of China that has a profound and long history, and practicing benefits both physical and mental health," Chen said at the opening ceremony launching the 12-day America tour of the China Tai Chi Culture World Tour, which aims to promote Chinese culture and Tai Chi culture outside China.
The masters from the Chinese Tai Chi team will run two days' training courses for Tai Chi fans and lovers in the United States, and teach them in person the skills and expertise of how to best practice Tai Chi.
Around 150 Tai Chi lovers, both overseas Chinese and Americans, from the Bay Area will attend the training.
San Francisco is the first stop of the team's 12-day Tai Chi Culture World Tour. The trip will also take them to two other U.S. cities of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 11:55:23|Editor: Xiang Bo
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GRAND RAPIDS, United States, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- While the United States and China may compete in economy and trade, they should also work together to combat global challenges, said a former senior U.S. diplomat here on Friday.
America and China, which are facing "a number of challenges in bilateral relations," should learn how to compete with each other as well as how to work together, said former U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns in an event held by a non-profit organization in the Midwestern state of Michigan.
We have climate change, pandemics, human trafficking and other global issues to deal with, Burns told an audience of over 400 people at the luncheon held by the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, which aims to provide forums for conversation on international topics.
The United States and China are the two strongest economies in the world and their relationship is "the most important relationship that both of our countries have," said the veteran diplomat, who was in the U.S. Foreign Service for about 27 years.
The two sides bear a lot of responsibility for the stability and peace in the world, he added.
Meanwhile, Burns criticized some "calls" from Washington which campaigned for preventing Chinese students from studying some subjects for "national security" reason.
That's "very dangerous" when you begin to say who can study in your country and who can't, Burns said.
"We do live in a global society and we have to work together" to tackle big problems, he added.
Burns noted that it is good for America's sake to welcome Chinese students, as that means there will be more people in China who really "understand us" in the future.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the China-U.S. diplomatic relations.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 11:35:20|Editor: Xiang Bo
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BEIJING, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's cultural heritage sites under state-level protection reported three fires in 2018, down 50 percent from a year ago, according to the National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA).
All fire accidents affected areas of no more than 60 square meters and caused no serious damage to the cultural relics, said Chen Peijun, a senior NCHA official at a press release earlier this month.
The three heritage sites that caught fire were Jokhang Temple in Tibet, an auxiliary structure near the east of the front section of the Longevity Hill in the Summer Palace in Beijing and a historical building on the campus of Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The total number of fire accidents involving cultural heritage in China also decreased in 2018, Chen said.
He attributed the reduction to increased government spending and technical upgrading on fire control.
In 2018, the administration invested 700 million yuan (about 104.3 million U.S. dollars) in 282 fire control projects at cultural heritage sites and listed fire control and surveillance technologies as a priority.
In January, the administration dispatched inspection teams to 30 cultural heritage sites and museums in four provinces and exposed about 100 security loopholes.
The administration will push for rectifying the problems and stepping up supervision over security control work, Chen said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 11:00:16|Editor: Chengcheng
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he will meet for the second time with Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on Feb. 27-28 in Hanoi, Vietnam.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump tweeted, referring to the DPRK trip of Stephen Biegun, U.S. special envoy for DPRK-related issues.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he added.
"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," he later tweeted in a separate post.
"He (Kim) may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket -- an Economic one!" the White House host noted.
Earlier in the day, the State Department said in a statement that during his stay in the DPRK, Biegun had "met with Special Representative for U.S. Affairs of the State Affairs Commission of the D.P.R.K. Kim Hyok Chol February 6-8, in Pyongyang."
The two officials "discussed advancing President Trump and Chairman Kim's Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming U.S.-D.P.R.K. relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula," the statement read.
It added that they "agreed to meet again in advance of President Trump and Chairman Kim's second summit."
In his State of the Union address delivered on Feb. 5, Trump said that he will meet with Kim Jong Un on Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam, but did not disclose the specific location.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 11:00:15|Editor: Chengcheng
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YAOUNDE, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Cameroon's Ministry of External Relations on Friday denied allegations that its army is using U.S. military assistance to carry out human rights violations.
"Cameroon strongly denies accusations that U.S. military assistance has been used to commit human rights violations. While we have acknowledged instances of human rights violations, they have been investigated and prosecuted through proper judicial channels," the ministry said in a statement.
The statement came after the U.S. government on Wednesday announced that it has decided to cut defense assistance to the country due to concern over alleged human rights abuses.
The ministry said the United States is "an important" security partner for Cameroon and warned that any termination of the cooperation could have "serious implications for Central Africa."
"Cameroon is committed to join efforts with the U.S. government to combat extremism and advance security in Africa. We look forward to continuing this work together."
Cameroon army is fighting Haram terror group in its Far North region that borders Nigeria and an armed insurgency in its two English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest, where separatists are seeking to create a new nation called "Ambazonia."
However, it was unclear whether the U.S. move against Cameroon was in response to abuses carried out in one of these military actions, or could be both.
On Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon, Peter Henry Barlerin met with Cameroon's Minister of Communication and Government Spokesman, Rene Sadi, and said despite the announcement that the United States has cut military aid, the relations between the two countries remain excellent.
"We are not going to stop security collaboration with Cameroon," Barlerin told reporters after the meeting.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 10:30:10|Editor: Chengcheng
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CARACAS, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Friday rejected a document issued a day earlier in Montevideo, Uruguay, by the International Contact Group on Venezuela.
The document, signed by a majority of the group, with the exception of Mexico and Bolivia, is biased in its recommendations on how to overcome Venezuela's political crisis, Maduro said.
"I totally disagree with its partiality," said Maduro.
At the same time, Maduro invited the group's envoy to Venezuela for talks.
The group, which gathers the European Union (EU) and 13 Latin American and European countries, issued a declaration following its first meeting on Thursday, in which it backed a new round of presidential elections in Venezuela as the right-wing opposition has been demanding.
The EU signed the document, along with Spain, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Ecuador. Bolivia and Mexico abstained.
EU foreign policy towards Venezuela "is doomed to failure if it continues to ... heed only the Venezuelan extreme right," said Maduro, calling on the bloc to dialogue with the government.
He also voiced his willingness to take part in the Montevideo Mechanism "to sign agreements for peace in Venezuela."
The Montevideo Mechanism is a four-step plan proposed by Uruguay and Mexico to promote dialogue between the government and opposition groups to negotiate a solution to the political crisis.
Maduro held a press conference for foreign correspondents earlier in the day to present what he called the "truth" about the situation in Venezuela.
The power struggle between Venezuela's ruling party and Washington-backed conservative groups deepened last month after the head of the National Assembly, opposition leader Juan Guaido, proclaimed himself interim president.
The White House immediately recognized Guaido, and the EU soon followed.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 10:00:07|Editor: Chengcheng
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he will meet for the second time with Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on Feb. 27-28 in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The DPRK will embrace great economic development under Kim's leadership, Trump said.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28," Trump tweeted, referring to Stephen Biegun, U.S. special envoy for DPRK-related issues.
"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," he later tweeted in a separate post.
"He (Kim) may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket -- an Economic one!" the White House host noted.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 09:50:05|Editor: mmm
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BEIJING, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- China may see a rapid growth in the number of people aged 80 or above from 2025 to 2050, according to a recent report issued by Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Aging Well Association (CAWA).
As of 2017, the number of people aged 80 and above had totaled 26 million in China, accounting for 1.8 percent of the country's total population. The proportion may rise to 2 percent in 2025 but rocket to 8 percent in 2050, the report said, citing a United Nations publication titled "World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision."
The country will be an "aged society" by 2026, with more than 14 percent of the total population aged 65 and above.
By 2018, China had 249 million people aged 60 and above, accounting for 17.9 percent of its total population, becoming a country with the largest and fastest-growing aged population in the world.
The fast-growing aging population will pose challenges to the country's economic development, as the country's expenditure in healthcare, pension and other areas related to elderly citizens is projected to rise from 7.33 percent of the country's GDP to 26.24 percent from 2015 to 2050, according to the report.
The country should further improve its healthcare and other social security systems to address the rapid aging of the population, said Liu Yuanli, director of CAWA and chief editor of the report.
China's National Health Commission has released a work plan with 12 other government departments to boost the health of the elderly.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 09:50:05|Editor: Chengcheng
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OTTAWA, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur has been sentenced to life in prison Friday and won't be able to apply for parole for 25 years, according to CTV.
At a two-day sentencing hearing, Ontario Superior Court Justice John McMahon noted the gruesome nature of McArthur's crimes but he cited McArthur's guilty plea and his age as reasons for his sentencing decision.
McArthur, 67, pleaded guilty last week to committing the crimes between 2010 and 2017. He killed eight men in Toronto between 2010 and 2017.
Most of the killed, as well as McArthur himself, had deep ties to Toronto's LGBTQ community. Most victims were immigrants and of South Asian or Middle Eastern descent. Some lived parts of their life in secret because of their sexual orientation.
McArthur sexually assaulted and forcibly confined many of his victims before murdering them. He killed most of the men in his bedroom, where he bound and then strangled them with rope.
McArthur posed their bodies for photographs, with many of the pictures featuring the same fur coat. He kept those images in folders on his computer labelled for each of his victims, accessing some of those photos long after the killings.
McArthur dismembered all his victims and buried most of their remains in large planter pots at a home in midtown Toronto where he stored his landscaping equipment. One man's remains were found in a garbage bin buried in a nearby ravine.
When McArthur was arrested in January 2018, police found a man tied to his bed and a folder on his computer labelled with the man's name that contained photos of him.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 07:14:35|Editor: mmm
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Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai (L) shakes hands with former U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns at Grand Rapids, the United States, Feb. 8, 2019. Cui Tiankai said on Friday that China and the United States need to develop even stronger ties in the future despite their differences. (Xinhua/Wang Ping)
GRAND RAPIDS, the United States, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said on Friday that China and the United States need to develop even stronger ties in the future despite their differences.
Cui made the remarks while addressing a public event held by a non-profit organization in the Midwestern U.S. state of Michigan.
"We need to develop even stronger relationship on the basis of coordination, cooperation and stability" between the two countries, the Chinese envoy said.
Noting that China and the United States are "two very different countries" in terms of history and culture among other areas, Cui said it was important for the two sides to "have much better mutual understanding" for each other's intention and policy and identify common grounds to stabilize the relationship.
"We have so many global issues that we have to work together on," including climate change, terrorism, poverty, pandemics and natural disaster, the veteran diplomat noted.
"No country can handle it all by itself," he added.
More than 400 guests, including former U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, attended the luncheon held by the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, which aims to provide forums for conversation on international topics.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the China-U.S. diplomatic relations.
Bilateral trade grew from less than 2.5 billion U.S. dollars 40 years ago to more than 580 billion dollars in 2017. Over the same period, the stock of two-way investment rose from practically nil to more than 230 billion dollars.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 07:09:34|Editor: Xiang Bo
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TIRANA, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Albania has registered four deaths related to the AH1N1 flu virus and the latest case being a 76-year-old lady from Lushnja, west Albania, Silvana Bala, chief doctor in the Sanatorium hospital, told media on Friday.
"The patient came to the hospital in a serious condition with insufficient lung function. She was immediately sent to our Reanimation, but the inadequacy of lung function caused the death after 8 hours in the late evening of Thursday," Bala said.
Meanwhile, at the Sanatorium hospital in the capital Tirana, everyday 80 to 100 urgent cases arrived with flu symptoms. At the moment in the Reanimation there are 10 serious cases, 3 with controlled respiration.
"AH1N1 is a virus that targets the respiratory system. When it affects people with poor immune systems, those who also suffer illnesses such as diabetes, cardiac diseases, or kidney disease, the virus easily causes serious complications, such as bilateral pneumonia," said the doctor.
Albanian Health Institute has been urging citizens to take flu vaccine and avoid overcrowded places.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 06:59:32|Editor: Xiang Bo
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SKOPJE, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Macedonian Health Minister Venko Filipce confirmed on Friday the death of a six-month-old baby related to measles.
According to Filipce, the baby was under treatment for lung complications and was not vaccinated.
The minister said vaccination in Macedonia should continue in order to strengthen the immunity of the population after the significant drop on vaccination coverage in 2014.
Filipce also confirmed that two children are treated for lung complications but not in life-threatening conditions.
The minister made the remarks after his visit at the Neurology Clinic in Skopje.
On Jan. 2, the Health Ministry in Macedonia declared the outbreak of measles in the capital of Skopje.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-09 06:54:31|Editor: mym
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Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai speaks at a dialogue on the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the U.S. in Grand Rapids, the United States, on Feb. 8, 2019. It is destructive to hold "zero-sum game" mindset in China-U.S. ties and the two sides need to develop even stronger relationship in the future, said Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai here on Friday. (Xinhua/Wang Ping)
GRAND RAPIDS, the United States, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- It is destructive to hold "zero-sum game" mindset and overemphasize the aspect of competition in China-U.S. ties, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said on Friday.
Cui made the remarks while addressing a public event held by a non-profit organization in the Midwestern U.S. state of Michigan.
The Chinese ambassador noted that some people see competition between the two countries as a "zero-sum" and "winner-takes-all" game, which is "very negative, very destructive" to the bilateral ties.
Pointing out that "competition" originally was a good word instead of a bad one in both Chinese and English languages, Cui said the problem today is "too much emphasis" has been added to it.
The two countries should have competition and at the same time cooperate with each other, the ambassador said. "We should have a win-win result."
The Chinese diplomat also noted that Chinese and U.S. companies should compete as well as cooperate with each other. "The real story in business is not that black-and-white," he said.
More than 400 guests, including former U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, attended the luncheon held by the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, which aims to provide forums for conversation on international topics.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the China-U.S. diplomatic relations.
Bilateral trade grew from less than 2.5 billion U.S. dollars 40 years ago to over 580 billion dollars in 2017. Over the same period, the stock of two-way investment rose from practically nil to more than 230 billion dollars.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (C) attends the opening ceremony of an exhibition about the past economic and trade cooperation between China and Mongolia in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, Aug. 22, 2014. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)
ULAN BATOR, Feb.8 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia said China remained its top export destination, accounting for 66 percent of its total exports last year.
Mongolia's exports to China grew by 811.2 million dollars, or 13.1 percent year on year, while imports increased by 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, or 35.5 percent, according to data released by Mongolian Customs General Administration on Friday.
The bilateral trade amounted to 8.4 billion U.S. dollars, increasing by 26.8 percent year on year, it said.
Mongolia's major export items to China include coal, copper and molybdenum concentrates, wool and cashmere.
Russia is another important trade partner, and its imports from Mongolia include animal products, in particular beef and horse meat, as well as minerals such as fluorspar, copper concentrates and gold.
Mongolia traded with about 160 economies across the world in 2018.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-08 23:02:52|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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CHONGQING, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- In a 1,500-square-meter warehouse in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, 500 blue boxes each about the size of a TV set stand in lines. Earthworms crawl in the boxes.
It is an earthworm farm in Longtai Village of Wuxi County. The little wriggling worms have helped many out of poverty.
"In the past, earthworms were just little worms in the village," said Lu Maoliang, Party chief of the village. "Now they are like gold in the earth."
The earthworm farm was set up with the help of the Communist youth leagues of Chongqing and Wuxi County, and China Construction Second Engineering Bureau Ltd.
Currently, the farm can generate a revenue of about 400,000 yuan (59,411 U.S. dollars) a year. It plans to expand to 2,000 boxes next year.
"Earthworms can be used in medicine and cosmetic products. They also help protect the environment," said Chen Keyu, from China Construction Second Engineering Bureau Ltd.
Earthworms' food comes from a cattle farm nearby, Chen said.
"We feed the worms with dried cow dung," he said.
In the past, villagers thought the cow dung was too dirty, but with the earthworm farm, the waste can be effectively used, Chen said.
"The cow dung is usually dried and fermented before being fed to the worms," he said. "Meanwhile, the waste from the worms is natural organic fertilizer, which can be used to grow vegetables and fruits."
The village's farms are now using earthworm waste, and the quality of the vegetables and fruit is far better.
"Vegetables are greener and stronger," said Lu. "The earthworm project truly helped improve lives here."
Ding Weimi, 62, came from one of the poor families in the village. Now working on the earthworm farm, she can make more than 10,000 yuan a year.
"There were 20 disadvantaged families in the village. Three of them, including Ding, work on the earthworm farm. The rest of them are eligible to share the revenue," Lu said.
Wuxi County, home to 540,000 residents, is one of the poorest places in Chongqing. From 2015 to 2017, more than 70,000 people were lifted out of poverty here. Authorities plan to help 11,000 more people out of poverty by the end of this year.
China has set 2020 as the target to finish building a moderately prosperous society and eradicate poverty.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-08 22:47:50|Editor: Chengcheng
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Rescuers remove snow and debris from a police post hit by an avalanche to rescue trapped people near Jawahar Tunnel in Anantnag district, about 90 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, Feb. 8, 2019. At least 10 people, mostly policemen, were trapped Thursday evening after a massive avalanche hit a police post in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. (Xinhua/Javed Dar)
by Peerzada Arshad Hamid
SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- At least 11 people were killed in avalanches and landslides that hit Indian-controlled Kashmir following heavy snowfall and rains, officials said Friday.
The avalanches struck at Kokernag in Anantnag district and Jawahar tunnel in Kulgam district, while landslides were triggered in Ramban district.
All these districts lie south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.
"Following the heavy snowfall in the region yesterday avalanches hit a residential house in Kokernag killing a man and his wife, while as their two daughters were rescued alive. Likewise a massive avalanche hit a police post at Jawahar tunnel burying 10 people including six policemen and two firefighters," a senior local government official said.
Early Friday police and disaster response force personnel launched an intense search to trace the trapped men inside the police post. However, during the search seven bodies were retrieved.
"During the search seven bodies belonging to two fire service personnel, two prisoners and three police personnel were retrieved," a police official overseeing rescue operation told Xinhua. "Two policemen were rescued alive, while as one is still missing."
Police official said the chances of survival for the missing policeman are said to be bleak.
Rescuers cut through mounds of snow manually to reach the trapped.
The avalanche hit the police post Thursday evening. However, incessant snow and wind hampered the rescue work.
Officials said there were 20 people inside the post when a massive avalanche hit it but 10 managed to come out safely immediately.
The upper reaches of Indian-controlled Kashmir received a heavy snowfall since Wednesday, while the plains were hit too on Thursday causing blockade of roads and power outages.
Officials said two people were killed after landslides hit a key highway connecting the Muslim majority area of region with Jammu province and others Indian states near the Ramban district.
"The duo was killed after shooting stones triggered by landslides struck the highway between Battery Cheshma and Maroog areas," an official said. "The two men were travelling on foot when the stones hit them."
Police said traffic on the 294-km Srinagar-Jammu highway remained suspended for the third straight day in the wake of accumulation of snow near Banihal tunnel and drifting of landslides.
Hundreds of passengers have been stranded on the highway and all the supply trucks leading to Srinagar were stuck.
With the suspension of traffic on main road, the supply of essential commodities is rapidly drying up.
To contain the situation, local government has ordered for the "rationing" of fuel - petrol, diesel and LPG - supplies.
"The decision was taken in view of the fast depletion of petrol products i.e. Motor Spirit (MS) and High Speed Diesel (HSD) and LPG, It is felt expedient to implement the rationing with respect to the distribution of these products, till such time the supplying position improves after road opening," a government order read.
As per directive all petrol pumps have been asked to issue only three litres of petrol per vehicle per day and 10 litres of diesel to the commercial vehicles a day.
Indian-controlled Kashmir has a rugged terrain. Landslides and avalanches are often triggered from its mountains during frequent rains and heavy snowfall.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-08 22:47:50|Editor: Chengcheng
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TOKYO, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Japan's exports of agriculture, forestry and fisheries exports amounted to a record high of 906.8 billion yen (8.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, propelled by robust demand from other Asian markets, the farm ministry said Friday.
The number grew 12.4 percent from a year earlier, climbing for the sixth consecutive year, the ministry said.
The preliminary figure of 2018 indicated that the goal of 1 trillion yen (9.2 billion dollars) of farm export in 2019 is within reach, as it is predicted that the demand for "washoku," or Japanese food, will rise in overseas markets, especially after Japan's entry into major free trade agreements.
"To achieve the 1-trillion-yen goal, we need an annual growth of more than 10 percent. By supporting producers of export items, we'll strive to meet the target," Farm Minister Takamori Yoshikawa told a press conference on Friday.
The market of Chinese mainland became the second largest buyer of Japan's farm produce from the previous year's third place with 133.8 billion yen (1.2 billion U.S. dollars).
Exports of agricultural products, including processed foods, increased 14.0 percent year-on-year, while those of fisheries products and forestry rose 10.3 percent and 6.0 percent, respectively.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-08 18:52:05|Editor: Xiaoxia
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Helicopters extinguish a fire near Nelson of South Island, New Zealand, Feb. 8, 2019. A medium-scale adverse event has been declared for Tasman district, unlocking further government support for farmers and growers as a fire starting three days ago still ravages the region, New Zealand Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor said on Friday. (Xinhua/Tim Cuff)
WELLINGTON, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- A medium-scale adverse event has been declared for Tasman district, unlocking further government support for farmers and growers as a fire starting three days ago still ravages the region, New Zealand Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor said on Friday.
"The wildfire and the drought conditions have combined to make it a particularly tough time for those trying to manage stock and grow food," O'Connor said in a statement.
"This unlocks extra funding of 50,000 NZ dollars (33,737 U.S. dollars) for the Rural Support Trusts and primary industry groups to help speed up the recovery of farming and horticultural businesses, O'Connor said, adding a medium-scale adverse event refers to the magnitude of the event, the ability to prepare for it and the capacity of the community to cope.
"The forecast holds little respite following several weeks of heat and high winds and with water restrictions in place, pastures and orchards are parched."
The fire, the biggest in nearly nine years, has further hurt rural communities with some stock losses, essential access to water restricted, feed destroyed and infrastructure damaged, the minister said.
"The acute issue is the management of stock where their owners have evacuated their properties due to the fires," the agricultural minister said, adding the Ministry for Primary Industries is working with vets, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Incorporated, fire and emergency and police to help farmers manage their animals or move them until it's safe to return.
"The focus remains on getting the blaze under control, cleaning up the immediate damage then supporting our rural sector to get back on their feet for winter."
Hundreds of people have been evacuated from their homes as the fire burned through 2,100 hectares within a perimeter of 27 km, compared with 23 km last night, according to local authorities.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern flied to Nelson in the South Island's Tasman region on Thursday to assess the damage.
ATLANTA, Ga. (WTXL) - U.S. Marshals are searching for a disbarred Georgia lawyer who's accused of violently murdering his mother a day before he was supposed to begin a 30 year jail sentence.
The U.S. Marshals-led Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force says they are searching for Richard V. Merrit, a disbarred attorney who was supposed to surrender on Feb. 1 after being sentenced to 30 years in jail in Cobb County.
Merrit is convicted of stealing money from clients and elder abuse.
However, Merrit didn't show up and, the next day, his elderly mother was found dead. Investigators say the woman was "violently killed" and her vehicle, as well as Merrit's, were recovered at the scene.
Authorities say they were monitoring Merrit via an ankle monitor, but they said he took it off.
They say he may be driving a 2009 silver Lexus RX350, bearing a Georgia tag CBV 6004. He may have shaved his head or otherwise changed his appearance. Marshals say Merritt is considered armed and dangerous and dont know which way he may be headed.
If you think you see him or his car, do not try to approach him. Instead, you should call 911 immediately.
LEON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - Leon County is ranked 14th in the state for the number of children living in poverty, that's according to the Florida Chamber's recent report.
The poorest zip code in Florida is in Leon County, which is why county leaders are working with people living in the 32304 area.
The county commission announced a March 9 community summit to address the issues happening in this area. The zip code stretches from Florida State's campus to the Ochlocknee River.
The Florida Chamber says nearly half of the children living in this area are below the poverty level.
Commissioner Rick Minor says they want to hear from community members about the issues they face.
"When it comes to tackling poverty, we really need to talk the neighbors and the neighborhoods more than anybody else what they to get themselves up on their feet," said Minor. "Anytime we get community leaders and neighbors to get together to talk about issues around poverty, it's a good thing."
Commissioner Minor says one thing that could be skewing these results for this area, the college students living there are included in the count but may not actually be under the poverty level.
Sport
Peshawar Zalmi reach PSL final after beating Islamabad United by 8 wickets at Sheikh Zayed Stadium
Peshawar Zalmi put the United to bat first, who scored 174 for the loss of nine wickets and set a 175-run target for the Wahab Riaz-led side. Hasan Alis start with the ball was not as effective as his batting in the first innings where he hit 45 off 16 balls.
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Bayern Munich defender Javi Martinez has made the outlandish if not entirely serious claim that he created the original concept of the vastly successful Hunger Games franchise.
For the uninitiated, the Hunger Games are a series of novels written by American novelist Suzanne Collins which were later turned into a series of equally lucrative movies starring Jennifer Lawrence as some kind of bow-wielding dystopian child warrior.
Discussing his love of writing with German magazine Socrates, Martinez said: Writing is a great pleasure for me, even as a teenager I started to write a book. And believe it or not, the plot was pretty much the same as The Hunger Games. It was strange (to see the Hunger Games movie). I was sitting in the cinema and thought: It does not exist, thats my idea, which I had years ago, the creators must have stolen my computer!
While most would instantly realise that Martinez wasnt airing a wholly serious grievance, the Bayern player still faced a significant amount of backlash on social media, with people pointing out that Hunger Games was actually inspired by a Japanese film called Battle Royal that was in turn inspired by a novel written in 1999 when Martinez was just 10 years old.
The Spaniard then actually felt the need to clarify that he was joking by following up on Twitter with a photo of him reading Night Over Water another book shamelessly stolen from him, this time by author Ken Follett.
Not everything is meant to be dead serious, Martinez quipped below.
In a perfect or even vaguely sensible world, he wouldnt have had to explain that yet here we are.
State Senate Unanimously Passes School Safety Bill
By West Kentucky Star Staff
FRANKFORT - Kentucky Senate Bill 1 - The School Safety and Resiliency Act - passed unanimously on Friday.Republican Senator Max Wise of Campbellsville, who sponsored the bill, says it is a comprehensive measure that focuses on personnel; systems and structures; accountability; and a culture of student connectivity.Wise said SB 1 was the product of testimony, research and study over eight months by the nonpartisan School Safety Working Group and others who were asked to assist. Legislators formed the group in response to the western Kentucky shooting at Marshall County High School last winter in Benton. Earlier in the week, the parents of Bailey Holt and Preston Cope gave emotional testimony in support of the bill before the Senate Education Committee.No one was shut out from providing input, said Wise, chairman of the education committee. No one was shut out from my office. No one was shut out from having comments and feedback."Republican Sen. Danny Carroll of Paducah recounted his reaction after hearing of the Marshall County High School shooting while he was in Frankfort for legislative duties.I remember the feelings of helplessness and the desire to do something immediately, he said. I think we all felt those feelings that day, however, we realized the best thing we could do was to take a step back and to think through the decisions we were making.He said that pause has resulted in superior legislation.The bill would create a state school safety marshal, similar to the state fire marshal, and would also establish the framework for schools to expand the use of school resource officers.Another provision would require one guidance counselor with mental health training for every 250 students in a school, contingent on funding. Those counselors would be required to spend at least 60 percent of their workday on counseling-related tasks.The bill would also expand an anonymous school safety tip line statewide, while a fourth would encourage districts to seek charitable donations to pay for security-related expenses.A fifth provision would specify who could serve on the board for the Center for School Safety and clarify members duties. The nationally recognized center was created by the passage of House Bill 330 in 1998. That measure was in response to the Heath High School shooting on Dec. 1, 1997, in West Paducah. Three girls died and five other students were injured.Wise said passage of the bill would be the first step in the legislatures efforts to improve school safety. He said the second step would be to fund its various provisions during next years regular session of the General Assembly. Thats when legislators are required to pass a biennium budget for the state.Republican Sen. Christian McDaniel of Taylor Mill said as chairman of the Senate Appropriations & Revenue Committee he would work to make sure provisions of SB 1 are funded in the next budget.Wise stressed that the bill tried to avoid unfunded mandates that cash-strapped rural schools may not be able to afford.Democratic Senator Julian M. Carroll of Frankfort voted for the bill, but said the legislation failed to address one underlying problem - easy access to unsecured guns.We dont want to deal with what to do about guns in the hands of students, he said. That is one small, but absolutely critical issue. I understand why it was not discussed because we do not like to even use the word gun in many of our discussions.However, Republican Senator C.B. Embry Jr., of Morgantown, commended the bipartisan effort.We were working together, and that is great, said Embry, a co-sponsor of SB 1. Our children are our most precious and valuable asset that we have in the commonwealth of Kentucky. This bill is a step in the right direction to give them safety.The bill passed the chamber by a 35-0 vote and now goes to the House of Representatives for their consideration, although a similar bill has also been introduced in the lower chamber.On the Net:
Sullivan University Ribbon Cutting in Mayfield
By Mike Cooper, West Kentucky Star Staff
MAYFIELD - A ribbon cutting formally opening the Sullivan University Mayfield Learning Center was held Friday afternoon at 12:30.Sullivan University President and CEO, Dr. Jay Marr, told those in attendance that Sullivan is proud to be part of the Western Kentucky area. He told of how the organization started in 1962 with seven students and five faculty members, in Louisville. Today, Sullivan has over 3,500 students, with campuses in Louisville, Lexington, and Ft. Knox, and Learning Centers in Carlisle (Nicholas County), Louisa (Lawrence County), and now in Mayfield-Graves County.Graves County Judge Executive Jesse Perry commented that it was a great day for Graves County. He expressed appreciation to Sullivan University for their decision to come to the community, as it will fill a large void left by the departure of Mid-Continent University.David Keene, Sullivan University Vice President-Community Partnerships, spoke with West Kentucky Star about the new Mayfield Learning Center. Keene said, "all of the counties west of Kentucky Lake, we're here to serve those people, and we're very happy to be here. We will be working with employers, we will be working with people that just want an advance in their careers, and possibly with high school students that are coming to us straight out of high school. But we're here to help develop the workforce in the region."Sullivan University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees. Program areas include hospitality, business, paralegal studies, justice and public safety, pharmacy, medical and health sciences, information technology, graphic and interior design, HVAC-R, advanced manufacturing and human resources. Their College of Pharmacy has the only three-year accelerated Doctor of Pharmacy program in the State of Kentucky. They also offer a Master of Science Physician Assistant program.Sullivan University offers both online and traditional classroom courses.
More Details Released on Alleged Murders in Murray
By West Kentucky Star Staff
A knife covered with blood and hair was reportedly found in Evelyn's kitchen, and police say it appears that Shannon tried to clean up in the shower, and a mop was found with blood on its handle. Shannon Scott's left thumb was still bleeding from a fresh cut, according to police, and he also had blood on his clothing.
MURRAY - Names of the victims have been released in what is described by police as a double murder Thursday night.Murray Police told KFVS-TV that 37-year-old Tera Todd and 77-year-old Evelyn Scott lived together in the home on Catalina Drive, and Todd was a caretaker for the older woman, who reportedly had Alzheimer's disease.Police responded at 9:47 pm Thursday, when a neighbor called after coming home and finding Todd's body in the doorway of their garage. when police went next door, they discovered Scott's body. They also found 51-year-old Shannon Scott in the bathroom with blood on his hands. Police told KFVS he was Tera's boyfriend, and had been to the home often. He is not related to Evelyn Scott.Officers took Scott into custody, and he is charged with two counts of murder and one count each of first-degree burglary, tampering with physical evidence and animal cruelty.Police say they believe the man forced his way into the home, breaking a door chain in the process. They say it appears he stabbed Todd several times, then slit Scott's throat and strangled a small dog that belonged to one of the women.KFVS reports that a blood trail found by police indicates Todd fled the home and went to the neighbor's front door before collapsing near the garage, where she was found.Autopsies were scheduled to be performed on the women's bodies on Friday.On the Net:
Graves County's Newest SRO is Retired Cop Maxie
By West Kentucky Star Staff
MAYFIELD - Shawn Maxie recently was sworn into office as a special law enforcement officer for the Graves County Public Schools.A graduate of Caldwell County High School, Maxie worked in the Paducah Police Department from 1994 to 2014. More recently, he taught incoming police officers at the Department of Criminal Justice Training center on the campus of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.Maxie joins Jonathan Grant, who is also a retired officer, having worked with Kentucky State Police Post 1, Mayfield.This is year four for me. Im glad to be a part of the team, Grant said of his own service in the Graves County Schools. The best part of this job is being able to come back to the school system to hang out with kids and mentor them.Grant and Maxie had crossed paths in their previous work. Officer Maxie is a great addition to our department of public safety. Hes got the perfect personality for the job, lots of experience, and loves the kids, Grant said.The kids are seeing me around, getting to know me better, Maxie said.He grinned and chuckled in recalling how one middle school student even let him in on a secret handshake.Im also getting back into teaching DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) in fact, at all seven elementary schools. The program has changed somewhat since I was an instructor and mentor a few years ago, but Im really enjoying it. Establishing relationships is a key part of doing police work. I also really enjoy not only teaching, but interacting with kids whenever I get the chance, Maxie said.
Conspirator in Trigg Co. Murders Dies in Prison
By West Kentucky Star Staff
HOPKINSVILLE - A woman who was just denied early parole due to health problems has died in prison.According to WKDZ, Ann Plotkin of Hopkinsville died Friday, just one day after she was denied a special request for parole due to a terminal illness.Counting time served in local jail after her 2014 arrest, Plotkin had served four years of a 22-year sentence at Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange.She plead guilty in May 2017 to three counts of complicity to murder related to the shooting deaths of Joe and Joy Champion and their daughter Emily on October 26, 2014. She helped Ryan Champion plan the murders and communicated between him and hired killer 22-year-old Vito Riservato, whom Ryan shot to death at the scene.Ryan Champion plead guilty in December 2016 to murder and kidnapping, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Senator Danny Carroll's Legislative Update
By Senator Danny Carroll
PADUCAH - The General Assembly hit the ground running this week as it began the continuation of the 2019 Regular Session. The Senate Majority is excited to move forward with its legislative priorities and pass laws that benefit the Commonwealth.Through ice and snow to unseasonably warm weather, the General Assembly continued to discuss legislative priorities throughout the three-week interim in committee meetings. The newly formed Public Pensions Working Group, co-chaired by Senator Wil Schroder, met twice each week. Throughout these meetings, this bipartisan group from both chambers heard extensive and detailed testimony on the condition of our public pension systems. While there is still much to be done, we are confident that this working group is heading in the right direction toward developing a viable solution to this persistent dilemma facing our state.Committee meetings were in full swing this week as we discussed and passed bills to the Senate floor for final votes. On Thursday, the Senate passed three pieces of legislation.Senate Bill 32, sponsored by Senator Stan Humphries, improves the current water well drilling system by allowing water well driller assistants to be certified by the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. Senate Bill 77, sponsored by Senator Julie Raque Adams, proposes an expansion of Kentucky's current organ donor registration list through an easily accessible sign-on system to designate consent. Senate Bill 31, sponsored by Senator Ralph Alvarado, requires the Cabinet of Health and Family Services to provide frequent visitation for siblings who are in out-of-home care and not jointly placed.Also on Thursday, the Senate Education Committee was honored to welcome the families of the victims of the Marshall County High School shooting as they testified on behalf of Senate Bill 1. The testimony from the Holt and Cope families was powerful and moving. At the conclusion of the meeting, SB 1 was unanimously voted out of committee.SB 1, the School Safety and Resiliency Act, passed on Friday with an overwhelming majority. Sponsored by Senator Max Wise, SB 1 is a bipartisan piece of legislation that focuses on developing standardized conditions and training that will better secure safety in our schools through personnel, structures/protocols, and a culture of connection with students that concentrates on their overall well-being. Accountability for school safety compliance will also be emphasized. The safety and security of the children of Kentucky is paramount. As the bill moves to the House, the Senate Education Committee will continue to provide input so that the bill that eventually arrives on the Governor's desk is in its best possible form.If you have any questions or comments about these issues or any other public policy issue, please call me toll-free at 1-800-372-7181 or email me at danny.carroll@lrc.ky.gov. You can also review the Legislature's work online at www.legislature.ky.gov.
Cultural advocate LeRoy McCarthy has been very successful in his efforts to get the city to recognize hip-hop culture and legendary musicians with tributes and street signs. Notorious B.I.G., Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest, Sylvia Robinson and the Wu-Tang Clan have all gotten streets renamed in their honor thanks to him. His latest project: trying to have a portion of Babylon Turnpike on Long Island turned into Public Enemy Turnpike.
"Hip-hop has changed many lives, and it is great that Long Island will have the opportunity to honor a significant group who are very influential worldwide," he told Gothamist. "With the success of Public Enemy Turnpike, hip hop will be on the map in Long Island."
Public Enemy formed on Long Island in the mid-1980s after Carlton Ridenhour (Chuck D) and William Drayton (Flavor Flav) met earlier in the decade at Adelphi University. They released their landmark second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, in 1988, recording the album at various NYC studios. The group was inducted in to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2013, and into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2018.
"I grew up in Roosevelt on Long Island, and I went to high school not too far from here," Chuck D said last year. "My track team had to run around Eisenhower Park two times and practice. I went to Adelphi University and I graduated in 1984. I have Long Island all in my bones."
The portion of the Babylon Turnpike that is in question comes between the towns of Roosevelt and Freeport in Nassau County. Paperwork is being submitted to Legislator Kevan Abrahams and Nassau County District 1 for approval next week, and McCarthy says he's received positive feedback for it so far.
In December, the City Council voted 48-0 to approve two of his proposals: the stretch of St. James Place between Gates Avenue and Fulton Street was renamed "Christopher Wallace Way" in honor of Notorious B.I.G., and the southeast of Vanderbilt Avenue and Targee Street in the Park Hill section of Staten Island was renamed Wu-Tang Clan District. Prior to that, he helped get a street in Queens co-named for Malik "Phife Dawg" Taylor Way, and got a street co-named for Sylvia Robinson in Englewood, NJ.
He also put up a spray chalk tribute at the Franklin Avenue stop to Aretha Franklin, and was able to convince the MTA to place more permanent "Respect" memorials in the station.
Another major hip-hop landmark McCarthy has been fighting to create for several years now: honoring the Beastie Boys with a street sign in the Lower East Side. Unfortunately, it's been rejected several times by CB3, though McCarthy is still hopeful it will happen at some point. "The Beastie Boys Square street co-name has been very political for very bizarre reasons, hopefully it will move forward in 2020," he said. (He's also trying to get Tupac Shakur Place street name in Oakland.)
McCarthy, who previously worked in the music industry for Bad Boy and other labels in the '90s, now works in film & TV production as a locations manager. In addition to the street signage, he's also trying to get The United States Conference Of Mayors to declare two resolutions in August: Hip Hop Recognition Month, and August 11th: Hip Hop Celebration Day. Philadelphia previously recognized the day with a proclamationMcCarthy chose that date because it historically is recognized as the birth of the hip-hop movement when Kool Herc threw a party on Sedgwick Avenue in The Bronx.
Hundreds Enjoy 'Night to Shine 2019' in Paducah
By West Kentucky Star Staff
PADUCAH - Heartland Church in Paducah hosted "Night to Shine 2019" Friday night, sponsored by the Tim Tebow Foundation.Hundreds of folks got a chance to celebrate at the event, which is a prom night experience that centers on God's love for people with special needs ages 14 and up.According to the Tim Tebow Foundation website, "Night to Shine" took place at over 650 churches, all on the same night. This is the second year for the event in Paducah, and the fifth nationwide.Every guest is paired up with a volunteer who is their buddy for the night. They get a red carpet experience with fans and paparazzi, along with access to hair and makeup stations, shoe shining areas, corsages and boutonnieres, a catered dinner, karaoke, prom favors, and fun on the dance floor. All of this leads up to the moment when each guest is crowned king or queen of the prom.
Gun Reportedly Fired Near WKCTC Campus
By West Kentucky Star Staff
PADUCAH - A woman allegedly fired a shot into the air near the campus of West Kentucky Community and Technical College on Friday morning.According to Paducah Police, officers were called to the 1000 block of Old North Friendship Road just before 11:00 am, where a woman with a handgun was reportedly in the road, near the rear of the Anderson Building on the WKCTC campus.A male acquaintance took the gun from her after the alleged shot was fired. WKCTC security was notified and Old North Friendship Road was blocked for a short time.Officers took the woman into custody and transported her for a mental evaluation.
A development team is planning to buy and demolish the Grand Hyatt New York, a 26-story hotel near Grand Central Terminal that was originally built in 1919 and renovated by Donald Trump in the late 1970s, the Wall Street Journal reports. The move allows developer TF Cornerstone and MSD Partners, which manages the assets of tech maven Michael Dell, to build a taller structure totaling 2 million square feet.
The project represents the third planned demolition to occur in the wake of the citys 2017 East Midtown rezoning plan, which sought to incentivize the development of newer and taller office buildings through the purchase of air rights from neighboring landmarks.
Last month, JPMorgan Chase initiated the city permitting process to demolish its 52-story headquarters at 270 Park Avenue. The decision to raze 270 Park, which would be the tallest building in the world to be intentionally destroyed, sparked an outcry from architectural critics and preservationists.
Aside from tearing down a structure deemed to be a modernist landmark, some expressed concerns that such demolitions fly in the face of sustainability. But then again, the rezoning was meant to spur such drastic overhauls.
One of the goals of the rezoning was to incentivize replacement of existing buildings by allowing larger ones to replace them, so that inherently runs counter to sustainability, said Kyle Johnson, a board member of Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sights and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement (DOCOMOMO)s NY/Tri-State division.
DOCOMOMO was among the groups who opposed the rezoning, citing sustainability as one of the reasons.
In an example of what occurred prior to the city's East Midtown rezoning, the new 47-story office tower that has gone up at 425 Park Avenue also involved a demolition. But the old zoning rules encouraged developer L&L Holding to keep 25 percent of the existing building in return for greater square footage.
Its unlikely there will be any tears shed for the Grand Hyatt, at least in its current form. Under Trump, who no longer owns the building, the Beaux-Arts-style building was wrapped in shiny bronze-colored glass and aluminum. In 2011, the Hyatt underwent an $130 million renovation, in part to rid itself of some of Trumps tacky design choices.
Originally named The Commodore after Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the hotel once boasted the Most Beautiful Lobby in the World, which was also said to be the largest room in the city. Although popular with tourists and business travelers for decades, the hotel went into decline in the 1970s.
The Commodore Hotel (Wiki Commons)
But underneath its glassy Trump-styled exterior, the more refined brick facade of The Commodore remains hidden, for now, at least.
I wish someone would strip off the glass slipcover over the historic building, rather than demolish the structure altogether, Johnson said.
What I love about wine is that its a
never ending
learning process and this
months
Wine Pairing Weekend
group
takes us to Uruguay to discover the
se South American wines. This is actually my first go around at tasting a wine from Uruguay. It is always tough to not want to judge wines from a particular country once youve tried some and make an overall judgment on the quality produced there. Luckily the wine Im sharing today from Bodega Garzon left a positive impression, but I have been on the opposite side of the spectrum many years ago with South African wines. I had tried a couple at a tasting and they were not to my liking at all. I never tried them again for years until my trip to South African back in about 2012. I ventured to the wine region of Stellenbosch. To make a long story short my first impression previously was no longer valid and Ive really come to appreciate the wines produced in South Africa.
So
push yourself to try something new and keep exploring as you may be pleasantly surprised.
L
Norman Seabrook, the longtime union boss of New York City's correction officers, will spend at least four years in prison, following his sentencing today for accepting a six-figure kickback in exchange for steering union retirement benefits into a sketchy hedge fund.
The 58-month sentence was handed down by Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Friday, capping off a sprawling federal probe into the corrupt dealings of a man who once ranked among New York City's most powerful labor leaders. For two decades, Seabrook ruled over the 20,000-member Correction Officers Benevolent Association, helping to dictate jail operations and frequently acting as a roadblock to reforms.
While he did "major good" for union members, Seabrook was "blinded by his own sense of importance and his desire to benefit himself after benefiting others for so long," the judge said on Friday, the NY Post reports.
Among his many duties as COBA boss, Seabrook controlled the union's finances, including the administration of a city-funded benefits program that invests more than $70 million for correction officers retirements.
In 2013, he declared that "it's time for Norman Seabrook to get paid," according to prosecutors. Soon after, Jona Rechnitz, a de Blasio donor who's admitted to bribing several law enforcement officials, delivered $60,000 in a Ferragamo bag to Seabrook. As part of the deal brokered by Rechnitz, Seabrook had agreed to invest millions of dollars into a now-defunct hedge fund called Platinum Partner, run by Murray Huberfeld. Most of that money was lost.
"Tens of thousands of hardworking correction officers once looked to Norman Seabrook as their leader and champion," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement. "Seabrook now stands convicted of betraying them for a bag full of cash and the promise of more. His conduct resulted not simply in the memberships loss of faith in its leader, but the loss of millions of dollars in retirement benefits due to union members."
Following the sentencing, Seabrook was reportedly unapologetic. There is no evidence that I ever intended for any union member to lose a dime," he said. "I always believed these investments would make money."
Under the terms of the sentence, Seabrook, Rechnitz, and Huberfeld will be required to pay back $19 million in lost investment. Huberfeld is due to be sentenced next week, and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Rechnitz, who has pleaded guilty to a slew of other charges, including buying access to the de Blasio administration, is set to be sentenced on April 4th.
UNI NEWS DIGEST AT 2000 HRS FOR JUNE 23, 2021 23 Jun 2021 | 8:11 PM New Delhi:ED transfers assets of Mallya, Nirav, Choksi worth Rs 9,041 cr to PSBs (DI8)
:Cabinet approves merger of CRWC with CWC (DI10)
Surat:Rahul Gandhi to appear before Gujarat court in defamation case (BY14)
Islamabad:Blast rips off outside Hafiz Saeed's house in Pakistan; three dead, 21 injured (DF5)
Srinagar:Encounter ensues b/w SFs & militants in Shopian (DR37)
New Delhi:PM pays homage to Jagannathrao Joshi on his 101st birth anniversary (DI11)
Thiruvananthapuram:Kerala reports 12,787 new COVID cases, 150 deaths (MS21)
New Delhi:Ajay Kaul assumes charge as Editor-in-Chief of UNI (DI14)
Moscow:Facebook's algorithm found promoting Myanmar military propaganda after coup: NGO (FN23)
Southampton:WTC Final: NZ bowl out India for 170, need 139 runs to win title (SPD11)
UNI GNK PS2000. see more..
Digital technology, space exploration can reinvigorate India-NZ ties: Muraleedharan 23 Jun 2021 | 7:36 PM New Delhi, Jun 23 (UNI) India and New Zealand need to rejuvenate their economic engagement by finding new avenues for investment and business, such as digital technology and space exploration for civilian use, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said on Wednesday. see more..
Ajay Kaul assumes charge as Editor-in-Chief of UNI 23 Jun 2021 | 7:31 PM New Delhi, Jun 23 (UNI) Senior journalist Ajay Kumar Kaul assumed the charge as Editor-in chief of multi-lingual national news agency United News of India on Wednesday. see more..
Cabinet okays pact b/w India, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines for tax information exchange 23 Jun 2021 | 7:01 PM New Delhi, Jun 23 (UNI) The Cabinet on Wednesday approved an agreement between the India and Caribbean country Saint Vincent and The Grenadines for the exchange of information and assistance in collection with respect to Taxes. see more..
Ahmedabad, Feb 9 (UNI) The old Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) state head office in Paldi area of Ahmedabad city of Gujarat on Saturday turned in to a 'battle-ground' of sorts as police intervened to stop a possible clash between the members of VHP and that of the Pravin Togadia led Antarashtriya Hindu Parishad (AHP).
The head-office building known as Vanikar Bhavan was being used by Togadia as the virtual head-office of AHP which he formed after the defeat in the election and his subsequent separation from VHP last year.
The VHP people were strongly against it and had made a written complaint to the police seeking ouster of AHP people from the premises.
Armenia stuck youth return, credit AAP's Mann
Chandigarh, Feb 9 (UNI) Expressing gratitude, rescued youths from Armenia said Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Bhagwant Mann was God sent and acted like a Messiah for them.
We are back from the virtual hell and want to express our profound gratitude to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Bhagwant Mann, without whose intervention, we would have never returned home. Mann Sir has acted as a true Messiah for us, this is how the youth trapped in Armenia expressed their ordeal with mediapersons here upon landing at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi.
With new regulations such as the PPP (public-private partnership) law in Saudi Arabia, an increased number of PPP projects will get off the ground around the region, with a growing focus on renewables, transportation, education and healthcare, said a report by global law firm Hogan Lovells.
The impact of key market regulations will become clearer as they are approved and implemented:
with possibly a new PPP law in Oman; foreign investment law in UAE and Qatar, stated Hogan Lowells in its recently released "Investment Outlook 2019 Report: Economic trends and corporate transactions in the GCC."
The third annual Investment Outlook report investigates the fiscal environment in the GCC, the key macroeconomic factors impacting the region, as well as investment trends and capital inflows over the next 12 months.
In this years report, alongside trends for capital markets, privatization and PPPs, Hogan Lovells takes a close look at the prospects for foreign direct investment (FDI), growing trade and investment ties with Africa and China, and the Gulf regions emergence as Silicon Valleys leading venture investor.
The global law firm pointed out that Emirati investors will continue to expand out of their slowing home market and take advantage of growth potential in Saudi Arabia, as well as increasing ties in Africa, China, India, Russia and Latin America, it stated.
Sovereign wealth funds like Mubadala and Saudi's Public Investment Fund (PIF) are likely to expand their investment in global ventures, increasingly financed by loans.
They could start investing more actively into their home economies to make up for lack of foreign investment and struggling private sectors, it stated.
Hogan Lowells pointed out that the macroeconomic picture had improved significantly across the GCC over the last 12 months.
Increased oil production and the more benign fiscal environment translated into improved GDP growth. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar returned to fiscal surpluses in 2018, Oman's deficit narrowed very sharply, while Bahrain pulled back from crisis, after receiving support from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, it stated.
According to Hogan Lowells, there are some challenges from 2018 which will make the transition into 2019. GDP growth has not yet delivered a better environment for the private sector.
"Also the low hanging fruit has gone, hindering the high growth rates we have become used to. The global and regional framework grows ever more challenging and harder to navigate," it stated.
"However, there are also key opportunities shaping Gulf markets this year, including: Growing trade and investment ties. With the US becoming a less predictable partner, Gulf countries are making efforts to develop ties in new markets," it added.
In Saudi Arabia, a number of privatisation deals, currently in the pipeline, are likely to be completed in 2019. Also the sovereign wealth funds are investing into global ventures.
"The major opportunities shaping Gulf markets include the UAE's strong position as a gateway for investment into Africa besides the transformation in Chinas relations with the Gulf over the past year, and Brexit, whilst causing financial markets to suffer, could be seen as an opportunity for GCC nations to strike mutually beneficial trade deals directly with the UK," it stated.
The Tech Boom
The Gulf region has emerged as Silicon Valley's leading venture investor, with key players establishing offices there to focus their high-value tech investments. Within the Middle East, a wave of tech start-ups, mostly founded after the recession, are now reaching critical mass and attracting serious capital investment.
GCC governments continue to attract foreign investment by offering far-reaching reforms, unlocking state-owned assets and loosening restrictions.
New regulations such as the PPP law in Saudi Arabia, and possibly Oman, as well as the Foreign Investment Laws in the UAE and Qatar are encouraging investors to take a real look at the Middle East, remarked Rahail Ali, the managing partner of Hogan Lovells Middle East.
"GCC economies have proved to be resilient in the face of, at times, depressed oil prices. The growth potential of these markets is huge and the reform drive is continuing, while government infrastructure spending has grown - a key hook for foreign investment," noted Ali.
"That is not to say that there isn't room for further development. Privatization, for example, takes time and local businesses need to adjust to the new regulatory environments," he pointed out.
"However, government initiatives, such as Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, are committed to positive change which we can already see in the development of sustainable market sectors," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
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NEWS RELEASE REGULATED INFORMATION
HERSTAL, BELGIUM and IRVINE, CA - February 9, 2019 - MDxHealth SA (Euronext Brussels: MDXH) ("MDxHealth" or the "Company"), announced that it received on February 7, 2019 the following notification of significant shareholdings in accordance with the Belgian Act of May 2, 2007 on the disclosure of important participations in issuers of which shares are admitted to trading on a regulated market and regarding miscellaneous provisions (the "Belgian Transparency Act").
Capfi Delen Asset Management NV (acting as a person that notifies alone) notified MDxHealth of the acquisition or disposal of voting securities or voting rights in MDxHealth, as a result of which, as at January 28, 2019, its participation in MDxHealth decreased below the threshold of 3% of the outstanding shares and voting rights of MDxHealth.
It follows from the notification that Capfi Delen Asset Management NV as at January 28, 2019 owns 1,780,286 shares of MDxHealth, representing 2.97% of the 59,939,289 currently outstanding shares and voting rights of MDxHealth. Previously, Capfi Delen Asset Management NV had notified that it owned 2,987,836 shares of MDxHealth.
The notification specifies that Capfi Delen Asset Management NV benefits from the exemption of Article 11 of the Belgian Transparancy Act, and that it is ultimately controlled by Stichting Aministratiekantoor "Het Torentje". The full chain of undertakings controlling Capfi Delen Asset Management NV is set out in an annex to the transparency notification, available on the website of MDxHealth.
For further information, reference is made to the information published on MDxHealth's website (http://www.mdxhealth.com/investors/shareholder-information).
About MDxHealth
MDxHealth is a multinational healthcare company that provides actionable molecular diagnostic information to personalize the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The Company's tests are based on proprietary genetic, epigenetic (methylation) and other molecular technologies and assist physicians with the diagnosis of urologic cancers, prognosis of recurrence risk, and prediction of response to a specific therapy. The Company's European headquarters are in Herstal, Belgium, with laboratory operations in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and US headquarters and laboratory operations based in Irvine, California. For more information, visit mdxhealth.com and follow us on social media at: twitter.com/mdxhealth, facebook.com/mdxhealth and linkedin.com/company/mdxhealth.
For more information:
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Dr. Jan Groen, CEO
US: +1 949 812 6979
BE: +32 4 257 70 21
info@mdxhealth.com
Consilium Strategic Communications
David Daley, Chris Welsh, Jonathan Birt
UK: +44 20 3709 5701
mdxhealth@consilium-comms.com
NOTE: The MDxHealth logo, MDxHealth, ConfirmMDx, SelectMDx, AssureMDx, PredictMDx and UrNCollect are trademarks or registered trademarks of MDxHealth SA. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.
LOBAMBA Some Members of Parliament were spot on on their predictions of what His Majesty the King would speak about during his address.
This was during the opening of the first session of the 11th Parliament which was held yesterday.
About 10 MPs were interviewed before the Kings address and asked what they were hoping His Majesty would touch on during his speech.
The MPs included Motjane MP Robert Magongo, Sithobelweni MP Bhekitje Dlamini, Maphalaleni MP Mabulala Maseko, Mkhiweni MP Ndlelayekuphila Masuku and Manzini South MP Thandi Nxumalo.
Like they were reading from the same script, the MPs in different interviews first stated that they could not put words in the Kings mouth or pre-empt what he would say. They said they could only say what they wished and hoped he would talk about.
Most common among what the legislators had to say was that they hoped the King would speak about how the economy would be revived, health issues as well as education. Some, however, were hopeful that he would touch on issues of the youth as it formed a huge part of the national population.
This is what they had to say:
Robert Magongo (Motjane Inkhundla): We are here to listen to His Majesty and get direction as to where he wants us to go. That will be the starting point although we might have our own ideas as to where we want to go.
We have our own ideas which you will learn about after the budget speech. We will not pull any punches but we will say it as it is. We are hopeful that with a new government in office things will be better; we hope the new government will listen.
Bomber Mamba (Matsa- njeni South Inkhundla): When we went to see the King as MPs, he emphasised on reviving the countrys economy. I noted that. It meant that we had to acknowledge the countrys economic status as the current Parliament.
MBABANE Roles were switched both literally and indirectly in Parliament yesterday as former politicians sat at the public gallery.
This was during the official opening of the first session of the 11th Parliament yesterday. Among these were former two-time cabinet Minister Jabulile Mashwama who has now assumed the position of Managing Director of Eswatini Water Services Corporation (EWSC).
This was a direct switch with former EWSC MD Peter Bhembe, who replaced Mashwama as both Senator and Minister of Natural Resources and Energy. Also, former Foreign Affairs and International Relations Minister Chief Mgwagwa Gamedze sat in the public gallery watching new Minister Thuli Dladla occupy his former seat in the chamber.
overlooking
Paul Dlamini, the former Deputy Prime Minister (DPM), was overlooking DPM Themba Masuku who sat on the seat for the second time, though not in a row.
Princess Tsandzile, former Home Affairs Minister, was surely in support of her sister Princess Lindiwe who replaced her both in the house of Senate and also at the ministry.
KAZONDWAKO Sell marijuana to pay school fees.These are words reportedly uttered by Sikanye (Ka-Zondwako) High School Head teacher Stanley Matsebula to parents who complained about the school fees being too high for a school in the rural areas.
The parents, in separate interviews, narrated that they were allegedly told by Matsebula to sell marijuana to make money so they could fund their childrens school fees. In an interview, Matsebula repeated these words cementing the allegations made by the parents.
Narrating how they got to the point of being told to sell dagga to fund their childrens school fees, parents said they had enquired about the schools decision to hike fees for the 2019 academic year. The decision was reportedly taken without their involvement and without furnishing them with last years financial report.
Shock
Parents interviewed earlier this week expressed their shock after they learnt that school fees had been hiked for this academic year. They narrated that the school fees hike had more impact on orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) as under the new fees plan, those in Form I had to pay about E1 401 more than what was paid at the school last year.
The parents narrated that last year OVC guardians paid about E1 500 as top-up fees while government paid about E1 950. According to the schools 2019 fees plan, guardians have to pay E2 901 for pupils in Form I. This figure is lower for the higher grades with the least paid being E2 594 by those in Form IV.
Protect
It should be noted that the names of interviewed parents are known to this publication but will not be revealed to protect the identities of the minors.
*Ruth, an elderly woman whose grandchild is a pupil at Sikanye High School, narrated that she was reportedly told to sell spinach so to be able to pay school fees for the learner.
She clarified that spinach was a word commonly used in the community to refer to dagga. She said she was also told that she should sell handicraft so she could make enough money to pay the fees. Ruth narrated that what pained her was that the school was literally a creation of their own hands as they did manual labour when it was built.
She narrated how she dug the foundation with the hope that the school would one day help her grandchildren and future generations to come. She narrated that the school was proving to become rather too expensive for them as unemployed people from the rural area. Where will we get this money from? Ruth asked in a sombre tone.
Ruth was concerned that due to the high fees they had to pay at the school, some parents moved their children to other schools which were a bit far from their community. Her concern was that as parents and guardians, they did not always have money which resulted in their children having to walk to their respective schools.
*Not real names.
This week I meant to write about the upcoming Valentines Day. I am fascinated by how millions of people are caught up with this now commercialised day whose original purpose seems misinterpreted today.
Visit Google on the origins of this day and you will see how it has evolved into a buy me a gift or it means you dont love me kind of day than how it started.
But I will save my views on this day for another day. There is a more pressing issue to discuss today. It is financial literacy. Wait dont page on to the next feature.
Achievement
This one may be very useful for you. Keep reading. Often is the case when we see the words finance or mathematics many minds hit a shutdown mode. But as the famous saying goes, what will save you is on the other side of fear or what on appears complex from afar but is actually quite simple and liberating.
Thanks to an attachment with the Junior Achievement Eswatini, I recently got a taste of the programmes they are rolling out for high school pupils. Most of them are about helping the youth to own their economic futures.
What took my attention the most though was the word financial literacy. I love fancy terms and this term sounds, and is pregnant with resources for sustainable happiness. So over the past few weeks I have been researching about this animal and I discovered that it is quite an integral part of any human beings life. It should be our dog.
A mans best friend. In fact you cannot afford to be financially illiterate. It is costly.
Investopedia, yes not Wikipedia, describes financial literacy as the education and understanding of various financial areas including topics related to managing personal finance, money and investing.
This topic focuses on the ability to manage personal finance matters in an efficient manner, and it includes the knowledge of making appropriate decisions about personal finance such as investing, insurance, real estate, paying for tertiary, budgeting, retirement and tax planning. Sounds like basic financial skills you agree? But as we are in the second month of the year it is apparent that what appears basic is not so basic.
The long lines at the banks when schools were about to reopen shows that for some, not all, there was a lack of planning in their resource usage during the festive season.
Retirement
And it is nothing to be very embarrassed about, because its a trap that you can still get out ofbeing gaining financial literacy.
My friend Investopedia continues to advise that the main steps to achieving financial literacy include learning the skills to create a budget, the ability to track spending, learning the techniques to pay off debt and effectively planning for retirement. These steps can also include counseling from a financial expert.
Education about the topic involves understanding how money works, creating and achieving financial goals and managing internal and external financial challenges. One of the books that was almost gathering dust on my shelf is Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Paging through it I discovered that it has a wealth (literally) of knowledge on the topic of financial literacy as well. According to Robert Kiyosaki, financial literacy is the most important instruction that will help a person to build a strong foundation.
Intelligence
And it is befitting that JA Eswatini is one of those organsations that have offered to assist in teaching this in schools. But we also need it in our adult lives especially at a time when the nation is facing economic challenges. In uncertain economic times one needs to know where every cent is going to and that means understanding your spending patterns as well as regulating and cutting where there is a waste.
Robert notes, Intelligence solves problems and produces money. Money without financial intelligence is money soon gone. In the book he shares how education systems teach people to work for money, but keeps us ignorant of how to make, keep, and manage money. He therefore urges that we should learn how to create wealth, that is learning about advocacy for financial independence.
This is quite good advice especially coming from someone enjoying more than his fair share of financial independence. In essence financial freedom takes you towards financial independence.
While we are seeking solutions to our economic crisis we are also looking at bodies like the Eswatini Bankers Association to roll out financial literacy programmes for adults. It would be in their best interest, literally, that we manage our money better.
Discussion
If there are existing ones then one can only wish that they are strengthen to reach out to the masses. In some cases you can have a bank account but never have had a discussion with any banking official on how to better manage your money. Hence we have seen some people blow ridiculous amounts of money within months through painting the town red to the detriment of their bank accounts. Financial literacy is a win-win for everyone and creates a better society and also supports a setting for more sustainable businesses.
The issue of financial literacy is not one that concerns Eswatini alone, but hey context is everything.
Financial literacy is also a biblical principle. In Haggai 1 verse 6 it warnsThink carefully about your ways. You have planted much but harvest little. You eat but are not satisfied. You drink but are still thirsty. You put on clothes but cannot keep warm. Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes.
Personal development is a never ending journey and at the top of the list should be financial literacy. Have a great week and for those who celebrate Valentines Day, may that day also be love filled!
remaining of
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Posted Friday, February 8, 2019 7:39 am
I am opposed to the construction of the Kalama methanol plant on the basis of its impact on the Northwests supply of natural gas and how it would impact the Northwest economy.
Energy is one of the keystones of a vibrant and growing economy. This project would have a significant negative impact on long-term growth and stability of the economy. The amount of gas to supply the operation of this plant is equivalent to the send-out of any of the four natural gas local distribution companies (LDC) serving Western Washington and the Willamette Valley.
The plant would consume 320 million therms of natural gas daily from the existing transmission line from the wells in Canada via a Canadian pipeline to the U.S. border and by the Williams pipeline through their transmission line to the local distribution companies in Oregon and Washington. A residential equivalent for heating is approximately one therm an hour.
Consider also all of the businesses and industries using gas. Through peak heating periods there is not enough capacity in the existing transmission lines to serve all of LDCs needs, for this reason they use peak shaving storage such as LNG or depleted natural gas wells that are refilled each summer to augment the pipeline supply. Flow in the line is relatively steady throughout the year because of this ability to replenish storage supplies closer to home.
Job creation has been a point that proponents of this plant have used. The Kalama plant would have an employment base of just over 100 employees in operation. More during construction, but that is short when compared with the operating life of this plant. Consider also that the plant will be of Chinese design and similar to the 11 other plants they have built around the Pacific Rim. While the civil works for this plant will be built here on site, the reforming equipment will be designed and built in China and barged to the Kalama site. Thus not all of the 2 billion dollars this plant is supposed to cost will be spent here. If built in China the labor rates are substantially lower. The plant will also have to meet Washington requirements of the heat and pressure equipment.
One of the biggest problems I see is the increased demand on the pipeline capacity all the way to the source. That means new pipelines and compressor station facilities will be required. Those costs will surely be passed on to us in the forms of increased transportation rates. Secondly, is the growth and development of new industry in the face of the possible constraints on the pipeline imposed by this plant? Industry will not develop or expand with an unsure energy supply, either at the well head or in transmission. Industry growth is what stimulates residential and commercial development. Problems in energy supply will chase the development elsewhere. Note here also that this plant, besides producing a paltry 100 jobs, does not contribute tax revenues to Washington. The gas is purchased in Canada and owned by the Chinese when it crosses the border and as an export product it is not subject to a sales tax. Furthermore, Cowlitz County is proposing significant property tax reductions for the plant. In effect we will be giving the Chinese a free gift. In the meantime, we will reduce our long term supply at the wellhead by about one third.
I would like to see an independent study on the economic impact of this plant on the entirety of the Northwest economy. My expectation is that the study will show that negative impacts of this plant far exceed its benefits.
{{tncms-inline content="David Taylor moved to Ridgefield in 2005 and presently serves on the Ridgefield City Council. Taylor has 45 years of natural gas engineering experience.
" id="9c72fe7c-8cde-424a-ab07-f900d9685864" style-type="bio" title="About the author" type="relcontent"}}
Posted Friday, February 8, 2019 7:37 am
I was initially an independent voter, choosing the person I believed would do the best job in a particular position. When Roe v. Wade made abortion legal, I realized that the Democrats were pushing abortion. If there was political opposition, it came from the Republicans. Abortion was never about the health of the mother as there were many ways to safely deal with complicated pregnancies. Abortion was about birth control. When having a baby was an inconvenience for the mother, abortion was seen as a way to solve the problem. As proponents of abortion admit today, actually delivering the baby is the safest and healthiest way for the average mother. Yes, she is the mother even if she chooses to kill the baby. Christians need to squarely face the evil behind murdering children. It compares with pagans throwing their babies to the fires of the biblical god Molech. I believe this is the most egregious sin this nation has ever legalized.
Posted Friday, February 8, 2019 9:03 am
The number of Washington law enforcement and government leaders balking at upholding gun control measures approved by voters in November, is growing.
Stevens County Sheriff Brad Manke said his deputies will not actively seek out violators unless there is an imminent threat to public safety.
I took an oath to defend the Constitution and uphold the laws of the state of Washington, so I don't feel I can say I will not enforce a law under any circumstances, he said. However, it would have to be a pretty extreme circumstance for us to ever make a custodial arrest for a violation.
As a sheriff, you have a lot of discretion and I will say that we are going to respect the Second Amendment.
Initiative-1639 passed with more than 60 percent of the vote, with the majority of yes votes coming from heavily populated, more urban counties west of the Cascades, while voters on the east side of the state mostly gave it a thumbs down.
The measure raises the minimum age for adults to buy a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21, redefines semi-automatic rifles as assault rifles and mandates safety classes for purchases. In addition, it requires firearms dealers to sell trigger locks and gun safes and prevents them from selling to out-of-state residents. The law would also make firearm owners criminally liable if their guns were involved in any criminal incidents, even if the weapons were stolen.
The measure is being challenged for its constitutionality in U.S. District Court by the Second Amendment Foundation as well as the National Rifle Association.
Manke said he opposed I-1639 and is hopeful the NRA-led challenge will ultimately prevail.
When my 19-year-old daughter can't carry a .22 rifle off our property but we can send her off to war I don't agree with that at all, he said.
Manke concedes there could be huge liabilities for jurisdictions refusing to enforce the law altogether if an underage subject uses a gun for a violent crime and authorities knew about weapons access and failed to act.
A motion to dismiss the NRA suit was filed by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Safe Schools Safe Communities, the leading proponents of I-1693; it will be heard Feb. 15.
Attorney General Office policy director Kate Kelly released this statement about the resistance rising in Eastern Washington:
We are aware of this situation and are actively monitoring developments as they occur. Attorney General Ferguson has been clear that he is committed to protecting the legal and constitutional rights of Washingtonians, and upholding the will of the state's voters in passing I-1639.
At least 20 county sheriffs statewide have said they would not actively enforce the measure.
She said the AG's office was confident I-1639 would be found constitutional. She referred people wanting further information to http://www.atg.wa.gov/initiative-1639.
Pend Orielle Sheriff Glenn Blakeslee shares Mankes views and they are working with other authorities on the east side to consolidate concerns about nonspecific and vague language in I-1639 that is open to interpretation.
They plan to ask the Legislature to further define the issues they identify.
We are trying to make as much sense of I-1639 as we can, Blakeslee said.
After doing research, he learned that the definition of assault rifle in the measure is more restrictive than even than that of the United Nations and California.
It's much too broad for my comfort, he said. This definition could end up being applied to every semi-automatic handgun or shotgun. He said the requirements for storage are also too vague and could be interpreted differently by someone on the west side of the state than on the east.
I want my citizens to have guns accessible where they can get to them in an emergency. I dont like this law and Im going to use a lot of discretion when enforcing it, he said.
Existing state law provides exemptions for underage possession of a firearm, such as target shooting and hunting, Blakeslee said.
He is going to follow those regulations and believes that will be important given that I-1639 does not specify whether guns already purchased by 18 to 20 years old are grandfathered and legal.
We are going to rely heavily on those exemptions, he said.
Okanogan County Sheriff Tony Hawley said I-1639 has the potential to re-victimize victims.
If someone has guns stolen and then we prosecute them for not storing them correctly, we are re-victimizing that individual, he said.
I dont like this law. My interpretation of I-1639 is that the language is so contradictory it's unenforceable. Until that's cleared up, we will do an investigation and document our findings and then turn them over to the prosecutor.
Stevens County Commission Vice Chairman Steve Parker said a proclamation is being drafted by the elected body in opposition of the new gun control laws.
A proclamation is a statement of principal, as opposed to an ordinance, which is local law, or a resolution, a legislative stance, he said.
The commission has taken time to research statements made by other counties, such as Franklin County's resolution announcing that its officials don't want the new laws enforced within their jurisdiction. Cowlitz County has also passed a resolution opposing the implementation of I-1639.
The idea was that we needed to make some kind of a statement, but we didn't want to cross jurisdictional lines, Parker said. It is really the jurisdiction of the sheriff and prosecutor to enforce these laws so we didn't want to muddy the waters.
Stevens County Prosecuting Attorney Tim Rasmussen pointed out the Second Amendment says, The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed so there should be no law telling people how to handle firearms in their own homes.
People have a right to protect themselves, he said. I support efforts to reduce gun violence but not to the extent of depriving people of their constitutional rights.
Rasmussen believes portions of I-1639 will be found unconstitutional.
The portion that holds a gun owner accountable for actions of other people I do not believe will stand judicial scrutiny, he said.
Like Manke, Rasmussen said an 18-year-old who is eligible to serve in the military should not be prohibited from gun ownership.
That is just nuts, he said.
He said many young people in Washington are taught by their parents how to safely handle guns and that is family business and the government should not tell families how to conduct themselves.
All prosecution is based on a case-by-case analysis, said Rasmussen, which considers the facts and the application of the law.
For that reason, he said he could not predict his response to any hypothetical situation that could arise under I-1639 laws.
Parker believes I-1639 was approved because too many voters have not been educated about how their constitutional rights play a vital role in protecting their personal liberties.
We need to call out any law that violates the constitution, he said.
That's exactly what Republic Police Chief Loren Culp said he is doing by refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution.
He was pleased with the announcements of Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer, Pacific County Sheriff Robin Souvenir, Gray Harbor County Rick Scott, Grant County Sheriff Tom Jones, Lincoln County Sheriff Wade Magers, and Kittitas County Sheriff Gene Dana that they would not enforce I-1639 laws.
Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza, Wahkiakum County Sheriff Mark Howie, Franklin County Sheriff Jim Raymond, Benton County Sheriff Jerry Hatcher, and Adams County Sheriff Dale Wagner have publicly stated that I-1639 appears to violate the constitution and for that reason is non-enforceable.
Skamania County Sheriff Dave Brown said he believes the law is unconstitutional and will wait for the courts to decide the issue before starting enforcement.
I did not personally support this initiative but I follow the rule of law, he said.
Chelan County Sheriff Brian Burnett took the same stance.
Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich issued a statement against I-1639 last week and said he offered to join the opposition lawsuit, although sheriffs have no standing to become a party.
He said there is nothing to enforce at this time and, until the day there is, I'll evaluate it and if it is against the Constitutions of the state of Washington or that of the United States, I will stand against it.
Ferry County Sheriff Raymond Maycumber said he would not enforce provisions of the law that he believes are unconstitutional.
As a person who has spent most of my adult life in service to our system of justice, I must have faith that the courts will fairly try and lawfully apply due process to the constitutionality of this initiative and find it lacking, as I do, he said.
Some gun shop owners, such Matt Cieslar of Talos Tactical in West Richland, have joined the rebellion by continuing to sell semi-automatic rifles to adults ages 18-20.
Cieslar says there is a loophole in the law, that the definition of assault rifle will be determined and implemented July 1.
I-1639 was approved Nov. 6 by a 60.33 percent margin statewide, but only 13 of Washington's 39 counties supported it.
All but two counties Spokane and Whitman counties in favor were in Western Washington.
While Spokane approved the measure with 51.1 percent of the vote, Stevens County rejected it by 72.1 percent.
Voters in Ferry County where Republic is located, opposed I-1639 by a nearly 80 percent margin.
To the sheriffs and police chiefs who say they have no choice but to enforce the law, Culp asks: Would you have arrested Rosa Parks for not sitting in the back of the bus because she was breaking a law? Would you have arrested Jews because that was a Nazi law?
No law approved by a state can supersede the rights protected in the U.S. Constitution, Culp said.
The supreme law of the land is the constitution and that's the law I uphold, he said.
His bid to have Republic declared a sanctuary city for Second Amendment rights is on hold pending further research by the city council, which he said is strongly supportive of his stand, as are local citizens.
When officers graduate from the academy they are certified by the state as peace officers, not law enforcement officers, Culp said. So, the argument that we have to enforce a law that doesn't keep the peace doesn't hold water.
He said the Legislature is considering more gun control laws and its time for authorities and citizens alike to stand up and be counted or they will lose their Second Amendment rights.
It will keep happening until enough police chiefs and sheriffs stand up against it, he said.
Roger Harnack contributed to this report.
Posted Friday, February 8, 2019 7:42 am
Doomsday Brewing Company has announced the opening of a third location at the Hazel Dell Towne Center. Theyre planning to open in May or June of this year.
The beer masters have found success with a brewpub in Washougal since 2014 and a taproom in downtown Vancouver since 2016.
Like the two other locations, the Hazel Dell spot will feature small-batch craft beer, and local hard cider and wine. The new location will also be offering beer in cans, growler fills and a food menu.
While the location does not yet have a name, it will be 3,000 square feet with a 600 square-foot patio.
We are excited to bring our family friendly pub and pizza concept from our headquarters in Washougal to where we both currently live, Erik Cole and Jake Walton, the owners of Doomsday Brewing Company said in a joint statement. This part of Hazel Dell has experienced massive growth in the past couple years, we are proud to offer our small batch beer and Artisan pizza to the community.
{{tncms-inline content="• Artisan Pizza
• Salad
• Wraps
• Sausage dogs
• Appetizers
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{{tncms-inline content="Along with a variety of brews they whip up occasionally and seasonally, Doomsday Brewing Company has three staples they’re always pouring:
• Nuclear IPA (7 percent ABV and 90 IBU)
• Redemption Red (6.5 percent ABV and 40 IBU)
• Agent Orange IPA (6 percent ABV and 60 IBU)
" id="83089e1d-0b53-4984-9603-0c7bdcbea798" style-type="bio" title="Beer Glance" type="relcontent"}}
Jealous of all the attention Image Comics' Saga #12 is getting after being banned for explicit gay sex scenes, the big two publishers are racing to include explicit gay sex in their own comics.
Source: ThanosCopter Newswire
Last year, both Marvel and DC received a lot of attention for their inclusion of gay characters in prominent situations in their comic books. For Marvel, it was the meaningful same-sex wedding of longtime X-Man Northstar in Astonishing X-Men, the culmination of a longterm relationship that had been evolving in Marvel comics since 2009. For DC, it was the reveal that a rebooted version of fourth-string Green Lantern Alan Scott in an alternate continuity universe title doomed to eventual cancelation is gay. Ok, so maybe Marvel's was a better idea.
In any case, it turned out to be fairly lucrative for them to exploit a hot social issue for comic book sales, so you can imagine their sharklike grins as they watched the media feeding frenzy over the 24 hour ban of Saga #12 due to explicit gay blowjob scenes play out earlier this week.
After learning that both Apple and Google were cool with explicit gay blowjob scenes, regardless of the consequences, DC and Marvel separately called meetings to determine how to organically place gay blowjobs in their comics. Using a sonic x-ray spycam attachment to our star reporter ThanosCopter, we are able to exclusively report on the happenings at those meetings, starting with Marvel's.
The following is a dramatization reenacted from Copter's memory banks. The events should be taken not as libelous facts, but rather our representation of the conversations and events based on ThanosCopter's best recollection. It is entirely possible that ThanosCopter made these up out of boredom, but as yesterday's Saga/Apple/Comixology drama shows, comic book news sites very rarely do any sort of factchecking:
"What if a bald bearded dude gave Wolverine a blowjob?" asked Jason Aaron, a bald bearded writer.
"Well, I guess Northstar could receive a blowjob or something," said Marjorie Liu, writer of last summer's Northstar wedding scene.
Jason Aaron cut her off. "What if we had Northstar grow a big black beard, put on like 50 pounds, and shave his head and then give Wolverine a blowjob while wearing an AC-DC shirt?"
"It'd look identical to the one I'm wearing now!" he somewhat unnecessarily pointed out.
"I've been building up to a scene where Spider-Ock forcibly receives a blowjob from a short person. It's a girl, but if we brought in Humberto Ramos it could look like a dude," said Dan Slott.
"Isn't that a bit rapey?" asked a Marvel editor.
"Nope, forcible blowjobs and rape are totally different," responded Stephen Wacker while a stern looking Mark Waid stood in the shadows behind him, cracking his knuckles menacingly. "And I will defend this on every message board on the Internet for the next month if someone says otherwise."
"What about an Iceman on Iceman blowjob scene?" asked "The Great One" Brian Bendis.
"What if both Icemen put on like 50 pounds, grew big black beards and shaved their heads and then gave Wolverine a blowjob?" suggested Jason Aaron. "While wearing matching AC/DC shirts!"
"I'm not really familiar with gay blowjobs," said Bendis. "But can two dudes blow Wolverine at once?"
"Wolverine has two dicks," replied Jason Aaron solemnly. "One for fucking and the other for lovemaking."
Meanwhile, at the hall of justice...
"Wait a minute, asked an exuberant Dan Didio, Co-Publisher of DC Comics, from behind a desk desk built of human skulls in the penthouse office of DC's headquarters. "We can put explicit gay blowjobs in our comics to generate a cheap and unsustainable sales boost? We can do this right now?"
Didio stood up from his desk, walked over to the wall, and used a small hammer to break a glass case protecting a big red button labeled "In case of Mainstream Gay Blowjob Acceptance, Break Glass." Alarms began sounding throughout DC's headquarters while a half dozen emails were instantly fired off from secure servers that had lain dormant for weeks, firing random creators. A cold, emotionless voice began speaking on the office public address system.
"Attention DC employees. We are undergoing another massive editorial direction change. Please remain calm and follow procedures."
"Whadaya need, boss?" barked Editor in Chief Bob Harras as he barged into Didio's office.
"This September is Gay Blowjob Month at DC!" Didio replied. "We need 52 comics of dudes blowing dudes."
"We don't have that sort of manpower!" screamed Harras. "I've only got fifteen licensed gay blowjob artists."
"Call everyone in the rolodex! Bring in every exiled writer we have! Chuck Dixon! John Byrne! Rob Liefeld! Chuck Austen! Claremont! Jurgens! Len Wein! Bring them all!"
Harras quickly pulled out his rolodex, which is actually a bar napkin with Scott Lobdell's phone number scrawled on it in red lipstick, and began making phone calls.
"I've already got a script for Hal and Barry," boasted Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns, pulling up his personal Tumblr blog on his Blackberry. "Fifteen scripts, actually."
Grant Morrison suddenly materialized in the office. "I have a great idea for a Wonder Woman comic in which it's revealed that she's actually a man."
"Sold!" bellowed Didio as he inexplicably started throwing papers in the air. "Fifty-two blowjobs! We're gonna do this thing!!!"
"Oi, I'll get right on that, I will!" shrieked Dan Didio's secretary, Rich Johnston in a Wig in a shrill falsetto. Seconds later and 800 miles away in Chicago, Illinois, Brian Azarello's eyes swelled up with tears while he read an email with the subject "good luck in your future endeavors."
Unfortunately, at that point, ThanosCopter had to return to base for refueling, but we believe we got enough information to confidently announce that Marvel and DC Comics will be running month-long gay blowjob media events, possibly as early as September. We'll keep you updated as the situation develops, or as soon as we see another opportunity to repeatedly fit the phrase "gay blowjobs" into an article in order to boost our search engine ranking for gay blowjobs.
With the development of new technologies in the area of AI, many companies are jumping into the field with both eyes wide open. It is very possible that artificial intelligent androids will work alongside their human companions in the future. They will not only work in the same office or building but also independently in their own home. Artificial intelligence has opened up many doors in the past and looks to continue that pace in the future. There are several reasons as to why companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, IBM and others are all jumping into the pool
What's the perfect Valentine's Day gift? Naming a cockroach after your ex, of course! Message us your ex's name and Posted by El Paso Zoo on Monday, February 4, 2019
Some unwitting exes waiting to be eaten (Sinhyu/Getty)
The less than romantic idea comes from El Paso Zoo in Texas, which is calling for submissions before they start announcing the names on February 11.The feeding event will then be broadcast live on Facebook on Valentines Day itself. The scheme seems to have captured the imagination of social media users, who were gleefully anticipating the animals vengeful meal. One Facebook user asked if the zoo had a roach that keeps going in circles and coming back to the same place to write her exs name on, while one wondered: Is it possible to have a voodoo curse put on the cockroach so it has the same effect as a voodoo doll while being eaten?Another said they would not be able to put their exs name forward because the meerkats do not deserve it and the cockroaches are still too cute for that. The event will begin at 2.15pm local time thats 9.15pm GMT on the big day and can be watched via the zoos Facebook page.
Police have been given a further extension to question a man arrested in connection with the disappearance of Hull University student Libby Squire.
The extension has been granted by the courts and allows officers to keep questioning the 24-year-old suspect until 9.11pm tomorrow (February 10).
Photo: Humberside Police Handout
Libby has still not been found and police searches for her are ongoing.
Detective Superintendent Mathew Hutchinson said: I can confirm that the court has granted us a further 24 hours to question the man.
We are still treating Libbys disappearance as a missing persons enquiry. I have said previously that we are keeping an open mind as to her whereabouts and that is still very much the case.
Our number one priority is to find Libby Squire and we are still conducting extensive searches and appealing for any information from the public.
If you have any information about Libby's disappearance contact police on 101 quoting log 29 of 1/2/19. If you're a Hull University student who is feeling worried or upset you can contact the Student Support centre on 01482 462222 or call the Hull Samaritans on 116 123.
British rapper Cadet has died in a car crash on his way to perform at Keele University.
The 28-year-old rapper was a passenger in a taxi which collided with a van in Betley, Staffordshire in the early hours of this morning, police said.
Photo: Youtube / NHS Give Blood
News of his death was shared on the rappers official Instagram account.
"We the family of Blaine Cameron Johnson otherwise known as Cadet (Underrated Legend) would like to share the sad news that during the early hours of 9th February 2019 he passed away."
His account has since been set to private.
In a statement, Staffordshire Police said: "Emergency services attended and a passenger of the Toyota, a 28-year-old man from London, sadly died at the scene.
"The drivers of both vehicles, a 36-year-old man from Stoke-on-Trent and a 22-year-old man from Crewe, were taken to the Royal Stoke University Hospital with serious injuries.
"Three further passengers of the Toyota were treated at Leighton Hospital in Crewe."
Police are appealing for witnesses or relevant dashcam footage to contact 101, quoting incident 45 of 9 February.
Keele Students Union expressed their sadness about Cadets shock death in a statement via Twitter.
We are deeply saddened to hear the tragic news that Cadet passed away en route to Keele in the early hours of this morning. We would like to offer our sincere condolences to his loved ones at this difficult time.
Tributes have been flooding in for the popular rapper. Cadet's cousin Krept said he was heartbroken.
My life will never be the same again. I love you and will forever miss you. I cant believe it. I am heartbroken. Rest in peace cuz. You finally started getting the recognition you deserved. Im so proud of you. My left lung. Im devestated and broken right now pic.twitter.com/125pWPMzO1 TALLY (@kreptplaydirty) February 9, 2019
Wireless Festival - where he was due to perform in July - have announced his performance slot will be kept open as a time to reflect on his memory.
AFP/Getty Images
Queen Sirikit of Thailand is the owner of a truly incredible collection of jewels. Today, were taking a closer look at one of her more modern pieces: her ruby floral bandeau.
Nationaal Archief/Wikimedia Commons
The tiara, as the name suggests, is a bandeau of stylized diamond flowers. The center of the tiara features a large, blossoming element, set with a central ruby. Many sources suggest that this central stone is interchangeable, which would certainly make sense design-wise.
Fotografia Felici/Alamy
The bandeau was one of Sirikits glittering companions during the lengthy foreign tour she undertook with King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 1960. Above, she wears the tiara with a black lace veil and pearls for an audience with Pope John XXIII at the Vatican.
AFP/Getty Images
In Belgium, she wore the tiara for a grand state banquet hosted by King Baudouin, who had recently announced his engagement to Fabiola de Mora y Aragon.
AFP/Getty Images
Heres a closer look at Sirikits fantastic jewels and gown for the banquet. She paired the tiara with diamond earrings and a diamond riviere with a glittering pendant. An elaborate brooch with an avian theme secured her sash, and she stacked a pair of diamond bracelets on her right wrist.
Nationaal Archief/Wikimedia Commons
She also wore the tiara for a gala concert in the Netherlands. Youll actually spot two tiaras in this photograph: Sirikit wore the bandeau on her head and the grand Thai Fringe Tiara as a necklace.
South Africa: President Ramaphosa in Ethiopia for AU Summit
President Cyril Ramaphosa has arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to lead a high-level South African delegation at the 32nd Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly of the Heads of State and Government.
The session is scheduled to take place from 10 to 11 February under the theme The Year of Refugees, Returnees and International Displaced Persons: Towards Durable Solutions to Forced Displacement in Africa. It presents an invaluable opportunity to reflect on and address the root causes of forced displacement in Africa.
The summit is expected to deliberate on a number of other important issues, including the institutional reform and financing of the continental body; peace and security on the continent; developments related to the African Continental Free Trade Area; and negotiations for a new cooperation agreement between the African, Caribbean and Pacific developing countries and the European Union Post-2020.
South Africa intends to submit its Instrument of Ratification of the Agreement on the African Continental Free Trade Area during the Summit.
In addition, consideration will also be given to the election of the chairperson of the AU for 2020 a position that will rotate to the Southern Region; the election of five Members of the AU Peace and Security Council; the appointment of one Member of the AU Commission on International Law; and of one Member of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.
This afternoon, President Ramaphosa attended a meeting of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Heads of State and Government on the margins of AU Summit.
The meeting received reports on the consolidation of SADC political efforts in supporting SADC Member States and progress made in the implementation of the Institutional Reform of the African Union and in Post-Cotonou Partnership Agreement Negotiations.
President Ramaphosa is accompanied by the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Lindiwe Sisulu; the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula; the Minister of State Security, Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba; the Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies; the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni; the Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Siyabonga Cwele; the Minister of Environmental Affairs, Nomvula Mokonyane; the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi; the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Ayanda Dlodlo and the Minister of Communications, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams. SAnews.gov.za
This story has been published on: 2019-02-09. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
Letter to the Editor
The efforts been renewed to bond for a new school. . Let me state the problem Everybody, including me, wants a new school, nobody wants to ...
Is the UN being undermined by a demagogic Trump team? By Thalif Deen View(s): View(s):
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) The United Nations, which embodies the core principles of multilateralism since its creation more than 74 years ago, is being steadily and systematically undermined by a reactionary and demagogic Trump administration recklessly flaunting American imperialism at its worst.
The US has already scuttled the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran, refused to participate in the global migration compact, pulled out of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, abandoned the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, dismissed the relevance of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), revoked the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, and withdrew from both the Human Rights Council in Geneva and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in Paris.
And thats just for startersand perhaps with more to come during the next two years of an unpredictable Trump presidency.
Meanwhile, as it continues to ravage international treaties and treaty bodies, the Trump administration has also weakened the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) of which it was never a member by threatening its judges with sanctions if they ever investigate war crimes committed either by US troops in Afghanistan or Israeli troops in Palestine.
The threat against the ICC was vociferously reinforced last September by National Security Adviser John Bolton, a former US ambassador, who once infamously said that you could chop off 10 floors of the 38-storeyed UN building and it wouldnt make a difference (prompting a New York Times columnist to say Bolton would be ideally suited as an urban planner than as an American envoy).
But the tragedy of it all is that several countries with rightwing governments, including Brazil, the Philippines, Hungary and Poland are following in the footsteps of the US and tragically so, at a time when UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns that multilateralism is under fire precisely when we need it most.
Will this trend continue in the coming years? And if it does, will the Trump administration be a potential threat to multilateral diplomacy and the United Nations itself? And more importantly, will other big powers step up take the lead in a new world order?
Norman Solomon, Executive Director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS the UN, as it now stands, is largely at the mercy of its most powerful member states.
Seventy years after adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he pointed out, its principles are often violated by the five permanent members (P-5) of the Security Councilthe US, the UK, France, China and Russia and the governments of many other countries.
It is hard to see how the UN can move forward effectively to advance the ideals of the Universal Declaration in the real world without challenging the nations that dominate the world body.
Selective outrage at the violations committed by countries in rival blocs does little to improve the well-being of the people of the world, said Solomon who is also Co-Founder and Coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org, which has 1.4 million active online members.
He singled out two fundamental, interrelated problems vast economic inequality of extreme proportions and rampant militarism led by the U.S. government that threaten the survival of humanity.
Over us all loom the threats of nuclear war and climate change, with those threats fueled by severe shortfalls of democracy that make possible rule by oligarchy as well as huge profiteering from arms sales and warfare.
The UN member states that have cleaner hands than the permanent members of the Security Council often seem intimidated by the most powerful governments as a matter of routine, he noted.
Yet, our only hope involves the willingness of individuals, organisations and nations to not only speak truth to and about power, but also to build effective coalitions across international borders on behalf of human rights, democracy, environmental protection and peace, declared Solomon, and author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Addressing delegates last December, Guterres lamented the rise of unilateralism and the decline of multilateralism.
He urged world leaders to renew their commitment to a rules-based order, with the United Nations at its centre.
In the face of massive existential threats to people and planet but, equally, at a time of compelling opportunities for shared prosperity there is no way forward but collective, common-sense action for the common good, he stressed. This is how we rebuild trust.
Despite chaos and confusion in the world, there are winds of hope, he said, pointing out three positive developments: first, Eritreas peace initiatives with neighbouring States, second, the signing of a peace agreement between rival leaders of South Sudan and third, the summit meetings involving leaders of North Korea, the United States and South Korea.
Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the Trump administrations ultra-nationalism and its rejection of international legal principles and multilateral initiatives are certainly harmful to the UN and the international community on a number of levels.
One result is that the US is not being taken as seriously as it used to be. That may actually be a good thing, however.
While there have been a number of areas at the UN where the US has wielded a positive influence, he argued, there have been quite a few others areas where Washington has undermined basic principles of international law and efforts at multilateral diplomacy.
These, he said, include the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the frequent abuse of its veto power, the rejection of near-unanimous World Court decisions, attacks on various UN agencies which have documented war crimes and other misdeeds by the United States or its allies, support for the Israeli and Moroccan occupations, and more.
The US has gotten away with wielding a disproportionate amount of influence on the UN since its inception.
With the US reputation at its lowest ebb, however, it may allow some other countries to step up to take greater leadership and thereby help create a more pluralistic world order, declared Zunes.
Addressing the UN General Assembly last September, Trump said that his outgoing Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, had laid out a clear agenda for reform.
But despite reported and repeated warnings, no action at all was taken.
So, the United States, he said, took the only responsible course: We withdrew from the Human Rights Council, and we will not return until real reform is enacted.
For similar reasons, said Trump, the US will provide no support in recognition to the International Criminal Court.
As far as America is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority.
He said the ICC claims near-universal jurisdiction over the citizens of every country, violating all principles of justice, fairness, and due process.
We will never surrender Americas sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.
America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism, Trump insisted.
He also said the US did not participate in the new Global Compact on Migration because migration should not be governed by an international body unaccountable to our own citizens.
Trumps nationalistic rhetoric was preceded by drastic cuts in US funding to at least two UN agencies: the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aiding Palestinian refugees.
At a news conference announcing her decision to step down as US ambassador to the UN, Haley told reporters last October that that during her two-year tenure we cut $1.3 billion in the UNs budget. Weve made it stronger. Weve made it more efficient.
At the same time, the US has slashed its contribution to UNFPA, from $69 million in 2016 to zero in 2017, and cut $300 million in funds to UNRWA.
(The writer can be
contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org)
Making the Cut: Understanding the role of editing The Gratiaen Trust, in partnership with The Seagull School of Publishing (India) to hold workshop from May 23-26 View(s): View(s):
The Gratiaen Trust, in partnership with The Seagull School of Publishing (India), will hold a workshop on editing for creative writing from May 23 26. Making the Cut is designed for editors as well as creative writers who would like to further their editing skills. The practical, four-day workshop leading to a certificate will provide participants a crucial understanding of the role of editing in producing successful literary manuscripts and tricks of the trade.
Neloufer De Mel, Chairperson of The Gratiaen Trust, said, Every writer is an editor, but what makes a good editor? And how can editing transform a good work into a great one? These are some of the questions explored in Making the Cut. Naveen Kishore and The Seagull School of Publishing are highly regarded worldwide for their contribution to English literature, and the Gratiaen Trust is proud to be associated with them in this endeavour.
This workshop is yet another initiative by The Gratiaen Trust whose key mandate is to support and promote literary excellence in Sri Lanka. Established in 1992, The Gratiaen Trust has over the years, worked closely with academics, writers, publishers and other professionals from Sri Lankas literary world to promote better works of creative English writing. The Gratiaen Prize, the countrys premier literary award for creative writing in English celebrated its 25th anniversary last year.
While the Gratiaen Prize has encouraged more writers to showcase their work and publish their manuscripts, the Trust sees the need for programmes that will help writers enhance their skills and produce works of a higher standard. To mark its 25th anniversary, The Gratiaen Trust has launched a series of workshops that aims to add value to the quality of creative output of Sri Lankan writers. Towards this, the Trust has forged collaborations with individuals and organisations from Sri Lanka as well as from within the region and beyond with the goal of providing Sri Lankan writers the opportunity to work with, and learn from experts from different areas of publishing. Recently the Trust conducted a two-part workshop in partnership with the Commonwealth Writers Prize for aspiring Sri Lankan writers on the process of critical rigour in writing.
The workshop on editing for creative writers to be held in May 2019 in partnership with The Seagull School of Publishing is the second in this series.
The founder of Seagull Books and The Seagull School of Publishing, Naveen Kishore, has shown a keen interest in creative writing from Sri Lanka and is looking forward to exchanging knowledge and experience with his contemporaries here. Commenting on this collaboration he said, The world is a family. The Gift. Of Wisdom. Gathered over the years. What we inherit, must be passed on. It is in this spirit of sharing that we wish to connect with the community of writers and publishers in Sri Lanka and help build bridges between the Seagull School of Publishing and you. On the process of editing Mr. Kishore added While good editing remains a largely invisible component of publishingas it should beit is nonetheless essential to making good literature visible in the world.
The workshop will be conducted by Naveen Kishore, Sunandini Banerjee, Senior Editor and Graphic Designer, Seagull Books, and Bishan Samaddar, Editor, Seagull Books. The workshop will cover aspects of the editorial process from structural and content editing to maintaining a prose style; from fact-checking to working with authors, translators, designers and publishers and more. Participants will gain deeper insights into good editing practices across genres, (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, translation, etc) as well as how the publishing world works.
Up to 15 participants will be selected to join the workshop which will be conducted at the Postgraduate Institute of English (PGIE) at the Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala, Nugegoda. The closing date for applications is February 28, 2019. For more details on how to submit applications, please send your queries to: gratiaenworkshops@gmail.com.
Letters to the Editor View(s):
Faced with an indifferent and inefficient CEB at a time of crisis
Open letter to the Minister of Power and Energy
At 4.15 a.m. on January 31, I began to get a strong smell of smoke that seemed to me like burning plastic. Then suddenly all the plug points in my home fused and we lost power. Our home was full of smoke and we heard a loud noise. When my father and I ran out to investigate we found the Main Distribution Board, that is installed by the CEB up in flames. The flames were beginning to find their way through the brick wall.
I wasted no time. At 4.28 a.m. I called 1987 the hotline of the CEB and explained to the gentleman who answered the phone what was happening and asked him to please deploy an emergency crew. He then told me that these things are not relevant to him, and to call 0114 498 498. I did so and a young lady answered the phone and asked me what the problem was. I explained the situation again and begged of her to make haste. She took down my particulars and told me she will notify the crew. I received the SMS notification with my complaint reference number (19013427) at 4.35 a.m.
I then proceeded to call the Fire Services (110), at 4.37 a.m. They took down my details and the fire engine was at the location in 25 minutes, (which in my opinion is far too late for an emergency response time from Dehiwala to Colombo 5 at the time the incident took place). They proceeded to use the CO2 extinguisher but since the brick wall was now beginning to catch the flames and work itself into a steady burn, they broke through the distribution board and quelled the fire.
They asked me why I had not called the CEB. I told them I had but there was no response. The Fire Services HQ also called the CEB with no success. If Fire Services had not helped us, this situation would have escalated.
I called 0114 498 498 again at 4.58 a.m., and 5.04 a.m. but there was no answer. In between these calls I called 1987 again at 5.06 a.m. and pleaded with them to please help me. The gentleman, quite annoyed with me said it is not his job and there is nothing he can do and to call the other number. I asked him why he couldnt help me and then he raised his voice and said, you have a complaint number so call them and not us. I called 0114 498 498 again at 5.11 a.m.. The lady, waking up from her sleep answered the phone. I pleaded yet again, asking her where the crew was and she just said oh I have told them already, I will remind them again. I was at the end of my tether. I reminded her I am a tax payer and I have a right to better service. She then repeated, I have already told them, I will remind them again.
The CEB arrived at the scene just minutes before the clock struck 6 a.m. this was over an hour after I had reported the fire.
Minister, this is callous, irresponsible, unprofessional and unacceptable. Your CEB admin and call centre staff are atrocious. They have no service culture. It is as though they are doing me a favour by answering the phone. They are rude, inefficient and downright offensive. Also the technicians had not been notified that they had to return to our home to replace the distribution board and restore power. We had to call the technicians at the Siebel Office CEB Maintenance office and ask them to come to restore power for us and to please make sure we are safe. Thankfully, your technicians have a far better idea of what service culture is and they did a brilliant job.
I am a citizen of this nation. I am a taxpayer. I have the right to an explanation from the CEB that falls under your purview. Your processes and coordinating systems are ineffective, inefficient and of no use to the public they are meant to serve.
I demand an explanation. I am exercising my right as a citizen of this nation and I am writing to the Minister in charge. If we are to exercise a culture of good governance in this nation, then sir it must start from the top. You, the Chairperson, the relevant deputies and all members of senior management are responsible. It is you who are culpable.
Shyamila Hettiarachchi Via email
Set up a pool of professionals who can run state institutions
The Business Times edition of January 27 carried the news item State machinery runs without cog wheels on its first page. It is pathetic to note that state institutions in our country at the moment are compelled to operate without Boards of Management.
Does our country lack qualified managers to run these enterprises? No. Our country is blessed with enough qualified and experienced managers. Or is it a question of selecting persons with the right political affiliations for the vacant positions? Yes, it is the question of selecting the person with the right political affiliations for the vacant positions. Are we on the right track? The answer is no. If there is any political upheaval the development of the country could be derailed.
There are enough qualified and experienced candidates who could fill these positions. But what is lacking is a mobilisation process to pool this man power. A pool of professionally qualified and experienced managers should be set up, who can manage state enterprises efficiently and effectively. When necessary, recruitment could be made when positions become vacant. When appointed these professionals should be set certain targets to achieve within a certain timeframe. Their decisions and performance should be evaluated annually. Those who fail to run institutions with the set objectives, performance criteria and tenets of good governance (Yahapalanaya), should be shown the exit door.
It is high time the government takes serious note of this situation, and acts swiftly.
M.Hakim Usoof Gampaha
First see to basic amenities before giving tabs
I refer to a recent news item regarding an announcement made by the Education Minister that tabs will be given to ALevel students and teachers this year.
The minister hailing from Wayamba should first do a survey of remote schools in his province and other provinces such as North Central, Uva etc.
The schools in these provinces do not have even basic amenities such as proper toilets, running water, proper class rooms etc. Many a time we have seen over electronic media the difficulties faced by these poor children to get to school and back on dilapidated roads and bridges, fording overflowing rivers often endangering their lives.
Therefore before giving tabs, his attention should be drawn to these shortcomings.
Further parents of most students in popular schools can afford to buy them tabs if needed. With decisions like this it is no wonder the UNP is unpopular in rural areas.
Ganganath Kariawasam Via email
Apartheid at public toilets
If this is not apartheid I dont know what is. Railway Stations in Sri Lanka display notices at rest rooms and washrooms Only for foreigners. In other words Sri Lankans are not allowed and the reason is obvious the officials feel that locals are not capable of maintaining the expected standards of hygiene.
Can a Bangladeshi or an Indian go into these places demarcated for foreigners? They also look like us Sri Lankans. Are their living standards higher than Sri Lankans?
There are also some hotels and restaurants in Hikkaduwa that shut their doors to locals in favour of foreigners.
This discrimination where foreigners are treated above their hosts does not take place anywhere in the world we are projecting to the whole world that we live in an unsanitary way that our visitors need to be given separate demarcated places to wash and rest in public.
Give our foreign visitors everything to make them comfortable. But bear in mind that 90 percent of the foreigners who visit this country are cheap-spending tourists who travel in public trains and buses. The high spending foreigners simply fly over Sri Lanka and end up in the Maldives.
Over to you the Minister of Tourism and the Minister of Transport.
C. Jude Moratuwa
Its 26 years old and growing Keep a date with Kala Pola on February 24 View(s): View(s):
Kala Pola is 26. Having notched up a significant milestone, the vibrant, colourful art festival will return for its 26th run on Sunday, February 24, at Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha (Green Path), Colombo 7 from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Sri Lankas biggest open art fair, Kala Pola provides a platform for aspiring and established artists to show, share and market their art to local and international audiences.
Last year, there were 350 artists, 28,000 visitors and more than Rs. 15 million worth of artworks sold, a big change from its humble beginnings with just 30 artists. It only costs Rs. 1000 to reserve a stall at Kala Pola making it an affordable venture to display art.
Sudath Abeysekera is one of the artists whose work is now displayed in Bangladesh and India through the exposure he received at Kala Pola. He has been a part of Kala Pola for 15 years and does not intend to stop as he says he has great respect for the event that helped make him a full time artist.
This sentiment is reiterated by Zamshiya Kaleel who is also a regular at Kala Pola. She expressed her gratitude to the organisers as this was her way of making a living. The exposure and interest garnered through the fair has enabled her to do what she loves whilst providing for her family. We would eagerly await the day when the next Kala Pola was announced every year, she said.
With this year marking 25 years of the partnership between the George Keyt Foundation and the John Keells Group to hold the Kala Pola annually, a panel discussion was held on Wednesday with Chairman of the George Keyt Foundation Michael Anthonisz, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at John Keells Holdings Nadija Tambiah, Vice President of John Keells Holdings Dileep Mudadeniya, and artists Sudath Abeysekera and Zamshiya Kaleel. The discussion was moderated by Arun Dias Bandaranaike.
Chairman of the George Keyt Foundation Michael Anthonisz, believes that Kala Pola has created a market for art in Sri Lanka and is now a great launching pad for artists.
As Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at John Keells Holdings PLC, Nadija Tambiah, believes that the development of art is fundamental to the development of our culture.
This year, there will also be a kids corner for children to tap into their creative side.
Other artists present at the panel discussion Vimukthi Sahan, Vikum Bandara and sculptor Bhashith Ranaweera, are all eagerly looking forward to the upcoming event.
So mark the date and celebrate Kala Polas 26th year with the artists.
Appreciations View(s):
The genuine politician who spurned racism
Anura Bandaranaike
(On the occasion of his 70th birthday on February 15)
A certain era in Sri Lankan politics stands stamped with the mark of Anura Bandaranaike, only son of a politician couple who achieved international fame, the late S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the worlds first woman Prime Minister. All attention focused on the young Anura growing up amidst the abundant affection of his parents, as everyone expected him to be the leader of Sri Lanka, one day. But fate decided otherwise. Perhaps this turn of events was due to the fact that Anura never indulged in the politics of deceit and opportunism. It was also perhaps brought about by false friends who surrounded him. As things turned out the leadership of the country eluded him while it was almost within his grasp.
Racism or religious bigotry was never manifest in Anura Bandaranaikes political life. That stands out when his speeches in Parliament, political speeches elsewhere and his scholarly addresses are perused. He was a true humanist. He had affection for men and women of all races. He respected all religions.
Anura Bandaranaike even distributed among the domestic aides of Horagolla several acres of commercially valuable land from his ancestral property, along the Colombo-Kandy road.
Anura wrote his own speeches. He edited them himself. I have seen manuscripts of his speeches, in his beautiful handwriting. Usually he would end with a poem or passage from a famous writer, blending it excellently with the theme of his speech. He was quite at home with Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot and other greats of western literature. Dr. Sarath Amunugama told me once that he was a fan of classic foreign films. Dr. Amunugama said he still has with him notes that Anura had written to him in his own hand. He had that habit of sending handwritten letters and messages to his friends.
Although Anura was brought up in a busy and even tumultuous environment, he always found time to read, savour poetry and the novel and view classic cinema. His father was also an avid reader. Even amidst the most serious problems, he managed to face the world with a smile. As I had the opportunity to associate with him closely I was able to observe that he had a wide and deep knowledge on diverse subjects. Only a handful of people equalled him in Parliament, in his knowledge of history, literature, political science and economics.
Anura Bandaranaike had his early education at Royal College and thereafter gained a First Class honours degree in history at the London University. He declined an offer to be a lecturer there and came home to take up his family heritage of political leadership. Thereafter he reorganized and strengthened the SLFP from the party branch right up to the national level, giving them guidance and leadership. While the party suffered an ignominious defeat in 1977, young Anura succeeded in entering Parliament from Nuwara Eliya collecting over 49,000 votes, after only six days of campaigning. He became the 2nd MP for Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya, relegating the senior politician Thondaman to third place.
In the Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya electorate with its preponderant Tamil estate worker population, the SLFP was never again able to poll such a high percentage. Anuras popularity, his organizing skill and his oratory made the difference. In the 1977 general elections Anura addressed meetings right round the country in every electorate. It was Anura who brought back the SLFP from the abyss. When in 1977 the UNP won with its 5/6th majority, it was Anura leading the eight MPs of the SLFP who gave them a fight using his oratory to good effect. He kept the Government at bay with his eloquence, so much so that it was said that Prime Minister Premadasa used to walk out of the chamber whenever Anura got on his feet. His argument was sharp and logical.
Anura took action after 1977 to raise the SLFP gradually from the depths to which it had fallen. He went round the country building up branch organizations and holding seminars. He thus rebuilt the party. When he served as the Leader of the Opposition, he was the youngest to hold that post in the Commonwealth. He devoted his office for public welfare and for democracy. When he later came to ascend to the chair of the Speaker of the House of Parliament, he served with distinction, maintaining the dignity and prestige of that office.
The absence of such an eloquent and imposing personality is a great loss to politics in Sri Lanka.
Gamini Gunasekera
Her motherly heart was large enough for all of us
LUCILLE ENID JAYATILAKA
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, No. . . -From A Valediction forbidding mourning John Donne
In the manner of such virtuous men and women, my mother-in-law slipped out of life on February 1, as quietly and unobtrusively as she had lived it so quietly in fact, that no one was quite sure of the exact moment when she exited this life. But the manner of her passing did not come as a great surprise to those who had known her, for she was never a person to ruffle the waters. Instead, she believed in the virtue of maintaining silence in the midst of controversy, opting rather to keep her opinions to herself than add another to the views being expressed. This is not to say that she had no opinion. On the contrary she was an intelligent, educated and well-read woman, who, until she fell ill in 2012, kept abreast of current events and maintained a keen interest in the doings of her fellow men.
Up until her 90th birthday, Amma had led an active and useful life. She had been mistress of her own home from her early twenties ever since she met and married her postmaster husband Francis Jayatilaka, who had previously served under her own father, himself a postmaster. It could not have been easy, especially as her seven children arrived fast and furiously one after another, to uproot herself and her large household in order to accompany her husband when he was transferred to different parts of the island, as was wont to happen in the old days. Her task was to be an efficient housewife, a nurturing mother as well as the mainstay and support of her husband, all rolled into one. She did it however in the manner of other such stalwart women of that era, whose contribution towards maintaining the stability of home and family were most often taken for granted. Her family however is only too conscious of and grateful for the role she played in their lives. She protected the boys to the extent she could from the wrath of their disciplinarian father whenever they did something they were forbidden to do (which by all accounts, was quite often); she was a good listener and trusted confidante to her children who could confide in her their childhood peccadilloes as well as the heartaches and pain that came their way as they matured; and she was their friend.
Ammas life took a downward turn in 1965, when her husband Francis suffered a debilitating stroke. In consequence he took early retirement and the family relocated to Panadura, right next door to his brothers home. Four months later however, he suffered a second and fatal stroke- and Amma was left a widow at the age of 44, with seven dependent children. Despite the financial and emotional difficulties she had to face consequent to her husbands demise, she made do and continued to provide a stable and emotionally secure home for her children. After her eldest son migrated to Australia the following year, much of the responsibilities of the home previously borne by her husband, were assumed by her second son, Bandu. Everything ran on a more or less even keel for the next several years, until, in December 1973, Bandu met with a fatal accident. This was the blow that felled her. And though with the passage of time, she was able to pick up the pieces and carry on with the business of living, she was never reconciled to the loss of her child. I was told that she had once had a beautiful singing voice. I never heard it however. She never raised her voice in song after Bandus death.
My husband, as do his siblings, bemoans the loss of his oldest friend. But he does not grudge her passing from this life, as life itself had become a burden to her in the latter years of her life. Now when I think of Amma, I think not of her withered body or her pain-filled and weary expression, but of the woman I knew until her 90th year gracious, dignified and beautiful with a smile that would light up her entire face and a kiss for every child and grandchild. I will not forget that when I introduced her to someone as my mother-in-law, she quietly told me that she doesnt like the term in-law and would prefer to be introduced as Amma. And so I bid goodbye to Amma, whose motherly heart was large enough to regard her sons and daughters-in-law as her very own.
Lilani Jayatilaka
Those we love dont go away
NOEL JOSEPH FRANCIS
Its been a year since you passed away.
Those we love dont go away,
They walk beside you every day.
Unseen, unheard, but always near,
Still loved, still missed and very dear.
Carol, Shane, Sean & Family
Two years on, RTI reaches out to the provinces View(s):
As Sri Lanka marked two years since the inception of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, on February 3, this year, the RTI Commission (RTIC) announced the commencement of public sittings and the hearing of appeals in the countrys provinces.
On January 19, the RTIC held its first public sitting and hearing of appeals in Panama, Ampara, in the Eastern Province, attended by the District Secretary, Ampara, and the Divisional Secretaries of Lahugala, Siyambalanduwa, Damana and Pothuvil, along with their officers as well as large numbers of community activists in the province. The sessions were addressed by the Chairman, Commissioners and the Director General of the RTIC as well as the District Secretary, Divisional Secretaries and community activists.
In a media release, the RTIC said discussions conducted in Sinhala and Tamil focused on the successes and challenges of the RTI process, with villagers explaining how they had used the RTI Act to obtain relief for their communities. Obstacles to the obtaining of information, such as delays in government offices, bureaucratic processes and the hostile attitudes of some officials were also discussed in detail. The RTIC, thereafter, held appeal hearings in the province, concluding those appeals to the satisfaction of the parties.
The RTIC also held a soft launch of two of its trilingual publications accessible on the website of the Commission (www.rticommission.lk). Volume I contains Orders of the RTIC delivered during 2017-2018, with several significant principles, keywords and an Index of a broader range of Decisions. In delivering these Orders, the RTIC has endeavoured to maintain the principle of equity between the Public Authority and the appellant, while taking into consideration the fact that the greater weight of resources and power lies with the State, rather than with an individual citizen. Volume II contains Reflections on Sri Lankas RTI Act and RTI regime written by eminent contributors in the fields of Law, the Media, the Public Service and academia.
The RTICs next public sittings and appeal sessions are to be held in Hatton and Angunukolapelessa in the coming months. Selection of the districts has been with a view to targeting marginalised/isolated/war-affected communities in Sri Lanka, so that citizens not yet exposed to RTI will be able to understand the benefits of using the Act, the RTIC stressed. The discussions have been planned in order that the RTIC acts as a facilitator in opening up dialogues between communities and government officers with regard to a cooperative and harmonious process in using the RTI Act, it further noted.
As of December 31, 2018, the RTIC had 1,030 appeals before it, of which 654 appeals had been concluded. In the remainder of pending appeals, interim orders had been issued by the RTIC in a majority of cases, releasing information in stages. As the RTIC has been conscious of the need to enunciate RTI principles in the initial years of functioning, its decisions overwhelmingly reflect pro-public interest and information disclosure principles, it stressed. An overriding factor has been the consideration of the public interest which the RTIC is statutorily mandated to take into account.
While the slow transformation of an information-closed culture to an information-open culture has been initiated, challenges remain, the RTIC observed. The duty to give information proactively needs to be manifested far more diligently by Public Authorities. Furthermore, the enactment of new Laws that are deliberately placed beyond the scrutiny of the RTI regime remains of particular concern. Nevertheless, an encouraging factor is the support and interest of ordinary citizens from every part of the land, who have exercised their Right to Information with commendable enthusiasm during the period in review.
In the interests of further development of the RTI culture through an Act which was 14 long years in the making in Sri Lanka, we hope that these positive trends will continue, the RTIC noted.
Thousands of ATM cards cancelled; new security measures now in force View(s):
Private and state banks have been forced to cancel thousands of ATM cards and issue fresh chip-based after revelations that a group of foreigners used devices to skim data from the cards at some teller machines and use them fraudulently, bank officials said.
At least three foreigners two Chinese and a Romanian have been taken into custody as the Criminal Investigation Department took over the probe.
A senior CID official said banks had been also cautioned that another foreign team was operating, reportedly in the outstations and using hi-tech skimming devices to obtain data from ATM cards.
An estimated Rs 4 million had been withdrawn illegally from various banks by Friday and the figure could be higher, the official said. One of the bank branches affected was in Mirissa in the south showing how far and wide the racketeers had spread out.
The detective said investigations had revealed that the skimming device had been installed into the slot where the ATM card was inserted. In earlier cases, the devices had been fitted externally.
He said that, as a result, banks had been forced to issue new cards.
Customers and bank security officials should be alert, especially when they see people wearing helmets and caps at ATMs, the officer said.
Meanwhile, a Payment Card Industry Association spokesman said that the fraudsters had managed to affix skimming devices to certain ATMs and were able to get the data embedded on the magnetic stripe of the cards.
A tiny camera had been used to get the PIN.
There have been concerns raised by people on the safety of the system. As most banks have adopted EMV Chip technology, customers have been reassured that the systems are safe for transaction, he said.
The spokesman said that as most banks and financial institutions had adopted EMV Chip technology, quickly converting the entire card base to EMV Chip cards and upgrading all ATM devices to process transactions based on the Chip of the card would help eliminate any threats.
Cards without EMV chips are vulnerable. Banks are replacing such cards with EMV Chip cards, he added.
He said it was the responsibility of the card issuing bank to pay the defrauded amounts to the affected customers.
Ronald Perera appointed BOC Chairman View(s):
After nearly two months of indecision and tug-of-war for control over the State banks, UNF Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera eventually prevailed and got President Maithripala Sirisena to approve UNF nominees to head the banks.
Here, Minister Samaraweera hands over the Letter of Appointment to Ronald Perera PC, UNP Working Committee member as Chairman of Bank of Ceylon on Friday. Minister Rauf Hakeem was present on the occasion.
Lankan drug bust in Dubai: Madushs rival gave tipoff and sent pictures here By Damith Wickremesekra View(s): View(s):
Last weeks arrest in Dubai of a Sri Lankan millionaire drug lord Makandure Madush raised questions of his political links and plunged the issue in mystery the result of conflicting claims locally. An investigation by the Sunday Times revealed that the raid was conducted entirely by the Dubai Police and none of their counterparts in Sri Lanka was involved.
Makandure Madush, whose real name is Samarasinghe Arachchige Madush Lakshitha, was hosting a party at a pooside venue at Al Marina Resort and Spa in Dubai when Police raided the hotel last Tuesday. The Dubai Police took into custody 25 people and emirates media reports claimed they included a guest who carried a diplomatic passport.
Information leading to the arrest, the Sunday Times learns, was the result of warfare between drug barons. Another drug lord, operating as Merril, had become Madushs target a year ago. He escaped in a shootout by a gang allegedly hired by Madush. He had then fled to Dubai where he had been living.
Madush himself fled to Dubai after he had been tipped off that the Police were closing in on him. He had been living a life of luxury there spending nights in different clubs a routine which Merril had tracked with the help of a group of Sri Lankan friends who were assisting him. Last Tuesday night, Merril had learnt that Madush, who spent lavishly, was hosting a party in a hotel and tipped off the Dubai Police. They were told that drugs were also being used at the party.
When the raid was under way, Merril had used his smart phone camera to photograph the arrests and sent the pictures to his close associates in Thalawatugoda. One of them had thereafter shared these photos with the Police Special Task Force.
A Dubai-based newspaper reported that a Sri Lankan holding a diplomatic passport was among those were arrested.
The identity of the person holding the diplomatic passport led to speculation. Some claimed that it was a son of Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena, a onetime State Minister for Finance. Parliamentarians Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila raised issue in Parliament, claiming that it was a staffer of Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera.
Mr. Abeywardena, now a UPFA MP, strongly denied social media claims that his family had nurtured drug kingpins. My three children were in Sri Lanka and have not travelled abroad recently, he told the Sunday Times. He said none of his sons held diplomatic passports or the passports did not have endorsements to say trips they undertook were official.
Mr. Abeywardenas son, Southern Provincial Council member Pasanda Yapa Abeywardena, on Friday held a news conference and dismissed speculative reports that any of his family members were arrested in Dubai.
An angry Mangala Samaraweera wrote to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), urging it to probe whether any of his staffers was involved. The CIDs initial investigations have not shown the presence of any of his officials.
The claims and counterclaims of joint arrests and their own success stories by senior Police official drew a comment even from President Maithripala Sirisena. The Police Department now comes under his purview. Addressing a meeting of Sri Lanka Professional Guidance Institute at the New Town in Polonnaruwa, he said many were now trying to take the credit for the Dubai arrest.
Another issue on which contradictory statements are being made is the extradition of Madush. A diplomatic source said yesterday that the question of extradition would not be entertained by this emirate until its courts heard the case first.
On top of that, the source said, relations between Sri Lanka and Dubai legal authorities have been strained after authorities in Colombo botched up attempts to seek the return of Udayanga Weeratunga. The former ambassador to Russia is a key suspect in the MiG-27 scandal.
HRCSL vets troops for South Sudan, rejects Presidents charge By Namini Wijedasa View(s): View(s):
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) is now vetting a group of military personnel nominated for UN peacekeeping in South Sudan, its chairperson Deepika Udagama said, days after writing to President Maithripala Sirisena rejecting claims that the commission was responsible for the recent deaths of two soldiers in Mali.
Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, President Sirisena claimed that the HRCSL was delaying Sri Lankas police and armed forces from taking part in UN peacekeeping missions. He blamed the commission for the death of two army personnel in Mali, saying they were due to return to the country six months ago.
The Human Rights Commission will not allow us to change the groups by finding background details of the servicemen, he said. The HRCSL objects to sending our servicemen based on its investigations results. If the HRCSL did not bother us and allowed to proceed with the exchange, we could have easily avoided the death of the Major and the Private.
The HRCSL has repeatedly rebuffed accusations that any delay in the vetting process is its fault. Dr Udagama, once again, in a letter sent to President Sirisena this week, said, We strongly disagree that the vetting process suffered setbacks due to any delays or carelessness on the part of the Commission.
The vetting process was suspended in June last year until standard operating procedures (SOPs) were drafted. This was unanimously decided upon by all stakeholdersthe military, the police, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, the HRCSL and the United Nations to solve a multitude of issues during the initial stages of the vetting process.
The SOPs were agreed upon by all parties over a period of weeks. The UN Department of Peace Operations then notified the Commission that vetting could resume from December 20 last year.
An urgent list identified by the UN is being tackled first, Dr Udagama told the Sunday Times. There is a dedicated group at the Commission. Their sole task is to carry out vetting under the supervision of the Chairperson and Commissioners. The teams currently being vetted will go to South Sudan.
During Thursdays press briefing at the UN headquarters in New York, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric confirmed that the SOPs were agreed to only in December. Since then, it is not the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission alone, but the UN together with the Human Rights Commision, that have been jointly screening the personnel nominated by the Government of Sri Lanka, he said. The aim is to ensure rapid deployment of Sri Lankan peacekeepers to the field.
It is the policy of the UN that individuals and units deployed to UN peacekeeping by any member States, including Sri Lanka, are screened through a thorough and credible process in order to safeguard the integrity of our peacekeeping missions, Mr. Dujarric said.
Controversy broke out last year when the Sri Lanka Army sent 49 soldiers to UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) without vetting by the Commission. Dr Udagama said any replacements for this groupthey will return at the end of their assignmentwould be reviewed as new applications.
Before the SOPs were drafted, the HRCSL faced considerable difficulty receiving applications on time and in completed form. Sometimes, the deployment date was also not specified. The military is required to give advance notice of six to seven months to ensure there is sufficient time.
Because of the suspension of vetting, a large number of applications have flown into the Commission at once. They will be reviewed in batches. There is a contingent earmarked to replace the Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Mali but the UN has requested the South Sudan and UNIFIL applications to be processed first, Dr Udagama said.
All UN member states that nominate or provide personnel to serve with the UN must screen and certify that such personnel have not committed, or are alleged to have committed, criminal offences and/or violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. Those who seek to serve with the UN must attest the same and, where necessary, provide relevant information. The processes by which this can be done are outlined in Decision 2012/18 of the UN Secretary-Generals Policy Committee.
According to the UN, Sri Lanka is the first nation to be granted the opportunity to vet military personnel for peacekeeping operations by a national Human Rights Commission.
Daring parachutists star in Independence celebrations By Kasun Warakapitiya View(s): View(s):
The highlight of the Independence Day celebrations at Galle Face Green on Monday, a parachute base jump from a skyscraper, drew cheers from the assembled crowd.
Twenty parachutists from the three forces and the police a female officer among them carried the national flag as they descended from the heights, trailing smoke and performing acrobatic manoeuvres. Four of them stacked their parachutes one on top of the other.
The navy also displayed its might with a sail-past of ships and speedboats, saluting the President.
The Air Force carried out an aerial display with C130, AM 32 and MA60 transport aircraft, Y12, Bell212, and Mi17 helicopters, and Kfir and F7 jets. A group of training aircraft performed colourful acrobatic manoeuvres and airmen performed a sky rope operation, showing how they would deploy to save people in disaster situations.
A cultural pageant featured 865 dancers and musicians from the three armed forces, police and Civil Defence Force, cultural centres and the University of Performing Arts.
The flamboyant main parade displayed the military strength of Sri Lanka under this years theme, Ekata Sitimu (Lets be together).
The marchpast included 3,620 soldiers, 1,249 navy personnel, 830 air force personnel, 800 police, 505 members of the Civil Security Force and 100 personnel from the National Cadet Corps led by the combined armed forces band and a float carrying a statue of a lion followed by personnel dressed as guards of ancient times carrying national flags.
Two queens and the battle for thrones Mary Queen of Scots View(s): View(s):
Theatrical visionary Josie Rourkes feature film debut with a powerful dramatization of the incredible life of Mary Queen Of Scots, based on the groundbreaking book Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by Dr. John Guy is now being screened in theatres in Colombo and suburbs.
Uncovering new evidence about Mary and Elizabeth, the film retells the story of these two Queens in a way that speaks to the experience of women in the modern world. Born a Catholic at a time of religious turmoil, as an infant Mary is sent for her safety to Catholic France. At 15, Mary marries the heir to the French throne. Queen of France at 16, at 18 Mary is widowed, defies pressure to remarry and instead returns to her native Scotland to reclaim her rightful throne. In Marys absence, Protestants have gained control of Scotland, and her half-brother, Moray, has ruled in Marys place.
The powerful John Knox leads Scotlands Protestants and believes that a woman monarch is against nature and Gods will. In England, Marys cousin Queen Elizabeth faces pressure to marry and produce an heir. In Scotland, Mary faces conspiracy, civil rebellion and a hatred of women that brings her sexual conduct into constant question.
Mary has, by birth, a rival claim to Elizabeths throne. The two Queens have a unique fascination with each other: only they can understand what it is like to rule in their land as women. Mary offers friendship and a treaty that settles their competing claims, but the bloody and intense politics of their courts keeps them apart.
Mary defies her advisors and Englands will to marry and produce an heir to both kingdoms, her son James I. Following his birth, there is again the possibility of alliance and peace, but Marys enemies are too numerous, and Elizabeth witnesses, with mounting horror, the cruelty, conspiracy and violence of Marys court. Both women make very different choices about marriage, children and leadership. Through those choices, each woman has been immortalized by history.
Universal Pictures presents, Mary Queen Of Scots stars Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden, Joe Alwyn, Martin Compston, Brendan Coyle, David Tennant, Guy Pearce, Ian Hart, Gemma Chan, Ismael Cruz Cordova and Adrian Lester in the stellar cast.
When I first started speaking about the film, I talked a lot about Michael Manns Heat, Rourke continues. In some senses, our film echoes that dynamic. Then of course, in Heat they have that massive scene together, a proper big scene with two great actors just going for it, she continued.
This film is now being released at Colombo City Centre, Liberty by Scope Cinemas, MC Cinemas, Empire and Savoy.
Compiled by Susitha Fernando
The rise of a lion, rod by rod By Oshani Alwis View(s): View(s):
The majestic beast with a rusting brown mane standing on the front porch of its creator Chandana Gunathilakes home is made with connecting rods of different sizes. The biggest assembled art piece done in Sri Lanka using connecting rods- the full figure being 14 feet in length and 11 feet in height is now almost ready to meet the public.
The sculpture was designed for his client, Edirisinghe Brothers Limited- a well known name in automotive engineering and mechanical services, and Chandana wanted to create something unique which would bring out the companys 66- year expertise.
I decided to build up a figures of a lion made with connecting rod- a rigid part inside engines which also has a connection to the companys product portfolio, says Chandana.
To design the sculpture of a lion, Chandana had to closely examine the anatomy of the animal. At least twice a month, I visited the Zoo, observed and drew figures of different animals, he said. Having made a rough sketch of a lion, he first moulded a miniature figure in clay.
It has taken him an entire year to build up the lion, the hardest part he says was setting the detailed outlines of the lions head. Special effort went to create the details of the lions mane with iron blades. When working with a hard and rough medium like iron, one is prone to make mistakes. I had to do 10-15 tryouts when setting up the face, Chandana reveals. Metals are hard to work with and to join the connecting rods Chandana had to weld the pieces together.
A graduate of the University of Visual and Performing Arts, majoring in sculpture Chandana tried his hand at assemble art back in 2007, diverting from the mainstream sculpture techniques and methods. He is a regular exhibitor at the annual Kala Pola.
The artist must have an eye for creativity and the skill to find the most suitable metal parts for the creation, Chandana says pointing to some polkichcha (Magpie-robin) birds made with tablespoons and an unfinished puffer fish made with valves.
The lion sculpture is almost complete and looking up at the giant beast Chandana feels proud of his creation. Now I dont feel like parting with the lion, he laughs. But a work of art should not remain with the artist. It should always be open for people to enjoy, he notes.
Weighing around 2700kg (two and half tons) the lion will stand at the Ingurukade Junction, Colombo in the near future.
Art One Creations- Chandanas firm does sculpture, painting, house planning, interior design, assemble art, wood and stone carving, fibre works to wedding and flower decor. He is based at No. 134/5, Horahena Road, Rukmale, Pannipitiya, tel: 0775439909.
The poli-tricks of a National Government View(s):
Discretion was the better part of political expediency on the part of the UNF Government when it decided to put off the move to form a National Government even if it has not entirely dropped the idea.
Very few would buy into the argument trotted out that the UNF wanted a National Government for the purpose of development. That is a much abused word of politicians to ram through partisan political agendas otherwise detrimental to the nation. That compares with the oft-misused cliche national security cry of not so long ago.
Unlike in January 2015, and the formation of the then National Government with the countrys two main political parties, this time, to foist a so-called National Government on the people between the UNF (which goes as one party as it contested as one), and a solitary MP from another (which is already in the Government as a partner of the UNF) seemed a bad joke. The UNF itself can be considered a coalition and an argument may hold that it is, therefore, a National Government by itself, though not for the purposes of the much criticised 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
The aim of the temporarily aborted move this time was clearly to get some SLFP MPs to cross-over and create a stable Government with a Parliamentary majority of its own without having to rely on TNA or JVP support to prop it up. But the President seems to have torpedoed the crossover with his rather inappropriate comment during his Independence Day address to the nation, slamming the proposed National Government. The SLFP MPs seem to have developed cold feet thereafter as our Political Editor says in his column today.
The UNF Prime Minister was clearly under intense pressure from within his partys backbenchers to expand his Cabinet. They had backed him twice last year i.e. at the Vote of No-Confidence and during the period when he was sacked in October. They wanted something in return for the support they gave him. The 19th Amendment that limits the number of the Cabinet to 30 was the barrier preventing them from fulfilling their ambitions of a Cabinet portfolio.
So, the Government has come up with this desperate exercise in trying to pull the wool over the publics eyes. It has made the very concept of a National Government, usually brought forth in a multi-party democracy at times of national emergencies, a somewhat flippant everyday manoeuvre to tinker with the Constitution for parochial gain. This Government will have to live with the fact that it is a minority Government and seek the support of the TNA and the JVP for its majority if push comes to shove. Otherwise, with the 100+ MPs it has to outvote the Oppositions 90+ MPs, the UNF may face the possibility of a defeat if the TNA and the JVP ever side with the Opposition on a vote.
That said, any Government is meant to be a National Government in its true sense working for the national interest at all times. And the move to bring additional Cabinet Ministers does not have the peoples support as it is they who have to ultimately carry the burden of paying for the expenses.
Govt. in part shutdown mode
Yet another week has rolled over and the Government continues to strain in filling the vacancies to the directorates of corporations, statutory bodies and other institutions outside the public service. This was caused by the disruption of its administration in October last year.
There appears to be an unholy cocktail of things happening with the appointment of a Presidential Committee supposedly vetting these appointments. The exercise in itself was nothing new. With the advent of the 2015 Government, there was a proposal to make these appointments on a scientific basis. That went through the window with some of those who were put into positions from the brother of a Cabinet Minister to head a mega institution under his care to a medical dispenser at the helm of a research institute. But at least there was a method in place to the isolated cases of madness.
Both, the method and the madness are continuing today. And it is taking an awful long time to fill in the vacancies. At least this week the state bank posts have been filled, but letters of appointments have not been given to all. Some ministers have been impatient and made their own appointments as they claim they are legally entitled to do so. They have virtually told the Presidential Committee to go to hell, and at least one UNF minister was hauled up by his own Prime Minister for going through the back-door to the President to get his appointments done.
The President has already broken his own guidelines and bypassed his own Committee. In the meantime, the Committee is still calling for the curriculum vitae of nominees of Cabinet Ministers who are playing by the rules and sending in the names of their nominees. This has become a case where the intentions are noble, but the implementation is too slow. In effect, what has happened is the Government is in part shutdown mode.
This week, the nation also witnessed the Finance Minister having to back down from an appointment he made to the Customs Department. The department is anything but squeaky clean, but the ministers move to bring in an outsider came a cropper when it was met with stiff resistance, with the ousted Director General taking the unprecedented step of going to the media to speak up against her removal.
The signs are that the public servants will no longer take things lying down and unions have become bolder. The public service has been let down by such appointments where honesty, integrity, ability, upholding the rule of law and disregard for political interference must be the norm not servility, prepared to act illegally and entertaining political interference. The ministers faux pas has not been without financial cost. The country was said to be losing Rs. 1 billion each day as the Customs Department launched a Work-to-Rule campaign. The minister has now reinstated the DG, but it seems only till pending investigations are over. Does this mean the DG ought not to begin new investigations for then they will also be pending?
The minister has also spoken of an apex Revenue Authority where the Customs, the Inland Revenue and the Excise Departments will be brought under one umbrella. This was a proposal of then Finance Minister K.N. Choksy during the 2001-2004 years and this was also resisted by those in these three agencies. It seems they are quite comfortable the way things are, and for reasons that are obvious, they dont want the status-quo disturbed. There was a hue and cry at the time and there will be now. It is not prudent to introduce these new measures at the tail-end of a Government if it lacks the support of the stakeholders. These are measures that must be introduced in the early months of a new administration.
UNP backs out of National Govt bid; President slams CC and Human Rights Council By Sandun Jayawardana View(s): View(s):
Simmering tensions between President Maithripala Sirisena and the Constitutional Council (CC) chaired by Speaker Karu Jayasuriya came to the fore this week, in Parliament, while the United National Front (UNF) abruptly put-off its controversial motion to establish a National Government with the sole MP representing the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC).
Ending his more than three months absence from Parliament, the President, on Wednesday, made an unannounced visit to the House and made it an occasion to air his frustrations about the conduct of the CC and independent commissions, particularly the Human Rights Commission (HRC).
The President claimed that the CC had rejected without explanation the names of 12 judges he had forwarded for promotion. He said the CC, in a letter, had notified him that the seniority of judges was not a factor when selecting judges for promotion. If this was so, on what criteria did the CC select judges for promotion? the President asked.
Accusing the the HRC of standing up for criminals, he hit out at the HRC for questioning the deployment of the Special Task Force (STF) to the Angunukolapelessa Prison.
In another broadside at the HRC, the President blamed the independent body for the deaths of two Sri Lankan peace keeping soldiers in Mali. The President said the deaths could have been avoided if the HRC had not delayed the vetting process to send reinforcement to Mali. The soldiers would have returned home six months ago, if the HRC had not dragged its feet on the vetting process, he said.
Not only the CC, but also the other independent commissions that were formed under the 19th Amendment had no approved guidelines. As such, these institutions work without being subjected to any limitations, he complained.
The Presidents statement prompted Speaker Karu Jayasuriya to come back strongly the following day against what he said were erroneous statements and unjustified allegations the President had made in his speech.
Noting that the guidelines followed by the CC when making appointments had been tabled in Parliament as far back as 2016, the Speaker stressed that the President had made an erroneous statement that seniority had not been counted by the CC in selecting suitable persons as judges. What we stated was that seniority was not the only yardstick that we had adopted, the Speaker insisted.
The Speaker also noted that the CC had only chosen names from the lists forwarded by the President and had not recommended any names outside the lists for promotion.
He also challenged the Presidents claims that the CC had rejected 12 names forwarded by the President to be appointed as judges to the superior courts.
Only one name was selected by us in the instances where three to four names had been proposed for one vacancy, the Speaker said, adding that depicting the procedure as rejections of the Presidents nominees was not fair by the Constitutional Council.
Mr. Jayasuriya said that levelling severe criticism against independent commissions such as the HRC, without first seeking clarifications, would cause long-term damage to the country.
Opposition MPs strongly protested against the Speakers statement, with Chief Opposition Whip Mahinda Amaraweera calling for an immediate debate on the conduct of the CC.
House Leader Lakshman Kiriella pointed out that the Government had already agreed to debate it on another day this month. His retorted that the Government would not grant even that debate if the Opposition insisted on a debate immediately. This prompted heated arguments between the two sides, forcing the Speaker to temporarily halt proceedings to hold a party leaders meeting. Party leaders later agreed to hold the debate as scheduled later this month.
Thursdays Parliamentary sessions were expected to be far more heated however, as the UNF was due to present its controversial proposal to establish a national Government. This proved to be a non-event when the party suddenly reversed course and deferred the motion to a future sitting.
The 11th hour decision was taken despite Chief Government Whip Gayantha Karunathilake sending letters to Government MPs informing them that it was mandatory for them to be present in the House throughout Thursday to vote for the motion. The UNP claimed that the reason to put off the motion was because it did not wish to suspend the Standing Orders of Parliament to debate it. The Opposition pooh-poohed the claim, saying that the real reason was due to the UNF being unable to muster the simple majority to pass the motion.
Opposition MPs could not contain their glee at the humiliating backtracking of a Government that had been so bullish less than 24 hours ago, when it decided to take up the motion ignoring opposition from all other parties. National Freedom Front (NFF) Leader Wimal Weerawansa quipped that they had risked their very lives to be in the chamber to fight against the motion, only to learn that it would not be presented. He was referring to an incident just before noon on Thursday when he and 11 other MPs, mostly from the Opposition, became trapped for about 15 minutes inside a Parliament lift.
On Friday (8), Parliament debated the preliminary report of the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) (From 01.07.2017 to 30.09.2017).
Unsurprisingly, the debt-laden national carrier, SriLankan Airlines, figured prominently. Speaking during the debate, COPE Chairman and JVP frontliner Sunil Handunnetti made some startling revelations regarding the salaries of senior officials of the airline. He noted that, according to the latest documents the COPE had received, up until December 31, 2018, the airlines Chief Executive Officer (CEO) had been getting as his monthly salary a staggering Rs. 3 million, which was equivalent to Rs 100,000 a day. Seven officials who were part of the airlines senior management earned upwards of Rs 2 million a month. He queried how such colossal salaries could be awarded to those at the management level when the airline was losing millions of rupees on a daily basis.
Mr. Handunnetti then came up with another revelation: He claimed the airlines directors held a crucial board meeting regarding the purchase of eight wide-body aircraft on March 1, 2013 at the then Speaker Chamal Rajapaksas official residence in Battaramulla. The airlines Director Board usually meets at its World Trade Centre office or in the head office meeting room. In his observations, the Auditor General had observed that holding such a meeting at the Speakers residence was highly unusual, the JVP member said.
In response, former Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa claimed he had no knowledge of such meeting and asked that the minutes from the said Director Board meeting be tabled. He, however, acknowledged that one of his sons was also on the airlines director board at the time. If he had held the meeting at the Speakers official residence, then I accept that it is wrong, he said.
Probe on Trumps inauguration bash: Lanka as footnote View(s):
Sri Lanka has figured as a political footnote in a major investigation of big-dollar donors who helped finance US President Donald Trumps inauguration ceremony when he took office in January 2017.
The focus of the investigation includes Imaad Zuberi, a California venture capitalist, who reportedly donated more than $1.1 million dollars to committees associated with Mr. Trump and the Republican Party. The donations included $900,000 to Mr. Trumps inaugural committee. The donations are now being scrutinised by Federal prosecutors. The inflow of foreign money, if any, is a violation of Federal laws.
Pakistan-born Mr Zuberi has figured in Police investigations into how then Monitoring MP for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sajin de Vass Gunawardena, allegedly hired public relations firms in the US to promote Sri Lanka. This came in the wake of US then introducing a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council to probe alleged war crimes. It has transpired that Mr. Zuberi played the role of a middleman and benefited from large amount of moneys paid to these so-called PR firms.
Mr. Zuberis company, Avenue Ventures, acts as a consultant and has offices in China and the United Arab Emirates, with investments in India and Bahrain. The donation apparently generated coveted invitations to black-tie dinners and photo ops with the US president and some of his high-ranking officials, including the chief of staff.
According to the New York Times, Zuberis habit of trading on his political connections veered into his role as an agent for a foreign government. Citing a report in Foreign Policy magazine, the Times said that in 2015, the scandal-plagued government of Sri Lanka paid a total of $6.5 million to Zuberi and another company linked to him, for services that appear to have included seeking to influence the American government. The report also said that Zuberi belatedly registered as a consultant to the government of Sri Lanka, as required by law under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Only fresh milk in Parliament
Allegations that milk powder imported from New Zealand were contaminated with animal fat including pig fat, and palm oil, has led some MPs to raise concerns with Speaker Karu Jayasuriya over the milk being served in Parliament.
Deputy Minister Buddhika Pathirana told Parliament earlier in the week that milk powder imported from New Zealand was contaminated in this manner. In response, Opposition MPs including National Freedom Front (NFF) Leader Wimal Weerawansa have called for the appointment of a special Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the matter.
Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne refuted Deputy Minister Pathiranas claim, telling Parliament on Thursday that tests conducted on imported milk powder samples in local and foreign laboratories had both revealed the milk powder did not contain any substance except for milk fat. Mr Pathirana, though, stuck to his guns, repeating his accusations to Parliament on Friday.
The Speaker meanwhile, revealed that in the wake of the controversy, some MPs had asked him privately about the milk being served in the Parliament complex. I can assure MPs that we only serve fresh milk in Parliament and they need not have any concerns on that, the Speaker said.
UN and HRCSL jointly screen peacekeepers
United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric last week made remarks on Sri Lankan peacekeepers during he noon briefing at the United Nations in New York.
She said: Ive been asked about recent statements made in Sri Lanka regarding UN peacekeeping, and what I can tell you is that we have seen the media reports. Sri Lanka is a very important contributor to UN peacekeeping. The Secretary-General has condemned the attack against Sri Lankan peacekeepers and extends his condolences to the Government and people of Sri Lanka.
It is the policy of the UN that individuals and units deployed to UN peacekeeping by any member States, including Sri Lanka, are screened through a thorough and credible process in order to safeguard the integrity of our peacekeeping missions.
The procedures for conducting the screening of UN peacekeepers in Sri Lanka were only agreed to in December of last year. Since then, it is not the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission alone, but the UN together with the Human Rights Commission, that have been jointly screening the personnel nominated by the Government of Sri Lanka. The aim is to ensure rapid deployment of Sri Lankan peacekeepers to the field.
Sirisena gets treatment for chest infection
President Maithripala Sirisena was at the Army Hospital in Narahenpita this week to receive treatment for a mild chest infection.
This prompted him to cancel official engagements the same day in Batticaloa. He, however, flew to Polonnaruwa.
Accompanying him were SLFP stalwarts Mahinda Amaraweera, Dilan Perera and S.B. Dissanayake, among others.
Mixed roles for new governors
The Home Ministry set out mixed roles for recently appointed Provincial Governors at celebrations connected with last Mondays Independence Day. In different provinces, the arrangements were varied. In Uva, both Governor Marshal Perera and Chief Minister Chamara Sampath took part in the ceremonies. In the South, Governor Rajith Keerthi Tennekoon and Chief Minister Shan Wijeylal de Silva were present.
However, Northern Province Governor Dr Suren Raghavan and Central Province Governor Maithri Gunaratne attended the ceremonies at the Galle Face Green.
War heroes: Presidents definition differs from that of secretary
President Maithripala Sirisena had a response to even his own Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando when he addressed the nation on the countrys 71st Independence Day last Monday.
He declared, I make this an occasion to pay my respect to all those war heroes who valiantly fought in the battlefield, sacrificed their lives, became disabled, or are missing in action for safeguarding the freedom of the Nation
That was in marked contrast to Mr Fernando who declared that war heroes were those who have been recognised through the issue of medals and certificates. He made these remarks during a felicitation ceremony for him and Air Force Commander Air Marshal Kapila Jayampathy at their former school, Nalanda College.
What happened when MR and CBK lit the lamp
Ahead of Indias Independence Day last month, the Indian High Commission held a performance at the Cultural Centre at Bauddaloka Mawatha in Colombo.
Present were two former Presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga.
When they were invited to light the traditional oil lamp, there were some awkward moments. Rajapaksa broke the silence by saying Madam Kohomada or How are you, Madam.
Ms. Kumaratungas attention was focused elsewhere. Moments later she remarked Congratulations. Then she said sorry, sorry. Oya nemei bandey. Oyage putha, ne, or sorry Its not you but your son who got married, isnt it, she said.
SriLankan probe: ASG and top official in hot air
As senior government officials who were involved in the decision-making process of SriLankan Airlines and the now-defunct Mihin Lanka have been summoned to testify before the Commission of Inquiry, last Thursday, it was Central Banks Deputy Governor S. R. Attygalle who gave evidence.
The full day inquiry was tense with heated arguments as Additional Solicitor General Neil Unamboowe grilled the former Deputy Secretary to the Treasury on the procedures followed when billions worth of Treasury bonds were issued in 2012 without the knowledge of then President and Finance Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to make a capital infusion of US$ 125 million to the debt-ridden SriLankan Airlines. Mr. Attygalle claimed that it was only to strengthen the cash flow of the company.
As Chairman of the Commission, retired Supreme Court Justice Anil Gooneratne, noticed, the ASG was armed with a written questionnaire. He wanted to make sure he did not miss any important point. Mr. Attygalle, who was appointed as Secretary to the Treasury during the 52-days of political crisis last year quipped with a remark as to how many marks he would be able to score in the exam.
ASG Unamboowe shot back, saying that the results would be known once the Commissioners concluded the sittings and the final report was compiled soon.
Youth aspirations View(s):
What are todays youth seeking? What are their aspirations? Are they looking for jobs where they have to work hard as older generations did or easy-going, more flexible-hour jobs?
These thoughts lingered on my mind after attending a recent discussion on this matter and being further provoked when Kussi Amma Sera and her friends discussed similar issues last Thursday morning.
Accompanied by steaming cups of tea (happily I was also drinking one, while listening to their Margosa tree conversation from the office window), Mabel Rasthiyadu was heard to say: Hari kammaeli kenek, apey putha (Our son is very lazy).
Aei? (Why), asked Serapina. Yana, yana raekiyawen, masayakata passe natara venawa (Every job he goes for, he quits in one month), replied Mabel Rasthiyadu.
Ada tarunayanta pahasu rakiya avashyayi (Todays youth want easy jobs) , ventured Kussi Amma Sera.
Heres what one of the panellists at the Sunday Times Business Club discussion last week on Crisis in Employment suggested as key challenges facing society and youth:
n Young people are not looking for a job for a lifetime.
n They dont like rigid structures.
n They dont like monotonous, repetitive tasks.
n They dont want to remember a lot of details. Information should be available at their fingertips.
n They want simple, user-friendly IT systems.
n They want flexibility in work hours, leave, etc.
n They dont like to work away from their comfort zone.
n They want a rapid rise in career and status to support costly lifestyles.
n The way they learn and apply knowledge is different to earlier generations.
Another panellist said that the reason why young people are bigger risk-takers than their parents or previous generations, is largely because they have chosen to rely on their parents if out of work.
Another reason could be that Sri Lanka is at full employment or the numbers of the unemployed are dwindling.
According to 2017 data, the countrys employed population (in the 18 years and over category) was 8.1 million with almost seven million being in rural areas. This means that nearly 40 per cent of the total population of 21.4 million was employed or doing some kind of work. The employment rate was 95.9 per cent of the labour force with 4.1 per cent being unemployed, which means in actual terms that Sri Lanka has achieved full employment status.
Often job vacancy ads in local newspapers are repeated as there are either no takers or young people present themselves at interviews and when offered the job, dont turn up on the first day. There is also a tendency to apply for several jobs and opt for the easiest-to-do job if they have several options. On the flipside, there are also hard-working young people particularly in the IT field and start-up community where flexi-working hours are the norm.
The culture of acquiring a three-wheeler and working at a slow pace was also discussed. There are about a million three-wheelers and a sizable number of drivers are young people who did day-jobs, quit and opted to do this as it was less strenuous. In some cases, those with jobs too acquired three-wheelers to work part-time.
A Verite Research study titled Youth Labour Market Assessment 2018 shows that youth prefer jobs in the public sector as against the private sector. While youth prefer to work close to home, regardless of whether it is a major town or a rural area, they are also less willing to take up jobs in the private sector than the public sector, it said.
The study also revealed that while youth show a strong preference for working close to home, the provision of good transport either public or employer-provided is the strongest motivator for them to take up jobs that are not located in their current village or town.
Youth spent an average 21 months searching for employment and approximately 29 per cent of constrained youth (those who are not in the labour force, education or training) showed an interest to work, according to the study.
Another possible reason for youth reluctance to be serious in seeking employment is dependency on the Ministers list as our Down to Earth columnist has expressed below. In a classic example, he points out how a librarian with a connected degree has a job with a limited contract, while a young person without a degree is appointed to the same job at a higher salary because he or she came from the Ministers list which appears to be a priority in public sector recruitment.
Helicopter parenting or over-parenting where, according to one explanation, means parents being involved in a childs life in a way that is over-controlling, over-protecting and over-perfecting, in a way that is in excess of responsible parenting may be another reason why young people stay longer without jobs than being young, responsible adults and do a job.
Over-parenting also implies parents paying for their childrens education, after acquiring a first degree, even though the individual can do a job while planning to acquire a second degree.
As my thoughts transformed into words being vigorously typed on the computer, the phone rang with Pedris Appo short for Appuhamy a retired agriculture expert who does farming, on the line.
The farming sector is having serious problems these days. Our children are not prepared to do farming and finding labour is very hard. I am told that in some areas, foreign labour is contracted and these people are hard-working and willing to work long hours, he said, after which we engaged in a long conversation on the unattractiveness of farm jobs and also the crisis arising out of the Sena caterpillar that is destroying cultivations.
Other points that emerged from last weeks Crisis in Employment discussion were:
n Earlier there would be a long queue waiting for an interview after applying for a job. Today, recruiters have to go after young people to fill vacancies.
n Because of the fast culture and fast lifestyle, young people are acquiring a mountain of debt.
Just as I was finishing my column, Kussi Amma Sera walked into the room with a second cup of tea, which I had requested, saying: Mahattaya, apey lamaya-te rassavak hoyala denna (Sir, find a job for our son).
Balamu, balamu (Lets see, lets see), I replied, not wanting to get into a longer discourse on the need for her son to be more responsible and find a job, rather than depend on his parents to find one.
Top priority to appoint Tax Ombudsman By Jayampathy Jayasinghe View(s): View(s):
The need for a Tax Ombudsman is now more urgent than ever before due to the changes in the income tax regime and the implementation of the Revenue Administration Management Information System (RAMIS) to prevent taxpayers running from pillar to post.
I believe the time is opportune to address the concerns of the tax payers by appointing a Tax Ombudsman along the lines of the South African experience to achieve a balance that will enhance the degree of equity and fairness in tax administration, said senior lawyer and PC K. Kanag-Isvaran at the 22nd Annual Oration of Taxation on the Tax Collector And the Rights of the Taxed at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) in Colombo this week.
Referring to the Tax Ombudsmen, Mr. Kanag-Isvaran said the concept of the Tax Ombudsman was introduced in the budget of November 2004, by the then incumbent Minister of Finance and the office was established on September 15, 2005 with the appointment of a retired High Court Judge who was the first and only holder of the office.
The administrative framework and operational guidelines pertaining to the Tax Ombudsman mandated the appointment to be a period of two years. No successor was appointed pursuant to the completion of this tenure and that office remains in abeyance. He said the tension between the tax collector and the taxed is as old in terms of recorded history and in every culture and in every part of history from the tax collectors of ancient Israel to the island revenue agents of today has received more than his share of contumely.
He said Chapter XVII of the Sri Lankan Constitution mandates the raising of finances from the citizen which shall only be by the authority of Parliament which is articulated in articles 148 and 152 of the Constitution. Under Article 148 of the Constitution, Parliament shall have full control over public finance. No tax rate or any other levy shall be imposed by any local authority or any other public authority except by or under the authority of a law passed by Parliament of any existing law.
Referring to Article 152, he said it speaks only of a Bill or Motion but everyone knows that day in and day out the Minister of Finance issues usually mid-night gazettes imposing or exempting or reducing taxes and levies. He said with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1987 and with the establishment of the Provincial Councils in addition to the power of Parliament to impose taxes, the 13th Amendment also devolved power to impose taxes upon the Provincial Councils in respect of any matter set out in list 1 of the 9th schedule to the Constitution commonly referred to as the Provincial Council List.
This includes turnover taxes on wholesale and retailer, betting taxes, and taxes in prize competition in lotteries, license taxes, arrack, toddy rents, tapping license fee and liquor license fee, motor vehicles license fee, Stamp Duty on transfer of properties, and taxes on mineral rights and the like.
CA Sri Lanka President, Jagath Perera in his welcome address said that taxation is one of the key tools that is most likely to be taken over by technology. He said CA members should be mindful of the technological changes that are taking place in the world. Any activity we do will be taken over by technology and taxation will not be an exception. We are going through the 4th Industrial Revolution and digitalisation is going to be the main feature.
State banks to bring in experienced professionals as banking heads By Bandula Sirimanna View(s): View(s):
The Finance Ministry is now clearing high level procedures in appointing heads to state banks almost two months after the reinstatement of the UNF government with the aim of invigorating the state banking sector with experienced professionals.
Most of the state banks are currently embroiled with dysfunction in policy and decision-making in managing and administering its key financial and legal matters as the boards of directors of these banks are still to be reconstituted.
Although, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera re-appointed Ronald C. Perera, PC, as the chairman of the Bank of Ceylon (BOC) on Thursday and Deputy Secretary to Treasury A.M.P.M.B. Atapattu as the acting Chairman Peoples Bank (PB) on Wednesday, boards of directors of these banks are still to be reconstituted under the present administration.
A renowned banking professional with over 40 years experience will be appointed soon as the chairman of the National Savings Bank as his nomination has been cleared by the Presidential Committee, a senior Treasury official said.
According to the rules at state banks, the management and administration of the affairs of the bank shall be vested in a board, consisting of six directors appointed by the subject Minister.
All these state banks have now been brought under the Finance Minister who is authorised to nominate the names of chairmen and board of directors for the Presidents approval.
However in accordance with the current procedure the credentials of those nominees have to be scrutinised by the Presidential Committee headed by senior presidential advisor W.J.S. Karunaratne before forwarding the names of nominees for the Presidents approval.
Issues facing banks have been brought to the notice of the President and the Prime Minister in separate letters sent to them by the Ceylon Bank Employees Union (CBEU), its Secretary General Ranjan Senanayake told the Business Times.
Although the daily functions of state banks are being carried out without any interruptions, administrative affairs and key policy decisions such as approving big loans and major staff issues cannot be carried out without board approval, he said.
This situation will aggravate the number of loan defaulters as they are aware of the difficulty faced by banks to take legal action against them without a board decision, he said. This will also affect businessmen who need bank overdrafts to carry out their business activities.
SL youth reluctant to take hard-working jobs By Quintus Perera View(s): View(s):
Youth reluctant to take hard-working jobs and dependency on their parents, among other issues came to the fore during a discussion on Crisis in Employment organised by the Sunday Times Business Club (STBC) last week.
The panel comprised Fayaz Saleem, Principal Consultant/MD of Executive Search; Rozaine Cooray, Business Psychologist and founder of Forte Consultancy and Isuru Tillakawardana, Deputy General Manager HRM, Commercial Bank, last week and it was held at the Kingsbury Hotel, Colombo the clubs host hotel.
The discussion was lively and examined the extremely vital and critical issues such as whether Sri Lanka has any unemployment or whether it has achieved full employment as according to Feizal Samath, Patron STBC and Business Editor, Sunday Times the available statistics points to only 4 per cent unemployment in Sri Lanka which could be considered as Sri Lanka has achieved full employment.
More interestingly the issue of young people not being attracted to employment was discussed at length and the major issue that confronts the youth those school leavers preferably after O Levels prefer to be three wheel drivers. This has now become a huge constraint as now there are no people to take up employment and even raises the question of whether Sri Lanka is heading towards importing labour, as seen in the construction industry, in particular.
In this scenario, when the blame was pinned on the youth who take up to three wheelers, there was at least one member in the audience, who stood to defend these entrants. We are looking at only one side of the story. I myself used to think actually the problem would be with the three wheelers. But what about the other side where the employer is also responsible where sometimes employers also set a bad example, he asked.
He said that some of them actually worked in sales organizations where the sales targets were unrealistic. For example why cannot the employers pay Rs 1,000 per day for the estate worker when they can afford to pay? Actually the employer is doing the wrong thing.
Mr. Saleem opening the discussion though he too believed there is full employment. Yet, he said that looking at the way the country is heading he was disgruntled, desperate and said in frustration: I do not know what the future of this country is (vis-a-vis employment trends). He said that he was involved in the employment recruitment business for the last 40 years.
He said that the countrys young people are reluctant to accept jobs and are waiting for better positions. How will Sri Lanka become a global country, expecting the kind of industries and to attract foreign investors in this kind of scenario, he said he did not know. He cited many examples as to how people who promised to take up employment and then refused even to foreign recruiting agents.
Jobs are no longer important for young people, but he said that he cannot say the same thing for middle and top rankers as he is dealing with senior level recruitment. Though there is unemployment, Mr. Saleem said that these people are not prepared because some of them accept the job but they do not report for work.
Mr. Thilakawardana said they too face the challenges in terms of retaining and sustaining the young generation in the work place at the bank. They have a crisis as the young generations are quite different and technology has changed the landscape. He said young people are looking for jobs where they can retire early.
He said that todays situation is different as in spite of retention rules and all of that they are not interested or compelled to stay in organisations. They look for a more flexi work environment with more freedom and privileges.
Yet, he said that they see the new generation as the future. The challenge of this generation today is how to change their organisations and be more flexible in work schedules and to change to accommodate the talents and at the same time recognise the difference in the approach.
Ms. Cooray said that most of the young people expect higher positions when they reach the age of 35 years and by the age of 30 they want be in a key role and to make an impact.
Mr. Saleem also raised the issue of vocational training and said that there were 374 training institutes earlier and 50 per cent of them were closed subsequently and 25 per cent were running with half the capacity. Nobody knows what happened to the rest, while the country is without skilled personnel.
Ratmalana Airport in over Rs.800 m upgrade By Sunimalee Dias Civilian operations demarcated from military View(s): View(s):
The Ratmalana Airport will be handed over to civilian operations this month, establishing clear cut demarcations as per civil aviation requirements and after upgrading facilities with an investment of Rs.825 million.
In two weeks time the Ratmalana Airport will be officially handed over by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to the Airport and Aviation Services Ltd. (AASL) allowing for clear demarcations between the civil and military operations at the facility, the airports Manager Aruna Rajapaksa told the Business Times.
The airport has been upgraded with a new taxiway, apron overlay, navigational equipment upgrade, administration complex including the Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower through an investment from the AASL.
The manager pointed out that the key advantage of the current change in the structure of the airport is that it would ensure there is a clear cut demarcation between the military and the civilian operations at the facility.
The facility would also allow for Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) operations to continue on the ground including the use of the runway; however, the military would be separate from the civilian traffic.
This would ensure that three more hangars previously occupied by the SLAF and one two storied building and a terminal building would be under the administration of the AASL, he explained.
At present the AASL has six hangars and the three additional ones that are larger in size would amount to a total of 75,000 sq. ft area space.
The land area is almost 25 acres that includes the apron and the grass patch as well, Mr. Rajapaksa said.
Arrangements are underway to ensure that one hangar that is relatively larger in capacity would be allocated for a fixed based operator and the other two hangars would be used to attract more international corporate jets, he said.
The two-storied building would be used for administrative requirements of domestic airline operators. At present there are nine domestic airline operators.
Once the places are reserved the tendering process or procurement process would commence to allocate the hangars that is expected to increase the aircraft traffic as well, Mr. Rajapaksa noted.
Within the next six months they expect an increase from the existing 70 aircraft movements per day to about 90 per day. This would be inclusive of the SLAF traffic as well.
Moreover, he noted that previously there existed only one taxiway for use but now the training students could have access to both taxiways that would increase efficiency levels as well.
The Ratmalana Airport is currently receiving about five international aircraft movements (per month) that is expected to continue in the future in addition to the surge in volumes as well.
Currently air traffic is mainly generated from India, Thailand, Singapore and Switzerland and some of the largest corporate jets have the capability of landing at the facility namely the Global 6000 corporate jets with a seating capacity of 20 passengers.
Banks to customers: Use SMS alerts to combat fraud View(s):
To safeguard against frauds, all bank customers have been urged to subscribe to a mobile alert service.
All customers should subscribe to a Short Messaging Service (SMS) alerts by banks so that account holders are aware of all their transactions, a senior industry official opined to the Business Times. He said with SMS alerts any transaction on a particular account is immediately alerted to the customer. While all banks have this facility, only some use it as a mandatory service. This discussion came on the back of reports of some transaction card data being compromised early this week through Automated Teller Machine (ATM) skimming activities, where cloned cards were created to make fraudulent withdrawals.
The Payment Card Industry Association of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lanka Banks Association (Guarantee) Ltd in a joint statement said that soon after receiving the complaints, member banks have taken prompt action to attend to the complaints received and credit the accounts upon verification. The fraudsters, of foreign origin were caught.
Nanda Fernando, Managing Director Sampath Bank told the Business Times that Sampath hasnt got any complaints on such frauds done on their cards, but its possible that cards can be skimmed from any ATM.
Credit card skimming is where offenders use a small device to pilfer information in a credit or debit card transaction. When such a card is swiped through a skimmer, it captures and saves all details stored in the cards magnetic stripe which holds the credit card number, the expiration date and the credit card holders full name. Crooks use the stolen data to make fraudulent purchases.
Credit card skimmers are often placed over the card swipe machine on ATMs and the skimmers can be placed over almost any type of credit card reader.
ATM hacking incidents were reported on Seylan Bank, Nations Trust Bank, Commercial Bank and National Savings Bank ATMs but most officials couldnt be contacted to verify this. Commercial said that some complaints were made on unauthorised transactions but they were dealt with.
The Central Bank (CB) in a statement on Wednesday said that payment cards provide customers the convenience of withdrawing cash through ATM network and transacting through merchants worldwide, but there is a possibility that ATM and card reading machines can be abused by criminals in order to steal customer funds from their accounts. To mitigate such incidents, international payment card security standards and best practices have been adopted in Sri Lankas ATM and payment card network, such as issuance of cards with increased security which have an electronic chip (EMV) and provide for SMS alerts for all electronic transactions.
The statement added: Efforts of banks, payment card issuers, acquirers and regulators need to be supported and recognised by customers in order to safeguard any payment system. In order to strengthen the security of ATM transactions, customers are required to use EMV enabled payment cards. The EMV enabled cards carry an electronic chip which is visible at the front of the card. If the card used by a customer is not EMV enabled, a request can be made from the relevant bank to issue an EMV enabled card.
Albert Edirisinghe Opticians celebrates 70th anniversary View(s):
Savinda Samarakoon, Managing Director, Albert Edirisinghe Opticians Ltd (in white shirt), makes the first sale to a customer at the reopening in Kollupitiya on Friday of the companys first-ever branch. The company celebrated 70 years on February 4 (as old as Sri Lankas independence) and offers top brands catering to lower and upper income groups. Pic by Amila Gamage
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Laura Jackson. Photo submitted.
WHEN Laura Jackson hit the headlines with her Januhairy campaign last month she had no idea the whole thing would go totally global.
The former Kineton High School pupil, now studying drama at Exeter University, wanted to raise awareness about body stigmas and challenge notions about what the perfect body should look like. She argues that body hair on a woman is perfectly natural and should be embraced as such.
Using this platform I grew my body hair and posted pictures on social media this was the catalyst for a social discussion and Ive had contact with women in Russia, Spain and Canada. I have been so surprised by the success of the campaign and its got people talking about their bodies and supporting each other. Of course youre going to get criticism and people will have their opinions but that means theyre talking even if they didnt want to about their bodies previously, Laura said.
The month of January may be over but the campaign Januhairy isnt. Laura, aged 22, intends to keep the debate going as she is raising money for a UK charity called Body Gossip which increases awareness on body image issues.
English08/02/2019
SRPSKA NATIONAL PRIORITY IS MOTORWAY TO SERBIA
TREBINJE, February 8 /SRNA/ - Prime Minister of Republika Srpska Radovan Viskovic says the first and national priority of Republika Srpska is building the motorway from Doboj to the border with Serbia and that this does not mean that building the Banjaluka-Prijedor motorway will be abandoned.
Viskovic said certain media hastily reported his statement about an agreement with Chinese companies regarding the construction of the Banjaluka-Prijedor motorway.
He explained that at this point, the Government considers the construction of the motorway from Doboj to the border with Serbia a priority and afterwards plans to build the road from Banjaluka to Prijedor.
"Not for a second have we considered terminating the agreement on building the motorway to Prijedor but at this point we have our priorities, and that is the road up to the border with Serbia, Viskovic told the press in Trebinje after meeting with the management of the hydropower plants Hidroelektrane na Trebisnjici and Hydropower Plant Dabar.
He said he had informed Mayor of Prijedor Milenko Djakovic about the plan and that the latter agreed and supported it.
"And I was told that Mister Djakovic wants, together with the mayors of Kozarska Dubica and Novi Grad, to ask in writing why the motorway to Prijedor is not being built, said Viskovic.
The government opted for that move after Serbia had, at the request of Republika Srpska, changed its priorities and put the Kuzmin-Raca road first, whose construction begins in June, according to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, said the prime minister.
"President Vucic accepted that Serbia build a bridge over the Sava River, the most demanding facility in the project, at its own expense, and offered help in the construction of around 20 km of the road through Republika Srpska," said Viskovic.
Viskovic noted the government was not going to pass up such an opportunity and that it would gladly accept help from Serbia. /end/ds
by Tsem Rinpoche and Pastor Shin Tan
One of the greatest intellectuals of India, Acharya Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi (9th October 1876 24th June 1947) was a Buddhist, Pali and Sanskrit scholar.
The youngest of seven children, Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi was born in Sankhval (or Sancoale) village in the Indian city of Goa in 1876 to Damodar and Anandibai. He was not able to eat food on his own till the age of eight or nine, and was considered the least intellectually-capable of all the boys in the village. However, his parents were hopeful as an astrologer had predicted that he would become intelligent later in life.
Kosambi studied in Madgaon before enrolling in a school run by Bhik Bhatji at Chikli. He then attended Raghoba Gopal Prabhus school in Aroba for around three months. It was here that he developed a liking for mathematics. However, ill health forced him to return home to Sankhval.
After about a year of recuperation, Kosambi was admitted to Standard Two at a Marathi-medium school in the Belgaum district. He was promoted to Standard Five after the annual examination when he came first in his class and scored distinctions in every subject. Unfortunately, Kosambis ill health returned, and again he was forced to return to Goa.
Kosambis father had leased a coconut farm near his house in Goa and Kosambi was given the responsibility of taking care of the coconuts there. In 1891, Kosambi was married.
He started to read books of various genres written by great thinkers. Among them were Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, a great writer who had a strong influence on modern Marathi prose; Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, a Brahmin social reformer and thinker from Maharashtra; and Tukaram, a 17th century poet-saint of the Bhakti movement in Maharashtra who was famous for his devotional poetry. Inspired by these towering figures, Kosambi spent a lot of time in solitude and practised deep contemplation, which miraculously cured his chronic heart problem.
Kosambi also started to read works of great Marathi poets, and memorised around 30 shilokas (verses) of Bhandarkars Sanskrit works. He developed an intense desire to learn Sanskrit, and he left home for the Mahalaxmi temple at Kolhapur without informing anyone. However, life was much more difficult than he had anticipated he had to beg for alms to survive and missed his father dearly. Eventually, Kosambi returned home.
A biography of Lord Buddha had appeared in an 1897 issue of Balbodhmagazine. Kosambi read it several times and began to meditate by focusing on an image of the Buddha in his minds eye. When his father passed away in 1898, Kosambi lost interest in household life and his life became a mirror of the life of the Buddha.
Kosambi was convinced that Buddhas philosophy would help him attain fulfilment. An extract from his work gives us more insight into his strong faith:
On Religion
Religion influences a man like nothing else does, not even polity. A foreign ruler may invade your state but would still fail to conquer your religion. Even in the case of forcible conversion to another religion, it would take ages to wipe out the deep-seated remnants of the original faith from the believers value system. ( 14th August 1899 )
Kosambi journeyed to Pune with the intention of learning Sanskrit from the Shastris (Sanskrit teachers) while working to support himself. A meeting with Dr Bhandarkar, a Sanskrit scholar and internationally renowned Indologist, changed the course of Kosambis life. Impressed by his well-written letter of introduction, Dr Bhandarkar decided to sponsor Kosambis education and even gave him a monthly allowance.
He began to study at the Sanskrit school of Nagarkar Wada under the tutelage of Mahadev Shastri Joshi, and was given a copy of Govind Narayan Kanes Jagatguru Gautam Buddhache Charitra (The Biography of Gautama Buddha). It was a translation of a poetic work that was not considered very authentic, but the devotion of the writer left a deep impression on Kosambis psyche. Convinced that the Buddhas thoughts and his religion would immensely benefit mankind, he wanted to journey to either Ceylon or Nepal to study Buddhism.
Kosambi first travelled to and studied briefly in Ujjain, Indore, Gwalior, Prayag and Kashi (Varanasi). At Kashi, he met with a young Nepali named Durganath, who helped him to secure a pass to Nepal through family connections.
Kosambi then went on a tour of Kathmandu, visiting highly venerated Hindu temples such as Guhyeshwari and Pashupati. Wishing to keep his Buddhist aspirations from Durganath, he went quietly to visit the famous Buddha stupa. However, he was disappointed as there was only a butcher and a few people playing dice at the site, with no scholar or saint nearby.
Kosambi then recalled from his reading of the Kashi Yatra that a Buddhist temple embroiled in litigation was located 15 miles to the south of Gaya. He considered spending the rest of his life there as he had become disillusioned with the dismal state of Buddhism in Nepal.
However, when he arrived in Bodhgaya, Kosambi heard about a bhikshu named Dharmapal and decided to visit him instead. Another bhikshu at Dharmapals house told Kosambi that Dharmapal had gone to Ceylon. Kosambi asked the bhikshu about the Pali language, and the bhikshu showed him several Pali books in the Sinhalese script, and recited some passages from them.
Hearing the Pali language being recited was exciting for Kosambi he realised he would be able to learn it fairly easily because of his background in Sanskrit, from which Pali was derived. The bhikshu then advised Kosambi that the best place to study Pali formally would be with the pandits in Ceylon.
When Kosambi revealed his lack of funds and of financial support, the bhikshutold him that the Mahabodhi Sadha in Calcutta might be able to sponsor him. He also told Kosambi that a visiting Sinhalese bhikshu would be departing for Ceylon from Calcutta, and that Kosambis journey to that country would be made considerably easier if he accompanied the Sinhalese bhikshu.
After a rather prolonged and tedious process of asking for help and sponsorship from various parties, Kosambi finally managed to scrape together the train fare to Calcutta. At the Mahabodhi Sabha in Calcutta, Aghoribabu helped Kosambi find the money he needed to travel to Ceylon.
Kosambi enrolled at the Vidyoday Vidyalaya and started studying the Sinhalese script. He spent three years studying under Shri Symanalacharya and took ordination as a Buddhist monk in 1902. He then went to Burma to study Buddhism.
In October 1904, Kosambi finally visited his wife and family in Sankhval. He had not seen them for seven years. He later returned to India and returned his monk vows through a formal ceremony and became a Professor of Pali in August 1906 at the newly established National College in Calcutta.
He was then appointed a Pali lecturer at the University of Calcutta. Although the financial remuneration was good, he was not satisfied internally the students did not share his enthusiasm for the subject. Furthermore, Kosambi had a deep desire to promote Pali literature throughout the country.
Kosambi sought out the Maharaja of Baroda, Shrimant Sayajirao Gaikwad. They were introduced by Shri Satyendranath Tagore ICS, whom Kosambi knew since the founding of the National College. The Maharaja of Baroda agreed to sponsor Kosambi with a stipend for three years. In return, Kosambi was required to write at least one book every year for the state of Baroda.
While in Pune, Kosambi completed some parts of the Vishuddhimarga in the Devanagari script, an abridged translation of the Bodhicharyavatara in Marathi, and a Sanskrit primer on Pali grammar. He also gave lectures on the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha at various locations in Baroda. Three of these were published in book form.
In 1901, Kosambi was contacted by Dr James Wood of Harvard University, whom he had met in Mumbai two years earlier. Dr Wood invited Kosambi to assist Mr Warren, a former Harvard professor with his research on the Vishuddhimarga.
As a renowned scholar of languages, Kosambi also studied Russian and travelled in 1929 to the USSR to teach Pali at Leningrad University. He then returned to India at a time when the Indian independence movement was in full swing, and taught at the Gujarat Vidyapith without pay. Because he recruited volunteers for, and participated in the famous Salt Satyagraha led by Mahatma Gandhi, Kosambi was sent to prison for six years.
Kosambi played a significant role in Dr B.R. Ambedkars conversion to Buddhism. He was also credited with the building of a shelter house for Buddhist monks in Mumbai, the Bahujanavihara.
Following the philosophy of Jainism, Kosambi committed to fasting unto death through sallekhana or voluntary fasting. After 30 days of fasting, he passed away on 24th June 1947.
Kosambi is remembered for writing Bhagwan Buddha, the biography of Lord Buddha, in Marathi, which was later translated into English and many other Indian languages by the Central Sahitya Academy, New Delhi.
He also wrote a Marathi play called Bodhisattva which tells the story of Buddhas life. Another important work was his autobiography, Nivedan, which was also published originally in Marathi.
Sources:
Kosambi, M. (2010). Nivedan: The Autobiography Of Dharmanand Kosambi. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan Pvt.
http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/itihas/kosambi.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmananda_Damodar_Kosambi
by Bhante Dhammika of Australia
From about the 8th or 9th centuries onwards a new type of Buddhism began to develop which later became known as the Tantrayana, the last of the three great 'vehicles' of Indian Buddhism. In the beginning this new interpretation met with disapproval amongst the more traditional monks and nuns, so King Dharmapala (775-812) founded a monastery named Vikramasila especially for its study. One Tibetan source gives us this description of the monastery. "Sri Vikramasila was built on the bank of the Ganges in the north of Magadha on the top of a hill. Around this were fifty three small temples for the study of the Guhyasamaja Tantra and another fifty four ordinary ones, all being surrounded by a wall. Thus the number of temples was one hundred and eight. He (Dharmapala) also provided requisites for one hundred and eight pundits." From other sources we also know that there was a huge courtyard big enough to hold 8,000 monks, that at the entrance to the main temple were two statues, one of Najarjuna and another of Atisa, and that the monasterys perimeter wall had six gates. At the main entrance there was a dharmasala to accommodate those who arrived after the gates had been locked at night.
What the monastic universities at Valabhi and Bodh Gaya were to early Buddhism and Nalanda was to Mahayana, Vikramasila was to Tantra. Some of the monasteries gate keeper scholars were amongst the greatest names of this twilight period of Indian Buddhism. They included Santipa, Jetari, Ratnavajira, Jnanasrimitra and the great Naropa. Vikramasilas first abbot, Buddhajnanapada, was the author of some 14 works and was described as a great pundit learned in many fields of knowledge. The monasterys greatest son however was the Bengali monk Atisa (982-1054). Apart from being a brilliant scholar and prolific writer, he also developed a new curriculum for the university, built more rooms for its monks and invited some of the best pundits of the time to come and teach there. The colophons on several of Atisas works state that he wrote then "while residing at Sri Vikramasila Mahavihara." At its height during the reign of King Ramapala at the beginning of the 11th century there were 160 teachers and 1,000 students. They are known to have come from all over north India as well as from Kashmir, Java, Nepal, Tibet and even Sri Lanka.
Vikramasilas connection with Tibet is of course well known, its connection with Sri Lanka less so. However, Tantra flourished in Sri Lanka for about 300 years and teachers from Vikramasila were sometimes invited to the island. A Tantric work called the Caturasitisiddhapravritti, says that Santipa, one of the greatest of the legendary 84 siddhas and a teacher at Vikramasila, visited Sri Lanka at the invitation of the countrys king and stayed for three years. Nor was the movement one way, Lankajayabadhra, famous for his expositions of the Guhayasamaja Tantra was one of the great Sri Lankan Tantric scholars who taught at the monastery. Some Tantric practitioners had a bad reputation for unconventional behaviour, but such things were not tolerated at Vikramasila. It is recorded that a monk named Maitrigupta was expelled for bringing alcohol into the monastery. As was the custom, he was ejected over the wall rather than being allowed to leave through the main gate.
At the beginning of the 13th century Vikramasila met the same fate as all Buddhist centres in India. One Tibetan source says that the monk Prajnarakshita prayed to a Tantric deity and the Muslim soldiers who were about to attack Vikramasila were scattered by a great rain storm. The reality was rather different. As the invading armies pushed further east, the king hastily fortified several of the larger monasteries including Vikramasila and stationed soldiers in them. But it did no good. In about 1206 Vikramasila was sacked, its inmates were killed or driven away and its foundation stone was tossed into the Ganges.
Towards the end of the 19th century European and Indian scholars began speculating about where Vikramasila might be. Silao, just south of Nalanda, Sultanganj near Bhagalpur and Hisla south of Patna were all suggested as possibilities. In 1901 archaeologist Nundalal Dey suggested that it might be at Patharaghat where there were several huge mounds and fragments of Buddhist statuary near a hill overlooking the Ganges. One ancient Tibetan source says that the monastery was situated "where the holy river flows northward" and indeed the Ganges does turn north at Patharaghat. Although Deys suggestion is now widely accepted as correct, excavations at Patharaghat have so far failed to find a single inscription or seal actually mentioning the name Vikramasila.
Today Patharaghat is one of the most interesting Buddhist sites in north India and yet at the same time one of the least known and least visited. At first it seems to be somewhat out of the ancient heartland of Buddhism but in actual fact this is not so. Nearby is Champanagar, the Campa of old, visited by the Buddha and the scene of several of his discourses. To the west is Munger, a town that is believed to derive its name from Moggallana, one of the Buddhas two chief disciples. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang spent a year in this town studying with Tathagatagupta and Kshantisimha. At Sultanganj there are the ruins of another huge Buddhist monastery. A magnificent bronze Buddha statue recovered from these ruins is now one of the great treasures of the Birmingham Museum. The fact that a few local village temples have ancient Buddhist statues in them now serving as Hindu gods, also attests to the fact that Buddhism once flourished in this region. But that was long ago.
Today Bhagalpur district where Patharagahat is situated is perhaps the most poverty stricken and lawless areas in India. Nonetheless, a few years ago I made the long and gruelling trip to the place. We hired a four wheel drive in Bodh Gaya and set off. After hours bumping over dusty pot-holed roads we got to the Ganges and began to follow it towards the east. We arrived in Bhagalpur around sunset, booked into the towns only hotel, a truly seedy and rundown establishment, and fell into bed exhausted after the long drive. Leaving Bhagalpur early the next morning we arrived at Patharaghat in about two hours. Patharaghat itself is a hill with its rocky north side washed by the Ganges and its top offering a commanding view over the river. The first thing we noticed were a series of caverns dug out of the side of a rocky water-filled depression. Local lore says that these mysterious cavern were the result of mining in ancient times but their real origin and purpose are unknown. At the foot of the nearby banyan tree is a beautiful statue of the Mahayana bodhisattva Tara, some votive stupas and other pieces of sculpture. The Tara is now being worshipped by locals as a Hindu goddess. A little further on along on the side of the hill is the Bodhesvaranath Temple. Just inside the main gate are a collection of ancient statues of the Buddha, Tara, Avalokitesvara and other bodhisattvas. The first shrine has another statue of Tara at its entrance. Right next to this is a cave with two chambers cut out of the side of the hill and outside the temples back gate is a similar one. About a hundred yards beyond the temple is yet another cave, large, finely cut and with a panelled ceiling. Another modern Hindu temple is situated right beside the water and all the rocks nearby have ancient carvings on them.
After seeing everything we took the road about 3 kilometres south-east to the ruins now identified as Vikramasila. A broad processional path leads up to the monasterys main entrance. The remains of the huge stone pillars that once supported the roof of the gatehouse can be seen on the left and right. One of these pillars is nearly 4 feet square. Passing through the gate we entered a vast quadrangle surrounded by monks cells. The thickness of the walls suggest that there may have been in two or even three tiers of these cells. According to the archaeological report, up to 16 cm. of ash was discovered in some of these cells, proof of the monastery's fiery end. In the middle of the quadrangle is the immense main temple, built on a cross plan, rising in three terraces and with shrine on each of the four sides. Circumambulating the temple we noticed numerous terracotta figures decorating the sides of the terraces but most were now badly weather worn. When Dey came here he found Buddhist sculptures scattered all over the place. In the home of an Englishman living nearby he saw ...some votive stupas, a big statue of Avalokitesvara, a large seated figures of the Buddha... and some broken statues. These statues were exquisitely sculptured. He was also told that some years before his visit another Englishman digging in the ruins had found a beautiful lotus made of silver, containing eight petals, which could be opened and closed by means of a spring.
All the sculpture that once lay neglected around the ruins are now displayed in the new museum at Vikramasila, even some statues that were removed to other museums in the early 20th century have been given to the new museum.
The archaeological report on Vikramasila makes it clear that the ruins are very large but even this did not prepare me for the sheer massiveness of the main temple and its cloisters. In its heyday it must have been the most magnificent Buddhist monastery in all India. In one ancient account of Vikramasila it says that as a delegation from Tibet approached the great monastery they were greatly thrilled to have the first distant glimpse of its golden spire shining in the sun. The golden spire is long gone but anyone interested in the later history of Indian Buddhism will still find Vikramasila a fascinating place to visit.
Addis Ababa, February 9, 2019 (SPS) - The African Union (AU) reiterated its support to the efforts conducted, under the auspices of the United Nations, through the African mechanism established in Nouakchott Summit to reach a solution to the conflict in Western Sahara, said Thursday, in Addis Ababa, the head of AU Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat.
I welcome the relaunch, under the auspices of the United Nations, of the process aimed at reaching a solution to the conflict in Western Sahara, said Faki in an opening speech at the 34th ordinary session of his executive Council.
AU will renew its support to these efforts through the African mechanism, established at Nouakchott Summit, he added.
The African mechanism enabling AU to provide an efficient support to the process led by UN, based on the relevant resolutions of the Security Council in order to enable the Sahrawi people to exercise their right to self-determination, was adopted by the Conference of heads of State and government, held in July 2018 in Nouakchott.
This mechanism was adopted following the report prepared by the head of AU Commission Moussa Faki on the issue of Western Sahara and in which it was underlined that Western Sahara and Morocco must resume negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations secretary general. (SPS)
062/SPS/APS
On 13 February, the European Parliament will vote on the newly proposed EU-Morocco Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA). In spite of two rulings from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) concluding such an agreement could not be applied to Western Sahara as that would constitute a violation of the right to self-determination, the geographical scope of the proposed deal refers explicitly to the last colony in Africa - rendering its legal foundation highly questionable.
No less than 110 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have signed a motion calling on the European Parliament to refer the proposed fisheries agreement to the CJEU for an advisory opinion, before casting its vote on the proposed deal.
The list of signatories contains heavyweights such as the Chair of the Committee for International Trade, Bernd Lange (Germany, S&D), two Vice Chairs of the Committee for Fisheries, Renata Briano (Italy, S&D) and Linnea Engstrom (Sweden, Greens/EFA), and Vice Chair of the European Parliament Heidi Hautala (Finland, Greens/EFA).
The motion will naturally be voted on before MEPs will cast their vote on the proposed SFPA.
What is however not on the agenda of Parliament's plenary session, is an actual debate on the suggested EU-Morocco fish deal. "Astounding, given that even the Parliament's Fisheries Committee has not had sufficient time to debate - let alone thoroughly evaluate - the proposal", says Sara Eyckmans of WSRW. "It is evident that there is a lot of effort being poured into having as little debate as possible about including Western Sahara in the EU's bilateral agreements with Morocco. But one would expect the elected representatives of the peoples of the EU to at least demand the chance to make an informed decision, or to have an open discussion on this matter."
Last month, hours before Parliament would vote on extending the EU-Morocco trade relations into occupied Western Sahara, leading MEP on the trade file Marietje Schaake (Netherlands, ALDE) announced that she wanted a court referral. "Asking for a legal opinion does not mean we implicitly reject the Council decision or do not wish to cherish and maintain the close ties we have with our partner Morocco. Instead, it reaffirms the value the European Parliament attaches to core principles of international law", Schaake stated. (SPS)
062/SPS/WSRW
https://www.wsrw.org/a105x4450
Algiers, February 4, 2019 (SPS) - Ambassador of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) to Algiers Abdelkader Taleb Omar affirmed Sunday that the Sahrawi side is very optimistic about the positive atmosphere marking the peace process conducted by the United Nations (UN) for the settlement of the conflict in Western Sahara.
In a statement to APS at the Sahrawi embassy, Taleb said that the biggest test facing today the Security Council is to reach negotiations dealing with the root of this conflict and ensuring to the Sahrawi people their right to self-determination.
All the concerned sides testify to the existence of a positive atmosphere with regard to the efforts made by the UN envoy Horst Kohler who welcomed, in his last briefing at the Security Council, the measures that have been taken so far, concerning the settlement of the conflict in Western Sahara, which, he added, gave a new impetus while opening up promising prospects to resolve the conflict.
According to the Sahrawi diplomat, all the parties agreed to organize a new round of negotiations whose preparations will take place in February.
It is also expected that Kohler establishes bilateral contacts with the two sides to the conflict, the Polisario Front and Morocco, in addition to the neighboring countries, pending the holding, in March, of another negotiation session.
The Sahrawi ambassador expressed the hope that this optimism continues in order to transform it into palpable actions able to exert pressure on Morocco, so that it ends its positions hindering the international efforts. (SPS)
062/SPS/APS
Chadian army says 250 rebels captured after rebel convoy targeted
N'Djamena, Feb 9 (AFP) Feb 09, 2019
The Chadian military on Saturday said it had captured more than 250 rebels, including some top leaders, after an operation against a convoy of militants trying to cross into the country from Libya in late January that also involved French airstrikes.
In a statement issued by army staff the Chadian military said the sweep would continue in the region of Ennedi, in the northwest border with Libya and Sudan, near where the armed column of rebel vehicles was brought to a halt in early February.
The statement said some 250 "terrorists, including four main leaders" were detained, while more than 40 vehicles were destroyed and hundreds of weapons were seized.
"Several compromising documents" were also seized," the statement added without giving further details.
However, a spokesman for the Union of Resistance Forces (UFR) rebel group, dismissed the figure given for those arrested as "imaginary".
Youssouf Hamid said only about 30 fighters had been held.
President Idriss Deby on Thursday said the column of rebels had been "destroyed" in a series of strikes carried out by French warplanes.
Acting in conjunction with Chad's government, French Mirage 2000 jets targeted the convoy on Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday, destroying about 20 of roughly 50 pickup trucks the rebels started out with, the French armed forces said in a statement.
Chadian forces had already tried to stop the column with airstrikes at the beginning of February, before asking France for warning passes and then strikes.
An armed forces spokesman said the convoy had crossed 400 kilometres (250 miles) of Chadian territory before being halted between Tibesti and Ennedi in the northwest.
The anti-Deby UFR had claimed to have crossed into northern Chad with "three columns" of vehicles.
On Friday, the group said it had suffered "damage" after the French strikes, according to one of its members Mahamat Doki Warou.
Another source from the group told AFP that ten fighters had been killed, adding: "We are in the mountains of Hadjer Marfain."
The UFR was created in January 2009 from an alliance of eight rebel groups.
In February 2008, a tripartite insurgent group, moving in from the east, reached the gates of the presidential palace in N'Djamena before being repulsed by Deby's forces.
Chad, a vast and mostly desert country with more than 200 ethnic groups, has suffered repeated coups and crises since it gained independence from France in 1960.
Under Deby, a former head of the armed forces, the country has taken a leading role in the fight against jihadism in the Sahel region.
It is part of a West African coalition fighting the Boko Haram insurgency, and a member of the French-backed G5 Sahel anti-terror alliance, which also includes Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.
Ethiopia re-integrates 1,700 separatist rebels
Addis Ababa, Feb 9 (AFP) Feb 09, 2019
Ethiopia formally re-integrated some 1,700 former fighters with the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) which waged a three decade insurgency in the eastern Somali regional state, local media said Saturday.
The ex-rebels, who will have a choice between returning to civilian life or joining regional or federal security forces, were formally re-integrated during a ceremony in the eastern city of Jijiga, reported the state media outlet Ethiopia News Agency.
The fighters, who were based in Eritrea, returned to Ethiopia in November 2018, shortly after a peace agreement was signed between the ONLF and the Ethiopian government.
Formed in 1984, ONLF had been fighting for the rights of ethnic Somalis living in eastern Ethiopia to self-determination, including the option of secession.
The rebel group made international headlines on April 24, 2007 when it launched a deadly raid on a Chinese run oil field in the Somali regional state.
The attack left 65 Ethiopians and nine Chinese dead.
After the attack, Addis Ababa launched a large scale counterinsurgency campaign, with rights groups alleging widespread abuses including torture, rape and murder.
Since taking office in April, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has released imprisoned dissidents and prioritised reconciling with the country's various opposition groups.
The Ethiopian parliament in July removed the ONLF from a terror list, which prompted the group to declare an indefinite unilateral ceasefire in August.
Ethiopia's breakneck diplomatic thaw with former rival Eritrea since July 2018, also helped turn Asmara from a chief sponsor of ONLF to one that is mediating between the two sides.
Boko Haram kills three troops in Nigeria base attack
Kano, Nigeria, Feb 9 (AFP) Feb 09, 2019
Three soldiers were killed when Boko Haram jihadists raided a military base in northeast Nigeria, security sources said on Saturday.
The attack happened at the Forward Operation Base in Ngwom village, some 14 kilometres (nearly nine miles) north of the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.
"Boko Haram infiltrated our base in Ngwom yesterday (Friday) at around 6:50 pm (1750 GMT) in which we lost three soldiers," a military officer in Maiduguri told AFP.
A second military source said the Islamist militants left with two army vehicles and "demobilised" a mine-resistant armoured vehicle.
"The terrorists also burnt two houses and a car belonging to our members in the village," added a civilian militia leader in Maiduguri.
It was not immediately clear which of the two Boko Haram factions was behind the attack.
Most of the attacks on troops in Borno and neighbouring Yobe state since mid-2018 have been claimed by, or blamed on, the self-styled Islamic State West Africa Province.
Others, though, have been carried out by fighters loyal to long-time factional leader Abubakar Shekau.
Nigeria's military has strongly denied claims the assaults on soldiers are an indication the group is resurgent, after repeated claims they were "technically defeated".
The attacks underline the persistent threat from the group, including to civilians, nearly 10 years after the start of the insurgency.
More than 27,000 people have been killed in northeast Nigeria and some 1.8 million others remain homeless.
Hard work still needed before Kim-Trump summit - US envoy
Seoul, Feb 9 (AFP) Feb 09, 2019
There was still some hard work to be done ahead of the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a Washington envoy said Saturday after three days of talks in Pyongyang.
Stephen Biegun, the US Special Representative for North Korea, said preparatory talks had been productive, but more dialogue was needed ahead of the summit scheduled for Vietnam from February 27-28.
Biegun on Saturday briefed South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on his Pyongyang visit, shortly after Trump revealed the summit would take place in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
"We have some hard work to do with the DPRK between now and then," Biegun told Kang, adding: "I'm confident that if both sides stay committed we can make real progress here.
Trump announced Hanoi as the location on Twitter, hailing as "very productive" the preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries.
"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" he said.
The State Department said talks during Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula".
It also confirmed Biegun had agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the summit.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with the top brass of the Korean People's Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernize the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
- Ending the Korean War? -
Attention will now focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward denuclearization.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war."
The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South.
Experts say the most likely scenario in Vietnam is that the concerned parties -- North and South Korea, the US, and China -- to declare a formal end to the war as a political statement.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula".
But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV."
On Friday Trump tweeted that North Korea will become a "great Economic Powerhouse" under Kim.
"He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is," said Trump.
But Park Won-gon, a professor at South Korea's Handong University, said Trump's remarks may not align with Pyongyang's current agenda.
"What Pyongyang wants now, more than anything, is the lifting of the existing sanctions," Park told AFP.
"The idea of being an economic powerhouse may sound too vague and even unrealistic for them at this moment."
North Korea, which holds most of the peninsula's mineral resources, was once wealthier than the South, but decades of mismanagement and the demise of its former paymaster the Soviet Union have left it deeply impoverished.
In 2017 the UN Security Council banned the North's main exports -- coal and other mineral resources, fisheries and textile products -- to cut off its access to hard currency in response to Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
burs-oh/ska/wd/fox
Trump says summit with Kim to take place in Hanoi
Washington, Feb 9 (AFP) Feb 09, 2019
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for a second much-anticipated summit in Hanoi, as preparations kick into high gear for the peace talks.
Trump announced the exact location on Twitter -- only the country, Vietnam, was previously known -- for the follow-on to the leaders' summit in Singapore last year as he hailed "very productive" preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un," Trump said.
"It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!"
The US State Department said the special US envoy for North Korea will meet again with Pyongyang officials ahead of the Trump-Kim talks -- hours after he returned to Seoul from talks in the North on the summit's agenda.
In a statement, the State Department said talks during Stephen Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula."
Biegun landed at Osan US Air Base late Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Noh Kyu-duk told AFP.
The State Department confirmed Biegun agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the leaders' talks.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with the top brass of the Korean People's Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernize the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
- Ending the Korean War? -
Biegun is expected to share details of his Pyongyang meetings with his South Korean counterpart Lee Do-hoon and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on Saturday.
Attention will focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward denuclearization.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war."
The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South.
The US envoy was also likely to have discussed with his counterpart protocol and security matters for the upcoming Trump-Kim summit.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."
But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV."
burs-oh/ska
US envoy to meet with North Korea again ahead of Trump-Kim summit
Washington, Feb 9 (AFP) Feb 09, 2019
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for a second much-anticipated summit in Hanoi, as preparations kick into high gear for the peace talks.
Trump announced the exact location on Twitter -- only the country, Vietnam, was previously known -- for the follow-on to the leaders' summit in Singapore last year as he hailed "very productive" preparatory talks between diplomats from the two countries.
"My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un," Trump said.
"It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!"
The US State Department said the special US envoy for North Korea will meet again with Pyongyang officials ahead of the Trump-Kim talks -- hours after he returned to Seoul from talks in the North on the summit's agenda.
In a statement, the State Department said talks during Stephen Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula."
Biegun landed at Osan US Air Base late Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Noh Kyu-duk told AFP.
The State Department confirmed Biegun agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the leaders' talks.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with the top brass of the Korean People's Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernize the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
- Ending the Korean War? -
Biegun is expected to share details of his Pyongyang meetings with his South Korean counterpart Lee Do-hoon and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on Saturday.
Attention will focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward denuclearization.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war."
The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South.
The US envoy was also likely to have discussed with his counterpart protocol and security matters for the upcoming Trump-Kim summit.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."
But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV."
burs-oh/ska
US envoy to meet with North Korea again ahead of Trump-Kim summit
Seoul, Feb 9 (AFP) Feb 09, 2019
The US State Department announced Friday that the special US envoy for North Korea will meet again with Pyongyang officials before a second summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un -- hours after he returned to Seoul from talks in the North on the summit's agenda.
In a statement, the State Department said talks during Stephen Biegun's three-day trip explored Trump and Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula" in preparation for the much-anticipated summit in Vietnam on February 27 and 28.
Biegun landed at Osan US Air Base Friday evening, foreign ministry spokesman Noh Kyu-duk told AFP.
The State Department confirmed Biegun agreed to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the summit.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting Friday with the top brass of the Korean People's Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernise the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
Biegun is expected to share details of his Pyongyang meetings with his South Korean counterpart Lee Do-hoon and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on Saturday.
Attention will focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps towards denuclearisation.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was "ready to end this war".
The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in the South.
The US envoy was also likely to have discussed with his counterpart protocol and security matters for the upcoming Trump-Kim summit.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula".
But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV".
Trump's World Bank pick, an ally for the lender's critics?
Washington, Feb 9 (AFP) Feb 09, 2019
President Donald Trump's choice to lead the World Bank is a firebrand critic of the world's largest anti-poverty lender -- an institution he has called wasteful, corrupt and overly generous to China.
Those complaints are similar to those voiced by others in the development community. But that does not mean they have found a new ally in David Malpass, the senior US Treasury official who has pledged to reform the bank.
Nancy Pelosi, the newly reinstalled Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives, says Trump's choice threatens to "undermine the institution's mission."
And Liberia's former minister of public works W. Gyude Moore tweeted that "an incorrigible arsonist will now be our fire chief."
Malpass' many criticisms of the Washington-based lender certainly echo familiar refrains.
Many activists have long called for reforms at the World Bank, citing a litany of alleged human rights failures and scandals, and saying projects all too often left the world's poorest even worse off, harmed the environment or entrenched the power of oligarchies and despots.
Those critics might well have nodded their heads in accord in 2017 when Malpass said international financial institutions such as the World Bank "spend a lot of money" but are "not very efficient."
"They are often corrupt in their lending practices and they don't get the benefit to the actual people in the countries," he said in congressional testimony.
When pressed for examples, he cited situations in Venezuela and South Africa, countries that do not have programs with the World Bank.
Internal audits and outside reports have, however, tied World Bank funds to forced labor in Uzbekistan, death squads in Honduras and a Chadian oil pipeline that enriched the undemocratic local government all while child mortality rose, to name just a few examples.
So is Malpass a kindred spirit?
Analysts and activists say probably not.
- 'Fundamentally opposed'? -
David Pred, head of Inclusive Development International, which has accused the World Bank of back-door financing for coal-fired energy in Asia that is likely to spur global warming, strongly questioned Trump's choice.
"While some of Malpass' past critiques of the World Bank may be valid, the former chief economist of a financial institution whose recklessness helped blow up the global economy in 2008 is one of the last people we can count on to make the bank more accountable," he told AFP.
Malpass served as chief economist at the former investment bank Bear Stearns, whose collapse marked the start of the global financial crisis.
To be sure, Malpass' nomination has delighted some observers, including the World Bank's conservative critics.
A Wall Street Journal editorial called Malpass, himself a long-time contributor, "the best man to run" an institution whose operations he well understands.
With a long career in development economics, Malpass has worked to "wean" the increasingly wealthy and ambitious China off World Bank financing as it pursued its ambitious "Belt and Road" infrastructure initiative across multiple continents, the newspaper said.
The Economist likewise said US allies could be "relieved" that Trump had chosen one of his administration's "few remaining grown-ups" to be its next president, calling his reform efforts "mostly unobjectionable and reassuringly unoriginal."
But elsewhere Malpass is not viewed simply as a critic.
Moore, the former Liberian minister, told AFP that Malpass' opposition to lending to China could be incompatible with the bank's very business model.
Returns from those loans provide helps to fund for assistance to low-income countries, many of which are now concentrated in Africa, he said.
"He's never put forth an alternative about how the bank is going to grow its reserves," Moore said.
"To have a person who is fundamentally opposed to the way the bank does business raises questions for me and is alarming."
- 'Drop in the bucket' -
The bank did not respond to Malpass' criticism in 2017, but it touts the precipitous drop in extreme global poverty -- which it says fell to 10 percent from 36 percent between 1990 and 2015 -- as evidence of its success.
The global lender also routinely blacklists corrupt companies and says it scrutinizes projects for corruption risk.
Malpass told reporters last week that the bank had changed since his 2017 testimony.
"There were criticisms that I had that were addressed in the reform package" of 2018, he said, adding that he wanted to focus on the bank's "core mission" of poverty eradication.
Yet Elana Berger, executive director of the Bank Information Center, which scrutinizes World Bank lending and shares some of Malpass' concerns, remains dubious.
"I agree that the World Bank frequently falls short of achieving its mission because its projects are very often not well targeted" towards the goal of poverty reduction, she told AFP.
But she said it was unclear whether Malpass shares the bank's goals.
For instance, in accepting Trump's nomination last week, Malpass hailed the bank's new Saudi-supported Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, spearheaded by the president's daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump.
Berger said that $1 billion fund represented "a drop in the bucket" compared to the billions the bank spends in a given year.
The bank's board will accept nominations for through mid-March, but under an unwritten rule Washington has anointed the World Bank's president since its creation following World War II -- a custom that faces mounting opposition.
Trump's World Bank pick echoes calls for reform from other critics
Washington, Feb 9 (AFP) Feb 09, 2019
President Donald Trump's choice to lead the World Bank is a firebrand critic of the world's largest anti-poverty lender -- an institution he has called wasteful, corrupt and overly generous to China.
Those criticisms are similar to those expressed by others in the development community. But that does not mean they have found a new ally in David Malpass, the senior US Treasury official who has pledged to reform the bank.
Nancy Pelosi, the newly reinstalled Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives, says Trump's choice threatens to "undermine the institution's mission."
And Liberia's former minister of public works W. Gyude Moore tweeted that "an incorrigible arsonist will now be our fire chief."
Still Malpass's many criticisms of the Washington-based lender echo familiar refrains.
Many activists have long called for reforms at the World Bank, citing a litany of alleged human rights failures and scandals, and saying projects all too often left the world's poorest even worse off, harmed the environment or entrenched the power of oligarchies and despots.
Those critics might well have nodded their heads in accord in 2017 when Malpass said international financial institutions such as the World Bank "spend a lot of money" but are "not very efficient."
"They are often corrupt in their lending practices and they don't get the benefit to the actual people in the countries," he said in congressional testimony.
However, when pressed for examples, he cited situations in Venezuela and South Africa, countries that do not have programs with the World Bank.
Internal audits and outside reports have tied World Bank funds to forced labor in Uzbekistan, death squads in Honduras and a Chadian oil pipeline that enriched the undemocratic local government all while child mortality rose, to name just a few examples.
So is Malpass a kindred spirit?
Analysts and activists say probably not.
David Pred, head of Inclusive Development International, which has accused the World Bank of back-door financing for coal-fired energy in Asia that is likely to spur global warming, questioned Trump's choice.
"While some of Malpass's past critiques of the World Bank may be valid, the former chief economist of a financial institution whose recklessness helped blow up the global economy in 2008 is one of the last people we can count on to make the bank more accountable," he told AFP.
Malpass served as chief economist at the former investment bank Bear Stearns, whose collapse marked the start of the global financial crisis.
- 'Fundamentally opposed'? -
Malpass is not viewed simply as a critic.
Moore, the former Liberian minister, told AFP that Malpass' opposition to lending to China could be incompatible with the bank's business model.
Returns from those loans provide helps to fund for assistance to low-income countries, many of which are now concentrated in Africa, he said.
"He's never put forth an alternative about how the bank is going to grow its reserves," Moore said.
"To have a person who is fundamentally opposed to the way the bank does business raises questions for me and is alarming."
The bank did not respond to Malpass's criticism in 2017 but it touts the precipitous drop in extreme global poverty -- which it says fell to 10 percent from 36 percent between 1990 and 2015 -- as evidence of its success.
The global lender also routinely blacklists corrupt companies and says it scrutinizes projects for corruption risk.
Malpass told reporters last week that the bank had changed since his 2017 testimony.
"There were criticisms that I had that were addressed in the reform package" of 2018, he said, adding that he wanted to focus on the bank's "core mission" of poverty eradication.
The bank's board will accept nominations for through mid-March, but under an unwritten rule Washington has anointed World Bank's president since its creation following World War II -- a practice that faces mounting opposition.
Elana Berger, executive director of the Bank Information Center, which scrutinizes World Bank lending, also is dubious about Malpass, despite sharing some of his concerns.
"I agree that the World Bank frequently falls short of achieving its mission because its projects are very often not well targeted" towards the goal of poverty reduction, she told AFP.
But it was unclear whether Malpass shares the bank's goals.
In accepting Trump's nomination last week, Malpass hailed the bank's new Saudi-supported Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, spearheaded by the president's daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump.
Berger said that $1 billion fund represented "a drop in the bucket" compared to the billions the bank spends in a given year.
Bezos, world's richest man, shows won't be pushed around
San Francisco, Feb 8 (AFP) Feb 08, 2019
He built one of the world's most valuable companies from scratch, becoming the richest person on the planet.
Now Jeff Bezos is intent on showing he won't be bullied in a battle of wills with the politically connected owner of a supermarket tabloid.
The 55-year-old Bezos founded Amazon in his garage in 1994 and went on to grow it into a colossus that dominates online retail, with operations in streaming music and television, groceries, cloud computing, robotics, artificial intelligence and more.
His other businesses include The Washington Post newspaper and the private space firm Blue Origin.
While Bezos has long been in the public eye because of Amazon's growth and his estimated $133 billion fortune, he was thrust into the spotlight with his announcement in January that he and his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie, were divorcing.
When the National Enquirer, controlled by President Donald Trump's ally David Pecker, threatened to release lurid, intimate pictures of Bezos and his mistress, he fought back by releasing the details of his exchanges publicly.
"If in my position I can't stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?" Bezos wrote on Medium.
The bombshell from Bezos brought a tidal wave of reactions, many praising his decision to face down Pecker and the Enquirer.
"Not everyone can stand up to bullies, thugs and extortionists, but if you can, you should," said rival tech entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay.
Until recently, Bezos had been seen as a bookish but determined entrepreneur, running his businesses with ruthless determination but avoiding the limelight -- steering clear of confronting Trump after a series of attacks by the president.
- Road to riches -
Bezos's penchant for experimenting reportedly dates to a young age -- with one widely shared story recounting how he tried to dismantle his own crib as a toddler.
His mother was a teenager when she gave birth to Bezos in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 12, 1964.
"You shaped us, you protected us, you let us fall, you picked us up, and you loved us, always and unconditionally," Bezos said in a Twitter message thanking his mom "for everything" on Mother's Day in May.
She remarried when her son was about four years old, and he was legally adopted by his Cuban immigrant stepfather who worked as an engineer at a major petrochemical company.
"My dad came here from Cuba all by himself without speaking English when he was 16 years old, and has been kicking ass ever since," Bezos said in a Father's Day tweet in June.
His mother's family were settlers in Texas, where Bezos spent many a summer working at a ranch owned by a grandfather retired from a job as a regional director at the US Atomic Energy Commission.
Bezos was enchanted by computer science when the IT industry was in its infancy and he studied engineering at Princeton University.
After graduating, he put his skills to work on Wall Street, where by 1990 he had risen to be a senior vice president at investment firm D.E. Shaw
He surprised peers by leaving his high-paid position about four years later to open an online bookseller called Amazon.com, which according to legend was started in a garage in a Seattle suburb. Bezos was backed by money borrowed from his parents.
Bezos went from being a boy with a love for how things work to being the man who built Amazon.com into an internet powerhouse.
- 'Hunger Games' -
Amazon lost money for many years as Bezos insisted on investing revenues for future growth, a plan which only recently has started to pay off.
Last year, he announced Amazon would be seeking a second headquarters after outgrowing Seattle, launching a competition derided by some as a "Hunger Games" competition. The company eventually decided on two locations -- one in New York City and the other in the Virginia suburbs of the capital Washington.
In releasing Amazon's latest results which showed a record $3 billion quarterly profit, Bezos put the emphasis on artificial intelligence and the Alexa digital assistant.
Bezos declined to join other billionaires in pledging the bulk of his fortune to charity, but last year announced a philanthropic fund with a $2 billion initial commitment to help homeless families and launch preschools in low-income communities.
jc/rl/ec
For the Week of February 11, 2019
You are getting sleepy... sleepy... Or at least our Two Scoops columnist is. Find out what's got her so worked up, and why she won't be seeking out "Kevin" to help her through her issues.
Dear readers, sometimes I ease into my column with a personal anecdote or a way I relate to General Hospital and why it keeps me tuned in after all these years.
But not today. Today I want to just get right to it. The serial killer storyline is making me CRAZY.
In this age of Ring doorbell cameras and home security, I find it impossible to suspend my disbelief as far as GH is hoping I will. I have home security through my cable company. It's $19.99 a month, and I have cameras in my house. What I typically use it for is to see what my dog is doing while I am at work, but the point is, I can at any time of the day or night click my phone and see what is happening in my house. So, if an average chick like me can do that for $20 a month, how can I accept that a hotel like the Metro Court or a major hospital in New York has no security cameras and no way to see a serial killer roaming the hallways, wreaking havoc? My disbelief cannot be suspended that far. Am I out of touch? Is it only here in California that people have home security?
From the moment that Ryan stabbed Lulu and she dragged herself out of her office, into an elevator, and into the Metro Court dining room, and then Ryan went blind and dragged himself out into the same corridor and onto the same elevator (how did he know which button to push?) -- there is NO security camera footage of either of these things?
Ugh. The last time I was this riled up at GH was when Ric Lansing had Carly held captive in his panic room and Elizabeth was staring at the button that opened the panic room door and wondered, "What is this big button for here on the bookshelf?" and I was screaming at my TV, "PUSH IT!"
It's absolutely maddening to me. I want Jordan to get fired after this all comes out and for Robert Scorpio to retire from the WSB and take over the PCPD. At least Jordan is a little resistant to buying the tidy package of evidence Ryan left for them and is considering the possibility that Franco was framed. Margaux, on the other hand, is ready to pounce.
Here's my main sticking point... GH has built a group of characters that are generally exceptionally smart and savvy, but suddenly, all those smart people are dumb as a rock. I don't like that. I have watched so many years of soaps, I can watch the evening news, see a real-life crime, hear the shady explanation of the suspect, and say, "He did it." I know you can, too. It's just so obvious that it's Ryan/Kevin. But the PCPD keeps calling him in to consult and having him hypnotize people, and he is stopping by Ferncliff to treat a patient who looks exactly like him, insisting he's not Ryan, and instructing staff to keep him drugged up -- and no one ever flinches.
Laura knows "Kevin" is off, has been acting strangely, isn't himself, and has had a mental breakdown in the past, yet with all of that knowledge, Laura still let him "hypnotize" Lulu? With NO ONE IN THE ROOM?? Ugh! Get a second opinion, for heaven's sake. Go to Mercy Hospital across town and find another shrink.
Which brings me to my next rant...Where did Ryan learn to hypnotize people while he's been locked up in a straitjacket at Ferncliff for 30 years? Is that one of the extracurricular activities taught at the psychiatric hospital along with art therapy and charades?
Could I just randomly decide to hypnotize you and sit down on a chair and tell you that some guy tried to murder you and you'd believe it?
Has anyone ever seen Franco in a suit, an overcoat, and dress shoes? Do Franco and Kevin really wear the exact same size of shoes and have the exact same brand of shoes? Hasn't the killer tried to frame two other people for his previous murders, as Elizabeth pointed out to Jordan? So many questions and inconsistencies! Maybe Liz should give up nursing and become a detective, since she is better at noticing clues and patterns.
The one thing that is making this tolerable for me is that Liz and Ava both know Franco would never hurt Kiki. If they believed he was guilty, I would be even angrier than I am.
Next up: Griffin... When Ryan signed up to give blood, I said to my husband (who was just casually in the room with me and in no way watching GH...) "No way Ryan is actually going to give blood because his blood might not match Kevin's." He was just there to eerily stalk Griffin and have the fun serial killer satisfaction of saying, "You're next" to him.
But the next part is another stupid plot point... "Hey, we want to honor Kiki with a memorial brick in the courtyard, and the best way to pick the spot is up on the rooftop of the hospital." Griffin asks no questions and goes along. 1) Have they done any memorial bricks for anyone else? 2) Has anyone ever asked Griffin to go on the roof to view the spot? 3) Why would Griffin be the person to choose, since they had only just started dating? 4) Wouldn't Griffin say, "Hey, I think we should ask Ava to join us, since she's Kiki's mom."? So many questions and inconsistences here, too!
Maybe they will send Franco to Ferncliff, and he will find the real Kevin and save the day. Maybe Ava will smarten up and figure out that her new boo is the killer. But no, she's on her way to apologize to him, thinking she has done him wrong. Did he already kill Griffin?
There are rumors that Matt Cohen is set to leave GH, but as yet, they are unconfirmed. If it's true, it's possible the writers will send him off in the serial killer storyline to make for a dramatic exit. I have to wonder what the writers' original intent was in bringing him to town? When we found out he was Duke's son, I thought maybe Duke was alive and would rise from the dead to meet his son. It never happened.
But Griffin was a priest in a crisis of faith, and that interested me... I think every soap needs one person who is the moral center, the stable, kind person to whom the town can confess their sins and get moral guidance. GH has had Lila Q, Emily Q, Laura, and others fill that role over the years. But Griffin was a man still wrestling with faith and flesh, and I was enjoying that journey. It doesn't matter, though, because he's probably gone splat on the sidewalks of Port Charles.
In other mysteries, Shiloh is holding a big Dawn of Day shindig on Valentine's Day. He really, really wants Sam to attend. That can't be good. Sweeps month and GH holiday parties always seem to end in mayhem and disaster.
Who is this mystery woman that Spinelli dug up, "Harmony," a.k.a. Lorraine Miller, who is partnering in Dawn of Day? Maybe another of Sam's former husband's kids? I'm so happy to see Bradford Anderson in town and on the GH canvas, but I'd like him to stick around a bit and have a real, meaty storyline. Let him break up with Ellie and come back to Port Charles full-time with baby Georgie (who isn't really a baby anymore, I guess). I love Maxie and Peter, so I am not suggesting a romantic reunion, but I would love to see Maxie and Spinelli interact. There is something so precious about their connection, I want to see them interact more.
But I digress from the matter at hand...Jason is heading to Beechers Corners to find Harmony. She's probably hiding in the Whitakers' barn. He should take Laura with him, as she knows that place inside and out. I love shout-outs to GH's past -- they also mentioned Jackie Templeton in this storyline (formerly Demi Moore's character on GH) -- so I can't help wondering if this current storyline is going to tie into something from the past. All I know right now is that one week after reuniting, Jason and Sam are fake breaking up, so we will be treated to multiple scenes of them fake fighting or stealing kisses, and before it's started, I'm already bored with it.
In other Davis girl discussions, as soon as Alexis started telling the guy at the bar all of her problems, I said to Jeff, "That's her new shrink." I was not shocked when she opened the door to find him because I had predicted it ten minutes earlier, and you did, too. Perhaps he will end up being a love interest for Alexis, since they refuse to reunite her with Julian. When the real Kevin is found and goes back to practicing, maybe Alexis can return to him and date Dr. Byrne, who is potentially a good match for her because he's smart and not a mobster (as far as we know right now).
I'm also having a bit of trouble suspending my disbelief about Liesl Obrecht being hired by the man she tied to a bed and tortured for months. Despite her claims that she was just "crazed by grief" and that "it won't happen again," if I were Peter, I would never hire her in a million years, no matter how clever her writing is or how big Maxie makes her eyes when she pleads with him for mercy for Liesl. And neither would you. No one would hire their torturer for a job at their company.
I want Liesl to out Sasha, anyway, and just end my misery. We know that Nina will find out. We know she will dump Valentin again. Maybe after they remarry in some Valentine's Day uber romantic wedding? Who knows, I just know it's coming, and I hate it.
Sasha is being defiant to Valentin now and has her own ideas on how to be a fake daughter to Nina. I thought I saw a scene with her and Griffin for next week, but since I think Ryan pushed him off the roof, my eyes must be deceiving me.
Liesl can blackmail Brad, too, because she is the one person who knows that Nelle's baby is alive and well in Port Charles. She hinted as much to Carly, but Carly didn't bite on her bait.
Dr. Terry gave Oscar the encouraging news that his tumor had temporarily stopped growing. I have read some speculation that Oscar may perish in a car accident instead of from his cancer, which I hope is false. But the fact that Oscar got a car and the fact that he and Joss are determined to "live life to the fullest" until he can't anymore means they have made some questionable choices, and driving erratically might be one of the choices they make. How would you feel if that's the thing that takes Oscar's life instead of the brain tumor? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
What will happen tomorrow, dear readers? Will Dante come home to see his ailing wife, blow his cover, and bring a new batch of thugs to town? Will GH hire Jacob Young to come back as Lucky to check on his sister, Lulu, since he expressed an interest in returning? Will Aiden compete on MasterChef Junior or become an Olympic skating sensation? Will Anna adopt my life rule: "never turn down free champagne, no matter who offers it"? Will Willow (please) get in Ryan's way pretty soon and become just another driver's license?
Will Gail's will reading on April 1 shock the town, or are they just toying with us? Will Heather escape when she hears that a maniac is trying to frame her son for murder? (I'd take Heather winning in a fight with Ryan any day.) Will Lulu's previous brainwashing from Stavros pop up and make them doubt her brainwashing from Ryan? Will Scott Baldwin's stall tactic of getting Franco an MRI help or hurt his case? Will the smart people of Port Charles find their brains? Will any business in Port Charles sign up for security cameras when a serial killer is on the loose?
Only tomorrow knows, dear readers, and I will tune in tomorrow as long as there are tomorrows.
Tamilu
System error
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context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28: 29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25
/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951
/var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17
/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149
Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fbff7f9aa08)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff7ffe9f8)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fbff7f9aa08)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff7ffe9f8)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fbff7fa8850)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff7ffe9f8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff7ffe9f8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff75afc60)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7fbff7fa5d80)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7fbff7fa5d80)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error
error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.
context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28: 29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25
/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951
/var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17
/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149
Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fbff7e966d0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff7e79ee8)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fbff7e966d0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff7e79ee8)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fbff7e632e0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff7e79ee8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff7e79ee8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fbff75ae5e8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7fbff7d97ab0)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7fbff7d97ab0)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error
error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.
context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28: 29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25
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/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951
/var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17
/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149
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Wyss Center neurologist awarded prestigious Pfizer Research Prize
8 February 2019, Wyss Center, Geneva - Maxime Baud, MD, PhD, Staff neurologist at the Wyss Center and epileptologist at the University of Bern and Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), was awarded the Pfizer Research Prize for his work in the field of neuroscience and nervous system disorders.
The research, carried out in collaboration with colleagues from the University of California, San Francisco found that epilepsy seizures are linked to cycles of brain activity. The research suggests it may be possible for clinicians to predict and evaluate the risk of epileptic seizures in clinical practice.
The Wyss Center is building on these research results by developing a minimally invasive device that will offer an alternative to current epilepsy monitoring methods. The device will use flexible electrodes that slip under the skin of the skull to allow chronic recordings of brain activity enabling people with epilepsy to continue with their daily lives during monitoring.
The Pfizer Research Prize, first awarded in 1992, is one of the most prestigious awards in the field of medical research in Switzerland. It is awarded to young researchers who have carried out exceptional studies in the fields of basic or clinical research.
The award ceremony was held in Zurich on Thursday 7 February 2019. Twenty-four researchers from Basel, Basel-Country, Bellinzona, Geneva, Lausanne, Lugano and Lucerne were awarded prizes to the total value of 180,000 Swiss francs. To date, 350 researchers have received this reward with the total prize money representing more than six million Swiss francs.
This year's award highlights promising scientific approaches to the discovery of potential new therapeutics for diseases in areas ranging from cardiovascular, urology and nephrology; infectious diseases, rheumatology and immunology; neuroscience and nervous system disorders; oncology and paediatrics.
###
About the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering, Geneva, Switzerland
The Wyss Center is an independent, non-profit, neurotechnology research and development organization. The Center provides the expertise, facilities and financial resources to transform creative neuroscience research into clinical solutions that will improve the lives of people with nervous system disorders.
The Center's experienced multidisciplinary neurotechnology development team from industry and academia provides the integrated scientific, engineering, clinical, regulatory and business expertise required to guide high risk, high reward projects on their journey from research to product.
Based at Campus Biotech in Geneva, Switzerland, the Center provides advanced neuroscience and engineering facilities for the development of technology that will prevent, diagnose or treat nervous system disorders, or has the potential to improve lives.
The Center has ongoing projects in brain computer interfaces, neurorehabilitation, neural circuits and sensory function, and advanced technology. It is currently seeking new partners from anywhere in the world that can fill scientific or technical gaps in the development of novel neurotechnologies in current Wyss Center projects.
A major goal of the Center is to ensure that innovative neurotechnologies advance until they are sufficiently mature to attract corporate partnerships, venture funding, or other mechanisms necessary to make them broadly available to society.
Established by a generous donation from the Swiss entrepreneur and philanthropist Hansjorg Wyss, the Wyss (pronounced "Veese") Center, is a partner in a progressive new neuroscience hub at Campus Biotech.
http://www. wysscenter. ch/
This story has been published on: 2019-02-09. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Heavy selling was witnessed in the auto stocks which fell over 3.37 per cent lower, and the banking and finance counter ended lower.
Mumbai: Both Sensex and Nifty ended over 1 per cent lower on Friday following a steep decline in auto stocks led by Tata Motors and broadly negative global cues.
Globally, investors reacted negatively after US President Donald Trump said he would not meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping ahead of a trade deal deadline on March 2, when American tariffs on Chinese products are slated to increase.
"Indian markets traded negative over concerns of economic growth and trade disputes which riled global markets. Post the rate cut by the RBI on Thursday profit booking was seen in rate-sensitives like auto," said Essel Mutual Fund CIO Viral Berawala.
The BSE Sensex closed 424.61 points or 1.15 per cent lower at 36,546.48 from its previous close of 36,971.09, while the Nifty closed 125.80 points down at 10,943.60.
According to Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services, the markets slid on renewed worries over global trade and profit booking in the domestic market after a healthy performance last one week after the interim budget and RBI policy.
In contrast, Tata Motors closed 17.28 per cent lower, while the Tata Motors(DVR) declined over 13 per cent after the company reported a massive loss in its third quarter results declared on Thursday.
Among the other laggards were Vedanta losing over 5 per cent. Tata Steel fell over 3 per cent and ONGC closed 2.94 per cent.
However, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bharti Airtel, HCL Tech, HDFC Bank and Bajaj Finance gained up to 1 per cent.
The company's scrip at the BSE on Friday fell by 4.78 per cent or Rs 11.30 to Rs 225.30 from its previous close.
Mumbai: Financially stressed Jet Airways' stocks fell by around 5 per cent on Friday a day after the airline said that four of its aircraft have been grounded for non-payment of dues to lessors.
In another development, the company in a separate regulatory filing said that its Board will meet on February 14, 2019 to approve the unaudited financial statements for the third quarter and nine months ended 31 December 2018.
On the issue of grounding of aircraft, the airline on Thursday said that it is actively engaged with all its aircraft lessors and "regularly provides them with updates on efforts undertaken by the company to improve its liquidity".
"The company is making all efforts to minimise disruption to its network...and is proactively informing and re-accommodating its affected guests," it said in the filing on Thursday.
"The company also continues to provide required and periodic updates to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in this regard."
The airline on Thursday also said that three aircraft that were grounded for engine normalisation are back in commercial operations.
Lately, Jet Airways has been in a tight spot financially as a rescue plan is being stitched between its partner Etihad and a consortium of banks.
The airline has a loan burden of over Rs 8,000 crore and it could see some of that amount being converted into equity by the banks.
Last month in a filing, Jet Airways said an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) of the company would be held on February 21 where a special resolution would be put forth to consider and "approve conversion of loan into shares or convertible instruments or other securities".
The question about the financial health of Jet Airways has also been raised in the Lok Sabha.
Replying to a question on the airline, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha in a written reply informed the Parliament that efficient operations and financial performance is the responsibility of each airline and their shareholders.
SHEPHERDSTOWN Shepherd University is hosting a faculty art exhibition in the Phaze 2 Gallery until Feb. 20, featuring displayed works from the faculty of the universitys art department.
The Phaze 2 Gallery, located inside the campus Contemporary Arts Center, hosts multiple exhibits from students and the community throughout the academic year. Some of the displayed works are up for sale, and all are available for free viewing by the public.
According to the faculty, the work in the show reflects the cultural and collegiate value of the gallery.
Visual communication is so much more important than just a sculpture or painting on a wall, said professor of art and exhibit contributor Sonya Evanisko. We are an image oriented society and we lead these students to create a profession within these images.
Evanisko has coordinated art programs at Shepherd for 25 years and was the recipient of the 2015 West Virginia Professor of the Year award.
Our mission in displaying this gallery is to bring work to students, Evanisko said. Focusing on contemporary art rooted in the current year allows us to show them the types of visuals and forms that they will encounter in their professions.
Evaniskos works on display are three paintings titled, Precariously LongingLingering (2018), Spaces Between the Dreams (2018) and The Silence that I Keep (2018). Her works are a part of a decade long series that calls into question what we need as humans, how we discard those things, and what kind of consequences does that have on the natural world around us.
According to faculty member and gallery contributor Rhonda J. Smith, these exhibits help students learn to absorb and develop multiple artistic styles and embrace challenges and problem solving.
I believe it is important in all areas of campus that students realize the faculty are practicing professionals who put into practice the skills, knowledge and information they share with students into work and endeavors beyond the classroom experience, Smith said.
Smiths works in the gallery, titled Dreaming of Safe Journeys Home (2018) and Hoping Helping Hands are Always There to Assist You (2018), are linoleum prints that draw upon African and Mexican traditions of prayers and talismans to keep one safe.
Along with Smith and Evanisko, a number of other faculty members works are displayed for viewing and sale, including: Erin Neve, assistant professor of photography; David Modler, associate professor of art; Robert Farmer, adjunct professor; Brad Hamann, assistant professor of graphic design; Evan Boggess, adjunct professor; Kay Dartt, clinical faculty/3-D fabrication manager; Michael Mendez, adjunct professor; and Christian Benefiel, associate professor of art.
The faculty exhibition is open to the public, and hours are from noon to 7 p.m. Monday-Friday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday or by special request.
SHEPHERDSTOWN When Milton Hershey founded the Milton Hershey School on Nov. 15, 1909, he had one goal to help impoverished, healthy orphan boys build a promising future for themselves.
According to Milton, [t]he value of our good is not measured by what it does, but by the amount of good it does to the one concerned. And, in the almost 100 years since his schools founding, Miltons legacy has done quite a lot of good for thousands of children from around the United States.
Our school is run by the generosity of Milton and Catherine Hershey, through a deed of trust set up by Mr. Hershey, so we have quite a large endowment that allows us to continue to provide a promising education to students, said Stacey Spangenburg, MHS admissions counselor, in a phone interview on Friday.
According to Spangenburg, the idea to create the school originated with Catherine, and since its creation has expanded its doors to include healthy male and female students from impoverished backgrounds.
Right now we have well over 2,000 students on our campus. Their vision has expanded from 100 students to 2,119, Spangenburg said, mentioning students who attend the school are well cared for. Milton Hershey provides children with room and board, tuition, medical and dental care, clothing and activities. Students who qualify and are enrolled, we take care of the majority of their needs.
One such student who qualified for and is currently enrolled in the school is high school freshman Trevor Jenkins. Now in his fourth year at the school, Jenkins family first heard about the school from his principal at Shepherdstown Elementary School, who recommended Jenkins older sister attend the school. Two years later, Jenkins received the same recommendation, making fifth grade his last year as a student in Shepherdstown.
I was living with my grandparents at the time, because there were incarceration problems in my family with my parents, Jenkins said, mentioning his grandparents have seen him grow since he started attending MHS. Theyre proud and theyre happy that I can do more now and can accomplish more things. We were really stressed with money, but it relieves stress on them, because they can do more than they used to do.
Since Jenkins joined the program at MHS, he has grown accustomed to the rigorous academic schedule and entered the law, public safety and security career pathway within the Career and Technical Education program. His free time is kept busy with community service projects, chores and working on campus, which Jenkins is doing to save up money for college.
Although his parents and grandparents may still be living in Shepherdstown, Jenkins is surrounded by the support of his school teachers, house parents, school counselor and sisters.
I miss being near family. Sometimes when youre here you get homesick a little, but over time you get used to it. I have two sisters here, so theyre there for me when I need them, Jenkins said, mentioning his younger sister started attending the school a couple years ago.
MHS currently has 28 students from West Virginia, 17 of which are from the Eastern Panhandle.
Admission to MHS is open to those between the ages of four and 15, and is determined by a variety of factors, which can be found at www.mhskids.org/admissions/admissions-considerations/. Families who would like to learn more can attend the MHS info session and dinner on Feb. 20 at 6 p.m. at the Golden Corral in Martinsburg. Attendees can show up without RSVPing, but are encouraged to RSVP at www.mhskids.org.
Press Release
February 9, 2019 Visual artist honored for painting simple Filipino rural life The Senate adopted a resolution honoring the late Edsel Moscoso for his life-long love of the arts and for his masterful depiction of the rural life of the Filipino people. Senate Resolution No. 999 was introduced by Senator Loren Legarda. According to her, Moscoso was a prominent painter who remained a steadfast champion of the cultural identity of the Filipinos, through his art. Born to Dr. Julito Moscoso and Remedios Atillo Hermoso on January 30, 1952 in Bugasong, Antique, Edsel succumbed to leukemia at the age of 55. His paintings were described by National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin as "manscapes," for his depiction of Filipino daily rural life. Moscoso finished his degree of Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines. He later studied archeology and fine arts in Italy for eight years through a scholarship program offered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In 1975, Moscoso was chosen as one of the 13 Outstanding Young Artists of the Art Association of the Philippines. He was likewise honored by his home province in 1993 as the "Pride of Antique." An accomplished artist, Moscoso held numerous solo exhibits in the Philippines as well as abroad. Columnist Sammy Julian related a story of Moscoso's generosity in the Panay News dated July, 2016. He said Moscoso donated a 5-foot wide and 6-and-a-half art work to the Max Foundation, the biggest institution that helps fight cancer worldwide. He said the mural, entitled "Biyaya ng Lupa" or "Blessings of the People," is now displayed in Seattle. Art aficionados said Moscoso's paintings show a life that is slowly disappearing in the Philippines, such as a fisherman working on his fishing nets, a farmer with his children running around the house or people selling fruit at the market. "In his paintings, halos appear above his subjects. The colors are basic and the style is closer to pencil sketches. Although Christianity was not the main subject in Mr. Moscoso's work, religion is undoubtedly the motif," an article in the Korean Joongang Daily said. In the same article, an ambassador to the Philippines said "Moscoso remained true to his Filipinos ethnicity although he would probably have benefited from the influence of Western culture had he lived in Europe for an extended period." Legarda said Moscoso had always been grounded and proud of his Antique roots. She said he deserved to be honored for his works and his love for the country.
Otso Diretso will ensure a coco levy bill truly beneficial to coco farmers: Sen. Kiko
The President's veto has put a cloud of uncertainty on when the country's coconut farmers would finally be able to benefit from the coco levy fund.
It is their money -- from years of toil and sweat.
The measure before the President is not reflective of the farmers' sentiments and needs. It has gone through a tedious process of revisions and has lost its soul.
However, the veto means we are back to square one. We urge fellow advocates of the coconut farmers' cause to stay the course and again work on the proposed law that would truly be beneficial to the farmers and the industry.
Most of our Otso Diretso senatorial candidates -- Sen. Bam Aquino, Atty. Chel Diokno, former Solicitor General Pilo Hilbay, and former Deputy House Speaker Erin Tanada -- have worked with our coconut farmers to right the wrong and return to them what is rightfully theirs.
The election of the entire Otso Diretso will ensure that control and management of the billions of pesos in coco levy funds will be given to our farmers, so that their lives will finally be better.
Press Release
February 9, 2019 Sen. Ejercito says 2019 budget 'pro-health' SENATOR JV Ejercito has described the P3.757-trillion 2019 national budget as a "pro-health" budget that would buttress the government's health programs. Ejercito, author and principal sponsor of the Universal Health Care (UHC) measure, issued his description following the legislature's ratification of the 2019 General Appropriations Act measure Friday night. "I consider this budget as a 'pro-health' budget because it carries the funds for the Health Facilities Enhancement Program, or HFEP, and Human Resource for Health Development (HRHD), both under the budget of the DOH (Department of Health)," he said in a statement. Ejercito, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Demography, had fought for the restoration of the more than Php16-billion HFEP budget and the almost Php8-billion HRHD allocation into the national budget after they had been slashed from the budget bill. The HFEP and the HRHD are both programs that will ensure the wide delivery of quality, affordable and accessible health services to the Filipinos. "I'm happy for our people because of the return of the HFEP and HRHD funds. The more than Php16-billion HFEP budget will be used for the improvement, upgrade, and expansion of gov't hospitals and health facilities, some are nearing completion already, and for their equipment. Another Php7-billion for Human Resource for Health Development para 'yun sa suweldo and augmentation ng health workers, nurses, midwives, and doctors," he said. He said the facilities would ensure the smooth implementation of the UHC measure, which includes all Filipinos in the National Health Insurance Program as well as brings down to an affordable level the people's expenses on health services, including but not limited to, check-ups and selected laboratory procedures. The UHC is now for President Duterte's signature for it to become a law. He added: "Kung hindi naibalik ang mga pondong ito, aba'y matetengga ang mga health units natin at marami ang mawawalan ng trabaho dahil walang pangsuweldo sa kanila ang gobyerno."
Dispatch from Crame No. 466:
Sen. Leila M. de Lima on her colleagues' rejection of the pork-laden 2019 budget
2/9/19
Kudos to my colleagues in the Minority bloc - Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon and Senators Bam Aquino, Risa Hontiveros and Kiko Pangilinan - and, of course, to Sen. Ping Lacson, for their rejection of the pork-laden 2019 budget.
Mabuhay kayo!
If I were there, and allowed to vote, I certainly would have joined them in their principled stand on this most important piece of legislation.
Press Release
February 9, 2019 De Lima hails Senate approval of 3 social justice bills Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has lauded her colleagues in the Senate for their approval of important social justice measures which seek to improve the lives of the most vulnerable sectors, notably poor families and senior citizens. De Lima, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Social Justice, Welfare and Rural Development, said she is elated that three of her pet measures have been overwhelmingly approved in the Senate ahead of their mid-term election recess. "Recently, three priority legislations were successfully passed in the Senate with the goal of improving the lives of the most vulnerable sectors of our society. Their cries have finally been heard, and they will no longer be consigned in the shadows," she said in her Dispatch from Crame No. 462. Last Jan. 29, the Senate passed on 3rd and final reading Senate Bill (SB) No. 2121, also referred to as the Magna Carta of the Poor, which seeks to guarantee full enjoyment of the basic rights of the poor to food, work, education, shelter and health. Under SB 2121 which she authored, poor individuals are granted ready access to government services to mitigate the impact of poverty especially during times of calamities or natural disasters. The Senate also okayed SB 2159 creating a national commission that would formulate policies and programs to protect the welfare of senior citizens in compliance with its obligation "to give back to those who served this nation with blood and sweat." Last Feb. 4, the Upper Chamber also approved SB 2117 which institutionalizes the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino program or 4Ps as one of the national poverty reduction strategy and a human capital investment program unaffected by any political transitions. "With these milestones, it is imperative that we all do our part and remain ever vigilant in ensuring that these measures are signed into law and dutifully and responsibly implemented by the national government," De Lima added. De Lima, a human rights and social justice champion, thanked the Senate leadership under Senate President Vicente Sotto III for steering clear these important social justice measures she has espoused under her committee chairmanship. "Bagaman malayo na ang ating narating, kailangan pa natin ng patuloy pang pagsusog at suporta upang tuluyang maisabatas itong mga panukalang ito na makatutulong sa ating mga kababayang nangangailangan," she said. "This is but another step forward in our continuing journey towards attaining social justice for the disadvantaged sectors. Walang tatalo sa pwersa ng nagkakaisang sambayanan," she added. The lady Senator from Bicol said she has other social justice bills she authored that are already in the pipeline, optimistic that her colleagues would be able to throw in their unequivocal support to their immediate passage into law.
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The key players are highly focusing innovation in production technologies to improve efficiency and shelf life. The best long-term growth opportunities for this sector can be captured by ensuring ongoing process improvements and financial flexibility to invest in the optimal strategies. Company profile section of players such as Accenture, Amdocs, Alcatel-Lucent, Capgemini, Cognizant, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, IBM & Oracle includes its basic information like legal name, website, headquarters, its market position, historical background and top 5 closest competitors by Market capitalization / revenue along with contact information. Each player/ manufacturer revenue figures, growth rate and gross profit margin is provided in easy to understand tabular format for past 5 years and a separate section on recent development like mergers, acquisition or any new product/service launch etc.
Market Segments:
The Global Telecom IT Services Market has been divided into type, application, and region.
On The Basis Of Type: On-Premise & Cloud.
On The Basis Of Application: Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), Enterprises
On The Basis Of Region, this report is segmented into following key geographies, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), and market share, growth rate of Telecom IT Services in these regions, from 2013 to 2023 (forecast), covering
- North America (U.S. & Canada) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Analysis (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Latin America (Brazil, Mexico & Rest of Latin America) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Europe (The U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden & RoE) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Asia-Pacific (China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Rest of Asia) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Middle East & Africa (GCC, South Africa, North Africa, RoMEA) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Rest of World {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Analysis (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
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Have a look at some extracts from Table of Content
Introduction about Global Telecom IT Services
Global Telecom IT Services Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 2017
Telecom IT Services Market by Application/End Users
Global Telecom IT Services Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Applications
(2013-2023) table defined for each application/end-users like [Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), Enterprises]
Global Telecom IT Services Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2023)
Telecom IT Services Competition by Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application
Telecom IT Services (Volume, Value and Sales Price) table defined for each geographic region defined.
Global Telecom IT Services Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales Data
Additionally Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors list is being provided for each listed manufacturers
Market Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018) table for each product type which include On-Premise & Cloud
Telecom IT Services Manufacturing Cost Analysis
Telecom IT Services Key Raw Materials Analysis
Telecom IT Services Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers, Industrial Chain Analysis
Market Forecast (2018-2023)
........and more in complete table of Contents
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Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.
About HTF Market Report
HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the "Accurate Forecast" in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their "Goals & Objectives".
Sarasota, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/08/2019 -- Global Spirits Market: Overview: Distilled beverage, or Spirit, is an alcoholic beverage produced by distillation (method of separating constituent substances from a mixture of liquid by making use of condensation and vaporization process) of a mixture generated from alcoholic fermentation. The process of distillation is utilized to purify the mix and to take away diluting components such as water from the mix for the reason of escalating its fraction of alcohol content.
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Global Spirits Market: Growth Factors
One of the major factors contributing to the growth of the worldwide spirits market is the increasing disposal revenue of the middle-class populace. Nevertheless, the escalating utilization of alcoholic beverages in nations such as Brazil, China, Russia, and India is projected to boost the growth of the market in the coming period. Spirit has been a status symbol now and thus the population is ready to shell out for quality brands. Additionally, print media and e-commerce have surfaced with more innovative and attractive ads to lure customers; which, in turn, will promote the growth of the spirits market. Also, the young generation is being drawn to alcoholic beverages, thus fueling the market growth. On the other hand, the severe government rules might hinder the growth of the spirit market growth. Retailing of alcohol is austerely barred in the government-approved shops. Moreover, the veto on advertising and drinking in public places may hamper the market growth.
Global Spirits Market: Segmentation
The worldwide spirits market is divided based on type, end-users, and region. The type segment of the spirits market is bifurcated into gin, brandy, cane, vodka, flavored spirits, rum, natural spirits, whiskey, and tequila. The vodka segment is anticipated to dominate the worldwide spirit market trailed by whiskey. The highest growth was witnessed by whiskey segment in the last few years and is anticipated to observe same growth in the near future owing to its rising consumption. Regionally, the worldwide spirits market can be categorized into Latin America, North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Middle East & Africa.
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Global Spirits Market: Regional Analysis
Asia-Pacific region is anticipated to dominate the worldwide spirits market. The growth of the market in this region can be attributed owing to the rising domestic consumption in the developing nations. Furthermore, the growth of the spirits market is also expected to boost in North America and Europe in the coming period.
Global Spirits Market: Competitive Players
The leading players in the worldwide spirit market consist of Alberta Distillers Limited, Carrington Distillers (Ont) Ltd, Bodegas Williams & Humbert, Agave Loco LLC, Bacardi Limited, Asbach Gmbh, Blavod Drinks Ltd., Bardinet S.A.S, Bodegas Rey Fernando de Castilla, Brown-Forman Corporation, Brooklyn Gin, Camus, "OAK POLAND" General Partnership Jerzy Markiewicz, and Agave Tequilana Prod. Y Comercializadores. Other few prominent players in the worldwide spirit market include Jun, AB Stumbras, Agropecuaria Grande Sul Ltda, 3 Medronhos, Agave Industries India Ltd., AF INTERNATIONAL CORP, S.A. C.V., Akwawit-Polmos S.A, Aivy Vodka, Pernod Ricard, Brown-Forman Corp., Aguardiente Llanero, and Diageo Plc.
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Global Spirits Market: Regional Segment Analysis
North America
The U.S.
Europe
The UK
France
Germany
The Asia Pacific
China
Japan
India
Latin America
Brazil
The Middle East and Africa
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What Reports Provides
Full in-depth analysis of the parent market
Important changes in market dynamics
Segmentation details of the market
Former, on-going, and projected market analysis in terms of volume and value
Assessment of niche industry developments
Market share analysis
Key strategies of major players
Emerging segments and regional markets
Testimonials to companies in order to fortify their foothold in the market.
About Zion Market Research
Zion Market Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations. Zion Market Research is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air. We have market research reports from number of leading industry and update our collection daily to provide our clients with the instant online access to our database. With access to this database, our clients will be able to benefit from expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends.
Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2019 -- HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 80 pages on title 'Global Smart Lock Market Size Study Forecasts By Type (Contact smart card, Contactless smart card, Hybrid and Dual interface smart card, By Components,( Microprocessor, Memory smart cards) by Communication Protocol (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Other Protocols (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, and NFC, among others))and Regional Forecasts 2017-2025' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes North America, U.S., Canada, Europe, UK, Germany, Asia Pacific, China, India, Japan, Latin America, Brazil, Mexico, Rest of the World and important players such as ASSA ABLOY (Sweden),Allegion (Ireland), dorma+kaba (Switzerland), Spectrum Brands (US), Salto Systems (Spain), ,Onity (US), Cansec Systems (Canada), Master Lock (US). , Infineon Technologies AG.
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Summary
Global Smart Lock Market to reach USD 3.4 billion by 2025.
Global Smart Lock Market valued approximately USD 1.1 billion in 2016 is anticipated to grow with a healthy growth rate of more than 13.34% over the forecast period 2017-2025. The driving factor for Smart Lock market is the rising adoption of connected home solutions and soaring need to establish connectivity across all electronic devices and users' houses as a consequence of growing penetration of smart homes as these are the key trends uplifting the market growth and Increasing penetration of smartphones which is also fueling the demand for smart locks over the forecast period. Moreover, technological advancements are estimated to play a key role in the development of this market
The objective of the study is to define market sizes of different segments & countries in recent years and to forecast the values to the coming eight years. The report is designed to incorporate both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the industry within each of the regions and countries involved in the study. Furthermore, the report also caters the detailed information about the crucial aspects such as driving factors & challenges which will define the future growth of the market. Additionally, the report shall also incorporate available opportunities in micro markets for stakeholders to invest along with the detailed analysis of competitive landscape and product offerings of key players. The detailed segments and sub-segment of the market are explained below:
by Lock Type
Deadbolts
Lever Handles
Padlocks
Other Locks
by Communication Protocol
Bluetooth
Wi-Fi
Other Protocols (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, and NFC, among others)
by Vertical
Commercial
Residential
Institution & Government
Industrial
By Regions:
North America
U.S.
Canada
Europe
UK
Germany
Asia Pacific
China
India
Japan
Rest of the World
Furthermore, years considered for the study are as follows:
Historical year 2015
Base year 2016
Forecast period 2017 to 2025
Some of the key manufacturers involved in the market are ASSA ABLOY (Sweden), Allegion (Ireland), dorma+kaba (Switzerland), Spectrum Brands (US), Salto Systems (Spain), Onity (US), Cansec Systems (Canada), Master Lock (US). Acquisitions and effective mergers are some of the strategies adopted by the key manufacturers. New product launches and continuous technological innovations are the key strategies adopted by the major players.
Target Audience of the Global Smart Lock in Market Study:
Key Consulting Companies & Advisors
Large, medium-sized, and small enterprises
Venture capitalists
Value-Added Resellers (VARs)
Third-party knowledge providers
Investment bankers
Investors
Companies Mentioned in the Report
ASSA ABLOY (Sweden),
Overview
Financial (Subject to Data Availability)
Product Summary
Recent Developments
Allegion (Ireland),
dorma+kaba (Switzerland),
Spectrum Brands (US),
Salto Systems (Spain),
Onity (US),
Cansec Systems (Canada),
Master Lock (US).
Infineon Technologies AG
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Chapter 1. Global Smart Lock Market Definition and Scope
1.1. Research Objective
1.2. Market Definition
1.3. Scope of The Study
1.4. Years Considered for The Study
1.5. Currency Conversion Rates
1.6. Report Limitation
Chapter 2. Research Methodology
2.1. Research Process
2.1.1. Data Mining
2.1.2. Analysis
2.1.3. Market Estimation
2.1.4. Validation
2.1.5. Publishing
2.2. Research Assumption
Chapter 3. Executive Summary
3.1. Global & Segmental Market Estimates & Forecasts, 2015-2025 (USD Billion)
3.2. Key Trends
Chapter 4. Global Smart Lock Market Dynamics
4.1. Growth Prospects
4.1.1. Drivers
4.1.2. Restraints
4.1.3. Opportunities
4.2. Industry Analysis
4.2.1. Porter's 5 Force Model
4.2.2. PEST Analysis
4.2.3. Value Chain Analysis
4.3. Analyst Recommendation & Conclusion
Chapter 5. Global Smart Lock Market, By Lock Type
5.1. Market Snapshot
5.2. Market Performance - Potential Model
5.3. Global Smart Lock Market, Sub Segment Analysis
5.3.1. Deadbolts
5.3.1.1. Market estimates & forecasts, 2015-2025 (USD Billion)
5.3.1.2. Regional breakdown estimates & forecasts, 2015-2025 (USD Billion)
5.3.2. Lever Handles
5.3.2.1. Market estimates & forecasts, 2015-2025 (USD Billion)
5.3.2.2. Regional breakdown estimates & forecasts, 2015-2025 (USD Billion)
5.3.3. Padlocks
5.3.3.1. Market estimates & forecasts, 2015-2025 (USD Billion)
5.3.3.2. Regional breakdown estimates & forecasts, 2015-2025 (USD Billion)
5.3.4. Other Locks
5.3.4.1. Market estimates & forecasts, 2015-2025 (USD Billion)
5.3.4.2. Regional breakdown estimates & forecasts, 2015-2025 (USD Billion)
....Continued
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About HTF Market Report
HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the "Accurate Forecast" in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their "Goals & Objectives".
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2019 -- This research holds critical and exclusive data to show the profound implications on the Next-Generation Battery Market for the forecast period 2018 to 2025. Some of the main proponents of this hypothesis that the size, growth, and share of the Next-Generation Battery industry is up for a major shift is compelling for business owners, stakeholders, field marketing executives and others trying to zero in on effective business strategies to gain maximum yield.
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The major manufacturers covered in this report:
- Seeo
- Ambri
- Sakti3
- Samsung SDI
- AES Energy Storage
- Samsung
- Primus Power
- Alevo
- 24M
- TESLA
- EnerSys
- Fluidic Energy
- GS Yuasa
- Hitachi
- BYD
- OXIS Energy
Geographically, this report studies the top producers and consumers, focuses on product capacity, production, value, consumption, market share and growth opportunity in these key regions, covering
- North America
- Europe
- China
- Japan
- Southeast Asia
- India
Data on how renewed disposable income and buyers in the emerging economies are building the foundation for a robust growth for the Next-Generation Battery market forms an important part of the study. Assessment of business landscape across different countries that are worth watching in the near future will draw the interest of many stakeholders to this report.The report is designed in a way to outline the product development initiatives and sales strategies adopted by the major leaders. Market experts have made a conscious effort to understand the market dynamics as well as factors driving the business performance worldwide. Besides, an in-depth assessment of the market entry strategies and effective business plans to sustain the cutthroat competition are some of the important highlights of the Next-Generation Battery.
Most important types of Next-Generation Battery products covered in this report are:
- Graphene Battery
- Lithium Sulfur Battery
- Sodium Carbon Dioxide Battery
- Lithium Air Battery
- Others
Most widely used downstream fields of Next-Generation Battery market covered in this report are:
- Transportation
- Grid Storage
- Consumer Electronics
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The expertise that has gone into this study is clearly visible from the way the subject matter experts have discussed the merger and acquisition opportunities in the report. Apart from identifying the local potential which can further assist in designing local market strategies the study brings to light the competitive scenario worldwide.
In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Next-Generation Battery are as follows:
History Year: 2013-2017
Base Year: 2017
Estimated Year: 2018
Forecast Year: 2018 to 2025
The study objectives of this report are:
- To analyse and study the global Next-Generation Battery capacity, production, value, consumption, status (2013-2017) and forecast (2018-2025);
- Focuses on the key Next-Generation Battery manufacturers, to study the capacity, production, value, market share and development plans in future.
- Focuses on the global key manufacturers, to define, describe and analyse the market competition landscape, SWOT analysis.
- To define, describe and forecast the market by type, application and region.
- To analyse the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.
- To analyse the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments.
- To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyse their growth strategies.
There are 13 Chapters to thoroughly display the Next-Generation Battery market. This report included the analysis of market overview, market characteristics, industry chain, competition landscape, historical and future data by types, applications and regions.
Chapter 1: Next-Generation Battery Market Overview, Product Overview, Market Segmentation, Market Overview of Regions, Market Dynamics, Limitations, Opportunities and Industry News and Policies.
Chapter 2: Next-Generation Battery Industry Chain Analysis, Upstream Raw Material Suppliers, Major Players, Production Process Analysis, Cost Analysis, Market Channels and Major Downstream Buyers.
Chapter 3: Value Analysis, Production, Growth Rate and Price Analysis by Type of Next-Generation Battery.
Chapter 4: Downstream Characteristics, Consumption and Market Share by Application of Next-Generation Battery.
Chapter 5: Production Volume, Price, Gross Margin, and Revenue ($) of Next-Generation Battery by Regions.
Chapter 6: Next-Generation Battery Production, Consumption, Export and Import by Regions.
Continue
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Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2019 -- Global Mobile Application Security Testing Market Size, Status and Forecast 2025 is latest research study released by HTF MI evaluating the market, highlighting opportunities, risk side analysis, and leveraged with strategic and tactical decision-making support. The study provides information on market trends and development, drivers, capacities, technologies, and on the changing capital structure of the Global Mobile Application Security Testing Market. Some of the key players profiled in the study are Accenture (Republic of Ireland), IBM (US), Micro Focus (UK), Veracode (US), Synopsys (US), Pradeo (France), Rapid7 (US), Tieto (Finland), Trustwave (US) & WhiteHat Security (US).
In 2017, the global Mobile Application Security Testing market size was million US$ and it is expected to reach million US$ by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of during 2018-2025.
Mobile Application Security Testing Market Overview:
If you are involved in the Mobile Application Security Testing industry or intend to be, then this study will provide you comprehensive outlook. It's vital you keep your market knowledge up to date segmented by Government & Defense, BFSI, IT & Telecom, Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing & Others, , On-Premises & Cloud and major players. If you have a different set of players/manufacturers according to geography or needs regional or country segmented reports we can provide customization according to your requirement.
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Mobile Application Security Testing Market: Demand Analysis & Opportunity Outlook 2023
Research study is to define market sizes of various segments & countries in previous years and to forecast the values to the next 5-8 years. The report is designed to comprise each qualitative and quantitative elements of the industry facts including: market share, market size (value and volume 2012-17, and forecast to 2023) with admire to each of the areas and countries concerned inside the examination. Furthermore, the report additionally caters the detailed statistics about the vital elements which includes drivers & restraining factors which will define the future growth of the market.
Furthermore, the years considered for the study are as follows:
Historical year 2013-2017
Base year 2018
Forecast period** 2018 to 2023 [** unless otherwise stated]
**Moreover, it will also include the opportunities available in micro markets for stakeholders to invest, detailed analysis of competitive landscape and product services of key players.
The designated segments and sub-section of the market are explained below:
The Study is segmented by following Product Type: , On-Premises & Cloud
Major applications/end-users industry are as follows: Government & Defense, BFSI, IT & Telecom, Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing & Others
Some of the key Manufacturers Involved in the Market are Accenture (Republic of Ireland), IBM (US), Micro Focus (UK), Veracode (US), Synopsys (US), Pradeo (France), Rapid7 (US), Tieto (Finland), Trustwave (US) & WhiteHat Security (US)
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For each region, market size and end users are analyzed as well as segment markets by types, applications and companies. If opting for the Global version of Mobile Application Security Testing Market analysis is provided for major regions as follows:
- North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)
- Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)
- Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)
- South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)
- Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)
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Key Answers Captured in Study are
Which geography would have better demand for product/services?
What are the strategies adopted by big players in the regional market?
Which country would see the steep rise in CAGR & year-on-year (Y-O-Y) growth?
What is the current & expected market size in next five years?
What is the market feasibility for long term investment?
What opportunity the country would offer for existing and new players in the Mobile Application Security Testing market?
What is risk involved for suppliers in the geography?
What factors would drive the demand for the product/service in near future?
What is the impact analysis of various factors in the Global Mobile Application Security Testing market growth?
What are the recent trends in the regional market and how successful they are?
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There are 15 Chapters to display the Global Mobile Application Security Testing market.
Chapter 1, About Executive Summary to describe Definition, Specifications and Classification of Global Mobile Application Security Testing market, Applications [Government & Defense, BFSI, IT & Telecom, Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing & Others], Market Segment by Regions United States, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia & India;
Chapter 2, objective of the study.
Chapter 3, to display Research methodology and techniques.
Chapter 4 and 5, to show the Overall Market Analysis, segmentation analysis, characteristics;
Chapter 6 and 7, to show the Market size, share and forecast; Five forces analysis (bargaining Power of buyers/suppliers), Threats to new entrants and market condition;
Chapter 8 and 9, to show analysis by Product Type: , On-Premises & Cloud], comparison, leading countries and opportunities; Regional Marketing Type Analysis, Supply Chain Analysis
Chapter 10, focus on identifying the key industry influencer's, overview of decision framework accumulated through Industry experts and strategic decision makers;
Chapter 11 and 12, Market Trend Analysis, Drivers, Challenges by consumer behaviour, Marketing Channels and demand & supply.
Chapter 13 and 14, describe about the vendor landscape (classification and Market Positioning)
Chapter 15, deals with Global Mobile Application Security Testing Market sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.
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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2019 -- A new market assessment report on the Hydraulic Marine Cranes market provides a comprehensive overview of the Hydraulic Marine Cranes industry for the forecast period 2018 - 2026. The analytical study is proposed to provide immense clarity on the market size, share and growth rate across different regions. The profound knowledge and extensive examination of the trends from the yesteryear and future aims at offering the stakeholders, product owners, and marketing personnel a competitive edge over others operating in the Hydraulic Marine Cranes market for the forecast period, 2018 - 2026.
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The major players covered in this report are
DMW Marine, Heila Cranes, Effer, Allied Marine Crane, EK Marine, Liebherr, PALFINGER, North Pacific Crane Company, HS.MARINE, Huisman Equipment, James Fisher and Sons, Rapp Marine, Seatrax, SMT MARINE, Fassi, Hawboldt Industries, Appleton Marine, Cargotec
Most important types of Hydraulic Marine Cranes products covered in this report are:
- <5 T
- 5-30 T
- >30 T
On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, including:
- Ship
- Offshore
Understanding the market size
The size of the Hydraulic Marine Cranes market is viewed in terms of the Share of Market, Total Available Market as well as Served Available Market. Not only does the study present the combined revenue for a particular market but also the market size for a specific geographic region. Analysis of percentage or the size of the Total Available Market based on the type of product, technology, regional constraints and others form an important part of the Hydraulic Marine Cranes report.
Knowing the trends influencing the industry performance
Stakeholders, marketing executives and business owners planning to refer a market research report can use this study to design their offerings and understand how competitors attract their potential customers and manage their supply and distribution channels. When tracking the trends researchers have made a conscious effort to analyze and interpret the consumer behavior Besides the research helps product owners to understand the changes in culture, target market as well as brands so they can draw the attention of the potential customers more effectively.
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Geographically, this report studies the top producers and consumers in these key regions:
- North America
- Europe
- China
- Japan
- Southeast Asia
- India
We can also provide the customized separate regional or country-level reports, for the following regions:
North America, United States, Canada, Mexico, Asia-Pacific, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Europe, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Russia, Rest of Europe, Central & South America, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, Middle East & Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Rest of Middle East & Africa
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The study objectives of this report are:
1. To analyze and study the global Hydraulic Marine Cranes capacity, production, value, consumption, status and forecast (2018-2026);
2. Focuses on the key Hydraulic Marine Cranes manufacturers, to study the capacity, production, value, market share and development plans in future.
3. Focuses on the global key manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the market competition landscape, analysis.
4. To define, describe and forecast the market by type, application and region.
5. To analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.
6. To identify significant trends and factors driving or inhibiting the market growth.
7. To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments.
8. To strategically analyze each submarket with respect to individual growth trend and their contribution to the market.
9. To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.
10. To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.
Key elements from table of content:
7 Global Hydraulic Marine Cranes Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis
7.1 DMW Marine
7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors
7.1.2 Hydraulic Marine Cranes Product Category, Application and Specification
7.1.2.1 Product A
7.1.2.2 Product B
7.1.3 DMW Marine Hydraulic Marine Cranes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2018-2026)
7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview
7.2 Heila Cranes
7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors
7.2.2 Hydraulic Marine Cranes Product Category, Application and Specification
Continue.
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Planning to invest in market intelligence products or offerings on the web? Then marketexpertz has just the thing for you - reports from over 500 prominent publishers and updates on our collection daily to empower companies and individuals catch-up with the vital insights on industries operating across different geography, trends, share, size and growth rate. There's more to what we offer to our customers. With marketexpertz you have the choice to tap into the specialized services without any additional charges.
Contact Us:
John Watson
Head of Business Development
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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/08/2019 -- Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Industrial Refractory Materials Market Insights,Forecast to 2025 to its huge collection of research reports.
Refractories are heat-resistant materials that constitute the linings for high-temperature furnaces and reactors and other processing units. In addition to being resistant to thermal stress and other physical phenomena induced by heat, refractories must also withstand physical wear and corrosion by chemical agents. ASTM C71 defines refractories as "non-metallic materials having those chemical and physical properties that make them applicable for structures, or as components of systems, that are exposed to environments above 1,000 F (811 K; 538 C)".
Steel and non-ferrous metals, glass, cement and energy such as electricity and gases are important factors necessary to support economic activities and social life. Manufacturer plays a key role as these cannot be produced without advanced refractories and related facilities.
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In the future, global market is expected to witness significant growth on account of rising applications, so in the next few years, Industrial Refractory Materials production will show a trend of steady growth. In 2023 the production of Industrial Refractory Materials is estimated to be 50503.4 K MT. On product prices, the slow downward trend in recent years will maintain in the future.
Global Industrial Refractory Materials market size will increase to 43200 Million US$ by 2025, from 39300 Million US$ in 2017, at a CAGR of 1.2% during the forecast period. In this study, 2017 has been considered as the base year and 2018 to 2025 as the forecast period to estimate the market size for Industrial Refractory Materials.
This report researches the worldwide Industrial Refractory Materials market size (value, capacity, production and consumption) in key regions like United States, Europe, Asia Pacific (China, Japan) and other regions.
This study categorizes the global Industrial Refractory Materials breakdown data by manufacturers, region, type and application, also analyzes the market status, market share, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, sales channels, distributors and Porter's Five Forces Analysis.
This report focuses on the top manufacturers' Industrial Refractory Materials capacity, production, value, price and market share of Industrial Refractory Materials in global market. The following manufacturers are covered in this report:
RHI Magnesita
VESUVIUS
KROSAKI
SHINAGAWA
Imerys
HWI
MORGAN CRUCIBLE
SAINT-GOBAIN
Minteq
Resco
Qinghua
Puyang Refractory
Sinosteel
Lier
Jinlong
Sujia
Industrial Refractory Materials Breakdown Data by Type
Shaped Industrial Refractory Materials
Unshaped Industrial Refractory Materials
Industrial Refractory Materials Breakdown Data by Application
Iron & Steel
Cement/Lime
Nonferrous Metals
Glass
Ceramics
Other Industries
Industrial Refractory Materials Production Breakdown Data by Region
United States
Europe
China
Japan
Other Regions
Industrial Refractory Materials Consumption Breakdown Data by Region
North America
United States
Canada
Mexico
Asia-Pacific
China
India
Japan
South Korea
Australia
Indonesia
Malaysia
Philippines
Thailand
Vietnam
Europe
Germany
France
......
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The study objectives are:
To analyze and research the global Industrial Refractory Materials capacity, production, value, consumption, status and forecast;
To focus on the key Industrial Refractory Materials manufacturers and study the capacity, production, value, market share and development plans in next few years.
To focuses on the global key manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the market competition landscape, SWOT analysis.
To define, describe and forecast the market by type, application and region.
To analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.
To identify significant trends and factors driving or inhibiting the market growth.
To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments.
To strategically analyze each submarket with respect to individual growth trend and their contribution to the market.
To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.
To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.
For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2017 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.
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QYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.
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Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2019 -- Gamma valerolactone is colorless liquid. It is one of the more common lactones. GVL is chiral but is usually used as the racemate. It can be used to produce food flavors, used as solvent for resins, monomer intermediate, lubricant, plasticizer and so on. Gamma valerolactone has been used in food flavors, solvent industry, as well as chemical synthesis and so on. Among various applications, food flavors accounts for the largest consumption share with 80.57% in 2017.
The gamma valerolactone industry is relatively small at the moment. There are only a few manufacturers engaged in the production. Manufacturers of Anhui Hyea gamma valerolactone mainly concentrate in China. Aromas is the largest producer of gamma valerolactone, owning 62% production share globally. Consumption of gamma valerolactone mainly distribute in USA and China. USA imports gamma valerolactone from China to meet its demand. In 2017, 13.8 MT gamma valerolactone was consumed in USA while China consumed 29.81%.
The global Gamma Valerolactone (CAS 108-29-2) market is valued at xx million US$ in 2018 is expected to reach xx million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of xx% during 2019-2025. At company level, this report focuses on the production capacity, ex-factory price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer covered in this report.
This report focuses on Gamma Valerolactone (CAS 108-29-2) volume and value at global level, regional level and company level. From a global perspective, this report represents overall Gamma Valerolactone (CAS 108-29-2) market size by analyzing historical data and future prospect. Regionally, this report focuses on several key regions: North America, Europe, China and Japan.
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The following manufacturers are covered:
Anhui Hyea Aromas
Dideu Industries
Kunshan Qiandeng Baihua
Zhongyue Aroma
Soda Aromatic
Inoue Perfumery MFG
Segment by Regions
North America
Europe
China
Japan
Segment by Type
Food Grade
Industrial Grade
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Segment by Application
Food Flavors
Solvent
Monomer Intermediate
About QYResearch
QYResearch always pursuits high product quality with the belief that quality is the soul of business. Through years of effort and supports from huge number of customer supports, QYResearch consulting group has accumulated creative design methods on many high-quality markets investigation and research team with rich experience. Today, QYResearch has become the brand of quality assurance in consulting industry.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2019 -- The demand within the global market for fiberglass fabric has been rising on account of the need to ensure seamless advancements in several end-use industries. Fiberglass endows unique chemical and physical properties, and this has led to the popularity of the material. Furthermore, the wide array of industries that use fiberglass fabric for several applications has also contributed towards the growth of this market. The use of fiberglass fabric for the manufacture of light weight industrial materials has created growth spaces within this market. Furthermore, the need for better management of industrial processes has also propelled demand within the global fiberglass fabric market. The lightweight of fiberglass fabric has played a major role in the growth of the global market for fiberglass fabric in recent times. Besides this, corrosion resistance and thermal insulation are amongst other properties that have popularised fiberglass fabric across the globe. It is worthwhile to note that the market for fiberglass fabric has existed for decades, and continues attract commendable demand. Owing to the factors mentioned above, it is safe to prognosticate that the global fiberglass fabric market would accumulate huge-scale revenues in the years to come.
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The global market for fiberglass fabric may be segmented on the basis of the following parameters: application,s product, and region. The aforementioned segments have been identified as key agents that can help in providing a thorough purview of the market.
A report added by Transparency Market Research (TMR) on the global market for fiberglass fabric is a succinct representation of the trends and dynamics that have aided market growth. Furthermore, the report is a succinct representation of all the factors and opportunities that can be capitalised upon by the vendors. Regional and business dynamics of the global fiberglass fabric market have also been enunciated in the report.
Global Fiberglass Fabric Market: Trends and Opportunities
The demand within the global market for fiberglass fabric has been increasing due to the advancements in several key-end use industries. The constructions industry has emerged as the most dynamic consumer of fiberglass fabric in recent times, which has in turn aided market growth. Several new construction projects have commenced across economically affluent regions over the past decade. Furthermore, the electrical and electronics industry has also witnessed the inflow of voluminous revenues over the past few years. Since fiberglass fabric is a key component during the manufacture of electronic devices, the demand for fiberglass fabric is expected to scale new heights.
Global Fiberglass Fabric Market: Market Potential
The popularity of renewable sources of energy has led to the development of multiple wind energy plants in recent times. Since fiberglass fabric is used for the manufacture of rotor blades, the demand within the global fiberglass fabric market has reached new heights. Furthermore, the use of fiberglass fabric in the aerospace sector is also expected to offer lucrative opportunities to the market vendors. It is expected that the global fiberglass fabric market would attract investments from key investors in the years to come.
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Global Fiberglass Fabric Market: Regional Outlook
The market for fiberglass fabric in North America has outreached the growth prospects of all other regional segments. This owes to the robust constructions sector in Canada and the US. Furthermore, the market for fiberglass fabric in Asia Pacific is also expanding at a skyrocketing pace due to advancements in the industrial sector in China and India.
Global Fiberglass Fabric Market: Competitive Landscape
Some of the key players in the global fiberglass fabric market are Colan Australia, Atlanta Fibergalss, and Amatex Corporation.
Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2019 -- Dishwashing liquid, known as dishwashing soap, dish detergent and dish soap, is a detergent used to assist in dishwashing. It is usually a highly-foaming mixture of dyskinesia with low skin irritation for cleaning washing, glasses, plates, cutlery, and cooking utensils in a sink or bowl. In addition to its primary use, dishwashing liquid also informal applications, such as for creating bubbles, clothes washing and cleaning oil-affected birds.
The manufacturers and consumers are concentrated in Europe, USA, China, and Japan. China is the largest production region with market share about 27%, Europe is following with share about 25%.The consumption share of Europe, North America, China and Japan is 22.5%, 20.17%, 22.6% and 6.35% in 2016.
P&G is the largest manufacturer in the global market, which revenue has reached 3000 M USD in 2016, and followed competitors are Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, Colgate-Palmolive, etc.
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In future, the dishwashing liquid industry in the world will turn more concentrated. The world dishwashing liquid production will increase at a growth rate of about 4.73%. Global consuming market will still has a certain amount of growth and the main consumption region will be in developed countries.
Despite the presence of competition problems, due to the global recovery trend is clear, investors are still optimistic about this area. In the future, the market in developed countries will have some growth and the market in developing countries will have a faster growth rate.
The global Dishwashing Liquid market is valued at 16700 million US$ in 2018 is expected to reach 22400 million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 3.7% during 2019-2025.
This report focuses on Dishwashing Liquid volume and value at global level, regional level and company level. From a global perspective, this report represents overall Dishwashing Liquid market size by analyzing historical data and future prospect. Regionally, this report focuses on several key regions: North America, Europe, China and Japan.
At company level, this report focuses on the production capacity, ex-factory price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer covered in this report.
The following manufacturers are covered:
P&G
Unilever
Reckitt Benckiser
Colgate-Palmolive
Henkel
Kao
Amway
Lion
Liby
Nice Group
Lam Soon
Segment by Regions
North America
Europe
China
Japan
Segment by Type
Hand Dishwashing Liquid
Automatic Dishwashing Liquid
Segment by Application
Household
Commercial
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About QYResearch
QYResearch always pursuits high product quality with the belief that quality is the soul of business. Through years of effort and supports from huge number of customer supports, QYResearch consulting group has accumulated creative design methods on many high-quality markets investigation and research team with rich experience. Today, QYResearch has become the brand of quality assurance in consulting industry.
Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2019 -- HTF MI recently introduced Cosmetic Chemicals - Global Market study with in-depth overview, describing about the Product / Industry Scope and elaborates market outlook and status to 2023. The market Study is segmented by key regions which is accelerating the marketization. At present, the market is developing its presence and some of the key players from the complete study are Akzo Nobel NV (Netherlands), Ashland Inc. (US), BASF SE (Germany), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (US), Bayer AG (Germany), Clariant International Limited (Switzerland), Dow Chemical Company (US), Eastman Chemical Company (US), Evonik Industries AG (Germany), Emery Oleochemicals Group (Malaysia), FMC Corporation (US), Pilot Chemical Company (US), Procter & Gamble Company (US), Solvay SA (Belgium) and United-Guardian Incorporated (US) etc.
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This report studies the Cosmetic Chemicals - Global market size, industry status and forecast, competition landscape and growth opportunity. This research report categorizes the Cosmetic Chemicals - Global market by companies, region, type and end-use industry.
Browse 100+ market data Tables and Figures spread through Pages and in-depth TOC on " Cosmetic Chemicals - Market by Type (Emollients & Moisturizers, Surfactants, Specialty Additives), by End-Users/Application (Skin Care, Hair Care, Color Cosmetics, Toiletries, Oral Care), Organization Size, Industry, and Region - Forecast to 2023". Early buyers will receive 10% customization on comprehensive study.
In order to get a deeper view of Market Size, competitive landscape is provided i.e. Revenue (Million USD) by Players (2013-2018), Revenue Market Share (%) by Players (2013-2018) and further a qualitative analysis is made towards market concentration rate, product/service differences, new entrants and the technological trends in future.
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Competitive Analysis:
The key players are highly focusing innovation in production technologies to improve efficiency and shelf life. The best long-term growth opportunities for this sector can be captured by ensuring ongoing process improvements and financial flexibility to invest in the optimal strategies. Company profile section of players such as Akzo Nobel NV (Netherlands), Ashland Inc. (US), BASF SE (Germany), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (US), Bayer AG (Germany), Clariant International Limited (Switzerland), Dow Chemical Company (US), Eastman Chemical Company (US), Evonik Industries AG (Germany), Emery Oleochemicals Group (Malaysia), FMC Corporation (US), Pilot Chemical Company (US), Procter & Gamble Company (US), Solvay SA (Belgium) and United-Guardian Incorporated (US) includes its basic information like legal name, website, headquarters, its market position, historical background and top 5 closest competitors by Market capitalization / revenue along with contact information. Each player/ manufacturer revenue figures, growth rate and gross profit margin is provided in easy to understand tabular format for past 5 years and a separate section on recent development like mergers, acquisition or any new product/service launch etc.
Market Segments:
The Cosmetic Chemicals - Global Market has been divided into type, application, and region.
On The Basis Of Type: Emollients & Moisturizers, Surfactants, Specialty Additives.
On The Basis Of Application: Skin Care, Hair Care, Color Cosmetics, Toiletries, Oral Care
On The Basis Of Region, this report is segmented into following key geographies, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), and market share, growth rate of Cosmetic Chemicals - in these regions, from 2013 to 2023 (forecast), covering
- North America (U.S. & Canada) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Analysis (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Latin America (Brazil, Mexico & Rest of Latin America) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Europe (The U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden & RoE) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Asia-Pacific (China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Rest of Asia) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Middle East & Africa (GCC, South Africa, North Africa, RoMEA) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
- Rest of World {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Analysis (%) and Opportunity Analysis}
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Have a look at some extracts from Table of Content
Introduction about Cosmetic Chemicals - Global
Cosmetic Chemicals - Global Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 2017
Cosmetic Chemicals - Market by Application/End Users
Cosmetic Chemicals - Global Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Applications
(2013-2023) table defined for each application/end-users like [Skin Care, Hair Care, Color Cosmetics, Toiletries, Oral Care]
Cosmetic Chemicals - Global Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2023)
Cosmetic Chemicals - Competition by Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application
Cosmetic Chemicals - (Volume, Value and Sales Price) table defined for each geographic region defined.
Cosmetic Chemicals - Global Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales Data
Additionally Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors list is being provided for each listed manufacturers
Market Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018) table for each product type which include Emollients & Moisturizers, Surfactants, Specialty Additives
Cosmetic Chemicals - Manufacturing Cost Analysis
Cosmetic Chemicals - Key Raw Materials Analysis
Cosmetic Chemicals - Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers, Industrial Chain Analysis
Market Forecast (2018-2023)
........and more in complete table of Contents
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Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2019 -- HTF MI recently Announced Global Corrugated Board study with 100+ market data Tables and Figures spread through Pages and easy to understand detailed TOC on "Corrugated Board. Global Corrugated Board research allows you to get different methods for maximizing your profit. The research study provides estimates for Global Corrugated Board Forecast till 2025*. Some of the Leading key Company's Covered for this Research are Georgia-Pacific Packaging, International Paper, Packaging Corporation of America, RockTenn, Orora, Acme Corrugated Box, Alliance Packaging, CCB, American Corrugated & Smurfit Kappa.
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This report researches the worldwide Corrugated Board market size (value, capacity, production and consumption) in key regions like United States, Europe, Asia Pacific (China, Japan) and other regions.
This study categorizes the global Corrugated Board breakdown data by manufacturers, region, type and application, also analyzes the market status, market share, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, sales channels, distributors and Porter's Five Forces Analysis.
Global Corrugated Board Research for a Leading company is an intelligent process of gathering and analyzing the numerical data related to services and products. This Research Give idea to aims at your targeted customer's understanding, needs and wants. Also, reveals how effectively a company can meet their requirements. The market research collects data about the customers, marketing strategy, competitors. The Corrugated Board Manufacturing industry is becoming increasingly dynamic and innovative, with more number of private players entering the industry.
Important Features that are under offering & key highlights of the report:
1) Who are the Leading Key Company in Global Corrugated Board market space?
Following are list of players that are currently profiled in the report "Georgia-Pacific Packaging, International Paper, Packaging Corporation of America, RockTenn, Orora, Acme Corrugated Box, Alliance Packaging, CCB, American Corrugated & Smurfit Kappa"
** List of companies mentioned may vary in the final report subject to Name Change / Merger etc.
2) What will the market size be in 2025 and what will the growth rate be?
In 2019, the Global Corrugated Board market size was xx million USD and it is expected to reach USD xx million by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of xx% during 2019-2025.
3) What are the Market Applications & Types:
The study is segmented by following Product Type: , Single Face Board, Single Wall Board, Double Wall Board, Triple Wall Board & Others
Major applications/end-users industry are: Household Appliances, Textiles, Food, Building Materials & Industrial Equipment
**The market is valued based on weighted average selling price (WASP) and includes any applicable taxes on manufacturers. All currency conversions used in the creation of this report have been calculated using constant annual average 2018 currency rates.
To comprehend Global Corrugated Board market dynamics in the world mainly, the worldwide Corrugated Board market is analyzed across major regions. HTF MI also provides customized specific regional and country-level reports for the following areas.
- North America: United States, Canada, and Mexico.
- South & Central America: Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.
- Middle East & Africa: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, Egypt and South Africa.
- Europe: UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Russia.
- Asia-Pacific: India, China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, and Australia.
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Competitive Analysis:
The key players are highly focusing innovation in production technologies to improve efficiency and shelf life. The best long-term growth opportunities for this sector can be captured by ensuring ongoing process improvements and financial flexibility to invest in the optimal strategies. Company profile section of players such as Georgia-Pacific Packaging, International Paper, Packaging Corporation of America, RockTenn, Orora, Acme Corrugated Box, Alliance Packaging, CCB, American Corrugated & Smurfit Kappa includes its basic information like legal name, website, headquarters, its market position, historical background and top 5 closest competitors by Market capitalization / revenue along with contact information. Each player/ manufacturer revenue figures, growth rate and gross profit margin is provided in easy to understand tabular format for past 5 years and a separate section on recent development like mergers, acquisition or any new product/service launch etc.
Research Parameter/ Research Methodology
Primary Research:
The primary sources involves the industry experts from the Global Corrugated Board industry including the management organizations, processing organizations, analytics service providers of the industry's value chain. All primary sources were interviewed to gather and authenticate qualitative & quantitative information and determine the future prospects.
In the extensive primary research process undertaken for this study, the primary sources industry experts such as CEOs, vice presidents, marketing director, technology & innovation directors, founders and related key executives from various key companies and organizations in the Global Corrugated Board in the industry have been interviewed to obtain and verify both qualitative and quantitative aspects of this research study.
Secondary Research:
In the Secondary research crucial information about the industries value chain, total pool of key players, and application areas. It also assisted in market segmentation according to industry trends to the bottom-most level, geographical markets and key developments from both market and technology oriented perspectives.
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In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Global Corrugated Board are as follows:
History Year: 2013-2018
Base Year: 2018
Estimated Year: 2019
Forecast Year 2019 to 2025
Key Stakeholders in Global Corrugated Board Market:
Global Corrugated Board Manufacturers
Global Corrugated Board Distributors/Traders/Wholesalers
Global Corrugated Board Subcomponent Manufacturers
Industry Association
Downstream Vendors
**Actual Numbers & In-Depth Analysis, Business opportunities, Market Size Estimation Available in Full Report.
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Sarasota, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/08/2019 -- Zion Market Research has published a new report titled "Clear Brine Fluids Market by Products (Potassium Chloride, Calcium Chloride, Potassium Bromide, Sodium Bromide, Sodium Chloride, Calcium Bromide, And Others): Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast, 2017-2024''. According to the report, global clear brine fluids market was valued at around USD 780 million in 2017 and is expected to reach approximately USD 1,450 million in 2024, growing at a CAGR of slightly above 5% between 2018 and 2024.
A brine solution is a salt dissolved in water. The solution may vary depending upon the proportion of water with salt. The solution is manufactured in order to control structure pressure and also to reduce the damage in the reservoirs. These solutions are largely used for food preservation process.
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The increasing demand for clear brine fluids especially from oil & gas industry is one of the major factors that is driving the growth of the market. In recent years, the drilling activities have increased worldwide. The developed countries are paying more attention to gain security for energy. These countries are focusing on the development of shale reserves as part of their strategies. A considerable shift has been observed towards the expansion of unconventional resources of energy such as CBM (Coalbed Methane), tight gas, among others. However, the shale gas situation coupled with the political imbalance in the Middle East is one of the restraining factors that are hampering the growth of the market. However, focus on exploring unconventional resources such as shale gas and coal bed methane is anticipated to provide various opportunities for the key players operating in the global clear brine fluids market.
The global clear brine fluids market can be diversified on the basis of product and regions. The product type of global clear brine fluids market is segmented into potassium chloride, calcium chloride, potassium bromide, sodium bromide, sodium chloride, calcium bromide, and others. Oil & gas sector is expected to be the most dominating end-user segment of the global clear brine fluids market and is expected to grow at a higher growth rate over the forecast period. Moreover, the increase in drilling activity in regions like the Middle East and Africa is expected to drive the demand for clear brine fluids in the years to come.
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Based on region, the market is diversified into North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. North America had the most significant share of the clear brine fluids market in terms of volume during the year 2017. This can be attributed to the increase in drilling activities in the region. There is an increase in investment in the drilling activities in the region which is favoring the growth of the market. The Asia Pacific clear brine fluids market is also expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period. Major countries in the region had accounted for around 15% of the shale gas reserves in the year 2015 and are growing at a very high rate.
Some of the key players operating in the global clear brine fluids market are Egyptian Mud Engineering & Chemicals Company (EMEC), Drillings Fluids, Inc., Geo Drillings Fluids, Inc., TETRA Technologies Inc, Great Lake Solutions, Albemarle Corporation, Israel Chemicals Ltd., Zirax Ltd., Solent Chemicals, Cabot Corporation, and Clements Fluids, amongst others
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Clear Brine Fluids Market: Regional Segment Analysis
North America
The U.S.
Europe
UK
France
Germany
Asia Pacific
China
Japan
India
Latin America
Brazil
The Middle East and Africa
About Zion Market Research
Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting-edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, the company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from cardinal industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the client's needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.
Selbyville, DE -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/08/2019 -- Market Study Report adds 2019-2025 Global Anti-Drone System market report that offers an exhaustive coverage of the industry with brief analysis, data charts, figures, statistics that help take business decisions, company profiles and more.
Anti-Drone System Market 2019
The Anti-Drone System market was valued at xx Million US$ in 2018 and is projected to reach xx Million US$ by 2025, at a CAGR of xx% during the forecast period. In this study, 2018 has been considered as the base year and 2019 to 2025 as the forecast period to estimate the market size for Anti-Drone System.
This report focuses on the global top players, covered Thales, Lockheed Martin, Saab, Raytheon, Blighter Surveillance Systems, Dedrone, Israel Aerospace Industries, Droneshield, Liteye Systems, Security and Counterintelligence Group, Northrop Grumma, SRC, Detect, Theiss Uav Solutions, Battele Memorial Institute
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Anti-Drone System Breakdown Data by Type
- Laser Systems
- Kinetic Systems
- Electronic Systems
Anti-Drone System Breakdown Data by Application
- Military & Defense
- Commercial
The study objectives are:
To analyze and research the global Anti-Drone System capacity, production, value, consumption, status and forecast;
To focus on the key Anti-Drone System manufacturers and study the capacity, production, value, market share and development plans in next few years.
To focuses on the global key manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the market competition landscape, SWOT analysis.
To define, describe and forecast the market by type, application and region.
To analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.
To identify significant trends and factors driving or inhibiting the market growth.
To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments.
To strategically analyze each submarket with respect to individual growth trend and their contribution to the market.
To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.
To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.
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Table of Contents Analysis of Key Points
1 Study Coverage
1.1 Anti-Drone System Product
1.2 Key Market Segments in This Study
1.3 Key Manufacturers Covered
1.4 Market by Type
1.4.1 Global Anti-Drone System Market Size Growth Rate by Type
1.4.2 Laser Systems
1.4.3 Kinetic Systems
1.4.4 Electronic Systems
1.5 Market by Application
1.5.1 Global Anti-Drone System Market Size Growth Rate by Application
1.5.2 Military & Defense
1.5.3 Commercial
1.6 Study Objectives
1.7 Years Considered
2 Executive Summary
2.1 Global Anti-Drone System Market Size
2.1.1 Global Anti-Drone System Revenue 2014-2025
2.1.2 Global Anti-Drone System Production 2014-2025
2.2 Anti-Drone System Growth Rate (CAGR) 2019-2025
2.3 Analysis of Competitive Landscape
2.3.1 Manufacturers Market Concentration Ratio (CR5 and HHI)
2.3.2 Key Anti-Drone System Manufacturers
2.3.2.1 Anti-Drone System Manufacturing Base Distribution, Headquarters
2.3.2.2 Manufacturers Anti-Drone System Product Offered
2.3.2.3 Date of Manufacturers Enter into Anti-Drone System Market
2.4 Key Trends for Anti-Drone System Markets & Products
3 Market Size by Manufacturers
3.1 Anti-Drone System Production by Manufacturers
3.1.1 Anti-Drone System Production by Manufacturers
3.1.2 Anti-Drone System Production Market Share by Manufacturers
3.2 Anti-Drone System Revenue by Manufacturers
3.2.1 Anti-Drone System Revenue by Manufacturers (2014-2019)
3.2.2 Anti-Drone System Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2014-2019)
3.3 Anti-Drone System Price by Manufacturers
3.4 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion Plans
4 Anti-Drone System Production by Regions
4.1 Global Anti-Drone System Production by Regions
4.1.1 Global Anti-Drone System Production Market Share by Regions
4.1.2 Global Anti-Drone System Revenue Market Share by Regions
4.2 United States
4.2.1 United States Anti-Drone System Production
4.2.2 United States Anti-Drone System Revenue
4.2.3 Key Players in United States
4.2.4 United States Anti-Drone System Import & Export
4.3 Europe
4.3.1 Europe Anti-Drone System Production
4.3.2 Europe Anti-Drone System Revenue
4.3.3 Key Players in Europe
4.3.4 Europe Anti-Drone System Import & Export
4.4 China
4.4.1 China Anti-Drone System Production
4.4.2 China Anti-Drone System Revenue
4.4.3 Key Players in China
4.4.4 China Anti-Drone System Import & Export
4.5 Japan
4.5.1 Japan Anti-Drone System Production
4.5.2 Japan Anti-Drone System Revenue
4.5.3 Key Players in Japan
4.5.4 Japan Anti-Drone System Import & Export
4.6 Other Regions
4.6.1 South Korea
4.6.2 India
4.6.3 Southeast Asia
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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/08/2019 -- A new market assessment report on the Aerospace High Performance Alloys market provides a comprehensive overview of the Aerospace High Performance Alloys industry for the forecast period 2018 - 2026. The analytical study is proposed to provide immense clarity on the market size, share and growth rate across different regions. The profound knowledge and extensive examination of the trends from the yesteryear and future aims at offering the stakeholders, product owners, and marketing personnel a competitive edge over others operating in the Aerospace High Performance Alloys market for the forecast period, 2018 - 2026.
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The major players covered in this report are
VSMPO, Alcoa, AMG, ThyssenKrupp, NBM Metals, Precision Castparts, Outokumpu, Aperam, Carpenter Technology, NSSMC, Nippon Yakin Kogyo, Haynes International, Allegheny Technologies
Most important types of Aerospace High Performance Alloys products covered in this report are:
- Nickel Based Alloy
- Titanium Alloy
- Other
On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, including:
- Aircraft
- Spacecraft
- Other
Understanding the market size
The size of the Aerospace High Performance Alloys market is viewed in terms of the Share of Market, Total Available Market as well as Served Available Market. Not only does the study present the combined revenue for a particular market but also the market size for a specific geographic region. Analysis of percentage or the size of the Total Available Market based on the type of product, technology, regional constraints and others form an important part of the Aerospace High Performance Alloys report.
Knowing the trends influencing the industry performance
Stakeholders, marketing executives and business owners planning to refer a market research report can use this study to design their offerings and understand how competitors attract their potential customers and manage their supply and distribution channels. When tracking the trends researchers have made a conscious effort to analyze and interpret the consumer behavior Besides the research helps product owners to understand the changes in culture, target market as well as brands so they can draw the attention of the potential customers more effectively.
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Geographically, this report studies the top producers and consumers in these key regions:
- North America
- Europe
- China
- Japan
- Southeast Asia
- India
We can also provide the customized separate regional or country-level reports, for the following regions:
North America, United States, Canada, Mexico, Asia-Pacific, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Europe, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Russia, Rest of Europe, Central & South America, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, Middle East & Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Rest of Middle East & Africa
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The study objectives of this report are:
1. To analyze and study the global Aerospace High Performance Alloys capacity, production, value, consumption, status and forecast (2018-2026);
2. Focuses on the key Aerospace High Performance Alloys manufacturers, to study the capacity, production, value, market share and development plans in future.
3. Focuses on the global key manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the market competition landscape, analysis.
4. To define, describe and forecast the market by type, application and region.
5. To analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.
6. To identify significant trends and factors driving or inhibiting the market growth.
7. To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments.
8. To strategically analyze each submarket with respect to individual growth trend and their contribution to the market.
9. To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.
10. To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.
Key elements from table of content:
8 Competitive Landscape
8.1 Competitive Profile
8.2 VSMPO
8.2.1 Company Profiles
8.2.2 Aerospace High Performance Alloys Product Introduction
8.2.3 VSMPO Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2018-2026
8.2.4 VSMPO Market Share of Aerospace High Performance Alloys Segmented by Region in 2017
8.3 Alcoa
8.3.1 Company Profiles
8.3.2 Aerospace High Performance Alloys Product Introduction
8.3.3 Alcoa Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2018-2026
8.3.4 Alcoa Market Share of Aerospace High Performance Alloys Segmented by Region in 2017
Continue.
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Pianists Kirill and Anna Gliadkovsky with daughters Anastasia and Sophia will return to Ramona for another Ramona Concert Association evening of music on Saturday, Feb. 9.
The concert will be in the Charles R. Nunn Performing Arts Center at Olive Peirce Middle School, 1521 Hanson Lane, at 7:30 p.m. Doors will open at 7.
For those without a concert season ticket, admission is $15 for adults and $5 for students.
Kirill and Anna Gliadkovsky have performed in major concert halls in Russia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Mongolia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Czechoslovakia and the United States.
Anna holds the highest degree in piano performance in Russia. Kirill, who studied for seven years at the University of Southern California, earned his masters and doctorate in piano. Both received awards and honors during their studies in Russia and the United States. Kirill has appeared on television and radio, and they have recorded several CDs.
The Gliadkovsky family recently returned from a sabbatical project where they performed in 20 countries.
Kirill has been on the piano faculty at USC and Pepperdine University. Anna is a published composer.
They often perform with their 19-year-old daughter, Anastasia, making it six hands, and now their youngest daughter, Sophia, 9, to make it eight hands. Sophia debuted four years ago during the Ramona Concert Association series and has performed with her parents in many Southern California venues.
All concerts in the series are in the Charles R. Nunn Performing Arts Center. For more information, call 760-789-7474 or 760-788-0434 or visit ramonaconcerts.com.
Less than two weeks after state Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the city of Huntington Beach at Gov. Gavin Newsoms behest for defying a state law meant to encourage local housing construction, the state is now demanding Encinitas get its housing act together. A Feb. 4 letter from a state housing official said city leaders must amend or invalidate a 2013 ordinance approved by city voters that says developers cant change zoning or increase density on projects without voters OK. That made it impossible for the city to meet its housing obligations.
Its not clear why state officials see the city ordinance as an obstacle given that a judge suspended it until 2021, ruling last month that it was pre-empted by state law. But its no surprise the state came after Encinitas, the only city in San Diego County without a certified, state-mandated Housing Element plan that shows how the city will accommodate the housing needs of Californians of all economic levels.
The states letter said that to comply with state requirements, the city must rezone enough parcels to accommodate the construction of 1,141 units of housing for those with lower incomes. Thats a daunting task in a small city with a population of about 63,000 people. But the letter warned that Encinitas could forfeit some state grants and, eventually, face a state lawsuit if it doesnt comply.
Encinitas voters invited this crackdown with their defiant 2013 ballot measure. Now its time for a mature, constructive response from city leaders.
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Twitter: @sdutIdeas
Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion
As his youngest child Dutch ran around on stage during his inaugural address, Gov. Gavin Newsom ad-libbed, We will support parents. They need support. Trust me, I know. Just a few days later, the governor suggested a way to do just that, including a number of early learning investments in his proposed 2019-2020 state budget. While the coming months will see discussion and debate over these initiatives, to us, one thing is clear: whether or not California should make universal preschool a reality is a no-brainer.
Some issues in public policy are particularly nuanced and require us to pause while we work through conflicting evidence or craft complex solutions. This isnt one of them. The research is exhaustive on a wide range of short-term and long-term measures, including educational achievement, economic mobility, and health and well-being, preschool is one of the most beneficial investments a state can make. We know that children who attend preschool are more likely to graduate from high school and college, and are more likely to earn higher wages.
Related: Why universal preschool is too costly for California
Researchers and early learning advocates in our state have been sharing this evidence for decades, along with recommendations for how California could comprehensively strengthen programs for our youngest children. First 5 Californias work coordinating regional and statewide technical assistance for high-quality local early learning systems can provide key learnings for expansion. And just recently, Early Edge California published data demonstrating widespread support for expanding preschool access. Yet despite the overwhelming research on the benefits of preschool, the expertise housed within our state, and the bipartisan, cross-sector support for funding early learning programs, we have continued to underdeliver on the type of early learning opportunities we know our children deserve. The states underfunding of early education has left us with a significant unmet need, particularly alarming in a state where one out of five children lives in poverty. Over 200,000 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds whose family incomes make them eligible for state-supported preschool are not enrolled. Our state is the fifth-largest economy in the world and can afford to do much better.
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California must not only provide more funding for these programs, but also invest in program quality. This means investing in facilities, professional development and better wages for those educating our youngest children. And with three out of five children under the age of 5 in our state learning English and another home language at the same time, as the Advancement Project and other organizations have pointed out, our educators must receive training to teach early literacy and support these dual language learners. Addressing these considerations will take a significant amount of collaboration between state and local level entities, but the challenges are surmountable and should not prevent us from moving full speed ahead on implementing what we believe will be Californias single best investment in our future.
We are glad to see that the governor is coupling his proposal to create a road map toward universal preschool with a significant increase in state-subsidized slots for low-income families, an equitable and sensible approach. As with any policy proposal, the devil will be in the details. Thats why were pleased that the governors plan also calls for not only investing in expanding access to preschool, but also making one-time, upfront investments in infrastructure and long-term planning.
The intentional focus on expanding family leave, developing a long-term strategic plan for comprehensive high-quality child care, and reducing barriers to full-day kindergarten show the governor is thinking comprehensively about the continuum from birth through kindergarten. And his appointments of national early learning and early childhood equity experts Ann OLeary and Giannina Perez are clear signs that the implementation of these proposals will be well-thought-out.
As policymakers and stakeholders work to improve these early learning proposals, we urge them to embrace these bold initiatives, and to also work to identify stable and long-term revenue sources for educating our youngest Californians. Ensuring the sustainability of universal preschool is clearly an equity issue, throughout the state and in San Diego County, which is home to over 200,000 children under the age of 5 and where 38 percent of the countys households earn an annual income of less than $50,000.
We have a choice about the future of our state. Universal preschool would give us more high school graduates in California. It would give us more financially stable Californians.
A public policy proposal that would result in better educated Californians and economic prosperity? Thats pretty tough to argue with.
Smith Arrillaga and Hahnel are interim co-executive directors of The Education Trust-West, a research, policy and advocacy organization focused on educational equity and justice, pre-K through college.
When newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced his first budget, he stated that universal preschool would be an important priority. Advocates of that program cheered, convinced that the $18 billion state budget surplus made this the right time to spend the $1.8 billion to make that commitment.
However, universal preschool is just one of the costly programs, all with devoted advocates, that are proposed as part of the record $143 billion general fund budget. Experience cautions us to be careful that we spend money responsibly, and to beware of making ongoing financial commitments to programs with a less than stellar track record.
Related: Why California needs universal preschool
The governor has said the spending on this program represents one-time money, and no additional funds will be required in future years. Taxpayers should be skeptical. The money needed to retrofit or build classrooms and bathrooms to accommodate younger children may be a one-time cost, but the salaries and benefits for thousands of newly hired teachers will necessarily be an ongoing expense. If a recession or economic slowdown were to hit California, the ongoing spending commitment will likely require higher taxes, fees or tuition costs to fill the hole in the budget.
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If Gov. Newsom and the Legislature are not inclined to be fiscally responsible, they might want to consider the political costs of such an outcome. Voters have not always shown support for universal preschool. In 2006, voters rejected Proposition 82, which would have provided universal preschool regardless of income level, by over 20 percentage points.
Advocates of universal preschool say that where the model has been tried, it has worked. As evidence, they cite the results of a Chicago Child-Parent Center program for low-income children. But the comparison is not convincing. The Chicago program had local control, which the California proposal does not, and the Chicago program was limited in size. Numerous studies have shown that targeted universal preschool programs limited to a specific city or county have a better chance of viability.
The second difference between the Chicago program and the California proposal is the specific funding requirements for parental training and involvement. Even in the most expansive preschool program, teachers may only have the children for four or five hours in a day. The role of parents in the success of any preschool program should not be underestimated.
Supporters respond to these arguments by saying universal preschool is uncharted territory, and because its never been attempted on a broad scale in California, it is a worthwhile investment. But in fact, it has been tried before, and the record is not encouraging.
For 50 years, the federal Head Start program has provided preschool services to more than 22 million predominantly low-income children. Sadly, there is abundant data to show that its track record is disappointing.
A recent study by two Vanderbilt University professors show that despite gains made by small-scale preschool programs, on a larger scale, any academic gains made in the Head Start program had evaporated by the end of kindergarten or first grade. That study also found that by third grade, Head Start children were disproportionately more aggressive and more likely to suffer from emotional issues. A study done by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which has oversight over Head Start, found that any academic gains from the program disappear by the third grade.
Numerous studies from the RAND think tank have shown that regardless of income level, children who attended any type of preschool were no more likely to achieve a high school diploma or a college degree than students who did not attend preschool.
Respected education experts in California are likewise skeptical. Lance Izumi, noted education author and Senior Fellow with the Pacific Research Institute concluded that, overall, data do not support the call for increased taxpayer investment in government preschool.
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Gov. Newsom and the advocates of universal preschool should go back to the drawing board and carefully consider both the cost and efficacy of the program. Taxpayers and parents deserve to see success in a scaled-down pilot program before committing to another ongoing government expense.
Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
The Democratic Party lately has been striving to portray itself as a bulwark for the American worker, but it hasnt done as much to place organized labor at the forefront of its platform.
That may be about to change. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has scheduled the formal announcement of her presidential candidacy Saturday in the old mill town of Lawrence, Mass. The symbolism is unmistakable. Lawrence was the site of one of the most important and successful strikes in U.S. labor history, the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike of textile workers.
Warren has made sure the connection isnt overlooked. Lawrence has a history of working people coming together to make change, where the fight was hard, the battle was uphill, and where a group of women led the charge for all of us, she says in a video posted on her campaign website.
The woman worker needs bread, but she needs roses too. Labor activist Rose Schneiderman, 1911
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The location also allows her to make deeper points about the plight of American workers in the U.S. and global economies.
Lawrence is very representative of where the nation has gone, says Erik Loomis, an expert in labor history at the University of Rhode Island whose 2018 book, A History of America in Ten Strikes, aims to restore to American consciousness a labor movement that has been written out of the standard history textbooks. You have the story of this amazing labor victory, but then for a very long time Lawrence has been depressed, its a symbol of industrialization, its a symbol of an America left behind in the new economy, its a symbol of the immigrant past and also the immigrant present.
Loomis places the Bread and Roses Strike at the dead center of his chronicle of American history. His book starts with the Mill Girls Strike of 1834 in Lowell, Mass. only 10 miles from Lawrence (mill owners in both cities exploited power from the Merrimack River to run their machines) and carries the story through to the Justice for Janitors campaign of the 1980s and 90s, stopping along the way at the eight-hour-day strikes of the Gilded Age, the Flint, Mich., sit-down strike of autoworkers in the mid-1930s, and the disastrous air-traffic controllers strike of 1981, among other way stations.
Among the threads running throughout the book is the tradition of government hostility to organized labor, expressed through often violent suppression of strikes by police or soldiers. That point tends to be overlooked even in labor histories, Loomis told me. Labor historians place an enormous emphasis on ideas of solidarity and radical actions, but not enough on the basic issue that there is almost no strike in American history that succeeded when the government was actively opposed to that strike.
The Bread and Roses Strike might be an exception. (The name generally is thought to have come from labor activist Rose Schneiderman, who declared in a 1911 speech, The woman worker needs bread, but she needs roses too the bread signifying better pay, the roses the schools, training and amenities that brought dignity to the working womans life.)
The strike began on Jan. 12, 1912, the day a new Massachusetts law limited working womens hours to 54 a week, a reduction of two hours. Mill owners in Lawrence cut the workers pay to match the new hours. Workers walked off the job in protest, and as Loomis reports, within a day the entire city was shut down.
Lawrence was the quintessential New England mill town, employing a quintessentially mill-town workforce of 40,000, mostly immigrants from Ireland and southern and eastern Europe, Loomis relates. Half the workers at the citys biggest mill, the American Woolen Co., were women younger than 18, toiling for little pay and breathing cotton dust. The average weekly wage was $9; the average weekly tenement rent, $6. The average life expectancy was less than 40.
Depictions of anti-strike violence like this one in Colliers Magazine helped create sympathy for the Lawrence strikers in 1912. (Colliers)
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The mill workers strike promptly attracted organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, who helped solidify the movement and hoped it could be expanded into a mass strike. Among the Wobbly luminaries who made appearances on the scene were key organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and I.W.W. co-founder Big Bill Haywood himself.
The government played its customary role of violence and suppression. Police deluged striker rallies with water from fire hoses in subfreezing temperatures. A militia member bayoneted one marcher to death. The police murder of another was pinned on strike leaders. Harvard students mobilized as a strikebreaking force a tradition, Loomis writes, in an era when university education was exclusively an option for the wealthy elite. Harvard allowed the students to make up their final exams later.
The Wobblies managed to turn the strike into a popular cause. The strike attracted sympathetic writers and donations from nationwide. When the Wobblies arranged railroad evacuation of strikers children to communities of sympathizers willing to keep them clothed and fed for the duration, the rail boardings were covered by the press, as were the childrens arrivals in New York.
When one evacuation was blocked by Lawrence police, who fomented a melee, the attack gained the attention of President William Howard Taft, who ordered an investigation. A congressional committee took testimony from workers, who described suffering horrific injuries on the factory floor and being charged even for clean drinking water.
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Under the onslaught of negative publicity, the mill owners relented, awarding the workers a wage increase of up to 20% and overtime pay, Loomis writes. The strike leaders framed for murder were acquitted.
But the solidarity so painstakingly promoted by the I.W.W. did not last. Wobbly membership in Lawrence collapsed within two years, in part because the economy had turned down and because the Wobblies had little grasp of long-term organizing.
The strike had won the workers some material gains, Loomis writes, but it left them no union to keep up the fight.
That could serve as the moral of the story of American organized labor more generally. Union membership in the private sector has declined sharply since its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, coinciding almost exactly with the growth in the share of national income going to the top 10%.
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Democratic Party support for organized labor has been strong, if not always as overt as Warren seems intent on making it. The Obama-era National Labor Relations Board took significant steps to address workplace abuses such as the improper designation of employees as contract workers or the use of labor contractors to obscure the employment relationship between companies such as fast food chains and the workers on their front lines. Obama took aim in executive orders against such abuses as forced arbitration of workplace claims. (Many of those initiatives have been rolled back by the Trump White House.)
Its also true that unions have made recent gains in some white-collar sectors such as journalism, where relentless layoffs and the threat of more cost-cutting have prompted editorial staff to organize at newspapers and magazines such as the Los Angeles Times and the New Yorker and digital news sites including Huffpost, the Intercept, Vox and Salon.
Warrens initiative signals that the political establishment may be regaining a sense of the value of collective bargaining that hasnt been seen in Washington in such strength since the New Deal and the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. Thats important because workers organizing rights have come under the most concerted attack by federal courts, including the Supreme Court, in decades.
The flow of wealth to the top 10% since 1960 coincides almost exactly with the decline in U.S. union membership. (Economic Policy Institute)
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Loomis also points to the success of teachers strikes in Chicago, West Virginia and, most recently, Los Angeles, which retained popular support in part because their organizers linked the gains sought for teachers with the prospect of improved schoolroom conditions for pupils. The specter of unionized action by aviation workers FAA inspectors, air traffic controllers, and flight attendants also seems to have played a role in forcing President Trump to reopen the government after the recent 35-day partial shutdown.
Strikes are a mixed bag, Loomis told me. Sometimes theyre a brilliant strategy, sometimes a terrible one. Sometimes theyre done for the right reason and sometimes not. But the Bread and Roses Strike in Lawrence shows how much they can accomplish at the right moment and the right place. If theyre used properly, they can be the most effective tactic labor has.
By making her presidential announcement from the steps of a Lawrence mill building, Elizabeth Warren seems to be linking her campaign to the idea that the key to restoring economic stability to the average workers lives is to restore their ability to stand together.
Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.
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Not everyone can win the admiration of their peers in their chosen profession. Fernando Romero, a Tijuana native who overcame the trauma of being orphaned as a boy, did it in two fields.
Romero, a self-taught percussionist with mutually rendered gifts for rhythm and storytelling, commanded the respect of professional musicians and seasoned journalists on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The former chief of The San Diego Evening Tribunes one-man Tijuana bureau became a staple of the border-city music scene and worked the San Diego bar circuit before and after moving to the Los Angeles Times to write stories about immigrants and others who were often overlooked. Romero died Wednesday at his home in South Bay Terraces. He was 70.
He knew everybody in Tijuana, and everybody knew him, said Chet Barfield, a decades-long friend and former Evening Tribune colleague. He knew all the Mexican journalists, he knew the politicians, he knew the restaurant owners. He even knew the waiters.
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Barfield described working with Romero as a graduate-level study in nurturing sources and gleaning information. They toured Tijuana while reporting a project on an immigration reform bill in the 1980s, and Barfield was struck with the ease in which Romero moved between social classes.
He had this whole journalism life up here, but he had this whole musical life in Tijuana, Barfield said. He was like a rock star.
Romero was born in Tijuana in 1948 and spent his early years in the border city. After his parents divorced, his father sent him to Mexico City to live with his aunt. But the 10-year-old boy was badly abused and left on his own one day to venture back north.
The travel north was perilous. Years later Romero recounted the journey in a memoir he called The Colors of Eden; Memories of a Runaway Boy.
In stark and desperate language, Romero described the fear, imprisonment and other cruelties he encountered along the way. The experiences shaped his adulthood, and drove him to help others whenever he could.
As a teenager in 1960s Tijuana, he did not reunite with his father. Instead, he managed subsistence however he could, selling gum on the street and doing any odd job he could find. He landed in the citys red light district, where he found work as a drummer accenting the womens dance moves.
Later, he gravitated to bands in the more respectable clubs. One night he met the young woman who would become his wife.
We were introduced but he asked me what time it was, and I said, What do I look like, Big Ben? said Denise Seffens Romero. And then we were married.
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Seffens Romero persuaded her husband to move to San Diego, she said, and while hunting for work the young bridegroom realized he needed an education. He earned his high school diploma and enrolled at Mesa College, then transferred to San Diego State University to pursue writing. He was 35 by the time he graduated.
I wanted him to pick a major that would get him a job for the rest of his life, Seffens Romero said. He loved journalism.
Romero accepted an internship at the Times San Diego office before he was hired as a temporary reporter for the Evening Tribune. His short-term status was extended multiple times until famed editor Neil Morgan summoned him to the corner office one day to announce he was being hired full time.
After years reporting in San Diego and Tijuana, Romero was lured to the Los Angeles Times to report on immigrants and immigration. Years after that he returned to San Diego and focused on his music.
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Guy Gonzales, who played guitar in several bands alongside Romero, said his longtime friend was a natural talent, watching other performers and picking up their tendencies by ear.
He would go hear the top drummer, and the next thing you know Skizo was playing it, said Gonzales, using the nickname Romero had picked up as a play on the Spanish word for exquisite.
He was able to see it, hear it and say I can do that, Gonzales said. Thats a gift, to be able to grab onto that and make what youre doing better.
He is survived by Denise Seffens Romero, his wife of 48 years; his son, Dennis Romero; and two grandchildren. No services are scheduled.
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jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1708 @sdutMcDonald
Acting Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitaker told Congress on Friday that he has not interfered with the special counsels investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 election and has not discussed the probe with President Trump or other senior White House officials.
The testimony came in a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing. Democrats repeatedly clashed with Whitaker as they pressed him for details about his appointment, his supervision of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his relationship with Trump.
Democrats are concerned that Trump appointed Whitaker as the temporary attorney general to undercut Muellers investigation. Whitaker had criticized the inquiry before he joined the Justice Department.
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At no time has the White House asked for, nor have I provided, any promises or commitments concerning the special counsels investigation, or any other investigation, Whitaker testified.
He later added that he had not spoken to the president about the special counsels investigation. Theres been no event, no decision that has required me to take any action, and Ive not interfered in any way with the special counsels investigation.
Whitaker said at a news conference last month that he was fully briefed on the Mueller investigation and that it was nearing a conclusion. On Friday, he repeatedly declined to provide more clarity about those statements.
To the frustration of Democrats, Whitaker refused to provide details of his conversations with Trump and other senior White House officials, citing the long-standing executive branch practice of not disclosing information that may be subject to executive privilege.
During a combative back-and-forth, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the committee chairman, grew so frustrated that he said he would recall Whitaker for a deposition, saying he expected him to provide clean answers or to properly assert executive privilege.
Republicans said the hearing was political theater and a waste of time because Whitaker wont stay in the job much longer
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to support William Barr, Trumps pick for attorney general, and the Republican-led Senate is expected to confirm him in coming weeks.
Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the committees ranking Republican, said the hearing was nothing more than a character assassination and an attempt to get at the president.
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Whitaker spoke highly of Muellers character and said the prosecutors mandate was consistent with the appointments of other special counsels. But he declined to rebut the presidents frequent characterization of the investigation as a witch hunt.
It would be inappropriate for me to talk about an ongoing investigation, he told Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who asked him whether he agreed with the presidents assessment.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein have publicly said Mueller is not on a witch hunt.
Although Whitaker stated he hadnt discussed the Mueller probe with Trump, he declined to provide similar assurances regarding the prosecution of Michael Cohen, Trumps longtime personal lawyer.
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Im not going to discuss my private conversations with the president of the United States, Whitaker said in response to a pointed question by Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) about the Cohen case.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to charges linked to his arranging of hush money payments to two women who said theyd had affairs with Trump and lying to two congressional committees about trying to arrange a Moscow hotel and condominium deal for Trump during the 2016 presidential race. The investigation of Cohen was spearheaded by federal prosecutors in New York.
Whitaker took over from Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions on Nov. 7, the day after the midterm election, when Trump forced the resignation of his top law enforcement official.
Trump soured on Sessions after the attorney general recused himself from the Russia investigation in early 2017, and the president frequently bashed the former senator on Twitter and in interviews.
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Whitaker had served for a year as Sessions chief of staff and built a rapport with Trump.
Before joining the department, Whitaker had criticized Muellers investigation in columns and in TV interviews.
Democrats sharply criticized Whitaker for refusing to recuse himself from supervising Muellers inquiry despite the advice of the Justice Departments top career attorney, who was concerned his past comments created the appearance of a conflict of interest, department officials said.
You decided that your private interest in overseeing this particular investigation and perhaps others from which you should have been recused was more important than the integrity of the department, Nadler said.
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Whitaker said he decided not to step aside because it was a close call and he didnt want to hamstring future attorneys general.
After Sessions recused himself from the federal investigation, its supervision fell to Rosenstein. Rosenstein appointed Mueller in May 2017 and he continues to oversee the day-to-day operations of the investigation. Rosenstein is expected to step down in coming months.
President Donald Trump announced Friday that his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will take place in Hanoi, ending weeks of speculation over the venue for the two leaders second meeting.
Trump revealed the decision in an evening tweet.
My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un, Trump said in the tweet. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!
Trump announced in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night that he would meet with Kim on Feb. 27 and 28 in Vietnam. But the exact location remained uncertain.
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U.S. officials had set their sights on the coastal resort city Danang, which Trump visited for a regional economic summit two years ago.
The North Koreans, meanwhile, had been pushing for Hanoi. The bustling capital could afford Kim an opportunity to hold a separate bilateral meeting with Vietnamese leadership, further bolstering his international standing.
In a second tweet Friday night, Trump predicted that North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!
Before their first summit in Singapore last year, Trump had long mocked Kim as Little Rocket Man.
North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse, Trump said in the tweet. He may surprise some but he wont surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is.
Trump administration officials hope the meeting will make progress toward North Korean denuclearization efforts, though some experts remain skeptical.
Stephen E. Biegun, the State Departments special representative for North Korea, was in Pyongyang this week to finalize planning with his counterpart, Kim Hyok Chol.
Biegun departed Pyongyang on Friday after three days of talks. In a one-paragraph news release, the State Department said Biegun and his North Korean counterpart plan to meet again ahead of the Trump-Kim summit. Their negotiations will include the agenda for the talks and potential concessions both sides could agree to when the leaders get together.
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On Saturday, Biegun briefed South Koreas Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and other officials in Seoul on the outcome of his discussions in Pyongyang. In brief statements to the media, Biegun said he had productive discussions in North Korea, but added: We have some hard work to do before the Hanoi summit.
I would say it was a productive set of discussions over the last few days, and our team engaged on a number of areas of mutual interest, and weve agreed to meet again, Biegun said. So I think this is a constructive place to be especially in advance of the presidents second summit with Chairman Kim.
Biegun was also due to hold a trilateral meeting in Seoul with his South Korea counterpart Lee Do-hoon and Kenji Kanasugi, the Japanese foreign ministrys director general of Asia and Oceania affairs, who is visiting.
Denyer reported from Tokyo. The Washington Posts David Nakamura, John Hudson and Anne Gearan in Washington, and Min Joo Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
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First published in The Washington Post
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren made her bid for the presidency official on Saturday in this working-class city, grounding her 2020 campaign in a populist call to fight economic inequality and build an America that works for everyone.
Warren delivered a sharp call for change at her presidential kickoff, decrying a middle-class squeeze that has left Americans crunched with too little accountability for the rich, too little opportunity for everyone else. She and her backers hope that message can distinguish her in a crowded Democratic field and help her move past the controversy surrounding her past claims to Native American heritage.
Weaving specific policy prescriptions into her remarks, from Medicare for All to the elimination of Washington lobbying as we know it, Warren avoided taking direct jabs at President Donald Trump. She aimed for a broader institutional shift instead, urging supporters to choose a government that makes different choices, choices that reflect our values.
Trump is not the cause of whats broken, Warren told an elated crowd without using the presidents name. Hes just the latest - and most extreme - symptom of whats gone wrong in America.
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In a tweet, Trump referenced the controversy over her Native American identity, once again using the insulting nickname hes given her.
Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President, Trump tweeted. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!
Warren announced her campaign in her home state of Massachusetts at a mill site where factory workers went on strike in the early 20th century, a fitting forum for the longtime consumer advocate to advance her platform.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is hugged by U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III after he introduced her during an event to formally launch her presidential campaign on Feb. 9, 2019, in Lawrence, Mass. (Elise Amendola/AP)
Supporters turned out in below-freezing temperatures, many hoisting signs Win With Warren, one read. A Massachusetts bakery created Persist cookies for the event to honor the candidates slogan, Nevertheless, She Persisted, words first spoken in the Senate to rebuke her.
Warrens rollout rally was a potent motivator for longtime supporters such as Mo Malekafzaly and Carlos Garcia, two longtime backers who attended her rally from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
The choice of Lawrence to start her campaign shows who shes fighting for, Garcia said. Asked if fellow New Englander Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, could pose a serious threat to Warren in New Hampshires critical primary should he get into the race, Garcia said Warren is such an effective communicator that I think that people will respond to that very well.
Warren went straight from her kickoff to New Hampshire, home to the nations first primary, where her campaign projected that 350 people turned out for an event in the city of Dover. She plans to spend Sunday in Iowa, where the leadoff caucuses will be the first test of candidates viability.
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Warren was the first high-profile Democrat to signal interest in running for the White House, forming an exploratory committee on New Years Eve.
She was endorsed and introduced Saturday by Massachusetts Democrats Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Joe Kennedy III. Kennedys backing could prove valuable for Warren, given his status as a rising young Democratic star and his friendship with one of her potential 2020 rivals, former Rep. Beto ORourke, D-Texas.
Warren enters the race as one of the partys most recognizable figures. She has spent the past decade in the national spotlight, first emerging as a consumer activist during the financial crisis. She later led the congressional panel that oversaw the 2008 financial industry bailout. After Republicans blocked her from running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she helped create, she ran for the Senate in 2012 and unseated a GOP incumbent.
She has $11 million left over from her commanding 2018 Senate re-election victory that can be used on her presidential run.
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Still, Warren must compete against other popular Democrats who will be able to raise substantial money. A recent CNN poll found that fewer Democrats said theyd be very likely to support Warren if she runs than said the same of former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Sanders. Still, about as many Democrats said theyd be at least somewhat likely to support Warren as said the same of Harris or Sanders.
That challenge is on display this weekend as Democratic presidential contenders or those considering a run fan out across the crucial early-voting states. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is in Iowa, while New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is visiting South Carolina. Another possible presidential rival, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, planned to be in New Hampshire on Saturday, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar is announcing her bid Sunday in her home state of Minnesota.
And Warrens launch comes at a challenging moment for the 69-year-old senator. Shes apologized twice over the past two weeks for claiming Native American identity on multiple occasions early in her career. That claim has created fodder for Republicans and could overshadow her campaign.
On Saturday, Trumps re-election campaign manager was quick to respond to her candidacy and called her a fraud.
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Warren got notable backup from Gillibrand, however, who called her Senate colleague an extraordinary public servant. Speaking to reporters in South Carolina, Gillibrand said Trumps treatment of women, particularly women of color, was outrageous.
The campaign launch will test whether the controversy is simply a Washington obsession or a substantive threat to her candidacy. Doug Rubin, a Boston-based strategist who advised Warren during her first Senate run in 2012, said in an interview that most voters will respond to the powerful message shes been talking about, in terms of battling social and economic injustices, rather than the back-and-forth over her personal identity.
Another threat could come from a fellow senator who has yet to announce his own plans for 2020: Sanders. Theyre both leaders of the Democrats liberal vanguard, but some Sanders supporters are still upset Warren didnt support him during his 2016 primary run against Hillary Clinton. And as a senator from Vermont who won the New Hampshire primary, he would likely go into the Granite State as an early favorite if he decided to run again.
Sheri Clark Nadell, a Maine resident who traveled to Warrens New Hampshire event, said that while she likes Sanders and voted for him in his previous campaign, she is less inclined to do so now.
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Im not sure, at this point, that he could win, Nadell said. And I feel sad saying that. But we need to win.
Despite their similarities, Warren and Sanders have taken somewhat divergent paths in recent months as they prepare for the primary. After proposing an ultra-millionaire tax that would hit the wealthiest 75,000 households in America, Warren told Bloomberg News last week that she continues to believe in capitalism but wants to see stricter rules to prevent gaming the system a marked contrast with the self-described democratic socialism of Sanders.
Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard contributed from Columbia, South Carolina.
Arjun and Jessica Sud routinely use a baby monitor to keep tabs on their 7-month-olds bedroom. Last month, they heard something chilling through the monitor: A deep male voice was speaking to their child.
Immediately I barge into the room because Im like, Oh my God, maybe someone got in there, said Arjun Sud, 29. The moment I walk in, its quiet.
The couple grabbed their son, now fully awake, and headed downstairs. When they passed their Nest thermostat, normally set around 72 degrees, they noticed it had been turned up to 90. Then, the voice was back, coming through the speaker in a downstairs security camera. And this time, it was talking to them.
The voice was rude and vulgar, using the n-word and cursing, he said. At first, he yelled back. But then, Sud composed himself and stared into the camera.
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He was like, Why are you looking at me? I see you watching me, Sud said. Thats when I started to question him back.
The Lake Barrington familys Nest cameras and thermostat had been hacked.
I felt like I (was) trapped in an episode of Black Mirror, Arjun Sud said, referring to a television series that explores the darker aspects of technology. All these devices youve put in there to safeguard yourself, to protect your home, your family, (are) now being used maliciously to turn against you.
Nest users across the country have reported similar incidents in recent weeks, but the Google-owned company has insisted that it was not breached. Instead, Nest has said that affected customers could have done more to protect their devices. And on Wednesday, Nest sent an email to users telling them what they can do to get the most out of its security features.
In an interview with the Tribune, Google spokeswoman Nicol Addison said the company automatically rolls out updates to its software and stays on top of security and safety measures. Addison declined to comment on specific hacking incidents.
The smart home devices Americans are increasingly installing which connect to the Internet and can be controlled and monitored remotely via smartphone app are ushering in unprecedented convenience for homeowners on the go, but they also represent one of the new frontiers when it comes to internet hacking.
There are no firm numbers about the number of smart devices that have been hacked, but experts expect the problem to grow along with the proliferation of smart devices, which include speakers like Google Home and Amazon Echo, thermostats, doorbells, and other household devices. Twenty-five billion connected devices are expected to be in use by 2021, up from 14.2 billion this year, according to research company Gartner.
Arjun Sud converses with an unidentified person who hacked his Nest camera inside their infant sons room at their Lake Barrington home on Jan. 20, 2019.
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No single organization appears to be monitoring or regulating smart device hackings, but growing use of the technology raises questions about whether that may become necessary.
Experts say its vital for homeowners to create strong and unique passwords for their smart devices. But they also say manufacturers arent doing enough to secure the products they sell to the public.
These gizmos are being manufactured at a crazy rate, yet theyre not being secured, said Christian Vezina, chief information security officer at Chicago-based mobile security company OneSpan. Anything that gets exposed to the internet is subject to being hacked, he said.
Families and individuals everywhere need to recognize that and say, OK, what can happen if someone gets a hold of your connected device? Whats the worst case? The one that we saw is a pretty frightening case, Vezina said.
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Designed for convenience
One reason smart home devices may be vulnerable to hacking is that they are often developed by vendors who know how to manufacture a standard appliance, but arent as well-versed in how to securely connect it to the internet, said Karl Sigler, threat intelligence manager at SpiderLabs, a team of ethical hackers at the Chicago-based cybersecurity company Trustwave.
The devices are also developed with convenience in mind, and manufacturers are sensitive about security steps that consumers may interpret as frustrating or a hassle, Sigler said.
And because the devices are used within the intimate confines of the home, some consumers fail to grasp the ramifications of not adequately securing them.
Most people arent yet thinking of these devices as something that needs protected the same way laptops or smartphones do, Sigler said.
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If youre thinking about your smart toaster, you might not think its an issue Who wants to hack your smart toaster? Until someone does, and it starts a fire, Sigler said. You dont really think your refrigerator is important until somebody turns it off and your food spoils overnight..
Cyber criminals usually gain access to connected devices through a weak password or a vulnerability in the device itself, such as how its programmed or how it connects to the internet, Sigler said.
When someone hacks into just one connected device, theyre usually looking for a point of entry into the network, said John Grimm, senior director of strategy and business development at cybersecurity company nCipher Security, which has headquarters in Florida and England. He pointed to an incident in which a Las Vegas casinos high-roller database was accessed through a smart thermometer in a fish tank.
Once youre on the network using those devices, what else can you get to? Grimm said.
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The rise of connected homes can also be tracked through usage of smart speakers, such as Amazon Echo and Google Home. The number of smart speakers installed in U.S. homes increased from 36 million in December 2017 to 66 million in December 2018, according to data from Chicago-based Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. The majority of smart speaker owners use them to stream music or ask questions, but roughly 40 percent depend on the speakers to help control their connected homes.
A proactive approach
Smart home hacking incidents are often reported to local police departments or sheriffs offices. The FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center also handles internet-based crimes.
As these types of hacking incidents continue to rise, so too might a debate surrounding regulation of smart device security. Consumers have grown more aware of their internet privacy in the wake of news last year that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used ill-gotten Facebook data in an effort to influence voter behavior. In the months since, a debate over how and if the government should regulate social media has raged, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has testified before Congress. With smart devices, too, experts say the public could end up calling for more oversight.
The Lake County Sheriffs Office, which is investigating the situation that unfolded at the Suds home last month, recommends that people change the factory-set passwords that come on their devices.
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Users should also make sure the software on their devices is regularly updated, so it has the latest security patches. Experts say not to wait for the company to push through an update, because some dont.
It can be hard for homeowners to notice when a smart device has been compromised. Sometimes, the device is just slower, unresponsive or reboots without notice.
Consumers should also keep an eye on the IP addresses that are accessing their smart home devices. Each computer that accesses a device has a unique numerical label that should appear on the log.
If people dont know how to do that, they should contact the device manufacturer and ask whether that data can be recorded and how they can view it, said Sgt. Chris Covelli, spokesman for the Lake County Sheriffs Office.
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Sud said he contacted Nest about getting a copy of a log tracking who had accessed his devices, but was told that was not available.
Arjun Sud sits with his wife, Jessica, and 7-month-old son, Oliver, at their home in Lake Barrington. (Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune)
Terrified and angry
The Lake Barrington family isnt the only household with a Nest system to be hacked recently.
Around the same time the Suds heard a stranger talking to their baby, a warning claiming to be from Civil Defense blared out of a speaker on a Nest camera in a California familys living room. It said three ballistic missiles were aimed at Los Angeles, Chicago and Ohio, and that President Donald Trump had been taken to a secure facility.
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The California family called Nest and 911 to confirm there was no danger as their child hid under the living room rug in fear of an impending missile.
In December, a Houston family reported hearing a voice saying sexual expletives through a baby monitor in their infants room. When they turned on the lights, the Nest camera in the room activated. A voice told them to turn off the lights and threatened to kidnap the baby.
Nest said affected customers were reusing passwords that had been compromised on other sites and encouraged users to make sure their routers and home networks are updated. The company also suggests using two-factor verification on their devices. Two-factor verification, which Nest has offered since March 2017, usually requires a code delivered through text message in addition to a username and password.
The extra layer of security in the log-in process eliminates this type of security risk, according to the statement from Nest. The company is also working on software updates that will reject compromised passwords and let users monitor access to their accounts. Separately, Google launched a Chrome extension that will prompt users to change their password if it appears to have been compromised.
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Sud said he checked his records and could not find a notification from Nest alerting him to the two-factor authentication option.
Sud said he felt terrified and then angry that day in January, when he and his wife heard the disembodied voice coming over their Nest speaker. Mostly, he felt violated.
Sud asked the stranger who and where he was. Now, Sud wonders how long he had been watching them.
When Sud contacted Nest after the hack, he said he was told the incident occurred because he used a compromised password. Still, he felt the company could have done more to help protect the devices.
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There was zero accountability, Sud said.
As soon as the voice stopped talking to them, Sud and his wife started unplugging the Nest cameras inside their home. The family had 17 Nest devices hooked up, which they also used to monitor the outside of their house and keep an eye on their dogs while they traveled. Sud said he hopes to return the roughly $4,000 worth of equipment to the company.
Im very, very upset, he said. I hope that with more eyes on my experience, this saves somebody else from going through the same terrifying experience.
amarotti@chicagotribune.com
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Twitter @AllyMarotti
San Diego police arrested a 25-year-old woman after she allegedly used a glass bong to attack a man Friday afternoon in the Roseville-Fleetridge area near Liberty Station.
A verbal argument between the suspect and the 30-year-old victim apparently preceded the attack, which happened around 2:20 p.m. at a residence near Keats and Locust streets, about two blocks from Nimitz Boulevard and Rosecrans Street, San Diego police Officer Robert Heims said.
During the argument it turned physical, Heims said in a statement. The suspect grabbed a glass bong and hit the victim in the head several times with it.
The suspect fled after attacking the victim but was found by police a few blocks away and arrested, Heims said.
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She was booked into jail Friday night and being held in lieu of $30,000 bail, according to jail records, on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury.
Twitter: @Alex_Riggins
(619) 293-1710
alex.riggins@sduniontribune.com
A shirtless suspect stabbed a 26-year-old man several times in a possibly gang-related attack Friday afternoon in San Diegos Stockton neighborhood, police said.
It happened around 2:40 p.m. in the area of 31st and L streets when the suspect walked up to the victim, started a fight with him and then stabbed him multiple times in the torso, according to San Diego police Capt. Mike Holden and Officer Robert Heims said.
The violent incident was the second of two stabbings that happened just a few blocks from each other and less than two hours apart Friday afternoon. San Diego police said the attacks were not related, as the suspect in the first stabbing which happened in Logan Heights as part of a family dispute was already detained by the time the second stabbing occurred.
Police said the victim in the Stockton street-side stabbing walked a few blocks, to the intersection at 30th and K streets, before he collapsed. Thats where a witness found him and called 911, Holden told OnScene TV.
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The victim was taken to a hospital where he underwent emergency surgery and was expected to survive, Holden said.
Police described the suspect as a short, thin Hispanic man in his 20s, wearing blue jeans, a dark beanie and no shirt. He remained at large Friday night, and detectives from the San Diego Police Departments gang unit were investigating the attack.
Twitter: @Alex_Riggins
(619) 293-1710
alex.riggins@sduniontribune.com
A fight between two relatives at a Logan Heights home ended Friday afternoon with a 59-year-old man hospitalized with severe stab wounds and a 27-year-old man in police custody on suspicion of attempted murder, authorities said.
The violent incident was the first of two stabbings Friday that happened just a few blocks from each other and less than two hours apart, but detectives said the attacks were not related.
The family fight in Logan Heights happened a little after 1 p.m. at a home on Imperial Avenue near 29th Street, San Diego police Officer Robert Heims said.
During the fight, the suspect stabbed the victim multiple times, Heims said in a statement. The stabbing occurred inside a shed (or) room attached to a garage.
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When officers arrived, they found the 59-year-old victim with several life-threatening stab wounds to his upper torso, Capt. Mike Holden told OnScene TV.
The suspect was lying on the ground, for unknown reasons, a few feet from the victim, Heims said. Police did not say how the men were related.
Medics rushed the victim to a hospital, where he underwent several hours of emergency surgery.
The stab wounds were very severe, Holden told OnScene TV. There was a period there we thought the victim might die of those injuries.
But after the urgent operation, doctors told police the man was expected to survive, Holden said.
The 27-year-old suspect was identified as Ryan Odale Baker. He was booked Friday night into San Diego Central Jail, and was being held without bail, on suspicion of attempted murder and committing a felony while on bail.
As investigators searched for evidence and interviewed other family members and witnesses, an unrelated stabbing was reported less than a quarter-mile away in the Stockton neighborhood, police said. The victim of that attack, which was possibly gang-related, was expected to survive.
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Twitter: @Alex_Riggins
(619) 293-1710
alex.riggins@sduniontribune.com
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UPDATES:
8:50 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details.
This article was originally published at 7:40 p.m.
A San Diego County sheriffs deputy was arrested in Oceanside on suspicion of domestic violence Friday, police said Saturday.
A 911 call came in about 11:30 a.m. reporting a disturbance at an apartment on Fiesta Way, Oceanside police Officer Richard Schickel said.
Police found probable cause to arrest Corey Petruzziello, 32, on a domestic violence charge, Schickel said. The deputy was out on bail as of Saturday morning. Further details on the incident were not available.
The Sheriffs Department said in a statement that the agency has been informed of Petruzziellos arrest and will be conducting an internal affairs investigation into the matter.
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According to his LinkedIn page, he has been working at the Sheriffs Department for a year and is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran.
kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @kristinadavis
The Trump administration was set to ignore a Friday deadline for giving the Senate a full accounting of the role of Saudi Arabias de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the brutal slaying of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi four months ago.
The administration, which has consistently sought to shield Saudi rulers from blame, had until midnight Friday to answer senators questions about whether Prince Mohammed ordered the killing, as U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded, and what additional sanctions should be placed on the government in Riyadh.
The deadline was set by Democratic and Republican senators, who wrote the president on Oct. 10 just over a week after Khashoggis disappearance calling for an investigation and invoking the Global Magnitsky Act that imposes sanctions on egregious abusers of international human rights. Under the rules, the president had 120 days to respond.
Senators said Trump was obliged by law to answer. Administration officials contended, however, that the law was not binding and that the president was within his rights to ignore the senators demands.
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A bipartisan group of senators, anticipating administration inaction, reintroduced a bill Thursday from late last year that would restrict arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the Khashoggi killing and the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the legislation was aimed at preventing President Trump from sweeping Mr. Khashoggis murder under the rug.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican close to the president, said sanctions were long overdue for this barbaric act.
While Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, the behavior of the crown prince in multiple ways has shown disrespect for the relationship and made him, in my view, beyond toxic, Graham said.
Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia who wrote columns for the Washington Post that were often critical of the Saudi monarchy, was strangled and dismembered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2. After weeks of denials, the Saudi government finally acknowledged his death but blamed the killing on rogue Saudi agents.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that such a brazen act would have had to be ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed. But Trump and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, keen to preserve a robust diplomatic and economic relationship with Riyadh that includes arm sales and mutual antagonism toward Iran, have refused to accept those findings.
Combined with the Saudi role in Yemen, where it leads a coalition that has killed thousands of civilians, the Khashoggi case has generated rare bipartisan criticism of Trump for his fealty to the kingdom. The only other issue to have similarly galvanized Republicans and Democrats in opposition is Trumps friendliness with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Khashoggi case seems to be opening chapter 2 of Congress being more purposeful and determined in a bipartisan way [to challenge the administration] on foreign policy, said Thomas Melia, a former senior State Department human rights official and the Washington director of PEN America, which advocates for human rights and freedom of expression.
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PEN was one of several organizations demanding government action against Saudi Arabia ahead of what they assumed would be the administrations refusal to meet Fridays deadline.
Adel Jubeir, Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, was in Washington this week for an international conference and met with Pompeo on Thursday. The two agreed on the importance of a credible and transparent investigation of the Khashoggi killing that holds all of those involved accountable, the State Department said in a statement, which echoed others of past months.
The Saudis are prosecuting about 15 alleged participants in the slaying, but none are thought to be its intellectual authors. The Trump administration has yanked U.S. visas or frozen assets of about three dozen Saudi officials.
On Friday, Jubeir reiterated that the crown prince did not order the killing and warned that attacking Saudi leadership was a red line that Americans should not cross.
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tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com
For more on international affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter
Several local programs that focus largely on housing received new funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in allocations that were announced Friday.
The $2.4 million in new funding is in addition to $19.4 million in continued funding HUD allocated for existing local programs last month.
The money includes a new allocation for domestic violence programs, with San Diego receiving $351,000 this year.
Most of the new money will go toward rapid re-housing programs that provide rent subsidies that taper off as tenants become self-sufficient. The funding is temporary and often lasts six months.
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HUD didnt provide details about the programs, but listed $443,000 for Salvation Army transitional and rapid re-housing, $239,000 for San Diego rapid re-housing and $102,000 for Families Forward rapid re-housing,
The list also included two allocations for expansions of unspecified rapid re-housing programs, with one for $107,000 and another for $102,000.
The allocations also included $585,000 for a San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless planning grant and $367,000 for the The Lofts, an affordable housing complex for homeless veterans, in Normal Heights.
In all, HUD has allocated 2.2 billion for about 6,800 homeless housing and service programs across the nation and US territories this year.
California received $415 million, more than any other state, to fund 694 existing programs and 99 new ones. New York was second and received about half as much with $215 million.
Los Angeles received $124 million and San Francisco received $44.5 million.
Some of the local allocations announced last month included $526,000 for Alpha Square, $243,000 for Escondido Veteran Apartments, $734,000 to expand the countys Homeless Management Information System, $541,000 for the Home Now program and $486,000 for the Journey Home program.
Others on that list included $375,000 for a maternity shelter program, $807,000 for PATH Connections Housing, $1.3 million for consolidated rapid re-housing programs, $3.6 million for a San Diego Housing Commission merged grant, $1.7 million for Father Joes Villages and $806,000 for Village Rapid Re-housing for Families.
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gary.warth@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @GaryWarthUT
760-529-4939
A 49-year-old man who led Border Patrol agents on a dangerous pursuit a getaway that started with an agent briefly hanging out the drivers side window as he tried to grab the keys to the stolen sedan was sentenced Friday to two and a half years in federal prison.
In November, a federal jury in San Diego found John Leland Combs guilty of assault on a federal officer and high-speed flight from a checkpoint for the early morning encounter near Tecate in 2017.
In a statement announcing Fridays sentencing, U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer said the agent had put his life on the line to keep our community safe.
Im very glad its the defendant, and not the brave agent, who is paying the price for this audacious crime, Brewer said.
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According to Brewers Office, a Border Patrol agent was patrolling the U.S-Mexico border about 5:40 a.m., Sept. 2, 2017 when he came across footprints in the dirt, headed north, roughly 300 yards was of the Tecate border crossing.
The agent, Norberto M. Ribac, was on an ATV. He followed the footprints and soon spotted a man on a cellphone standing next to a four-door Hyundai Genesis, engine running.
After speaking with Combs, Ribac searched the trunk, then radioed dispatchers to request a records check on the car and thats when he saw Combs get into the drivers seat.
Ribac reached in through the open window to grab the keys from the ignition. But Combs took off driving, with the agents upper body still in the car, federal prosecutors said in court documents.
Ribac freed himself, but the moving car struck his right elbow and head, breaking the visor of his helmet. Through his radio, he reported what had happened and which way the Hyundai had gone.
Within two minutes, another agent spotted the fleeing Hyundai and gave chase, a high-speed pursuit west on state Route 94. Combs drove faster than 70 mph, swerving in and out of traffic on the winding two-lane road, the U.S. Attorneys Office said.
During the chase, the Hyundai ran over spike strips agents had put down to stop him.
According to the trial brief filed by federal prosecutors, Combs continued to drive another two and a half miles, with the Hyundai losing large chunks of the drivers side tires along the way.
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Combs eventually lost control and came to a stop near a home along the highway. He jumped out of the car and jumped over chain link fence. About 300 yard into an open field, he stopped and threw his hands up, prosecutors wrote.
Combs represented himself at the trial, which ran less than two days. It took the jury about an hour to return with a guilty verdict.
According to the court docket, the federal judge assigned an attorney to represent Combs at Combs request in his bid to appeal the conviction.
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teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com
(760) 529-4945
Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT
A hearing in El Cajon Superior Court on Thursday offered a glimpse into an extensive human smuggling operation at work before a Border Patrol pursuit crash in Boulevard last year that killed three Mexican citizens and injured others.
Luis Alberto Virgen, 21, a U.S. citizen, is alleged to have been the driver who tried to evade agents in a 100 mph pursuit on Interstate 8 before agents spiked his tires and the truck overturned.
Virgen faces trial on three counts of murder, three counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and seven counts of reckless driving causing injury. He could be sentenced to 45 years to life in prison if convicted of all charges.
Five of the 10 passengers who had been smuggled into the United States on Nov. 29 testified Thursday in a special hearing called a conditional examination.
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Such hearings are held to elicit testimony from witnesses who may not be available at a preliminary hearing or trial perhaps because of illness or military deployment. In this case, Deputy District Attorney Clayton Carr said, the men face deportation and might not return.
They are currently in custody, with attorneys, but they want to return to their families in the Mexican state of Jalisco, Carr said. He served each one with a subpoena to return to court on June 3 for a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence against Virgen to send him to trial.
The five witnesses testified that they waited in a Tijuana house for up to two weeks before being directed to a pickup for the ride across the border. When asked who made the arrangements, they said they didnt know.
They were to pay some unspecified person $8,000 after being taken to Los Angeles, the men testified. They said they didnt have that kind of cash, but friends in the U.S. would put up the money, and they would pay those friends back.
Two of the men said they planned to seek work in Tennessee and one hoped to reach Arkansas.
The night of the crash, one of the men rode up front with a woman and the pickup driver. Eight men lay side by side in the truck bed, under a tarp. After leaving a dirt road and reaching a freeway, they said, they heard a siren and their driver sped up.
The ride west on Interstate 8, in the rain, turned frightening, the men said. The man who sat in front testified that the driver swerved around other cars until agents threw out a spike strip that blew the trucks tires and sent it careering off the highway.
Passengers Erika Gonzalez-Cardoso, 38, Celerino Jimenez-Flores, 34, and Jorge Garcia-Isordia, 22, died in the crash. The men who testified said they couldnt recall being thrown from the truck, but woke up in ambulances, badly injured.
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Carr said two men didnt testify because they were still hospitalized when he was seeking court orders to hold the witnesses.
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pauline.repard@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @pdrepard
It was a strange place for a meeting. Six years ago, San Diegan Linda Sheridan convinced members of the police department, probation office and D.A.s Juvenile Division to gather for a discussion of graffiti.
She set up tables and chairs under state Route 163 near its intersection with Interstate 8. It is a place known by locals as The Pit and is a jungle of graffiti. The visitors first were asked to look at the scribbled images and give their impressions.
She was hoping the messages they saw would be the ones that had touched her heart: Lost and alone. Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow. They say Im trash but Im not. People dont love you. ...
They were.
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Sheridan was ready with a proposal. Local authorities were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on graffiti paint-outs and on a graffiti tracker program to identify and hunt down the paint-wielding perpetrators. But Sheridan wanted to focus on the kids behind many of the spray cans to give them an education in vandalism and offer them other venues for their creative expressions.
This is just a portion of about 300 images that radiated out from a giant heart mural painted on a building at Cherokee Point Elementary School in City Heights. It was a student project orchestrated by the San Diego Cultural Arts Alliances Graffiti Hurts program. (Linda Sheridan)
As founder and CEO of the San Diego Cultural Arts Alliance, she developed an eight-week, after-school graffiti arts curriculum and recruited reformed taggers and respected mural artists. They now teach potential offenders that their crime can lead to costly restitution, jail and even felony records, and work with them on art projects that enhance rather than deface a surface.
Upon completion, students are invited to join the mural team doing commissioned public artworks throughout San Diego.
After nearly four years of working with Sheridan, Chuck Schindler, the principal at Rancho Buena Vista High School in Vista, reports that campus graffiti has all but disappeared, school attendance by students in the weekly program is up as much as 70 percent. They are getting higher grades and completing high school, he says. Plus their behavior has improved, and they have a place to go after school.
We let them paint a mural on campus at the end of the program. That has had a very positive effect on the kids, he adds.
At Cherokee Point Elementary School in City Heights, mural artist Jose Venegas painted a large heart as a centerpiece. Then students added more than 300 pieces of art depicting something each loved. It covers the back wall of the school auditorium and stretches around the building.
Graffiti arts students at Crawford High School transformed a tagger-targeted wall across from a nearby elementary school into a colorful student portrait mural no longer in need of bimonthly paint-outs.
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Mural artist Jose Venegas, who works with a graffiti arts program designed to channel students creative talent into positive activities, painted this artwork for the lobby of the San Diego District Attorneys Juvenile Division. The program focuses on prevention, not punishment. (Courtesy of San Diego County)
Nowhere does Sheridans Graffiti Hurts program, with its tender vs. tough approach, make more of an impact than in the District Attorneys Juvenile Division, where attorneys are used to prosecuting destructive taggers. A 15-foot-long graffiti mural by Venegas was installed in its lobby late last month. Instead of F words and negative expressions, it highlights positive words: respectful, honesty, integrity, accountability, justice and more.
The artist, in a videotaped interview, says theyre trying to teach the students that graffiti doesnt have to go in an alley. It can be on a canvas, on a T-shirt or on a hat. You can really go places when you do it with permission, he notes.
Division chief Lisa Weinreb explains that her office is working with different community organizations to take what otherwise might have been criminal activity and divert it into positive action.
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SANDAG has put out a warning to motorists about the closure of multiple lanes of traffic of La Jolla Village Drive at Genesee Avenue near Westfield UTC for one week, from Feb. 8 to early Feb. 15 to facilitate trolley line construction. (Courtesy of SANDAG)
A mall with a heart: In light of the traffic congestion on La Jolla Village Drive due to construction of the Mid-Coast Trolley extension, the management of Westfield UTC shopping mall is suspending its new parking fee charges for this Saturday and Sunday in all of its UTC lots during mall operating hours.
For some time, motorists have been slowed by trolley overpass construction work near the intersection of Genesee Avenue and La Jolla Village Drive. The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) announced that various lane closures will be in effect for a full week from 9 p.m today to early Feb. 15 as 60-foot-long concrete girders weighing up to 200,000 pounds each are hoisted into place over La Jolla Village Drive.
The shopping center let it be known last spring that it planned a switch to charging $2 an hour after two free hours of parking for shoppers (with the exception of validations available for cinema, ice rink and 24-Hour Fitness clientele). Its Jan. 30 fee debut happened to coincide with the trolley project work.
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The mall has stationed parking ambassadors in its lots to help familiarize customers with the machines and ticketing procedure. Nevertheless, motorist confusion and vehicles delayed at the entry gates have seen traffic back up into the street.
After contacting UTC management Friday for comment, I learned that mall operators had decided to temporarily suspend the parking fees and lift the gates to accommodate the busy weekend traffic. My advice to those who want to save a buck: Do your shopping this weekend.
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diane.bell@sduniontribune.com
(619) 293-1518
Twitter: @dianebellSD
Facebook: dianebell.news
The Los Angeles City Council on Friday ordered a handful of city agencies to draw up an assessment of fleas and vermin at City Hall, with at least one member linking the problem to the ongoing homelessness crisis.
City officials told council members that they believe the rat infestation was triggered by the demolition of Parker Center, the former police department headquarters being dismantled across from City Hall East on Los Angeles Street.
But Councilman Joe Buscaino drew his own connection between a 2016 court injunction, which limited how and when the city can seize and destroy the property of homeless people on skid row, and the City Hall rat infestation and recent cases of flea-borne typhus.
Rats are a symbol of this injunction, said Buscaino, who represents Watts and the harbor area. They are emblematic of how we lost control of the homeless, trash and encampment issue. And if we cant protect the greatest symbol of our own democracy, our own City Hall, if we cant protect our own staff from this medieval disease, then we should all pack up and go home.
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City workers at several offices say theyve seen evidence of rats. The City Council president has submitted a motion asking for a report on the scope of vermin and pest control issues. (Source: Office of Los Angeles City Councilwoman Monica Rodrig
Branimir Kvartuc, a Buscaino spokesman, said his boss wants L.A. to challenge the injunction. Buscaino later added in a written statement that city lawyers have advised city workers to interpret the injunction very conservatively, which is resulting in giant mountains of trash.
Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, countered that the injunction has nothing to do with a typhus outbreak nor does it have anything to do with rats. Under the injunction, the city can still destroy property that poses an immediate threat to public health.
The injunction in no way prohibits a robust rat extermination plan, he said.
White, whose organization advocates for poor people on skid row, said his group has repeatedly called for more trash pickup and other measures to deal with rodents. City leaders should take those steps instead of trying to blame legal protections for skid row residents and their property, he said.
County health officials declared a typhus outbreak last year in downtown L.A., saying people should avoid stray or wild animals, including rats. Typhus is a flea-borne illness that occurs when fleas bite rats and become infected with bacteria known as Rickettsia typhi or Rickettsia felis.
The illness can spread to humans through flea bites or the feces of infected fleas when rubbed into cuts or scrapes in the skin, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Personnel Department officials say last years typhus outbreak is unrelated to recent reports of rodents in City Hall and in neighboring buildings.
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Still, one city employee said her doctor diagnosed her with typhus in November and believes she contracted the disease while working in her City Hall East office. Deputy City Atty. Elizabeth Greenwood said she has not returned to work since November.
Los Angeles City Hall has had a rat infestation in recent months. Council President Herb Wesson says his office is one of the places where rodents have shown up. (Reed Saxon / AP)
City employees have been complaining for months about the rat situation, saying they had found rodent droppings, partially eaten house plants and tiny paw prints on paperwork.
Since August, rats have been repeatedly spotted in the office of Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez. Last year, staffers tried without success to catch one using cardboard boxes a chaotic attempt captured on video.
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Three rats were eventually trapped by pest control workers, a staffer said.
We have yet to see one carrying a piece of pizza, like in the New York subway, said Rodriguez, who represents the northeast San Fernando Valley.
City officials said that, in the coming weeks, there will be cleanups of the entire Civic Center area, with crews increasing the frequency of street sweeping and removing vegetation that can provide food or hiding places for rodents.
In a letter this week, Personnel Department officials advised workers to empty the trash in their offices each night, put away food and water, and limit the number of potted plants they keep.
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On Friday, a pest control company also was assigned to visit each floor in City Hall and City Hall East to determine the scope of the flea and rodent problem. Officials said they are still examining whether carpets on particular floors will need to be ripped out and replaced.
That possibility drew concern from Councilman Paul Koretz, a champion of environmental issues, who warned that carpet debris can be a huge problem in landfills.
Hopefully we can find an appropriate way to recycle them, said Koretz, who represents part of the Westside.
He also voiced worries that pest control crews may use poisons that could harm other wildlife. A city official overseeing the work said any flea spray used inside city buildings will be non-toxic.
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Council President Herb Wesson, whose staff found evidence of rodents in his office last year, said some in City Hall might not want carpets removed from their offices. He warned there will need to be a new carpet-cleaning protocol if that floor covering is allowed to remain.
The things we need to do, we have to do immediately, Wesson said.
david.zahniser@latimes.com
Twitter: @DavidZahniser
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Times Staff Writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report
One caravan of more than 1,800 migrants has been camped out by the Texas border in Piedras Negras. A second caravan numbering 2,000 has been moving this week through southern Mexico. Several hundred other migrants remained at a stadium in Mexico City earlier this week, preparing for the next step of their journey.
Four months after more than 6,000 Central American migrants arrived in Tijuana, the exodus continues. Many have been making their way through Mexico and are heading for the U.S. border, in less numerous but still sizeable caravans or smaller, lower-profile groups that pass undetected.
The issue of Central American caravans who joins them, how large they are, where they are going, if more are forming has been a pressing one for both the U.S. and Mexican governments and for communities along the way. In recent days, social media sites have been spreading word of a new caravan scheduled to leave San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Feb. 16.
Caravans form as a means of protection for undocumented Central American migrants on their way to the United States as they flee violence and poverty in their home countries. By moving jointly across Mexico, the idea has been that they can more easily fend off kidnappers or corrupt law enforcement officials in Mexico. But the massive movements have had their challenges.
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I think that people will continue to leave as they traditionally have, even as they have found protection in caravans, to travel as a community, especially women and children, said Mariana Zaragoza, who heads the Program for Migrant Matters at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. In the end, caravans have allowed the migrants to be seen, to shed their clandestine status.
The caravans make up a small fraction of the overall flow of Central Americans estimated to pass through Mexico. The Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a government think tank based in Tijuana, estimates anywhere from 350,000 to 400,000 annual crossings of Central Americans through Mexico on their way to the United States.
In one recent survey at Mexicos southern border, only 35 percent of nearly 1,000 people interviewed at the Ciudad Hidalgo Port of Entry said they were traveling as part of a caravan. Seventy percent said violence was a factor in their decision to leave their countries. Less than one third 30 percent said they were heading for another country, most of those to the United States. Those who said they intended to remain in Mexico gave Mexico City and Baja California as their top destinations.
The survey, by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, took place last month as thousands of migrants applied for one-year humanitarian visas being offered for the first time by the Mexican government. The pilot program, which ran from Jan. 17 to 29, offered migrants who presented themselves at the port of entry the chance to live and work anywhere in Mexico.
By late last week, Mexicos National Migration Institute had issued more than 12,000 of these visas on the Guatemalan border in the southern state of Chiapas. Another 900 had received visas in Mexico City. Even though the process had formally concluded, on Friday authorities began registering members of a caravan camped in a factory compound near the U.S. border in Piedras Negras.
The program was a necessary temporary measure to try to handle a large flow of people, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. The thinking was were not able to implement the kind of border control or visa control policy that we want. Lets at least make sure that things are above-board and according to law, Selee said.
By giving the Central Americans legal status, they took the market away from smugglers and any corrupt authorities that were smuggling with them, he said.
With the conclusion of the program, Mexican authorities announced they were entering a new phase that allows the Central American migrants to apply for the visas in their home countries. They said that Mexico also will begin offering residents of El Salvador and Honduras the same benefits accorded to citizens of neighboring Belize and Guatemala through regional visitor and visiting border worker visas in southern Mexico.
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Thats the way it needs to be done, not only in Mexico, but in the world, migration flows need to be done in an organized and humane manner, said Alejandra Castaneda, a migration researcher at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. I think its a success, the other way doesnt work, you cant stop people by repressing people.
These efforts have been part of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors push to document Central American migrants transiting through Mexico and bring them out of the shadows. But experts say enormous challenges persist and changes cant happen overnight.
They want to have a humane treatment of migrants at the southern border, but you cant do that without some sort of control, said Selee of the Migration Policy Institute. The administration has to find a way of controlling the southern border, where there are legal visas theres also a humane way of deporting people who dont come through legal channels, because otherwise, theyre incentivizing a massive migration flow into Mexico.
As one incident showed last week, migrants continue to be subject to abuses by criminal groups. In Veracruz on Thursday, state police officials reported the detention of 10 suspected smugglers after they found 239 Central Americans crammed inside a large truck, most of them Guatemalans.
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While last years caravan brought much attention to Tijuana and to the San Diego border, the new focus for U.S. and Mexican authorities has been Piedras Negras, a border community of some 200,000 residents in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, across from Eagle Pass, Texas.
Press reports have been telling of more than 1,800 people being held inside the enclosed grounds of a former maquiladora. They have been provided with sleeping areas, food and bathrooms but not allowed to leave the facility as officials from Mexicos National Migration Institute register them for humanitarian visas that allow them to work and travel anywhere in Mexico. A group of 48 unaccompanied minors in the group, many with parents in the United States, were sent to a shelter, according to the newspaper Reforma.
Local authorities have said the community is not equipped to host such a large group. Miguel Angel Riquelme, the governor of Coahuila, won applause from business leaders when he said the state would turn away future caravans. We dont have the capacity, nor should we have to carry a responsibility thats not ours, the governor was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile in southern Mexico, another caravan has arrived in Oaxaca, estimated in size from 1,500 to 2,000 people, many of whom reportedly have the humanitarian visas.
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Earlier in the week, in Chiapas, authorities detained an activist with the group Pueblo sin Fronteras, David Cueva Ramirez, and deported him to Honduras. Mexican authorities have not confirmed the detention, but Cueva, who said he had legal residency in Mexico, told Mexicos La Jornada newspaper that he was detained Monday while traveling with a group of 400 to 500 migrants, and interrogated by Mexican authorities as well as Interpol agents before being flown to San Pedro Sula.
One persistent question in recent days has been the location of the thousands who were processed legally last month and have not joined any caravan. We think that many people at the moment they processed their visas went ahead on their own, they looked for a place to rent, said Zaragoza of the Universidad Iberoamericana. Theres been no follow-up, and thats worrisome, she said.
In Honduras, a new caravan departure date has been spreading through social media. Announced for next Saturday, the group is scheduled leave from the same bus depot in San Pedro Sula as previous groups.
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Karen Valladares, executive director of the National Forum for Migrations in Honduras, said conditions continue to push people out. As long as there are no structural changes in Honduras, were going to continue seeing Hondurans fleeing the country, she said.
For those people who make the decision to migrate, it matters little or nothing if they open the border, if they close the border, she said. What they want to do is arrive, period, arrive in the United States.
sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com
Twitter @sandradibble
Describing San Diegos border with Mexico as an area of high illegal entry, the Trump administration announced this week it is waiving environmental reviews to speed up replacement of 12.4 miles of the secondary border fence.
This project was funded by a 2018 spending bill that allocated $251 million for border construction in San Diego. It is not part of the $5.7 billion President Donald Trump has demanded for border wall construction in the latest budget.
The project extends from the eastern end of Border Field State Park, east along the Tijuana River. There will also be about 1.5 miles of new secondary wall, a Border Patrol spokesperson said, to fill gaps in area where the existing secondary fence does not completely mirror the primary barrier.
The new secondary barrier will be constructed of 30-foot-tall steel bollards similar to the 14 miles of primary fencing that is currently being erected along the same stretch of land to replace older fencing.
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This is the sixth waiver the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued since Trumps election in 2016. Several federal laws have been interpreted to allow Washington to waive legally-required environmental reviews in order to control the border.
In issuing the order Thursday, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen argued that conditions on the border necessitated this step.
There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States, Nielsens public notice stated, in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project area.
In the last fiscal year, the notice stated, the U.S. Border Patrol made more than 38,000 apprehensions and seized 8,700 pounds of marijuana, plus 1,800 pounds of cocaine in the San Diego sector.
Build the wall has been a Trump mantra since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015. In San Diego, however, much of the U.S.-Mexico border has been marked by tall fences for years.
Construction on the primary fence, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to Otay Mountain, began in 1989. Made of 10-foot-tall Vietnam-era helicopter mats, this fence was regarded as welcome, yet ineffective. In 1994, Operation Gatekeeper brought more Border Patrol agents and new tactics to the borders western-most five miles.
In 1996, the secondary fence of steel mesh was installed.
Apprehensions in the area steeply declined as crossing routes moved farther east.
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In recent years, this barrier has been repeatedly breached, often by battery-powered saws that can rapidly create holes large enough for humans. The Border Patrol has covered some areas of the mesh with rolls of concertina wire to further deter breaches.
SLSCO Ltd., a Texas firm, has a $101 million government contract to replace that meshed fence with 30-foot-tall steel bollards. Thanks to the waiver, construction may begin as early as this month.
The government is including numerous relevant local, state and federal stakeholders in the conversation about construction, a Border Patrol spokesperson said without identifying them.
Environmental groups blasted the decision, saying the existing 600-plus miles of border barriers already harms more than a dozen rare species.
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It comes as no surprise that the Trump administration continues to bypass laws established to keep our communities and wildlife safe to further their dangerous border security agenda, said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife.
In 2018, after similar waivers were issued to speed the construction of the replacement primary fencing in San Diego and 60 miles of fencing in Texas, the Trump administration was sued by the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Legal Defense Fund.
The nonprofits argued that the waiver was unconstitutional, allowing Homeland Security to violate the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws. Building barriers on the border, they maintained, could damage habitats, rare plants and threatened animals.
Last February, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel in San Diego dismissed the case, ruling in favor of the Trump administration. In December, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
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Lawsuits are still pending on waivers DHS issued to hasten the construction of border barriers in New Mexico and another portion of the Texas-Mexico boundary.
This is the sixth time the Trump administration has issued these waivers and we are fundamentally opposed to all of them, said Laiken Jordahl, a borderlands campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity. We think there is no justification for ignoring environmental, safety and health concerns to rush through this unnecessary wall.
Will this waiver prompt a lawsuit?
We are weighing our legal options, Jordahl said.
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A Navy captain described by his Pacific Fleet commander as the standard-bearer in the public affairs community was sentenced Friday to six months in prison for his role in the years-long Fat Leonard scandal that torpedoed dozens of naval officers careers.
Retired Capt. Jeffrey Breslau, 52, pleaded guilty in November to a felony charge that his business relationship with Leonard Glenn Fat Leonard Francis constituted a conflict of interest.
Breslau fought back tears Friday in a San Diego courtroom as he said he was sorry for what he had done and how it affected his wife, family and country.
After retiring from the Navy, Breslau said, he worked as a spokesman for the city of Johns Creek, Georgia, but after his guilty plea he left that job. Now he is working part-time at a fast food restaurant.
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I understand what rock bottom means, Breslau said.
The so-called Fat Leonard scandal rocked the Navy and tarnished the reputation of a generation of officers.
Francis pleaded guilty in 2015 to orchestrating a massive bribery and corruption scheme involving scores of naval officers. His company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, served as the Navys primary ship husbanding agent in the western Pacific and, over the course of decades, over-charged the Navy $35 million in bogus or inflated fees.
A network of Navy officers and officials, including an NCIS agent, worked for years to thwart multiple investigations into Francis and his company and to steer Navy ships to ports controlled by his company. In exchange, Francis provided his network of corrupt officials with cash, travel, fine dining, lavish parties and prostitutes.
Francis has yet to be sentenced. He is on house arrest in San Diego and is a witness for the prosecution.
Breslau was one of the top public affairs officers for the Navys Pacific Fleet, headquartered in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from October 2009 through July 2012. According to a 2012 evaluation by Adm. Patrick Walsh, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, Breslau was the best PAO in the Navy, and a must-select for the admiral ranks.
In March of that year Breslau had begun secretly working for Francis, who was, by then, the subject of an expansive criminal investigation.
Breslau worked for him for more than a year; he wrote, reviewed or edited at least 33 documents, and provided Francis with talking points for meetings with high ranking Navy officials. He also served as a ghostwriter for Francis email communications to the Navy.
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Francis paid him $65,000. Breslau never disclosed this arrangement to his superiors.
Francis was arrested in 2013 in a San Diego hotel room. In the five years since, 33 others have been charged in the scheme, with 22 pleading guilty. Hundreds more were investigated by the Navy.
U.S. Attorney Mark Pletcher, in comments during Breslaus sentencing hearing, compared him to a hired hitman, using a pen instead of a sword, because Breslau used his Navy training to help Francis fight the Navy.
Breslau used Skype instead of email to communicate with Francis to conceal his activity, Pletcher noted.
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He knew the rules, Pletcher said.
U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino, in handing down Breslaus sentence, said his crime was extraordinarily serious.
Breslaus attorneys in their comments compared their clients fate to others in the case.
Other officers caught up in the Fat Leonard scandal have escaped prosecution. Of the estimated 500 officers investigated by the Department of Defense for their contacts with Francis, a majority were cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
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Some did receive reprimands, reduction in rank or censure from the Navy.
In December, a two-star admiral in line for a Trump administration appointment was censured by Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.
In his letter, Spencer detailed instances in which retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery accepted meals and hotel stays in exchange for feeding Franci information on ship movements. Montgomery also lied to investigators in a written statement, Spencer said.
Montgomery was described in an email from someone at Francis company perhaps Francis as a top shelf friend.
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The most extensive prosecution in the scandal has yet to go to trial. Nine Navy and Marine Corps officers from the Navys Seventh Fleet await trial together in San Diego.
A Breslaus attorney, Renee Stackhouse, told the Union-Tribune that the government is using Breslau to send a message to those still fighting federal charges.
I think that the sentencing today was an attempt to act as a general deterrent, Stackhouse said. This case was used to send a message to all the unresolved cases.
Those unresolved cases involve Francis almost complete infiltration of the Seventh Fleet, where prosecutors say officers in key decision-making positions routinely partied with the contractor, traveled on his dime and were entertained by prostitutes.
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William Cowden, Breslaus other attorney, told the judge his client did not accept bribes, hotel stays or prostitutes, nor did he provide classified information.
This is a unique prosecution, Cowden said.
Stackhouse noted the disparity in consequences faced by Naval officers in federal court and those adjudicated by the Navy.
It is disheartening for (Breslau) when you look at what they did and what he did, she said. There seems to be a disparity in sentencing.
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Breslau was fined $20,000 and ordered to pay back the Navy $65,000. He reports to prison in April.
After he is released from custody, Breslau will serve two years supervised release and perform 250 hours community service.
Contact Andrew Dyer via email or Twitter.
Berenice Badillo learned firsthand how art could help people change when it helped her through her own tumultuous adolescence.
In 11th grade, my high school counselor advised me not to attend college, saying, Just forget about that, you will never make it, she recalls.
After high school, she eventually began working at a homeless shelter for youth started painting the walls and furniture with the teens there. She began noticing that the painting activity helped them engage and communicate with each other. That led her to start a violence prevention arts program for them.
Art soon became my platform, and I utilized art as a tool for diffusion and de-escalation, to unite, and to empower.
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She went on to embark on a career as an art therapist, earning degrees in human services, education and counseling, marriage and family therapy, and is currently working on her doctorate in art therapy. Recently, she led the communal art process for an art show thats part of the development of Welcome the Stranger, a 40-foot sculpture being planned for San Ysidro as a sign of welcome and hope to immigrants. The project involves the work and input of residents and artists in San Ysidro, members of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church (part of the San Diego Organizing Project), artist Jim Bliesner and Badillo.
Badillo, 44, lives in the Emerald Hills neighborhood of San Diego with her husband and took some time to talk about this art show, the sculpture project, and her own personal use of art therapy.
Q: What is art therapy?
A: Art therapy is a multi-modal, art- and psychology-based process that provides a shared language in which difficult issues can be named and expressed, as well as providing the opportunity to explore subconscious material. No art experience is necessary, as the process is more important than the product. It is an alternative way to express painful material and to process visually by using art as a distancing tool with overwhelming thoughts and experience.
Q: Do you participate in any form of art therapy for yourself?
A: I cannot even imagine a life without art making. As a youth, art saved my life it was the only thing that redirected my rage, changed my life trajectory and gave me a voice. Art was my escape, the one thing that I excelled in and the only place where I could express myself freely. Art calmed me amid the chaos and would propel me into a path that seemed insurmountable to achieve.
As an art therapist, I use art as a way to process, manage and understand my life circumstances and often exhibit my art in galleries as it helps me to visually see clearly what I am going through and how to get through it. I love exploring new media and challenge myself to practice beginners mind and experiment and combine media.
Q: Tell us about this art exhibit in San Ysidro thats part of the Welcome the Stranger sculpture to welcome immigrants at the border.
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A: This exhibit and project was made possible by the generous financial support of The California Endowment and in collaboration with the San Diego Organizing Project. The art exhibit at the Front Gallery in San Ysidro is the artifact of an inclusive, communal discussion that utilized art therapy for the purpose of mediating the politically charged conversation of immigration. The community-based art project, which includes a 40-foot permanent sculpture, was developed to raise attention to political issues, conflict resolution, and in creating an environment in which people could bear witness to each others stories. The exhibit will be up until March 2.
What I love about Emerald Hills ...
I love that my community has deep, multi-cultural roots that start with the Kumeyaay people and is sustained by a tight-knit, African-American legacy of resilience.
Q: Why was this something you wanted to be a part of?
A: The negative portrayal of immigrants in the media matters and can reinforce the problematic belief that immigrants should not be regarded as members of the community. The development of myths, beliefs and fantasies regarding foreigners include stories based on stereotypes, media and fear. Anti-immigrant rhetoric targets both documented and undocumented Mexican immigrants and contributes toward a negative self-identity in the form of profiling, laws that discriminate, anti-immigration policies, denial of basic health services, and unequal treatment in schools and in the workplace. I wanted to develop a communal art process that would create social change. As a first-generation immigrant, I grew up straddling two worlds, balancing the intertwined cultural and sub-cultural identities that were my daily reality. At an early age, I found myself in negotiation of identity, power and self-worth. Art helped me reclaim my identity and gave me a purpose.
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Q: What were the steps involved in this communal artistic process?
A: The first part prepared the participants to think on a micro level by exploring their identity through symbol making, then linking them to a larger group process, which increased storytelling, relationship-building, safety, empathetic listening and self-reflection.
The middle part of the protocol symbolically mimicked the experience of deportation and asset-building through the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of a personal and group collage. This experiential process assisted in the building of empathy for one another, the processing of difficult emotions, cognitive processes and facilitated the discussions regarding the United States-Mexico border and the negative discourse surrounding immigration.
The last part assisted the participants and facilitators in thinking on a macro, more global level by arriving at a new collaborative meaning, identifying their collaborative stories, themes, values, solutions and contributions to the creation of the sculpture. The six groups then shared with the larger community and created sketches.
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Q: What do you hope viewers of the artwork get from seeing the results of this process?
A: I hope that exhibiting this process can introduce people to the contributions that art therapy can have to global peace. I hope to inspire people to learn more about the use of therapeutic skills to mediate conflict resolution and in the development of authentic engagement through the art process. I would love for people to consider that building global peace begins with creating interpersonal relationships on both a micro and macro level. There is a challenge in truly engaging people in social issues in which they have no personal experience. Stories can serve as powerful motivators and may also be essential in creating empathy. There is need for a global empathetic movement within the current political climate and the first step in creating social change begins with generating empathy for others.
Q: What have you learned about yourself as a result of this work?
A: I take refuge in knowing that I can still throw down using the pen as my sword and my paintbrush as my beacon.
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Q: What is the best advice youve ever received?
A: Pick your battles and Not every thought deserves a tongue.
Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?
A: I have always been an assertive, driven, self-assured woman who knows what she wants and how to get it. I am incredibly passionate and people are surprised when I tell them I often doubt myself. Thinking positive or just getting over it isnt real; I use the same therapeutic tools I teach my clients in order to manage my negative self-talk and not get trapped by it.
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Q: Describe your ideal San Diego weekend.
A: My ideal San Diego weekend starts off with sleeping in, going out for breakfast, preferably something savory and sweet with strong black coffee. Then, catching the many events that San Diego has to offer: a festival, museum exhibit, walking on the beach, hanging out with friends, exploring something new and creating new adventures. The ideal weekend would end with eating dinner with my parents, and then hanging out in my pajamas reading and doing art at home while my husband watches anime.
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Email: lisa.deaderick@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @lisadeaderick
Wherever Ed Fuentes went, whether it was an art gallery or community meeting, he had his camera hanging around his neck.
Both Fuentes and his camera became fixtures of the downtown Los Angeles Arts District, as he meticulously and lovingly documented the neighborhood and its transformation in photos and writing on his blog, View From a Loft, starting in 2006.
Fuentes, who emerged as a voice and staunch advocate for the local arts scene, died Thursday morning at the age of 59 after suffering a heart attack, according to his father Edward Fuentes Sr.
In addition to his role as a local historian, Fuentes was a muralist, blogger, poet, photographer, graphic designer and comedian. Larry Harnisch described Fuentes in an LA Times column as a human cyclone because he wore so many hats.
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He really had his finger on the pulse of the art community downtown. There are so few voices like Eds out there, said Maria Margarita Lopez, who met Fuentes while he was doing graphic design work at Variety more than 20 years ago.
A big guy with a scruffy beard, Fuentes was frequently described as larger than life, both in the physical sense and in personality, said cultural producer and photographer Melissa Richardson Banks. He was outgoing, funny, knowledgeable and passionate, said art curator Isabel Rojas-Williams.
And he could talk for hours. He would always play the devils advocate, pushing conversations in unexpected ways, said Alex Poli, an L.A. artist also known as Man One.
Lopez agreed.
If you gave him a microphone, he probably wouldnt give it back to you, she said.
Born and raised in Riverside, Fuentes lived there until the late 90s. Fuentes was always artistic growing up; he won a graphic design contest in his hometown paper, the Press-Enterprise, when he was just 6 years old, his father said.
When he moved to L.A., he worked almost feverishly to document downtown public art and buildings. You never know whats going to be gone next, Fuentes told Harnisch in 2013.
Fuentes championing of Latino artists helped fill a void in the Los Angeles art scene and his death is a searing loss, Lopez said.
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He used to tell me he was peoples worst nightmare because he was a Chicano who knew how to write, Alex Poli said.
Fuentes writing brought much-needed visibility to historic murals, Rojas-Williams said, and to her own advocacy for an ordinance removing a ban on public murals that the city eventually passed 2013.
People should look to Latino street artists, such as those in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights, who use paint as a protest tool, a practice that came from the barrios, where villagers rose up with brushes for pitchforks and paint as torches, Fuentes wrote in 2017. Underserved communities have always spoken up by writing on the walls of their neighborhoods, demanding for better education and shared civic liberties.
Murals, he wrote, redefined what art can be for a city, but work to recognize art from neglected communities is ongoing.
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Although Fuentes left Los Angeles in 2012 to earn his MFA at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he continued to write for LAs KCET and dove into documenting similar movements in Las Vegas. Fuentes chronicled downtown Las Vegas murals and street art on another blog, Paint This Desert which he launched in 2013 with money from a Warhol Foundation grant.
In Las Vegas, Fuentes branched out into teaching and curating art exhibits. He was planning to open Homeboy Fauxism, an exhibit on an imaginary Chicano political artist from the early 80s (Bunko) and his influence on contemporary (also fictional) street art at Riverside Art Museum this month.
Fuentes saw what he loved about L.A. echoed in Las Vegas, and told Joe Schoenmann of Las Vegas Weekly that public art helps a city become a community.
I watched it happen in downtown L.A., Fuentes said, according to the Las Vegas Weekly. Street art and murals help people feel engaged in the streets. And that gray line of what is legal and illegal will never be agreed upon, but the art attracts people and allows them to experience a city as a city.
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Fuentes is survived by his mother, Dora Fuentes, and father, Edward Fuentes and brother Ron Fuentes.
The Fallbrook elementary school board adopted new voting districts Monday, in response to concerns that the current at-large elections disenfranchise Latino voters.
However, community members who submitted an alternative map for electoral districts say the new plan doesnt maximize the Latino vote in the community, and delays district voting by two years.
We are definitely concerned with the lack of urgency that the board expressed with our concerns, so we really want to have an opportunity for our town to have a chance at the 2020 elections, to have a representative there, said Stephanie Ortiz, a community member and former student of Fallbrook Union Elementary School District. Our primary concern is that the California Voting Rights Act is not being upheld, and the remedy is being postponed.
District Spokesman Bill Billingsley said many Fallbrook voters are satisfied with the map the council approved, despite the opposition from Ortiz and some other residents.
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Theres broad community support for that map that was selected, Billingsley said. There are four individuals in the community that expressed their concern with it.
School Trustee Caron Lieber, the lone vote against the adopted map, agreed with residents on the urgency of creating an electoral district that increased representation of Latino voters. Students need to see elected officials that reflect their culture and background, she said, and parents are more likely to communicate with a board member who speaks their primary language, she said.
The California Voters Right Act was enacted in 2002, 17 years ago, she said in a statement. The Hispanic/Latino community has been very patience with us. Seventeen years is a long time to wait. For that reason, and the ones I have already mentioned, I feel that the time to give a voice to the Hispanic/Latino population of Fallbrookis now.
According to the state website Ed Data, Fallbrook Elementary district had a student population that was 61 percent Latino in the last school year. In August, the district received a letter from attorney Kevin Shenkman, stating that the district was violating the California Voting Rights Act by holding at-large elections, in which voters choose trustees for the district as a whole. At-large elections are illegal if they hinder the ability of a protected class, including certain racial groups such as Latino voters, from electing representatives of their choice.
To avoid litigation, the school board voted in November to move to district elections in which voters choose board members to represent specific geographic areas. Its the latest of a number of San Diego County public agencies, including the cities and school districts of Escondido, Carlsbad, Oceanside, Vista and San Marcos, to make that switch.
In the following months, the district considered several plans to create electoral districts that concentrate the number of Latino voters, improving their ability to elect their preferred candidates. In Fallbrook, Ortiz teamed up with fellow residents Leticia Maldonado Stamos and Ricardo Favela to draft a map that would include a downtown voting district consisting of 52 percent Latino voters. According to their proposed plan, that district would vote on a new school board member in the next presidential election, in 2020.
On Monday, the board approved a different plan that would create a downtown district consisting of 50 percent Latino voters, and would place that area on the ballot in 2022. Community organizers complained that the adopted plan postpones their ability to gain representation by two years, and schedules that choice for a midterm vote, which typically produces lower turnout than presidential elections.
It just puts it off, said Ricardo Favela, a member of the Fallbrook Human Rights Committee, and a parent of two students in sixth and second grade at Maie Ellis Elementary This is supposed to remedy historic discrimination against our community. And we want that remedy immediately.
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Favela said he became involved in the districting process as soon as he heard about it, providing feedback at community meetings, talking to demographers and reviewing census blocks.
We thought we submitted a good map that creates a strong Latino community district, and surrounds Fallbrooks downtown, he said. And that map would allow us to vote on this position in the next election, 2020.
The adopted version features a boundary that captures the home of an incumbent, said Julia Gomez, an attorney for the Los-Angeles-based Mexican American Legal Defense Educational Fund (MALDEF). Thats not necessarily a problem, she said, except that it dilutes Latino voting power, and delays the opportunity for an election in that district.
It looks like what Fallbrook was doing when it adopted its map, is that it was trying to protect incumbents, to the detriment of its Latino population, she said.
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The California Voting Rights Act was passed in 2001, so Fallbrook is already behind in complying with it, Favela said.
Moreover, he argued, Fallbrook has past racial injustice to address, noting that Tom Metzger, a former Klu Klux Klan leader and founder of White Aryan Resistance, made the community his home and center of operations. As a student in Fallbrook, Favela said, he endured anti-Latino threats and taunts, so he wants to ensure that Latino students and families have a voice in the school district going forward.
I was born in this town, Favela said. I know many of the migrant workers. My father was a migrant worker. Were well familiar with the violence that our community went through.
The adopted map will go next to the County Board of Educations committee on school district organization for review. There isnt a hearing scheduled yet, Gomez said, but Favela said that community members plan to lobby against its approval. If the county committee approves it, Gomez said, MALDEF and the community organizations may consider challenging it in court.
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deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan
A San Diego Superior Court judge on Friday said he will issue a final ruling within the next 10 days on whether the city of Lemon Grove should be taken out a lawsuit filed by a prospective cannabis shop owner against the city and one of its City Council members.
Judge Richard S. Whitney tentatively ruled on Thursday that City Councilman David Arambula was acting in his role as an elected official the night a fight broke out between him and businessman Christopher Williams in 2017 at Arambulas home. As a result of injuries suffered during the incident, Williams filed a lawsuit against the city and Arambula, seeking unspecified damages.
The city has argued that by the time the fight happened near midnight, several hours after Williams and others arrived at Arambulas home, Arambula was no longer taking part in city business and that it was a social event.
Kim Oberrecht, an attorney hired by Lemon Grove, asked the judge on Friday to compare the incident to a 2009 legal decision that said the city of Sacramento could not be held liable in a case in which two firefighters one on duty, one off duty allegedly sexually assaulted a photographer during a 2004 party at a hotel.
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In that case, the court found that the on-duty firefighters conduct during the assault was not within the scope of the firefighters employment. The case pointed out his behavior during a social event was not considered conduct for which Sacramento was vicariously liable.
Oberrecht argued that, in that same light of outrageous and not anticipated behavior by those firefighters, Arambulas actions late in the evening were similar here and did not amount to an outgrowth of his job as a city councilman.
Hitting someone upside the head with a bottle is startling, shocking and unusual and cannot be tied to any city activity but (rather) a social gathering at his home at midnight, Oberrecht said.
Also at Arambulas home the night of the fight were Lemon Grove Mayor Racquel Vasquez; Taisha Brown, a member of the executive board of the San Diego County Democratic Party; and a neighbor of Arambulas. Vasquez has said she was not present during the altercation.
The judges tentative ruling cites a declaration by Brown that Arambula knew there was going to be a meeting about Williams cannabis dispensary and that Arambula showed Williams a briefing booklet that he had received for the upcoming City Council meeting at which the dispensary was going to be considered.
Williams has been trying to open a medical marijuana dispensary in the city since the end of 2016, when voters passed a measure making the businesses legal in Lemon Grove.
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karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com
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Amazon.com is reconsidering its plan to bring 25,000 jobs to a new campus in New York City, according to two people familiar with the companys thinking, following a wave of political and community opposition.
Hailed as an economic triumph when it was announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, D, the project now faces withering criticism from some elected officials and advocacy groups appalled at the prospect of giving giant subsidies to the worlds most valuable company, led by its richest man. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)
In the past two weeks, the state Senate nominated an outspoken Amazon critic to a state board where he could potentially veto the deal, and City Council members for the second time aggressively challenged company executives at a hearing where activists booed and unfurled anti-Amazon banners. Key officials, including freshman U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., whose district borders the proposed Amazon site, have railed against the project.
No specific plans to abandon New York have been made. And it is possible that Amazon would try to use a threat to withdraw to put pressure on New York officials.
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But company executives have had internal discussions recently to reassess the situation in New York and explore alternatives, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the companys perspective. The company has not leased or purchased office space for the project in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, making it easy to abandon its commitment.
Unlike in Virginia, where elected leaders quickly passed an incentive package for a separate headquarters campus, and Tennessee, which has embraced plans for a smaller facility, final approval from New York state is not expected until 2020.
The question is whether its worth it if the politicians in New York dont want the project, especially with how people in Virginia and Nashville have been so welcoming, said one person familiar with the companys thinking.
Asked to comment on the possibility that the New York deal might founder, Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth said: Were focused on engaging with our new neighbors. . . . Whether its building a pipeline of local jobs through workforce training or funding computer science classes for thousands of New York City students, we are working hard to demonstrate what kind of neighbor we will be.
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Amazon has hired a lobbying firm and a public relations firm in New York and recently advertised for a senior community affairs manager to focus on developing a positive partnership with local stakeholders, community groups and nonprofits.
At the same time, the two people said company executives may be reaching an inflection point as they prepare for a third City Council hearing and a session of the states Public Authorities Control Board, which typically would have to OK the project.
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I think now is the time for Amazon to make a decision because it has to start hiring, said one person. At some point, the project starts to fall behind.
New York state and city officials have played down the chances that the deal will fall through. They point to opinion polls showing strong public support for the project and say Cuomo and de Blasio will fight hard for it.
But officials are furious at the nomination of Sen. Michael Gianaris, D-Queens, who is deputy majority leader of the Senate and a strong opponent of the deal, to the Public Authorities Control Board, where he could effectively kill the project.
Cuomo, who has not said whether he will accept Gianariss nomination, called the Senate action governmental malpractice.
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Its a very small group of politicians who are pandering, Cuomo said Friday after The Washington Post reported Amazon was reassessing its plans. The problem is the state Senate has adopted that position, and thats what could stop Amazon. And if they do, I would not want to be a Democratic senator coming back to my district to explain why Amazon left.
Gianaris described the possibility that Amazon would pull out of the deal - which totals up to $3 billion in state and city incentives - as akin to blackmail.
Amazon has extorted New York from the start, and this seems to be their next effort to do just that, he said. If their view is, We wont come unless we get three billion of your dollars, then they shouldnt come.
The resistance in New York contrasts with the warm welcome Amazon has received in Virginia, where Gov. Ralph Northam, D, signed a law on Tuesday authorizing up to $750 million in state subsidies for the Arlington headquarters.
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Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, D, and Attorney General Mark Herring, D, have been engulfed in recent days by scandals involving past personal behavior. But the two people familiar with Amazons plans said company leadership is not concerned those controversies will hamper their project.
Its unclear what Amazon might consider as a Plan B if the New York project falls through. It could forgo the incentive package and hire employees on a smaller scale, as competitors including Google are doing. Or Amazon could search for another jurisdiction to get some or all of the jobs.
We always welcome more great jobs to the commonwealth, said Stephen Moret, chief executive of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the states top Amazon negotiator.
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Resistance to Amazon in New York is well organized and energetic, based in unions and community groups. Canvassers have gone door-to-door to warn people in Queens of looming rent hikes and displacement, much as Seattle experienced during the companys explosive growth there.
In addition to Ocasio-Cortez and Gianaris, opponents include City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, D-Manhattan, and Deputy Leader of the City Council James G. Van Bramer, D-Queens.
Gianaris, Van Bramer and some others who previously supported bringing Amazon to the city have changed their position, partly because they were unhappy that the deal was structured to bypass City Council approval.
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Critics portray the New York struggle as a national test for populist forces confronting big companies influence, and for the contest within the Democratic Party between its grass-roots and business-friendly wings.
We are dealing with an era of unprecedented corporate power in this country, Gianaris said. This Amazon deal represents a tipping point that is going to set the stage for what this country is going to be going forward.
Amazon surprised the nation in November by announcing that it would split its much-publicized second headquarters between Arlington and Long Island City, with employees at each site earning an average of at least $150,000 a year. Initially, the company said it planned a single location with all 50,000 jobs.
The divergent reactions in New York and Virginia arise from political and economic differences between the two, officials and analysts say. New York is a pro-labor city, whereas Virginia is a right-to-work state where employees cannot be obliged to join a union as a condition of employment. Amazon has opposed attempts to unionize its workforce and said it would do the same in New York.
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What Amazon is looking to do is come in and change the values of our city, said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
New York also is straining from the effects of rapid economic growth, while Arlington is eager to attract investment to Crystal City to offset the loss of thousands of federal government jobs over the past 14 years.
The community around Long Island City is home to legions of grass-roots organizations that were already unhappy about gentrification. Some also fault Amazon for selling facial-recognition technology to law enforcement agencies and partnering with companies that work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The activists have occupied an Amazon store in Manhattan, marched in Albany and demonstrated at the office of Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, D-Queens, who supports the deal.
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The geography in New York has brought together a lot of threads of activism who were really ready to react to this kind of announcement and were particularly outraged, said Deborah Axt, co-executive director of Make the Road, an organization of low-income immigrants and communities of color.
Northern Virginia, Axt said, does not have quite the pool of amazing champions ready to jump into the fray as were fortunate to have here in New York.
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In Virginia, almost all state and local leaders support Amazons arrival, despite opposition by Tenants and Workers United, Our Revolution Arlington and some members of Indivisible Arlington, which have staged small protests at community meetings.
The Arlington County Board is putting final touches on a proposed $23 million local incentives package, which it is expected to approve in March or later.
Most people think this is a great opportunity, Board Chair Christian Dorsey, D, said.
The board is pressuring Amazon to sign a project labor agreement that ensures a living wage, proper job classifications and safety standards for all those employed by construction contractors and subcontractors. They have emphatically not promised anything, said board member Erik Gutshall, D. But I didnt get the sense that any of those things was a non-starter.
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Residents of the neighborhoods around the Arlington site worry about rent increases, spiking property taxes and paralyzing traffic. But neither they nor the progressive groups lobbying against the company appear to have enough political clout to block the deal.
In New York, critics are hoping that Amazon will tire of devoting time and money to fighting a battle it didnt expect.
The way these fights work, you push on each and every little thing, Van Bramer said.
That approach was sure to worry Amazon, whose vice president for policy, Brian Huseman, told the recent City Council hearing, We want to invest in a community that wants us.
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This story was originally published by The Washington Post.
Whipped Apias founder and gelato chef Chloe Faaiuaso is setting off the United States next week, and is happy to announce her mother Trisha Walsh is taking over.
It is her last shift in the shop today, and to celebrate, she has ordered a batch of churros to serve up with her own chocolate sauce and of course, gelato.
Ms Faaiuaso opened Whipped Apia in November 2017, offering Samoa its first ever local gelateria. After her fiance Mason Holmes proposed to her, the pair knew eventually their life would move to his hometown in Washington DC at least for a while.
Were going to go over for a few years, get a head start over there. If the stars align we will be back, and hopefully we can open a Whipped in America, run that for a few years then come back bigger and better, she said.
Ms Faaiuaso said before Whipped, she hated being in a kitchen, and she even hates dessert.
Thinking about going into this that was my biggest fear, how am I meant to provide food for people?
All of my friends said you, owning something to do with food, how does that compute, but now I have had a successful business and I have learned so much.
But despite that, she said she has found a passion for food, and the constant learning that comes with it.
Oh, can you its 150 grams of pistachio, thank you, she says to her fiance, who is making a new patch of gelato on the other side of the counter during the interview.
And 130 of the lime milkshake, in the fridge.
Watching her serve customers, waiting patiently for their toddlers to carefully choose a flavour, it is clear how much love Ms Faaiuaso has for her work and her shop.
She hugs regular customers who squeeze in a sweet fix on their way home from shopping, and insists on whipping up a special batch for another customers birthday.
Do you want us to make a mint chocolate chip, and you can pick it up tomorrow? Ms Faaiuaso said, interrupting a sale of an imperfect flavour choice.
She tells a doting boyfriend in the shop that he can pick up a batch of gelato tomorrow, his girlfriends birthday.
Its not going out of our way to do that kind of thing, I know its her favourite, so why not? she said, returning to the interview.
Based in Vailima, opposite the Manumea Hotel, Whipped Apia has become part of the food-scene furniture. Friendships and business connections have been formed over a waffle cone of koko Samoa or siamu popo flavoured gelato, and that is what Ms Faaiuaso said she will miss the most.
But I think when people are coming in, and asking what is this flavour, where is that fruit from the space isnt that big, so that opens it up to having other people join in the conversation, she said.
People come in, they overhear a conversation and it becomes a real knowledge sharing place, its been really awesome.
Since announcing on Facebook last week she planned to close, Ms Faaiuaso has been inundated with visitors coming to say goodbye. Some were there to buy gelato too, but mostly they wanted to hug and kiss their dear friend, and wish her well.
The amount of people that have said go, were really happy for you there is no judgement, no anything, about having to close a business that has only been open a year, she said.
Everyone is just really proud of me for following my heart. That makes it much easier.
Weve been really blessed.
When Ms Faaiuaso and Mr Holmes decided to relocate to Washington, Ms Faaiuaso thought she would have to lock the doors of Whipped forever. She handed in her two weeks notice to the landlord, and the two of them cried, she said, laughing a little.
But her mother, Trisha Walsh offered to step in.
When we said we were closing, she said oh, did you want to close? Or do you want me to run it?
Whipped wouldnt be here at all, or what it is, without her and Mike.
Mrs Walsh is returning to New Zealand with her husband, outgoing Deputy High Commissioner Mike Walsh, but will return to Samoa. She will publish new opening hours soon enough, Ms Faaiuaso said.
How well this has done has been amazing, having the people weve met, its so special to me.
Knowing that I have set up the brand is cool, the product is great but its just hard to leave our customers that have been coming in.
Ms Faaiuaso will be back in May, and will take a portable freezer around the Pacific Games in July. After that, Whipped Apia may have to close its doors permanently.
I really thought [today] was going to be the end, but we do have a little more time!
The Ministry of Health (MOH) has revealed that only three out of 15 Samoa Water Authority (SWA)-owned boreholes complied with its national standards.
According to a December 2018 Communicable Diseases Surveillance Bulletin released by the MOH, only 15 boreholes were tested out of 40 on Upolu and Savaii using the National Drinking Water Standards (NDWS) 2016 and the results showed only three were compliant.
The monitoring by the water quality unit within the MOH includes water sampling, testing, obtaining results and doing analysis. Standards that the unit sets includes the presence or the absence of total coliforms and Escherichia (E.coli) bacteria. In order for a sample to comply with the standards, it must have zero counts of the bacteria.
The key findings from the December 2018 monitoring of drinking water: all three Samoa Water Authority-run urban treatment plans were found to be compliant; out of the 26 water bottling companies in Samoa, only one was found to be non-compliant; and there was a high percentage (80 per cent) of non-compliant samples for boreholes.
But SWA Chief Executive Officer Seugamaalii Jammie Saena, in response to questions from the Samoa Observer, said when all the boreholes were first drilled they passed the parameters of the NDWS.
MOH report does not clarify which of the 46 parameters that should be tested are non-compliant, but our testing (which is weekly) shows that for the period in question, our micro compliance (which is one of the parameters) is 80 per cent compliant, the rest is in the works this year to chlorinate."
Out of 26 boreholes in Upolu, we have chlorinated 21. The last five are to be done this financial year. I cannot comment as to the accuracy of the MOH report, she said.
We have to ensure we provide safe drinking water to our people and when there is a need to improve our facilities due to the changing environment and increased human activity around our supply areas, we prioritize to do so.
The mandated role of the WQU is to monitor and regulate all the water service providers in Samoa, to ensure that drinking water is safe for consumption.
A member of the public has made a verbal threat against Prime Minister Tuilaepa Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi, in a video that immediately went viral last night.
Saute Sapolu posted the video on Facebook yesterday. In the video, Saute swears at Prime Minister Tuilaepa, using words that cannot be published.
He also makes a threat on Prime Minister Tuilaepas life, criticizing the way he runs the Government.
The video earned immediate condemnation from many Samoans who defended the Prime Minister.
Saute also copped a lot of swear words in social media posts where people called him many names.
Sautes video follows the arrest of King Faipopo, who has been charged with making false statements against the Prime Minister.
In a statement issued by the Police yesterday, they cautioned members of the public against abuse of social media.
The damage that defamatory statements on social media outlets and cyber bullying has done to several members of the community is a matter that these laws are designed to address, the statement said.
It was not possible to get a comment from the Police last night on whether they would charge Saute.
The Police yesterday confirmed that Malele Paulo, better known as King Faipopo, has been charged with making false statements.
The confirmation from the Police was issued after Mr. Paulo spent Friday night in Police custody following his arrest at the S.N.P.F. Plaza that afternoon. He was released yesterday afternoon to attend his mothers funeral, but only after he surrendered his passport.
Mr. Paulo who lives in Australia and holds a New Zealand passport arrived on Thursday.
Because of public interest and media enquiries received, the Samoa Police Service (SPS) can confirm that a Mr Malele Atofu Paulo (m) 45 years of Vailoa Aleipata, has been charged pursuant to section 117A of the Crime Act, with making False Statements with the intention of causing harm to a member of our Samoan communities' reputation, by defaming them, the Police statement said.
Police investigations started in August 2018 when a complaint was filed by Tuilaepa Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi with police in relation to alleged defamatory statements, made by the defendant.
The Police said Mr. Paulo had publicly said that the complainant, committed murder, corruption, theft, gun smuggling and other statements that are strongly denied by the complainant.
If convicted the defendant is liable to a fine not exceeding 175 penalty units or imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months per charge.
The Police also used the opportunity to issue a warning about the abuse of social media.
The damage that defamatory statements on social media outlets and cyber bullying has done to several members of the community is a matter that these laws are designed to address, the statement said.
Where complaints are laid with the police, we will do our best to assist those being victimised on social media platforms by any false statements.
Mr. Paulo has been remanded at liberty and is scheduled to appear before the Court on 5 March 2019. He has to report to the Criminal Investigation Division every Friday.
A business couple has opposed a plan by the family of a Cabinet Minister to build a two-storey building behind their newly opened supermarket at Vailima.
In the Supreme Court, Komisi and Sala Lupe Chan Mow, rejected an application to lift an interim injunction issued against the construction of the residential property belonging to the family of the Minister of Works, Transport and Infrastructure, Papalii Niko Lee Hang.
The interim injunction was issued by the Chief Justice, His Honour Patu Tiavaasue Falefatu Sapolu, in December 2018. The family of the Cabinet Minister wants the injunction lifted so they can proceed with the project.
The dispute, which is separate from a civil lawsuit between the same parties in relation to the location of the new Mynas Supa-mart at Vailima, was before Supreme Court Justice Tafaoimalo Leilani Tuala-Warren, on Thursday.
The Ministers family was represented by lawyer, Muriel Lui while Sala Josephine Stowers represented the Komisi and Sala Chan Mow.
Ms. Lui is fighting for the interim injunction to be lifted immediately.
But Sala Stowers argued that the application to lift the interim order should be dismissed.
She cited the current proceedings before the Supreme Court pertaining to the supermarket being built without due compliance with the PUMA Act.
The respondents are challenging the validity of the applicants development consent for the current development, Sala told the Court."
The building of the applicants two-storey residential building behind his supermarket will continue to add nuisance to the respondents if allowed.
Sala maintained that her clients have a valid argument when it comes to the obstruction of their view, airspace and lighting. She said these are all to be considered for any development as stipulated by section 63 of the PUMA Act.
The respondents also raised issues about their health in the legal action before the Supreme Court noting the health impacts on them, the lawyer said.
But Ms. Lui disagreed. She argued that the Lee Hangs did in fact acquire the permit, which was granted for the construction of their family residence, located behind the Supermarket.
They (Chan Mows) allege in their claim they suffer nuisance issues because of the Supermarket and that is because it is located besides their building; I understand that, however the residential property is separate location from the supermarket, Ms. Lui said.
She disputed claims by the couple on health, saying they have nothing to worry about when it comes to the residential property.
Also the respondents keep talking about their certain rights to a view from their land, but there is no legal right and they havent pointed to one, Ms. Lui said.
I get their main claim against the residential property is that it may block a potential view from their land, but there is no such law against my clients in terms of blocking the views.
The lawyer noted that to stop someone from building on their own land as it may affect their future plans or future view is highly unreasonable.
The applicant was the first to build on his land and if the respondent is late to the table then that is too bad for them.
There is no legal requirement to reserve a view for them, or wait until they build. Another option is that they could build higher to get their view.
She also reminded the Court that the supermarket and the residential property are two separate developments, with separate development consent permits.
To rely on the alleged impact of the supermarket to support their claims against the residential property is invalid, said Ms. Lui.
Justice Tafaoimalo has adjourned the matter to a date that has been disclosed for her decision.
US President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (file photo) US President Donald Trump has announced that he will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 and 28, for their second high-stakes summit meeting intended to eliminate a potential nuclear threat. "My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong-un," Trump said in a tweet on Friday night.
"It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 and 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim and advancing the cause of peace!"
Trump revealed in his State of the Union address on February 5 that the meeting would be in Vietnam but did not disclose the city or the date, reports The New York Times.
US officials had earlier explored Da Nang, a coastal city where American troops arrived in 1965 for a war that would scar a generation, but the North Koreans were reported to prefer Hanoi since the country has an embassy there.
The meeting will be the second between Trump and Kim after an inaugural get-together last June in Singapore. Trump emerged from that meeting declaring that he had all but resolved the decades-long nuclear dispute and later declared that he and Kim "fell in love".
In another series of tweets also on Friday night, Trump said: "North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse.
"He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him and fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!"
But while North Korea has refrained from further nuclear and missile tests, it is yet to make any concrete commitment to eliminating its arsenal.
Friday's announcement comes just days after a confidential UN report found that the North Korean nuclear and missile programme remains intact, CNN reported.
Last week, intelligence officials warned that North Korea was "unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability".
The State Department's top negotiator with North Korea, Stephen Biegun, had released a statement earlier Friday following a meeting in Pyongyang with North Korean officials, but did not mention the location for the summit.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Reaffirming the BJP-led NDA government's intention to pass the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the government will ensure that the Bill does not cause any harm to Assam and other parts of the Northeast. The Prime Minister was addressing a public rally at Changsari near Guwahati while inaugurating several development projects amid protests by various organisations across the region which showed him black flags on Friday.
"The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 is not for Assam or northeastern states. It is for the whole country. The Bill is a national commitment considering the plight of the persecuted minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The passage of the Bill will ensure that those who were left out during the Partition and who still love India more than their lives are accommodated in the country. It is the responsibility of India to accept those people," he said.
"I am here to assure you that the Bill will not harm Assam or any other state in the region. The Bill will only allow those persecuted minorities to apply for citizenship. There is no question of granting citizenship without verification," Modi said.
The Prime Minister said the government is committed to ensuring that there are no illegal foreigners in Assam and the country.
"Our government has started work for updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) under the supervision of the Supreme Court, which the previous government was not doing. Our government is also working at a faster pace to seal the India-Bangladesh border," Modi said.
The Prime Minister attacked the Congress by holding the opposition party responsible for the delay in conferring Bharat Ratna to the late Bhupen Hazarika and Gopinath Bordoloi.
"Although music maestro Bhupen Hazarika and Gopinath Bordoloi were worthy of Bharat Ratna, the conferring of the honour to them was delayed for decades by the previous governments. It is the BJP government during whose tenure Bharat Ratna was conferred to both the worthy sons of Assam," he said.
"I want to ask them why the real jewels had to wait for decades to be recognised as Bharat Ratna, while for some the honour was fixed immediately after their birth," said the Prime Minister, adding that the previous governments in Assam also failed to implement the Assam Accord for over 30 years.
"Our government has already instituted a committee to implement the Clause 6 of the Assam Accord and I firmly believe that the committee will be able to fulfill all the aspirations of the people of the state," he said.
FM stresses importance of cooperation with UN organizations and offices [09/February/2019] SANAA, Feb. 9 (Saba) - Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf Abdullah on Saturday stressed keenness to cooperate fully with the United Nations organizations, programs and offices operating in Yemen.
"While the national authorities in Sana'a are keen to provide all necessary support, cooperation and facilitation to the United Nations organizations, programs and offices operating in Sana'a, there are those who are trying again to exploit some of the positions to blame the national authorities through describing them as obstructionists," he told Saba in a statement.
He added that those forgot the fact that the policy of starvation and the total siege used by the aggressor countries and its mercenaries as a weapon of war against the Yemeni people is one of the forms of genocide against civilians in clear violation of all human rights treaties, as well the laws of war."
The Foreign Minister said that the statement issued by the the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Mark Lowcock ,on 7 February, which referred to the refusal of the authorities in Sanaa to grant permission to the United Nations to reach the Red Sea Mills, is not consistent with the facts on the ground reality.
He pointed out that the competent national authorities in Sanaa coordinated with the Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator and the Office of the World Food Program for the purpose of opening another safe passage for humanitarian workers at the United Nations and shipments of aid away from the areas of clashes in the area of Kilo 16.
He indicated in this regard that Hiss area or any other path closer to the mills were proposed.
However, for unknown reasons, the WFP office has withdrew its previous agreement on what was proposed by the national authorities to find a safe passage beyond 16 kilometers.
Minister Sharaf pointed out that the full positive treatment by the authorities in Sana'a did not meet the same level or proposed other alternatives. Rather, this positive attitude was used politically to try to show the national authorities as an obstacle.
"In full view of the United Nations team in Hodeidah, the initiative of the authorities in Sanaa earlier was obstructed by a direct assault resulting in the killing of a member of the national team of experts," he said.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs called on the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs to investigate further information by the United Nations offices in Sana'a and to clarify the reasons behind the non-engagement positively in finding safe corridors that contribute to the delivery of food assistance to the citizens and to maintain the safety of the movement of workers in this area.
The Minister concluded his statement by inviting the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs to visit the province of Hodeidah and to take a closer look at the situation.
AA
Saba
Scientists image conducting edges in a promising 2D material
RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A research team comprised of scientists at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Washington has for the first time directly imaged "edge conduction" in monolayer tungsten ditelluride, or WTe 2 , a newly discovered 2-D topological insulator and quantum material.
The research makes it possible to exploit this edge conduction feature to build more energy-efficient electronic devices.
In a typical conductor, electrical current flows everywhere. Insulators, on the other hand, do not readily conduct electricity. In topological insulators, a special type of material, the interior works as an insulator, but the boundaries of such materials are guaranteed to be conductive due to its topological property, resulting in a feature called "topological edge conduction."
Topology is the mathematical study of the properties of a geometric figure or solid that is unchanged by stretching or bending. Applying this concept to electronic materials leads to discoveries of many interesting phenomena, including topological edge conduction. Working like highways for electrons, channels of topological edge conduction allow electrons to travel with little resistance. Further, because edge channels can be potentially very narrow, electronic devices can be further miniaturized.
Study results appear today in Science Advances.
"Several materials have been shown to be 3-D topological insulators," said Yongtao Cui, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at UCR, who led the research. "But 2-D topological insulators are rare. Several recent experiments established that monolayer WTe 2 is the first atomically thin 2-D topological insulator."
Cui explained that for a 3-D topological insulator, conduction appears at its surfaces; for a 2-D sheet-like material, such conducting features are simply at the edges of the sheet.
Cui's lab used a novel experimental technique called Microwave Impedance Microscopy, or MIM, to directly image the conduction at the edges of monolayer WTe 2 .
"Our results unambiguously confirm edge conduction in this promising material," Cui said.
Although WTe 2 has been known to exist for decades, interest in this material got a boost in only the last few years due to its exotic physical and electronic properties discovered using topological physics. WTe 2 layers are stacked together via van der Waals interactions and can be easily exfoliated into thin, 2-D, graphene-like sheets.
"In addition to conduction at the edges in monolayer WTe 2 , we also found that the conductive channels can extend to the interior of the material, due to imperfections -- such as cracks," Cui said. "Our observations point to new ways to control and engineer such conduction channels via mechanical or chemical means."
Cui's collaborators at the University of Washington prepared the monolayer WTe 2 samples. At UCR, his lab performed the MIM measurement, which involved sending a microwave electrical signal to a sharp metal tip, and positioning the tip near the surface of monolayer WTe 2 . By resolving the microwave signal bounced back by the sample, the researchers could determine whether the sample region directly below the tip was conductive or not.
"We scanned the tip across the entire sample and directly mapped the local conductivity," Cui said. "We performed all the measurements at cryogenic temperatures, needed for monolayer WTe 2 to exhibit the topological property. The topological properties of monolayer WTe 2 can potentially serve as a platform to realize essential operations in quantum computing."
Cui's lab is already exploring new ways to manipulate the edge conduction channels and topological physics in monolayer WTe 2 .
"We are looking into whether stacking monolayer WTe 2 with other 2-D materials can alter its topological property," he said. "We are also using mechanical and chemical methods to create networks of conduction channels. The MIM technique we used offers a powerful means to characterize the conduction channels in topological materials such as monolayer WTe 2 ."
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Cui was joined in the study by Yanmeng Shi, Ben Niu, and Brian A. Francisco of UCR; Joshua Kahn, Zaiyao Fei, Bosong Sun, Xinghan Cai, Xiaodong Xu, and David H. Cobden of the University of Washington; Di Wu of Nanjing University, China; and Zhi-Xun Shen of Stanford University; Shi, Kahn, and Niu are co-first authors of the research paper.
The work done at UCR was supported by Cui's startup funds.
This story has been published on: 2019-02-09. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: Ayatollah warns against trusting Europe
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday that Europe "cannot be trusted", a week after the EU launched a trade mechanism to bypass US sanctions on Tehran.
"These days there's talk of the Europeans and their proposals. My advice is that they shouldn't be trusted, just like the Americans," he said at a meeting with air force officials, his website reported. "I'm not saying we shouldn't have relations with them. This is about trust," he added.
Britain, France and Germany last week launched a special payment mechanism called INSTEX to help save the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
It would allow Tehran to keep trading with EU companies in spite of US sanctions renewed after Washington quit the accord last year.
Tehran has cautiously welcomed INSTEX as a "first step", but US officials said the new entity would not have any impact on efforts to exert economic pressure on Iran.
Khamenei also accused Europe of hypocrisy over human rights, criticising France's treatment of protesters in Paris.
"They (anti-riot police) attack protesters in Paris streets and blind them, then they have the audacity to make human rights requests of us," he said.
Turning to the United States, Khamenei said Iranians would chant "death to America" as long as Washington kept up its hostile policies, but the slogan was not directed at the American people.
"Death to America means death to (President Donald) Trump, (National Security Advisor) John Bolton and (Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo. It means death to America's rulers ... we have nothing against the American people," he said. (AFP)
This story has been published on: 2019-02-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.